The Shadow Isle - Katharine Kerr [89]
Salamander’s remark about colts eaten by wolves stung most of all. I know all about dark dweomer, Neb thought. The last thing I’d ever do is join up with that lot of deformed scum! He was sure that he knew a great deal more about many things than either Salamander or Dallandra gave him credit for. Over the winter he’d meditated upon the correct symbols to open the treasure-house of images. Hard work, but he’d remembered more and more of Nevyn’s long life, the dweomer knowledge he’d had, the power he’d commanded, all of it out of Neb’s reach but easily in sight.
Those cursed women! It was no wonder, he reflected, that Branna was learning so much so easily while he stumbled along behind. Dallandra and Grallezar, even Valandario, favored her shamelessly— or so he believed. And then, of course, there were her dreams, filled with memories and lore. Although she denied it, Neb was convinced that Branna looked down on him because he’d had to work so hard to retrieve his own past life from the astral while her knowledge came effortlessly.
Round and round his mind went, rehearsing grievances. Who am I? he wondered. Nevyn was the Master of the Aethyr—why can’t I have the same position? He knew full well that he’d have to work to regain such exalted powers, but somehow he’d not expected the work to take so long. Branna remembered Jill so clearly, and she seemed to him to be speeding through her apprenticeship whilst he dragged along behind. It’s not fair!
Even his meditations upon Nevyn’s life fell short, in Neb’s opinion. He would try to recover some bit of dweomerlore only to feel his mind wandering off to other things, mostly images of herbs, blooming along roadways, or of sick children, drinking out of a cup as Nevyn held it for them. Memories of warriors, cut and bleeding, disrupted his attempts to call upon the Lords of the Wildlands as once Nevyn had done. Every now and then he considered stopping his study of the healer’s craft. Maybe then those intrusive memories would die away. But every time he stopped, some question would nag at him until he took it up again.
The herbcraft would come in handy, he supposed, when he left the Westfolk. Eventually he’d make his escape. He would simply take Branna with him. He wasn’t sure why he was so determined to leave, except that it annoyed him to see Branna so at home among these alien lives, while he struggled on behind, trying to learn Elvish as fast as she—
“Oh, stop it!” he whispered aloud. “You’re being stupid!”
He heard the dun’s watchmen calling out the mid-mark of the night before he finally fell asleep, only to dream of finding Brangwen’s dead body on the river sand, sodden, wide-eyed but unseeing, her deathly-pale skin touched by the rising sun. In the dream he heard Rhegor’s voice once again, saying, “You failed her, lad.”
Neb woke covered in cold sweat to find the room bright with sunlight and Clae gone. He sat up and perched on the edge of the high bed to run his hands through his sweaty hair.
“You can’t leave her,” he said aloud. “A vow’s a vow.”
As he thought about Branna, it seemed to him that he could see her, standing in the women’s hall in a pair of woad-blue dresses, her hair swept back in a flowered scarf. His thought formed without his willing it: I love you, Branni. Her thought floated back to him: I love you, too, but you shouldn’t be doing this working without Dalla’s permission. Neb jumped to his feet and growled, a sound so like a dog that it startled him. Stupid wretched females! His yellow gnome materialized, took one good look at him, then vanished again. In a foul mood Neb dressed, then went downstairs to find some breakfast, growling to himself all the way.
With no dreams that troubled him, Gerran slept till a few hours after