As Morreion spoke the red stones went pale; his voice quavered with passion he had not hitherto displayed.

"I stood alone," said Morreion hoarsely. "I could not die, with the Spell of Untiring Nourishment upon me, but I could not move a step, not an inch from the cavity of black dust, or I would instantly have been no more than a print upon the surface of the shining field.

"I stood rigid—how long I cannot say. Years? Decades? I cannot remember. This period seems a time of dull daze. I searched my mind for resources, and I grew bold with despair. I probed for IOUN stones, and I won those which now attend me. They became my friends and gave me solace.

"I embarked then upon a new task, which, had I not been mad with despair, I would never have attempted. I brought up particles of black dust, wet them with blood to make a paste; this paste I molded into a circular plate four feet in diameter.

"It was finished. I stepped aboard; I anchored myself with the barbed pins, and I floated up and away from the half-star.

"I had won free! I stood on my disk in the void! I was free, but I was alone. You cannot know what I felt until you, too, have stood in space, without knowledge of where to go. Far away I saw a single star; a rogue, a wanderer; toward this star I fared.

"How long the voyage required, again I cannot say. When I judged that I had traveled half-way, I turned the disk about and slowed my motion.

"Of this voyage I remember little. I spoke to my stones, I gave them my thoughts. I seemed to become calm from talking, for during the first hundred years of this voyage I felt a prodigious fury that seemed to overwhelm all rational thought; to inflict but a pin prick upon a single one of my adversaries I would have died by torture a hundred times! I plotted delicious vengeance, I became yeasty and exuberant upon the imagined pain I would inflict. Then at times I suffered unutterable melancholy—while others enjoyed the good things of life, the feasts, the comradeship, the caresses of their loved ones, here stood I, alone in the dark. The balance would be restored, I assured myself. My enemies would suffer as I had suffered, and more! But the passion waned, and as my stones grew to know me they assumed their beautiful colours. Each has his name; each is individual; I know each stone by its motion. The archveults consider them the brain-eggs of fire-folk who live within these stars; as to this I cannot say.

"At last I came down upon my world. I had burned away my rage. I was calm and placid, as now you know me. My old lust for revenge I saw to be futility. I turned my mind to a new existence, and over the aeons I built my buildings and my cairns; I lived my new life.