When his dead father touched his hand, Athson almost dropped the arrow.

Man, Sub-creator, the refracted Light
through whom is splintered from a single White
to many hues, and endlessly combined
in living shapes that move from mind to mind.

Long has black powder been in the hands of dwarves alone.
Alas, winds ever change and nothing remains the same forever.

Lord Arrlo Salkeld

There was love, a reliable and real love grown in a handful of days, and Tristan did not know why it was: friendship had happened to both of them, on the sudden, completely aside from Tristan's both endangering and saving Crissand's life.

It was no reason related to that, it was no reason that either of them quite knew. Crissand had simply risen on his horizon like the sun of his banner...and that was that....They were together, and there was a great deal right with the day simply in that.

Right and wrong matters little when survival matters most.

If I rolled the dice carved out of my weathered bone
And offered of my blood the libation to the fane
When even the reaper’s mockery forsakes me alone
My own clangorous thoughts are the last to remain