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Lady Tania?”
    “Because I see you in the dream world,” Tania told him, “as you must now see me.”
    Aryn felt stupid all over again. “You're a mage. Solyr?” He should have known.
    “Now journeymage,” Tania said. “What rank are you?”
    “Doesn't matter.” At least he had lost to someone a rank above him. “The man I once was made Firebrand, but that man died.”
    “Pity. He wasn't all that bad looking.”
    His head snapped up. “You're insane to say that.”
    “I'm not talking about the skin you wear today.” Tania offered his quarterstaff. “I'm talking about your soulform. That, as I can see it, hasn't changed.”
    Aryn took his staff, even though it was a clear reminder he had lost their duel. “You honestly expect me to believe you can see how I looked before I burned?”
    “I don't expect anything.” Tania leaned in and he smelled her, a mixture of grass and sweat. “But I could train you to see as I do, if you're willing.”
    “To do what? Become your apprentice?”
    “How about my friend?” Tania crossed her arms and stepped back. “Though as you said, you are traveling. I doubt you'd have any interest in staying in a dry house with food you don't have to sneak away with in the night.”
    Aryn couldn't trust this. It was too easy. “You don't know what I've done or where I've been. You don't know me. Why would you offer a complete stranger a warm meal or a bed under your roof?”
    “Because I know how it feels to lose your sight.” Tania tapped one finger to the side of her head. “I've been blind for a very long time now.”
    Aryn connected her blindness to her first name — Tania — and everything clicked. All the stories about Solyr's blind Earther prodigy returned, the only student to ever challenge Elder Halde to a triptych duel. She had graduated shortly after he became an initiate.
    “You're Tania Lace.” She had lost her duel with Elder Halde handily, of course, but just challenging an elder had made her legend at Solyr. “What are you doing here ?”
    “This is my home. Where else would I be?”
    Aryn had at least a dozen questions, but there was only one he couldn't hold back. “How did you go blind?”
    “Gradually,” Tania said. “The world started turning dark when I was six, just before a journeymage judged my blood strong enough to train at Solyr. By my eighth birthday it was all dark, but the elders made accommodations. Elder Cantrall taught me how to grasp the dream world. Elder Halde taught me how to see in it.”
    “You know Halde's dead.” Cantrall, Halde’s Mavoureen worshipping twin brother, had killed Halde when he infiltrated Solyr. Cantrall roasted Halde in phantom fire and took his place.
    Tania stood silent for a moment. “That's a terrible shame.”
    “It was recent.” Aryn wondered just how much he should say about the events surrounding Kara's journey to Tarna. “I'm not sure if the news has left Solyr.”
    “How did Elder Halde die?”
    “A demon did it.” That, or a man close enough.
    “Those can be troublesome.” Tania sighed heavily. “Such a loss. Both brothers dead, good men gone.”
    Aryn scowled at Tania calling Cantrall a good man , remembering all whom the resurrected elder maimed and killed in his quest to open the gates at Terras. Cantrall made him into a harvenger, a demon that summoned the dead and hungered for living flesh. Only Kara's flames and the intervention of Heat saved Aryn's soul from suffering forever in the Underside.
    “I was there when Elder Cantrall burned,” Tania said softly. “It happened on Selection Day. None of us had ever seen so much phantom fire on a single man.”
    Aryn thought back to the day Tania spoke of, the confusion that followed Cantrall's murder. Alarms were raised across Solyr and journeymages and apprentices rushed the fledglings to the safety of the dorms. Aryn had been herded along with his fellows. He remembered Elder Halde striding past them at the head of the Solyr Guard, his