Silverdun's mind reeled. 'Are you saying ... ?'
Jedron snickered, then laughed out loud. 'You gullible fool,' he said through chuckles. 'I had you going there for a second, didn't I?'
'Damn you, Jedron!' shouted Silverdun. He picked up the water pitcher and flung it at his old teacher. Jedron caught it handily and threw it back at him, hitting him square in the forehead.
'Get up,' he said. 'You've got to get back to work.'
'I don't understand,' said Silverdun. 'What happened to me, you old bastard?'
Jedron was already at the door. 'Oh, that. You died. Come on.'
Silverdun followed Jedron down the stairs of the castle. Nothing had changed since his first visit there months earlier.
'Jedron?' Silverdun shouted. 'What the hell are you talking about?'
'Just shut up and follow me. I have something to show you.'
Silverdun sighed and followed. His weeks at Whitemount were jogged back fully into memory by his presence here. He'd forgotten just how much he disliked this man.
'Wait,' said Silverdun. A flash of images came to him, and the memory of pain, and fear. 'I remember. The Bel Zheret stabbed me. I felt him pierce my heart!'
'I know,' said Jedron. 'I heard all about it.'
They left the castle, and the sunlight hurt Silverdun's eyes. The sea around them was a deep blue, and as he looked to the east, he could just make out the spires of the City Emerald.
'You can gather wool later,' said Jedron, glaring. 'I have things to do.' He went to the steps leading to the pit and started down them. Silverdun followed, muttering a string of obscenities under his breath.
'I can hear you,' Jedron said, not turning around.
'I know,' said Silverdun.
They stood together at the pit, looking down into it. It was dull gray in the sunlight, dank and deeply unpleasant. The temperature here seemed easily ten degrees colder.
Jedron said nothing at first, then sighed.
'Here's the truth,' he said. 'Perrin Alt, Lord Silverdun, is dead.'
'I know that,' said Silverdun. 'I felt the knife go in.'
'That's not what I mean. Silverdun died here, in this pit. On the last night of your training. Ironfoot and I hurled him in here, and what was inside the pit ate him. He is no more.' Jedron reached inside his robe and withdrew a small white object.
'Here's all that's left of him. A tooth. Maybe a molar.'
Silverdun took the tooth and looked at it, remembering the bone he'd found in the pit after watching Ironfoot go into it.
'The problem with your theory,' said Silverdun, 'is that I'm standing right next to you.'
'Yes, you are. But you're not Silverdun.'
'No? Then who am I?'
'A shadow. A shadow of him. You're a thing that's taken his form, taken his mind and memories. A sylph, to be precise.'
'A sylph.'
'Never heard of them?' said Jedron. 'I'm not surprised. They're very rare, and we don't advertise their existence.
'Elusive little creatures. We get them from an island across the sea. The way they hunt is to eat animals-deer mainly-and assume their shape. Then they join the herd and kill the animal's friends and relatives at their leisure. Nasty things.'
'I don't feel like eating my friends or my relatives,' said Silverdun.
'Well, we alter the sylphs a bit first,' said Jedron. 'It's a complicated and expensive process, I can assure you. And an extremely classified one. That's why we never told you. The less any of our people knows, the better.'
'In case I was captured.'
'Yes.'
'So I'm not who I think I am,' said Silverdun.
'Who is?' Jedron shrugged. 'People make such a fuss of identity and the concept of self. But it's only because they're mortal and afraid to die.
