Rain pattered hard on a raftered roof. The air of the room was dark and clear. Near his couch stood a woman whose face he knew, a proud, gentle, dark face crowned with gold. He wanted to tell her that Mogien was dead, but he could not say the words. He lay there sorely puzzled, for now he recalled that Haldre of Hallan was an old woman, white-haired; and the golden-haired woman he had known was long dead; and anyway he had seen her only once, on a planet eight lightyears away, a long time ago when he had been a man named Rocannon.
