Eighty years, then, had passed since tegeus-Cromis broke the yoke of Canna Moidart, since the Chemosit fell and dragged the North down with them; and Aistath Fulthor, first among the Reborn Men, heir to a technology whose power he could not really appreciate, a lord respected among the councils of the Pastel City, was running through the foothills of the Monar as if his life depended upon it, without any knowledge of why he ran or what compelled him to do it.

He was a tall man, as are all the Reborn, and a thin one, clad in tunic and trousers of black satin, the contorted yellow crest or ideograph of his House writhing over his breast. On his feet were the curious flimsy shoes his race wears in preference to boots, and at his waist hung a short force knife or baan, dug up along with its ancient ceramic scabbard from some desert. His long coarse yellow hair was tangled and damp, and sweat filmed his prominent birdlike features. He came into Dyke Head Moss over the steep and dangerous ground at the head of Rossett Gill, the low rounded hills about him browned with autumn; shot the screes at Surgeon's Gate with arms windmilling to keep his balance and grey dust exploding round him as he went; and gained the valley path in a few long, energetic strides. That the pace he set would have crippled an ordinary man he was unaware. His queer green eyes were blank and unfocused, but with a psychic rather than a physical weariness. In the more foolish and fashionable salons of Viriconium he was held to be the 'most human'of the Reborn; but this was a silly expression (not to say a meaningless one), and if there was anything more or less human in his face now it was only despair.

Thirty-six hours before, black and incontrovertible, the madness had driven him from his comfortable house on the edge of Minnet Saba, dragged him through the silent predawn streets of the city, along Proton Circuit to the NorthEast Gate, and so up into the icy gullies of the Monar, where it showed him the evil landscapes of quite another country (in his ears was a prolonged metallic moan rising on afdhn wind, while against the horizon moved tall and cumbersome shapes) and drove him on with 'Run! Run!'whispered in every chamber of the heart, shrieked in the skull's deep recess and echoed in each atom of his pounding blood.