Bloodheir

Power loves not the light of day, nor the attention of curious eyes. In darkness it thrives most. Examined too closely, it withers. A lord may send his army hither and thither, but the true testing of his power is in those places where his army is not. Has he sunk the roots of his power deep enough into the earth of his lands? Has he sent its long fingers far enough through the backstreets and alleys, into the drinking dens and the lending-houses, so that he may gather them unto himself and hold them firm without a single swordsman?

When a man may whisper in a close ear, and that whisper be repeated far away and many moons later, then he has power. When a man may speak against another, and that other be brought to ruin and rue by nothing more than those words, then he has power. And if a man can act without the appearance of action, and bring about great change without the appearance of desiring it, then he has power.

Ask me not who the most powerful has been, for I know not his name, and nor do you. The greatest power will have been cultivated in the shadows, and the further into darkness and secrecy it was sunk, the mightier will have been its exercising.

from The Huanin Lords by an unknown hand, writing amidst chaos at the beginning of the Third Age, translated from the western form of Old Aygll