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68ace4a
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And then he left the palace to roam the streets of Ombria, where he painted shadows as he searched for light within them, painted thick, barred doors, as he searched in their hewn, scarred grains for what it was they hid, painted high windowless walls as if, rebuilding them stone by stone on paper, he could dismantle them and finally see the secret life behind the real.
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Patricia A. McKillip |
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79b07e4
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He finally took his harp out of the cobwebs, walked out the door, and admitted who he was: the Unforgiven.
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Patricia A. McKillip |
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359ace4
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There are pieces to the puzzle missing,' Camas said. He was tugging his hair; his eyes glowed eerily in the red light from a stained-glass lamp. 'And pieces that don't yet fit. What, for instance, precipitates the shift from city to shadow city? Is it sorcery? Has it to do with the precarious state of affairs in the House of Greve? The powerless heir, the bastard who cannot act? What secrets are hidden within the secret palace? What is ther..
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Patricia A. McKillip |
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4b25d07
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The tutor's eyelids drooped; his thoughts drained out of his face like water seeping into earth.
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Patricia A. McKillip |
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fc27678
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That man would betray his own shadow. And for what? A child's tale.' 'Is it?' Mag looked at her. 'Is it only a tale?' For a moment, the purple eyes grew dark, black as the little rags of shadows that Mag saw on empty streets or patches of barren ground, attached to nothing, seemingly blown at random from some place adrift in light.
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Patricia A. McKillip |
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6cea438
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As she moved swiftly and noiselessly through the vast palace cellar, odd noises weltered toward her. Voices and echoes of water rippled through the air as if, in some magic chamber, whales and dolphins cavorted among young maidens in great tanks of water. When she reached it, all the fish turned into laundry, stirred and beaten in steaming cauldrons by glum, limp-haired women as wet as mackerels.
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Patricia A. McKillip |
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05cb9d3
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When he held a candle across the threshold, the black swallowed the fire completely. When he tried to step across it, he felt nothing beneath his foot. Sometimes he heard rain, a bird-cry, wind soughing through tall trees; mostly he was aware only of an intimation of vastness, silence, as though he stood at the edge of a world. He saw nothing. So he let the charcoal imagine what might lie on the other side of the door.
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Patricia A. McKillip |
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52ec0a3
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He is not here to help me with this; you must take his place.' Ducon started to speak, faltered. He stared at her, the bruise on his face suddenly vivid against his pallor, as if she had struck him.
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Patricia A. McKillip |
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cf3ff16
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What a dull place the world would be if all the mysteries in it were solved.
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Patricia A. McKillip |
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49e99e5
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Then, as Mag worried the crock into her basket, trying not to squash goats' eyes and violets, the young man reached across the counter and seized her hand. She gazed at him in wonder. He had thick, moist fingers, and she needed her hand to shift the eyes. 'Mag,' he said huskily. His heavy, earnest face was sheened with sweat and the bluish shadow of his first beard. 'How can you not see how we belong to one another? We've grown up together,..
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Patricia A. McKillip |
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5280258
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She descended, not through the nearest hole as was her childhood habit, but more sedately down a marble staircase that began life in the upper world as an innocent stairway from a cellar door. Below, Faey complained about her tardiness, but was too busy to press for explanations. A gentleman from the palace had sent a request, with gold, for a method of detecting poison. Mag sighed. It would be a smelly afternoon.
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Patricia A. McKillip |
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890db43
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She spread her hands. That morning they had been soft as feathers, jeweled, polished, and perfumed. Now they were crisscrossed with blood and dirt, wearing only bruises for jewels
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Patricia A. McKillip |
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3e0eb16
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There was a drop of human blood in her, and in her father . . . it brought both of them visions at times, living dreams of the world beyond the wood. Her father had learned to ignore them, for they meant nothing to him. She, still learning words for her own world, did not make such distinctions: Everything was new, everything spoke to her and had a name; she had not yet learned that something could mean nothing.
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Patricia A. McKillip |
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fc71584
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Now the wood in early morning was utterly silent. She walked carefully through damp leaves, around tangles of bramble and vine, trying not to disturb the stillness. She could not see the sky, only green and shadow woven thickly above her, yelding not a scrap of blue. She breathed soundlessly. So did the wood around her, she felt; it seemed a live thing, alert and watching her, trees trailing whisps of morning mist, their faces hidden, their..
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Patricia A. McKillip |
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7c407f8
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He had made tiny pipes of feathers he had found along the streets; birds answered him here as they had in the hinterlands. A night-bird, singing back to his playing, showed him the loose bar in the iron fence, the furrowed earth along which the bar swung sideways, that told him, as the bird did, that others came here secretly. Around him, the sleeping city dreamed, tossed fretfully, muttered, dreamed again.
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Patricia A. McKillip |
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995c992
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Oh...if you were older...It is not a bad thing, itself, but it is a bad thing to be used by men, to have them choose what you must be, and what you must not be, to have little choice in your life. If you were older, you could choose your own way.
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choice
older
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Patricia A. McKillip |
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a0299f9
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The giant Grof was hit in one eye by a stone, and that eye turned inward so that it looked into his mind and he died of what he saw there.
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Patricia A. McKillip |
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62e1d35
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Kir stood close to his father, watching. He seemed, Peri realized, finally becalmed; already he looked more like his mother, as if he were relinquishing his human experience. He found her looking at him wistfully; he gave her a sea-smile. She swallowed a briny taste of sadness in her throat. Already he was leaving her.
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magic
sea
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Patricia A. McKillip |
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0ce2536
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That sleep that has no language, No dream, No time, No end.
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Patricia A. McKillip |
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c182e81
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Is she crazy?" "No," he said simply. "But sometimes her sanity is terrifying."
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Patricia A. McKillip |
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c397147
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You nearly killed him-" "You do dwell on details" --
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funny
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Patricia A. McKillip |
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fd55bd1
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You are Faey's making Meg where silent, not even willing to give this old raven the sound of her voice. Domina Pearl smiled, a thin smile like a wrinkle in old leather. Who made you, really I wonder? Did she find you in some dorway? Or do you have a more fomplex history?
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Patricia A. McKillip |
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5219158
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You are not thinking, are you my waxling? I didn't make you to think." "Occasionally", Meg admited, "I have a thought." "Well, Makings such as you are difficult and seldom flawless. You keep away from Domina Pearl. Shes buissniss for us, but she is ruthless. I don't want you anywhere near in her thoughts." "I thought you said she is mostly imagination." "So she is", Faey said sotfly, "and so are you. She'd melt you down like a chandle if yo..
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waxling
sorceress-and-magic
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Patricia A. McKillip |
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d9789f1
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I had thirty-nine typed pages and a contract stating I would send the completed manuscript in by February 1, 2002. I knew where I wanted the novel to go, but I couldn't seem to shove it past page 39. I couldn't find the point of view I needed to examine the life and motives of a man who wanted to conquer the world. I did the usual: sacrificed small rodents to the moon, offered my soul to demons in exchange for inspiration, did some research..
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Patricia A. McKillip |
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0f8edcc
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Sybel, you went from me like a dream, so silently, so irrevocably--I could not bear it, I could not bear it--
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Patricia A. McKillip |
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b91f52b
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Now you must go" "But it's raining", Caerles said. Ferly danced to the door and opend it to the starless night.Her voice hushed. "Adventures comes on a night like this, when the whole world is whispering magic". Page 76"
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magic
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Patricia A. McKillip |
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c6a76ff
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his unending ambition to find death and conquer it or become it, which, poets said later, became the same thing in the end.
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Patricia A. McKillip |
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32940b6
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He gave a good yell, for Baba Yaga at her best caused strong windows to crack and fall out of their frames." From "Baba Yaga and the Sorcerer's son"
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funny
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Patricia A. McKillip |
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f6e06a7
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at the end of a breathless day when the air seemed so heavy and full of molten light, everyone sweated drops of gold instead of brine.
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light
nature
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Patricia A. McKillip |
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f169684
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Coren's arms tightened around the child. "It is Norrel's son--it is not an animal."
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Patricia A. McKillip |
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867fbd9
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What you say, when you say a word. What you think when you say it. What I see and hear when you speak. Words are ancient; visions and echoes cling to them like barnacles on the whale's back. You speak words used in poetry and song since the beginning of the world we know. Here, you will learn to hear and to speak as if you had never listened, never spoken before. Then you will learn the thousand meanings within the word. What you say when y..
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Patricia A. McKillip |
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5058773
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Hexel's blue eyes were narrowed, his long, black hair looked suddenly windblown, though the candles behind him burned still. As a dramatist and composer, he had an exhausting passion for dramatics. He was lean, moody, intense; students at the music school constantly pushed notes under his door, or set his discarded scribbles to music, or dropped roses or themselves across his work.
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Patricia A. McKillip |
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90b96a6
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You can weave your life so long--only so long," Coren says to Sybel, "and then a thing in the world out of your control will tug at one vital thread and leave you patternless and subdued."
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true-to-life
life-philosophy
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Patricia A. McKillip |
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0ae0873
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He was sitting in moonlight and candlelight, scratching the head of some beast that looked to Vevay a cross between a lion and a bear. It had black pelt, a flat, broad, fanged face, a powerful bulky body. It seemed to be purring. It cast a smoldering red glance at Vevay than closed it eyes again, leading heavy against Felan's knee. "what on earth is that?" Vavey asked. "I've no idea," Felon said. "It came out of an old book I was reading on..
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magic
cute
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Patricia A. McKillip |
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5d5d3c3
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Can you call a man?" "If I choose to," she said, surprised. "I have never done it." "Then if you ever have anything to fear from any man who comes here, will you call me? I will come. Whatever I am doing will remain undone, and I will come to you. Will you?" "But why? You know I will do nothing for you. Why would you ride all the way from Sirle to help me?" He looked at her silently. Then he shrugged, the snow melting in his fiery hair. "I ..
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Patricia A. McKillip |
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a5aee0d
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she was, like the paintings and marble pillars, a background detail in the house of the Basilisk. Only her bowing, the unexpected, enthusiastic shrieks she got out of the peasant's instrument, made her incongruous, and therefore real.
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Patricia A. McKillip |
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71fc555
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This bond I draw between you: that though you are parted in mind or in body, there will be a call in the core of you, one to the other, that nothing, no one else will answer to. By the secrets of earth and water, this bond is woven, unbreakable, irrevocable; by the law that created fire and wind this call is set in you, in life and beyond life . . .
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Patricia A. McKillip |
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121ae8f
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You can weave your life so long--only so long, and then a thing in the world out of your control will tug at one vital thread and leave you patternless and subdued.
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Patricia A. McKillip |
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51a610d
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I don't know you." "Then why did you do that for me?" "Because you are so full of wonder. After what I-- After--" He gestured, his eyes hidden; deep lines ran down his cheeks like claw marks. "That seems very precious to me now. How could I not give you such a small thing?"
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Patricia A. McKillip |
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4a87992
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I did not say what I thought; perhaps, if it remained unspoken, it would become untrue.
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Patricia A. McKillip |
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91fd39f
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Be gentle with yourself, my white one. Come with me tomorrow through the forest; we will gather black mushrooms and herbs that, crushed against the fingers, give a magic smell. You will feel the sun on your hair and the rich earth beneath your feet, and the fresh winds scented with the spice of snow from the hidden places on Eld Mountain. Be patient, as you must always be patient with new pale seeds buried in the dark ground. When you are s..
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Patricia A. McKillip |
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6c383da
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I suppose it was easier, in that harsh world, to make demons out of your neighbors, with their imperfections, tempers, rheumy eyes, missing teeth, irritating habits and smells, than to find angelic beauty in them.
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Patricia A. McKillip |
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af08c9f
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Then she dropped her hands in her lap and stared out the window at the restless water that ran beyond the edge of the world, and pulled the sun and the moon and the stars every night down into its secret country.
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Patricia A. McKillip |
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723bb8f
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Soon is such a long word.
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Patricia A. McKillip |