>If he was wondering >how could Natalia know about that Dzur hero, why didn't >he suppose that was why he jumped a bit? I doubt Vlad would be making a connection between the Dzur hero in his vision/day-dream and a legend that Natalia would have read as a youngster. Many Dzur heroes have challenged The Enchantress of Dzur Mountain. It's an archetypically Heroic thing to do. Vlad's vision was more of kind of psychic free-association that happened to touch on a legendary theme that personifies the spirit of the Dzur and the mystique of The Enchantress. Being a personal friend of Sethra, Vlad has a tendency to forget (or at least fail to truly appreciate) that 90% of the world sees her as a mythic figure, much like we might think of King Arthur and Morgan Le Fey. Hearing Natalia speak of her childhood fantasies, Vlad reacts much like you might upon hearing me tell you about my fantasies assisting Arthur against Mordred, followed by the quest to destroy Morgan the evil witch, when you had in fact just had lunch with the real Morgan a couple of days ago and had a conversation about the current state of the kingdom being run by Arthur's grandchildren 20 generations removed. >Or could the text from Teckla be a hint of a past-life-soul memory? Could >whatever that was from the spell in Jhereg be related or just plain old >memories? Past life memories are not out of the question, but the general impression I get from Aliera's story about Dolivar is that Vlad represents the first reincarnation of Dolivar's soul since he went to wherever Drageran souls go when they have been denied the Paths and they're waiting for reincarnation. Personally, I view the trance induced visions as random psychic impressions that are probably a common side-effect of witchcraft. It could even be one of the common dangers of the Art, since it's probably very easy to become distracted by a particularly interesting vision and find yourself suddenly losing control of the spell or traveling down a different path than the one you'd intended.