Pellin’s heart ached to give his apprentice what he wanted. “Mark, the gift of domere doesn’t work that way. When I delve a person, when any of the Vigil touch another, we see the memories and emotions of that person’s life as a river. We reach into the river, grasp a memory, and become that person at that point in time. To accomplish our task we track that memory forward or backward until we can determine their guilt or innocence.” He shook his head. “But there’s no way for us to absorb all the memories that make up a person, just as there’s no way you could drink all the water in a river. We don’t have room enough in our minds to hold so much. Even as it is, taking only what we need, some of the Vigil lose control over their own minds at the end, too tired to maintain their own identity.”
“What do we have to lose?” Mark asked. “What does she have to lose?”
“Oh, Aer,” Pellin almost pleaded. “Mark, look at yourself. All of your memories are tied to your physical being. What would it be like to give Myra memories from a different body? You’re asking me to give her memories that will drive her insane.”
Mark shrugged away his answer. “We have a saying in the urchins, Eldest. When is the best time to die?”
Pellin shook his head. “When?”
His apprentice gave him a rueful smile. “Later.”
Behind the dwimor, Allta chuckled, his voice a rumble of amusement. “Well spoken.”
Pellin pulled a deep breath that held hints of woodsmoke and ale and sighed his resignation. “I’ll try.” How could he deny the request of his earnest, kindhearted apprentice. “Allta, as gently as you can, please render her unconscious. I have some somnal powder in my pack.”
He sat on the bed, waiting while Allta and Mark tried to coax water mixed with sleeping powder into a girl only one of them could see, a slip of a girl who would kill them all without a hint of remorse because she’d lost the ability to feel it.
After seven hundred years of living, everyone he met reminded him of someone he’d met before. Several times he’d met descendants of nobles or gnath, people without a gift, who resembled a distant relative from antiquity so closely that he suspected the dead of walking his memories.
Who would she resemble? Might he have seen or met some of her ancestors in his long sojourn? Deep within, so deep he might have denied it existed, lay the hope that he wouldn’t recognize anyone associated with her. What Mark had asked of him lay beyond his ability. Centuries with his gift hadn’t given him Aer-like wisdom—only experience, and all of it told him this was doomed to fail.
“I think she’s ready, Eldest,” Allta said.
Pellin stood and circled the young woman he could now see, committing her features to memory. Her heart-shaped face and dark hair would have been considered attractive in any time period, though the current fashion trended toward smaller facial features. He thumbed open one of her eyelids. Her irises, clear as glass, gave no hint of their original color. He would just have to trust to Aer that the memories he placed within the girl would feel right. “How tall is she, Mark?”
The boy shrugged. “About my height, Eldest. Perhaps a finger’s width shorter.”
Pellin pulled the other chair close and removed his gloves, though he made no move to delve the girl just yet. “You may as well be seated, gentlemen. This will take more than a moment.”
He turned his thoughts inward and entered the construct that existed in his mind, a vast library of five levels and four wings emanating from a central open space. He lifted his arms, palms down, and floated. The strictures of Aer’s physical universe didn’t apply here, and he’d long ago found it quicker to fly than walk. When he’d first come to the Vigil, Formona and the others had instructed him on the construction of his sanctuary, how it might have to hold the accumulated delvings of a thousand years.
He’d planned accordingly. Each wing held two hundred and fifty years of accumulated memories, divided into groups of five decades for each level. He flew along the hallways, his fingers brushing each door just long enough to get a sense of the physical appearance of the person within.
It was over more quickly than he would have thought, but he had two possibilities, neither of them good. “Mark.” He tried not to sigh. “I’m willing to make the attempt, and I will strive to make it work, but there is a choice to be made.”
The boy’s eyebrows dipped as if in suspicion. “What choice, Eldest?”
“Most of the memories held by the Vigil are from those who’ve committed some crime, not surprising, since that is the task Aer has laid upon us with our gift.”
He didn’t have to finish. “You’re going to give her the memories of a criminal,” Mark said. A moment later he shrugged. “That would have described me a few short months ago.”
“We don’t delve mere thieves,” Pellin snapped. “You know that.”
Mark’s face went stony, and for a moment he resembled a Vigil guard. “I do know that. What’s the choice?”
“Criminal or victim,” Pellin said. “They both resemble her, but the memories are old and partial, as we discussed before.”
Mark stared. “You’re asking me to choose?”
Pellin nodded. “It’s customary within the Vigil for the one who proposes a course of action to bear the cost of its decisions.” Behind him, Allta might have made a sound of disapproval.
To his credit the boy didn’t try to argue or rationalize his way out of the responsibility. “Victim,” he said. “It will give her a better chance at healing. Besides, she’s seems to be one.”
“Well enough,” Pellin nodded. He leaned forward, placed his hand on the dwimor’s arm, and opened the door to memories from a long dead girl. “May Aer have mercy on our souls,” he whispered.
Chapter
