“Father,” Jael said, and fainted.
X
Jael dragged herself up out of sleep as a mortally wounded beast might drag itself from a battle. Gods, she had to be alive; nobody could feel this awful and be dead. Every muscle in her body ached and her head throbbed sickly. Despite her lurching stomach, Jael forced her eyes open.
“You’re awake,” Tanis said relievedly, smiling down at her. “I’ve been awfully worried. It’s been almost two days.”
“I’m all right,” Jael croaked. “I think.” She forced herself up on one elbow to look around, although the effort made her head reel.
She lay on furs, but under the furs was stone. She was clothed in a clean tunic and trousers, but they were not hers. She and Tanis were alone in a dome-shaped shelter about the size of Vedara’s tent, but this shelter was of solid stone—apparently one piece, for Jael could see no block edges. The only light came from fat lamps and a small firepit at the center of the area; there was a door, but it was covered with a leather flap. Her belongings and Tanis’s were nowhere in sight; even their swords and daggers had been taken, although the bracelets containing the translation spells had been left on their wrists. There were no furnishings in the area other than another heap of furs, apparently Tanis’s bed, but Jael realized immediately that the shelter was not without ornamentation—the entire inner stone surface of the structure was deeply engraved with reliefs that might be pictures, runes, or simply ornamental patterns. Jael felt an immediate urge to run her fingers over the carvings.
Tanis handed Jael a cup, and Jael realized she was terribly thirsty; she gulped, then almost spat in amazement as she realized the cup had been filled with plain, cold water, although the water was delightfully clear and sweet.
“What’s happened?” Jael asked when she’d finished the water. The cold liquid refreshed her somewhat, but she still felt weak and sick and oddly empty. Adding to her discomfort was the impatience of the ponies somewhere nearby, far from content with the hard floor of their stalls—
Oh, gods! Jael bolted upright, oblivious to the wave of dizziness the motion caused, and groped in dismay at her throat. The pendant was gone.
“Their healer took it,” Tanis said quietly. “When they took off your furs and saw it, there was a lot of argument. They’d already given me some kind of sleeping potion, so I didn’t understand much of it. I think some of them didn’t want us brought here at all. When they saw you wearing the pendant, though, everyone seemed to get rather angry. That’s about the time I faded out, though. When I woke up, we were here alone. There are guards outside the door, too.”
“Guards?” Jael shook her head and sat up. She’d anticipated possible hostility, but not this; she had supposed they’d either be welcomed or rejected outright, not taken in and then imprisoned.
Tanis nodded.
“A couple of them. I tried to go outside when I woke up. They stopped me. But I’ve looked at your leg, and the gray’s gone. I’d like you to check my side, since I can’t see myself, but I think we were cured.”
“Well, that’s something.” Jael touched her thigh. The wound was certainly less sore.
“I’ll show you something else.” Tanis gestured toward the firepit. “Look at that.”
Jael had to raise her self up a bit higher to see into the firepit, but she gasped when she finally succeeded. There was no fire in the firepit, only a single large rock glowing white hot. Tanis helped Jael slide closer to the firepit, and there she could feel the heat radiating outward from the stone, although she could see nothing heating the rock.
“It’s been like that since I’ve been awake,” Tanis told her. “It must be magic.”
Jael shook her head, feeling none of the tingling she associated with magic.
“Not magic,” she said. “Not any kind I can feel, anyway.” Then she realized that she was feeling no tingling not only from the glowing rock, but from her bracelet. She shook her head and slid it from her wrist, tossing it away with a grimace.
“Ruined,” she said. “Better keep yours away from me or I’ll spoil it, too.”
“Jael!” Tanis’s voice was quiet, but Jael turned immediately to see where he was pointing—the door flap, which was raising.
Instinctively Jael dropped her hand to reach for her sword, scowling as she realized that it was gone. It took her a moment to recognize the figure in the doorway; then she clenched her shaking hands and forced herself to her feet despite her dizzy weakness. She was not going to meet her father on her knees.
Farryn approached her slowly, apparently as much at a loss for words as she. They circled each other cautiously, Jael getting her first good look at the man who had given her life.
Farryn was tall, but not quite as tall as her mother, and slender and wiry in build. His skin was darkly tanned, but his piercing eyes and braided hair were the same bright bronze shade as Jael’s own, and the exotic tilt of his finely sculpted features was very like Jael’s. He wore no jewelry except a pendant exactly resembling the one Jael had formerly worn, but he wore a sword at his hip as well as two daggers.
“Jaellyn,” Farryn said at last, rather hesitantly, and once again Jael was struck by the harshness of his voice. This time, however, she could see its apparent cause—a white scar, likely an old battle wound, crossing the front of his throat.
“Father,” Jael said, just as hesitantly, wincing inwardly. Gods, all she needed to do was faint again to make the ridiculous scene complete! She’d anticipated that Farryn would either welcome her enthusiastically or reject her outright, but she’d never thought of such an awkward, embarrassing meeting. She fought back the instinct to embrace him, elven style; somehow he didn’t seem like the embracing kind.
“You look—fit,” Farryn said at last, giving Jael another head-to-toe scrutiny. Jael started, amazed that she could understand his words without the translation spell; then she realized he was speaking Allanmere’s tongue. “Is your health improved?”
Jael touched her thigh, but felt too shy to pull down her trousers to look.
“I think so,” she said, miserably aware how stiff and formal her voice sounded. “I still feel a little weak and dizzy.”
Farryn nodded.
“That is to be expected,” he said. “You are like us, slow in recovering from such infections.” He glanced at Tanis. “Your companion healed more quickly.”
Jael flushed, suddenly aware that they’d both been ignoring Tanis completely.
“This is Tanis, the truest friend I could ever have,” Jael said, reaching for Tanis’s hand—the hand without the bracelet. “He came all the way from Allanmere with me. Tanis, this is Farryn, my father.”
Farryn nodded gravely to Tanis.
“Your loyalty and courage in bringing Jaellyn so far safely do you honor,” he said. “Have you been made comfortable?”
Tanis squeezed Jael’s hand.
“We’ve been made to feel like prisoners, since you ask,” he said pointedly. “A poor welcome after coming so far.”
“You are not prisoners.” Farryn met Tanis’s gaze directly, his own gaze troubled. “What you were was strangers afflicted with a dangerous disease.”
“And now?” Tanis challenged.
“What you are now has not been decided,” Farryn said evenly. “No one has ever come to us uninvited, and no one has ever been invited.”
“Didn’t you come here uninvited?” Jael asked pointedly. “You and all your people.”
Farryn nodded.
“That is true,” he admitted. “And that was a difficult time for my folk and those who accepted us here. We were years learning to be one people again. So you must be a little patient with a folk as slow to change as the stone they build upon.”
Stone. Jael glanced at the pendant around Farryn’s neck and fought off the urge to reach for the one that no longer hung on her own chest. She pointed to Farryn’s pendant.
“I had one of those,” she said. “It made me—whole. Why was it taken away f
rom me?”
Farryn’s brows drew down, and he glanced at Tanis, then turned back to Jael.
“There are matters we must discuss,” he said. “But I cannot discuss them in front of one not of our kind. Walk with me, and my mate Lidaya will take your friend—Tanis—to our home and give him food, and we will join him there later.”
Mate. A small surge of resentment flared, then died in Jael’s heart. Why shouldn’t Farryn have a mate, other children? It had been twenty years and more since he’d spent a single night with her mother. Donya had taken a husband only a few days later, albeit of political necessity; certainly there was no reason that Farryn should have pined away lonely on the other side of the world!
Still, she didn’t like the idea of leaving Tanis. Tanis, however, squeezed her hand again and then released it.
“I’ll be fine,” he said comfortingly. “And it’s right that you should talk to your—to Farryn alone. Besides, this way I can have my dinner without waiting for you.” He grinned.
Farryn held out his six-fingered hand, his eyes on Jael’s. Jael hesitated, then took his hand. She could not tell which hand, hers or his, was shaking.
Farryn led her to the door flap and raised the leather sheet. Tanis had said there were guards outside, but there were none now, only a leather-clad woman with a stony expression on her face. She scrutinized Jael rather coldly.
“Jaellyn, I make known to you my mate, Lidaya,” Farryn said. “Lidaya, I make known to you”—he hesitated, glancing at Jael—”my firstborn daughter, Jaellyn.”
Lidaya’s eyes narrowed, and her mouth drew into a tight line.
“I greet you, daughter of my mate,” she said shortly, but before Jael could reply, she turned away and ducked through the door flap.
Jael sighed. It wasn’t the first time she’d managed to offend someone without saying a word or doing a thing. It seemed that here, as well as in Allanmere, she was an inconvenient person to have around.
Farryn gazed after Lidaya for a moment, then shook his head and sighed.
“Pay her no mind,” he said. “We’ve been mates for almost three hands of years. It’s hard for her to learn only now that another woman had a place in my heart, for however short a time, and that that woman and not she bore my firstborn.”
Despite the awkward situation, Jael could understand Lidaya’s discomfort. The discovery of Jael’s mixed blood had given her mother a good shock, too, and Jael suspected that despite his easy and unconditional love for her, Argent had been a little shaken by the realization that his firstborn daughter had actually been sired by another man.
“She spoke my language,” Jael realized. “Just as you do. How did you manage that?”
Farryn smiled.
“When I met your mother, I was given a wonderful magical device that let me speak to her and her companions. I brought this device away with me when I returned to my people, and I have it still. When we received word from the plains folk that you were arriving, and who you were, I took the device to our Enlightened Ones. They drank the magic from the device and so learned your language, then used their magic to teach that language to myself, Lidaya, and our children. It was only honorable, to assure you could speak with your own kinfolk.”
Jael shook her head wonderingly and looked around her. The stone building they’d just come from was as dome-shaped on the outside as it was inside, although the outside was bare of the deep carvings Jael had seen within. The building appeared to grow up out of the stone of the mountain itself, as did numerous similar structures clustered about with surprisingly little distance between them. The paths between the buildings were stone, too, worn smooth by long usage. Because of the thick cluster of buildings, Jael could see nothing but gray stone and sky, and she shivered with more than the chill of the air.
Farryn noticed her shivering and removed the fur cloak he was wearing, draping it around her shoulders.
“Forgive me,” he said a little stiffly. “I forget that you are used to warmer lands.”
“It’s not bad,” Jael said, although the thick cloak felt deli-ciously warm. She turned back to Farryn. “You never answered my question. Why was the pendant taken from me? And our weapons?”
Farryn glanced around quickly, as if afraid of being overheard, and laid his hand on Jael’s shoulder, drawing her down one of the paths.
“Your weapons were taken because of your disease,” he said. “The Unformed Ones know how to use weapons, and none of us wanted you armed until we were certain that the Enlightened Ones had cured you completely. With one entirely of our blood, it would never have been in doubt, but—” He glanced at Jael uncomfortably and shrugged. “Your weapons will be returned now that you are well. There were many questions asked when the Enlightened Ones saw you bearing a sword and dagger made by our folk. Among our clans you’d not be permitted to carry them until you’d proven yourself in battle. I recognized the blades, though, as the sword your mother had wielded so bravely and the dagger I gave to the strange and courageous Shadow so many years ago. I told the Enlightened Ones you’d never have been given the blades, nor yet managed to reach us, if you were unworthy.”
Jael said nothing, but another coal of anger fanned into flame in her heart. Unworthy! She’d traveled across half the world, dealt with highwaymen, shifters, dragons, mages, and enchanted forests, and they dared to think she might be unworthy to carry one of their precious blades? Grimly she forced her anger down. The Kresh knew nothing of what she’d gone through to find them. Getting angry at Farryn wouldn’t do any good, anyway.
Farryn had fallen silent, and Jael turned to see him gazing at her rather sadly.
“You’ve said nothing of your mother,” he said at last. “How has Donya fared?”
“My grandfather, Sharl, died while she was in the swamp,” Jael said. “Mother became High Lady as soon as she returned, and married Argent almost immediately.”
“Argent—” Farryn frowned. “Ah, the tall elf who collected the plants.” He sighed. “Is she happy?”
Jael raised her eyebrows.
“With Argent? Yes. As High Lady of Allanmere, she’s miserable, of course.”
“Of course.” Farryn smiled a little. “I can hardly imagine her in robes instead of armor.”
“They have two other children,” Jael continued, glancing sideways at Farryn. “Twins. Markus and Mera are thirteen years old now.”
“Two at one birth,” Farryn marveled. “How wonderful.”
“When a human marries an elf, that’s usually how it works,” Jael told him. “But you still haven’t answered my—”
Farryn held up his hand, sighing again.
“The soul keeper,” he said, touching the pendant that hung around his own neck. “Tell me how you came to have it, and why.”
Farryn listened sympathetically while Jael told him about the soul sickness she’d endured all her life, the many remedies they’d tried, and finally the elven passage ritual that had revealed Jael’s mixed blood and incomplete soul. He nodded thoughtfully when Jael recounted her adventures in the dragon’s nest and her discovery of the pendant.
“And wearing the soul keeper healed that lack within you,” Farryn agreed. “Tell me, didn’t you find yourself changed when you wore the soul keeper?”
“Of course I felt changed,” Jael said impatiently. “I could mold stone, I could control my beast-speaking—”
“No,” Farryn said gently. “Changed in other ways, as if finding yourself a different person than the Jaellyn you knew.”
Jael started to retort sharply; then she remembered her inexplicable impatience with Tanis, her shocking inclination to attack him in the dragons’ hill, her uncharacteristic recklessness while fighting the hatchling, even her unexpectedly aggressive seduction—if it could indeed be called that—of Tanis. She felt herself flushing at the thought.
“Well, wouldn’t suddenly having a whole soul change anybody a little?” Jael protested.
“Jaellyn, these amulets are calle
d ‘soul keepers’ because they indeed hold a soul within them,” Farryn said gently. “And the one you wore healed you because it indeed held a soul within it—but that soul was not yours. It belonged to a warrior killed by the dragons, and that warrior has earned the peace of Adraon’s realm. You can’t heal yourself with a stolen soul. If you had been one of us, and entirely lacking a soul of your own, the soul of the slain warrior might have possessed you utterly.”
Jael shivered. It had never occurred to her that she might well be hosting someone else’s soul in her body. And she’d tumbled Tanis, too, while—Jael gulped. The idea was rather disgusting, now that she thought about it.
“I didn’t know it was somebody else’s soul,” Jael said at last.
“I don’t think I’d have dared touch the thing if I’d known. What will you do with it?”
“The Enlightened Ones will conduct ceremonies to appease the soul for the indignities it has suffered, then destroy the soul keeper to free the imprisoned one,” Farryn told her.
Indignities? Jael had the uncomfortable notion that Farryn wasn’t referring to years spent in a dragon’s nest.
“But what about me?” Jael asked. “I don’t want somebody else’s soul, I just want my own. All of it.”
“I have spoken to the Enlightened Ones on your behalf,” Farryn said slowly. “They are deliberating on the problem. The matter is complicated.”
“What’s complicated?” Jael asked indignantly. “I need a whole soul, and your people are the only ones who can give me one. What’s there to deliberate about? Is it because I’m a half-blood?”
“The purity of your blood is not a concern,” Farryn said, guiding her down another of the narrow alleys between buildings. “There have never before been half-bloods among us, but if Donya could bear my daughter, a daughter who carries the gift of stone, you are near enough to our blood. But you must understand that our children are schooled from birth in the conduct of a Kresh warrior under our laws of honor and are not given their souls until they have proven themselves under that code. The bestowing of a soul is not a light matter, and some of the Englightened Ones feel that you have not been properly prepared, being raised among strangers.”
Dagger's Point (Shadow series) Page 29