“Dayna,” Mark said, a reproving tone with an immediate effect on her—especially when she saw the hurt on Jess’s face.
She took a deep breath. “I didn’t mean you were ridiculous, Jess, it’s just that magic is... magic.”
“Not to mention,” Carey added softly, “that we’re in real trouble if she’s right. Camolen is in real trouble.”
“We knew that,” Dayna said. “It’s why we’re here in the first place. But I don’t think we should jump to conclusions.”
Mark gave the board a long look before wiping it clean with the edge of his hand. “We could ask her to repeat.”
“I think we’d better,” Carey agreed.
“Better what?” Suliya said from—to judge by the sound of it—still halfway down the hall. “That doesn’t sound good.”
“Just a garbled message from Jaime,” Dayna said, not the least willing to go into the potential ramifications with her.
“I’m going to Ramble,” Jess said, starting her own conversation. “He shouldn’t be alone.”
Carey half turned, looking back at the board with obvious reluctance.
“Go,” Mark said. “Both of you. I’ll be out when I’m done.”
“He’s awake?” Suliya said, appearing in the doorway as she fastened her impossibly lively hair back with a fashionable latching comb from Camolen.
“Getting there,” Carey said shortly. “Come on, then.”
Jess left her half-finished soda on the counter and headed for the barn with long strides. Dayna trailed behind with Suliya, squinting in the bright sunlight.
Carey paced her, apparently in no hurry. “She’s worried,” he said, nodding to where Jess had found and now peered between the bars of Ramble’s assigned home. He added, “She may be right to be. He’s not doing well with the change so far.”
“Don’t wuss out on me now,” Dayna muttered.
Suliya, uncharacteristically wise, remained silent.
“Too late for that, isn’t it?” Carey said dryly, easing to a stop just within sight of the stall. She started to move closer, but he put out a hand, shaking his head. “Give them some room. And no, I’m not wussing. But I’d be foolish if I didn’t have concerns after his behavior at the park. This could take a lot longer than any of us expected—and if we’re right that something big is happening in Camolen, then that time could be critical.”
“We’ll do better with him than we did with Jess,” Dayna muttered. “We know he’s a horse. And we have Jess.”
Carey lifted his chin, a quiet gesture to draw her attention to where Jess had slipped into the stall. With a great floundering stumble, Ramble came to his feet, finally visible to Dayna. Even so, she drew closer, and this time Carey came with her.
Jess waited inside the door. She didn’t look directly at the palomino; she didn’t even face him. She kept her body turned slightly while Ramble lifted his head, nostrils flaring, body stiff and tense.
He would clean up nicely, Dayna thought, realizing it for the first time. He’d been so difficult, so full of struggle—and then so crumpled by the drug—that she hadn’t seen it. He wasn’t her type, not with that hard look about him, head to toe rugged and not quite crossing the line to coarse. But the hair alone would offset all of that. Strikingly, stunningly blond.
Hair that was at the moment in his face. He flipped his head and made a snorting noise, relaxing.
“That’s what she was waiting for,” Carey said, while Suliya nodded understanding. “An invitation.”
If he said so.
Jess moved forward, keeping herself at an angle, hesitating once and receiving some invisible-to-Dayna encouragement even as Ramble seemed to draw himself up into something bigger than he’d been, something more eloquent of line even with his rangy physique, his attention riveted on Jess.
It was a focus she returned, Dayna realized, noting Carey’s sudden tension beside her.
Not worried for Jess. Not with that look on his face, the glower in his eyes and that muscle twitching in his jaw. Jealous. Guides, he’s jealous.
Jess eased right up to the palomino, and just when Dayna expected her to stop—she certainly wouldn’t have gotten any closer to a man she didn’t know—Jess moved up until their faces were only a breath apart—and stayed there.
“What?” Dayna whispered.
Tersely, Carey said, “All horses greet this way. You’ve seen it. They take in each other’s breath. It just looks... different when human faces try it.”
“I’ll say,” Dayna muttered, taking a sideways glance from him that silenced further words.
Ramble gave an unexpected bob of his head, startling Jess into lifting hers—an expression Dayna did know... Jess uncertain, Jess tilting back ears that wouldn’t tilt in this form. And somehow he grew even taller, and obviously aroused.
He did something then—she wasn’t sure what, whether it was bob of his head or if he actually nudged her with his shoulder, but Jess staggered back. In an instant she whirled, ears definitely back with that tilt of her head, and let go a kick that missed completely.
Was meant to miss, Dayna realized, although Ramble started back wildly just the same as if he’d been hit, recovering to a much more subdued posture. Jess walked away, right out of the stall and down the aisle to stand at the barn doorway, looking out.
Dayna would have gone to her, but Carey clamped a hand on her arm, releasing only when she acquiesced. He went to the stall and slid home the latch Jess had left undone. “Give her a moment.”
And after that moment, Jess gave herself a little shake and returned to them, a more casual walk than the brusque strides that had taken her away. She looked into the stall where Ramble tugged at his clothing, doing a slow and unselfconscious examination of his own body, his expression of such exaggerated puzzlement that Dayna felt her first stirrings of compassion, if not doubt.
Jess gave her head a little toss. “He is as I said. He hasn’t been brought up well. He’s been stall-kept. He doesn’t know his manners even when he’s not trying to be rude. It’s not his fault. But...” she trailed off, shrugged.
“But he’ll be hard to deal with,” Carey finished for her. “Suggestions?”
She didn’t take her eyes from Ramble. “He needs to understand what has happened to him. We need to understand his Words and Rules, so we can give him the support he is used to.” She hesitated. “If he is like me... then he has been hearing language all his life. Some of it is there in his thoughts, waiting... now that he is human, it will begin to make sense.”
“It didn’t take you very long to get your meaning across,” Dayna said, remembering the morning after Jess had arrived in her house and her first faltering attempts to tell her new friends that she was in fact a horse. That they hadn’t understood or believed had been their failing, not hers.
Jess turned a dark look on her. “I was brought up to turn to humans for help. And I thought you could do that.”
Dayna, too, turned her attention to Ramble; he was halfway out of his loose tunic and not the least bit interested in his audience. “I guess we’ll have to find something he wants. Some incentive to learn.”
“We have something he wants,” Jess said bitterly. “To be a horse again. It will be his first thought once he understands why he no longer has whiskers, or ears to point and a tail to flick. When he tries to run and can barely stir the breeze. And when he understands, he will hate you for what you’ve done.”
Carey flinched. But as Dayna scowled, he gathered himself. “We’ll just have to hope his desire to be a horse again is stronger than his hatred. Because cooperating with us is his only chance for that to happen.”
Even Suliya looked unhappy. “It’s not so bad, being human,” she said in a low voice, not quite looking at Jess. “You spend most of your time that way now.”
“Not so bad,” Jess said. “Because I have a choice.”
Carey rubbed the heel of his hand against the side of his thigh, his expression masked by fatigue. �
��Just see what you can do to help him along.”
The words sounded dragged out of him; Dayna realized that he hadn’t rested since the rough transition between worlds. She’d haul him to into the guest room if she had to; they needed to be in top form to get through this.
All of them. Ready for anything.
Jess responded by re-entering the stall; the palomino instantly stopped his struggle with the tunic, letting it settle back into place. Having been chastised once, he didn’t quite puff himself up as before, but watched her from the back of the stall with a certain wariness.
She changed the angle of her head, turned, and lifted her leg just enough so only her toes touched the bedding. He made an expressive face, flared nostrils and tight chin, and ducked his head away, giving her his shoulder. Quieting.
“Burnin’ poot,” Suliya said, wonder-struck tones entirely at odds with her youthful slang. “It’s just like watching two horses, clear as anything.”
“That,” Dayna said, looking at Carey, “is exactly the point.”
~~~~~~~~~~
Chapter Seventeen
Jaime sat behind Carey’s desk off the job room and let her face sink into her hands. Not despair, exactly...
Anticipation.
Rather than getting better, her miserable evening attacks had become distinctly worse. Tonight’s was pending... but until it hit, she’d work to reconcile the large number of incoming messages with the much smaller number of Anfeald’s couriers and the dwindling number of sound horses.
She’d already used a precious run to confirm what they’d all suspected—Chesba knew nothing about the two visitors claiming to be from his hold. No one knew anything about them.
“Jaime.”
She looked up toward the job room door and found Linton, the ranking courier. He looked at her with concern, his face scratched and bruised at the leading edge of a thinning hairline, his thick wool shirt ripped, and something unidentifiable dangling from his hand. “Are you all right?”
She gave a soundless huff of laughter. “Just tired, like everyone else. What’s up?”
He laid his unidentifiable something on the scarred wooden desktop.
“Looks like giant earthworms frozen in a mating dance,” she observed. “And what happened to you?”
He plucked ruefully at the tear in his sleeve. “I ran into something out on the trail.” He slumped in the plain wooden chair placed haphazardly at the corner of Carey’s desk, unheeding of the half-mended bridle hung over the back of it. “Guides, I hate riding at night.”
She stared again at the object, unable to make any sense of it, and shook her head. “I don’t understand.”
“Those are the ends of my reins.”
She couldn’t keep the dread from her voice. “Tell me that doesn’t mean what I think it means.”
He shifted uneasily. “Thank the Guides we weren’t going very fast, because this mess just popped up on the edge of the trail—it looked like a giant fist had squeezed the trees. Cammi booted right out of there—did a turn-about. The reins must’ve whipped out into that spot.”
“And your shirt?”
“Jagged edges of something that weren’t there an instant earlier. Not a single instant.” Linton shuddered. “If I hadn’t had a permalight with me, I’d never have seen it in time—or gotten out in one piece.” He rubbed a hand down his face, pulling his features long. “Guides saved me on that one. I’m telling you—I hadn’t triggered the light for more’n an instant before I came up on this mess.”
A heavy tread sounded outside the door; Jaime looked over just as the groundskeeper entered Carey’s office. Gertli. By dint of his size alone, he’d recently come to act as an unofficial peacekeeper for Jaime... a role for which his gentle personality left him ill-suited, but which circumstances demanded.
He frowned in greeting, turning his harsh features downright fearsome. “Just had someone show up in the travel chamber. She says...” and he glanced outside to job room and lowered his voice dramatically, “she says she’s with the Council. The new one.”
Jaime and Linton exchanged equally startled glances. “I suppose I should meet her upstairs.”
Gertli cleared his throat. “She’s waiting here.” A roll of his eyes indicated the job room behind him.
“Guides,” Linton sighed. He pulled his chin again and said, “Well, if she’s that eager to talk to you...” with no warning, he meant, and the notable lack of courtesy to fail to stay in the comfortable travel chamber until her unprepared hosts could be found and apprised of her arrival.
He stood, removed the bridle and saddlepad from the chair, and looked around the room, at a loss.
“Dump it here,” Jaime said, taking the gear and dropping it behind the desk, along with the remains of the reins.
By then the woman had supplanted Gertli at the doorway.
She was no one Jaime had met before, and she did nothing to make herself memorable. Her costly wizard-cloth longsuit was of the most subdued autumn colors; she wore her hair back in a stern up-do too immobile to be anything but magically fixed in place.
“Welcome to Anfeald,” Jaime said, gesturing at the chair. “Gertli, let Natt and Kesna know we have a visitor, will you? And ask the kitchen to send refreshments.”
“That won’t be necessary,” the woman said, twitching the long tails of her suit aside as she sat. “I don’t plan to be here that long. Arlen may not have mentioned me; my name is Phia. Please... let me extend my condolences. These are far from the circumstances under which I wish I’d become a member of the Council. Arlen was an extraordinary wizard.”
“He was,” Jaime said, “an extraordinary man.” The new Council, at least, didn’t seem to think Arlen still lived, unlike her previous two visitors.
Jaime herself...
Knew she’d never quite believe, not until she saw the evidence with her own eyes. Or heard it from someone who had been there.
Like the palomino.
The palomino. The world travel spell. And a woman from the Second Council, which until now had primarily overseen checkspells for such magic.
Of course they knew. Jaime should have been expecting this visit from the moment she’d ushered the earlier false Sallatier Precinct representatives out of the null room—if they’d felt it, so had others. Especially those who had worked on the checkspell.
Phia said, “Unusual circumstances notwithstanding, I’m afraid you’ve got a lot to answer for.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Forbidden spells,” Phia said, her words hard and precise, “are forbidden spells even if the checkspells have failed. We overlooked the illicit spellcasting here the first time—knowing the chaos that likely prevailed at the time. And frankly, we had other things on our minds. But we cannot overlook a second event.”
A second... what? “I’m sorry, but I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Phia’s unyielding gaze grew cold. “My certain knowledge that both spells were triggered from the grounds of Anfeald leaves me less than willing to listen to naive denials.”
“Oh, please,” Jaime said, forgetting her wariness for a moment of utter irritation. “You won’t even tell me what spell you’re talking about, probably exactly in case I don’t already know. I’m not denying that you detected whatever you detected, but I’m damned well saying I know nothing about it.”
Not that second spell, anyway. Although Phia seemed to believe it was the same as the first. . .
And that meant someone else had cast the original world-travel spell.
For an instant Jaime wondered who, and how they could have acquired it in the first place—and why they would.
The answer came quite naturally.
The visitors who hadn’t been from Sallatier. They knew of the first spell. They’d learned Carey was gone.
They went after him.
Jaime went on the offensive, scooping up Linton’s twisted reins and dropping them on the desk. “Besides, do you think we d
on’t know there’s more happening out there than you’ve told us?”
Phia lost her composure, springing to her feet to stab a finger toward the reins. “That site is off-limits!”
“What makes you think the problem is contained at a single site?” Jaime asked dryly. “We’ve felt from the start that there’s more to this problem than we’re being told. Much more.”
“We?” Phia said. She reached for the reins, but Jaime had already picked them up. “Who do you mean by that?”
Jaime jerked open a desk drawer, pulled out a thick pile of recent messages, and thumped them down on the desk. “Don’t you think we talk to each other?” she said dryly. “Those of us who were left behind?”
Phia said nothing. She nodded at the awkward twist of stiffened, distorted reins. “I’ll take that.”
“You must be kidding,” Jaime said. “My couriers need to see this—they need to understand!” She saw the twitch of Phia’s fingers—knew exactly what it meant, after sharing her life with a wizard. “And yes, dammit, you can pull some sort of magic on me. You won’t be the first. But you’ll have to, if you want to stop me!”
Phia winced, withdrawing her hand. “That...” She shook her head. “That’s not who we’re supposed to be. Not even now.” She exhaled loudly and sank back into the chair. “Of course you’re right. It’s spreading. And we don’t know how it started, or how it was used to kill the Council. But most importantly... we don’t know how to stop it.” She offered Jaime and Linton the merest hint of a wry expression. “We’ve been trying to avoid widespread panic.”
Linton said suddenly, “That’s why the dispatch is barely working. It went down because of the Councils’ death, but you’ve kept it that way. So the word won’t spread to anyone who hasn’t actually seen this... corruption.”
“Essentially,” Phia said, releasing a faint sigh. “Although the dispatch is hardly up to normal operations in any event. Not anymore.” She pressed her tinted lips firmly together. “Perhaps now you understand why it’s so important that we know the truth about the recent spell use—”
Jaime snorted. It wasn’t polite. “I know we’d still be completely in the dark if someone hadn’t triggered illicit magic in this area, and you hadn’t come to scold me about it. I know I’m going to spread the word about what happened to Linton just as fast as I can.”
The Changespell Saga Page 72