There was a long silence. "Details," Dayna said heavily. She set the saddlebags down next to Arlen, and her voice turned resolute. "Don't eat too much, you'll only throw up. Do you think we could have a fire, Carey? If we're really out of sight here?"
"It'll make it harder to move around out there," Carey said readily, but he was looking at Jaime, and even without seeing his face clearly she knew he hadn't been sidetracked. He would make his request of Arlen again, now that he recognized Jaime's evasiveness; eventually, he would learn about the torture . . . but maybe by then Jaime would be ready to handle talking about it. Maybe.
"I, for one, could use a cheerful little fire," Mark said. "We can always put it out if we feel like taking a walk. Anyone got a match?"
Carey snorted. "Magic, Mark. Even I know this one."
"You sure can call up a lot of spells for a courier who doesn't know anything about magic," Mark said.
"It's not calling up the magic that's so hard," Arlen said. "It's controlling it."
"Amen," Dayna said wearily. "Make us a fire, Carey, and let's eat."
* * *
The others slept, except for Mark, who was doing his best to keep watch, although even the still slightly befuddled Jess could see that he was hardly less fatigued than the others. The blue-cast moon had set and the hollow had settled into a darkness deep enough to hide everything but the darker bits of blackness that were the horses against rock. Jess thought about the moon, and how tonight was the first time she'd seen it with eyes that had appreciated the subtleties of color in the icy light it cast.
But as usual, the thoughts she was trying to follow to conclusion—thoughts that would decipher events since her return to the equine shape she had both treasured and feared, that would make sense of Eric's death, that would fit together the pieces of where they were and where they were trying to get—were disrupted into irrecoverable fragments by the pain in her arm.
She remembered the first step when she'd known it was wrong, way back on the stairs. And then all she could remember was the running, and the strength and speed that were hers—and that she'd refused to give up when the leg gave out here in the hollow. She knew it had been dangerous to fight like she had, but she also still felt a deep little piece of that fight left in her, an anger at events that were none of her doing.
She hadn't thanked Dayna for bringing her back, not only from her first and natural form, but from the dark corner of her mind where the human part of her had been coaxed into hiding. She remembered being soothed into that corner, and then all her memories were of a distinctly equine cast, and she shuddered to think that perhaps this Jess part of her could have been lost forever.
"You're awake?" Carey asked softly, one arm moving up to touch her where she lay curled up against his chest.
"Did Jaime ever tell you about Ruffian?" Jess said by way of reply, not moving, still savoring the feel of human touch against human senses—no, of Carey's touch—and not willing to pull away to look up at him. She could feel the frown of his body language.
"No," he said. "A horse?"
"A great runner. She hurt her leg, just like me. And she didn't want to quit. . . ."
"Like you," Carey supplied.
"And they killed her," Jess said finally. "Because she was only hurting herself. She was making it worse." She waited a long moment, her mind filled with the effort of that struggle, and the human hindsight that told her she had, indeed, only worsened her injury. Then she said hesitantly, "Would you have—"
"No!" Carey recoiled from her, and grabbed her upper arms, pulling her upright, his face only inches from hers, while she stared at him with widened eyes. "No, Jess, never! You're not just some racehorse. You're not just Lady anymore. Don't ever doubt that, just because I was too stupid to see it when I first . . . met you."
Something about the way he looked at her, the intensity in his voice, satisfied that deep longing within her that had started in Marion, Ohio, and lay cocooned within Lady ever since. "Damn straight," she whispered. She settled back down against his shoulder, and it seemed ever so natural to nuzzle his neck in an equine flirt, nipping gently at the angle of his jaw. He shivered as he closed his arm around her, holding her tightly against him. Very tight. And for the moment, whatever else was happening around them, Jess found she was completely content.
Satisfaction brought her sleep, but she was drawn back into awareness by a sound so slight it woke no one else. Puzzled, she listened, searching the breeze in the trees for the other noise that hadn't quite belonged to the sounds of the night. There, by the horses, a definite snuffle. Protecting her arm, Jess slid away from Carey and moved hesitantly into the darkness. She stopped with her hand on the rump of the little bay and said, "Jaime."
A short muffled laugh, no humor in it. "How'd you know it was me?"
"Who else would come to the horses?" Jess asked simply. She hitched at the pants that were bagged around her hips again, and moved to where Jaime sat at the horses' heads, by the small cluster of trees that served as pickets. "Jaime, why are you crying? Are you scared?"
"No," Jaime said. "Well, I am scared, but . . . no."
"I want to make it better," Jess said, thinking that in all the difficult times she'd spent with Jaime, the only tears she'd seen had been quiet and few. This, however, seemed to have been quite a sincere cry.
"Oh, Jess," Jaime said, with a sigh that signaled her shaking head, "I wish you could." After a pause, she asked, "How's your arm? I think that you—Lady—blew something in your knee, so it must be your wrist, now."
Even Jess could recognize an evasion that bald. "It hurts like hell, I think Carey would say. Won't you talk to me?"
"Talking isn't going to make this go away," Jaime said bitterly. "I was just thinking. About Eric, for one."
Jess tried once again to make sense of the jumbled memories that surrounded the return to Camolen, and the change from Jess to Lady. "I know . . . he is dead. Not why."
"He's dead because Derrick's slick friend is trigger-happy," Jaime said, more bitterness. "And . . . because of who he was. Do you remember going for that slimeball? Right before Carey invoked the stone?"
"No," Jess said, shaking her head in the darkness. "I remember fighting Derrick. I remember . . . killing him."
"After that, that guy Ernie had us in a pretty bad spot. And things got confusing, everybody was moving, and Eric pulled you back out of the way when Ernie would have shot you. And," she swallowed audibly, "Ernie shot him. Damn, I wish I'd let Carey shoot that bastard. I wish Carey had let Dayna kill him with the magic—even if it had backlashed on us all!"
Jess was stunned. "Eric was killed because he helped me?"
"Eric was killed," Jaime corrected her fiercely, "because Ernie is an egg-sucking son of a bitch who probably pisses in his own Cheerios every morning."
Jess blinked.
"It's funny," Jaime continued unprompted. "There's been so much that's happened since that night. We thought we'd lost you, for one thing. And I've been so worried about what's happening at home. I mean, surely one of my boarders realized we'd gone missing before the horses missed too many meals. Surely . . ."
"Yes," Jess said firmly.
"And up until now, I've handled it all just fine. Which is to say I haven't handled it at all, but sometimes you've got to put that kind of stuff aside, until there's a better time to deal with it."
Jess allowed, "I have a hard time doing that."
"But suddenly I can't get away from it. I was so happy to see you, and then suddenly I was so sad about everything else . . . I just . . . couldn't . . . ."
Jess found Jaime's hand in the darkness, but it pulled out of her grasp.
"No," Jaime said, fighting for control. "If you comfort me I'll lose it. I'll wake everyone up, and then they'll want explanations and Arlen will tell them—" she cut herself off, leaving palpable, empty silence between them.
"Tell them what," Jess asked, suddenly aware that this unspoken thing was the key. "Jaime, I
will yell so loud everyone here will come running."
"Jess—"
"No."
There was a big sigh from the darkness, the sound of Jaime shifting position on the hard ground. One of the horses lowered its head to whuff softly at Jess' head, and then at the still damp clamminess of the dead man's blood on her shirt, but Jess ignored it. And waited.
"Something happened to me today," Jaime said, finally, reluctantly, her voice very far away even though it came from a spot not two feet from Jess' ears. "Willand—that's the blonde-haired wizard that was at the cabin I chased you away from—"
"I remember."
"Willand didn't treat me very well. She . . . she hurt me. She was trying to force Arlen into giving up the spell. She hurt me a lot."
Jess couldn't think of anything to say. The concept of such behavior had never occurred to her, but with understanding came a cold, cold anger. "Sometimes you—everyone, I mean—treat me like I have to be protected," she said. "Like you think I won't understand the answers to the questions I ask, and that you have to watch out for me. But the next time I see Willand, it will not be me who needs protection."
A hesitation, and Jaime said, "I believe you, Jess. But it won't help me if you turn into another Eric: good-hearted and dead. Nothing can help, I think, except maybe time."
They sat for a moment in the darkness, while Jess thought about this woman who was her friend, and with whom she'd shared all her human hours—and many more under saddle. "I liked it when you taught me dressage," she said suddenly. "I wish . . . I wish this part of me had been there, too. Someday, Jaime, will you teach me more? If the Lady part of me and the Jess part of me are ever in the same place at the same time?"
"Yes, Jess," Jaime choked. "Yes, I'll teach you dressage. But . . . this is between you and me, Jess, okay? When I'm ready for the others to know, I'll tell them. But I have to deal with it before I can deal with them dealing with it."
"That was a little confusing," Jess replied. "But I won't tell anyone." Stiffly, she got to her feet and walked away, her bare feet feeling out ground grown chill with the night. She found Carey without too much trouble and sat as close as she could without touching him, unwilling to disturb his sleep again. She dozed through the remaining hours of the night, until the earliest dawn when Mark woke from his valiant but failed effort at night watch and crept among the others, quietly waking them. In a few moments they were gathered together in the haven of the rock formations, all a little chilled, all a lot sore.
Jess was no exception. The sharp pain just below her knee reminded her that an arrow had raked across dun flesh in Arlen's stable. Her wrist throbbed unceasingly, and she held it carefully against her stomach, trying to shield it from the occasional shiver that ran up her stiff frame. Arlen actually looked better than he had the night before, not surprising considering he'd probably just had his best night's sleep for some while. Jaime looked plainly awful, her eyes reddened, surrounded by the black circles from her broken nose. The slash in her breeches was crusted with dried blood, and accented by her awkward limp.
Carey looked at them all and said, "It's time to make some decisions."
"It doesn't look to me like there's much to decide," Dayna said glumly. "Unless we somehow just walk right past that guy up there."
"There's a lot more involved here than just that guy up there," Carey said. "Believe me, if we wanted to, we'd find a way past him. Things are no different than last night—we can't travel as a group, not with Calandre's people looking for us, and stirred up because of Sherra. I'd really hoped to find Sherra's people more of a presence—one we could count on."
"Just like last night," Jaime said. "We're safer here."
"Unless someone misses him and starts looking," Mark said dryly, nodding up at the rocky point.
Arlen nodded agreement and said, "Tell me, Carey, where does Sherra stand?"
"They don't have a checkspell yet, not unless they came up with it in the last day or so. She was working with the other wizards on it, not making a play for you because she didn't want to stir Calandre up."
"Quite right," Arlen said.
"I can't believe you really feel that way," Dayna said, almost a challenge.
"I've certainly had plenty of time to think about it," Arlen said in gentle reproof. "It was much wiser for Sherra to put all her efforts into creating the checkspell than to start trouble by mounting a physical attempt to rescue me once her magical ones failed." He looked around the little group and a mildly startled expression crossed his face. "I think introductions might be in order, Carey."
Carey gave a short laugh as the others, also, realized they'd never really met Arlen, nor he them, even though their lives had been tied together for months now. "I think we might have time for that. This is Mark, Jaime's brother. He's been training with the archers and fighters since we got back. You can depend on him in a pinch, Arlen." Mark looked a little surprised but lifted a hand for a waggle of a hello wave. "This is Dayna—she's from the other world, too. She started using magic almost the moment we got here. One of Sherra's students has been working with her."
Arlen lifted an eyebrow. "You've just started and you were fooling with the kind of magic I helped you calm last night?"
Dayna looked at the ground, seeming as small as she ever did, but then her head came up and there was no apology in her eyes. "I'd do it again."
Arlen nodded. "All right," he said. "As long as you realize the danger you created, and the risk you took on for your friends, as well."
"We had a little brush with backlash already," Carey said ruefully. "And I, for one, am grateful for the chance she took this time."
"For me," Jess said. She looked at Arlen, finding it satisfying to view him from her human eyes. He was as tall as she, and didn't look nearly as old as he had in her brief glimpse of him the evening before. Although he was still gaunt, she nonetheless found the arched nose from her early memories, and the warm, honest eyes. She thought his hint of an overbite was kind of cute. "Dun Lady's Jess," she named herself.
"Yes," he said. "And the most magical thing to come of this whole adventure. I owe my life to your bravery last night, Jess. I'm sorry you were hurt."
"I was not the only one," Jess said, and Jaime gave her a sharp look, but no one else saw anything amiss. Their scars were all clearly visible, from Jaime's sword cut to Mark's saddle-sore gait. "And do not leave out Eric, Carey."
"You mentioned that name," Arlen said to Jaime.
Dayna looked away, but she was the one who spoke. "A friend," she said. "One of Calandre's little goons came to Ohio with Carey, and he caused enough trouble that one of us was killed."
"Eric was the first to believe me," Jess said, and grief prickled at her eyes. Another misery to carry along with her wrist.
Carey took a deep breath and filled the pained silence. "We can't just sit here. Right now there's only one man up there, but that probably won't last long. This is our best chance to make a move."
In puzzled protest, Jaime said, "But we've already agreed—"
"Not all of us," Carey said, and held up his hand to forestall further objection. "I've been thinking about this all night, on and off. Listen. As far as that guy knows, there are five of us and four horses. They must have felt the magic—that's probably what our dead friend over there was trying to check on—but they couldn't see anything. If all of us but Jess were out in the open, our guy would think he was watching all of us. He'd feel pretty secure."
"Yeah, but there's still only one way out of here, and it's past him," Mark said.
"But if we had him distracted," Jaime started slowly.
Dayna shifted, and said hesitantly, "There's that thing I did in the woods. . . ."
Mark winced. "I'm not sure that's a good idea, Dayna."
"No," Carey said. "It's a great idea."
"Magic," Arlen said. "Maybe you'd better let me in on it. But first, I need to make something clear—you can't count on me for any spells. For one thing, Calan
dre knows my touch and can locate us through any magic I do. For another—well, I simply haven't got it in me."
"I was afraid of that," Carey said heavily. He leaned back against the rocky wall and gave Arlen a succinct explanation of Dayna's first successful spell. "Of course, this would have to be something much more subtle. About the level of a glowspell, where there just isn't enough magic gathered to create a backlash."
"It wouldn't be enough to keep him away," Arlen said. "But as a distraction I think it would be perfect. A go-away spell. Why didn't I ever think of that one?"
"It takes desperation," Dayna said, but she responded shyly to Arlen's approval.
"There's our distraction, then," Carey said, and looked at Jess. "That puts a lot on Jess."
"Me?" Jess said in surprise, having failed to anticipate Carey's plan.
He nodded reluctantly. "If you're willing to do it," he said. "Here's the way I see it, start to finish: we need to eat what food is left and take care of ourselves a little. There's a spring back under the rocks, not a fast-flowing one, but it ought to do if we're careful. Jaime, especially, needs to clean out that cut, and the horses need to be watered. We may not get the chance to take care of those things once we start trouble—" and he nodded his head at the exit. "And Arlen, if you can, Jess will need a finder. Something like the maplight," he explained to Jaime, glancing at Mark and Dayna to see that they understood the reference, "only tuned in to a person—this time Sherra—instead of a place. And then it gets simple. While Dayna hits that guy with her go-away, with all of us in plain sight, Jess makes a run for it. She should take him completely by surprise, be past him before he even figures out he should try to stop her."
Changespell 01 Dunn Lady's Jess Page 28