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Indeed, to be a hero, forever at war, is to be in some ways always a child. The true challenge comes in making sense of one’s life, of imbuing it with purpose based on one’s own principles.

“For years my lady made her plans. And when the time came to put them into action, how wonderfully she was able to achieve her ambitions.”

“Only because few rational people can ever begin to understand such a lust for power,” said von Bek feelingly. “There is nothing more puerile than the mind of a tyrant.”

Everything may exist for a short while—even justice. But the true state of the universe is anarchy. It is the mortal’s tragedy that he can never accept this.

Knowledge ceases to be wisdom when one has no method for making sense or use of what one learns.

How true it is when they say there is nothing which makes a man more furious than the discovery that he has deceived himself!

Let us say that those who do insist on a hearing will be silenced soon enough. There is a monotonous pattern to the rise of tyrants which, I suppose, is reflected in the general pattern of human folly. Depressing though it is, we must accept the fact.

“Chaos has her moods and whims, that’s all. As I told you, she cannot remain stable. It is in her nature to be forever changing.”

“While it is in the nature of Law,” Alisaard explained, “to be forever fixed. The Balance is there to ensure that neither Law nor Chaos ever gain complete ascendancy, for the one offers sterility while the other offers only sensation.”

“It is your capacity for love that makes you strong, Prince Corum.”

“And my capacity for hate?”

“That directs your strength.”

I could scarcely believe that these were the men who had done so much to influence the course of my own world’s history. It now seemed obvious that all of them were drugged in some way. They were acting like silly children. And yet I suppose I should have realized that it is in the nature of all such creatures to be at heart infantile. Only children believe they can achieve enormous power over the world without paying a price for that power. And the price so often is the sanity of the one who seeks it.

Her smile was all pride. I had seen many like her in the past. She believed herself cleverer than she was because it suited others to let her maintain that delusion.

“Evil flourishes best in disguise,” said Otto grimly. His companions nodded in assent.

“And the best disguise is simple” said the youth, Federit Shaus. “Honest patriotism. Joyful idealism.”

“You’re a cynic, lad,” von Bek smiled at him. “But sadly my own experience would support your view. Show me a man who cries ‘my country right or wrong’, and I’ll show you one who’d cheerfully murder half his own nation in the name of patriotism.”

“She is in other words a classic demagogue,” said von Bek...“It was Hitler’s secret that he could seem one thing to one group and an entirely different thing to another. That is how they rise so swiftly to power. These creatures are bizarre. They can virtually change shape and colour. They have an amophous quality and yet at the same time they have a will to dominate others which is unrelenting, almost their only consistent trait, their only reality.”