The Shadow Isle - Katharine Kerr [113]
“Clae asked me to see how you fared,” Salamander said. “Did you truly eat spoiled food last night?”
Neb sat up, swung his legs over the edge of the bed, and turned away without answering. The gnome waved tiny fists at his unresponding back.
“Considering that Lord Blethry spotted you up on the roof,” Salamander went on, “I don’t believe your little tale.”
Neb winced and began studying the floor.
“You do look half starved, however. Let me guess. You’re fasting in hopes of making your astral visions more vivid.”
Neb never answered. Salamander walked over to the window, which Neb was facing, and sat on the wide sill.
“It’s a bad idea, fasting at your stage of the apprenticeship.”
“Oh, and how would you know?” Neb’s voice hovered just above a growl. “I don’t see what’s wrong with it.”
“That’s the crux of the trouble. You don’t.”
“Nevyn used to do it.”
“He did no such thing, and besides, you’re not Nevyn.”
Neb looked at him with murderous eyes, then returned to studying the floor.
“You’re forgetting that if you remembered me from your time as Nevyn, then I must, conversely and all that, remember him. He was not the fasting sort, especially when good dark ale and a roast swan were on the table.”
Neb sat up a little straighter.
“Let us consider this.” Salamander went on, “You say I can’t know that what you’re doing is wrong. But I can because I did somewhat similar in the folly of my youth, and you, as Nevyn, told me to stop it. Had I listened to him, I would have been spared years of madness, and the family I loved so dearly would have been spared the pain I caused them. I lost them because I refused to listen to the old man.” Salamander heard his voice choke on that remembered grief. “Now, if you wish to spend a long day listening to all of my errors, I’ll tell them in detail. But the one and only thing you really need to know is that now you’re going down the same path.”
“What path is that?” Neb spoke softly.
“Refusing to listen to the masters of your guild, sure you know better than they what’s harmful and what’s safe.”
Neb looked up again. “I do have memories, you know,” he said, “of lore.”
“But what, pray tell, is memory? The memories of our own childhoods are unreliable enough. How can you expect to remember what happened to you two hundred years ago, when you wore a different being?”
“I’ve been working on the astral—”
“Ah, building a dun at the water’s edge, where the waves slide in to undermine it. Surely Dalla’s told you how unreliable those images are, how slippery, shifting, melting, merging—”
“Oh, hold your cursed tongue!” At that moment his expression did resemble Nevyn’s, not that Salamander would have told him so. “I’ve been testing the images with sigils.”
“Has Dalla taught you those, or are you remembering them?”
“Remembering them.”
“Are you sure you’re remembering them correctly?”
Neb opened his mouth, then shut it again.
“You’re not, are you?” Salamander said. “Why are you so determined to recover those memories, anyway? You don’t need to learn the lore that way. You’ve got good teachers.”
“It’s all taking so long.”
“Ah, I see that you’ve fallen into an opposite error from one of mine. When I was a lad, I thought that my teacher was rushing along like the winter winds. I felt so burdened that I kept running away. Val didn’t much care for my wandering ways, as you might guess, but did I listen to her? Hah!”
“Valandario was your teacher?”
“She was. But here’s somewhat you may not remember. When I was a tiny child, Nevyn’s the one who told her that some day I’d be her pupil.”
If they’d been playing with swords, Salamander thought, he would have just scored a touch. Neb looked at him wide-eyed, his lips a little parted.
“I didn’t realize,” Neb said at length, “that you were taught by a woman, too.”
“Is that what’s troubling your heart? All those women around you?”
For a long moment Neb hesitated, then spoke in a flood of words. “It’s just that they tell Branna things