Judge, jury, and executioner. "Sounds efficient," Curufin remarks with a little smile. "Good thing for me that you didn't exist in my universe."

"And good thing your Corsai and Machai didn't, either. They'd have made a sepulcher of my world, I suspect." So great was the violence in that world that the smoke of ruin must have blackened the sky in the last years that Curufin can remember. Adding sin-created monsters would have been over-kill.

But he smiles again at the talk of music. Even when it's used for such a purpose. "What happens, exactly, when you sing your particular song? Do the sinners recognize that they are about to meet their demise, or are they oblivious?"