Quotes from Storm Constantine

There was something too realistic in this performance, a promise of horror. I didn't want to watch it any more; I was sure it was going to distress me. It was like some soulscape terror being brought into reality, with no escape of return to normal awareness

I lay down among the the rocks, and they were gold and crimson like a royal tomb. I saw wonderous shapes rise from the fumes, twisting and curling like cats about me. They breathed upon me and filled me with fire. I saw myself leading armies. I saw myself killing men, and in my heart I felt a fierce glee. I saw myself ridding the world of all that was worthless.

The twins exchanged a secret glance, but it did not altogether exclude him. They were willing to play, he felt. He experienced a delirious sense of weakness, as if the performance was not his, but theirs. It was a strange and unfamiliar sensation, but not unpleasant.

There are many myths concerning our previous, more visible existence in the world, but these are now only stories with which to frighten children.

I was dazed, perplexed by the eternal flights of shallow steps that made me feel like a tiny, crawling creature negotiating a fallen pack of cards. From every shadowed corner, rampant stone lions and gryphons leered down at me with lolling tongues. Ancient swords clashed upon the walls around me.

There are two sides to every story, Pharry, and each of those sides can argue that they are right.

Your love of mystery is really quite tiresome, you know!

She felt dizzy, exhilarated, because a thousand words she had kept tightly within her had been given their freedom, because he had spoken kindly to her.

Greed, she thought, he was so greedy, but stupid too.

Her excitement at finally landing this choice morsel was concealed behind her urbane talk of investment. For over a year, she would have given two of her best operatives in exchange for Zambia Crevecoeur, but the boy had been so awkward, resisting all her proud, veiled offers of employment to suffer starvation in the name of autonomy.

I have a purpose, thought Ays. I am a purpose. And the winds sang their mournful tunes through the sand-scoured pipes and sails, conjuring a salt-sweat memory that surely must be false. A woman's song; a melody. The feel of sand and dry air. A sense of tombs, of ancient dust.

They were beautiful to behold, but that night, it seemed a dark shadow hung over him. Their movements were more languid, their eyes unfocused. They had the look of creatures hypnotised by a snake.

As Ishtahar is kept from me, so are you, in a different kind of way.

Shem dozed beside Daniel on the floor of the jeep. Daniel stared at his sleeping face, fighting an urge to reach out and touch it. Not yet. The time wasn't right.

You look remarkably healthy, Daniel, and rather smug about it, too.

We create ourselves constantly.

Everything that he saw and heard about the city filled him with distaste, yet Valraven seemed to embrace it.

There are many forms of death and not all are final.

May the Old Ones forgive me, but as the leagues rolled past our carriage windows, the pleasure of the hunt came over me too and I reverted to a forgotten farmer wildness. Eventually, I no longer had to force myself to kill. And yet, at the time, I could not find the will to be ashamed of it, which means I must accept that this cruel greed is a part of me, thankfully hidden in the regulated, civilised world of Sacramante, but always present in the deepest corners of my souls.

To express ingratitude was to risk taunting fate; we were all afraid of that, aware of the delicacy of our disregard.

I donned my smartest, blackest clothes and brushed my hair until it gleamed like jet. I put earrings of obsidian into my ears, and brushed the skin around my eyes with a kiss of charcoal. My mirror showed me the image of an aloof young man of glacial beauty. I was a black and white creature, even my lips were without colour, and my eyes were the darkest grey. It was as I desired.

He wanted to suceed in life, at whatever cost.

He had seen this strange and guarded smile on Jadrin's face before. It spoke of power, the kind of which Ashalan had only a cursory grasp. It made him feel he was sitting next to a totatl stranger, and someone not entirely human. It made him afraid.

You must go to Old Caradore to take back what is yours, fully and completely. You must become the Dragon Heir, as you are meant to be. It must be done before anything else.