Garrin held back the cloth divider and stepped aside. Kiema looked over to the figure stepping into her little room, candlelight behind cast the face into darkness. She could sense him, though, and she curtsied, ?Master Pearen, an honor.?

He gave a wave of his hand for her to leave off the formalities, and spoke to Garrin without turning, ?Leave us, Garrin.?

A stiff and unapproving bow from Garrin before he departed and Pearen snickered after Garrin left, ?Lapdog he is. Gets on my nerves.? Turning around to sit on the edge of her bed, his long fingers, so often set to writing music or playing upon the lute and harp, folded together on his lap. ?So, Their Excellencies of Yransea kept you overlong this time. Your loyalties are being swayed.?

Kiema?s green eyes rolled as she sat on the trunk across from him, candlelight now lighting half of each of their faces, ?Lacking any poetical turns of phrase today, are you?? Her eyes darken hazel in blue brown turmoil, ?I am loyal to the Circelus, but it was you who first sent me to Yransea and on to RhyDin. That I have loyalties and friends,? her emphasis teased the Master, ?there do not mean I forget my place.?

The Master?s eyes were dark as pitch. Kiema sighed, she could feel his concern without the affirmation of his eyes, and she changed her tune to something sweeter, ?Master Pearen, if the Circelus has duties for me, I will do them gladly. In between times my life is my own.?

?So it is, but my troubles spring from not loyalties of the mind, but of the heart. I?ve no quarrel with Sylvia or Kieran. I do have a quarrel with your heart.?

Kiema sprang up to her feet like a snapped string, ?Quarrel with my heart? Are you insinuating??

He lifted his hand placating and she could feel his calm soothing her senses, ?I insinuate nothing. The young Master Corinsson is worried over your particular interest in someone, though he refrained from saying who.?

?Master Corinsson is of an unstable mind-?

?-Kiema,? warningly spoken. He'd not let her get away with falsehoods.

?He?s jealous.?

?A man can only be jealous if he has reason to be. And,? he continued with a fatherly smile, ?I don?t think he is jealous. I didn?t feel it. It was concern that you were going to be hurt, and his words felt true.? He set a hand to her shoulder for her to sit once more, "We are in Anria here, not Rhydin, and our talents are not filtered or muted."

"I have to go back, Master Pearen." Avoiding the alluded to question all together.

"I was certain of it, though Quincas, now he is jealous of everyone who spends time with you, will doubtless have some words to say about it." A low sigh, he stood and sang softly in such a rich baritone that Kiema was certain her soul would shame itself with any notes she dared to add, "Beware the cold fire, the moonlight and diamond gleam, a heartless joy there never has been."

"It is good to see you, as it was good to sense you again," Master Pearen held Kiema close in a fatherly embrace. It comforted her to be home again as a familiar song refrain can call in a crowded and confusing tavern to ease a spirit.

"It is good to be seen, Master. I felt your presence like few others in that moment when I rose from the ritual."

He looked closely upon her face as if the notes of her recent adventure would be written there for him to memorize and know the tune. "Ah, well, we did not wish to overwhelm, but in these times, when one returns to us, it is of great interest."

The walked in a slow cadence through the gardens of the Circelus grounds. "Quincas has been most persistent in pressing his attentions. Could he not find a hobby?" her voice the light touch of horsehair bow against loose strings.

"You have not changed," Pearen laughed a trio of notes.

Kiema stopped and look up at the sky where the setting sun chorused the notes of coming night in brass and woodwind, and the moon had already begun to rise to sing its soft aria about it all. "I felt as if I swallowed the moon, and I do now know why."

This is, hopefully obviously, after the "Needle in the Haystack" thread, but before her being seen in Rhydin: the missing weeks.

Another day of the library cocooning Kiema in paper and other instruments of knowledge, cold and boxlike, foreign to her. She sat sideways, her legs curled beneath her caused her skirt to look like a puddle of ocean water lapping about her. Slender fingers slid down the edge of each page prior to turning. The illustrations in this particular book were fading slightly, browning from black. The text, too, seemed to be uncertain of itself sometimes still strong and sometimes just a phantom of itself barely traceable upon the page.

As Kiema squinted seablue eyes to read one particularly deteriorating passage, the words she had been searching for teased upon the last sentence. She turned the page to find an illustration so upset by time that it was as if she looked at it through milkglass. The person, unknown if man or woman, was drawn in fullness with ancient attire of wrapping cloth. A warrior, perhaps, from the fading tracery of tattoos upon the neck and hands. Beneath written A Sed on a Laral. This was the next clue and she closed the book eager to share it with the folk of Palendies.