Faramir's head dropped and his eyes slid shut, only to spring open again as he jerked upright. He sighed and held his head in his hands. Every time he closed his eyes he saw them. Those hands, clawlike, burning....

It had been his own fault. The King had offered to allow him to gaze into the Palantir, to prove it was not the Stone itself that had driven Denethor to madness. But he had insisted on gazing into his father's Stone rather than Aragorn's.

Now those hands were burned into his mind just as they were burned into the Stone.