Barrenlands (The Changespell Saga)

by Doranna Durgin

  Laine had reason enough to be sure of himself. Ehren scowled, and had the satisfaction of seeing the uncertainty it brought to Laine's face. Then he turned silently back to his task at the edge of the Barrenlands.

  Laine was right, of course. He'd already made a difference, had guided Ehren's thinking with his Sight, had given Ehren the openings that led him this far. Even now, he provided the odd pieces that helped to make this puzzle whole.

  The ring, for instance. It gave Ehren chills to think he'd carried the deadly token over so many miles, and that he'd come so close to killing them all just by invoking the confirmation. It was long past time to get rid of it, and even Laine didn't have a reason to argue anymore.

  Ehren had no means to destroy the thing. But he had the Barrenlands.

  Working carefully so only his hands crossed into the Barrenlands, Ehren used one of the recently confiscated knives to dig a hole deep in the yellow-brown soil, and then jammed the ring in deep. Without Sherran's spell, he couldn't feel what he was doing…it was a warning he heeded.

  When Ehren had finished, wiped his hands and his knife, and mounted up, Laine did the same. He looked at Ehren without challenge, but his expression was implacable all the same. He meant to see this to the end, that was clear— to find the killer that fit into his Dream.

  Ehren regarded him with a sour look. "The question is, will you get in more trouble with me, or without me?"

  "With you, I expect," Laine said, far too cheerfully. Ehren just grunted, and turned Ricasso for the deer trail they'd found the day before.

  Before the end of the day they ran across a definite path, and then a road. Ever bearing north, Ehren kept a low profile. He packed away his ailette, honor feather, and even the brigandine. To all appearances they were two men on a long journey, and if Laine's speech patterns were a little out of the ordinary, it only made sense. Ehren told all who asked that they were going to visit long-lost family, and it amused some small, hard part of him that for Laine, the story was true.

  Kurtane was as far from its southern border as from its eastern pass, and Ehren could have easily stretched the trip out to two weeks to spare the horses. Instead he bought extra grain when they passed crossroad villages, and pushed them all. Even solidly muscular Laine began to look worn around the edges after a week. By then they were on the Offcoast Highway, and Ehren knew well just where they were and how to get where they were going.

  Getting there quietly was another matter altogether. People seemed to be in a mood for trouble, and Ehren had already ducked out of two tavern fights where he'd have been just as pleased to show the troublemakers what real trouble was. More significantly, he'd pulled them off the road at the merest hint of approaching Guards— such as they were— and there seemed to be plenty of them nosing around when they should have been seeing to Rodar's safety. His restraint seemed to impress the gravity of their situation on Laine as nothing else had.

  Ehren estimated them five days away from Kurtane, riding at a slogging trot through a day-long rain, when he looked up from the rain dripping off his hood and saw yet another Guard riding toward them, readily identifiable in the same grey, service-issued slicker Ehren wore.

  Damn. Ehren's Guard patch was long gone from his own slicker, but any other Guard was bound to recognize the distinctive slicker. He had no chance to warn Laine; he could only keep them moving.

  Oddly enough, the other Guard displayed the same aloofness, staring straight ahead within the slicker hood and only glancing sideways for the merest instant as they passed. Ehren had ridden another fifty feet before those heavily shadowed features came together in his mind and turned into something familiar. Jada? He stopped, half-turning Shaffron in the deserted wet road.

  He wasn't surprised to discover the other Guard had done the same. Laine, ensconced in his own slicker, made a noise that could have been the beginning of a question, but broke it off and watched cautiously instead.

  Ehren let the Guard approach, his hand a notable distance from his sword hilt but not all that far from the knife in his boot. Heat from Shaffron steamed the air before him and scented it with warm horse, and the steady rain slicked the reins and dripped water over the bony curve of Shaffron's brow. Slowly, the other Guard reached up and pushed the slicker hood off her head.

  "Jada," Ehren said, through a sigh that released his tension.

  Her face was strained, her expression uncertain, and her horse worn. "I never truly hoped to find you," she said. "Ehren, you won't believe..." She stopped, looked him up and down and then checked Laine out as well. "Well, maybe you would. But let's find a dry place to talk."

  The last thing Ehren wanted to do was lose an afternoon of travel, but he heard the plea in her voice. "It looks like we need to."

  "I passed a place a little ways back," she said. "It looked abandoned— ought to be all right."

  She flipped her hood back up and moved her horse abreast of Shaffron. Silently, they rode to the old farmstead she'd spotted. The house had burned and fallen in, but half the barn remained— and if it creaked alarmingly now and then, it still kept out most of the sullen, steady rain.

  Ehren left the hobbled horses in a half-fenced, overgrown paddock, trusting the combination of restraints to keep them out of trouble and the grass to keep them busy. Then the three of them, plenty wet despite rain gear, found an old stall to hunker in.

  Food came first. Ehren waited until Jada's freckled face lost its pinched look, and until she stopped giving Laine sideways glances— Ehren had made no effort to explain Laine's presence. Then he set aside the ham and bread they'd picked up at the last village, wiping his knife clean.

  Jada was quick enough to realize he wasn't going to wait any longer. She sat back from the meal, wiping her hands on her trouser leg, and took the deepest of breaths. "Ehren, they told us you'd killed a Guard. One of us."

  "They, who?"

  She blinked. "Gerhard is the one who told us, but he seemed very upset by it all— like he didn't want to say it at all. But we had orders, and he didn't have a choice."

  "What orders?" Ehren held her light blue eyes, reading them.

  Jada didn't flinch. "Arrest you. Kill you, if that's what it takes to detain you. And any of us who help you will face the same." Some of her confidence returned, enough to lend her voice its wry note.

  "And who," Ehren said quietly, "am I supposed to have killed?"

  She frowned. "Gerhard said it was someone who'd been on remote duty— away even longer than you've been. Someone watching our interests in Therand and Loraka."

  Up until this point, Laine had been slouching in the corner, too tired from the constant travel to push his way into the conversation. But now he raised his head, a sharp motion. "Then they don't know..."

  The Guards by the border...

  Ehren's sharp look cut him off. It didn't go unnoticed; Ehren had had little hope of that. Being a Guard meant more than using muscle.

  "How about it, Ehren?" Jada said, her eyes narrowed. "You been killing Guards? Did Algere lose his life for a traitor?"

  "What?" Ehren stiffened. He jammed the knife point down in the dirt and glared at her. "What happened?"

  "You first." She crossed her arms and looked at him, clearly willing to wait in silence until she was satisfied.

  Ehren eased back, watching her wariness— approving of it. He'd helped train it into her, after all. "The dead man wasn't a Guard— he was Varien's man. And I didn't kill him. Varien's magic did that. It happened in T'ieranguard."

  "Varien," she said, and although her face didn't change, her voice sounded resigned. She took a deep breath and said, "He's kept a very low profile in Kurtane. We felt something was going on, that someone was orchestrating changes, but I never would have pinned it all on him."

  "Changes?" Ehren said instantly.

  Jada combined a frown and a shrug. "Odd decisions with the same flavor— and they add up. The Levels sent Reds out to deal with the border bandits, but they were mostly foot soldiers,
so they didn't do much good." When Ehren responded with a disbelieving stare, she insisted, "Guide's truth, Ehren. Some cavalry went, but the bulk were foot. Scuttlebutt said we couldn't afford to send away more cav when we're so short-handed here, and that the mere presence of the soldiers ought to send the bandits packing."

  His voice expressionless, Ehren asked, "What else?"

  "The orders to step up the cavalry breeding program, for one. We're short on horses— an amazing number of them have colicked this summer— so instead of hunting up new ones, we're breeding them."

  In five years, it might even make a difference.

  Jada waited for him to take it in. "There are new people serving in the diplomatic Levels, and they're everywhere, sticking their noses in everybody's business. Not that I've seen any one of them acting inappropriately, but..."

  "It feels wrong," Ehren finished for her. She nodded. Ehren drew a hand over one eye, a gesture of fatigue, and considered what he'd heard. "It may not all be Varien's doing, at that. But he's been involved in subterfuge for quite some while— in some respects, since before he even took his position in Kurtane. It's even possible he had a part in Benlan's death. That's something I'm still trying to discover."

  Laine remained conspicuously quiet. That didn't stop Jada's gaze from going to him, her eyes narrowed. She looked at Ehren and then pointedly back to Laine. "I'm already in trouble for you. It looks like I may get myself in a lot more. I want to know exactly what's going on."

  "You may wish you hadn't asked," Ehren said dryly, and nodded at Laine. "Laine, this is Jada, who was in training when I first left to find Benlan's killer. Jada, meet Benlan's nephew— Dannel's firstborn."

  Her eyes widened in a moment of astonishment, and then her gaze snapped back over to Laine, fairly daring him to confirm it. Laine offered a weary one-shouldered shrug and tore off another piece of the tough bread.

  Jada cleared her throat, but her voice still sounded strained. "Maybe you'd better start at what passes for the beginning."

  Ehren laughed shortly. "We have yet to discover exactly where the beginning is." He pulled his knife from the dirt, finished wiping it down, and set it aside for the whetstone. "Best I can do for sure is where it started with me— and all the attempts on my life while I was riding the coast. I didn't think much of them; any year a king dies, there's unrest, and they were clumsy attempts at best." He rubbed his leg, as if he could push out the ache of the rain and the riding. "But when I returned to Kurtane, Varien sent for me. He told me the Upper Levels weren't happy with me and that he was therefore sending me off on a mission of his own." Ehren sent her a wry grin. "He did, of course, offer me the chance to resign."

  Jada's expression indicated her opinion of that option. In the background, Laine snorted. "Right," Ehren said. "So I went. And I wasn't supposed to come back without success."

  "That's why you wouldn't return with us at the border," Jada said.

  "If I had, I would have been discharged— assuming I lived that long. Varien was pretty blunt about my need to be gone." He paused, trying to order his words. "Varien assigned me to find Benlan's brother Dannel— to ensure he was no threat to Rodar. Which I did, but that's almost beside the point, because it turns out that Loraka's soldiers are everywhere. There's also new magic being set along the Lorakans— and there are the bandits near the border on our own side. You know the prisoner I brought in who died?"

  She nodded, frowning. "His heart, they said."

  "It just as well could have been magic. The man who died in T'ieranguard died under a spell because he was about to talk. There was another we ran into about a week ago; he was under the same spell. It's all tied together, and it all leads to Varien."

  "Maybe it does," she allowed. "But where does it go then? He has to have a reason for being involved in all these things."

  "Why does a man do anything?" Ehren asked. "For love— or hate, which is close enough to being the same thing— or for power, or greed. In Varien's case I suspect it's the last two."

  She shook her head. Several strands of her kinky red hair had come loose from her braid, and they fell over her forehead to dangle at her nose. She rubbed it, vigorously, and tucked the hair away. "I don't really understand," she said, and the hair fell back down. Jada made a growling noise and said, "I hate damp weather."

  "Just wait until you've got some bones that hate it, too," Ehren told her. He drank one of the last few swallows of the wine Sherran had given him, and offered the rest to Jada.

  Jada downed it, giving the leather skin a glance of appreciation as she returned it. "There's more, Ehren. There's got to be more."

  "There is," he admitted. "I have documentation that years ago— two generations, at least— someone at the highest Levels was involved in smuggling contraband drugs from Therand. Mage lure."

  "How?" she said, her eyes wide.

  "There's a pass somewhere in the Barrenlands." His anger grew again at the thought. "I'm certain it's Varien's doing. Mage lure is a dangerous drug, Jada, and one that gives him far too much power over other wizards."

  "This is..." Jada searched for the word and gave up. "Inconceivable! If I was hearing this from anyone but you..."

  "And I wouldn't have learned any of it if Varien hadn't sent me away." Ehren mused over his own words. "He did, of course, plan to kill me, along with Dannel's family, and I'm not certain he's through trying."

  "After today, nothing's going to surprise me again," Jada said, sneaking the wayward hair back behind her ear again.

  Ehren wondered what she'd think if she knew how he gained much of his information. It'd have to come out eventually, he realized, looking at Laine— grateful to have him here in spite of the dangers. His presence, and his obvious abilities, would lend credence to the tale. Few would gainsay Dannel's son— and Laine still had his mother's ring to prove his identity.

  "I'm not done yet," he told Jada, and she made an incredulous face. "Think it through," he said. "Notice all the new Lorakan influence in Kurtane? It might not have been obvious to you, but I've been there half my life. I learned an earful from our border guards, too— things our Upper Levels should know but aren't acting on. There's unrest in inner Loraka these days— they're working up to one of those ugly rallies around king and country that provides an excuse to go stomping on borders. And we're not ready."

  Jada opened her mouth, but Ehren raised a hand, cutting her off. "Now we know that Loraka, through Varien, may have access to that hidden pass. Put that together with the depleted state of Solvany's defenses, and it's not a reassuring picture."

  Laine broke his silence with surprise. "When did you come up with all this?"

  "I've been thinking," Ehren said. "Here and there. Jada, right before Benlan was killed, he learned of the smuggling— he wanted to work with Therand to stop it. And he'd been looking for an excuse to get through the Barrenlands, maybe even eliminate them." He glanced to see if she followed, then said it out loud. "Losing the Barrenlands would make a mess of that smuggling. And if Varien truly is a traitor as well, involved with the changes in Loraka..."

  She still hadn't quite made the connection, frowning over his words; she shook her head.

  He tried to keep his words matter-of-fact; he failed. "Exchanging Benlan for a weak king like Rodar may have been part of the plan to undermine Solvany's defenses."

  Jada's stray lock of hair wrapped tightly about her finger, one twist short of being a snarled knot. She yanked it free with far too much vigor, her frustration flowing over. "Where'd you get this information? How the Hells did you put all this together, stuck out in the Lorakan mountains?"

  "Sources," Ehren said. Laine snorted, but kept his silence.

  They gave Jada a moment to think. When she spoke again, the early evening had dimmed unto dusk. "No wonder," she said. "No wonder he wanted you out of Kurtane. No wonder he wants you dead! He'd never have hidden all this from you if you were in the middle of it. Gerhard doesn't have the history with us to have seen it."
/>
  "Varien always wanted me dead. But now he knows that I took some side trips on this assignment, places he wouldn't have expected or wanted me to go. He knows I was in Therand, too, and may guess I was at the Grannor summer home. After all, we did come through the Barrenlands, and we couldn't have done that without help."

  "That's enough to make you a problem, as far as he's concerned," she declared.

  Ehren smiled, a feral grin. "I was always a problem," he said. "Now, I'm going to be more trouble than he ever imagined."

  ~~~~~~~~~~~

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Laine rode behind Jada and in front of Ehren. Though the damp path squished beneath the horses' hooves and the fields and woods they passed sparkled with a surfeit of moisture, the sky had cleared. The sun beat hot against Laine's shoulder, and he was sure they'd be searching for shade before they hit noon— despite several days of cool and gloomy weather, it was, after all, still fully summer.

  Jada and Ehren weren't saying much. Perhaps that was just as well, for they'd certainly had enough to say the evening before. Laine still winced at the recollection of Ehren's face when Jada told them again her partner Algere was dead, and how it'd happened.

  "We've had some men and women pulled into the Guards from the Reds," she'd told Ehren. Kurtane Ready Troops, they explained to Laine. "We need the numbers, all right, but most of these people have some sort of chip on their shoulders— think that Guarding is just some glorified version of what they've already been doing."

  And Ehren had snorted, a derisive sound.

  "Right," Jada said. "So when Gerhard came in with one of the Upper Level flunkies and told us you'd killed a Guard, we weren't really surprised when he pulled out a group of the booted-up Reds to look for you. Even though only a few of us trained with you, the rest of us have heard about you—" her voice broke slightly, but she gathered herself quickly enough. "— and looked up to you, like Algere. Gerhard probably thought he was doing us a favor, sending the others out. But I thought those Reds would as soon put a crossbow bolt through you from a distance as try to talk you in, and risk facing you." She smiled grimly. "They've heard some about you, you see."