name. Then he gets angry with me.’
Her teacher considered, sucking a thoughtful fang. Since Grallezar shaved her head, she was wearing a knitted wool cap, striped in grey and blackish-brown, that came down low over her ears and forehead. She’d also bundled herself in a heavy wool cloak and wore fur-lined boots against the cold. Back in her home country, she’d spent winters in a heated house, not a drafty tent.
‘Well, he be not my student,’ Grallezar said at last. ‘So this be but a guess. I think me that Nevyn’s life, it were so long that Neb be unable to remember past it. From our work I know that you do see bits and pieces of many lives and deaths.’
‘That’s true. Jill’s life is only one of them. I’m not Jill any more than Jill was Morwen or Branoic.’
‘True spoken. But Neb, the only memory that lives for him is Nevyn, and by all that I have heard, he were a mighty dweomermaster indeed. Neb does covet all that power. To earn it all again, to do the work, it be burdensome, but needful.’
‘I see. There’s another thing, too. He keeps thinking about the plague in Trev Hael that killed his father and sister. He talks about it a lot. It’s so morbid! It can’t be good for him.’
‘Well, mayhap, mayhap not. There may be a riddle there for him to answer.’ Grallezar held up a warning forefinger. ‘Not one word of this to Neb, mind, and no more may you tell Dallandra of your fears. For a student to interfere with another master’s student be a baleful thing.’
‘I promise I won’t.’
‘Good. It would go ill for you were you to throw my words in Neb’s face.’ Grallezar suddenly smiled. ‘But of course, I be a master myself, and if I should speak to Dallandra, well, who’s to say me nay?’
Branna felt so relieved that she nearly wept. I’ve been frightened, she thought, not just worried.
Over the next few weeks, Branna found herself hard-pressed to keep her promise to Grallezar, but every time she was tempted to break it, her own mind distracted her by raising the enormous question that lay just beyond her worries about Neb. If he wasn’t Nevyn, then who was Neb? Worse yet, if she wasn’t Jill, was she truly Branna? Who was any person, then, whether Westfolk or Gel da’Thae or human being, if their body and their personality were only masks they wore for a little while, masks that they’d toss aside at their death only to don new ones at birth?
Contemplating such matters made her turn cold with terror, as if she stood on the very edge of a high cliff and felt the soil under her feet begin to crumble away. She would jump back from that edge and take refuge in any distraction she could find. In a travelling alar, distractions lay thick on the ground, most of them trivial, though now and again Branna found something that hinted at her future role of Wise One.
One evening, just at sunset, she was walking back to her tent when she heard someone weeping, a soft little sound, half-suppressed, unlike the usual loud sobs of one of the Westfolk. She followed the sound and discovered Sidro, standing alone out in the wild grass. Overhead the sky hung low with clouds, dark and gathering.
‘What’s wrong?’ Branna said from behind her. ‘Can I help?’
Sidro swirled around, her eyes wide and tear-wet, her hand at her throat.
‘A thousand apologies!’ Branna said. ‘I didn’t mean to startle you.’
Sidro tried to smile, sniffed back tears, and finally wiped her eyes on her sleeve. ‘Oh, tis naught,’ she said at last. ‘Just a silly moment.’
‘Oh now here, if somewhat’s made you cry, it can’t be naught.’ Branna laid a gentle hand on Sidro’s shoulder. ‘Tell me. Is it about Laz?’
‘Him, too, but missing my old home in Taenalapan is the most of it. Which be a strange thing, since I was but a slave lass there. It were always warm and dry in the house, and there were warm bread and laughter. I think me that be what I miss the most.’
‘I can certainly understand that! But truly, I don’t see how the comfort would make being a slave tolerable. Didn’t you long to get away and be free?’
‘And how was I to know what being free did mean?’ Sidro smiled with a rueful twist of her mouth. ‘Laz, he did say somewhat about that to me once, that all I did know was slavery, whether slave to his mother or to Alshandra. He were right about that, too. Now, being here among the Westfolk and having Pir, too, for my man, I do begin to see what freedom is, but truly, I see it with my mind, not my heart.’
‘Is that why you’re always waiting on everyone?’
Sidro started to answer, then hesitated, visibly thinking. ‘I suppose it be so,’ she said at last. ‘What we always knew before, it be comforting, somehow. My thanks, Branna! I’ll be thinking on that, I truly will. Though the Wise Ones, they do deserve what service we can pay them.’
‘That’s true.’ I just wish Neb could see it, Branna thought. Well, mayhap someday he will.
Yet, when she returned to their tent she found Neb sitting under a silver dweomer light, studying the book of herblore that she’d compiled back in her life as Jill. He looked up at her with watery eyes.
‘Is the mouldy smell bothering you?’ she said.
‘Not truly.’ He laid the book down, stretched, and yawned. ‘My eyes are just tired, that’s all. I’ll brew up some eyebright water on the morrow.’
‘You told me that Dallandra wanted you to study less.’
‘So?’ He spat out the word. ‘She doesn’t know everything.’
‘She knows more than you do.’
Branna regretted the words the moment she’d said them. She braced herself for one of their fights, but Neb merely shrugged and looked away.
‘So she does,’ he said at last. ‘For now.’
Branna said nothing. Outside the storm suddenly broke with a patter of rain on the tent roof.
As the alar continued making its slow way north, the rain followed. On the dry days the alar set up only a few tents, but a day or two out of every four it needed to make a full camp and wait out the storm, no matter how impatient its Wise One was. At least, Dallandra reminded herself, they never came upon any lingering snow.
‘A blessing,’ Dallandra remarked to Valandario. ‘I lived with snow for one whole winter, up in Cengarn, and I swear to all the gods I never ever want to see the stuff again.’
‘I don’t think I ever have.’ Val considered for a moment. ‘I’m glad, too.’
Dallandra glanced around the camp. Under a grey sky, streaked with near-black, the men were bustling around, setting up the tents for the night, while the women worked with the herds, hobbling the horses in case the coming storm broke with thunder and lightning. Wildfolk, children, and dogs raced through the camp in unruly packs, always in everyone’s way.
‘We’d better get inside,’ Dallandra said.
‘Yes, come to my tent, will you?’ Val said. ‘I keep thinking about Haen Marn, and we need to scry.’
Now
