As with rune rods, the usual practice with scrying was to request an answer to a particular question, or clarification of a puzzle or quandary. What the seer then saw in the scrying vessel might be an answer to that question or to any other. It might seem to have no relevance at all to what one wanted to know. The vision might be of past, present or future, or might deal with the difficult may be or the heart-wrenching might have been. I had seen things that made me sick; I had seen things that made me weep. I had seen things that made me desperately afraid. Much of what I had seen, I had not spoken of to anyone.

I took time to sink into a trance. The long meditation had not quite wiped the last two days’ upheaval from my mind. As the sun moved across the sky and the light from the opening in the cave roof shifted and changed, I asked the first of my questions.

I feel Svala’s pain. I feel her cry for help. How can she be reached? For a long time the water of the pool showed only a series of ripples, a subtle, deep pattern. Then all at once waves were crashing over my head, crushing the breath from my body; hands were clamped around my arms like iron bands, something was dragging me over gritty sand, and I was screaming, screaming . . . no, that was not my voice but the shouting of men, Don’t leave us! What are you doing? For pity’s sake, don’t leave us! The hands heaved me up, threw me down. My head struck something, and all went dark in the still pool. I breathed, and breathed again, and the nightmare vision was gone.

I took time to recover, using long-practiced techniques to calm myself. Gods, that had been so real! I would not try to interpret it now. I drank from my water skin. I listened to the cries of gulls beyond the opening in the cave roof, and the endless wash of the sea. I thought of the man brought to me by those chill waves. When my heart had ceased to hammer, when my breathing was slow and even, I asked my second question. Not, Will he survive? I did not want an answer to that; I needed hope.

Thanks to Manannán’s mercy, I saved a man from the sea. What is it he needs most?

I waited, keeping my mind open and empty. I breathed. The pool lay still before me, not a ripple on its glassy surface, now darkening under the sky of late afternoon.