Dagger's Edge (Shadow series) (11 page)

Jael walked back silently, thoroughly disgusted with herself. Gods, what was
wrong
with her? Maybe it was the fasting.
And maybe some wicked sorcerer put a curse on me the day I was born.

Urien escorted her back to the main hall, where a rather surprised Donya met them. Urien thanked her again for the hospitality of the castle and bowed over Jael’s hand formally before he left.

“Well?” Donya demanded when Urien had gone. “What happened?”

“Nothing! Nothing happened!” Jael’s sudden anger surprised her. “We walked in the garden, we looked at the trees, we watched the sun go down. What did you think, that he was going to tumble me on the ground with guards looking down from the parapets? That I’d let him?”

“No!” Donya flushed. “No. I didn’t mean—no, that’s wrong. I suppose I did.” She took a deep breath and laid a callused hand on Jael’s shoulder. “I’m sorry. By the time I was your age, I was no maiden, as you’ve probably gathered from Shadow’s stories. At your age, if I’d been in a beautiful garden at sunset with a charming and handsome young fellow, I probably
would
have tumbled him. And the only thing that would have concerned my mother would be if he was the husband of some other city’s High Lady, or if I hadn’t been taking my goldenroot potion. So.”

Donya took another deep breath and shook her head.

“Do what you want, Jaellyn. Just be wise and please don’t get your heart broken by a lord we know nothing about.” She squeezed Jael’s shoulder roughly. “And if Shadow isn’t here and you need someone to talk to—well, I’ll do the best I can.

I’ve always been better with swords than words.” She turned away.

“Mother—” Jael hesitated a moment too long; Donya was gone.

Jael sighed and climbed the stairs toward her room, realizing that all too often words were not enough.

Perhaps they never were.

^IV

“I don’t understand why I have to go under a sleep spell,” Jael complained. “I’ve walked through the Gate before.”

“Fasting not only purifies the blood, but also intensifies magical energies in the body,” Mist explained patiently. “You have already seen the effects that your uncontrolled energies can cause on even simple magics, and that effect is stronger now than when you were younger. Would you wish to see what will happen if a Gate goes awry with us passing through it?”

“It’s a simple spell,” Celene reassured her. “I’ll release it as soon as we are safely through the Gate.”

“And if Fortune favors us,” Shadow added, “you can walk back through on your own feet.”

“Are you coming, Aunt Shadow?” Jael asked with relief.

“Your mother suggested it,” Shadow said with a grin. “Be flattered. It’s some time since I’ve
volunteered
to spend the night sleeping on the ground. But it might cause problems if some of the people in town heard that the High Lord and High Lady were involved in elven rituals, so I said I’d come along. Besides, this way I can enjoy Mist’s company while you’re napping.”

“Is that all that happens?” Donya asked warily. “You give her this potion and she lies there and dreams?”

“I will ask the Mother Forest to guide her,” Mist said. “But the true journey is Jael’s alone to make.”

“And how long does she just lie there sleeping?” Donya asked.

“We begin the ritual at sunset, so we will arrive a little early,” Mist said. “She should return from her journey at sunrise, perhaps a little later. We’ll come back through the Gate as soon as the effects of the potion are completely gone.”

“She will be perfectly safe,” Argent assured Donya, stroking her hair. “Elaria checked each ingredient in the potion and I blended it myself. Mist has plenty of blankets and furs to keep Jael warm while she sleeps. Shadow and Mist will be nearby if Jael needs them, and there is no place in the forest more protected than the Forest Altars.”

“Of course, you’re right,” Donya said hastily. She tousled Jael’s hair, kissing the top of her head in a rare gesture of affection. “Mage or not, Jaellyn, come back safe and at peace with yourself and I’ll be happy.”

“Not as happy as I’ll be,” Jael said wryly. “Right now I’d be happy just to eat something—other than boiled greens, that is.”

“Well, when you come home tomorrow,” Donya said comfortingly, “we’ll have a feast ready and you can stuff yourself till you’re sick, if you like.”

Argent pulled Jael close.

“Remember how much we love you,” he murmured. “I will ask the Mother Forest to protect and guide you.”

Jael said nothing, but hugged back hard. His long, pale hair smelled of herbs, a familiar, comforting scent.

“Fortune favor us, she’s not going to her death, Argent,” Shadow said good-naturedly. “One night napping in the forest hardly warrants this fuss. Come along, little sapling, and let’s get this done with. Celene, do you want to cast the spell at the Gate, so Mist won’t have to carry her through the halls? She’s almost as tall as he is.”

“I’ll carry her,” Donya said quickly.

“Better cast the spell here,” Celene agreed. “Jael might be able to affect the Gate merely by being near it. Jael, better to sit down so you won’t fall.”

Jael sighed and sat, uncomfortable with all the attention. As Aunt Shadow said, what was the fuss about a few missed meals and an uncomfortable night sleeping in the forest? Her nose would run and she’d wake up stiff, and likely nothing much would come of it.

Celene gave her an encouraging smile, chanted a few words, and leaned over to touch Jael’s eyelids gently. Jael had just time to think,
I
wonder how this is going to feel
—

Jael opened her eyes, surprised to see leaves instead of stone overhead. Celene patted her cheek comfortingly.

“All finished, granddaughter,” she said. “I was almost surprised that the spell worked on you. I half expected you to turn into a bird instead, or sottie such.”

“I wish you’d told me that
before
you cast it,” Jael grumbled, scrambling to her feet. “I’d rather have ridden into the Heartwood on horses.”

“Jaellyn, the sleep spell is so simple that there was no risk worth mentioning,” Celene said gently. “I was only jesting. Now come along, and tomorrow we will see how great a mage you’ve become.”

“No doubt I’ll become such a great mage that I can break every light globe in the castle, instead of just in the one room,” Jael chuckled.

It was forbidden to cast a Gate spell within the area of the Forest Altars, but the altars were less than a mile from the Gate. Celene, Mist, Shadow, and Jael arrived with plenty of sunlight left.

“What do I do now?” Jael asked, when they had cleared the offerings from one of the altars and laid a few warm furs over it.

“You can help us set up our camp,” Mist said. “We will be close, but not so close that our fire or our voices might distract you.”

“Besides, I will
not
camp without a fire, as well as something to cook over it,” Shadow said firmly. “And that means we have to leave the area of the altars to hunt. But we’ll still be near enough to hear you if you should need us.”

They made a camp at one of the already cleared sites just outside the stones defining the area of the altars, and Shadow excused herself, saying that she would hunt something for supper while Mist helped Jael prepare.

There was little enough, however, to prepare. Mist drew a clay flask from his pack and followed Jael back to the chosen altar, bringing several furs and blankets with him.

“It’s been a little chill these past few nights,” Mist said. “I will stay until you are asleep, then see that you are well covered. You take chill too easily, little fawn.” He glanced up at the setting sun, then pulled the stopper out of the flask. “This will taste terrible, but I brought some water for you to drink with it.”

Jael took the flask. It felt heavy, and the smell of the potion was unpleasantly sweet and pungent.

“All of it?” she asked dubiously.

“Every drop,” Mist said firmly. “If you drink it down quickly, you’ll taste it less.”

Jael took a deep breath and tipped up the flask. The liquid was thick and syrupy, obviously sweetened heavily with honey, but the liquid burned its way down her throat anyway. Jael grimaced and sipped water from the skin that Mist offered.

“Lie down,” Mist said. “The potion will start to take effect in a few moments.”

Jael climbed awkwardly onto the altar, making herself as comfortable as she could on the fur-covered stone. Mist folded a fur to cushion her head, then laid several blankets and furs over her.

“You’ll start feeling heavy and warm,” Mist said. He clasped her hand warmly. “After a time your thoughts will begin to drift. When that starts to happen, focus your thoughts inward, downward. Send your thoughts down through yourself and into the earth, down to the roots of the trees. Think of those roots as your own roots, and follow them down as far as you can go.”

Jael sighed and squirmed a little. The fur was ticklish under her, annoying. She wanted to push it aside. She was too hot; she wanted to feel the cool of the stone against her back.

“When you’ve gone down as far as you can go, you will find a peaceful place there, like a still forest pool,” Mist said, his voice smooth and soothing. “This place exists at the center of yourself. Your magic is in that place, your soul is in that place, your wholeness is there in that peaceful place. Go there and find it and bring it back with you.”

“Uh-huh.” Jael heard her own voice as if from a great distance. She felt far too hot and vaguely sick, but the heat and the nausea were far away, too. Her muscles were still a little sore, too, from the previous day’s exertions; she had spent the whole day training with Rabin and Larissa, having nothing better to pass the time.

Mist’s voice faded out, but she could still feel the pressure of his hand. Then that was gone, too, and somehow Jael was glad; she wanted to be alone. She squirmed around on the stone until she managed to push the fur out from under her, and the weathered stone was smooth and delightful against her cheek.

There was no focusing her thoughts downward; she was pulled down like iron shavings to a lodestone. Earth was around her, warm and moist and musky with leaf mold, tunneled by worms, laced with roots. There were thoughts around her, too—worm-thoughts and beetle-thoughts and other noisy pulses of hunger, of fear, of pain and birth and death. There was nothing soothing or peaceful here; it was too alive, too moving and varied of texture and confusing.

Under the forest soil was denser earth, more roots, finer and longer and pale from the dark, squirming things that had never seen the sun, blind, writhing life even more confused and confusing than that above. There was nothing to be found at the end of the roots but their pale, searching tips. How could she think of them as her roots, these frail, blind things? Jael knew a moment of panic—how could she find peace, how could she find herself here in this writhing chaos of life?

Almost instinctively she sank deeper. Under the earth was water—not a still pool as Mist had described, but water pushing up hot and sulfurous from the earth, bubbling and frothing toward the surface. Then down under the water—

Stone.

Jael sank into stone as she might sink into a soft bed after a rigorous combat lesson, gratefully, every muscle in her body sighing its surrender. Stone surrounded her, smooth and firm and solid, and yet it was alive, too, holding in its heart a memory of liquid fire. The fire called to her, like a distant memory, vague and indistinct but beckoning, a pleasurable tinge like the sight of home after a long journey, but when she reached for it, it was always just beyond her grasp. Desperately she followed that vein or tire deeper, farther, but it seemed to retreat even as she approached, growing ever more distant even as the world receded far behind her. Just a little farther and she could reach it—almost—almost—

Something seized her, as if a warm, strong hand had grasped the back of her shirt, pulling her back, back through stone, through water, through earth, back up. Jael howled with disappointment, reaching desperately for the stone, but the force pulling her back was too strong, and the red thread of fire melted slowly into darkness.

Jael was warm and comfortable, cradled smoothly and comfortingly. Slowly sound intruded—early morning sounds of birds and insects. Sunlight trickled through her eyelashes like water; reluctantly, Jael yawned and rubbed her eyes. To her surprise, she felt neither stiff nor groggy; rather, she was utterly relaxed and as refreshed as after a swim in the river on a hot day. Jael tried to stretch, only to find that she had somehow wedged herself into a rather cramped, if comfortable, space.

“Good morning, little acorn,” Shadow said cheerily from somewhere out of sight. “Are you ready for us to pry you out of there?”

“Uh—” Jael squirmed and found her quarters even more cramped than she had originally thought. She looked upward through what appeared to be the entrance to a den or burrow. Had she found some animal’s lair and crawled in? “What happened?”

“That’s a good question.” Shadow’s face appeared in the opening, her mischievous black eyes sparkling with laughter. “Maybe you can tell us.”

“Where am I?” Jael asked confusedly.

“You’re still on the altar,” Shadow said. She paused. “Or rather
in
the altar. It seems to have—ah—caved in with you. Can you wriggle around so we can grab either your arms or your legs?”

Jael tried, but her stone womb made every movement difficult. Gradually she worked one arm loose, then the other, by bending her back into a screaming angle. Shadow locked both her hands around one wrist, Mist around the other, and they pulled, with several protests from Jael and worried instructions from Celene. Gradually Jael squirmed painfully free, scraping her hips, knees, and elbows unmercifully in the process.

When she at last wriggled out of the tight space, Jael turned and gaped at the place she had recently occupied. “Caved in” was not the phrase Jael would have used; rather, a Jael-sized hole seemed to have been melted half a man-height into the stone, almost enclosing her.

“Fortune favor us, that’s some trick, little acorn,” Shadow chuckled. Mist walked around the altar, shaking his head at the sight.

“Well, I will end the suspense,” Celene smiled. She took Jael’s hands. Jael held her breath, but nothing happened; after a moment, Celene shook her head sadly and released Jael’s hands.

“I’m sorry, Jaellyn,” she said gently. “Nothing has changed.”

“Something has changed here,” Mist said, looking at something at the far side of the altar. “Shadow, have you seen this?”

Jael and Celene followed Shadow around the altar. There was a simple drawing in the dirt, scratched with a stick, of a circle divided into three parts. The sword twined with the vine, symbol of Allanmere’s ruling house, had been drawn in one section, and a single green leaf had been laid on the second. The arc of the third section had been rubbed out, leaving a gap, but a short distance outside the circle lay a scrap of leather bearing a symbol Jael had never seen—a highly stylized eye.

“What’s this?” Jael asked, picking up the bit of leather. “What’s it mean?”

“It means about what I expected,” Shadow said, sighing.

“The forest sprite must have left the drawing,” Mist said. He shook his head. “But how could she know that—”

“Shhh.” Celene laid one hand on Mist’s arm. “It’s not yours to tell, Mist.”

“The forest sprite?” Jael asked eagerly. “You mean Chyrie? Oh, I wish I’d seen her!”

“Well, you were fast asleep, little fawn,” Mist comforted. “I don’t understand this drawing, though.”

“I may,” Shadow said cautiously. “Mist, Celene, are you coming back through the Gate?”

“I must sleep-spell Jael again, so I will come through to awaken her,” Celene said. She shook her head. “But then I will return through the Gate. This is one difficulty, I’m afraid, that Donya will have to face herself.”