Starke was alone. Falga's warriors had gone off along a dim subterranean vent, vanished. Now the faint beckoning of harp and the golden hounds behind him, turned him down a passage that opened out into a large circular stone room, one end of which opened out into a hall. Around the ebon ceiling, slender schools of fish swam. It was their bright effulgence that gave light to the room. They had been there, breeding, eating, dying, a thousand years, giving light to the place, and they would be there, breeding and dying, a thousand more. The harp faded until it was only a murmur. Starke found his feet. Strength returned to him. He was able to see the man in the center of the room well. Too well. The man hung in the fire tide. Chains of wrought bronze held his thin fleshless ankles so he couldn't escape. His body desired it. It floated up. It had been dead a long time. It was gaseous with decomposition and it wanted to rise to the surface of the Red Sea. The chains prevented this. Its arms weaved like white scarves before a sunken white face. Black hair trembled on end. * * * * * He was one of Faolan's men. One of the Rovers. One of those who had gone down at Falga because of Conan. His name was Geil. Starke remembered. The part of him that was Conan remembered the name. The dead lips moved. "Conan. What luck is this! Conan. I make you welcome." The words were cruel, the lips around them loose and dead. It seemed to Starke an anger and embittered wrath lay deep in those hollow eyes. The lips twitched again. "I went down at Falga for you and Rann, Conan. Remember?" Part of Starke remembered and twisted in agony. "We're all here, Conan. All of us. Clev and Mannt and Bron and Aesur. Remember Aesur, who could shape metal over his spine, prying it with his fingers? Aesur is here, big as a sea-monster, waiting in a niche, cold and loose as string. The sea-shepherds collected us. Collected us for a purpose of irony. Look!" The boneless fingers hung out, as in a wind, pointing. Starke turned slowly, and his heart pounded an uneven, shattering drum beat. His jaw clinched and his eyes blurred. That part of him that was Conan cried out. Conan was so much of him and he so much of Conan it was impossible for a cleavage. They'd grown together like pearl material around sand-specule, layer on layer. Starke cried out. In the hall which this circular room overlooked, stood a thousand men. In lines of fifty across, shoulder to shoulder, the men of Crom Dhu stared unseeingly up at Starke. Here and there a face became shockingly familiar. Old memory cried their names. "Bron! Clev! Mannt! Aesur!" The collected decomposition of their bodily fluids raised them, drifted them above the flaggings. Each of them was chained, like Geil. Geil whispered. "We have made a union with the men of Falga!" Starke pulled back. "Falga!"