by Kyra Halland
We have a body!
The Sh’kimech’s exulting cry jerked Lainie’s awareness back to the mage’s body. She felt the body twitch as the Sh’kimech began trying to make it obey their will.
Oh, no, you don’t, she told them. Was it going to be easier or harder to send them home if they were in possession of a body of their own? Harder, probably. She gathered the remnants of her own power for this last fight, then a shudder rippled through her, along with a too-familiar sickness.
No. It couldn’t be. She’d thought she was rid of the demonsalts cravings. She found herself on her hands and knees, shaking with exhaustion and chills as sweat, rain, and tears streamed down her face. A cramp seized her belly and pain radiated through her arms and legs.
She couldn’t let this happen, not while the Sh’kimech were running around loose in a body. She needed power to bring them back under control and to ease the cravings, and there wasn’t time to regenerate any. Frantically, she reached out, searching. The fifth and last mage had disappeared – dead or fled, she didn’t know. Silas was nearly drained; if she took from him, that would leave him depleted, hungry, and helpless.
Her mind returned to the warmth in the ground beneath her, the power of the Wildings, rich and abundant. Silas had told her that the power within the earth couldn’t be drawn and used; it was too closely bound to the land. But she could do other things that were supposed to be impossible; why not this? And there really wasn’t any other choice, if she was going to get control of the Sh’kimech again and send them back where they belonged.
With one of her precious few remaining strands of power, she reined in the Sh’kimech as best she could while they were distracted, fumbling with their new flesh and bones. With another thread, she reached into the ground beneath her hands and touched the amber glow running through the earth. Opening herself, she drew the earth-power in as though taking a deep breath.
Warmth and strength flowed into her, filling her until she seemed to swell with power. The cravings and sickness eased as the nearly-empty place inside of her, where her magic should be, was filled. The earth-power felt so good, so right, as though she had been shaped to hold it. Maybe what she was doing was supposed to be impossible, but she didn’t see how it could possibly be wrong.
With her renewed strength, she reached into the body the Sh’kimech were occupying and grasped them. Sister, no! they protested as she pulled them back into herself. Let us have this body!
No. I let you destroy my enemy; that was what I promised you. Not a body.
But what about the other one? You promised we could destroy him too!
He got away, I think. Or he’s already dead. If I ever find him, I’ll let you have him. Now, she told them firmly, it’s time for you to go home.
They seemed to have learned by now that when she spoke to them like that, it was no use trying to argue with her any more. They didn’t resist as she pushed them out through her hands into the ground. Using all her will and the rest of the power she held, she drove them deep down to their home, where they fell still and silent again.
Lainie sat back, shaking in exhaustion and relief. Yet again, she had managed to not lose herself to the Sh’kimech. It had seemed easier this time, but, she thought, she really ought to stop pressing her luck. The last remnants of the Wildings power she had taken in flowed back into the ground; it seemed to naturally want to return to its source if she wasn’t actively using it. When it was gone, she could still feel traces inside her of where it had been. The place where her power dwelled felt expanded, somehow, and a faint amber glow seemed to cling around the edges. Beneath her, she could sense the magic in the ground even more clearly than before. She wasn’t sure what the changes meant, and she wondered if she would ever be the same.
Another spasm of sickness dragged her the rest of the way back to her physical senses. Silas was kneeling beside her, his arms wrapped tightly around her as if he never meant to let her go. Both of them were drenched and shivering. The rain and wind had mostly died away, and the storm clouds, now just an ordinary gray, were beginning to drift apart. The ground around them was pitted from explosions, and the grass where Lainie had drawn up the Sh’kimech and then sent them back down into the earth was gray and rotted from their icy, life-draining touch.
“You all right?” Silas’s voice was worn harsh and thin.
“I’m fine.” She shivered harder. “Mostly.”
“The cravings?”
She nodded, keeping her mouth clenched shut against a wave of nausea that surged through her.
“Damn. I thought that was over and done with.”
“I know.” Disappointment and discouragement lay heavy and cold on her heart; was the addiction going to plague her for the rest of her life? She refused to believe it. She hadn’t been able to work much magic in months; maybe that had allowed the cravings to come back. She would just have to make sure she didn’t go that long without using her power again. “At least it isn’t too bad. So far, anyhow. What about you?”
“Alive. Can’t complain.”
“I killed two of them.” It seemed so strange to talk about killing men this way, as though she was counting sacks of beans in the grub wagon. “The mage who was using the Old Ones, I don’t know if they killed him or if I did, but he’s dead too. And I Stripped one, or as good as. So that’s four; what about the fifth one?”
“I attacked him while you were busy. He fought back, then by the time I fended it off and counter-attacked, he’d disappeared. I don’t know if he’s dead or if he ran off. I don’t like not knowing for sure.”
Lainie didn’t like not knowing, either. That was the third mage who knew what she could do who might possibly get word to the Mage Council. But, much as she hated to admit it, they almost certainly knew by now, anyway. The last message Silas had received proved as much. “Don’t think it matters, now.”
“I would have liked to question him. Find out what they wanted, if they were working for someone else. And then make sure he couldn’t tell anyone about you.”
The voices of cowhands shouting to each other drifted over. “And now they know, too,” she added. “But it couldn’t be helped. You couldn’t have just stood by and let that twister hit.”
“I did it for you, not them,” he said.
She wasn’t entirely sure she believed him; he couldn’t have completely turned away from his belief in protecting Plain folk. “What are we going to do now?”
“We can’t leave, not without the horses and our gear. And I hate to quit before we get paid what we’ve earned.”
“So let’s go help with the roundup, and hope for the best. You stopped a tornado. We saved the herd. That’s got to mean something to them. It’s a wicked thing before the gods to do harm to someone who’s only done good to you.”
Silas was silent for a long moment, then he let out a heavy sigh. “Is your gun loaded?”
“You know it always is.”
“Hope for the best, then, and be prepared for the worst. Let’s go.”
With a groan, Silas got to his feet, then gave Lainie a hand up. She wiped the mud off her hands onto her pants; the lower legs of both her and Silas’s pants were caked with mud, and they were soaked from head to foot. They walked back to the milling, confused herd of cattle but still remained at a distance, not ready yet to face the rest of the crew. At Silas’s whistle, Abenar and Mala came trotting over, and Silas and Lainie mounted up and rode off in search of runaway cattle.
Chapter 11
LAINIE AND SILAS spent a long, hard afternoon tracking down wet, unhappy cattle. They had to shout at the animals and smack them on the flanks with their hands and the cattle quirts and fire gunshots into the dirt at their hooves to get them moving. Lainie was almost too weary to move or even to think, but the work distracted her from the magical hunger that gnawed at her and the cravings that shook her body with spasms of pain and sickness. Silas was silent, likewise intent on the work; she knew his hunger had to be every bit as
strong as her own. But now wasn’t the time to do something about it, not with cattle to be rounded up and cowhands all over the place; they would just have to wait for it to regenerate on its own.
In a small ravine running out of the western hills, they found one bunch of cattle, maybe fifty head, being guarded by a couple of annoyed-looking A’ayimat sentries. Silas and Lainie dismounted to take the animals in hand and thank the A’ayimat, and the sentries greeted them as the Grana wizards they’d heard tell of.
“We understand the unnatural storm scared your animals,” one of the sentries said, “but don’t let it happen again.”
“It won’t,” Lainie said wearily. “We took care of the wizards who caused it.”
The other sentry nodded. “We found them up yonder, three of them dead and one as good as dead. We put an end to his suffering.”
“There were five,” Lainie said. “Have you seen the last one?”
“If anyone left the place where we found the bodies, the wind and rain wiped out their tracks,” the first sentry said.
“If you do see him,” Silas said, “don’t let him get away. I’d like to question him if I can make it back this way sometime, but it might not be soon.”
The second sentry grinned. “Don’t worry. He trespassed on our land and caused us a great deal of inconvenience this afternoon. If we see him, he won’t be going free. Though he might not be able to answer questions, either.”
The A’ayimat disappeared up the ravine, and Lainie and Silas mounted up and drove the cattle back towards the herd. They left the animals near the herd where the other hands would easily find them and rode off again in search of more strays.
Near sunset, after one final search through the fringes of the western hills that came up empty, Lainie and Silas returned to the herd. The smell of sizzling steaks drifted over from the camp; apparently some cattle had been killed by the lightning strike or the stampede and were now going to be supper.
Just outside the camp, Lainie let Mala dawdle to a halt. Her stomach churned with nerves at the thought of riding into the camp to face the hands who now knew that she and Silas were wizards. Silas reined in Abenar and looked at her. “Well?”
With luck, they could just slip into the camp, fetch their belongings, and ride away without being seen. But Lainie hated the thought of turning tail. With a deep breath, she gathered her courage and squared her shoulders. “We saved the herd. We’ve done nothin’ wrong.”
Silas nodded once.
Though her heart pounded in fear, they rode to the remounts and cared for Abenar and Mala, then headed for the Windy Valley grub wagon. Along the way, hands from Windy Valley and the other crews gathered around them, with more men joining them until they formed a wide circle.
Lainie and Silas stopped. A cold knot formed in Lainie’s stomach, and her heart started racing; they were surrounded by some three dozen or more hostile-looking men with guns in hand. The memory of the hanging mob in Bitterbush Springs flashed through her mind. Frantically, she looked for the ropes they surely meant to hang her and Silas with.
“We’ve been working hard and we’re hungry,” Silas said. “So if you fellows don’t mind moving out of our way –” He took a step forward.
The men in front of them closed ranks, blocking their way. “Hold it right there, wizard scum,” one man said.
Silas put his right arm around Lainie, leaving his gun hand free, and pulled her protectively close to him. Not that they could protect each other right now, drained, exhausted, and badly outnumbered as they were. They should have just run, she thought. The hells with the cattle and the drive and the money. Silas was right; no matter what they did, wizards were wizards as far as the Plains were concerned, and the only good wizard was a dead one.
Landstrom pushed his way through the growing circle of men and stopped in front of Silas. His fists were clenched; corded muscles and veins stood out from his powerful forearms and thick neck. “You are a wizard. You as good as told me you weren’t, when I hired you.” He stood shaking and red-faced; Lainie expected him to strike Silas, but he didn’t. Could he be afraid? she wondered.
“He’s been puttin’ curses on us this whole time!” a hand shouted.
Others called out, “That flooded river was his doing!” “An’ the stampedes!” “And this storm!”
“I just saved your gods-damned cattle drive,” Silas ground out. “And your lives.”
“Whatever you did, we know it weren’t for no good cause!”
“Nothin’ a wizard does is for good!”
The Forn’s Crossing hand who had bragged about hanging a mage stepped forward, aiming his gun at Silas. “I reckon a bullet can kill a wizard just as dead as a human. I want to see you beg for your life, wizard boy.”
The men in the mob laughed and threw more taunts at them. “Come on, let’s see you beg!” “On your knees, wizard boy!”
Lainie’s heart was thudding in her chest, and she could hardly breathe. Silas drew his gun and aimed it at the Forn’s Crossing man. The gun started to glow blue while a wind whipped up around them and the ground trembled beneath their feet. “I don’t have to beg,” he said.
He was leaning heavily against Lainie, and his hand shook slightly as he held his gun. How could he possibly have enough power to put on a display like that? Lainie hoped the hostile crowd couldn’t see how weak he really was. But the show of magic seemed to be working; a few of the hands glanced sidelong at each other, licking their lips nervously, and took a few steps back as their anger turned to fear and uncertainty.
The Forn’s Crossing man’s gun faltered, but he didn’t back off, and neither did Landstrom. “Miss Lainie,” Landstrom said, “I know your Pa. I don’t know if this wizard bastard kidnapped you or put a spell on you, but we’ll get you away from him and I’ll make sure you get home safely.”
They didn’t know about her, Lainie realized. Of course – she wasn’t the one who had unleashed her magic in the middle of the herd to stop the tornado, and they must not have seen her start to call up her power before the storm struck or much, if anything, of the magical battle by the hills.
For a long moment, Silas stood absolutely still. Then he dropped his arm from around Lainie and took a step away. “I’ll let her go,” he said. “Just don’t hurt her.”
He couldn’t mean it. Lainie looked at him. His head was bowed, his face shadowed by his hat, but defeat and resignation showed in the slumped lines of his body. He did mean it, she realized. A tight ache filled her chest. Was that really what he thought she wanted, to go home to her Pa and leave him behind? Was that really what he thought was best for her?
Well, if that was what he thought, he’d best think again. She would show him that she had meant what she said about them being a team, even with a hundred guns aimed at them.
She stepped to his side and put her left arm around his waist. With a grand and completely unnecessary flourish, she brought a rose-colored glow to her right hand, using her ring to dredge up the scraps of power that had regenerated since the fight.
“Lainie!” Silas whispered sharply.
She ignored him. “I guess you didn’t notice, Mr. Landstrom,” she said. “I’m a wizard too.”
Landstrom stared at her, eyes wide with shock, and a muttering went around the circle of cowhands. “You!” Mrs. Bington’s furious cry cut through from beyond the mob.
Lainie paid none of it any mind. “That’s why I’m with him,” she went on telling Landstrom. “I belong with him. You kill him, you’ll have to kill me too. And then what will you say to my Pa? Don’t worry; my Pa ain’t a wizard. It came from my grandmother.” Bitterness filled her mouth as she spoke of the cruel, faithless woman who was the source of her magic, the heartless, inhuman creature that Lainie had feared becoming herself. “We saved the cattle drive because we believe Plain people should have equal rights with wizards and be allowed to make good lives for themselves just as wizards do.”
“It was wizards who made that storm
and tried to destroy the herd!” argued Deevish, the mage-killing hand from the Windy Valley crew.
“You was workin’ with them to kill us and take our cattle!” the Forn’s Crossing man added.
“If I wanted to kill you and take your cattle,” Silas growled, “you wouldn’t be standing here right now.”
“You threatening me, wizard boy?”
Silas pushed Lainie aside as the Forn’s Crossing man fired, then staggered back with a grunt of pain. Immediately, he righted himself and aimed. His injured left arm shook as he held the gun, and the blue glow around the gun flickered weakly. Lainie went to his side and put her arm around him again, supporting him. She tried to resume her own show of magic, but she had used up most of the little that had regenerated. Waves of sickness and cramps shuddered through her; she did her best to hide them. Fear of her and Silas’s magic was the only thing holding back the mob. If the men realized how vulnerable she and Silas were now, it was over.
If only they had taken time to regenerate their power instead of chasing cattle all over the place… But there was a plentiful source of power right beneath her feet. Whether it was rightfully hers to use or not, right now she needed it. It took power to take power, but Lainie thought she might just have enough. Focusing her attention on where her feet met the earth, she found the amber warmth that lay just beneath the surface. With a thin strand of her own power, she reached down into the earth and drew the land’s magic into her.
Bright, living warmth filled her, and an amber glow touched with rose came to life in her hand. Beside her, she felt rather than heard Silas’s sharp intake of breath as he realized what she had done. Now, if only she could strengthen him as well… Or maybe she could. If she could force power into another mage, why couldn’t she do the same to Silas, only more gently?
She clung to him more closely, like a lady in distress clinging to the hero in a penny-thriller novel. With her mage senses, strengthened by the Wildings earth-power she had taken in, she sought the place inside him where his own power lived. Only the faintest flicker of blue still remained along the edges. Cautiously, using the physical contact between them to strengthen and guide the magical connection, she directed a trickle of amber power into him.