Crow rubbed his forehead with his thumb and forefinger, looking done in. “Wouldn’t it be sufficient if I promise not to treat you like a fool in the future?”

Han shook his head. “That’s not enough.”

“Even if I tell you the truth, you won’t believe me,” Crow said. “That’s always the way. People unnecessarily limit themselves, and then they try to limit you.”

“I’m not learning what I need to know here,” Han said. “I’m not the most patient person.”

“Nor am I,” Crow said. “But I have had to be incredibly patient for longer than you can even imagine.” He thought a moment. “Who am I? I was once the Bayars’ enemy. Their greatest rival.”

By now it was clear that the only way Han was going to hear this story was in small bits and riddles. “And now you’re not?” Han said.

Crow smiled faintly. “I suppose you would say I am a shade. A ghost of my former self. A remnant of who I used to be, made up of memory and emotion. The Bayars no longer perceive me as a threat. And yet”—he tapped his temple—“I have something they want very badly.”

“Knowledge,” Han guessed. “You know something they need to know.”

“I know something they need to know, and I intend to use it to destroy them,” Crow said matter-of-factly. “That is the reason for my existence.”

Han was lost. “When you say you are a ghost of your former self, what does that mean, exactly?”

Crow’s image shimmered, dissolved, and then reassembled itself. “This is all that remains of me,” he said. “I am an illusion. I exist in your head, Alister. And in Aediion, the meeting place of wizards. Not in the world you consider real.”

“You’re saying you’re…dead?” Han stared at Crow. “That doesn’t make sense.” At least, it didn’t fit in very well with what he’d been taught at temple. But then he’d never claimed to be a theologian.

Crow shrugged. “What is death? The loss of a body? The loss of the animating spark? If that’s the case, I am dead.

“Or is life the persistence of memory and emotion, volition and desire?” Crow went on, as if in a debate with himself. “If that’s the case, I am very much alive.”

“But you have no body,” Han said.

Crow smiled. “Precisely. I have no corporeal body, nothing beyond what I conjure up in Aediion. And a body is required in order to get things done in the real world. A body is necessary in order to take revenge on the Bayars. Specifically, a wizard’s body, since that would allow me to use my considerable knowledge of magic.”

“And that’s where I came in,” Han said. “I could provide the flash you needed.”