Dinadan rode until finally he came to a land where the names Arthur and Camelot had no meaning at all and produced only puzzled looks, and there he rested from his travels. He didn't know it, but by then he was the very last knight of the Round Table still alive. All the others were gone. And when at last his time came, too, he lay down on a hot dry hill in the shade of an ancient silvery-leafed olive tree, alone except for his horse, and a single tiny perching bird that almost seemed to glow from within, as if it had swallowed a star, though it could just as easily have been a trick of the light. He looked up at the empty clouds, and as he died he wondered, not for the first time but for the very last, why it should be that we are made for a bright world, but live in a dark one.
The Bright Sword, Lev Grossman
