Elsa

“No,’ she whispered. ‘Only that all my joy will be gone from the earth if you are killed in this war. Coren, perhaps the Lion is not dreaming. Perhaps Rok is right and Sirle will defeat Drede, and no one will be killed.’
He shook his head, his face pained, hopeless. ‘Sybel, men will die; perhaps not my brothers, but men of Sirle. At Terbrec, I heard their broken, weary voices weeping of their wounds while I fought, until I did not know anymore, in the dust, heat and blinding leap of metal, if they were truly men’s voices, or the broken, crying voices of my own thoughts that could never again be coherent. It will be the same thing all over again, now.”
― Patricia A. McKillip, The Forgotten Beasts of Eld

“I will not draw Coren into the whirlpool of my anger and hatred. No revenge of his making could satisfy me, and it is purposeless involving him in mine. I want– I want t keep him free of hate. He– the night we flew the Dragon, we dropped downward suddenly, rushing toward darkness as though toward the endless deep of the night, blind, helpless, as you are when there is nothing left of you but the unhidden centre of yourself– and from the core of him came a living, joyous laughter. Lost in his own hate for Drede, he could not have laughed like that. He may fight in this war simply because if he refused to fight for my sake and you died at battle, he would never forgive himself for not being with you. But I will give him no great cause to fight for. I will not drag him through his grief and bitterness again. He has given me so much love. At least I can give him that one protection.”
― Patricia A. McKillip, The Forgotten Beasts of Eld

“There is a part of me, like a white-winged falcon, free, proud, wild, a souring thing that goes its own way seeking the bright stars and the sun. If you kill that white bird, I will be earthbound, bound in the patterns of men, with no words of my own, no actions of my own. I will take that bird for you, cage it. Only let it live.”
― Patricia A. McKillip, The Forgotten Beasts of Eld

“Let us sail home through the sky on Gyld. Sybel, there must be a silence deeper than the silence of Eld between those stars; shall we go listen to it? Come. We will throw all the stars into Sirle, then go and dance on the moon.”
― Patricia A. McKillip, The Forgotten Beasts of Eld