Shairn came before him, her face uplifted, smiling, sweet. "You're coming with us, Michael. That's what you wanted. Aren't you happy?"
"Coming with you—where?"
"To Llyrdis."
He did not like her smile. He did not like the wisdom in it, the mockery, the knowledge of things beyond his ken. She bore him malice, and somehow she had got her revenge, and he didn't understand how. All the little details joined together in his mind, the language, the dress, the physical appearance, the taste of a purple wine that came from no familiar vineyard, and they pressed down on him like an avalanche, crowned with the echo of an unknown name, and he was cold deep inside himself, cold with a dread that even yet had no clear shape to it.
He repeated, "Llyrdis?"
"Oh, Christ, don't torture the man," said Edri wearily to Shairn. Then he looked at Trehearne and said, "Llyrdis is our home world, the fourth planet of the star you call Aldebaran."
That was all he said. No one else spoke, there was not a sound inside the ancient room of stone, and even outside all noise had ceased, and the word Aldebaran tolled in that silence like a far-off bell. A curious weakness came over Trehearne. Shairn's face grew misty and indistinct. The solid ground, the Earth on which he stood, slipped out from under him and vast yawning windows opened on all sides, windows into space, into darkness and wild light....
He said to Edri, quite reasonably, "But that isn't possible."
Somebody put a wine-cup in a hand that didn't belong to him any more, and Edri's voice spoke to him from miles away. "But it is. Drink up, Trehearne. Sovereign remedy for practically everything. Take in the idea slowly, with the wine. We come from another world, another sun. It seems incredible to you. To us, it's only a familiar fact."
Trehearne sat down. The wine burned in his throat, and his head spun round. Everything had turned unreal. "Another world, another sun." He stared down at himself, turning his hands over and back again and staring at them as though he had never seen them before. "My own blood. That's why...." He shook his head, stumbling over his own words, and then he shivered, a muscular reaction that shook him right down to his heels. He repeated carefully, "I am going with you."