Christ and Satan!" "Swear by whomever you like," laughed the King. "Why not Jupiter, Thor, Mithra, and Ahura-Mazda also? It'll do you as much good. - Darrell Schweitzer

This place was not divine. It was enchanted, which was a different thing altogether.

I lost my faith on a foreign shore, in the shade of the conscience tree. In the shade of the conscience tree, on a foreign shore, where the sand ran wet with the blood of children.

So now the tale is done. What moral? There was in the abbey a learned man who insisted that all things have a greater meaning, that life is but a symbol of motions on a higher plane. Nothing, he said, is random. Nothing is without purpose. Yet I blundered into my adventure and out of it, seeking only to save my own life. I came to the only place a wretched fugitive could have come on such a night, and my escape was miracle enough. A meaning? A purpose? When others, as the ballads tell, pass into Faerie, or into the lands of the dead, it is for some lofty purpose, to learn some deep wisdom, or to rescue a loved one, or to save a kingdom. It was not like that with me. My life will make a poor amusement if it is ever told. There is no form to it, no order. No conclusion, no moral, no answers. Only more questions.