“I’ll save you trying to wade backward through our language, and tell you straight up the answer to what you’re going to ask me,” the MindHealer said with a grin that had just a touch of smugness about it. “Yes, I planned this whole business of only using what you know to build seminal Karsite experiences for our four victims, rather than taking your memories entire. It’s all been very deliberate. I’ve got a lot of reasons for doing it that way, as much for their sake as yours. You wanted them made Karsite, not made into duplicate versions of you. And I didn’t want them subsumed into your rather formidable personality, Herald Alberich. But most of all, I did not want you to have to expose yourself in a way that would have been difficult for you to come to terms with.”

Alberich let out the breath he’d been holding in. “You knew—” he said, with just a touch of hesitation.

“That you didn’t want everybody and his Companion knowing every sordid detail about your past?” Crathach looked sardonic as well as smug, an odd combination. “I’d be a pretty poor MindHealer if I hadn’t been able to pick that up, now, wouldn’t I?”

Alberich just shrugged; it was only the truth.

“At any rate, things will diverge more from here, in the little life stories we’re concocting,” the MindHealer continued, and scratched his head with a slight frown. “How to put this? The powerful incident that formed you into what you are now will remain the same, and all of your background, but the way our agents will react to it and the details of the incident will be driven by their own personalities. Am I making sense to you?”

“I—” Alberich hesitated.

“Well, never mind, you’ll see it as we go along. The point is, the more we do, the less it will be anything like your own experience.” The MindHealer shrugged, stretched, and got to his feet, then he paused, giving Alberich a long, measuring gaze. “Go, do something,” he said. “Something purely physical. There’s such a thing as thinking too much, especially for you.”

Since thinking was all that Alberich had been doing for the past several marks, the advice seemed good to him, and he nodded. “My thanks,” he replied, and went off to follow his Healer’s orders.

* * *

Sendar coughed unexpectedly. Selenay pressed down too hard on the goose quill, and it leaked, leaving a trail of ink spatters on the parchment. She cursed and tried to blot the damage but only made it worse. She dropped the quill and made a grab for the edge of the parchment in irritation.