Dagger's Edge (Shadow series) (13 page)

“Well, I hope you feel privileged,” Shadow muttered, dragging Jael out the door and back down the stairs. “Only a double handful of people in Allanmere ever speak to her personally and walk away alive afterward.”

“She must be lonely, then,” Jael said. Now that she was out of that horrible, dim little room, she felt less quivery inside and wondered exactly what it was about Blade that had so frightened her.

Shadow stopped abruptly and glanced back at Jael.

“Yes, I think she is,” Shadow said quietly. “Terribly lonely. But being lonely doesn’t make her any less dangerous, Jaellyn, and you can’t help her. The smartest thing you can do is hope you never see her again, although that’s a vain hope. I don’t like you owing her anything, either, especially an unnamed favor.”

“She’s like me, isn’t she?” Jael asked. “Bloody feet from walking the dagger’s edge.”

“More than you know,” Shadow muttered. She steered Jael firmly through the market. “But that doesn’t mean she’d hesitate to stick that dagger into you if someone offered her enough Suns. Remember that.”

The excitement of meeting Allanmere’s most legendary assassin had almost taken Jael’s mind off the purpose of the visit, but not entirely.

“Aunt Shadow, if Mother’s elf and human and fa—”

“Not here in the middle of the market crowds,” Shadow said quickly. “Listen, little sapling, you’re making me walk a slippery log. Your mother made me promise I’d never speak to you about this, and one thing I don’t do is break my promises. Be patient just a little longer, and if Donya won’t give you all the answers, I’ll see that
someone
does. All right?”

“All right,” Jael agreed grudgingly. After twenty years of wondering, she wanted to know
now.
“But I’m still hungry.”

“Your mother promised you a feast, and I’ve never known Donya to break
her
word,” Shadow assured her. “Wait until then. I want to get back to the Gate before your parents realize we took a side trip through the city.”

“They won’t be waiting for us now,” Jael said crossly. “It’s midmorning. The City Council will be in session until noon, and since it’s midweek, Mother and Father will both be there.”

“Well, why didn’t you tell me that before I ran through the market like a doe with a wolf on her scent?” Shadow asked exasperatedly, slowing to a walk.

“Well, if you’d
explained
why you were hurrying, instead of pulling my arm out of its socket dragging me,” Jael retorted, “I
would
have told you.”

“All right, all right,” Shadow sighed. “I’m sorry.”

They walked more leisurely through the market after that, arriving back at the castle only a little before midday. Because dinner preparations were under way, there was no difficulty in avoiding the servants as Shadow and Jael slipped back to the room holding the Gate. Once they arrived there, Jael made a show of calling for one of the maids and asking that her parents be told that she and Shadow had returned. By the time Jael and Shadow reached the dining hall, Donya and Argent were already there, still dressed in their formal surcoats for council.

“It didn’t work,” Jael said flatly as Donya and Argent hurried to embrace her. Blade’s news had made her feel unaccountably awkward with her parents, and she endured, rather than welcomed, their affection. “I’m still the same.”

Somehow the statement tasted like a lie in her mouth. Her elven gifts and her magic were no closer than they ever had been, but Jael felt that somehow she
had
changed—changed greatly.

“Never mind,” Donya said with a sigh, ruffling Jael’s hair. “You’re safe and well, and nothing else really matters. What
did
happen? Just a night of strange dreams?”

“Hardly that,” Shadow said wryly. “Let’s let this poor, hungry girl have some food and I’ll tell you the story.”

Halfway through the story, Donya quietly dismissed the servants. When Shadow finished, the dining hall was absolutely silent except for the crackling of the fire. Donya stared down at the scrap of leather bearing the eye design. Quietly Argent reached out and folded Donya into his arms, and Donya let him, leaning her forehead wearily on his shoulder.

As shocked as Jael had been by the news of her ancestry, her mother’s behavior shocked her more. Suddenly she wished she had never agreed to go through the ritual, never dreamed of fire and stone, and, most of all,
never
gone with Shadow to see Blade to find out awkward things about her family. This, then, was what Blade had meant, that some answers were uncomfortable to know—but Jael had thought that the answers would be uncomfortable for
her.
She had never thought that it might hurt her mother instead.

“All right,” Donya said at last, tiredly. “All right.” She raised her head, and Jael was relieved to see that her mother’s eyes were dry. She didn’t know what she would have done if High Lady Donya, likely the greatest warrior in Allanmere, had wept.

“Maybe I should talk to Jael for you,” Shadow suggested gently. “If you’d rather—”

“No.” Donya straightened and took a deep breath. “What’s the elven saying? I shot the arrow, and I’ll carry the kill. Jaellyn, I hope you don’t mind another walk in the garden.” She turned to Argent. “Do you mind if—”

“I understand.” Argent clasped Donya’s hand, pressing her large knuckles against his pale cheek. “Shadow and I will be in the study. She was kind enough to bring me a bottle of brandy all the way from Chernon, and I think this is a good time to open it.”

Donya walked silently beside Jael through the corridors and out into the garden. Jael did not break the silence; she felt oddly as though she were walking beside a stranger.

Donya took Jael to the west walk and gestured to Jael to sit down in the bower. Donya did not sit, however, instead pacing back and forth. At last she stopped, standing braced as if for combat.

“About twenty-one years ago Aspen asked me to come to the Heartwood to see a trespasser they’d caught,” Donya said slowly. “They’d never seen anyone like him before. He wasn’t elf or human, but something else completely. He was sick, too. None of us realized he was carrying plague.”

“The Crimson Plague?” Jael asked.

Donya nodded.

“The Crimson Plague. He’d come south to find a place where some of his people used to live in the hope of finding a cure. He didn’t know about Allanmere, and he didn’t know about the elves in the Heartwood, either, because it had been centuries and more since his own people had left. He didn’t mean to bring plague among us—the plague wasn’t even fatal to his own folk.”

“I thought the elves brought the Crimson Plague into town,” Jael ventured hesitantly.

“Well, they did,” Donya admitted. “The elves carried the plague into town, although they couldn’t catch it themselves. But it was Farryn who actually brought the plague into the forest.”

“Farryn,” Jael repeated, rolling the word in her mouth. “What did he look like?”

“He was almost as tall as me,” Donya said with a sigh. “Slender, though. His skin was as brown as leaves in autumn, and his hair and eyes—” Donya glanced at Jael, then smiled a little as she reached out to touch Jael’s polished-bronze curls. “You favor him in many ways. He had six fingers on each hand, too, and six toes on each foot.”

Jael glanced down at her boots, the left boot slightly wider to accommodate the sixth toe there.

“And he melted holes in stone?” Jael asked.

“No.” Donya smiled distantly. “No, Farryn could run like the wind, even over water. But another clan of the Kresh could mold stone and metal with their will, and Farryn told us that once they had lived together like one people. We saw some of their dwellings, stone shaped by their minds just as we might shape a piece of clay. Farryn must have had a little of their blood in his ancestry, a long way back, just as I have a little Hidden Folk blood in me if you go back far enough. But I was telling you about the plague.

“Farryn recovered quickly enough,” Donya continued, gazing out into the garden. “He insisted that there was a cure for the Crimson Plague to be found where his people had once lived. That place was deep in the Reaches, though. Five of us went to find that cure—Farryn, Argent, Mist, Shadow, and myself.”

“Mist was there?” Jael asked, surprised. “He’s never said anything, not in all the summers I’ve spent in the Heart-wood.”

“He wouldn’t have,” Donya smiled wryly. “That was kind of him. That time in the swamp has always been a painful memory for me. I was sick at the time, and we were all miserable—it was a terrible journey, and worse for knowing that every day we were gone, more people were dying in the city. Do you remember hearing a story about a giant dagger-tooth?”

“They still tell that story in the market sometimes,” Jael laughed. “That you killed a daggertooth bigger than a house. Nobody believes it, not really.”

“That’s one story that actually was true,” Donya chuckled a little. “I didn’t kill the daggertooth alone, but I’d like to think I had a good hand in it. And it
was
bigger than a house; I know, because it was sitting on one. One of the ruined houses of Farryn’s people, that is. We hollowed that daggertooth out and used it as a boat. The boat rotted, of course; we didn’t have time to cure it properly. But, you know, I still have one of its teeth.”

“A boat?” Jael asked skeptically.

“A boat,” Donya smiled. “Ask Shadow about that boat sometime. But Farryn was quite a warrior. Watching him with that sword—it was like a dance. I’d never seen anything like it. He moved like lightning, like the wind, and the lightning flashing off his armor and his sword ...”

Donya was silent for a moment, and Jael wisely said nothing, although the look in her mother’s eyes somehow made her uncomfortable. Donya glanced at her and sighed.

“Well.” Donya shook her head. “You know what happens between men and women. I spent that night with Farryn.”

“With Father right there?” Jael asked amazedly.

“I—didn’t think of Argent in that way then,” Donya said slowly. “Jaellyn, sometimes love comes suddenly, like an autumn whirlwind, tearing away every obstacle in its path, so powerful that there’s no stopping it. It was like that with Farryn—huge and powerful, and then—and then suddenly you’re left with nothing but the debris left behind after the storm.”

“I suppose I’m part of the debris,” Jael said, a little bitterly.

“I suppose I earned that,” Donya said quietly. “Shadow’s right. I should have told you a long time ago. But I wasn’t certain, I swear to you. Farryn had to go back to his people, and I had to return to Allanmere. I learned that my father had died while I was gone, and for a while all I could think of was the grief. With my father dead, I had to marry immediately, and to produce an heir as soon as I could. I married Argent, and nine months later you were born.”

Jael was silent for a moment, thinking about what Donya had told her. The sadness in her mother’s voice, the longing— that was real.

“Did you love my fa—Argent?” Jael asked at last. “I mean, you married him only a little after—well, you know.”

“Love isn’t always an autumn whirlwind,” Donya said after a moment’s thought. “Sometimes it’s like those acorns you bring back from the elven spring festival—just a little seed in your hand, and it grows so slowly, but in the end you have a tree that towers over the forest, with roots that dig deep and strong into the earth. I love Argent, and I love you, Jaellyn. Don’t ever doubt that. But I want to know what you feel.” Her shoulders tensed, as if she expected an attack.

Jael was silent again. What
did
she feel? She was sorry her mother had been hurt by the revelation, but that regret was tempered with a little anger and, yes, a little resentment—why
hadn’t
she been told? It was her life, after all, and look what her mother’s whirlwind night had done to it!

But was that really what Jael was feeling hurt and angry about now? Did it matter, really, whether her mother had had one lover more or less, or that her lover had been a stranger from a distant land? Would Argent indeed have been hurt to know that Donya was in another’s arms only a short distance away? Jealousy was a human concept, so far as Jael had seen, and elves never bothered overmuch about privacy; none of the elves in the Heartwood had ever been disturbed when Jael accidentally intruded on their trysts. Even Mother and Father— Argent, that is—had never evidenced more than a mild impatience and eagerness for Jael to go on about her business so they could get on with
theirs.

“I don’t know,” Jael sighed. “I’m angry, but I suppose it’s just—you know—twenty years, and everybody in the city whispering about me, and then they stop talking when I walk into the room, and all this time I never knew what they were whispering about, and I hated it. It was as if there were a joke in town that everyone was laughing at but me. But nobody in the city knows, do they? So they’re just whispering because I’m odd. They never knew anything I didn’t, after all.”

“No one but some of the forest elves ever saw Farryn,” Donya said quietly. “So the people in the city never knew anything, no. And there’s certainly no joke.”

“It doesn’t help much, though, does it?” Jael said bitterly. “I mean, we all know now, don’t we, but what good does it do?”

Donya pulled the scrap of leather out of her pocket and traced the eye design with a callused fingertip.

“Farryn wore a medallion with this design on it,” she said. “He told us that it was a receptacle for his soul.” Her brow furrowed in concentration. “He said that his people weren’t born with their souls, that their souls were given to them when they reached a certain age, and they kept them in these—well, soul keepers is what he called them. So that’s what the drawing meant, Jaellyn. Your elven and human blood comes from me, but the Kresh elements of your soul are missing, because the Kresh aren’t born with them at all.”

“How can anyone not have a soul?” Jael asked, amazed. “And how can anyone
give
you one?”

“I don’t know,” Donya said, sighing. “Shadow might have been curious enough to ask, but I never thought it was important. Even when I bore you alone instead of twins, and I started to—to wonder, it never occurred to me that there might be an effect to your soul.”