If you’d keep your nose out of things that don’t concern you, you wouldn’t hear so much that offends you. - David Eddings

Astonishing!" Andine said in mock amazement. "Everybody says that making speeches is difficult. I didn't seem to have any trouble at all."
"Any speech goes over better with musical accompaniment, Andine," Leitha suggested. "And Eliar plays the gold keg like a world-renowned virtuoso." "It's the most beautiful music I've ever heard," Koleika said fervently. "I'm glad I stayed for the concert.

Althalus took the child by the scruff of the neck and hauled him to the fire.
“I didn’t do anything!” the child protested in a shrill voice, struggling to get free.
“That’s probably because you’re too clumsy for this line of work."

The Queen of Night was in full voice when Althalus and the others reached the battlements on the eastern side of the city, and her catapults were hurling boulders at the walls of Mawor with a monotonous thudding sound. “I’m starting to get a bellyful of that,” Duke Nitral growled. “I spent a fortune on that marble sheathing on the outer wall, and she’s breaking it all to pieces with those accursed engines. Excuse me, gentlemen. I’m going to do something about that right now.” He went on down the parapet to a cluster of peculiar-looking engines. “What are those things?” Eliar asked curiously.
“Nitral calls them arbalests,” Koleika replied. “They’re sort of an oversized bow. They’ll throw a spear for half a mile. Nitral and I’ve come up with a way to make life very interesting for those catapult crews out there.”
Duke Nitral barked a sharp command to the men around the arbalests, and a sheet of spears trailing fire shot out in long arcs from the high walls of Mawor.