Sharon Shinn - Reader And Raelynx

Ellynor was trying not to smile. “All right.”

“Oh, I was wrong,” Kirra said. “That doesn’t sound fun at all.”

Ellynor disappeared through the gate, though she left it standing wide behind her. “We shouldn’t watch her entry point,” Jerril said. “After all, if she were to come upon us unawares on the street, we would have no idea which direction she would be approaching from.”

Cammon obligingly turned his back to the gate but said, “I have a feeling it won’t matter.” Donnal, who had also faced the other direction, thumped his tail against the ground.

“Should we try to distract them, you think?” Kirra asked. “Tell jokes, sing bawdy songs?”

“I don’t know any bawdy songs,” Senneth said.

“Oh, I know plenty.” Kirra lifted her voice and proceeded to offer what sounded like a sailor’s ditty. “I knew five girls in Fortunalt / Lived by the sea and loved the salt. / One had bosoms flat and thin / Throw her in the water, she couldn’t swim-”

“Why are they always about women, these bawdy songs?” Senneth asked. “Why aren’t there awful little melodies about men?”

“Wait. Give me a minute,” Kirra said. “I knew five men from Forten City / Three were dumb and one was pretty. / One said, ‘Girl, won’t you give me a lick? / I’ve sprinkled saltwater on-’ ”

Senneth slapped her hand over Kirra’s mouth. “Just when I think it’s safe to introduce you to my friends-”

Jerril, of course, was not offended. “She’s a serramarra?” he asked. When Cammon nodded, he added, “She doesn’t exhibit the behavior I would expect from the aristocracy.”

“Kirra never really does what anybody expects,” Cammon replied.

“She has a lot of power, though,” Jerril said. “I can sense it. Full of a wild magic.”

“ ‘Wild’ about covers it,” Cammon agreed.

“But I’m having a hard time getting any sense of Ellynor,” Jerril added.

“You can when she’s in a room with Justin,” Cammon said with a grin. “But when Justin’s not around-” He shook his head. “She might as well not exist. I can’t feel her at all.”

“No,” Jerril said. “I can’t even tell if she’s entered the garden yet. I feel certain she has, and yet I cannot pick up any telltale traces of her.”

Cammon nudged Donnal with his foot. “Can you scent her?” he asked. Donnal lifted his black nose and sniffed the air, then quirked his ears back. Nothing. “Maybe she’s still outside the gate. Maybe she just walked away.”

And then it was as if there was a rent in the air-as if the sky itself blinked-and Ellynor was standing right before them. Jerril was so surprised he took a step backward. Donnal yelped and scrambled to his feet, then frisked around her knees, snuffling at her skirt.

“Now that was entertaining,” Kirra called out.

Cammon was smiling and shaking his head. “How do you do that? I’m looking for you, and I can’t tell you’re there.”

She was smiling, pleased with herself. She bent down to stroke Donnal’s head. “I used to be able to conceal myself only at night. But now I’ve found that the magic works in daylight, too.” She shrugged. “I don’t know why.”

Cammon glanced at Jerril. “And I have no idea how to countermand her magic,” he said. “How can we even practice?”

Jerril looked intrigued. “This will take some experimentation,” he said. “Ellynor, will you indulge us? Can you assume your cloaks as we’re standing here watching you?”

She tilted her head to one side. Her long dark hair was braided and wrapped around her head, but here and there Cammon could see the blonder markings of her clan pattern dyed into the black. She looked very neat and compact and serious. “I think so.”

“Cammon, focus on her,” Jerril directed. “Ellynor-disappear.”

Before their very eyes, Ellynor seemed to drop into a well of shadows, which smoothed away and left only ordinary sunlight behind.

“ I want to do that,” Senneth exclaimed. “Next time I’m invited to dinner at the king’s table.”

Cammon was staring at the place where she’d been but was completely unable to tell if she was still there. Donnal, however, had grown alert. His pointed nose swung in a slow circle as if he tracked a particularly tasty piece of game.

“Donnal, can you find her?” Jerril asked in a quiet voice. “Show us.”

Donnal bounded forward and made a low leap, and suddenly he and Ellynor were tussling on the ground. Ellynor was laughing as she tried to dodge his tongue. “That’s not fair! I can’t outrun him.” She pushed Donnal aside and rose gracefully to her feet. “I thought the dog might be more difficult to trick than the mystic.”

“But we want Donnal to be able to pick you out even when he doesn’t know where you are,” Jerril said.

“I can’t pick her out even when I do,” Cammon said gloomily.

“Concentrate on the spaces around her,” Jerril suggested. “When she takes a step, she disturbs the shrubs, the vines-the birds, the squirrels. See if you can sense the disruption she causes in the world, if you can’t sense her.”

Cammon widened his eyes. “That’s awfully subtle.”

Jerril smiled. “It’s a delicate magic.”

They spent the next two hours hunting for Ellynor. Donnal experienced significantly more success than Cammon did, and even he could only find her three times out of seven. Jerril had Ellynor increase her magic by stages, gradually becoming less and less perceptible to the others, and that was a fascinating exercise. Like lifting weights that were successively heavier, Cammon thought. The last round had been possible, so surely the next one should be as well-but there was a point at which he could discern her, and a point at which he could not, and not all his straining changed that.

All of them were exhausted by the end of two hours of effort. Well, not Senneth and Kirra-they had stayed comfortable and lazy against the wall, calling out derision or encouragement as the mood took them.

Jerril finally said, “I think we’ve had enough for the day. I’ll come back tomorrow and the day after that, and we’ll work on this some more.”

“I want to try one more thing,” Cammon said, and he pulled Ellynor over to whisper in her ear. Three minutes later, the Lirren girl had crept invisibly over to the wall and dumped a canteen of water on the other two women.

Kirra shrieked and melted into lioness shape, leaping straight through the dead shrubbery for Cammon. He ran, of course, but she caught him in three steps, and they tumbled on the ground together until she stilled him completely by standing with her great golden paws heavy on his chest. She stared down at him with liquid blue eyes-Kirra’s eyes even in the cat’s shape, or maybe it was just that Cammon still saw her as Kirra-and yowled in triumph.

“Bite him!” Senneth was shouting. “Have him for dinner!” But, instead, Kirra just dropped her head and ran her rough tongue across his face, practically lifting off his skin. Then she jumped down and loped to Donnal’s side.

Jerril helped Cammon up. “She is impressive,” he said. “One hears stories about Kirra Danalustrous, but to see her up close like that-well.”

Cammon brushed off his clothes and grinned. “No one quite like her.”

Jerril’s eyes wandered thoughtfully over the whole group: Senneth still lounging on the ground, Ellynor now corporeal and kneeling beside her, Kirra and Donnal chasing each other across the width of the garden and back. “It’s quite a group of friends you’ve gathered,” the older man said. “With an astonishing array of powers.”

“Senneth gathered us,” Cammon said. “And Justin and Tayse.”