The Bright Sword

by Lev Grossman

It is a cruel paradox of monarchy that the king’s private life is the foundation of Britain’s public well-being.”

“I’ll never understand it.” Morgan shook her head. “A man with your, shall we say, proclivities, fighting for a God who would send you to Hell just for being what He made you. There are other ways to live, man! I put it to you, to all of you: What can you say about a God who judges your worth by how infrequently you touch yourself?” She drew a finger suggestively along one elegant antler. “What can you say about a government that falls apart just because the queen got a poke on the side? You will find my Britain a wilder place but a much freer, much stronger one.”

But of course it wasn’t over. Why would the future be simpler than the past? Stories never really ended, they just rolled one into the next. The past was never wholly lost, and the future was never quite found. We wander forever in a pathless forest, dropping with weariness, as home draws us back, and the grail draws us on, and we never arrive, and the quest never ends.