And then she frowned, coming into alert, her thumb forgotten at the edge of her lip. Magic.
Significant, flaring magic.
She felt the implications of it in the very pit of her stomach, a cold dark spot of dread. Dayna would use such magic only if driven to it by dire circumstances, and that meant Jaime’s warning had come none too soon.
Or maybe not soon enough.
“Carey?” she said, thinking him out in the kitchen, where he’d made himself something to eat. But Carey didn’t respond.
After a few quick silent, barefooted steps to check the house, she realized he wasn’t even here.
Not the barn.
Please, not the barn. Not doing the one thing she’d told him she wouldn’t allow. Couldn’t allow, not for Ramble’s sake.
She fled the house, ignoring the ring of the telephone behind her, and ran straight into the barn, where—
Where seeing Carey at Ramble’s stall stopped her as surely as if she’d run into a wall. And hit her just as hard.
He glanced up at her. His misery was no consolation, nor the fact that he leaned against the outside stall bars with his back to Ramble, not trying to communicate at all. Because he’d already tried, and failed, and given up—and left the path of it written on his face.
Jess forced herself to walk down the aisle to Ramble’s stall. She glanced inside to find Ramble sitting cross-legged, facing the corner so stiff-backed he actually trembled a little.
Carey wouldn’t meet her gaze.
In a voice as stiff and trembling as Ramble’s back, Jess said, “Was it worth it?”
Carey shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. But I had to try. I couldn’t not.” He gave her a helpless look. “None of it makes any sense. Not the death of the Council, not the failing magic, not Jaime’s warning... My world is falling apart around me, and if I try hard enough, I should be able to fix it. That’s the way it always works... if I try hard enough.”
His voice cracked on the last words; he gave a despairing, sardonic cough of a laugh that might just as well have been a sob, and rubbed circles over his eyes with his fingers.
Her heart broke for him. But it broke for herself, too.
In a low but remarkably even voice she said, “My world is falling apart around me, too, but as long as I could depend on you—trust you—I was all right. Now... all the rules have changed at once. Nothing is the same, not the world, not the people in it. Not you.”
“Jess...”
She gave a short, sharp shake of her head. “I have only my own rules now. Only my own self to trust. I will get my things, and then Ramble and I are going home. You should come back too. I don’t think it’s safe here anymore. But I think you’ll do as you want, and not what matters to anyone else.”
“Not what I want—” for a brief moment, he looked aghast. “Not what I wanted—I had to try. To fix—” He stopped, gave a short shake of his head. “It doesn’t matter right now. What happens next matters. I’m not going to try to stop you.”
“You should come too.” She tipped her head at the house. “Get your things. Get everyone’s things—be ready. Didn’t you feel the magic?”
“Magic?” he said, looking suddenly haggard. Giving up. She’d never seen that in him. Never.
“From town. Maybe Dayna... maybe someone else. And Jaime said—”
“Just what the Hells is going on?” he said, interrupting with utter frustration. “When is this going to start to make sense?”
“When it is too late,” Jess said before she could stop herself... maybe because in her mind, it was already too late. Lives and patterns that could have—should have—withstood the changes were stretched out of shape, distorted past ever returning to what they’d been.
It wasn’t something she’d ever comprehended as possible. Rules were rules. She lived her life by them; she’d been trained and grown up by them, and respected them. She thought she’d learned the new human rules, and she’d been living by those, too.
Now she was learning that sometimes humans discarded all their rules, all their understandings, and left even the most important people in their lives floundering. Not true to anyone, not even themselves.
Carey only looked at her, complete in his misery, and no longer attempting to explain himself. Finally, for once, accepting a thing as not possible. “Maybe,” he said, after a heavy moment, “it’s time to go—”
Jess lifted her head, drawn by the motor sound of an approaching vehicle. A downshift. A car preparing to turn.
Whatever Carey had done, he hadn’t lost his ability to read her. “Not Mark’s?” he asked in a low voice.
She gave the slightest shake of her head, listening hard.
He pushed himself away from the stall as tires crunched on the gravel driveway; two doors opened, then closed, and the vehicle moved away. “Taxi,” he said, a guess that nonetheless sounded confident. And grim. In this world, only those without cars used the charter cars called taxis.
Or those from out of town. From other worlds.
Think they followed you, Jaime had written. Be careful.
Touching a hand to the lump of spellstones under his borrowed T-shirt, Carey asked, “Do you have your shieldstone?”
“And Ramble’s.” In no-nonsense economy of movement, she went to Ramble’s stall, shooting open both latches and yanking the door aside. “Ramble,” she said, “I know you have anger. But this is danger, and I am here to protect you. Will you wear the stones?”
He turned around just far enough to scowl at her. Like his early clothing, the stones had consistently been something to take off; Jess had taken to carrying them herself.
She said, “These will protect you, too. From magic.”
In a startlingly abrupt movement, he rose to his feet, shoved himself across the stall, and stopped before her, lowering his head slightly.
She looped the stones around his neck, tucking them under his shirt so they touched skin. The instant she finished, he whirled away to his corner, his lips twitching in want to bite and his hard jaw made harder with tension.
Jess left him there, stood on tip-toe to peer out the wire-protected stall window. Two men hesitated before the barn, their clothes shimmering faintly with casual magic. Camolen cloth. It went with their shortcoats, with the collarless shirts they wore beneath. They were attractive but not striking, average in height and shape. One the color of light tea, the other of Carey’s coloring. Nothing special.
If they hadn’t been from another world.
“They are here for us,” she said in a low voice as the men exchanged quick words, gesturing between house and barn and eventually deciding to head for the barn first. “They’re coming. They aren’t big... but they could be strong.” One touched his chest as Carey just had; the other dipped a hand into his pocket. “They have magic.”
“Maybe,” Carey said, returning from the hay stall. “Depends on how prepared they are. We’d hoped Dayna could draw on magic from here, and she couldn’t—they may have thought the same.”
She turned from the window to find him in the open stall door, his back to it. Ready to protect them both. The dull old hunting knife Mark used to cut hay twine hung from his hand, unobtrusive, half-obscured... but like him, ready.
Run. They ought to run. Any sane horse would know it.
But not with Ramble... Ramble, who couldn’t understand or adapt. Who would be as much of a problem as these men.
Jess watched out the window until the men entered through the tack room in the middle of the barn. Then she moved to the middle of the stall, where she could see beyond Carey—feeling trapped, but not willing to leave Ramble—Ramble, who still sat in the corner with his back to the world. Alone.
Carey’s fingers clenched and eased around the knife handle as the men entered the aisle beyond the hay bale barrier. Maybe they would be as fooled as the horse owners who had been trooping in and out during the evenings, perfectly willing to accept that Mark had received
a hay shipment that filled the entire end of the aisle, never realizing the hay bales were only stacked two deep and Ramble lived in the stall beyond.
Maybe...
Jess found she’d stopped breathing to listen. She forced herself to take in a deep and surprisingly shaky breath. Ramble heard it, turned to look at her, his mouth open—
“Shh,” she said, barely making sound behind it, lifting a hand to stay him where he was—surprised to find that shaking, too. Not now, Ramble, oh not now—
But Ramble didn’t have to give them away. Not with the voices coming close to the hay bales. “There’s another stall beyond here; I saw it outside. And there’s plenty of light showing in the window. I’ll be burnt if that hay is stacked all the way through.”
Carey’s fingers, clenching and relaxing around the knife, his posture stiff.
Afraid, Jess realized suddenly. Outmatched and knowing it. He was a courier, not a warrior. A courier, not a wizard. And one man against two, struggling with his body’s limits since his arrival.
She moved up behind him and murmured in his ear, “Two of us. And Ramble will not be taken. Three.”
He cast her a grateful look—and in another instant both of them startled as the top bale of hay fell inward. Within moments the intruders had tossed aside enough bales to push their way through.
The darker of them looked at Carey and Jess and then Ramble beyond. “I hate it here,” he said. “Don’t make this hard. I’m not in a good mood.”
“I feel for you,” Carey told him. “Neither am I.”
The lighter man nodded at Ramble. “What has he told you?”
Jess said in low voice, “Nothing. He knows nothing. Leave him alone.”
The man gave her a grin of what looked like true amusement. “He’s safe. All we have to do is take him back and he’s a horse again; he can’t talk then.”
“He can barely talk now,” Carey said.
“Here’s how it’s going to go,” the light man said as Ramble came to his knees, his anger focusing on the men. He had no reason to fear them—he didn’t understand. But he’d had enough. “We’re taking you back to Camolen. Once the situation there is settled, you’ll be released.”
Nothing about Carey’s body language made Jess believe the man. “What situation, exactly?”
The light man said, “That would be telling.” He shook his head. “See it, Carey. We’re good at what we do. You want things to turn out well, just come along.”
“No,” said Jess.
“Carey,” the light man warned.
“He does not speak for me,” Jess informed them.
“I told you,” the darker man grumbled to the lighter. “Talking—a complete waste of time.”
And Carey said, “But she speaks for me. We’ll return on our own terms. Whoever you sent after Dayna failed—”
We don’t know that. But Jess was silent.
“—and I’d like to be here when she gets back.” So casual. But his stance was anything but, and Jess found herself easing back, and Ramble snorted and—
Someone moved first. She didn’t see who and she couldn’t even tell what, just that Carey doubled over and then he hit the stall bars, the knife falling from his hand, the light man grabbing his spellstones right through the T-shirt, yanking—
Jess scooped up the knife in a desperate furor—no strategy and no skill, but still the astonishing quickness to slash the knife down the man’s arm.
He hissed with surprise and pain, turning from Carey with a precision movement that disarmed her even as the darker man slammed her against the stall, hitting her head against the bars so the world turned black and distant.
Ramble roared, “Mine!”
Something knocked her aside; she clutched the bars and stayed on her feet, but the world came back slowly, and made little sense. Carey sparred with the lighter man, taking the worst of it. But he had the knife again, and he had a grim determination that Jess found frightening and reassuring at the same time—though she barely had time to regard it at all before she had to throw herself aside from Ramble.
Ramble. Ramble who didn’t understand, but knew when another stallion touched his mare. Hurt her.
And the darker man—not as fast as his partner, not as precise—didn’t know how to defend himself against a man who fought not as a man, but a horse. Going for the throat. Hammering blows to chest and sides in a strange overhand punch, quicker and stronger and driven by more feral instincts than his opponent could hope to have.
Bloodied, the man went down—and should have stayed down. Ramble drew back to let him admit defeat—but gave no quarter when the man bulled back to his feet. Ramble’s grunts were of rage; the man’s of pain and not a little surprise.
And Carey held his own—a delicate balance with which Jess, climbing to her feet, was loathe to interfere. Not until the lighter man glimpsed his partner and muttered a curse, flying into action—moving so quickly Jess stood stunned. He danced around Carey in sinuous pattern, suddenly behind him to land a blow so hard the very sound of it made Jess hurt. Carey dropped straight to the ground.
“Stay down!” the man snapped, and she thought it was to Carey but realized the man shouted at his partner—and his partner, listening or else at last simply unable to rise again, ceased to trigger Ramble’s fury.
She thought about going for the lighter man, and wasn’t sure; she thought about yanking Ramble aside and wasn’t sure, and then she heard Carey make a strange gasping noise and knew. She threw herself in front of Carey and glaring the man off—but he wasn’t attacking any more. They froze, both caught in an instant of hesitation.
And then something eased within him. He backed a step, dripping blood from the cut she’d inflicted; blood from that cut sprayed across the stall boards, painted by the pattern of his own whirling movement.
He gave her the slightest of nods.
Carey made a whooping noise, struggling to take in that first deep gulp of air after having lost it all. Ramble, uncertain now, retreated to the doorway of his stall. “Jess?”
“Attaboy, Ramble,” she said without looking at him. “Good job.” She eased a hand to Carey’s shoulder, where the warmth of his exertion dampened the thick cotton T-shirt.
The lighter man said, “You stay down there, and we’re on truce. Whoa, if you prefer.”
She sent him a quick glare, automatically stroking Carey’s back, too aware of his effort as he fought through whatever the man had done to him.
“It didn’t have to be this way,” the man said—but as he watched Carey recover, he frowned. The frown of a man expecting something else.
“Yes,” Carey said, still choking for breath but levering himself up to glare, to take in how things had sorted out. “It did. We’re not going with you.”
Exasperated, the man said, “My people just want you out of the way for a while. Not interfering.”
Bitterly, Jess said, “How can you think we would trust you? Our friends are dead. The Council is dead.”
His expression twitched. “That was a mistake,” he said. “No one understood what they were dealing with. My people, your people... wizards and their burnin’ magic. Rife, all of them.” He gave a disgusted shake of his head.
His partner, crumpled up against the wall where Ramble had left him, stirred. “Just... kill... them.”
“Things are under control,” the man said sharply. “You shouldn’t have started this. Take yourself back and have them send a replacement.”
“You,” Jess said to the injured man. “You did this!” And she understood then that the other man had not been trying to hurt them, not even after she cut him—not until that last moment when he’d seen his partner down and turned on Carey with such speed and precision. He’d only been trying to control them. To take the shieldstones and return them to Camolen as he’d said from the start.
If he’d wanted to hurt them, any one of them, he could have. Even Ramble.
“Ramble,” she said, “I’m safe
from this man. Do you understand? Even if he touches me, he does not possess me. If you go back in the stall, I’ll come sit with you in a while.”
“Yes?” he said doubtfully, looking at the man he’d hurt, and at the perfectly bland, bleeding stranger who seemed to understand what she was trying to do, for he took another step back, and Ramble’s gaze left him and watched how she knelt by Carey, still rubbing his back with absent, soothing gestures.
Carey caught her eye, gestured minutely with his chin. Move away.
She felt like she was tearing something inside herself... but to her surprise, it was a wound already opened. A tear first made when she’d found Carey in here with Ramble in the first place, only—somehow—moments ago.
She stood. She moved away. “Yes,” she told Ramble.
He flicked his head up with the internal conflict of it, and took a step back. “Come sit,” he said.
“I will.” She hesitated, not able to do as he wished... not wanting to thwart him directly. “I have to talk to this man. You can listen if you want. But we made a mess, and we have to clean it up. If you stay in there, we can clean it up faster.”
He sighed hugely, gave his own tongue a thoughtful chew, and backed into the stall, sliding the door closed himself.
“Attaboy,” she murmured. Beside her, Carey tried to climb to his feet, failed—and held up a hand to stay her when she would have helped.
“I’ll get there,” he muttered. “Just knocked the wind out of me, that’s all.”
“Should have done more than that,” the man said, without any particular heat behind it. He moved to the end of the barn, closing the barn door Jess had left ajar, latching it, and then wrapping the inner handles with hay twine. “You can open it,” he told them, eyeing them as he tied a loose knot, “but not before I reach you. So save us all some trouble and sit still a moment.”
Carey laughed shortly and threw himself into a fit of coughing, barely managing words. “I’m the one who hasn’t managed to get up yet, remember?”
“Or maybe you just haven’t bothered.” But the man didn’t dwell on it; he shrugged out of his shortcoat as he walked down the aisle, passing between Carey and Jess with no apparent concern even as he took a quick look at his bleeding arm. The look he gave Jess was one of appraisal—almost, she thought, of approval. “Took me by surprise with that one. You’re quick. But it won’t happen again.” Approval, but... warning. He completed the rip she’d made in his shirt sleeve and held the arm out to her. “Tie that off, will you?”
The Changespell Saga Page 76