“For even if you should have stood your ground, he said, yet what ground was it?”

“I'd stood my ground against him. I wasn't going to jump when he said jump. I was more likely to give him the finger.”

“I would cut off your head, dwarf, if it stood but a bit higher off the ground.”

“It is forbidden to fight on the Killing Ground," he said, and paused while he considered the sense of this. "You know what I mean anyway...”

“He was learning to live on several planes at once. The art of it was to forget everything except the ground you stood on and the face you spoke from at that moment.”

“The ground was so far below him, he could barely make it out through the grey mists that whirled around him, but he could feel how fast he was falling, and he knew what was waiting for him down there. Even in dreams, you could not fall forever. He would wake up in the instant before he hit the ground, he knew. You always woke in the instant before you hit the ground.”