85
" An enormous cathedral, winter had been constructed in the forest, its masonry of ice, the organ peal of wind. The tiny artisans of the tribes of the fox and the ermine had excavated and ornamented its aisles, printed its paving. Its windows were paned with cold mauve and blue and yellowish skies and the deadly reds of frozen sunsets. The cathedral endured. Then spring, the destroying angel, stalked the wilderness sword in hand. Spring smote the cathedral. Its roofs of snow collapsed. After the thaw, green trickled into the arteries of the wood, and spears of sunlight divided the trees one from another. "
― Tanith Lee , The Blood of Roses Volume 1: Mechail, Anillia
92
" At this point in the story, a child interrupted from the crowd, asking fearfully and loudly if the gods were terrible to behold.
The storytellers smiled, and bowed to the philosophers. One of these, a venerable elderly man, spoke gravely to the child. “No, indeed. The gods are beautiful, and just. Those who reverence and obey them need fear nothing from the gods. The gods reward those who adhere to them. Those who stray, they punish. Then they are terrible, terrible in their perfection and magnificence.”
“But,” said the child anxiously, “what do they look like?” The philosopher was done, however, and the storytellers proceeded with their tale. “Hush!” said the child’s nurse sharply. “But,” said the child, “if I cannot tell them from their looks, how am I to know them and beware of offending them?”
Then a voice spoke to the child, a voice which brushed the insides of the child’s ears, wonderfully unexpected, like the sound of the sea inside a shell. “The gods are colorless as crystal for they have no blood in their veins. Neither do they possess breasts or genitals. Their eyes are cold as their country where everything is tinted by frost. But you will probably never meet them; they have no liking for the world.”
“Oh,” said the child, and looked up and saw the pale face of a man bending over it, a face so astonishing it dazzled the eyes of the child like the moon. Then the child, dazzled, blinked, and in the little interval of that blink, the man was gone. "
― Tanith Lee , Night's Master (Tales from the Flat Earth #1)
93
" Cremisia said, “No, Signore. In this we have misunderstood. Nothing is the absence of anything we may understand. It is invisible in this world, has no presence or substance, neither sight nor sound, touch nor taste, not even, usually, any feeling of itself. It is the vast and unknowable sea that rings us round and lies beyond the physical reality of life, and out of which fly amazements and miracles unforetold. It is what awaits us, just as it is the fount from which we sprang. And being Nothing, we cannot here remember it, just as, here, we fear to enter it again. It is Un-ness, it is Death, it is the empty and unknowable ending. And yet, and yet, in fact it is only perceived in this way since we have here no words for it, no channels of our clever physical minds able to capture and convey its being, either to others or ourselves. It is—here—so unlike here, and what we too are when here, that we find no method to visualize or reclaim it. Or—if some great poet or mystic somewhat may, he, being lost for words, can only resort to symbols, architypes most others will dismiss. Only before, or after life, do we know it. When we are one with it, with Nothing, nothing at all, Nihil. Only then. "
― Tanith Lee , Redder Than Blood
95
" She saw the different times at sea—calm blue days, raw pea-green ones, others when the skies turned black and thunderbolts blasted the masts, and the galloping waves. The ship then leaned this way, another way, seeming to want to throw herself right over and upside down. Had Art ever been frightened? Maybe only once. One of the earliest memories, this. Molly standing braced, holding Art, two or three years old, in her arms. ‘What a spectacle!’ cried Molly. ‘Look—how beautiful it is!’ And then, ‘Don’t ever be afraid of the sea. She’s the best friend out kind have got. Better than any land, however fair. Respect the sea, yes, but don’t ever think what the sea does is cruel or unjust. People are that. The sea is only herself. And this ship—she’s lucky. She’s friends with this sea. They know how to behave with each other.’ Exactly then, a great green salt wave swamped the decks. Canvas was being hauled in, Molly’s crew clutching and swinging like monkeys along the masts. Art and Molly, soaked, and Molly saying, ‘And even if we went down, don’t fear that either. Those that the sea keeps sleep among mermaids and pearls and sunken kingdoms. You wouldn’t mind that, would you, love? "
― Tanith Lee , Piratica I
96
" ONE NIGHT, AZHRARN Prince of Demons, one of the Lords of Darkness, took on him, for amusement, the shape of a great black eagle. East and west he flew, beating with his vast wings, north and south, to the four edges of the world, for in those days the earth was flat and floated on the ocean of chaos. "
― Tanith Lee , Night's Master (Tales from the Flat Earth #1)
98
" Despair, the worst of all the deadly sins, since it is denial of the self, of the god-in-self, since it is so seductive, like the snow-death, so warm. Ah, who would tear himself to pieces when he might lie down in such arms, in comfort, and cease. Bless you, my despair, my dear and loving despair. So painlessly you take my pain away. Oh Father, by no means dash the cup from my lips - "
― Tanith Lee , The Book of the Damned (Secret Books of Paradys, #1)
