> But I don't think Sethra would have deliberately > engineered events to send Vlad to the Paths of the > Dead, unless, possibly, all of the talk about Vlad > being unable to return if he fell asleep was a bluff. I believe Sethra says they had sending Vlad to the Pattern sorry the Paths in mind from the beginning. I don't think she would hesitate to send Vlad on a suicide mission, esp. to rescue Aliera (Vlad says she's doing something like that at the start of _Issola_, in paperback and hence not spoilered unless people object). > Can anyone make sense of Kiera's subsequent comment, > in _Orca_ I think it was, that Verra had said it was I'm almost sure the comment was in _Taltos_. > important for Vlad to have the vial (consistent with > the theory above); and Verra herself didn't know why > (very difficult to explain)? > > A flat lie (by Verra, or Kiera)? Or could it be > something stranger? > The heart has its reasons that the reason doesn't know (Pascal?) I know plenty of things without knowing why - the vast majority, likely. The idea that we know what's going on in our own heads is just wrong IMHO. For a being of the sophistication of Verra (three-way split personality, can be in multiple places at once [on the subject Michael Swanwick has an interesting scene of a character splitting into avatars in _Stations of the Tide_], god-like intelligence [well...]) this inaccessibility should be much worse.