![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
amanuensis1Okay, who's gonna help me identify this fantasy book?
Bit in it that I'm remembering--guy goes to solicit help from a wise-woman, witch-woman type. There's break-up history implied between them. He wants to take a warning of what's coming back to his people, but...he's dying, or maybe he's not but the price of carrying back the info will cost his life, or maybe it's hers. And she gives him a fistful of sand--maybe she smashes an hourglass?--and tells him, he's got until the fistful is gone to get the message back to his people. So he has to make the journey back with this leaking fistful of sand, trying ever so hard to keep at least a few grains in his fist so he can make it back. It's just one part of the story but now it's in my head and I have no idea what that book was. It feels like I read it twenty years ago. Who else read it and knows what book this is?
Bit in it that I'm remembering--guy goes to solicit help from a wise-woman, witch-woman type. There's break-up history implied between them. He wants to take a warning of what's coming back to his people, but...he's dying, or maybe he's not but the price of carrying back the info will cost his life, or maybe it's hers. And she gives him a fistful of sand--maybe she smashes an hourglass?--and tells him, he's got until the fistful is gone to get the message back to his people. So he has to make the journey back with this leaking fistful of sand, trying ever so hard to keep at least a few grains in his fist so he can make it back. It's just one part of the story but now it's in my head and I have no idea what that book was. It feels like I read it twenty years ago. Who else read it and knows what book this is?
