“If I tell you now, you’ll lose when you fight him.” Dorian shook his head, but still didn’t look at Kylar. “Damn this power. What good is it if I can’t tell you in a way you’ll understand? Kylar, if time is a river, most people live submerged. Some rise to the surface and can guess what’s going to happen next, or can understand the past. I’m different. When I don’t concentrate, I detach from the flow of time. My consciousness floats above the river. I see a thousand thousand paths. Ask me where a leaf will fall, and I couldn’t tell you. There are too many possibilities. There’s so much noise, like I’m trying to follow a drop of rain from the clouds to a lake, then over a waterfall and pick it out in the river two leagues downstream. If I can touch someone or chant rhymes, it gives me focus. Sometimes.” Dorian seemed to be looking through the wall, lost in reverie.

“Sometimes,” he said, “sometimes when I transcend the river, I start to see a pattern. Then it isn’t like water, it’s a fabric made up of every insignificant decision of every peasant as much as it is of great decisions by kings. As I begin to comprehend the vastness and intricacy of that skein, my mind starts to pull apart.” He blinked, and he turned his eyes to Kylar. He squinted, as if even looking at him caused him pain.

“Sometimes it’s merely images, totally unbidden. I can see the anguish on the young man’s face who will watch me die, but I don’t know who he is or when that will be or why he’ll care. I know that tomorrow, a square vase will give you hope. I see a little girl crying over your body. She’s trying to pull you away but you’re too heavy. Away from what? I don’t know.”

Kylar felt a chill. “A girl? When?” Was it Ilena Drake?

“I can’t tell. Wait.” Dorian blinked and his face went rigid. “Go, go now. Ask Momma K!”

Feir threw open the front door. Kylar stared from one mage to the other, stunned at the abruptness of his dismissal.

“Go,” Feir said. “Go!”

Kylar ran into the night.

For a long moment, Feir stared after him. He spat. Still staring into the depths of the night, he said, “What didn’t you tell him?”

Dorian let out a shaky breath. “He’s going to die. No matter what.”

“How does that fit?”

“I don’t know. Maybe he’s not what we hoped.”

Chapter 35

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