Light … Golden sunbeams streaming across a series of rolling hills patched with fields and vineyards. She was standing by the edge of a small courtyard, underneath a trellis laden with blooming morning glories, the vines of which seemed uncomfortably familiar. She was wearing a beautiful yellow dress. There was a crystal goblet of wine in her right hand and the musky, cherry taste of wine upon her tongue. A slight breeze was blowing from the west. The air smelled of warmth and comfort and freshly tilled land.

“Ah, there you are,” said a voice behind her, and she turned to see Murtagh striding toward her from a grand estate. Like her, he held a goblet of wine. He was dressed in black hose and a doublet of maroon satin trimmed with gold piping. A gem-encrusted dagger hung from his studded belt. His hair was longer than she remembered, and he appeared relaxed and confident in a way she had not seen before. That, and the light upon his face, made him appear strikingly handsome—noble, even.

He joined her under the trellis and placed a hand on her bare arm. The gesture seemed casual and intimate. “You minx, abandoning me to Lord Ferros and his interminable stories. It took me half an hour to escape.” Then he paused and looked at her closer, and his expression became one of concern. “Are you feeling ill? Your cheeks look gray.”

She opened her mouth, but no words came to her. She could not think how to react.

Murtagh’s brow furrowed. “You had another one of your attacks, didn’t you?”

“I—I don’t know.… I can’t remember how I got here, or …” She trailed off as she saw the pain that appeared in Murtagh’s eyes, and which he quickly hid.

He slid his hand down to the small of her back as he moved around her to stare out at the hilly landscape. With a swift motion, he drained his goblet. Then, in a low voice, he said, “I know how confusing this is for you.… It isn’t the first time this has happened, but—” He took a deep breath and shook his head slightly. “What is the last thing you remember? Teirm? Aberon? The siege of Cithrí? … The gift I gave you that night in Eoam?”

A terrible sense of uncertainty overcame her. “Urû’baen,” she whispered. “The Hall of the Soothsayer. That is my last memory.”

For an instant, she felt his hand tremble against her back, but his face betrayed no reaction.

“Urû’baen,” he repeated hoarsely. He looked at her. “Nasuada … it’s been eight years since Urû’baen.”

No, she thought. It can’t be. And yet everything she saw and felt seemed so real. The motion of Murtagh’s hair as the wind tousled it, the scent of the fields, the touch of her dress against her skin—it all seemed exactly as it should. But if she was actually there, then why hadn’t Murtagh reassured her of it by reaching out to her mind, as he had done before? Had he forgotten? If eight years had elapsed, he might not remember the promise he made to her so long ago in the Hall of the Soothsayer.

“I—” she started to say, and then she heard a woman call out:

“My Lady!”

She looked over her shoulder and saw a portly maid hurrying down from the estate, the front of her white apron flapping. “My Lady,” said the maid, and curtsied. “I’m sorry to disturb you, but the children hoped that you would watch them put on their play for the guests.”

“Children,” she whispered. She looked back at Murtagh to see his eyes shining with tears.

“Aye,” he said. “Children. Four of them, all strong and healthy and full of high spirits.”

She shuddered, overcome with emotion. She could not help it. Then she lifted her chin. “Show me what I have forgotten. Show me why I have forgotten.”

Murtagh smiled at her with what seemed like pride. “It would be my pleasure,” he said, and kissed her on the forehead. He took her goblet and gave both glasses to the maid. Then he grasped her hands in his, closed his eyes, and bowed his head.

An instant later, she felt a presence pressing against her mind, and then she knew: it was not him. It could never have been him.

Angered by the deception and by the loss of what could never be, she pulled her right hand free of Murtagh’s, grabbed his dagger, and shoved the blade into his side. And she shouted:

In El-harím, there lived a man, a man with yellow eyes!

To me, he said, “Beware the whispers, for they whisper lies!”

Murtagh regarded her with a curiously blank expression, and then he faded away before her. Everything around her—the trellis, the courtyard, the estate, the hills with the vineyards—vanished, and she found herself floating in a void without light or sound. She tried to continue her litany, but no sound came from her throat. She could not even hear the pounding of her pulse in her veins.

Then she felt the darkness twist, and—

She stumbled and fell onto her hands and knees. Sharp rocks scraped her palms. Blinking as her eyes adjusted to the light, she rose to her feet and looked around.

Haze. Ribbons of smoke drifting across a barren field similar to the Burning Plains.

She was once more clothed in her tattered shift, and her feet were bare.

Something roared behind her, and she spun around to see a twelve-foot-tall Kull charging toward her, swinging an ironbound club as large as she was. Another roar came from her left, and she saw a second Kull, as well as four smaller Urgals. Then a pair of cloaked, hunchbacked figures scurried out of the whitish haze and darted in her direction, chittering and waving their leaf-bladed swords. Although she had never seen them before, she knew they were the Ra’zac.