“Realizing that the dream had been sent to him for a purpose, Adin worked in secert over many months to create a likeness of the belt he had been shown.Then he traveled around the kingdom to persuade each tribe to allow its talisman to be added to it.”

“But these last months had turned him around and now Gen saw there could be as much virtue in letting go of what you knew as there had ever been in gathering new information. He worked as hard at forgetting as he had ever worked to learn.”

“When he began to talk about Wyndham, it was almost with relief, as if his purpose in life was to tell that story over and over. To tell it until its last shard had been pulled from him. As he listened to himself, he realized that the story sounded practiced as it changed from event and recollection into language, as if each retelling were an attempt to scrub away the awfulness.”

“No: that fear had been inside him for manyyears, it had lived with him, it had been another shadow cast over hisown shadow ever since the night he awoke, shaken by a bad dream,and realized that death was not only a permanent probability, as hehad always believed, but an immediate reality.”

“We are vanishing from the earth, yet I cannot think we are useless or else Usen would not have created us. He created all tribes of men and certainly had a righteous purpose in creating each.”

“It had brought melancholy across his passions. Its mere memory had marred many moments of joy. It had been like conscience to him. Yes, it had been conscience. He would destroy it.”