“It’s work like this that makes me want to never be a sword smith,” Feir said. “The scabbard is the original. Woven thick with magic as fine as Gandian silk, and I think all that’s just to preserve the leather. It won’t stay dirty, won’t take a mark. The gold inlay is real, too. Pure gold. Hardened to where it would stand against iron or even steel. If I could figure out that technique alone, my heirs would be rich to the twelfth generation.”

“We’ve barely dared unsheathe the sword, and of course we haven’t tried to use it,” Dorian said.

“I should hope not,” Solon said. “Dorian, why would you bring it here? Have you seen something?”

He shook his head. “Artifacts of such power skew my vision. They themselves and the lusts they invoke are so intense that it fogs my sight.”

Suddenly, he was drifting again, but drifting was too gentle a word for it. His vision latched onto Solon and images streamed past him. Impossible visions. Solon against incredible odds. Solon as a white-haired old man, except not old, but—blast, the image disappeared before he could understand it. Solon Solon Solon. Solon dying. Solon killing. Solon on a storm-tossed ship. Solon saving Regnus from a wetboy. Solon killing the king. Solon dooming Cenaria. Solon propelling Dorian into Khalidor. A beautiful woman in a chamber of a hundred portraits of beautiful women. Jenine. Dorian’s heart lurched. Garoth Ursuul.

“Dorian? Dorian?” the voice was distant, but Dorian grabbed onto the sound and pulled himself back to it.

He shook himself, gasping as if emerging from a cold lake.

“It’s getting worse as you get stronger, isn’t it?” Solon asked.

“He trades his mind for the visions,” Feir said. “He won’t listen to me.”

“My sanity isn’t necessary for the work I must do,” Dorian said simply. “My visions are.” The dice were in his hand, not just two dice, a whole handful of dice, each with a dozen faces. How many twelves can I throw? He would be throwing blind; he could see that Solon already was thinking he should leave, that no matter how good it was to see his old friends, he had to try to save Regnus Gyre. But Dorian had a feeling. That was the damnable thing. Sometimes it was as logical as a sesch game. Sometimes it was just an itch.