Dagger's Point (Shadow series) Read Online Free

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