She stood in front of me. “Manglyth,” she said, holding out the silver goblet, “the potion we use for examination.”

The two liquids had not mixed. The dark one hung suspended in the clear, so that the drink looked like an egg with a dark red yolk, encased in the silver shell of the goblet. Drink it all, Madyalar motioned, holding the cup to my lips. The clear liquid was icy cold and sweet, coating my tongue and my throat, but the dark one boiled away the sweet coating and scalded my very bones. Panicked, I wanted to push it away, but my hands lay on the arms of the chair like tide-dropped seaweed, and the big woman relentlessly poured the rest of her potion into me. Enough of the sweet liquid remained in the cup to soothe my mouth and throat a bit, leaving them throbbing and sore, but not blistered. As for the rest of me, flesh and thought and memory were turned inside out, exposed to anyone who should desire to inspect them.

“Uncomfortable, I know”-I heaved and gasped for breath, unable to move to help myself-“but necessary. Now we begin. Your secrets… Dassine’s secrets… now belong to me, as do you, in a sense. You cannot imagine… And to have you present yourself to me willingly!” Madyalar sat opposite me once again, her expression that of a moneylender introduced to a wastrel baron. Not at all motherly. I began to suspect that I had made a dreadful mistake.

Quickly, brutally, Madyalar wrenched open the gates of my mind. No sound disturbed her chamber save the snapping of the flames in the brazier. Rather, her questions appeared directly inside my head. Though I could formulate my responses, she retrieved them in the same way, with no artifice of voice or limitation of words to obscure their truth. I could neither withhold an answer nor could I lie.

Came her question: Who is the child in Zhev’Na?

Came my answer: He is the son of Dassine’s friend, a mundane child stolen from his home five days ago.

A mundane child! Why have the Zhid taken him?

I do not know.

And what is your interest in the child?

Dassine instructed me to find him. He said if the boy was taken to Zhev‘Na before I found him, then I should surrender myself to the Preceptorate for examination.

Nothing more?

Nothing more.

And you are accustomed to taking direction from Dassine without understanding any more than this?

Yes.

Why is that?

I do not know.

She was puzzled, and I couldn’t blame her, but I was unable to volunteer any information. I could only answer her questions. She rubbed her lips with an idle finger.

What have you been doing with Dassine in these past months since your return from the Bridge?

I have been regaining my memory.

Your memory… lost? You did not know… what? The deeds of a night? The happenings of a week?

I knew nothing of myself.

Nothing! Did this happen when you walked the Bridge these few months ago?

Dassine said that whatever happened at the Bridge worsened damage that was done earlier.

From the first attempt, she said. I knew it. So Dassine the Healer was restoring your memories. Fortunately for you, he was a talented man. And so now you are restored.

I wasn’t sure whether the last was a statement or a question, but as long as there was doubt, I was compelled to answer.

No.

Madyalar’s eyes widened. Not restored… How much of your memory is yet missing?

A great deal is yet missing.

She proceeded to question me about many things: about Avonar, about my family, about Dassine and the Preceptorate and the life of the Dar’Nethi. Some things I knew. More I did not. It would have been clear to anyone that I was profoundly confused and dreadfully incomplete. No one would have called me mad, but of course she hadn’t gotten to the heart of the matter as yet. She was shaking her head in exasperation at my lack of information, and she blurted out her opinion with her audible voice. “You’re no more than a child, scarcely past infancy. Do you even know your own name?”

She must have sensed the ambivalence her question evoked in me, for she narrowed her gray eyes and blasted her question directly into my head. Tell me… what is your true name?

I knew what I should answer, even lost in the smoky haze and the fierce compulsions of the potion she had given me. If the purpose of the examination was to legitimize my position, then only one answer would do. But under the influence of manglyth, it was not possible to speak anything but the most absolute truth. My name is Karon, eldest son of the Baron Mandille, Lord of Avonar, and his wife Nesei, a Singer.

She jumped up from her chair. What are you saying? Where is D’Natheil, Heir of D’Arnath?

And of course, I couldn’t lie about that either. I am D’Natheil, Prince of Avonar, Heir of D’Arnath.

How is this possible? Have you put an enchantment on yourself so that you can lie?

I do not lie, and I do not know how it is possible.

Who is this Mandille? We have no barons in Avonar.

My father inherited the title of baron and the sign of the ruler from his father, Bertrand. The title Baron, Lord of Avonar, was granted by order of King Dagobert of Valleor.

These names have no meaning to me. Was D’Marte not your father? Is Mandille another name for D’Marte?

D’Marte was my father. D’Marte and. Mandille were not the same man.

This is madness. How can you have two fathers?

And that, of course, brought me to the familiar ground at the edge of the precipice. Gods save me, I do not know how it is possible.

Are you the Heir or are you not?

I am the true Heir of D’Arnath. Hold onto that, I told myself, until the cracks in the world disappear.

On and on she went, discovering everything I knew of my two lives, of the Preceptorate, of Dassine’s work, and his murder. She constantly returned to questions about conspiracies of which I knew nothing, and of what I had done to preserve the Bridge in the human world, which I could not remember, and how I’d come to believe I was two persons. Each time she pushed me to the edge, I wanted to scream at her to stop before I lost my mind.

So you truly do not know how you-this Karon of Avonar, an Exile-first met with Dassine, or when?

No.

Perhaps Dassine was able to cross the Bridge to find you.

Astonishing that you don’t know. Perhaps the real D’Natheil was killed four months ago, and Dassine has mind-altered an impostor… No, I would see that. Perhaps you are D’Natheil, but truly mad.

“Fires of chaos!” As her words erupted into audible speech, she kicked aside a basket of cillia branches and stood glaring down at me, the dried pods, leaves, and twigs left in an untidy heap. “Insupportable! The beast and his ‘private information.’ ” While I sat groggy, paralyzed, and half crazed, she waved her hands and yelled at me as if I were yet a third person who understood her anger. “He thinks to squeeze me out of this matter of the boy, and every time I get the upper hand, he laughs at me, I chance to hear news of his meeting with Dassine, but arrive too late to hear anything worthwhile. And now I’m given the opportunity to become an equal partner, only to discover that my prize is a madman who believes he is two persons at once, who can tell me nothing of the boy, nothing of the one called Darzid, nothing of why the two of them were rushed to Zhev’Na. And the only way to discover the truth is to bring in the very one I detest. Damn! Damn! Damn!”

Her irritation reduced to snarls and muttering, she flopped back into her chair and picked a small blue summoning stone from a bowl of them that sat on the table. A flick of her eyes, a mumbled word, and a press of her fingers, and she dropped the thumb-sized stone into the bowl of flame, where it cracked and sizzled and disappeared. Then she threw the bowl of blue stones across the room, creating a noisy shower of broken pottery and clattering pebbles on the tile floor. The last was not a part of the summoning enchantment. Drumming her fingers on the table, she glared at me through the thinning smoke as if I’d made the mess. She tossed another handful of the gray powder on the flames and waved the smoke my way. “A few moments’ delay,” she said, sourly. “You can be sure he’ll be quick.”

Only slowly did the complexities of her monologue sink into my fogged mind. But sink in they did, so that by the time her smirking partner/rival walked in, I knew it would be Exeget.

Had anyone ever been such a fool? If I could have summoned enough sense to feel anything, I would have been terrified. My mind open to Exeget… For three brutal years of my childhood, I had resisted him, and now, in the space of an hour, I had yielded the control he had always craved.

“Difficulties, you say? A single Preceptor attempting to examine the Heir-I would expect nothing else.” Gloating would not be an exaggerated description of his demeanor.

Madyalar was spitting like a cat, but my mysteries were evidently compelling enough for her to put up with him. “I’ve never known anyone capable of untruth while under the influence of manglyth, yet the answers he gives are not possible.”

“What has he said that is impossible?”

“That he is two persons at once, both D’Natheil and an Exile!”

“Vasrin’s hand…” he said, softly. Never had I known Exeget to lose control far enough to swear, even in such mild form.

And so, we went through it all again. Exeget was an immensely more perceptive and precise interrogator, and, having been my mentor, he knew how to probe deep and touch the most private self… but only that of D’Natheil. He didn’t know Karon at all.

By the time he was done with me, I was half insensible, able to grasp only bits and pieces of their discussion. Madyalar and Exeget had made some accommodation with the Lords of Zhev’Na. The boy had somehow changed the equation. Something I’d told Exeget had made clear to him why the child was important. Madyalar was frantic to know, as was I, but I could not stay awake long enough to hear it.

For whatever reason-perhaps in exchange for knowledge of his great discovery-Madyalar released me into Exeget’s custody. Muddleheaded and nauseated from manglyth, smoke, and the bile of self-recrimination, I was half carried, half dragged through passages and cold air and a portal. At last I was deposited on a pallet that was too short for me. One bleary-eyed glance told me that I lay in the same room where I’d slept for three of the most wretched years of a sorry childhood. Exeget’s house-the Precept House of the Dar’Nethi. And yet, as I collapsed into complete insensibility, a soft and not unkind voice spoke in my head. Sleep well, my lord Prince. You’ll need it.