“Worse than that, ey?” Dayna said, amused.
Jaime blushed. “Well, yes.”
Lady chose that moment to snort again—impatience and frustration, and a reminder.
“That’s enough of that,” Dayna said. “Time to look like Jess again. Get ready.”
Lady threw her weight back, propped her front legs out before her, and then pushed her haunches upright. She shook off the bits of bark and leaf that clung to her sides, and waited quietly.
Dayna reached for the spell, running through the initial structure—a complex recitation of muscle and shape and substance. Halfway through, she cheated—triggering a flow of raw magic, shaping it more with her will than her intellect. The magic swirled around them, flickering through Lady with the effect it always had—look straight at it, and you couldn’t see a thing. Watch with the corner of your eye, and there might be a glimpse of hair settling back into place, of Jess as she straightened and stood.
But for Dayna, the spell wasn’t over—not with the swirling raw magic fighting to break loose and wreak havoc.
She took a deep breath and plugged back into the formal spell, using the final elements to dismiss that wild magic. It faded like a long wave flowing back to the sea, and left Dayna with the same feeling she used to get after a good aerobics work out.
Only so much better.
She opened her eyes and grinned at Jaime, and found Jaime grinning back.
~~~~~
Jess did not smile.
“Jess,” Jaime told her—again—“you did very well. You’re making progress. Maybe you should try a more intermediate spell before jumping up to the big one. Practice it as Jess, first.”
She was right, of course. Still...
Jess had hoped to return to Anfeald able to prove Ander wrong. Even Carey thought it might be too much for her.
“Never mind, Jess,” Dayna said. “We’ll work on it again when we get a chance. Maybe they’ll send the changespell team back to Anfeald. It’s really a better set-up for intensive work.”
“Yes,” Jess said. There was no point in thinking about it now, when they were spending their last afternoon with Dayna. “Are we going to go to the village, now? To the place that does ear piercing?”
“You still want to do that?” Jaime asked, amusement in her voice. She fingered one of her own silver studs and held a branch aside for the rest of them to step from the woods to the main road, only a few moments from the hold.
“This is a good place to get it done,” Jess said, not certain of Jaime’s reaction.
“I’m sorry,” Jaime said, but this time she outright grinned. “I just keep seeing Lady with great big hoop earrings.”
“No,” Jess said decisively. “Small ones... that blue stone. No one will see them unless they look.”
“I can’t help it,” Jaime said, biting her lip in a way that did nothing to stop the grin.
“Uh-oh,” Dayna said, looking out ahead of them and stopping Jaime’s levity short—they all saw it, then, the lingering figure of a guard at Sherra’s stout wooden gate. “I think vacation’s over.”
In a moment, they knew for sure. The figure turned out to be Sherra’s familiar strongarm, Katrie—tall, sturdy, very light blonde, with features too strong to be beautiful. Jess had always thought she would make a very handsome mare.
Now, she wasted no time. “Waiting for visitors,” she said shortly. “The outlaws have struck again.”
“Who?” Jess asked, thinking immediately of Carey.
“Group of Ninth Level Meditators just north of the border,” Katrie told her. “Their regular supply run came today and discovered a hold full of hedgehogs clinging to meditation beads.”
“Meditators?” Dayna said, horror in her voice. “Since when did they ever do anyone any harm?”
“That,” said Katrie grimly, resting her hand on the hilt of her knife, “is the point. I’m not supposed to know this—and I’m not telling how I heard!—but you’ll find out soon enough. The outlaws have set up an ultimatum—unless the Council removes the mage lure blockade, the outlaws will continue to deploy the reverse changespell.”
“They must be desperate,” Jaime murmured. “Maybe Ernie finally told them the truth about mage lure.”
Dayna took Jaime and Jess each by the arm, tugging them onward. Jess couldn’t help it—that sudden grip, that pre-emptory tug—
She reared back and tore loose, garnering Dayna’s astonishment and Jaime’s quick reaction. “Easy, Jess,” she said. “It’s all right.”
And by then it was, but Jess couldn’t help the annoyance she sent at Dayna; tossing her head to hide the depth of her reaction.
“I’m sorry—sorry,” Dayna said, clearly also still impatient. “Listen. I might not have the chance to see you again before you leave. Think about what I said—about us doing something. Things are only going to get worse around here, and yeah, yeah, the Council will finally do something, but by then we’ll have a whole zoo of changed people, and who knows how many of them we’ll get back sane?”
Reluctantly, Jaime said, “I wish I didn’t think you were right.”
“But I am.” Dayna didn’t miss a beat. “Think about it. It’s not like the team can’t get along without me. See what Carey thinks—we’ll need someone who really knows the country.” She looked at Jaime, her eyes intent. “I can do this, Jay. I can find them—and I can blast ’em with enough raw magic to keep us safe. And I’m the only one who can.”
Jaime gave Jess an unhappy look, but Jess, her anger at Dayna gone, nodded. It was time for them to go, all right. And time for them to think hard about what came next. “Yes,” she said. “I’ll talk to Carey.”
~~~~~~~~~~
Chapter Twenty-Three
Jess perceived Carey’s distraction well enough. She’d seen it at dinner and she saw it now, sitting on the small couch in his tiny suite—the first and largest on the second floor courier quarters. He’d left the door open, as he ever did, making himself available for those couriers who needed a quiet conversation, a personal question answered... a private concern reassured.
It made for a cascade of little interruptions.
Jess didn’t mind. It was all part of Carey.
She hadn’t been ready to mention Dayna’s proposal, anyway. He’d rested his hand lightly on the back of her neck on the way up here, and she’d been distracted by it—and now he looked at her slantways from his spot by the window, as if he could tell she was working her way up to something.
She played with the back of her baseball cap, sliding the adjustment strap back and forth in its clip. “Dayna thinks we should go after the outlaws,” she blurted, just as Carey was beginning to smile at her hesitation.
The smile vanished. “Dayna thinks what?”
Jess left the bed and joined him at the window, where the summer dusk was just falling—starting to get earlier again, and pointing at autumn. “It surprised us, too,” she said. “But I want to do it.”
“You want to do what?” Carey’s congeniality had vanished, his distraction turned to sharp attention. “Charge off with no notion of where you’re going and what you’re going to do when you get there?”
She frowned at him. “That’s rude. I’m not stupid.”
Carey groaned, and rubbed his eye—and looked wearier than she’d expected. “You’re right, you’re right. I’m sorry. But Guides-damn, Jess... you’ve got to admit that sounded a little—” He stopped himself. Wise man. “All right. Talk to me, then.”
So Jess told him what Dayna had in mind. She shifted closer, absently brushing the smudge of dirt from his shoulder, to run her fingers down his arm and pick up his hand, playing with his long human fingers.
When she would have moved upagainst him, putting their bodies in contact like any two close horse companions, he shifted away. She met his gaze for a long and questioning look, but she couldn’t read the conflict in his eyes—she thought maybe it wasn’t about her words at all.
“What d
o you think?” she said finally, not entirely sure, herself, just what she was asking.
Carey cleared his throat. “I think Dayna’s bitten off more than she can chew. If any of that was viable, the Council would be doing it.”
“They didn’t help Arlen last year,” Jess said. “We did.”
Carey ducked his head, crossed his arms over his chest. When he looked up again, he tipped his head aside to move dark blond hair out of his eyes. “True,” he said. “But Arlen’s time was running out.”
Jess watched him in silence. Then she said softly, “Willand has taken me. She had me beaten. She has burned Kymmet to kill me. She tried to tag you and Jaime with that dart. She threatened Dayna at the farm. And now the outlaws are going after people who have nothing to do with any of this.”
Carey closed his eyes. “Sooner or later, their mage lure will run out—and then they’ll die.”
“Maybe,” Jess said. “Will that be soon enough? Maybe they’ll figure out how to withdraw from it. Sherra did.”
He didn’t respond, and his expression showed no sign that he’d heard her.
She said, “We need you. But I can find maps.”
He shook his head, scrubbed his hands over his face, and let his head drop back, eyes closed. She thought he might not answer at all, and she thought maybe that was her answer.
But when he looked at her, it was head on, and with wry defeat. “You’ve always been persuasive, Jess—in more ways than you know. But you sure are getting better with words.”
“Then are you coming with us?”
“I don’t know,” Carey said, as bluntly as Dayna was ever wont. “And I’m not sure you can do it without me. If I don’t want this to happen, it won’t.”
It shocked her. “You’d tell Arlen?”
A boot scuffed against stone at the open doorway—and there was Ander, just arriving—but his eyes narrowed and his voice suspicious. “Tell Arlen what?”
Jess turned on him, cutting in front of Carey’s anger. “You’re supposed to knock, Ander. Even when the door is open.”
“I just got here,” Ander said. “And if you weren’t so close to him, he’d have seen me coming.”
Carey growled, a startling and unmistakable sound of ire.
Ander stood fast—even if he gave Jess a quick look, one she suddenly recognized as hurt. “I was in that fire, too. And you’re talking about people I—” He took a sharp breath, looked hard at Jess. “People I care about. So I want to know what’s going on.”
Jess cast a quick glance between them—one man who thought he loved her, and one man who’d declared love a year earlier and didn’t seem to know what to do with it.
Best to separate them, as they separated angry stallions.
But Ander was right. He’d been in that fire; he’d saved her life. He’d been with her through this entire mess.
Carey seemed, begrudgingly, to realize the same thing. His voice remained tight, his shoulders remained stiff... but his words tried for neutrality. “Dayna has an idea for approaching the outlaws. We’re thinking about it.”
“Thinking about?” Ander asked pointedly. “Or arguing about?”
“Some of both,” Carey said, just as pointedly unconcerned about that veiled accusation.
Ander gave them a sudden grin; it had a feral quality that made Jess blink. “I’ve had enough, myself. It’s time to get back to work at Kymmet. Jess has Mia scheduled to come back down for work, and I have three foals who need ground handling. So if you go to deal with this—with them—I’m coming with you.”
“I don’t remember asking you,” Carey said.
Ander’s grin just broadened. “Sometimes it doesn’t pay to wait around. Sometimes you have to go get what you want—even if it means taking it from someone else who hasn’t made up their mind yet.”
Jess frowned at him. She had the impression he wasn’t talking about the outlaws at all.
~~~~~
Carey stood out by the gate to the broodmare’s back pasture. A breeze whispered by his face, bringing the teasing scent of rain.
He should have been in bed on this overcast and moonless night. His body was no longer so forgiving about lost sleep, and tomorrow wouldn’t go light on him just because he had circles under his eyes.
The mares scented him—first one snort, then another. Soon he had them spotted—dark, slow-moving shapes against an only marginally lighter skyline. They ambled to the gate to question him, as much as horses might.
“Looking for answers,” he told them, only then realizing it was the truth.
A year earlier, headstrong and undeterred by the disapproval of almost everyone around him, Carey had ignored the Council, broken out of house-arrest at Sherra’s, and ridden to rescue Arlen.
He hadn’t thought about consequences. He hadn’t wondered if he was doing it exactly right. He’d known it had to be done, he’d taken his best options, and he’d done it.
He suddenly wondered if he’d do that same thing today. “Would I?” he asked the mares, who whuffled over his hands and arms, and politely waited for treats.
No wonder Jess had been puzzled. No wonder she didn’t seem to understand why he was so careful around her.
He wasn’t the same person she’d come to know, either as horse and human.
No, he was Carey a year after being irreparably touched by Calandre’s twisted magic. A whole year of learning to accept his new limits, to plan his days so he could make it through without falling on his face. He’d turned into someone who weighed everything he did before he did it.
And maybe he’d fallen into over-thinking those things along the way.
When had he gotten so concerned about acting that he’d held back when it came to drawing close to Jess—when it came to doing what he’d wanted ever since he’d been in Ohio, for Heavens’ sake?
At first he’d been too sick to think about her. Them. And somehow, by the time he was feeling more like himself, Jess was off in Kymmet, and he was wondering if she didn’t need a little more room to grow.
He was an idiot. A burning in ninth-level Hells idiot, so wrapped up in learning to live with the limitations of his damaged body that he’d lost track of the bigger things, the more important things. The things that made him want to live.
And now Willand was threatening those things again—his friends, his own safety, his Jess—and he wasn’t sure if he wanted to do something about it?
“I’m an idiot,” he groaned.
The mares shifted, apparently in agreement. He looked back toward the hold—the back of the hill, from this vantage, and nothing more than a big dark lump rising in the night sky. There, on the second floor, Jess was sleeping—had probably gone to sleep wondering what was wrong with him, and why he had changed so much.
Well, he knew why he’d changed. And on a day-to-day basis, maybe it was the way he had to live.
But for the important things...
There was still enough of the old Carey left to handle them.
~~~~~
Jess whimpered in her sleep.
The rope lashed by her face.
She twitched, trying to escape.
Shammel’s greasy looking grin—
She wouldn’t let him hit her again!
The rope slashed air, smacking dun haunches, ripping flesh with searing pain.
Escape, she had to—the scent of rain in her nose—hands reaching for her—
Jess shrieked in fury and terror and launched herself off the bed into darkness, ears flattened, teeth bared, hooves ready to... hands ready to—
Where was she?
“Easy, Braveheart. It was just a dream.”
Jess made a stricken sound and struggled to orient herself.
Carey’s voice, tender and reassuring. The dim outlines of the furniture in the borrowed room. The smell of impending rain on the cool currents of a breeze through the window. Arlen’s. Safe.
“Carey,” she said, her voice thick and her mouth struggling more than us
ual with speech.
“It’s me,” he said, moving up next to her in the dark—smelling of horse, his hair in his eyes... not enough to hide the shine of them. “Pretty bad dream, ey?”
“Yes,” Jess said, still a little befuddled. “But... why... how...”
“I know it’s late, but... I wanted to talk to you. Now I’m glad I came. The guest rooms are all keyed to me,” he said as an afterthought, understanding her question. “I knocked, but you didn’t answer, and then I heard...”
All right. It was the middle of the night, and she’d had a bad dream, but it was over now—it really was—and Carey was here. She took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. “I’m all right.”
“Want to talk about it?”
His voice was just the right combination of sympathy and concern, but she didn’t want to talk about it.
“No,” she murmured, looking away from him—though his expression drew her back. To judge by the nakedly open emotion there, she thought he’d forgotten how well she could see in the dark. Concern... tenderness.
And something else, too, something she couldn’t quite identify, but which reminded her of Carey from days gone by.
She shifted away from him and ended up by the window, where night time Anfeald spread out before her in a clarity offered by those equine eyes. “I want to talk about something else.”
“Like what?” He shifted the weight off his stiff leg, and it only underscored what she was about to say.
“Dayna’s idea,” Jess said. “When I said I could use a map if you didn’t want to go... That’s what I want to do.”
She never should have asked him, not with Calandre’s spell still—and always—riding him. Finding the outlaws would be no simple thing, no mere day’s ride. If he went, it would take a terrible toll.
She saw his surprise as well as she’d seen the rest. He said, “I never said I wouldn’t—”
“I can use I-am-here spells to mark the map,” she continued, as if he hadn’t spoken. This was hard enough. “Dayna can guide us, too. So we can do it. If you don’t tell Arlen. You won’t, will you?”
He frowned. “I have no intention of telling Arlen. I’m not so sure he wouldn’t agree with Dayna, but it’s not fair to put him in that position.”
The Changespell Saga Page 52