At some point the whole System will fail (...). Perhaps new sorts of Wizards will be required then. But — and perhaps this is only because of his age, and that there’s a longboat waiting to take him away — he has to admit that having some kind of a System, even a flawed and doomed one, is better than to live forever in the poisonous storm-tide of quicksilver that gave birth to all this.

At some point the whole System will fail (...). Perhaps new sorts of Wizards will be required then. But — and perhaps this is only because of his age, and that there’s a longboat waiting to take him away — he has to admit that having some kind of a System, even a flawed and doomed one, is better than to live forever in the poisonous storm-tide of quicksilver that gave birth to ...