The Heart of What Was Lost (The Last King of Osten Ard, #0.5)

by Tad Williams

When you discover a flaw in stone, do not examine only the flaw, but how it formed, what it will do if left alone, and how the stone around it has responded. Do not neglect what beauty may have been created—if there were no flaws in order, life would be immeasurably poorer.”

Wars don’t end, he thought suddenly. They become stories, told to children. They become causes that are taken up by those who were not even born when the war started. But they don’t end. We are a fierce race, we men. We will give up even our short, precious lives for revenge—no, for justice. No wonder the immortals fear us.

The end of every battle is the beginning of something else, often something too large to understand at that moment, inside the Dance of Time.”