'Braided Light'
"He had loved this life, this austerity, this play of mind, this finely ordered and controlled existence. But it was past. And he no longer belonged to it. The years behind him were full. They had brought him the joys of study, the strictness of service, the strange ecstasies of the Game. And now they had ended, and in their place was a freedom as foreign as it was gentle.
The cold of the mountain air, the sound of the stream, the scent of pine needles — these too were now his teachers. He had nothing left to prove, and little left to ask. He was no longer master, or servant, or player, or scholar. He was only Josef Knecht.
'I have been and I have lived,' he said softly. 'And that is enough.'
No one heard him. The boy had gone off to gather wood. The path lay open below, winding downward toward the lake, toward the valley. The sun was rising. And in that light, he began to descend."
überdruss
