Dagger's Point (Shadow series) Page 2

  “About twenty years ago a legend sprang up,” Shadow continued, drawing a gold pin from the tall coil of her black braid and idly scratching one delicately pointed ear with it. “There was talk about a mysterious band of people who would abruptly appear in an area, stay for a night or two, and just as abruptly disappear. No one had traded with them, no one had spoken with them, and if anyone saw one of them alone and approached, he’d just disappear. Like magic.”

  “Disappear?” Tanis repeated. “Like a mage, you mean?”

  Shadow turned to glance with surprise at Jael.

  “You never told him?”

  “Jael told me that her true father—that Farryn—was one of these Kresh folk,” Tanis told her. “That’s why she can melt stone sometimes, right?”

  Jael rolled her eyes. Shadow grinned sympathetically, but made no effort to explain for her.

  “I’ll tell you the whole thing again later,” Jael sighed. “We’re going to have months of evenings to talk over campfires. Can we just look at the maps now, please?”

  Tanis raised his eyebrows in surprise, but turned back to the map to examine the spot where Shadow’s finger still rested.

  “So you didn’t go north of Ramant?” he asked.

  “I didn’t go, no,” Shadow confirmed. “Luckily or unluckily, I arrived in Ramant just in time for the first winter storms, so I had weeks to question the merchants as they came in. A few of the mountain nomads who had come to Ramant to trade were snowed in, too, and like most folk, they were willing to talk with a few mugs of ale in their belly and a few coins in their purse. They knew of the Kresh, all right, although they called them by another word in their own language—windwalkers, or something very like it—but the nomads said they’d left about twenty years before, just picked up and left, leaving behind everything they couldn’t easily carry on their backs. There was some fine scavenging in their old village, and the nomads still use the houses occasionally, so the story hasn’t gotten old and stale yet.

  “As I said, I talked to some of these nomads. Nobody knew where the Kresh had gone, but it wasn’t hard to puzzle out. North was impossible. Once there had been a pass through the mountains leading to the frozen lands, and the northern barbarians occasionally tried to fight their way through that pass and invade the southern lands—you two remember this from your histories of the Black Wars. But a huge rockfall had completely blocked the pass only a year or two before Farryn left his valley, so they couldn’t have gone north—and even if they could, why would they walk right into their enemies’ land? South was impossible, too, or they’d have been seen; the land’s too settled here for them to pass completely through without stopping somewhere. East’s the same, only worse, and before they got too far, they’d just run into the sea. So that only left west, the way Farryn said they’d go.”

  Jael leafed through the other maps scattered around the room.

  “None of these maps show the lands very far west of Allanmere,” she said.

  “No; the west, after a point, has hardly been settled,” Shadow told her. “There aren’t many merchant trains to or from the western lands, either, and it was hard getting much news. But when spring came and I was able to move on, I found the stories I’d been looking for.

  “Western folk called them ‘ghost people.’ Sometimes folk would see their fires, hear their songs from a distance, and in the morning they were gone as if they’d never been there, no tracks leading to the campsite or away from it. Sometimes folk even saw them traveling, mere flickers of movement like the beat of a dragonfly’s wing, running so fast and so light they could dance right across a lake’s surface like that same dragonfly.” Shadow shook her head. I’d give a good many Suns to have seen it myself.”

  The elf sighed regretfully and turned back to the map.

  “Here, here, and here,” she said, tapping three points on the map. “Here’s where I heard the stories. It wasn’t city folk who had seen them, of course—Fortune knows the Kresh would’ve avoided the cities—but cities are where the stories live, in taverns and inns and brothels, and that’s where I went hunting them. The Kresh traveled fast, but they were limited by the young, the old, and the sick, and they had to hunt occasionally, and when they stopped, they were seen. Now look at this.”

  Shadow picked up a strip of thong and laid one end of it on the spot she’d marked in the northern mountains. “Put your finger on that.” She stretched the thong westward; the three cities she had indicated formed an almost straight line under the thong’s length.

  “Allowing a bit for the fact they were seen outside the cities, the Kresh traveled in almost a perfectly straight line,” Shadow told them. “Not straight west, but west and south a bit from the mountains north of Ramant. Drawing a line along that trail, you can get a pretty good prediction of their course beyond that. I’ll draw that on a traveling map for you. At some point you’ll begin reaching lands that aren’t mapped, and this may be the only thing you have to guide you. Fortune knows that even if they’d left tracks, two decades would have eaten the traces. Whenever you can find a city or a village, find the old folk and ask about the rumors. As long as you’re on the right track, there’ll be someone who saw them.”

  Tanis traced a fingertip along the western edge of the map.

  “How far beyond this might they have gone?” he asked. “Do you have any notion where this homeland they’re seeking is, or even what it’s like?”

  Shadow shook her head.

  “Farryn told us the story of his ancestors traveling east,” she said. “He said they came through a land of plains and low, rocky hills, and he mentioned mountains, I think, but I’ve got to tell you, stories get mightily twisted around over the course of twenty centuries, and that’s how long his folk had been gone from their homeland. There’s plains aplenty to the west across the Brightwater, but after a point you start getting forest instead, and I’ve never heard anything of rocky hills or any western mountains. If the Kresh liked to live among the mountains here, though, it makes sense that they’d have come from a similar land.”

  “Months,” Tanis said slowly. “We’re talking about months of travel.”

  “Months of travel in bad country,” Donya interrupted, stepping into the room. The High Lady had exchanged her ragged practice leathers for one of the ornate gowns she so hated, but had to wear for official functions. “Shadow showed me her maps earlier. The farther west you go, the more vague the maps become and the less populated the land. The trade roads, such as they are, will be prowled by brigands and the like. Before you get too far, there may not be any roads at all.”

  “But there are a few blessings,” Shadow said, shrugging. “Languages move west with settlers and you should be able to make yourself understood most of the time. It’d be otherwise, I can promise you, if you went too far south. At the same time, Donya’s right. Sparsely settled country breeds desperate types. I’d keep your noble birth a close secret, Jael, and keep your money hidden. Use small coins when you spend. It’s safer, too, to travel with well-guarded merchant caravans as long as you can—more comfortable, too, bet on it, and you’ll eat better. For Fortune’s sake, Tanis, you don’t want to tell the merchants you’re a novice thief.”

  “I probably could have worked that out myself,” Tanis said wryly. “But coming from a Mercantile House and serving a trade god for so many years, I won’t have much difficulty convincing anyone that I’m the younger son of a House, gone west to make a start for myself. The way Jael looks, she could be any elf with the wandering itch.”

  Shadow gave Tanis a crooked grin at his last comment.

  “Well, there aren’t so many of us wandering the world as all that,” she warned. “Elves out of the Heartwood look odd compared with the eastern city elves, especially those of us with the old wild blood showing in their faces like Jael. She looks a little remarkable even to the other elves hereabouts.”

  “There’s one thing,” Donya said firmly, “and I’m not taking any argument about i
t, Jaellyn. I’ve asked Shadow to ride with the two of you for the first couple of days, just to see that you get started safely.”

  Jael opened her mouth to protest, but closed it again at a warning frown from Shadow. The elf herself appeared equally irritated but resigned, and Jael could well imagine tnat despite ner

  love of Jael and her long and dear friendship with Donya, Shadow would far rather spend the days in an inn with plenty of wine and some handsome fellow than riding days out of her way. Jael swallowed her protest; if Donya had been able to push Shadow into this errand, she was utterly determined and there was nothing Jael could say that would change her mind.

  “I wish you’d take one of those mirrors with the farspeaking spell,” Donya said with a scowl. “I don’t like the thought of wondering for so long where you are, what’s happening to you.”

  Jael fought back a retort that the last thing in the world she wanted was to have to use the magical mirrors her grandmother Celene had invented to call her parents every night.

  “How do you think I’m going to use one of those?” Jael asked impatiently. “The minute I touch it, I’ll ruin the spell.”

  “If it doesn’t explode in your hand,” Shadow chuckled in agreement. Jael winced. She found the warping effect that she had on magic much less amusing than Shadow did.

  “We could give the mirror to Tanis,” Donya said. “He could use it.”

  “Mother, light globes explode across the room from me,” Jael said, a little irritated by the High Lady’s persistence in treating her like the child she appeared, but was not. “Sometimes in other rooms, as you know very well. How far away from me do you want Tanis to ride—a mile? Two?”

  “All right, all right,” Shadow said mildly. “Travelers have been getting by without farspeaking spells for a good many centuries, including you and me, Doe. Pull the reins in much tighter on this filly, and she’s going to buck hard enough to throw you.”

  “You’re right.” Donya sighed and shrugged. “At her age I’d have said, ‘Whatever you want, Mother,’ and then accidentally dropped the mirror on the first rock I found. Jaellyn, I wasn’t really eavesdropping on your plans. I just wanted to let you know that Argent would like to see you before supper. Now I’ll leave you be. I’m in audience this afternoon, anyway.”

  “Looked like it,” Shadow said sympathetically, gesturing at Donya’s gown. “What is it this time, poachers in the Heartwood or squabbles between the temples?”

  “Neither,” Donya said wearily. “City Council meeting.” She turned away without another word.

  Jael was sorry she had snapped at her mother, knowing that Donya’s brusqueness was only her way or hiding her worry, but she was more than a little relieved when the High Lady left. If Donya had her way, Jael wouldn’t be leaving at all; failing that, Donya would settle for making her leave-taking as difficult and miserable as possible.

  “You go ahead to Argent,” Shadow told Jael kindly. “I’ll give Tanis the maps and tell him what I know about the lands to the west. No need wasting your time with it. You could get lost in your own bedchambers, little sapling, I’m afraid.”

  Jael left reluctantly, more than a little vexed by Aunt Shadow’s typically blunt comment. It was unfortunately all too true, only one of the legacies of the uneasy mixture of her true father’s Kresh blood and her mother’s elf and human ancestry. Jael had spent almost every summer of her life with her foster father Mist in the Heartwood, trying to learn all the elven arts, but she could still manage to get lost less than a mile from their camp, just as she could likely find something to trip over standing stock still on a bare stone floor. She was so tired of her clumsiness, her inability to remember the simplest lessons from one day to the next, of the strange missing part of her soul that warped any spell in her vicinity and left her seemingly frozen in childhood. More than anything else, however, she was tired of the bad luck that seemed to follow her like a wolf on the trail of a deer. It was worth almost anything to hope that her father’s people could help her gain the missing part of her soul; certainly it was worth a couple of months of travel in new and exciting places, exploring wild and unknown lands. Mother and Shadow might moan about danger and discomfort; Jael could hardly wait to leave. Nothing could possibly be worse than living like this, caught between worlds, neither one thing or the other.

  High Lord Argent was in his study, or rather the study; High Lady Donya, not of a scholarly bent, was far likelier to spend her time in the practice yard than poring over old books and scrolls, so Argent had turned the study attached to their rooms to his own use. Missing the herbal store which his sister Elaria now managed alone, Argent had created his own herbal workshop, where he could putter in his few free hours.

  Allanmere’s High Lord was as tall as his wife, but he was pale where she was sun-browned, slender where she was muscular, his features delicate where Donya’s were strong, his braid silver-white where Donya’s was almost as black as Shadow’s.

  At the moment Argent was grinding something pungent-smelling with a mortar and pestle while reading out of an ancient herbal. His sharp elven hearing, however, was not dulled by his concentration, and he looked up, smiling, as Jael stepped through the doorway.

  “Good afternoon, Jaellyn,” he said warmly. “Sit down for a moment. I’m almost finished.”

  Jael took her usual seat on the edge of the table. She loved to watch her father work; as his herbal preparations seldom involved magic, his workshop was one place where her presence didn’t invite disaster—as long as she didn’t move and send fifteen bottles and vials crashing to the floor, at least.

  Argent finished blending the paste in the mortar and scraped it carefully into a clay jar. He cleaned the mortar and pestle meticulously before he turned to face Jael.

  “How are you faring this spring?” he asked. “Your breathing doesn’t sound much better.”

  Jael shrugged in resignation. The fact that Argent could hear her raspy wheezing from that distance was answer enough. Argent understood, if Donya didn’t, that part of the reason Jael lost her wind so quickly was because breathing was difficult in the damp springtime air. Her eyes and nose ran like the Brightwater River, too, all spring long. She’d have some relief in summer, if the weather was dry and there weren’t too many flowers in bloom, but she’d be miserable again once the leaves fell and the autumn rains started.

  “I have two new mixtures for you to try,” Argent said. He handed her the jar he’d just filled and a flask filled with greenish liquid. “Put five drops of the potion in your goblet at suppertime and see how you feel this evening. Rub the paste on your chest tonight. It should help your breathing.” He handed her another jar. “And this is for the aches and pains your mother left you with today.”

  “Salve to ease my pains?” Jael chuckled. “And I thought she wanted me to ache at every step, just to remind me of my lessons. At least she didn’t bruise my bottom, not for want of trying.”

  “Your mother would rather see you bruised than dead, and so would I,” Argent said kindly. “If she’s a little zealous lately in that regard, it’s only because she loves you and worries about you so much. Sometimes it’s difficult for her to say those things with her mouth, so she tries to say them with her sword instead.”

  Jael sighed, again regretting her sharp remarks. It wasn’t as if anything Donya had said wasn’t true. Unlike Argent, however, Jael had no excess of patience to compensate for Donya’s occasionally sharp-edged manner.

  Argent picked up another bottle, this one half-filled with bright blue liquid of a rather syrupy consistency.

  “Were you planning to take any of this with you?”

  Jael hesitated, then nodded.

  “Two bottles, just for emergencies,” she said. “It’s either the Bluebright or that elven dreaming potion you made for me before, and that puts me to sleep for hours. I’m taking some of the Calidwyn black tea, too. It settles my stomach.”

  Argent nodded, sighing.

  “The Blue
bright does seem to temporarily relieve many of your problems—allows you to use your Kresh stone-shaping ability, keeps you from warping magic around you—but I don’t like you using it,” he said slowly. “I haven’t been able to find out where it came from or what it’s made of, and that makes me uneasy. The fact that it has an aphrodisiac effect worries me even more. At least I know the tea is harmless.”

  “Well, Bluebright can’t be magical, or it wouldn’t work on me, especially since I want it to work,” Jael said practically. “So what’s the harm?”

  “A snake’s venom isn’t magical, but that would be small comfort after it killed you,” Argent said patiently. “Potions powerful enough to affect the soul can have unforeseen effects, or they can create dependence. Do you trust the Bluebright, knowing who brought it?”

  Jael grimaced. Like Donya, Argent had a way of driving home a point—but unlike the High Lady, he didn’t need a sword to do it. She didn’t like to be reminded that the Bluebright had been brought to Allanmere by a false priest planning to raise one of the Greater Darklings, or that Jael had been so won over by his charming manner that she had all but handed herself over to him as the very sacrifice needed to bring his master into the world. Where Urien might have come by the Bluebright, or from what he might have made it, were questions Jael didn’t like to ask herself.