“What’s your name?”
“Jason Dreshen,” he said.
He said it quickly, and realized almost too late that he could have used a different name, though it probably didn’t matter. Therin knew his first name, but did he know his last name? And even if he did, would it have mattered? Therin would be unlikely to think that Jason would come to Lorach, chasing after his villagers.
“Dreshen isn’t a typical name for those from Gilroy,” she said.
“Isn’t it?”
She looked over, meeting his eyes. “You know that it’s not.”
Jason held her gaze, barely able to breathe. “As I said, my village was—”
“Isolated. I recall you telling me that. Isolated doesn’t mean you wouldn’t have some of the typical trappings of Gilroy.”
“What sort of trappings do you mean?”
“In my travels in Gilroy, I experienced several difficulties. Can you imagine what the greatest was?”
Jason watched her. “No.”
“None? Even in all the times I’ve traveled to Gilroy, you don’t think you could fathom what someone from Lorach would struggle with when it came to Gilroy?”
It was a trick and he recognized it, but that did nothing to help him answer the question more effectively. Even knowing that trick and that there was no good answer didn’t help Jason find the right response. In his case, there might not be a right answer. She was trying to trap him, and with his lack of knowledge about Gilroy, she was immediately successful.
Sarah had placed him in that trap, though unintentionally.
“Where’s my sister?”
“I thought we’d agreed I was the one doing the questioning.”
“You might have agreed, but I did not.”
“So impetuous. Interesting. Another thing unusual from Gilroy.”
“Maybe for most, but I’m from—”
“An isolated village.” She flashed a smile.
Something shimmered at the edge of his vision, and Jason frowned. For a moment, he was tempted to look beyond, to try to see what was calling his attention, but the woman standing there drew him, keeping his focus upon her.
“Are you going to tell me what happened to my sister?”
“Are you going to tell me where you’re really from?”
“I’ve told you where I’m from.”
The moment he backtracked, he knew there would be more challenges for him and Sarah. It was easier to continue the lie, even if it was not believable. And yet, he couldn’t tell whether or not the woman really knew anything about him, or whether she was using some uncertainty on his part to try to unnerve him.
As she watched him, there came another shimmering behind her.
He turned to it this time. He wasn’t able to take his eyes off where he had seen the shimmering, and now as he focused, he thought he understood.
All of this was an illusion.
She seemed real enough, which suggested she was, though he couldn’t help but wonder if perhaps she wasn’t quite who he thought. If she was so skilled at illusion, and if she’d used the chain as some way of trapping him, then perhaps she wasn’t even real.
The key was to try to understand the nature of the illusion behind her, and to try to see beyond it.
He hadn’t had enough time with Thomas in order to understand more about illusions. As much as he had trained on how to hold on to his connection to his eyes and his hand, there had been no training on what to do if he encountered someone else who was able to place an illusion.
That had been a mistake. Jason wished that he had taken that time, and wished he had an opportunity to better understand it, if only so he could know whether he might be able to overpower someone who was able to create an effective illusion that made it difficult to see beyond.
“What are you looking at?”
Jason turned his attention back to her. “Nothing.”
She frowned again, pressing her lips together. She had her hands clasped in front of her, seemingly completely at ease.
Every so often, the shimmering behind her caught his attention.
It reminded him of what he had seen in the forest, the way that the wind would gust through, changing the dragon scales. And yet, unlike with the dragon scales, where the dragon was able to flow with that shifting, this shimmering made it so he could see something.
The dragon’s power was such that she was able to hold on to that illusion and maintain it effectively. What they were able to do, at least what this woman was able to do, was not quite as solid.
Had he not had any experience with illusion, he might not even have seen it. Even now, Jason didn’t know if what he was witnessing was real or not.
It might be only a shimmer of someone using a dragon pearl, nothing more than that, and yet as he stared at it, he couldn’t help but feel as if he were right and it was an illusion.
“Jason Dreshen, I would like you to tell me more about your home village.”
The shimmering came again.
There was a surge of color behind it, and he didn’t know if he was seeing it correctly.
“What was that?”
“Your village.”
She took a step toward him.
When she did, it was enough of a distraction, and this time everything tilted. As it did, he noticed a blur of darkness behind her.
Had he not been focusing on it, he wasn’t sure that he would’ve been able to see it. Even paying attention to it, he still wasn’t sure that he saw what he thought he saw, and yet with that blur, he knew.
“None of this is real.”
“What was that?”
He shook his head and took a step away from her. “None of this is real.”
He watched her, looking for any sign of shimmering around her. How much of her was real? It was difficult to tell, and yet as he watched and focused on her, he continued to find no sign of the same shimmering around her as he had seen behind her.
It was likely that she was real, but was every part of her real?
She studied him, saying nothing. The movement behind her began to solidify, whatever she had lost her grip on, the control that she had, becoming more solid once again.
“I think you’re mistaken. And what I need is for you to tell me more about your village. We can stay outside, under the bright sun, and we can talk. The alternative is to return to the room, to the darkness, and wait.”
“I never left the room,” Jason said.
The smear of darkness behind her suddenly made sense. He had thought he’d walked, and yet he hadn’t gone anywhere.
It was all in his mind.
It was possible the entire room where he’d been held was in his mind.
If that were the case, then maybe Sarah was nearby. He had to find a way to look past the illusion, to see beyond what this woman was doing to him, and if he could do that, then he might be able to find Sarah, and then they could figure out what they were going to do next. If it meant escaping, then they would have to figure out how and where they would go.
She took another step toward him.
“I believe it’s time for you to return. If you’re going to continue this line of fabrication, then you would do best to sit in your chamber and consider.”
She pushed him backward, and it seemed as everything blurred past him. All of a sudden, he was back in the room where he had been, and even more surprisingly, the chains wrapped around his ankles.
Jason didn’t try to fight.
The door closed, and the last thing he saw before it did was her face. Something about her shimmered, and then faded to nothing.