Somehow, the days passed despite the prolonged silence of the Farsighted. Without Apprentice Travail, Queen Estie might have lost control of herself.

Every day, she worried about him. And every day, she was relieved to see that his teaching met his needs as well as hers. He came to her like a dying man. Yet during each lesson, a bit of vitality leaked into his eyes. Whenever she mastered a particularly complex series of touches, a faint smile twisted his mouth. He did not mention his own condition unless she asked. Then he replied that he was learning to deafen himself. He may have been teasing her.

At all times, however, her private dilemma lingered in the background, nagging at her. Could she accept the power of her inheritance and its cruel cost? Should she? Why? Who would she be if she lost her essential connection to other people? To her whole world?

Magister Avail had called her gift a curse. He had urged her to refuse it. Now she could not explain why she hesitated to take his advice. What sane person would choose to follow his path?

Perhaps Avail himself was not sane. He had accepted the same gift.

Nevertheless the question haunted her like an ambiguous nightmare, a horror that held the secret of death and life.

How could she turn her back on the woman she was born to be and go limping into the gloom of a wasted future?

How could she not?

Fortunately, she was not pressed for a decision. She had time. Instead of forcing herself, she waited for news of Bifalt and the war. Failing that, she waited for Magister Threnody to compile a list of men and women who had learned how to poison Travail and murder Magister Marrow. Perhaps such things would help her answer her doubts.

But the Farsighted and Beatrix Threnody were silent. The only word that came to the Queen was from sub-Commander Waysel. He had sent a guardsman ahead to inform her that her cannon had reached the stone bridge in the desert. Seeing that the man was road-weary, Queen Estie asked him to join her escort. In his place, Commander Crayn dispatched one of his own guardsmen to meet Waysel’s wagons and guide them to the Repository.

Thinking of the guns gave her a measure of relief, but it was brief. Nine cannon were better than none, but they would not change the outcome of the war.

That depended on men like her husband and Klamath, men who were beyond her aid.

Without news, time no longer trudged. It crawled on its hands and knees. By increments, it frayed Queen Estie’s concentration. One day, she found herself unable to focus her mind on Apprentice Travail’s lessons. When Crayn sat with her that evening, they did not practice the tapping code. Instead, her thoughts slipped past every subject, trying to go in all directions at once.