Pal smiles sympathetically. “The trick, in my experience, is to separate the effort to remember from the effort to learn. You’re not trying to recall something you used to know, you’re discovering something new—about yourself, yes, but also about this place in which we’ve found ourselves. If you feel yourself begin to remember something, don’t pursue it. Let it go.” He shrugs ruefully. “It takes some practice, and a bit of mental gymnastics, but it is possible.”

He takes something else out of his pocket. It’s a coin, or at least it’s coin-shaped—any identifiable markers are long rubbed off—that Palamedes found in the depths of one of the chasms that has appeared in Wellstone. It’s a thousand years old, at least, and once belonged to someone, though who, he cannot figure out.

“Take this, and tell me what you see. Don’t try anything, just observe.”