He laughed bitterly. “No, I was not. I am the least of the Shorn, late to the party but eager to feast on the praise given to the brave and the bold, which I never deserved. Yet look at me now, reduced to walking in another’s body as I hope to redeem myself in some small way for what I refused to do in the hard days, when my help was most needed.”

It was painful to hear that sardonic tone turned on himself. But reassuring him that surely, surely, he was wrong about his assessment of himself was definitely not the way to proceed.

“Where is Prince Gevulin?” she asked instead. “Are you sure he isn’t seeing and hearing all?”

“Oh, no! That is not how the passage spell works. First, as I said before, the host must agree to carry one of the Shorn for a specific mission or task. When we enter, the host’s mind retreats as behind a veil. They do not see or hear anything that happens. It’s as if they sleep while we walk in their body. They trust the traveler will treat their body with respect and in no way violate any bounds of intimacy or violence that aren’t absolutely necessary for survival. Thus…” He extended a hand toward her, as one would if meaning to take hold of another person’s hand, but drew it back without touching her.

“I see.” Her fingers closed over empty air. “What are the Shorn, exactly?”

“We who were shorn of our bodies in order to survive natural death and become … what shall I say?… to become guardians and warriors and caretakers, set aside so we might be released in a time of need. We retain our sense of self and our knowledge and memory, and some of the inherent gifts we wielded in the time before being shorn.”

“Magical gifts?”

“It might be so,” he said evasively. “But after being shorn, we have no bodies, so we need the passage spell to enter a physical body. Only then can we move about the world, which is otherwise closed to us. But after touching the Pall here, I believe my soul can move into and within the Pall.”

“Like a fish swimming in the ocean?”

“I would scarcely compare my glorious self to a fish. But something like that, yes. I believe the Pall would act as a soft shell harboring my soul in the same way the hard shell of a statue did for so long.” A flicker of disquiet troubled his expression. “Yet, were I to become trapped in a stagnant Pall like this one, I would eventually wither away and die with it. Sparks fade as ashes grow cold.”

Elen swallowed past a thickness in her throat. “What will happen when you reach a living Pall?”