Karal was being kept as a prisoner of war. Though he remembered his future with Solaris and even knew, without sight, Vanyel and Tylendel, they didn't know him.

"And what is it you do, Karsite?" Tylendel shared a look with Vanyel. "Right on the battlefield, yet you never hurt a fly."

"I'm a Sun Priest," Karal said.

Sun Priests were at the forefront of the atrocities in Karse.

"So, you live among murderers. Though you're too young to have become one yet yourself."

"I'm the Karsite ambassador to Valdemar," Karal said softly. His mind was turning, exhausted from the Channeling. "I'm Karal."

Vanyel lifted him by the arm and walked him to the threshold of the prison. Looking over the battlefield Vanyel saw the destruction wrought by the demons the Sun Priests had called. "How do you excuse this, ambassador? How can we negotiate with this?"

"I don't see." Karal said. "I can't, literally, see."

Vanyel looked at Karal's eyes then, the pupils unfocused and flecked with warm light.

"I have a feeling I am meant to find out," Karal continued. "Do I have your permission to leave?"

Vanyel shook his head. But his gifts for empathy and thought sensing were enough to let him know he was with a beautiful man, a man with a beautiful soul. He had served at the Karsite border for years. He hated the Karsites. But it was undeniable. "Stay with us," he said, removing the man's bonds. "Get him something to eat, please, Lendel. He's been through something awful."

Tylendel brought Karal soup and bread, watching him, completely unused to sightlessness, struggle to eat. "Shall we make room for him in the barracks? He's no danger to us. But Elspeth will need to hear about this, and we have no precedent just release him. Do you feel what I feel when you touch his mind, Vanyel? He's been used for some great power."

Vanyel nodded, running his hand along Tylendel's thigh. "Like when I helped you make a gate, before my potential awoke, and we rescued Staven. But I see your meaning. Some mage could be using him, even if he's committed no crimes of his own. And it's not blood magic, no. But hurtful to him. It ripped his sight away and blinded him."

"He'll be well treated but not allowed to leave. If the power that used him gets him back, he's a threat to Valdemar."

Vanyel nodded. And yet, there was something too familiar, too close to home about that channel.

They set up a space next to their room in the barracks and Vanyel set a ward on the door, to wake him if the Karsite left, or some Karsite-hating soldier came in to wreak revenge on the prisoner. He went into bed and wrapped his arms around Tylendel, savoring the familiarity of him, kissing his neck. "We did what we had to, k'chara," he said. And he let that long-enjoyed closeness pull him down into relaxation and sleep.

Karal awoke, knowing where and when he was, because Vkandis was the power that was using his channel, and Vkandis needed him to know. But the God clashed with the feelings of awkward affection, inadequacy, the doubts of an inexperienced 19 year old who doubted he had practical skills beyond being a secretary, and retreated as soon as he came, lest he overwhelm Karal. And Karal was left with knowledge—that Ma'ar had been behind the centuries long corruption of The Sunpriests; that he had poisoned the land of the temple with blood magic and the calling of demons; that until the land was healed, Vkandis could for no great time dwell in Karse. That the sickness of the land weakened faith in the God. And lastly, that just as Hardorn had been healed from Ancar, Karse could be healed from demons. It could take immense power. It could cost his life. And he knew where he needed to go first was nearby.

He was thinking of Natalie as he approached the door, not just of her wild thick hair and the hints of her breasts under her blues, but of the way she approached ideas of what to do with theorems and proofs. That she could still fall victim to an explosion— because nothing was without risk — but that she knew what she was getting into. And as he blindly groped for the door, trusting the God to move him like a chess piece, he wondered which of them would be lucky, which of them would win.

Vanyel's alarm ward woke him from his sleep, and within seconds he was up, pulling the blind Karsite away from the door. The young man instinctively tried to throw him off, and he resisted the urge to mage-tie him. He already knew this was no murderer, not even a soldier, but from his mind touch — he had to be careful who was using this channel. He gave in and bound the man's arms.

"We have treated you well, for a member of an enemy army. A person we don't know," he said.

"I beg your pardon," said Karal, in Valdemaran only slightly accented. "But truly I am your allied Ambassador. I ask you as an ally —"

"I have never met you," Vanyel said.

"And yet you have been more intimate with my mind than my dreams are." Karal slid to the ground. "It doesn't matter if you believe it. It matters that it's true."

Vanyel lifted him from the ground easily and sat him on the bed. The things he felt reaching out with his Empathy and touching this man's mind were astounding. . "Tell me."

"When I tell you – if I am able to convince you it is true, even though it seems impossible— if you come to believe it is true, then help me. I want to stop these demons. I want to end this war. I want Solaris to call herself the Daughter of the Sun."

The star glow in his eyes was vivid as he spoke, gradually fading. His blind eyes turned inward like he was sharing his mind with an intimate friend.

"And I wish gender didn't exist. That I was neither male nor female. That I was just me."

Vanyel put an arm around him. A platonic touch. "Karal. Sometimes I wonder if I should have liked women more than I did, growing up. Not sexually, personally. But every time someone insulted me, it was by comparing me to a woman. I didn't know it was wrong then. Even until now, I didn't really—"

"Vanyel. I love reading histories, remembering details, taking clear notes, absorbing the big picture of things." Karal said. "But they looked down on me because these are things that women excel in." He smiled gently. "Women and priests," he said. "As much as I love Natalie, as much as I hate to be alone, I'm afraid I will never—" He cut off. "I just wish there were no genders," he said, leaning into Vanyel's shoulder. "But more than that I wish Karse still had its goodness. Its God. Please let me go where Vkandis wants me. He brought me here. He knows where I need to be."

The larger wards around the barracks screeched a warning. "Demons, Karal. Damn it." He left to get ready, to plan with Tylendel, to meet Yfandes. He was distracted by the screams of soldiers, a man's arm cut off at the shoulder, a levinbolt to save another man. Karal walked out the door, the alarm bleating out unnoticed, to the temple of Vkandis nearby. He knew the formal passages, the ones Karsite priests, corrupt or not, had known by heart for centuries. He passed himself off. The temple was almost abandoned within as the murderous ones called their demons outside. "Solaris?" He called for her, though why would she be here, here in this time away from his own time? He sent the stubbornly androgynous woman a thought along the channel that was frequented by the God. "You're the Daughter of the Sun, Solaris. Not the Son of the Sun. Help me?"

He felt her in his mind. "Are you ready to clean the temple, Sister?"

"I'm ready, Brother."