- Author: [[David Farland]] - Full Title: The Runelords Series - Category:: books - Tags:: [[inbox]] - ### Highlights first synced by [[Readwise]] [[2020-09-03]] - The boys were well liked by the help. As toddlers, Iome had sent them to the kitchens to work, as if they were the get of common scullions. She did it, as she said, “To teach the boys humility and respect for authority, and to let them know that their every request was purchased at the price of another’s sweat.” And so they had toiled—scrubbing pots and stirring stews, plucking geese and sweeping floors, fetching herbs from the garden and serving tables—duties common to children. In the process of learning to work, they had gained the love and respect of the common folk. ([Location 33912](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B074ZLYHBV&location=33912)) - She turned to Borenson. “You think well of Fallion. You could not hide the hope in your voice when you spoke of him challenging Anders.” “I watched his father grow,” Borenson said. “He was a good lad, and I knew that he’d make a great king. But Fallion will be better.” ([Location 34159](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B074ZLYHBV&location=34159)) - “Whenever we grow angry,” his father had once said, “it is in response to a sense of helplessness. We all yearn to control our lives, our destinies. Sometimes we wish to control those around us, even need to control them. So whenever you grow angry, look at yourself, and figure out what it is that you want to control.” ([Location 37415](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B074ZLYHBV&location=37415)) - ### New highlights added [[2020-09-08]] at 9:29 AM - “Your life is mine,” he whispered, then placed five fingers upon her skull—one between her eyes, two upon each of her eyes, and his thumb and pinky finger upon her mandibles. ([Location 40855](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B074ZLYHBV&location=40855)) - “Long ago, there was but one world, and one moon, and all men lived in perfect contentment, in perfect peace. There was no death or pain, no deformity, no poverty or war or vice. “But one went out from among our forefathers who sought power. She sought to wrest control of the world from the others. The control of the world was bound into a great rune, the Seal of Creation. She sought to twist it, to bind it to her, so that she would become the lord of the earth. “But in the process of twisting it, the Seal of Creation was broken, and the One World shattered into many, into thousands and tens of thousands and into millions—each a world orbiting its own sun, each a flawed replica of that One True World. “The world that you live upon,” Daylan said, “is but a flawed shadow of that world, like a piece of broken crystal that can only hint at what it once was.” ([Location 41173](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B074ZLYHBV&location=41173)) - To the eyes of the true men of Luciare, every object holds within it various levels of life or death, and so in formal speech, all nouns end in the appropriate suffix. A living woman might be named Norak-na, Cloud Alive. But when she dies, her name becomes Norak-bas, Cloud Departed. All living trees and animals hold life in them, and thus end with -na. Warmth and water also hold na, as does fertile soil, the wind, and the clouds. Things that hold death within them include all weapons, sterile soil, bitter cold, and fire. Given this emphasis on life and death, it is no surprise that the wizards of our world place so much emphasis on “Life Magic,” magic which draws energy from one living thing to another, in an effort to sustain them both. And while some might think that death magic is the antithesis of life magic, it is not. There is no power in death. Death Lords kill by draining energy from living things into themselves. Thus, their power is not the antithesis of life magic, merely a perversion of it. —the Wizard Sisel ([Location 41542](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B074ZLYHBV&location=41542))