“But you must have sun.”

“Yes,” the green man said. “And I have not enough here. Day is brighter in my age.”

That simple remark thrilled me in a way that nothing had since I had first glimpsed the unroofed chapel in the Broken Court of our Citadel. “Then the New Sun comes as prophesied,” I said, “and there is indeed a second life for Urth — if what you say is the truth.”

The green man threw back his head and laughed. Much later I was to hear the sound the alzabo makes as it ranges the snow-swept tablelands of the high country; its laughter is horrible, but the green man’s was more terrible, and I drew away from him. “You’re not a human being,” I said. “Not now, if you ever were.”

He laughed again. “And to think I hoped in you. What a poor creature I am. I thought I had resigned myself to dying here among a people who are no more than walking dust; but at the tiniest gleam, all my resignation fell from me. I am a true man, friend. You are not, and in a few months I will be dead.”

I remembered his kin. How often I had seen the frozen stalks of summer flowers dashed by the wind against the sides of the mausoleums in our necropolis. “I understand you. The warm days of sun are coming, but when they are gone, you will go with them. Grow seed while you can.”

He sobered. “You do not believe me or even understand that I am a man like yourself, yet you still pity me. Perhaps you are right, and for us a new sun has come, and because it has come we have forgotten it. If I am ever able to return to my own time, I will tell them there of you.”

“If you are indeed of the future, why cannot you go forward to your home, and so escape?”

“Because I am chained, as you see.” He held out his leg so that I could examine the shackle about his ankle. His beryline flesh was swollen about it, as I have seen the bark of a tree swollen that had grown through an iron ring.

The tent flap opened, and the drummer thrust his head through. “Are you still here? I have others outside.” He looked significantly at the green man and withdrew.