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of their cursed time folds, no doubt. And the other
two are probably with him right now. Very possibly”—the man’s silver faceless
face turned and gazed around the bedroom—”they are listening to us at this
moment.”
    “Then it is simple. Torture the
body. Pain will cause their spirits to return. They will be only too glad,
after a while, to tell us where to find the Enforcer.”
    The female D’karn-darah raised her hand, and where before had been five fingers were now five long steel
needles. Electricity began to arc from one to another. She reached the hand
with the horribly crackling needles toward Saryon’s defenseless form.
    Her partner halted her, his own
hand closing around her wrist.
    “The Khandic Sages will be here
tomorrow, working their own methods of persuasion. They would know that we had
been here and they would not be pleased.”
    “They know that we are hunting
this Enforcer. They want him as much as we do.”
    “Yes, but they want this catalyst
more.” The D’karn-darah sounded irritated. “Very well, we will leave him
to them. A pity we could not have arrived a few moments sooner. We would have
been able to capture the Duuk-tsarith. As it is, our meeting is only
delayed, Enforcer!” He spoke to the air. “And, you, Catalyst.” The silver face
turned toward the figure in the bed. “I leave this, my . . . business card.”
    He opened the palm of his gloved
hand, reached into his other palm, gave a twist, freeing some object—I could
not see what. He tossed that object onto the bed, at the feet of Saryon’s
slumbering figure. Then the two of them left the bedroom, left the house by the
back door.
    At their departure, the machines
in the house returned to normal. The lights went off, the CD player ceased to
play.
    We waited, hidden, for some time,
to make certain the D’karn-darah were gone and that this was no trick to
lure us out of hiding. When Mosiah permitted us to return, my spirit drifted
back to find my body. I looked down upon myself.
    This was much different than
looking into a mirror, for the mirror shows us what we see every day, what we
have grown accustomed to seeing. Before now, I had never seen myself with such
clarity. And though I was eager to return to Saryon and had questions to ask of
Mosiah, I was so entranced by this ability to see myself as a casual observer
might see me that I took a few moments to do just that.
    Physical attributes I knew well.
The mirror shows us these. Fair hair, worn long, that someone in my childhood
once called “corn silk.” Brown eyes beneath eyebrows that I
did not like. They were thick and dark brown, in stark contrast to my
fair hair, and gave me a grave and overly serious aspect. The features of my
face tended to be sharp, with prominent cheekbones and a nose that was called
aquiline. It would grow beaky as I aged.
    Being young, my body was lithe,
although certainly not strong. Exercise of the mind suited me far better than
running very fast on a machine that took me nowhere. Yet now I looked at those
thin hands and spindly arms with disfavor. If Saryon was in danger, how could I
defend him?
    I found that I did not have the
leisure to spend long on this inspection. The nearer my spirit drew to my body,
the more it longed to return, and I had the impression that I dove down to my
body from a great height. I awoke, shaking, stomach clenching, as one does from
a falling dream. And I have wondered, ever since, if perhaps those dreams aren’t
really the first tentative journeys our spirits make.
    I sat up in my bed, shaking off
the feelings of sleep that clung to my body. Hurriedly grabbing my robe, I
wrapped it around myself, and switching on the hall light, hastened down the
stairs. Light came from Saryon’s bedroom. I found my master, looking as groggy
as I felt, staring at the object which the D’karn-darah had left upon
the blanket.
    “It will not harm you,” Mosiah
was saying as I entered. “You may pick it up, if you