THE BROKEN EYE - BRENT WEEKS

The Broken Eye - Pg 728

   Teia looked at Kip, and he looked at her. She was glowing with joy and morning light, her skin radiant, her eyes holding a million colors Kip had never seen. And they were flying, and they were holding each other, and they were safe, and they were alive, and they were breathing pure glory, and Orholam's Eye gazed on them with the approval that only young lovers know, and in that moment Kip knew the difference between love and infatuation, and love and hunger, and love and the longing not to go unloved. And he wanted to know nothing more than this, and he wanted this moment to freeze forever and thought to cease.
   He kissed her. And she kissed him. And it was infatuation, and it was hunger, and it was longing to be loved, and it was an all-consuming fire so hot it devoured worry and loneliness and fear and time and being and thought itself. They kissed, embracing, flying, and for a hundred heartbeats, there was no war, no death, no pain, nothing hard, nothing terrible, nothing but warmth and acceptance.
   And as they slowed, nearing the end of their flight, when Kip pulled away from her at last, and gazed again into her eyes, he knew he was lost in her. And he knew at last the difference between love and necessity.

The Broken Eye - Pg 713

   This is what it is to grow up. It is to live beyond the blind rush of passion, or hate, or green luxin, or battle juice, or battle juice. It is to see what must be done, and to do it, without feeling a great desire or a great hatred or a great love. It is to confront fear, naked. No armor of bombast or machismo. Just duty, and love for one's fellows. Not love felt, not the love that compelled action without thought, but love chosen deliberately. I am the best person to do this thing, it said, though I may die doing it.
   I will go, it said, with clear eyes and no passion, but it was love, love, love all the same.

The Broken Eye - Pg 560

   Karris couldn't move. She held herself rigid. I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten. That promise held everything she'd ever hoped to hear, and from Orholam. It felt like someone had picked her soul up out of her body and shaken it gently, and all the dirt and grime and hatred and rage had simply sloughed off and fallen, and he dropped her back into her own shoes. Everything was the same, but her eyes were different, healing. She didn't trust herself to speak.

The Broken Eye - Pg 529

   "Know this, O Kip. Your being here involves a compromise. Your mind is not structured to understand timelessness. So instead of being outside of time, you are instead carrying around with you a bubble of casuality."
   "Hammerfist centaur granite," Kip said gravely.
   Ancient eyes wrinkled, irritated. "What?"
   "I was, uh, trying to demonstrate how I could understand each of the three words in a three-word phrase and still have no clue what they mean together." Kip grinned weakly.

The Broken Eye - Pg 482

   "We are the priests of light and darkness, the arbiters of dusk. Neither day nor night is our master. And do you know what happens when a woman walks without fear?"
   Teia shook her head, but there was a sudden longing deep in her that swelled so strong it paralyzed her tongue. Tell me. Tell me.
   "She becomes."
   Becomes what? Teia didn't say the words aloud, but he knew what she was thinking, for he answered:
   "She becomes whatever she wills. Minus only one thing." In the dark, he held up a finger, almost like he was scolding her.
   Teia was silent now. The question was obvious, and now she didn't want to ask it.
   Sharp said, "She has one thing she can never be, never again. You know what it is, don't you?"
   The words came unbidden to her lips, from a place so dark no light had ever touched it: "A slave."

The Broken Eye - Pg 458

   "Sorry, 'mother'," Kip said. He was trying to make a joke of it, but the word was so sharp-edged that Karris couldn't even hear the joke. None of Kip's tone could make it past the roaring of the blood in her ears. Just that one, lancet word piercing a boil.

   "You are not my son!" Karris spat. Her heart was bile and she was vomiting it out on him, foul and acid, and it tore her throat and ate everything it touched. 

   Kip had the same look on his face as she'd seen on men mortally wounded, staring at their own guts in ropes in their hands, shocked they weren't already dead, but dying nonetheless. 

The Broken Eye - Pg 335

   When the crier finished, there was only silence and sobs, the broken being led away by stunned friends. 

   Kip wanted to shout at them. You thought this was a game?! When Tyreans were dying it was exciting, but now, now it's serious?! He hated them for a moment, but the moment passed, and he saw their sorrow and was moved.

   That they have learned to weep at war is no victory. That they know loss is no gain.

The Broken Eye - Pg 335

   The squads stood at attention for fifteen minutes as the names were read. Name after name after name. As each lord's dead was read, some would sob or shriek or collapse, while others tried not to let too much relief show. But as the list continued relentlessly, the balance shifted. The mood darkened. The brightly shining sun glistened in mockery, as if Orholam didn't see.

The Broken Eye - Pg 333

   All the world turned around the Jaspers, but the Jaspers were not the world... He realized there was now no sign at all of the sea demon attack that had nearly demolished this bridge. The sea demon itself hadn't been seen since the Feast of Light and Darkness, nor the black whale. The mess had been cleared, the dead taken away--and none of them were people Kip had known, or known by people Kip knew. It was like it hadn't happened. 

   This is what it is to live in the cosmos that is the Jaspers. The world changes here, but there is not one world, there are many, and we only see the others when they tread upon our toes.  

The Broken Eye - Pg 329

   "And this?" Teia asked, showing her still-bloodied hands and the bloody rag that wouldn't get the stains out completely. "This is the best thing?"

   Kip stared her hard in the eye. He took the towel in his own clean hands and smeared blood first on one palm and then on the other. "Not the best thing, Teia. The best thing possible? A thousand times yes."

   And staring into his eyes, she believed him. It was a damned thing, war, but she wasn't damned for fighting it.

The Broken Eye - Pg 282

   "Orholam is a caring lord," Kip said. Not so much because he believed it, but to see what Andross would say.

   "Caring enough to give us rational and consistent laws, which is great care indeed. Laws that apply to the faithful, to apostates, to pagans, and to those in vast reaches beyond unknown oceans who have never even heard the word 'Orholam'. I find that infinitely more caring than some bearded giant who embraces some and smites others without reason."

The Broken Eye - Pg 192

   "You can tell I love you and want the best for you."

   "Love me?" Kip scoffed. "You barely know me."

   "When you have lived either a very short time or a very long time--if you've lived well--you will be able to love easily, too. Broken hearts have fresh places to bond with new faces."

The Broken Eye - Pg 167

   "Greetings, daughter. May the light always shine upon you. Dulcina, if you would like to--"

   "Shh," she said, touching her lips with a finger. "I've already confessed."

   "Then would you like me to lead us in some prayers or songs?"

   She shook her head. "My High Lord Prism, you've been doing Orholam's work all day, and will do so all night and through the morrow. Let me give you a gift. The only gift I have. The gift of my five minutes. You may speak or we can be silent. You can Free me first if you prefer solitude, or at the end if you prefer company. As you will."

   He didn't understand. There had to be some angle, some advantage. It was all she had. It was her last five minutes, whereas to him it would just be another grain in a full hourglass.

   There was no angle. There was no deceit in her open eyes. He started at her for ten seconds, thirty. And then he was furious for no reason he could understand. 

   And then he broke.

   And he wept.

   And she held him. And they wept together.

   And after five minutes, the accursed bell jingled. And he stood. And he begged her forgiveness. And he kissed her lips.

   And he slew her.

   And with her died his faith in Orholam. It had survived war and abandonment and massacres and deceit, but it could not survive the holiest night of the year.

The Broken Eye - Pg 137

   Time was measured out with such perfect regularity that time lost meaning. Gavin's every day had a similar rhythm. Pull. Twist. Push. Twist. Pull. Up, down, life circumscribed in ovals of work and rest and transition from one to the other. Scrape off the inefficient edges of every moment. Breathe in, breathe out, try to make the motion of the one to the other as painless as possible. Wake, sleep, and spend no time in between.

The Broken Eye - Pg 85

 She had some of a warrior's sense of humor: black and light, irreverent to death as death was irreverent to all else.

The Broken Eye - Pg 85

   She took care of me, knowing my mother wasn't doing so, and she did it in a way that never made me ashamed. She made it a game, for me. Kip had seen the fun in it before, but he'd never seen the kindness of it until now. 

The Broken Eye - Pg 83

 She saw him from afar, smiled, and beckoned him to come with one hand as she continued singing. The sound was like the rivers and the winds and the deeps of the sea, and the warmth and light of a fire against a child's fear of the darkness. It held the promise of the morning and the comfort of a mother's heartbeat.

The Broken Eye - Pg 81

   The hunger had lost its urgency. Kip felt an odd purity, the serenity of saints and ascetics and the batshit insane. The clarity of a soul detaching itself from its flesh home, perhaps.

The Broken Eye - Pg 75

   I howl, waking the whole goddam camp, and my Aeshma comes back over me, putrid and beautiful, a diseased whore. She is as ugly as I plan to do, and my soul is a small price to pay for vengeance. It makes me monstrous. I am become a beast. I am become a god. Vengeance is mine.