He remembered, then, with the old terrible loneliness, that they were not truly his people. They had raised him, but they were not of his blood. And he remembered also that they were dead, slain by the miners who had needed all the water of the valley for themselves. Slain by the miners who had taken N'Chaka and put him in a cage. With a start of terror, he thought he was again in that cage, with the leering bearded faces peering in at him. But in the blinding dazzle of light he could see no bars. There was only one face. The anxious, pitying face of a girl. Fianna. His brain began to clear. Memory returned bit by bit, the fragments fitting themselves gradually into place. Kynon. Delgaun. Berild. Sinharat, the Ever-Living. He remembered now with perfect clarity that he was dying, and it seemed a terrible thing to die in the body of another man. For the first time, fully, he felt the separation from his own flesh. It seemed a blasphemous thing, more terrible than death. Fianna was weeping. She stroked his hair, and whispered, "I am so glad. I was afraid--afraid you would never wake." He was touched, because he knew that she loved him and would be sad. He lifted his hand to touch her face, to comfort her. He saw the fingers of that hand, dark against her cheek. Dark.... His own fingers. His own hand. He was not on the ledge. He was back in the coral crypt beneath the palace. The light that had dazzled his eyes was not the sun, but only the flare of torches. He sat up, his heart pounding wildly. Kynon of Shun lay beside him on the coral. He was quite dead, his head encircled by a crown of fire, his side open to the white bone where Delgaun's blade had struck. The wound that Kynon himself had never felt. The golden coffer was open. The second crown lay near Fianna, with the rod beside it. Stark looked at her, deep into her eyes. Very softly he said, "I would not have dreamed it." "You will understand, now--many things," she said. "And I was glad of my power today, because I could truly give you life!" She rose, and he saw that she was very tired. Her voice was dull, as though it counted over old things that no longer mattered. "You see why I was afraid. If _they_ had ever suspected that I, too, was of the Twice-Born ... Berild or Delgaun, each alone, I might have destroyed, but I could not destroy both of them. And if I had, there was still Kynon. You did what I could not, Eric John Stark." "Why were you against them, Fianna? How were you proof against the poison that made them what they were?" She answered angrily, "Because I am weary of evil, of scheming for power and shedding the blood of men as though they were sheep! I am no better than Berild was. I, too, have lived a long time, and my hands are not clean. But perhaps, by what you helped me do, I have made up a little for my sins."