Patricia A. McKillip

“You fought for your freedom and won a different kind of prison. I will fight for mine—”

“You can’t fight me,” Tearle reminded him harshly.

“I know.” In the placid light, his face looked chilled and very weary. “But I can die.”

I could not find my way back in dreams, I knew then. They were memory and desire, terror and hope; they told me only what I already knew.

She lies like the moon lies, a different face every night, all but one of them false, and the one true face as barren and hard as stone. Why do you believe her?

“Love is what we say it is,” she said fiercely. “That’s all I know. That’s all anyone knows about it. I’m sorry.”

“But, Corbet, there were things—between us—”

“You imagined many of them. You wanted them to be true, and so they were. But only to you.”

I didn’t know anymore what love meant, or why we were not all better off without it.

Do you care for me at all? Or do you only need me?

He was silent a moment, struggling. He said finally, “But you had a right to be angry.”

“Yes. But not to hurt those I love, or myself.”

“The Riddle Master himself lost the key to his own riddles one day,” he said in his deep, reed-pure voice, “and he found it again at the bottom of his heart.”

Wisdom never learned silence, and it is most annoying when least wanted.

Men see what they are most afraid of.

I do not want to choose which one of you I must love or hate. Here, I am free to do neither. I want no part of your bitterness.