“Although Branwen had no patience for dry lists of names and dates, she had always loved the thrilling tales of the old wars that were told and retold around the hearth in the Great Hall of Garth Milain.”

“Kami'd always retold her fairy tales to make the fair maidens braver and more self-sufficient, but she had never had any real objection to the handsome prince.”

“A smile flitted across War's mouth, hidden by her helmet. She had little patience for religion (although she approved heartily of the religious fanatics who sought to cleanse the world of heresy), and the only faith War had was in cold steel and hot blood.”

“To hear the tales told at night-time hearths you would think we had made a whole new country in Britain, named it Camelot and peopled it with shining heroes, but the truth is that we simply ruled Dumnonia as best we could, we ruled it justly and we never called it Camelot. Camelot exists only in the poets' dreams, while in our Dumnonia, even in those good years, the harvests still failed, the plagues still ravaged us and wars were still fought.”

“Several notes were missing. They had always been missing, except for two that I had levered out with a poker when three...The anticipated thrill of a missing G or an E Flat was like a good joke, told again and again, always fresh. I believe that my present feeling for silences and emptinesses dates from those sing-songs, the awaited non-note on the beat.”

“She was so old, she would have had to be dated by carbon 14.”