The sacrifice lives, but the sun’s still shining. - Tanith Lee

The absolute, as I had finally been shown, does not need the accompaniment of pipes and drums.

The sea was a phenomenon I had never clapped eyes on for myself, yet it seemed, from the tales, a destination ultimate and uncompromising. The ocean’s edge, the brink of the land; the lip of Chaos.

For an instant a half-formed prayer struggled into Havor’s mouth. But he could not utter it. Not for himself. For him those words were already drowned by the noise the thong-whip had made, or the sounds of children crying out of hunger or the cold or sheer misery in that grey house of orphans in the far North, eight years ago.