A strangeness pervaded the scene, but Grantin had to concentrate to determine the nature of its peculiarity. It seemed as though images approached from a great distance, danced in front of him, and then roared past him and disappeared. With a start Grantin realized that a colored fog shrouded these scenes until they were quite close to him. The visions themselves were composed predominantly of reds and oranges, yellows and tans, but the fog that surrounded them, without actually touching them, was itself a pale pearly green.
Each succeeding vision persisted for a longer time. Grantin began to catch fragments of entire scenes, all of a uniquely frightening nature: dungeons, cells, humans, Ajaj, and Fanists in chains, storms, blood, and torture. In spite of his revulsion Grantin stared fixedly at each picture, trying to drink in all of its details before it flickered away. More and more he thought he discerned a common link between all of them-in each vision he detected the hint if not the actual presence of a bloodstone such as that affixed to his own left hand. Grantin was intrigued by one apparition in particular, one that he realized he had been watching for some time. This picture filled his entire field of vision. Grantin avidly watched the events silently unfold.
A small, chunky, baldheaded man, childlike in size but bearing the grizzled face of age, tramped down a gray-walled corridor. Bandy legs moved piston-like beneath the folds of his wizard's gown. In a few paces the magician reached a wooden door broken in the middle by a small barred window. The portal was flung open by his touch. The room beyond was brightly lit by several glow-pods. The chamber was circular. Down its center was a line of floor-to-ceiling bars spaced only a few inches apart. Imprisoned in the right half of the room was a four-armed creature, a Fanist of a clan unknown to Grantin. The native's hairless, pebble-gray hide did not yet bear the network of wrinkles and seams which distinguished the elders of the tribes. This native was young, barely into adulthood, although even after five hundred years of cohabitation humans were unsure what his age would be as man reckons time.
The wizard's mouth worked angrily and he shouted in silent frustration at the impassive Fanist. An instant later bolts of red and green leaped from the wizard's fingertips, passed through the bars, and discharged themselves into the native's flesh. The Fanist writhed in agony but refused to answer the wizard's questions. Another bolt struck him, and, as the Fanist crumpled to the floor, the scene began to fade. In the last instant before the vision failed Grantin saw, or sensed, affixed beneath the tough flap of skin which covered the native's forehead a glowing milky blue jewel set there in an indentation of the skull itself.
With a snap, like a spark of static electricity, the scene pulsed brightly, then went dark. Grantin awakened to find himself still sprawled in the library, with dawn beginning to tint the far horizon. Soon Greyhorn would be stirring, looking for Grantin. With him he would bring his knife.