A sudden thought came to her, twisting like a dull knife in her chest. Perhaps Anomander Rake was equally lost. Perhaps this endless succession of causes reflects his own search. I had all along assumed a simple goal — to give us a reason to exist, to take upon ourselves the nobility of others. others for whom the struggle meant something. Was that not the theme underlying all we have done? Why do I now doubt? Why do I now believe that, if a theme does indeed exist, it is something other?
Something far less noble.
She attempted to shake off such thoughts, before they dragged her towards despair. For despair is the nemesis of the Tiste Andii. How often have I seen my kin fall on the field of battle, and have known — deep in my soul — that my brothers and sisters did not die through an inability to defend themselves? They died, because they had chosen to die. Shin by their own despair.
Our gravest threat.
Does Anomander Rake lead us away from despair — is that his only purpose, his only goal? Is his a theme of denial? If so, then, dear Mother Dark, he was right in seeking to confound our understanding, in seeking to keep us from ever realizing his singular, pathetic goal. And I–I should never have pursued these thoughts, should never have clawed my way to this conclusion.
Discovering my Lord's secret holds no reward. Curse of the Light, he has spent centuries evading my questions, discouraging my desire to come to know him, to pierce through his veil of mystery. And I have been hurt by it, I have lashed out at him more than once, and he has stood before my anger and frustration. Silent.
To choose not to share. what I had seen as arrogance, as patronizing behaviour of the worst sort — enough to leave me incensed. ah, Lord, you held to the hardest mercy.
And if despair assails us, it assails you a hundredfold.
She knew now she would not release her kin. Like Rake, she could not abandon them, and like Rake, she could voice no truth when they begged — or demanded — justification.
And so, should that moment come soon, I must needs find strength — the strength to lead — the strength to hide the truth from my kin.
Oh, Whiskeyjack, how will I be able to tell you this? Our desires were. simplistic. Foolishly romantic. The world holds no paradise for you and me, dear lover. Thus, all I can offer is that you join me, that you stay at my side. And I pray to Mother Dark, how I pray, that it will, for you, be enough.
The city's outskirts persisted along the river's edge in a straggly, ramshackle ribbon of fisher huts, smokeshacks and drying nets, storm-battered and rubbish-strewn. The settlement reached upriver to the very edge of the flats, and indeed a half-score shacks on stilts connected by raised causeways encroached upon the reedy sweep of mud itself.
