She Was Owner And Captive, Both, Of

It Is Always Difficult, Even With The Best Will In The World, To Look Back A Long Way And See Anything Resembling The Truth.

Men Made Wagers With Their Judgment, Their Allegiances, Their Resources.

It Can Be Hard To Write A Skillfully Entertaining Fiction, But A Great Book Wants To Be More, And Wants More From Us.

There Are Kinds Of Action, For Good Or Ill, That Lie So Far Outside The Boundaries Of Normal Behavior That They Force Us, In Acknowledging That They Have Occurred, To Restructure Our Own Understanding Of Reality. We Have To Make Room For Them.

Some Writers Later, Describing The Events Of That Night And Day, Wrote That Wan'yen Of The Altai Had Seen A Spirit-dragon Of The River And Become Afraid. Writers Do That Sort Of Thing. They Like Dragons In Their Tales.