“Yes,” the Tarkin said dreamily, his eyes unfocused. “It unmakes, it returns the world to the never was.”

“Lord Tarkin.” Dhulyn tapped Tek-aKet sharply on the side of the face. “Do not drift away from us.”

The Tarkin pressed his lips together and took a deep breath through his nose. “It’s so old,” he said. “It wants its home. It loathes the body, the… the shape, and would destroy it.”

“Your body?” It was true the man looked older and worn, as though he’d been faded through too many washings.

The Tarkin nodded, but slowly, face contorted with the effort of making himself understood. “Yes, but also… the body of the world.”

“And the Sleeping God?” Gun asked.

“It fears the Sleeping God. Hates and fears it. It was the Sleeping God who broke it. Into parts. It knew nothing of parts-do you know, I just realized that. That’s the reason it hates the world and everything in it.” Tek-aKet dropped his voice as if he were sharing a secret. “We’re all made up of parts. Shapes within shapes.”

Dhulyn looked at Parno, saw her own confusion mirrored in his face. Shape and edges. That’s how she’d Seen it when she was close to the Green Shadow. What Tek-aKet saw as parts. But if what made up the world was strange to the Shadow-how could that be? Unless the Shadow was not of this world.

Then she Saw it. The mirror window that was the night sky. The sword cut that opened the doorway in the stars. The entrance of the mist. The entrance of something not of this world.

A Sight from the past, not the future. She’d realized with her Vision of the Finder’s fire from Navra, and the circle of Espadryni women that the Sight was showing her the past as well as the future, but, fool that she was, she’d never thought to examine her other Visions. Parno’s voice brought her back to the present moment. She would have to consider what the Vision of the doorway could tell her later.

“Does it know how the Sleeping God is called?” Parno was asking.

“It’s ironic. It knows irony. Only the Marked can call the Sleeping God. But they’ve forgotten how. He’s the only one left who knows. The Shadow.”

“But he kills them anyway.”

“Surely.” The Tarkin nodded, his eyes still focused on his memory. “What if they remember?”

“Now we know,” Parno said from the doorway.

The Tarkin licked his lips. Dhulyn leaned forward again with her cup of water. “You frightened it, Dhulyn Wolfshead. It knows what I know. When it rode Lok-iKol, it only suspected, but it knew you were a Seer as soon as it entered m-” He clamped his mouth shut as if against a scream. Dhulyn knew he was drawing upon the rags of his strength to be able to speak to them at all, to tell them what he must. Worse than any rape, the Green Shadow had been inside him, inside his mind. He had watched it wear his body, use it. Such a thing could do more than make a man mad-it could drive him to his own destruction.

“Enough, Lord Tarkin,” she said. “Now you must rest.”

“No.” It was a command, no matter how faint the voice. “It had to wait to destroy you,” Tek-aKet said finally, spittle forming at the corners of his mouth. “It had to wait until the effects of the blow to my head had worn off, and the body-my body, was strong again.”

“Lucky it hadn’t finished, then,” she said.

“You were too fast for it. Then, when the Scholar found me, its attention was turned away; it had gone to look through someone else’s eyes for a while.”

They all look at each other. “Beslyn-Tor?”

Tek-aKet lifted his right hand as far as the silk bindings would let him and waved it from side to side. “Not then. It was-oh the blessed Caids, it was Far-eFar. Who else?” His hand clutched and Dhulyn grasped it, wincing at the sudden strength of his grip. “Hid-oHid the Steward of Keys and Korvolyn the guard. It can look through their eyes, and,” his eyes locked on hers, “it can visit them.”

“Parno!”

But her Partner was already on his way out the door.

“Wolfshead, he must rest now. He must.” Zelianora rose to her feet, ready to argue, but Dhulyn also stood. They had heard the meat of it. If the Tarkin regained his strength, there might be more he could tell them, but if they taxed the man too much now-She forced her lips to smile in what she hoped was reassurance. He looked as though he’d been ill of a wasting sickness for months. As she began to release his hand, however, it tightened once more on hers.

“Dhulyn Wolfshead,” Tek-aKet said, his voice suddenly strong. “Promise me. If the Shadow returns, kill me. I lived too long in the never was. I can’t go back. If it returns, kill me.”

Dhulyn knew the right words to reassure him and opened her mouth to say them. Things were never so dark as you thought. He was not alone in the world. He could come back from anything but death. But she remembered her own sight of the NOT and the platitudes died unspoken.

“I am Dhulyn Wolfshead, called the Scholar. If the Green Shadow possesses you again, I will kill you.”

“Gun’s Found it once, why not have him Find it again?” Mar shook her head as Parno offered her a piece of roasted pheasant.

“What if all we’d manage was to chase it into someone else? Even if I find it again…” Gun looked at the food on his plate as if he couldn’t imagine how it had arrived there. “We need to know how to destroy it.” He picked up his knife and fork, but did nothing more.

“We need to awaken the Sleeping God,” Dhulyn said. Once Parno had returned from securing the men-all men, she noticed, and wondered if it was significant-and setting Brothers to watch them, they’d brought the youngsters once more to their own rooms.

“We don’t know how,” Parno said.

“What do we know?” Dhulyn said. “Gundaron, an exercise for your scholarship, summarize what we know about the Green Shadow.”

“We know it does not have innate shape or substance, and that it views these things as foreign and hateful. Therefore, it must originate in a world other than our own.” Gundaron tilted his head to one side, as if examining his own thought, before nodding in satisfaction. He sat up straighter and began cutting his food.

Mar began to protest, but subsided when Dhulyn held up her hand. No time now to describe the links in the chain of theory.

“We know it destroys the Marked to prevent them-to prevent us,” Gun amended with a nod at Dhulyn, “from calling the Sleeping God. Even though we don’t remember how,” he added, his voice turning thoughtful. “We know it wants the Mesticha Stone, though again, we don’t know why.”

“I have a theory,” Dhulyn said, “but finish your list.”

The corners of Gundaron’s mouth turned down. “I think I am finished.”

“We’d have done better to list the things we don’t know,” Parno said, throwing his own knife down in disgust.

“We may not have that much time,” Dhulyn said. She looked over her companions. “I’ve not spent much of my life in Imrion,” she said. “What does the Mesticha Stone look like?”

“Well,” Mar said when it appeared no one else would speak. “Like all the Jaldean relics, it’s believed to be a part of the Sleeping God.”

“Like the bracelet with green stones that was in the Tarkin’s treasure room?” Dhulyn picked a wing from the platter and tore it in two.

“It’s green, all the relics are,” Gundaron said. “But the Mesticha Stone is shaped like a hand carved from green stone. There’s a treatise-the original’s here in the Gotterang Library-that says there was a statue of the Sleeping God that shattered when the God last awoke, or because the God awoke, something like that. That’s what these relics really are, just bits of the statue.”

Dhulyn tossed down a bone. “Bits of a green statue that this Shadow absorbs into itself,” she said. “Beslyn-Tor said when he collected five relics of the God together for the first time, the God appeared and spoke to him.”