Soon all in Dun Turenn and in all the lands of Edar knew that Brian, Ur, and Urba were come again; but sorrowful were they indeed to see, instead of the three proud heroes, only three wasted men like unto shadows. Neither Ur nor Urba could speak, but Brian’s voice could rise to a thin whisper. With halting breath he bade his father hasten to Tara, and tell Lu Lamfada that now all the eric was paid at last; and then beseech him, by his honour and fair name, and for the glory of the old Dedannan faith, and by the invocation of the Sun and Moon and Wind, to lend to the three perishing sons of Turenn, the Skin of Healing, so that their lives might not flicker out as the flame of spent torches. But, alas! Lu would not yield to that prayer, not even when the grey hairs of Turenn were at his feet. Then once more Brian besought his father; and now it was that he bade his father put him upon a litter, and bear him gently, because of his open wounds, and lay him at the feet of Lu. And when he was there, Brian said this thing: “Behold, O Lu Ildanna, son of Kian, we have fulfilled the heaviest eric ever exacted of any man since the world was made. And now we ask this one thing alone: one hour only of the Healing Skin that we ourselves brought unto thee. Yet not for myself I ask this, if thou desirest my life, since it was I who slew thy father, but for my brothers Ur and Urba. And if not for them--though they are guiltless of this ill, and are with me in this dire plight because they would not forsake me, but made my fortune their fortune--then for the sake of the old hero Turenn, who was comrade in arms with thy father Kian when both were youths. And by the Sun, and by the Moon, and by the Wind, and by thine honour, I cry to thee to be merciful, and to do this thing.” But Lu smiled a bitter, evil smile. Half that smile was from the cruel revengefulness in his breast, and half because he feared that if Brian and Ur and Urba lived, there would be an end of the Dedannan race, for the fierce internecine wars which would be in Erin. “I would not give thee the Skin, Brian, though all thy race, nay, not though every man and woman in the eastlands were to perish with thee. Go hence, and in the shadow of death remember the eric unto death of Lu the Long-Handed.” So Brian went forth upon his litter, with the death-sweat already upon him. That night a long and bitter lamentation went up from Dun Turenn, and the Beacons of Death flared upon Ben Edar. For, at the setting of the sun, Brian and Ur and Urba breathed out their souls into the light, and these moved swift to Flathinnis, the holy island where are gathered all the souls of heroes. Yet on their way to join the innumerous deathless dead, they halted once, for they heard a thin voice crying upon the wind. It was the voice of Turenn their father.