Lorna's Reviews > The Far Pavilions

"Ash jerked his gaze from the gulf at his feet and saw, across the vast moon-washed spaces of the night, the Far Pavilions, their glittering peaks high and serene against the quiet sky."

"The months, the years, the centuries would pass, and when the Palace of the Winds was no more, the Far Pavilions would still be there, unchanged and unchanging."

"Only it was not towards Mecca that he would face, but to the mountains. His own mountains, in whose shadow he had been born--to the Dur Khaima to which he prayed as a child. Somewhere over there lay the Far Pavilions, with Tarakalas, the 'Star Tower', catching the first rays of the sunrise. And somewhere, too, the valley that Sita had so longed to reach before she died, and that he himself would reach one day."

"Yet I am still Ashok, and I cannot alter that either, for having been a child of this land for eleven years I am tied to it by something as strong as the tie of blood, and shall always be two people in one skin--which is not a comfortable thing to be."

"Later, as the light began to fade and the dusk turn green about him, he reined in and turned to look back at the mountains that were already in shadow and sharply violet against the hyacinth of the darkening sky. One cluster of peaks still held a last gleam of the sunset: the crown of the Dur Khaima, rose-pink in the twilight. . . the far pavilions. . . The warm colour faded from them as he looked, and peak after peak turned from rose to lavender until at last only Tara Kilas, the 'Star Tower', held the light. Then suddenly that too had gone, and the whole long range lost its sharpness of outline and merged into a night that was brilliant with stars."