“And now he was dead, his soul fled down to the Sunless Country and his body lying cold in the cold mud, somewhere in the city's wake.”

“Is it...dead?" asked Tom, his voice all quivery with fright."A town just ran over him," said Hester. "I shouldn't think he's very well...”

“In the old days, I'd never given a thought to the future, and not much to the past. I'd lived simply in the now. I'd been happy if I had enough to eat, and nobody was hitting me. I'd been miserable when I was cold and frightened when I was ill, but mostly I gave no more thought than an animal did to what might happen tomorrow, or next week. Just an animal walking about on two legs, that's all I was till Myrddin changed me. It seemd to me sometimes I'd been happier that way.”

“But the look on his face was so strange that I hadn't the heart to take his story away from him. He believed it, see. He believed the old gods were on Arthur's side just as he believed that winter would follow autumn and the sun would rise tomorrow. And I thought that maybe that believing would make him strong and brave and lucky when the fighting came, and maybe without it he'd be killed, or turn and run away, which was worse than being killed. So I kept quiet.”

“It was a dark, blustery afternoon in spring, and the city of London was chasing a small mining town across the dried-out bed of the old North Sea.”

“The small lives of women don't make for good stories. That's why there were no girls in the stories Myrddin told, unless they were there as a prize for the hero to win at the end of his adventures.”

“It will be all right, Tom. Wherever we go now, whatever becomes of us, we'll be together, and it will all be all right.”