How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
"Southeast, roughly," said Lananeth. "That way lies Talagh. You said you would look for him there. And you think he still lives—the same man that gave the peach nineteen generations back?"
"So the waters tell me," said Alnor.
"Then he is powerful indeed," said Lananeth. "He must hold Time itself in his hand." (6.104-106).
Faheel still has power over Axtrig—carved from a peach tree that came from a peach he once owned—nineteen generations after it was first a fruit. If his power can be so strong for so long, he's a magician of extraordinary power—one that, like Asarta when she made herself younger, might have the ability to turn back time and/or maintain extreme power over long stretches of time.
Quote #2
"[...] I'm really making the most of it, seeing all these places and meeting all these people, when all my life I've never been more than nine miles from my own front door."
Not everyone felt like this. Some were already in the grip of their last illness, some made the journey with dread, and some with fierce resentment, but most seemed to be going south almost gaily, and these helped to keep the doubters from gloom. (8.25-26)
For the old folks here, their time to live is up. Some take it badly, but some are actually quite cheery about it. Maybe they're suffering and looking forward to a relief. Maybe they enjoy traveling when they never got a chance to. It's an interesting look at death: it's the end of someone's time on Earth, but it's not necessarily negative.
Quote #3
"So what I must do is ask the ring to hold all time still for everything but you and your immediate surroundings while you are carried to Talagh. There will be a sort of bubble of moving time inside an unmoving universe. The bubble will be centered on you. Our journey will seem to us to take several hours, but when we reach the palace at Talagh the parading soldiers will not have moved a step." (11.157)
The manipulation of time is what allows Tilja and Faheel to complete this part of their journey. They save the Empire from a despotic ruler, destroy the Watchers, and restore some balance of equality to the country. It furthers both their missions—Tilja stops the Ropemaker from becoming a Watcher—and allows things to continue as they should, not as they might have.
Quote #4
She didn't expect to sleep, but lay for a while wondering at the strangeness of what was happening, far stranger, she thought, than anything else in her adventure [...]—this business with time. Suppose in the wild hurtle of the start of their flight she had fallen out of the litter, but landed unhurt, what would have happened? Would the roc have stuck in its flight between wing beat and wing beat? Or would Faheel have found the strength to wear his ring again? And if neither of them had been able to do that, what then? Would she have been stuck, moving and breathing, in a world forever still? (11.177)
Tilja feels a bit out of her element—meddling with time isn't something she's used to. How can she make sure everything goes according to plan if she doesn't really know how this type of magic works? She's presented with a potential dilemma that she can't do much about—our girl can't work that kind of magic—and has to remain in a state of unknowing, trusting, just as her ancestor Dirna did, in the power of Faheel.
Quote #5
"Time, I tell you, is a great rope. Wearing the ring, I have stood outside it and seen how its strands weave into other strands, back and forth, far beyond the instant in which we all live." (12.29)
When Tilja asks Faheel what would have happened if she had fixed the men's dice game, he tells her that she could have ruined the world—or saved it. One small action can affect the whole flow of life. Faheel has observed such things by standing outside the world of men—and, to some degree, outside time itself.
Quote #6
"I may be a fool,' he said, 'but I think I am not as old as I was."
"Nor me," said Meena. "My, I'm sorry I didn't get to know your Faheel a bit better. He's really a thoughtful old gentleman—unlike some I could name. Now I'll be walking back to the Valley, after all." (14.44-45)
Meena calls Alnor an old fool, and he genially replies that he's not as old as he used to be. By eating Faheel's grapes, they have been transformed into their younger selves—Meena is more vivacious than she used to be, while Alnor relishes his ability to see. The most precious gift they receivedfrom Faheel—other than, you know, the Valley's future survival from the Ropemaker—is this reversal of time.
Quote #7
"He has changed time, not you. Somehow he was brought you out of your past and put you into this time." (16.90)
At Lord Kzuva's house, the magicians Zara and Lananeth express wonder at the reversal of Meena and Alnor's ages. Zara—in her magicked robot-esque voice—says that Faheel didn't change the old folks; instead he took their younger selves and plopped them into the present. It's the same kind of thing Asarta did in the original story about the Valley, and an example of Faheel's great power.
Quote #8
By the time it shone down full into the bowl there was a tall woman standing behind the carved slab, wearing the same gray robe that Asarta had worn, but with long dark hair flowing around it, so that it could hardly be seen.
Time also waited. The two from the Valley had watched, not understanding what they saw. But they remembered what the women by the gateway had said, and guessed that if they took any steps down into the hollow they would be trapped in the backward eddy of the years, sucked into the vortex where Asarta sang. (2.53-54)
Asarta turns back time before she disappears, making herself young again. At the same time—as she reverses time—there is a parallel pausing of time (perhaps not literal) for Dirna and Reyel. These uses of time foreshadow the reversal of time Dirna and Reyel's descendants Meena and Alnor will experience in their own epic journey, while Tilja herself travels to Talagh in a bubble of frozen time.
Quote #9
Tilja understood what she must now do. Sobbing with relief, she huddled down into the same posture as the girl. She heard the pad of the Ropemaker's feet on the hut floor, felt herself lifted and carried. The Ropemaker waited for the exact instant at which the time that he was in caught up with the stilled moment from which Tilja had been watching. When the two times became one her lowered her into herself. (17.121)
This complicated bit of time magic ultimately saves Tilja's friends from obliteration at the hands of Moonfist. The Ropemaker, assuming Faheel's ultimate powers, both pauses the second Tilja's in and rewinds to the moment in which Meena, Alnor, and Tahl went up in flames. He then rescues the trio in the past, and syncs the past with Tilja's frozen present to create a new time in which everybody on the good side is okay. Handy trick, right?
Quote #10
"If you could change one thread, you'd change everything," said Tahl.
"Right," said the Ropemaker. "Went back last night, for instance, two, three minutes only, fiddled with a thread, let me pull you three clear of the fire, that's all. But more than I could chew, almost. Out beyond where I could see, felt the whole rope bucking and heaving around, all of time to come weaving itself fresh. Had to hang on, all my strength, to what I'd got fixed this side, stop it being messed up by stuff happening beyond, till it went and calmed down. Only just made it. Rocked me, that did, badly. Lucky to get back out." (18.56-57)
The Ropemaker discusses the metaphor of time as a great rope. When he altered the course of events—past, present, and future—he tugged on just one little thread. That small action took all the strength he had because altering one miniscule event changes everything that will happen in the future. He took a great risk by saving Meena, Alnor, and Tahl, and meddling in time—which just may be the greatest magic of all.