Barrenlands (The Changespell Saga)

by Doranna Durgin

  "You never mind, son," Ehren told him, steadying the horse with the pressure of his thighs while he stuffed the hand-bound journal back in its satchel. He tucked it securely in the back of the wagon as he rode past, threading Shaffron through the narrow space between Laine's wagon and the rock of mountain rising to their right.

  There he found Laine and Shette staring at a twisted corpse.

  "Interesting," Ehren said, thinking it was far more than that.

  Shette looked up at him, her nose wrinkled as she backed away. "I'm going to get Ansgare."

  Laine crouched by the body, not touching it but holding his ground. The man's rigid arms warded his face, his features contorted with fear. His eyes were dully glazed, and a clump of fly eggs rested in the corner of his open mouth.

  There wasn't a single visible mark on his body.

  When Laine looked up, his expression held invitation— a hope, perhaps, that Ehren had seen just such a thing before and could explain it. "Magic, I suppose," he guessed, "but I don't know just what."

  "I'd say he's lucky to have made it this far." Ehren swung off Shaffron and left one rein dangling on the ground. Shaffron rolled a rattly snort through his nose; Ehren gave the gelding a hard look and a low reminder. "Stay put, monster bait."

  Laine stared at the corpse with a distant expression, tipping his head to close first his dark, dark blue eye, and then the one that might as well have been black. Ehren moved his hand to the hilt of his sword, his stance turning wary.

  But when Laine pulled his attention back to the here and now, he shook his head. "Just a faint trace left over— but it doesn't taste like the magic I've felt over the past two years. These are serious spells. Deadly ones."

  Ehren heard Shette and Ansgare behind him, coming around Laine's wagon on foot. "Found us some more trouble, ey?" Ansgare said, his voice a sour note.

  Laine's mouth quirked in a wry grin. "That's what you pay me for."

  "Maybe I need to pay you less, then." Ansgare moved up to the body, leaving Shette to hang back and make faces. He stared soberly a moment. "This may be it for us, Laine. It's not that I don't trust you to detect the spells before we trip them, but there's going to come a point where we can't handle what you find."

  Laine sat back on the rocky trail, one arm propped over his knee and the other hand raking his hair back, his expression distinctly unhappy. "Things have changed," he agreed. "The spells have changed. I think someone wants us out of here, Ansgare."

  "This man was a fool to try the road on his own," Ehren said. "Ask someone who knows."

  Laine gave him a quick grin, but then shook his head. "You weren't here last year, Ehren, or the year before. The spells were old and weak. A wagon couldn't have evaded them, but someone on foot or horseback? Even if you triggered them, you had a chance to get out of the way."

  "He's right," Ansgare said. "You might lose livestock, you might lose goods— you might even lose a limb. But such efficient death..." He shook his head. "No. This is new."

  "You might want to come look at this fellow from over here." Laine looked at Ehren, head cocked at the body. "This looks like a Lorakan device." He pointed at the folded shirt by the man's collarbone.

  Ehren leaning over to straighten the shirt. A Lorakan badge. This one, Ehren had seen before— and in Kurtane. Responsible only to the highest levels of the Lorakan government, those who wore this badge were investigators of a sort. And sometimes, instigators of a sort. Ehren had never trusted them, never taken them at face value. They always had two plots behind their backs for every one they revealed— and they were far too good at bluffing in court games.

  "Well?" Ansgare said.

  "Not your average traveler." Ignoring the body's stiff limbs, Ehren unfastened the badge and handed it to Laine, and then rifled through the dead man's clothes— patting him down for the crackle of paper, the solidity of a leather wallet.

  Nothing— except a variety of disgusted noises from Shette. But the inner calves of the man's riding boots were stiff and grimy— he'd been ahorse, all right. If he'd been carrying orders, they must have gone with the horse. Ehren straightened and stretched his back. "That's as much as we're going to get from this one. Let's get this body covered."

  For a moment Ansgare looked like he was going to protest the loss of time, but he must have thought better of it; he left without comment, and when he returned, he brought Machara and her men. They were enough to make the job a quick one.

  When they broke apart, preparing to start the caravan moving again, Machara put her hand on Laine's arm. "Be careful," she said. "For all of us."

  ~~~~~~~~~~

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Laine made a strangled noise of alarm and ducked away from the quick flash of metal.

  "Relax," Ehren said.

  Laine responded with an incredulous snort. Relax? With Ehren's blade flashing before his face?

  Parry from first, draw back his blade, use some elusive, subtle motion to clear the point of Ehren's blade and guard, and go in at his head? It seemed simple enough when Ehren showed him, slowly and carefully. But when Laine actually tried to perform it...

  He stepped back. "I don't get it, I guess."

  "No, you've got a good start," Ehren said, lowering his blade. "The whole idea of this exercise is to perform it with a relaxed shoulder. Tense up, and you've got a wild blade. Easy enough to parry that."

  "I don't think you're going to get a good soldier out of me," Laine said ruefully, looking at his sword. It was a new one, rustled out of the returning caravan goods. Longer, infinitely plainer, it had a slight sweep in the blade, a leather-wrapped grip, and short, wide quillons. It was heavier than his first sword, too, and better balanced.

  "I never thought I would," Ehren said. "But if you're going to carry that blade, you need to be able to use it with some familiarity. You need automatic reactions— and you need to be able to handle it without stiffening up. When you can do this exercise, you'll be on your way."

  Laine looked at Ehren, trying to see through the training mask he wore, to read the expression beyond. "Maybe I shouldn't carry it."

  "That's an option," Ehren said. "But... all things considered, I think it's best to be flexible. You can know how to use it, and choose not to carry it. It doesn't work as well the other way around." He tapped Laine's training mask with the tip of his sword; it was a measure of Laine's growing respect for Ehren's skill that he didn't flinch this time. "I wouldn't have borrowed these from the border station if I thought it was a bad idea."

  A rock skipped down the slope beside them; Laine glanced up to see Shette climbing down the steep trail from the small, deep lake just up the hill.

  Laine pulled the training mask over his head, drinking in the breeze of the narrow valley. It made the hot afternoon as pleasant as any summer day would get. They'd stopped the caravan earlier than usual, for they always put up for the night here in preparation for the rough spot ahead. Earlier, Laine had scouted the lake and declared it free of magic, but it might do to repeat the sweep. He glanced at Ehren— Are we done?— and Ehren sheathed his sword by way of response. Laine struggled out of the brigandine and set it next to the wagon along with his sheathed sword, happy enough to walk bare-chested to the lake.

  The steep, rocky lake trail edged along the hillside and over the crest, dumping him out at the edge of the lake. It was a barren little thing, contained by rock and edged by nothing more than scraggly grasses— but it was spring-fed and wonderfully cool. He walked in and ducked under before emerging to walk the perimeter, spiraling outward to catch any sign of dangerous magic.

  Nothing. Once he might have felt vaguely bored; now he was only relieved as he headed back down the path, stopping halfway down the rise to watch over their tranquil camp. The mules were tied in front of the wagon; Ehren's horses and Nell were behind. The boys, Ehren called them, although that certainly wasn't how Laine thought of them, not after Ricasso had gone after first himself and then Shette.

  Beside t
he wagon, Ehren seemed to be showing Shette how to throw a good punch, and spent some time demonstrating how she should hold her hand and fingers. He folded her fingers and removed her thumb from beneath them; as Ehren held up his hand and had Shette punch it, Laine wondered how much Shette wanted to learn and how much was an excuse to be with Ehren.

  Equal parts. And no doubt those newly enhanced punches would be aimed his way. After a few hits, Ehren nodded, said something that made her blush, and glanced up at Laine.

  Probably knew I was here all along. Laine descended to the wagon and dripped on the ground next to them. "All clear," he announced, unnecessarily. "How about it, Ehren, should she train for the Guard?"

  "No more than you should," Ehren told him, and gave Shette a grin.

  "Ha," she said to Laine. Then, without preamble, she asked Ehren, "Why do you always wear that feather?" She put a quick hand over her mouth. "I meant for that to sound better."

  Ehren only smiled at her. "It's an honor feather. Awarded by consensus of the King's Guard."

  "If you got too many of them, you'd look like a goose," Shette said, and then reddened a shade brighter. "I mean..."

  He smiled. "Only the one feather. It's spelled; it won't break. After that they give out the beads. Different colors and numbers, different ranks of honor."

  Laine'd noticed those beads, several strings of them attached to the feather, mostly hidden in Ehren's hair. Despite himself, Laine was impressed. But then, since the bandits' hideout, there'd never been any question in his mind that Ehren's life had been very different from his own.

  Very different indeed.

  "Do you know this area pretty well?" Ehren asked him without preamble.

  "Depends on what you mean by this area," Laine said, suddenly wary and not even sure why. The honor feather…the reminder of who Ehren was. More than just an amiable protector teaching Shette how to punch and Laine how to pick up a sword.

  "The route." Ehren gestured ahead and behind the wagon. "The territory around it."

  "The route itself, yes. The surrounding areas— well, we saw a lot of it when we originally scouted. But I haven't seen much of it recently, if you were looking for a guide."

  "Not a guide," Ehren said, and hesitated, his thoughts going deeper. Shette met Laine's gaze and raised her eyebrows in question, but he only shrugged.

  Ehren took a sudden breath, glancing back at their wagon. "Hetna seemed to think the smuggling was linked to a pass she found described in pre-Barrenlands records... its east end is a cavern, and would be near the Solvany-Therand border now in the Barrenlands. A wizard— a good one— could get to it." His expression grew momentarily dark. "That's what it all comes down to— wizards. Wizards causing trouble in Loraka…a pass only wizards can negotiate. And Hetna could only have found out about Coirra's curse on the T'ieran by poking into a wizard's business…but her intent had been to poke into the smuggling. The information must have been in the same place." He added, his tone dark, "Wizards."

  Laine half expected to hear Varien's name. But then, Varien could hardly be gallivanting around the pass with so many court duties to attend.

  Ehren shook his head, looking off over the ridge for a long moment; when he looked back, he seemed to have moved on. "I wondered if you'd seen any sign of such a thing. You've had more access to this area than anyone else since the inception of the Barrenlands."

  Laine hid his surprise— or thought he had. Ehren— always the one to take action, always thinking behind dark grey eyes. Certainly never waiting for help of any sort, as he waited now. And Laine found himself wanting to provide the answers— the moments from his Dreams, the knowledge that his parents had fled Solvany and Therand and reached the folded southern mountains of Loraka somehow...

  And then he looked at Ehren and shook his head.

  Maybe his parents knew the pass, maybe not. But that was private. The Dreams had shown him two people meeting, two people loving…two people struggling to find a place they could live in peace. Now that they had it, Laine would do nothing to disturb it.

  "I've never seen any signs of a pass," he said truthfully. "There's no break in the mountains anywhere along here."

  Ehren gave him a rueful grin. "I didn't think it would be that easy," he said. "I'll just keep working on it."

  And that, Laine suddenly realized, was what he was afraid of.

  ~~~~~

  Ehren rode bareback on Ricasso, watching Laine move shift with the movement of Nell's sturdy round back, his legs absurdly long against the mare's barrel. It was too hot today for saddles, though Ehren might have wished for a blanket between himself and Ricasso's sweaty back.

  Shette rode in the wagon, not feeling well and not talking about it. Laine, tired and footsore after almost an entire day of walking on rocks, had appropriated the little mare.

  Laine had called this the roughest leg of the route. The wagons lurched over rocky ground, perpetually tilted down on the left as they traveled the least-sloped part of a valley so narrow it didn't even hesitate at the bottom before heading back up the opposite mountain ridge. To their right, the main ridge no longer looked even faintly hospitable. It loomed over them with shale and chunks of layered rock; at their passage, loose rock skittered down the hill to clog the trickle of the creek winding through the bottom.

  Not a friendly place at all.

  But they were almost through it; Laine had said as much just moments earlier. And that thanks to the currents of the place, it was seldom an area that held any hint of magic. Just as well. It would be Hells trying to handle a tricky situation in this terrain.

  But Nell stopped short in front of him anyway. When Ehren moved up, he discovered Laine had that look, his head slightly cocked as though listening instead of looking. One eye closed, he scanned the area around them— while behind them, an assortment of equine snorts and shouted commands indicated the entire caravan was coming to a halt.

  "Something?" Ehren asked, suddenly realizing he'd come to take Laine's Sight as seriously as he would take a warning from one of his own Guards.

  "As strong as I've ever felt it," Laine said, still looking puzzled. "But I can't See it." He looked back at Shette, who'd come off the wagon to stand by Spike's head.

  "What?" she called to him.

  "I'm not sure. Stay put— and holler back to get Machara up here."

  She nodded, a wary expression in place— apparently just as cognizant as Ehren and Laine that this was a bad place for trouble. As she passed Laine's request back down the wagon line, Ehren felt Ricasso's impatience beneath him. Even the horse knew something was up.

  Nell moved out at a slow walk. Ehren checked Ricasso until the horse accepted the pace— and then, while Laine moved ahead with that not-quite-there look on his face, Ehren inspected the foreboding landscape, watching for things more mundane... things that his more limited sight could perceive.

  Rock trickled down the slope, joining the sound of shod hooves on stone and the occasional impatient huff from Ricasso. Laine stopped again, glancing back; his sad-dog eyes narrowed in a baffled frown. "It's so strong," he said. "But there's nothing..."

  But Ehren had seen what they needed to know. "There is," he said, his voice low. "Look with your normal sight, Laine. There, just underneath that overhang."

  It was a man, crouched at the edge of the overhang and squinting uphill.

  "What—" Laine started, his voice at almost full strength. He cut himself short and said, more quietly, "What in the Guides' eyes is he doing?"

  "Casting a spell, unless I'm mistaken," Ehren said, frustrated by the distance between them— too far away to make out the details of clothing, hairstyle, or weaponry. The wizard was nothing more than a man-shaped figure.

  A figure who abruptly looked their way, starting in alarm.

  "It was bound to happen." Ehren closed his legs around Ricasso. The horse surged forward, his big hooves scrabbling slightly on the uneven footing; he finally found his balance and moved out in a powerful canter.<
br />
  The wizard didn't hesitate an instant. He whirled back to his spell casting, waved a complicated gesture, and ran back under the overhang. As Ehren closed on the spot, he saw the flick of a tail beyond it— but Ehren was willing to bet he had the better horse. He urged Ricasso forward.

  But Ricasso— he who took great heart from such a chase— suddenly slowed, his steps turning high and prancing. And there came a rumble in the air, reverberating deeply inside Ehren's chest until he coughed in response.

  What the Hells?

  A stone pinged off his thigh and another off Ricasso's neck, and above the growing noise he heard Laine's shout of warning. "Run, Ehren!"

  As a larger rock bounced off his shoulder and drew blood, Ehren suddenly understood the rest of Laine's garbled words. He spelled an avalanche! A quick glance behind showed Laine galloping back to the wagon, where Shette frantically pushed at the alarmed and uncooperative mules.

  An avalanche, and he was directly in its path.

  Ehren gathered the reins and slapped them across Ricasso's rump, across the lathering flesh of a horse so willing he'd never felt that sting before. Ricasso's abrupt burst of speed nearly unseated Ehren, and then the horse raced flat out across the uneven path, stumbling and slipping and running ever faster each time another rock hit his sweat-dark coat. When they reached the overhang, Ehren ducked, throwing himself down beside the bay's neck. He clutched desperately at the black mane; his legs slipped against Ricasso's wet hide as rock scraped along his shoulder and dug into his thigh.

  It would have been better to stop beneath the relative safety of the overhang, but Ehren was no longer in control. They cleared the dank cool length of protection, and he barely had time to raise his head before the horse plunged up and over a giant chunk of skidding rock. Ehren's face slammed against Ricasso's crest, stunning him. He clung to the runaway animal, his body moving with the lunging gallop of its own accord.

  When the horse finally slowed, Ehren became aware of his fingers, tangled painfully tight in thick mane. The burn of his shoulder and thigh plucked at him, and the warm flow of blood down his leg echoed Ricasso's scalding body between his legs. Ricasso trembled, trotting in jerky, high-stepping movements, his ears swiveling this way and that.