“Lady Mar, I’m sorry to disturb you so early, but I have need of your bowl.”

“My bowl?” The door swung open, and Mar-eMar stepped back in invitation, one hand still on the edge of the door, the other holding the throat of her dressing gown closed. There were oil lamps burning in this outer room, and neat piles of folded clothing on the low chairs and the single brazier table, but he barely took them in as he scanned the surfaces for the patterned bowl. Could she be keeping it in the bedroom? He glanced from the girl, still standing with her hand on the open door, to the inner door leading to the bedroom.

“I’d only need it for a few minutes, I won’t harm it.”

“But why my bowl? There must be bowls in the kitchens you can use.”

“It’s-” Now that he was faced with it, Gun realized he had no idea what to say next. He hadn’t seen beyond the point at which he had the scrying bowl in his hands. It simply hadn’t occurred to him that he would have to explain what he wanted it for. He glanced over his shoulder at the open doorway, but there was no help there. When he turned back, Mar-eMar was watching him with her liquid eyes.

She had relaxed her hold on her dressing gown. The neck had fallen open and he saw that, under it, she was wearing not a night dress but a shirt and tunic. There was no fear in her face, just a calm query as she waited for him to answer her-and the certainty that he would. She’s very brave, he thought, taking a deep breath. She had to have been, to come all this way not knowing what waited for her. Braver than I am.

“It’s a scryer’s bowl, Lady Mar,” he said. “A Finder would use it to focus the Mark.”

Mar-eMar glanced into the passageway and shut the door.

“Are you sure?” She came toward him. “Dhulyn Wolfshead only said it was very old.”

“I’m sure. Please, my lady. I’ve lost something, and I-” Gun swallowed the sob that threatened to break out. She was from Navra, the Marked were still safe in Navra. She must not think him a coward, she must not. “I have to Find it.”

“You…?” Mar gestured without completing the sentence. “Please.”

She stared at him a moment longer and then turned to the pack that lay open on the round brazier table to the left of the inner door. She removed two rolled gowns, a pair of light brown sueded half boots, and finally the old thick cloth he’d seen when she’d shown the bowl on her arrival. As Mar-eMar turned back the faded folds of material, she looked once more at the door. Gun followed her glance and went himself to secure the latch. When he turned back, she had tossed the old cloth over a chair and set the bowl on the round table.

“Do you have water?” he asked. Without another word, Mar went into the bedroom and returned with a pitcher of water. Gun took it from her and, after moving the bowl nearer the edge of the round tabletop, filled it two-thirds full. He looked around and found Mar taking three folded tunics from a chair. He positioned the now empty chair in front of the bowl and sat down.

His Finding had always been most successful when he was researching. He placed his fingertips lightly on the edge of the table and leaned forward, keeping his back straight, his shoulders down. He was researching again, that’s all; all he had to do was relax.

Gun licked his lips. Research so often started with the printed page. A scroll, or book. The flame of the lamp cast little highlights on the surface of the water, standing out against the pure white of the bowl. A little like letters meticulously copied onto a page of parchment or paper. This was how he’d Found things. Hypnotizing himself with the ink and page. The water-

It’s not water, it’s a bright page of paper. Suddenly he’s in a Library. Familiar. Not one he’s been in, but Libraries are Libraries. He should be able to Find the text he’s looking for. There’s a beautiful jade-green line on the floor before him, fuzzy at first, but stronger and more precise as he follows it. He walks swiftly now, down the main aisle, shelves and scroll holders branching off to left and right. The place is enormous.

He walks faster, following the thin jade line as it rounds a corner into a narrower aisle. The aisle ends, opening into Lok-iKol’s workroom. Of course, this is where his memory must be. There. The Kir is bent over Dhulyn Wolfshead in her chair, her face frozen in that snarling smile. And there he is himself-Caids, how fat he’s become!-sitting in the other chair. Something has frightened him because he has his hands up to his mouth and his eyes are very wide open.

They are motionless as a painting, as if the jade-green mist that fills the room, the exact shade of the line he’s been following, is a kind of ice freezing them into stillness. But his memory is in there, it must be. He focuses, straining to move forward again, and the mist is sucked away, so suddenly that he takes an unintended step forward into the room just as sound and movement returns to the people in it.

Dhulyn Wolfshead stiffens and looks at where Gun sits in his chair, but she also looks at him now, right now, where he’s standing watching them all, and with a shock he realizes that she can See. That she Saw him when they were all in this room together. She is a Seer. Part of him feels triumphant. Her eyes shift and he follows the angle of her glance and sees himself at the door of Lok-iKol’s workroom, trying to work the latch. But he’s transparent, and his hands pass through the mechanism without affecting it. I don’t remember that. Gun looks back to where he was sitting and sees his body is still there, filled with a jade-green light, that makes his eyes glow green in his slack face.

Gun takes a step back toward the Library he has come from. He remembers seeing that green glow, that slack face, in Lok-iKol. With that thought images, memories, cascade through his mind and he remembers-for the first time-seeing the glow, but with no slackness whatsoever, in the eyes of Beslyn-Tor as the Jaldean has passed him in the doorway of this very room. And he remembers that the Jaldean has passed him many times, over and over. All those memories lost-taken, he realizes-until this very moment. And now that he has those memories again, standing there in his mind’s Library, Gun realizes there is a difference between the green glow when it is in Beslyn-Tor and in Lok-iKol, and that same difference-please, blessed Caids-is in himself as well.

There is something living inside Beslyn-Tor, he thinks, his Scholar’s mind weighing and assessing. He and Lok-iKol were tools only, something to look through, as a jeweler looks through a lens. Somehow the Jaldean priest, or the thing living inside him, has pushed Gun out of his own head, out of his own body, and that’s why he has no memory of this. He couldn’t remember what he wasn’t in his body to experience.

And Gun realizes something else.

This is what happened every time I left the room. All those people I’ve Found for them. This interrogation, this torture, this is what happened to them.

At that moment the head on the body he’s not wearing begins to turn to him, and Dhulyn Wolfshead starts to scream, the sound a horrid tearing of the throat. Fear chokes him as he backs away, faster and faster, finally turning and beginning to run as shelves and tables of books and scrolls move to block the aisles between him and the image of the room, shutting it away.

Not that he will be able to forget it now.

“Gundaron?” Mar put out a tentative hand and touched the Scholar’s shoulder with her fingertips. His muscles were so rigid, it was like touching wood.

At first he’d been relaxed, watching the water as though he were reading, eyes flicking back and forth. As the minutes passed, however, he’d become gradually more rigid, and now his grip on the table’s edge showed white knuckles. Mar leaned forward. He seemed to have stopped blinking. She took a firmer hold on his shoulder and shook him. It was only slightly better than pushing at a wall. She reached out and gently touched his face. The skin soft, the muscles under it rigid.