Quotes from Alison Croggon

THE Naraudh Lar-Chanë (or Riddle of the Treesong), one of the key legends of the lost civilization of Edil-Amarandh, is here translated in full for the first time. This great classic of Annaren literature

No, he thought. I didn't die. Not yet. He realized, with surprise, that he was happy. Happiness wasn't what he had thought it was: it was like the dragonfly, a fragile winged thing that arrived, unsought and unexpected, and graced the work of living. You couldn't hunt it down; you couldn't hold it. But sometimes, in a blessed moment, it was there. It was good to be alive.

There is no shame in not knowing something," he said gently. "The shame is in not being willing to learn

Friends can only do their best. -Pip

The law is that the hungry must be fed, and the homeless must be housed, and the sick must be healed. That is the way of the Light.

I don't know everything. No one does, and only the foolish seek to.

I don't deserve that,' said Cadvan. 'Love isn't about deserving. It just is.

Virtue was ever double-edged.

At least I won't die a slave," Maerad answered. Proud words, she thought, but she meant them.

I have all faith in you. I will look to your coming when spring walks in the land.

I am what I am, all the things that have happened to me, all the things I have ever learned, as well as all the things that were born inside me.

Perhaps Dernhil knew there was no time. He had foresight..." Cadvan sighed and looked away. "But he was ever one who looked clearly into his own heart. That is the beauty of his poems. Would that all of us were so lucid.

Everything is difficult," she whispered. "Maybe that's something else that I've learned.

Freedom was a fantasy she gnawed obsessively in her few moments of leisure, like an old bone with just a trace of meat, and like all illusions, it left her hungrier than before, only more keenly aware of how her soul starved within her, its wings wasting with the despair of disuse.

I think we deserve a wine, yes, young Bard? We have worked hard today." "A wine?" said Maerad shyly, thinking of the vociferous Bards. Elenxi looked at her and laughed. "Don't tell me you are frightened! Well, we'll have to cure that." "But I'm filthy!" Maerad objected, blushing. Elenxi lifted an eyebrow. "So? Does one have to be clean to drink? I should like to know when that was made a rule.

So far, so good, thought Maerad, wondering how she was to explain to these people why she had come so far north. Because of a dream, because of a few clues scoured here and there, from a half-mad old Pilanel woman and a wise goatherd in Thorold--what sense could they possibly make of what she told them?

Stay alert! And stay close to me!" "I'll stick like a burr," said Maerad.

At the moment my advice is to hide behind Cadvan if any trouble occurs, and don't draw the sword at all. You're just a liability.

There come few times in a person's life where there is a clear choice," said Cadvan at last. "The difference between one person and another is how they meet that choice.

He thought for a while, and then said, "How do you fancy being my mute son, and I a . . . boot maker, maybe, from near Pellinor, seeking help for his son's affliction in Ettinor?" "Why not?" said Maerad, amused. "But do you know anything about boot-making?" "Ar, mistress," said Cadvan, winking in a rascally fashion. "You don't know what I know. My da was a cobbler, and his boots were much prized in Lirigon. And elsewhere, come to that.

As he kindled a flame with his flint, Maerad saw that Cadvan had his own face back again. "Cadvan!" she said. He looked up in surprise. "You're back!" "And so are you," he said, squinting through the darkness. "I may say, it's some improvement. I was a little too convincing in making you an idiot boy.

This time I could be your lunatic daughter," said Maerad. "If that would help." She messed up her hair, trailing tresses across her face in witch-locked tangles, and adopted a slack-jawed expression. Cadvan laughed grimly. "I'm beginning to think that in some respects your education was quite thorough," he said.

I begin to remember stories from my childhood of the wild people, the Deridhu, who live in the heart of the forest; they are supposed to come out and bring nightmares to children who do not do as they are told, and ride the cows so they come to the morning stare-eyed and milkless. Perhaps they are a heartside memory of these folk. Many forgotten things live still in children's tales." Maerad glanced at the bowmen; they looked altogether too grim to take cows on wild rides.

One difference is that for the Dark, certainly, you are a pawn. For the Light, you are a free human being, free to make mistakes, to do wrong, even. You are free to choose, whether or not you believe it." "Funny idea of freedom." "It is the difference between commitment and slavery," Cadvan said. "Between working for what you hope for and believe in the depths of your heart, and what someone else forces you to do.