7
" Except when the freedom is one you don't choose to grant," Memeki said, more loudly this time. She was shaking herself all over, struggling to stand stright again. "You hold our hope with one claw and take it away with her other! I may be weak and doomed soon to die, but I will die as an I, not just one more nameless scarp of shell to be thrown out into the sucking mud! No matter how little a time it lasts, I will be what all these are" -she looked around at Kit and Ponch and Nita and the others-"selves unto themselves and being what matters to each other! Such a life, even a breath's worth of it, is better than anything you've ever given me!" Memeki was trembling again, but with passion with determinatin, desperate and doomed. She took a stem toward the dias, and another, her claw lifted not in that old gesture of submission, but in one more like a warrior's threat. "I will be what the Voice said I was, the Hesper I will be the Aeon of Light, the Power that made a different choice from yours. I will be the Star that did not fall, no matter how little a time the light lasts! "
― Diane Duane , Wizards at War (Young Wizards, #8)
8
" You look concerned,” Roshaun said from behind her.
Dairine scowled over her shoulder at him. “The whole universe is in danger,” she said, “and we’re not sure how to save it, assuming it can be saved. One of the Powers That Be has stuffed secret messages into my brain without telling me. And a friend of mine who happens to be my wizard’s manual is being reprogrammed with software that even these guys haven’t had time to beta test! Wow, Roshaun, why would I need to be concerned?”
Roshaun glanced at the ground. Another chair appeared for him, a slight distance from Dairine’s. He lowered himself into it, stretching out his legs with a sigh. “Sarcasm,” he said, “Amusing, if ineffective. "
― Diane Duane , Wizards at War (Young Wizards, #8)
9
" It was the Arch-votary, with its patterned shell. Slowly, it approached; those massive claws raised…The Arch-votary stopped, looming up before them. “Evil ones,” it said, “enemies of the Great One, come and be judged.”
Roshaun raised his head and gave the Arch-votary an inexpressibly haughty look. “Killed, perhaps,” he said, “But your dark Master has neither authority nor right to judge us. Therefore, stand away, lackey, and keep silent in the presence of your betters. "
― Diane Duane , Wizards at War (Young Wizards, #8)
10
" I was going to ask you,’ Nita said, ‘whether all that was what I thought it was.’
‘If you thought that dogs now finally have their own version of the One,’ said the Transcendent Pig, ‘then the answer is yes.’
Kit was shaking his head. ‘I can’t believe it,’ he whispered. ‘Are you trying to tell me that my dog—my dog was—’
‘Is. Yes, it’s the “spell-it-backward” joke again,’ the Pig said, with some resignation. ‘The One just loves those old jokes. The older, the better.’ It raised its bristly eyebrows. ‘Making a big BANG! and running off to hide behind the nearest chunk of physical existence, like some kid ringing the doorbell at Halloween. And the puns. Don’t get It started on the puns...you’ll be there forever.’ It smiled. ‘Literally. But what did you expect? Your dog started making universes out of nothing. That wasn’t a slight tip-off?’
‘And not just making them,’ Nita said. ‘Saving them.’
‘Or saving one person,’ Kit said.
‘It’s the same thing, I’m told,’ said the Pig, and it vanished. "
― Diane Duane , Wizards at War (Young Wizards, #8)
11
" Things change,” said the former Sunlord, “as we see.” And once again he looked at Dairine. “You arrive for your people’s first sight of you as Sunlord, and what do they also see, standing at your side? An alien, garbed in raiment much like that of Wellakhit royalty, wearing some other world’s life-color, gemmed like a Guarantor. The rumors are flying already. Does another world have designs on the rule of ours? Either by straightforward conquest, or more intimate means?” Dairine’s eyes went wide as what he meant sank in. “You mean they think that we—that I—You tell those people that they are completely nuts! Even if I were old enough to think about stuff like this, which I seriously am not, I have zero interest in being anybody’s queen! Especially not his—” And then Dairine stopped short as she saw the peculiar look that had appeared on both Roshaun’s and Nelaid’s faces. “Uh,” she said then, and blushed again. “Maybe there was a less tactful way I could have put that . . .” That "
― Diane Duane , Wizards at War (Young Wizards, #8)
