She paused, her thoughts turned darkly inward, and it was strange to see the shadow of age touching her sweet young face. Then she said, very slowly, like an old, old woman speaking, "I am weary of living. No matter where I go, I am a stranger. You can understand that, though not so well as I. There is an end to pleasure, and after that only loneliness is left. "I have remembered that I was human once. That is why I set myself against their plan of empire. After all these ages I have come round full circle to the starting point, and things seem to me now as they seemed then, before I was tempted by the Sending-on of Minds. "It is a wicked thing!" she cried suddenly. "Against nature and the gods, and it has never brought anything but evil!" She caught up the rod and held it in her hands. "This is the last," she said. "Cities die, and nations perish, and material things, even such as these, are destroyed. One by one the Twice-Born have perished also, through accident or swift disease or murder, as Berild would have slain Delgaun. Now only this, and I, are left." * * * * * Quite suddenly, she flung the rod against the coral, and it broke in a cloudy flame and a tinkling of crystal shards. Then, one by one, she broke the crowns. She stood still for a long moment. Then she whispered, "Now only I am left." Again there was silence, and Stark was shaken by the magnitude of the thing that she had done. Her slim girl's body somehow took on the stature of a goddess. After a while he went to her and said awkwardly, "I have not thanked you, Fianna. You brought me here, you saved me...." "Kiss me once, then," she answered, and raised her lips to his. "For I love you, Eric John Stark--and that is the pity of it. Because I am not for you, nor for any man." He kissed her, very tenderly, and there was the bitter taste of tears on her soft lips. "Now come," she whispered, and took his hand. She led him back through the labyrinth, into the palace, and then out again into the streets of Sinharat. Stark saw that it was sunset, and that the city was deserted. The tribes of Kesh and Shun had broken camp and gone. There was a beast ready for him, supplied with food and water. Fianna asked him where he wished to go, and pointed the way to Tarak. "And you?" he asked. "Where will you go, little one?" "I have not thought." She lifted her head, and the wind played with her dark hair. She did not smile, and yet suddenly Stark knew that she was happy. "I am free of a great burden," she whispered. "I shall stay here for a while, and think, and after that I shall know what to do. But whatever it is there will be no evil in it, and in the end I shall rest." He mounted, and she looked up at him, with a look that wrung his heart although it was not sad. "Go now," she said, "and the gods go with you." "And with you." He bent and kissed her once again, and then rode away, down to the coral cliffs.