sirannon

The Sorceress Dahy, Dahy, the Siren, stared down at the strangeness that was her child. “My poor little Sirannon,” she whispered.
<<What will we do with our Sirannon?>> Llareal asked her softly, in that rare mind-to-mind speaking, so as not to wake his daughter. <<Eryri and Llaremach would have her killed, if they knew. What if they come to Gol Agha?>>
<<Sirannon must be raised somewhere safe. We may have to give her to someone going back through the gate. She is not…welcome here.>>
Llareal shuddered his skin, laying his head atop his mate’s in a comforting caress. <<I would not cause you such pain. We must talk to Isllare…Isllare can help us.>>

The red-and-gold Magys Isllare, Llareal’s sister, stared at her niece with one liquid blue eye. “You dare much,” she remarked, her tail lashing. “I can think of only one solution.”
Dahy clutched her child closer to her chest. “What is that, Brenin Magys?” The woman could not forget that Isllare had borne Llareal’s children before he had bonded to Dahy.
The blue eyes turned, sternly, to Dahy. “Timeshifting, Dahyremnon Kalanthe. You and Llareal are equal to the task. It was a tradition, I think, back in Eryri’s world, that human and Anuaer Jump or Timeshift together. Even Eryri cannot reach you there, and Llaremach cannot track you down. My niece will be safest where there are not yet any Anuaeri.”
The human sorceress shivered, but it was Llareal who spoke, the dark blue Anuaer turning his head to lock eyes with Isllare. “Do you have the image for us, Isllare?” he said quietly, shifting uneasily from foot to foot as he stood. “I’ll not lose myself in the Light, thank you.”
Red-and-gold hide shifted, shimmered, in the wan light of the blue fire at Isllare’s hearth. Wordlessly, she gestured through the scentless white smoke that coiled, snakelike, ‘round her, and the pale wisps quickened and colored, arranging themselves at her whim, until an undulating picture slid, real as life, through the air.
Silent, Dahy studied the scene, tawny-pale eyes wide, until it began to waver. Blinking furiously, the human woman shook her head. “When is it safe to go, Brenin Magys? Where is this place?”
The Magys smiled, toothily. “This place? It is here, on Ysgol, thirty years before a Magys ever set foot on it. You may go now. I will wait for your return. Don’t meet yourself coming back, human Magys.”
Llareal drew Dahy and his child into his arms, head bowed over the tops of theirs. “Our thanks, Isllare. Know that we shall think of you, these long years.” His breath was warm on Dahy’s neck, a comforting breeze that ruffled her pale hair. “Envision for me, Dahyremnon,” the lladron whispered, and the sorceress went limp and closed her eyes.
Green….
The world whipped past.
Against blue…
The half-Anuaeri child keen/cried as an ever-paler Dahy cradled her closer.
The unbroken soil…
Turquoise…
Gray…
White…
Green!

Sirannon ran for the pleasure of running, her long, lanky frame swinging over the ground as lightly as a deer. Ravelgrass snagged the hem of her full pants, snatching at the homespun with its frayed ends. The crunch of splintering wood drew her attention, but she surmised that the ancient iyalan had finally come down, and she paid it no head.
She ran on, wondering why she felt as though she should be loping on all fours instead of sprinting lightly across the erosion-smoothed hills of Ysgol. The soft, ceaseless wind that made it over the distant peaks of Gol Agha lifted the long, soft mane that grew down her back, and Sirannon threw her head back to drink in its coolness.
“Sirannon.” Her mother’s soft voice stopped her in her tracks, and she pivoted neatly, fine strands of white hair lashing across her face with the abrupt motion. Beside the tiny, all-but-hairless Dahy stood the uneasily tall Llareal, looming head-and-shoulders above his lifemate.
The heavily-furred Anuaer spoke now, his head bent down so that his gray eyes looked into hers. “It is time to go now, Sirannon. As we’ve told you. Back to our time…”
The half-Anuaer shivered. “Back? Why? Why go back, if all that you have told me is true? You are an outlaw, a lladron, and Mother is outcaste…and what will I be? A freak? A lesser servant? Let us stay here, where it is safe, Father, Mother.”
Llareal reared up to his full, impressive height, eyes flashing. “Is my daughter a coward then, timid and retiring? Is she already an old woman at twenty-one, afraid of change and hardship? We can stay here no longer, Sirannon. Mother—Eryri will be coming through the Portal any time now, and we cannot be here when that happens. We are going back. We did not ask your advice.” The dark blue Anuaer never raised his voice, but there was irritation and the hint of a growl beneath his smooth bass.
Panting, Sirannon looked back at the cwm, the two-room house built into the hill. The door was gone, and the oval entrance had been battered until it was no longer recognizable as ‘made’. The broken kindling of the table and the bed-shelves was covered over with the shredded leather of the body-pillows used for chair and mattress. The spangled blue hair stuffing covered it all like a shroud, misting over the sharp edges and the delicately planed curves.
“We have had little,” Dahy said, her tawny eyes fixed on her daughter. “There is nothing for you to take. I have the clothing with me.” Those haunting eyes turned their pale stare on the pile of wreckage, and, with no more effort than the movement of her lips, the family’s belongings burst into a mushroom-cloud of flame that faded to ash and embers as quickly as it had started. ‘We are going,” she said in a frozen voice, and Sirannon dropped her gaze.
Wordlessly, the half-Anuaer stepped between her parents, her lips white against the terror of the magic that crackled and crawled between Dahy and Llareal. It limned the fine hair on the back of her hands with blue-white energy, and played in her gold-shot white mane.
Blue fire dancing in a draft, clearly framed by the crooked chimney of a cwm, shoved itself before her eyes. A reverse-lit yawn closed around them, flickering light and darkness as they were engulfed by that brilliant maw…space shifted, and time jittered to a halt, then started up again, as regular as a tabor-beat. The flame flared wildly, and then there was an odd feeling of breaking through a skin, as if she had immersed herself full-length in water, very slowly.
She stood in a normal room, and nothing flickered or spun but the shadows across the wall, normal, firelight-shadows across ordinary daub walls. A tall, pale brown-white-and-wheat Anuaer, both larger and sleeker than her father, stared keenly at Sirannon’s face from one corner, while another, young Anuaer who was crimson-black-and-green, was openly astonished, as was the lanky, awkward human male standing beside him.
“Lleill,” spoke the slender brown one, harshly melodic, and Sirannon knew that this was a—a lady Anuaer. “Isllare! Lleill!” The boldly-colored youngster and the human merely peered at the trio as if entranced.
Another Anuaer entered, lithe and regal, colored scarlet-and-gold. She gave the brown lady a long, withering look. “She has never seen human magic before,” the one-in-charge said in a deeper, wilder voice than the brown’s harsh fluting. “Cheia, my brother, lladron Llareal, who I’m sure you’ve heard of, his mate Dahyremnon Kalanthe, and my niece Sirannon Llareanthe. And if you call her a lleill one more time, Cheiameel, you will spend further time in learning of human culture.” She smiled humorlessly at the group, her blue eyes as eerie as Dahy’s tawny ones. “Llareal, Dahy, Sirannon, this is uchel magys Cheiameel, eraill-magys Elystryr and his human partner, Cabal.”
Dislocated, awestruck, and confused, Sirannon could only stare.

“Lleill!” was the cry that followed her everywhere, whether she was halfheartedly trying to learn magic—she had little talent, and as much patience for it—or dancing in her own energetic, acrobatic style at the shared meal. She scandalized the mage-students, and the young Anuaeri visiting from the mainland, coming fresh from Aghren to learn history in the beginnings of the great library of Ysgol.
She had asked to stay at Ysgol with her aunt, after viewing Gol Agha. The winds keened and screamed through the buttes and catacomb-like passes through the worn, worm-eaten mountains, and it was a constant battle to think in the buffeting, battering gales that howled constantly around the cwm. But Sirannon knew now that Gol Agha was more hospitable than the magii’s isle ever would be.
Frustrated beyond reason, she broke into a run over the half-familiar curves of Ysgol’s hills, her boots scrunching on the gravel path until she leaped lightly off of it. She needed to go…had to go…where she was welcome. Where magic was unnecessary, and no one spoke the harsh Anuaeri tongue. Away from the bigots and biases, where anyone was welcome…
The spell came up out of her unconscious like smoke, and the landscape blurred as she ran. She thought that she was going faster than she ever had, for the world had never swirled like this before, not even when her parents had Timeshifted her.
Sand crunched suddenly under her feet.
Heat and light hit her like a blow, a physical thing that took her breath away. And though she’d been running through Ysgol’s heart, she could hear the ocean’s hissing growl as it broke against the shore.
When her tearing eyes finally cleared, she started. A human woman, so small that she barely came up to the 6’11’’ Sirannon’s waist, was examining her with much the same expression as Cabal had. She was standing next to the oddest creature that Sirannon had ever seen—pale violet in color, larger than the burliest Anuaer, and with a single set of wings that were similar to the Lleisiau’s.
<<Before you go and do anything rash,>> a cool, soundless voice commented, <<I think that you should take into account that, despite your precipitous arrival, you appear to be a sterling choice of Candidate for my children. What are you, anyway?>>
Blinking frantically, Sirannon backed up a pace. “A halfblood,” she murmured. “Anuaeri and human.”
<<Anuaeri?>> the violet creature repeated, slowly, disbelievingly. << Anuaer. An uaer. A wher. You’re of /watchwher/ stock?>>
She snarled. “Then you are one of those condescending ‘dragons’ that my father has told me tales of? Those for whose sake my people lived like chattel, before they came to Cysegr?”
The woman held up a placating hand, her face unreadable. “That’s prejudice, Hiraeth, and there will be none of that here. Your Search stands, and Stands, indeed. What does it matter, if you know she’s a good Candidate.”
Sirannon had read her histories. “You want me,” she said, in tones of profound horror, “to Stand to Impress /dragons/? As if I were a human?”
Cool, mismatched eyes did not blink. “It is the quickest way to solve a bloodfeud that I know,” the woman said dryly. “I’ll not tell you how to get back until those eggs are hatched, no matter what either of you say. Hiraeth, you’re forbidden to take her home.” The human’s gaze bored through her. “Pelar Protectorate will not be shamed in its first Hatching.”