Andrin ... whose presence reached out and took Darcel Kinlafia by the throat.

He stood there, unable to move, while the images roared through him. Andrin, standing tall and straight, face white and strained with grief but with eyes that flashed defiance, as she faced tier upon tier of seated men and women in a magnificent chamber somewhere which Kinlafia had never seen. Andrin, weeping like a broken child. Andrin alight with laughter, launching a falcon from her wrist like an ivory thunderbolt. Andrin, in a torn gown, with a smoking revolver in her hand and murder in her eyes.

Andrin, standing before the high priests of the Triad as she laid her hand upon the Book of the Double- Three to swear some high and solemn oath.

They ripped through his mind, those images, those visions. None of them had happened yet, and yet he knew—he knew—that every single one would come inevitably to pass. And as he Saw them, he Saw himself. Saw himself with his arms about her, holding her as she sobbed upon his shoulder. Saw himself standing at her shoulder. She was older now, and she turned to look at him, her eyes grim, as he passed her a document of some sort. He Saw himself recognizing in her a daughter. Not simply the daughter of Zindel and Varena Calirath, but his daughter. The daughter of his heart, as surely as if she had been born of his own flesh and bone.

This is why Janaki wanted him here!

The thought flared like an explosion, and in that instant, Darcel Kinlafia realized what was happening.

This knowledge, those visions, those recognitions, weren't his. Or, rather, they weren't solely his. In that chaotic, stunned instant, he knew precisely what it was to have the Calirath Talent, for in that moment, he shared it with the Emperor of Ternathia. It was Zindel's vision, his recognition of his daughters, roaring through Kinlafia's Voice Talent, like a flash of lightning bridging the gap between two pylons of the Ylani Strait suspension bridge.

And in that recognition, Kinlafia discovered the true curse of the Calirath Talent. For all their clarity, all the iron certitude that they would someday come to pass, those visions were isolated from one another.

There was no continuity, no thread to tie them together, to tell him why Andrin wept, or who she stood to face in such splendid defiance. No calendar to tell him when he handed her that document, or where, or why.

He stood there for an eternity, frozen, realizing that he'd been right to suspect that Janaki had more reasons than he'd shared for sending Kinlafia to Tajvana. And he also realized why Janaki hadn't shared those other reasons. Not out of dishonesty, not out of any intent to deceive or mislead, but because without this moment of fusion, Kinlafia could not possibly have understood any explanation Janaki might have offered.

And then, as abruptly as it had struck, the moment of almost unendurable vision ended. Ended in the tick between one second and the next. That was all the time it had truly taken—no longer than the time between two heartbeats—to change Darcel Kinlafia's life and future forever.

He blinked, and the world about him flashed back into focus. He sensed Alazon's concern and realized that even though she hadn't shared the vision of Zindel's Glimpse, she'd Felt its impact upon him. He wanted to tell her not to worry, that everything was all right. But he couldn't, because he didn't know if things were "all right" ... or if they ever would be again. All he knew was the way things had to be.

And it was knowledge that only he and Zindel shared. Knowledge which could not be—must not be—

shared with anyone else. Especially not with Andrin. Not yet. Perhaps never.

"And these are our daughters," he heard Zindel chan Calirath's deep, calm voice say. "Girls, come meet Voice Kinlafia. I suspect—" Kinlafia turned his head and looked into those steady gray, Calirath eyes with their burden of ghosts yet to come "—that we'll be seeing quite a bit of him in the future."