Rough gibing woke him. "Where're you woolgathering now, whelp?"

"Far away from this place," Ryel replied, every word snapped.

"I've been too easy on you. You're not learning fast enough."

"I can't learn any faster."

"You mean you don't want to."

Ryel lifted his chin. "I know by heart the spells that tame srihs."

"Then use them, fool."

"They shouldn't work," Ryel replied, stung and angry. "Not by the World's laws."

Edris snorted again, even more contemptuously. "Damn the dullard World. The Art takes imagination, lad—something you've shown precious little of, I'm sorry to say. You have to not only accept the impossible, but make it happen. That's what the meditations and the drugs of the first couple of years are for—to loosen your mind, open it up, free it from fear and doubt. You've learned all that, but you'll never move on to the next step as long as I keep feeding you. A few days' fasting, and you'd learn srih-Mastery soon enough..." To Ryel's deep perturbation and resentment, Edris' long eyes lit in mocking malice. "Now there's a thought. I'll just quit feeding you. Find your own dinner tonight, brat."

Ryel went hungry for three days. During that time he endured not only starvation, but Edris' taunts and wavings of food in his face, which he stonily ignored. However, by the dawning of the fourth day he knew by the lightness of his head and the famished tremor of the rest of him that he must either progress to the next step of the Art while he still had the strength, or submit to having his uncle throw him scraps and call him idiot. Goaded beyond all misgivings, he called up the last of his strength and strode to the book-table in the middle of his room, knocking aside the scrolls and volumes, cursing his stomach, the Art, Markul, Edris, everything. With peremptory exasperation he barked out the necessary mantra, then commanded a full Steppes breakfast with chal hot and strong. When these things appeared, he felt no astonishment, and scarcely muttered thanks to his unseen servitors as he grabbed a piece of bread and tore off a vengeful bite.