“Because if I see you defeated, then I think I will see Alban defeated, and if that happens, none of us can go on. To guard you is to guard the heart of this land of ours.”

“He would have told her - he would have said, it matters not if you are here or there, for I see you before me every moment. I see you in the light of the water, in the swaying of the young trees in the spring wind. I see you in the shadows of the great oaks, I hear your voice in the cry of the owl at night. You are the blood in my veins, and the beating of my heart. You are my first waking thought, and my last sigh before sleeping. You are - you are bone of my bone, and breath of my breath.”

“I cannot expiate my sin, yet I am compelled to try. My mind will not let me rest. There must be something I could have done, some way I could have acted, something I could have changed to snatch victory from bitter defeat.”

“I wept in self-pity, and because I knew you could never go back. You chose your path, and that was it.”

“How can he do this? If you were mine, I would fight to keep you. I would die, before I let you go.”

“Don't you long for something different to happen, something so exciting and new it carries you along with it like a great tide, something that lets your life blaze and burn so the whole world can see it?”

“My daughter," I said blankly. "I see. Correct me if I am wrong, but I thoughtit took a man, as well as a woman, to make a child. Is this infant's father tobe a crab, or a seagull maybe? Or were you planning to shipwreck some likelysailor on my doorstep, so I can make convenient use of him?”