“Then the hall would be full of a thousand books and scrolls we’d have to look through instead,” Tanis said good-naturedly. “Anyway, Jaellyn, it could be a lot worse. Think what we’d have here if you had become a thief. We’d likely have a thousand purses to empty instead.”
Jael had to laugh at that, and she wiped her eyes.
“All right, all right,” she chuckled. “But shuffling through all this stuff makes me wish I’d lived a simpler life.”
“No firstborn daughter of a High Lord and Lady lives a simple life,” Tanis agreed. “But it makes me wonder how much farther this can go on. After all, it’s not as if you’re centuries old like an elf. You’re only two decades and a bit. Want to see if there’s an end?”
“All right,” Jael said eagerly. Then she hesitated. “But what if the hallway disappears behind us like the door did? We might pass up my soul and never be able to get back to find it.”
“Well, we’ll walk down the hall slowly and watch the shelves,” Tanis said after a moment’s thought. “If the beginning of the shelves starts to disappear, we’ll know we mustn’t go any farther. You examined all the stuff at the beginning pretty closely, anyway.”
“That sounds good,’ Jael agreed after considering the suggestion. “Let’s go, then.”
They walked slowly down the hall, Tanis facing ahead and Jael watching the beginning of the hall. To her relief, the hall remained the same behind them.
“How much farther can this go?” Jael wondered after they’d walked for several moments. “I mean, as you said, I am only a little over two decades.”
“Not much farther,” Tanis said. “I can see something across the hall just a little ahead. It’s awfully dark there, though.”
Jael turned to look. Her keener vision saw movement ahead of her, and instantly her sword was in her hand; a moment later, however, she sheathed her sword and sighed irritably. She’d seen nothing more harmful than her own reflection in a mirror, and she told Tanis as much.
“There’s more than one,” Tanis said wonderingly. “Look, there’s one across the end, but I can see light glancing off mirrors on the sides, too.”
As they approached, Jael could see that there were, in fact, four mirrors, two on one wall, one across the hall, and one on the opposite wall.
“But why mirrors?” Jael asked slowly, stopping just a little before she reached them. Her reflection gazed back just as puz-zledly.
“I don’t—” Tanis fell silent, reaching out to touch the glass of the mirror at the end of the hall. “Jael, look at your reflection. Don’t you think there’s anything strange about it?”
Jael stared at the mirror. She could see nothing strange there. She waved one hand; the reflection waved back.
“No, it looks—” Jael stopped, gasping. Tanis stood between her and the mirror, a little to one side, but there was no sign of his reflection in the glass. Tanis stepped completely in front of her, and Jael shivered; leaning to glance around his shoulder, she could see her own unobstructed reflection standing alone in the mirror, eyes wide and wondering.
“Come here,” Tanis said, beckoning. “Let’s see what happens with the other mirrors. I can’t see my reflection in any of them, either.”
A little fearfully, Jael stepped forward to join Tanis in front of the mirrors. This time he echoed her gasp, and she reached for his hand, clutching it hard in her excitement and fear.
Jael’s reflection was there in the mirror facing her, but it was no reflection of Jael as she had ever seen herself. Her reflection stood tall, taller than Tanis, her limbs strongly muscled instead of wiry and too thin and knobby at the joints. Straight black hair hung over her shoulders instead of her bronze curls, and her skin was the plain brown of her mother’s skin after a warm summer with plenty of sword practice in the yard. Gone were the upswept pointed tips of Jael’s ears, and her eyes, no longer exotically tilted, were a simple warm brown. The bones of her face were stronger, like Donya’s.
Silently, Jael raised one hand. The reflection echoed her movement. Jael numbly reached for the mirror, then snatched her hand back instinctively. Frankly, the thing frightened her.
“If you were all human, you’d look like that, I suppose,” Tanis said quietly. “But look at this one.”
Jael glanced into the adjacent mirror. In this reflection Jael was not taller; indeed, she was slightly shorter, more delicately built, her skin slightly paler. Her pointed ears remained, as did her delicate features, but her eyes were the brilliant green of new leaves, and her hair had faded to a pale cascade almost as light as Argent’s silver-white locks.
“Look behind you,” Tanis whispered, and slowly, fearfully, Jael turned, staring at the image that faced her.
For a moment Jael thought this mirror was simply like the one at the end of the hall, a plain mirror reflecting her as she was, for she seemed outwardly unchanged. When she raised her hand, however, she gasped as the reflection’s hand waved six fingers, not five, back at her. As she studied the reflection further, she realized that the points of her ears had once again vanished, and there was a subtle change in the cast of her face that made her seem alien. Quickly she turned away, almost dizzied by the revelation. It was comforting to look into the end mirror and see herself once again as she was.
“What are these?” Jael wondered uncomfortably.
“Faces of yourself,” Tanis guessed. “You’re elf, human, and Kresh by blood. Maybe they represent the parts of your soul.”
“Then this must be it,” Jael said, shivering as she turned again to her Kresh reflection. “The missing part of my soul must be this mirror. I already have the elven and human parts. But how can I fit all that in this box?”
“Jaellyn—” Tanis’s voice was uncertain. “Look at it. Are you certain? It just doesn’t seem like—like you, somehow.”
Jael stepped close to the mirror, staring at her reflection. The strange set of her face seemed wrong, making Jael a stranger to herself. The hands, too, seemed too wide, awkwardly bristling with their extra fingers.
Of course it does, Jael thought impatiently. I’ve grown up looking at elves and humans. I’ve never seen anyone who looked like that until I met Farryn and the others here. Of course that looks strange to me. And isn’t that part of my soul a stranger to me, too?
But was it? When she’d taken the dreaming potion at her el-ven passage ceremony, she hadn’t found a stranger within herself. When she’d drunk the Bluebright, it had made her whole, and she’d been relieved that it hadn’t changed her, that she’d felt more herself than ever. How could her own soul seem strange and unfamiliar to her?
“No,” she said slowly. “You’re right. This isn’t my soul. These are—choices, I think. Aunt Shadow and I used to joke about my sore feet, trying to balance on the dagger’s edge between elf and human. It always seemed like it would be more comfortable to be just one thing or the other, to really know who and what I am. That’s what these mirrors are, the three sides of myself, if I could choose to be just one thing.”
“But why do you want that?” Tanis asked her gently, laying his hands on her shoulders. “You have the beast-speaking gift of your elven blood, the stone molding of the Kresh, and from your human blood—” He hesitated, raising his eyebrows.
“The mage-gift,” Jael said slowly. “Grandma Celene once told me I had magery in me. That’s why I bend magic the way I do. And that’s been a gift, too, sometimes, hasn’t it?”
“Don’t ask me,” Tanis said softly. “I’ve always thought you were just about right, just as you are.”
Jael turned to face him.
“Really?” she asked wryly. “Even when I trip over my own feet and shatter light globes and don’t want to tumble with you?”
“Even when you melt holes in cave walls and sense dragons coming and dissolve hinder-spells,” Tanis said firmly. “Besides, those globes you shattered in Zaravelle gave me the best haul of purses I’ve ever taken.” He turned Jael gently around so she faced the mirro
r at the end of the hall. “Why take only one part when you’ve got them all?”
“You’re right,” Jael said, her heart suddenly light. “You’re right.” She raised her voice, almost shouting. “By the gods, I want it all, and I won’t be tricked into settling for less!” She smiled at her reflection in the mirror, reaching out to touch the glass.
For the briefest of moments, Jael thought she touched not cold glass, but warm flesh; then the mirror shattered into a thousand pieces, brilliant shards cascading to the floor. Where the mirror had been was a plain wooden door, very slightly ajar.
Jael grinned, bending to pick up a bright shard of the mirror. She laid it gently inside the box in her hand, closing the lid firmly, and turned to Tanis.
“Ready to go home?” she asked.
Tanis took her hand, grinning back.
“Very, very ready,” he said. He glanced back at the long hallway behind them. “But are you sure you don’t want a souvenir?”
Jael groaned in mock agony, and, clutching Tanis’s hand and the box tightly, stepped through the door.
Jael blinked, momentarily dazzled by the bright light around her. She stood in the large room in the temple, still clutching Tanis’s hand so tightly that her fingers ached. Seana, Cadeta, and Ronan were exactly where she’d left them, but now Lainan stood at the edge of the platform, and Farryn was there, too, his face drawn in a scowl.
“When I found you gone from your house, I knew where you’d be,” he said, shaking his head. “I ran all the way down the path. Jaellyn, how could you take such a risk?”
Jael glanced down. The box had vanished from her hand, but in its place was a soul keeper, sparkling and new. Jael turned and smiled at Tanis, hanging the chain over her head. Tanis smiled back, winking at her.
“How could we not?” Tanis answered for her, releasing Jael’s hand and laying his arm around her shoulders.
Seana stepped in front of them, facing Tanis.
“What you did is forbidden,” she said severely. “If Adraon had punished you for your impertinence, you’d have earned it.”
Tanis grinned and half-bowed.
“Lady, any man who’s spent as many hours as I have sorting pebbles and smelling old baby rags has been punished enough,” he chuckled. “I think Jaellyn and I both got exactly what we deserved. And if your god’s angry with me, all the more reason to start home.” He raised an eyebrow at Jael.
Seana frowned.
“You should stay here among us now,” she said to Jael. “You’ve missed many years of learning already.”
Jael exchanged another look with Tanis, then shook her head.
“I’ll stay for a while,” she said. “I’d like to get to know my kin here, and Lainan and I owe each other a few sword lessons. I’d especially like to learn that trick with the rocks in the firepits. But then I think it’s time to go home. I’ve got another set of lessons ahead of me, from Grandma Celene, maybe. And I’ve got a book to deliver, too.” She grimaced. “And likely a good long lecture from my mother about sneaking away in the middle of the night.”
“I remember the lands to the east, when we traveled west from the great mountains,” Ronan said. “We could fashion a Gate to take you near to your own land so that you need not pass the Singing Forest and the other dangers again.”
Dragons, mages, skinshifters, rivers, highwaymen—
Jael glanced down at the dragon bracelet encircling her arm. She looked soberly at Tanis and saw him touch his side where the scars from the shifter attack were. Tanis met her eyes, and his own eyes twinkled.
“It’s a kindly offer,” Tanis said at last. “But, do you know, I believe when the time comes we’ll take the long way home.”
They walked from the temple, following Lainan and Farryn, and Tanis sighed happily.
“I suppose this means,” he said, “that I won’t have a single tunic left whole by the time we reach home.”
Jael blushed, grinning.
“Then take if off faster,” she said, “or learn to sew.”
The huge door opened soundlessly at Farryn’s touch, and this time Jael echoed her father’s sigh. It had been sweet to feel herself surrounded by stone, safe and secure, but it was good to breathe the fresh air and see the sun, and to smell the green growing things in the valley. She’d missed that smell in the mountains. No doubt of it; Farryn would just have to find them a hut in the valley as long as they were here.
“So that’s it, then?” Tanis asked her, smiling. “One whole soul of your very own?”
Jael bent and picked up a pebble. In her cupped hands it melted into a perfect sphere, then a cube. She handed it to Farryn.
“One whole soul,” she said. “Of my very own.”
“No more sore feet, then,” Tanis chuckled, taking her hand again.
Jael shrugged.
“Who knows?” she said. “I’m still me, elf and human and Kresh. Maybe I’ll teeter on the dagger’s edge all my life. Gods, maybe we all do.”
She smiled.
“But do you know, Tanis, I think my balance is up to it.”
About the Author
Anne Logston was born February 15, 1962 in Indianapolis, Indiana and grew up there and in the country in southern Indiana. She started to write fiction as soon as she could put intelligible words on paper. She quickly learned to type so she could put intelligible and LEGIBLE words on paper. Anne graduated from the University of Indianapolis in 1984 with an Associate’s degree in computer sciences, for which she had no talent, and a Bachelor of Arts degree in English literature, for which she had no practical use.
After college, Anne spent six years masquerading by day as a bad-tempered but sane legal secretary, then coming home at night to assume her secret identity as a bad-tempered and mildly demented writer. After significant bootsole-to-buttocks encouragement from her best friend, Mary Bischoff, she reluctantly sent off her first manuscript and was blessed with a remarkably short search for a publisher. Her first novel, Shadow, saw print in 1991, and two years later she abandoned my “normal” life and descended completely into fantasy.
Anne has a remarkably patient husband, Paul, who supplies the sanity in their marriage. Together they are owned by three cats, two dogs, and one snake. In her infrequent leisure time, she likes to grow and/or cook strange and spicy things, and is an avid collector of anything about vampires.
Table of Contents
Title page
Dagger's Point (Shadow series) Page 33
