“I leaned toward him and whispered, "I'm drowning. Save me." But when I tried to grasp his shoulder my hand passed through him."I'm over here," he said.I said, "No wonder I can't touch you. You're dead too." Or perhaps I didn't say it.”

“He pushed up his visor and came over to me. He put his shield arm around me and pulled me close. This new skin of his was cold and hard, and I was glad of it. But I wished I could take him by the hair and dip him in metal, so that he was covered all over, for I didn't like the chinks, the way a dagger could find the back of his knee and hamstring him, or a sword find its way through the mail under his arm. We are imperfect vessels. We leak so easily.”

“But that was all bravado. Already - how had it come about so quickly - desire had begotten need. A few whispered words (perhaps he didn't mean them) and I was ready to follow. It was worse to think of staying behind, to grind one day upon another. Nothing to hold me here. None to regret my leaving, save Az.”

“You still haven't said where you come from. Where is your home?"I said, "I am a sheath, so home is wherenever my shade, my blade is.”

“But I found signs of their trespass: a burned patch planted with a fistful of grain, a tree felled or stripped of fruit, a deer strung up in a snare. I never saw a poacher. They were too cunning, and for cause: the foresters would take a man's hands and eyes and leave him to the mercy of the wolves for such an offense. It was bad enough to steal the king's game, but snares were an abomnination. The gods abhor weapons that leave the hand, coward' weapons such as javelins, bows and arrows, slings. No man or beast should die by such means.”

“Then the queenmother said, "I am done with weeping." She whistled for the grey wolves that guarded her keep, and they loped at her heels as she rode around the Inward Sea and south to Ramas, and the way was long and hard. She knelt before her brother, King Thyrse, and begged him to lend this strength to save her son and kingdom from the lamia's stranglehold. But he bade her go hom to her northern keep, saying, "It more befits a woman to weep than to war." She rent her gown and showed under it a corset of steel, saying, "Brother, by our sire and our dame, remember the same blood runs in both our veins.”

“I awoke in the deepest night to find I had been divided from myself. There lay my body sleeping and dreaming, and I was outside it; awakening. When we dream we may take shapes other than our own; a man may be his brother, a woman a king, and never question it. So, with the certainty born of a dream, I knew I'd become my own shadow.”