A knife… I needed a knife and a strip of linen.

“No!” The old man gripped my wrist. “I forbid it! I need to tell you-”

“But I can heal you,” I said. “The power is in me.” Even as I spoke I gathered power… from my fear… from the bitter winter… from the pain and awe and terror of my vision. I just needed to make the link…

“No use. No time.” His voice was harsh and low, broken with strident breaths. “Listen to me. They have the child.”

“What child? Why-?”

“No time… everything is changed. Your only task… find the child. Save him. Only one… only one can help…” His words came ragged… desperate… “Bareil… your guide…”

“Who’s done this to you?” I would not listen to words that rang so of finality. “Tell me who.” And when I knew, that one would die.

“No, no, fool! Leave it be. If they take… boy to Zhev’Na, then… oh, curse it all… no time… the only way…” He faltered, choking as blood bubbled out of the corner of his mouth. I thought he was gone, but he snarled and forced the words past his clenched jaw. “If they take the boy to Zhev’Na, give yourself… to the Preceptorate.”

“But-”

“Go defenseless. Tell them… ready to be examined. Let it play out. The only way. The only way…” His cold hand touched my face tenderly, his voice sunk to a ferocious whisper, his eyes boring holes in my own. “Dearest son, do not use the crystal. Not until you are whole, and you have the boy. Promise me.”

“Dassine-”

“Promise me!” he bellowed, grabbing my robe and raising himself off the cushions.

“Yes, yes, I promise.”

He jerked his head and sagged onto the cushions, his eyelids heavy, the grip on my robe relaxing. I did not beg or argue or rage about how little I understood. He had no strength to remedy my ignorance. But his finger fluttered against my arm, and I bent close to hear him. With a sighing breath, he whispered, “Trust me.” And then he breathed no more.

My friend, my mentor, my keeper. Without thought of Bridge or worlds or any of the larger consequences of his passing, I held the old man in my arms until the sun was high. Though keeping vigil with the dead for half a day was the Dar’Nethi custom, love, not custom, compelled me to stay with him. Dassine had willingly forfeited every last drop of his life’s essence to give me his instruction. No Healer could bring him back before he crossed the Verges.

Eventually, I laid Dassine in his garden, hacking at the frozen ground until my arms could scarcely raise pick or shovel. When I was done, I sat beside the grave, sweat and anger hardening into ice. I tried to recall everything he’d said, while trying to ignore how empty the world had become.

It is said that those who live long in close companionship come to anticipate each other’s words and actions, and even that one of the pair comes to resemble the other in physical appearance. If such were true, then surely when I next looked in a glass, I would see wild, gray-streaked eyebrows sprouting from my face. Only now did I realize how closely bound our minds had been. Lacking his abundant presence, my thoughts felt thin and watery. Whatever else I retrieved of the years still missing, I vowed to learn someday how we had become so close.

So what to do? Nothing made sense. I could believe Dassine’s last words were the product of delirium had it been anyone but Dassine who voiced them. A mysterious child to be saved from someone I didn’t know. Someone named Bareil to guide me. No doubt that I needed help, but who was Bareil and where was he to be found? I had heard his name before… yes, the brandy. “Bareil’s best.” Dassine had spoken as if I should know him, but I’d met no one in Avonar save the Preceptors, the six…

No… a seventh person had been in that room when I met the Preceptors-a Dulcé. So perhaps he didn’t mean an ordinary guide, but a madrissé. With their strange intellectual limitations, Dulcé on their own did not figure in the equations of power in Gondai. But a Dulcé could give a Dar’Nethi a significant advantage in life’s games by placing his immense capacity for knowledge at that person’s service. When a Dulcé bound himself in this rare and privileged relationship, he was called a madrissé, one whose knowledge and insights could guide the Dar’Nethi in decision-making. Bareil was likely Dassine’s madrissé. He would have been the other presence I had felt in Dassine’s house, the note-taker, the user of the third bowl, the one who would drink brandy with Dassine while I was enraptured with candlelight and the past. He could hold a number of answers, if only I could find him. To imagine it was a comfort.

In the matter of the crystal, I had to follow Dassine’s judgment. From the corner of my mind where I had pushed the unsettling experience, the fingers of light beckoned dangerously, causing my blood to churn. When I was whole, Dassine had said, implying that such was still possible. The crystal, whatever it was, would have to wait. I had promised him.

As for his command to give myself to the Preceptorate, I was confounded. For how many days had Dassine fumed about my offer to be examined, warning me to stay away from the Preceptors’ multitudinous deceptions? Now he told me that circumstance might demand I surrender to the Preceptorate while yet incomplete. Defenseless… helpless. The world would surely crack at their first probe, and they would judge me mad… or Zhid. Was that what he wanted? If not for his last words, I would have dismissed it entirely. Trust, in this matter, was very difficult.

“I thank you for my life, old man,” I said, as I took my leave of the snowy garden. “But I mislike being a pawn in a dead man’s game. However will I hold you to account for it?”

I returned to the silent house warily. The house would surely have formidable wards, the masterful illusion that hid my room but one example. But Dassine’s enemies would themselves be formidable, and they would know that Dassine was severely weakened if not dead. As I was so unsure of my own strength, it seemed sensible to take whatever might be useful and leave Dassine’s house as quickly as possible. Then I could watch and confront the murderers on my own terms. Not friendly terms.

Rummaging about the kitchen, I located a capacious rucksack. Careful not to touch the black crystal itself, I wrapped the unsettling artifact in a small towel and stuffed it into the bottom of the bag. I didn’t question the motive that made me make sure of it before anything else. Next I searched the room for something I knew would never be far from Dassine’s hand. Indeed, the small leather case sat on the shelf by the door. Inside it lay an exquisitely sharp, palm-length knife with a curved blade-a Healer’s knife- and in a separate compartment, a narrow strip of linen, scarcely less fine than a spider’s web. For a moment I felt almost whole. I put the case in the pack.

Next went in the flask of “Bareil’s best” and the two pears I had not eaten earlier. From the larder I grabbed enough food for at least a day-a considerable amount since I was still ravenous. Clothes were more difficult. Dassine had given me nothing but the white wool robe. Citizens of Avonar who specialized in the study of sorcery wore traditional scholars’ garb-loose robes and sandals or slippers. Warriors, tradesmen, those who tended gardens and fields, the Dulcé, and most others wore garments more like those to which I was accustomed: shirts or tunics, breeches, leggings, and boots. I didn’t wish to proclaim myself a scholar-far from it. But I was more than two heads taller than Dassine. His more ordinary garments would do nothing to make me inconspicuous. Clothing would have to wait.

Money would be useful, but I had no idea where any might be. Masses of notes and manuscripts cluttered the house, some relevant to my situation, I had no doubt, but I’d no time to sort through them. Perhaps this Bareil would know what was valuable, if I could find him.

The instincts and habits I had so recently redeveloped from my memories of hiding from the law prodded me to move, to get away from the place my enemies expected me to be. My teeth were on edge, and despite the paltry supplies in the pack, I was ready to bolt.

But just as I hefted the pack, quiet footsteps sounded in the passageway from the house. I flattened myself to the wall beside the doorway, realizing at the same time that I had forgotten to acquire a most important piece of equipment-a weapon. I-Karon-had never carried a weapon, yet my hand demanded a blade. The Healer’s knife was too small, and it was unthinkable to use an instrument designed for healing to harm another person.

But I was out of time. The sneaking villain tiptoed down the lectorium steps. I glimpsed a dagger in a bloody hand. Stupid brute. I grabbed his wrist and dragged him off balance. Remembering Dassine and the jagged wound in his chest, I was not gentle. I wrapped one arm about his neck and twisted his arm behind his back until his weapon clattered to the floor.

“Did you think to finish your work or simply add another to your tally?” I growled in his ear. Tightening my grip on his throat, I snatched the dagger from the floor, vowing to rip him open the same way he had murdered Dassine.

“Help Master Dassine… please.” The man, small and light, went limp in my arms. An amateur’s ploy. He deserved to die. But even as I poised the dagger at his belly, I noted the color of his skin… a creamy brown like strong tea with milk in it. Slender oval face. Dark eyes the shape of almonds. A Dulcé… I lowered the knife and shifted him in my arms. Black, straight hair cut short around his ears. A trim beard. An ageless face, his lips mortally pale.

Holy gods, he was the one, the seventh person in the room with the Preceptors! And his slight body was bleeding from no less than ten stab wounds. Whoever had taken a blade to him had wanted to make sure. I laid him on the couch still wet with Dassine’s blood, grabbed the leather case from the pack, and pulled out the knife and the strip of linen.

No sorcery can blunt the pain of a Healer’s knife. To cut your own flesh and mingle your blood with that of your patient is the only truly effective way to unleash your Healer’s power. And pain is part of the working every bit as much as the words that open your mind to the light of the universe, as much as the gathering of power that lies hidden in the recesses of your being, as much as the smell of blood. Pain opens the door to the heightened senses needed for putting right what is wrong, a connection that binds Healer to patient more intimately than any strip of white linen.