Barrenlands (The Changespell Saga) (19 page)

"Not a guide," Ehren said, and hesitated, his thoughts going deeper. Shette met Laine's gaze and raised her eyebrows in question, but he only shrugged.

Ehren took a sudden breath, glancing back at their wagon. "Hetna seemed to think the smuggling was linked to a pass she found described in pre-Barrenlands records... its east end is a cavern, and would be near the Solvany-Therand border now in the Barrenlands. A wizard— a good one— could get to it." His expression grew momentarily dark. "That's what it all comes down to— wizards. Wizards causing trouble in Loraka…a pass only wizards can negotiate. And Hetna could only have found out about Coirra's curse on the T'ieran by poking into a wizard's business…but her intent had been to poke into the smuggling. The information must have been in the same place." He added, his tone dark, "
Wizards.
"

Laine half expected to hear Varien's name. But then, Varien could hardly be gallivanting around the pass with so many court duties to attend.

Ehren shook his head, looking off over the ridge for a long moment; when he looked back, he seemed to have moved on. "I wondered if you'd seen any sign of such a thing. You've had more access to this area than anyone else since the inception of the Barrenlands."

Laine hid his surprise— or thought he had. Ehren— always the one to take action, always thinking behind dark grey eyes. Certainly never waiting for help of any sort, as he waited now. And Laine found himself wanting to provide the answers— the moments from his Dreams, the knowledge that his parents had fled Solvany and Therand and reached the folded southern mountains of Loraka
some
how...

And then he looked at Ehren and shook his head.

Maybe his parents knew the pass, maybe not. But that was private. The Dreams had shown him two people meeting, two people loving…two people struggling to find a place they could live in peace. Now that they had it, Laine would do nothing to disturb it.

"I've never seen any signs of a pass," he said truthfully. "There's no break in the mountains anywhere along here."

Ehren gave him a rueful grin. "I didn't think it would be that easy," he said. "I'll just keep working on it."

And that, Laine suddenly realized, was what he was afraid of.

~~~~~

Ehren rode bareback on Ricasso, watching Laine move shift with the movement of Nell's sturdy round back, his legs absurdly long against the mare's barrel. It was too hot today for saddles, though Ehren might have wished for a blanket between himself and Ricasso's sweaty back.

Shette rode in the wagon, not feeling well and not talking about it. Laine, tired and footsore after almost an entire day of walking on rocks, had appropriated the little mare.

Laine had called this the roughest leg of the route. The wagons lurched over rocky ground, perpetually tilted down on the left as they traveled the least-sloped part of a valley so narrow it didn't even hesitate at the bottom before heading back up the opposite mountain ridge. To their right, the main ridge no longer looked even faintly hospitable. It loomed over them with shale and chunks of layered rock; at their passage, loose rock skittered down the hill to clog the trickle of the creek winding through the bottom.

Not a friendly place at all.

But they were almost through it; Laine had said as much just moments earlier. And that thanks to the currents of the place, it was seldom an area that held any hint of magic. Just as well. It would be Hells trying to handle a tricky situation in this terrain.

But Nell stopped short in front of him anyway. When Ehren moved up, he discovered Laine had that
look
, his head slightly cocked as though listening instead of looking. One eye closed, he scanned the area around them— while behind them, an assortment of equine snorts and shouted commands indicated the entire caravan was coming to a halt.

"Something?" Ehren asked, suddenly realizing he'd come to take Laine's Sight as seriously as he would take a warning from one of his own Guards.

"As strong as I've ever felt it," Laine said, still looking puzzled. "But I can't
See
it." He looked back at Shette, who'd come off the wagon to stand by Spike's head.

"What?" she called to him.

"I'm not sure. Stay put— and holler back to get Machara up here."

She nodded, a wary expression in place— apparently just as cognizant as Ehren and Laine that this was a bad place for trouble. As she passed Laine's request back down the wagon line, Ehren felt Ricasso's impatience beneath him. Even the horse knew something was up.

 Nell moved out at a slow walk. Ehren checked Ricasso until the horse accepted the pace— and then, while Laine moved ahead with that not-quite-there look on his face, Ehren inspected the foreboding landscape, watching for things more mundane... things that his more limited sight could perceive.

Rock trickled down the slope, joining the sound of shod hooves on stone and the occasional impatient huff from Ricasso. Laine stopped again, glancing back; his sad-dog eyes narrowed in a baffled frown. "It's so strong," he said. "But there's nothing..."

But Ehren had seen what they needed to know. "There is," he said, his voice low. "Look with your normal sight, Laine. There, just underneath that overhang."

It was a man, crouched at the edge of the overhang and squinting uphill.

"What—" Laine started, his voice at almost full strength. He cut himself short and said, more quietly, "What in the Guides' eyes is he doing?"

"Casting a spell, unless I'm mistaken," Ehren said, frustrated by the distance between them— too far away to make out the details of clothing, hairstyle, or weaponry. The wizard was nothing more than a man-shaped figure.

A figure who abruptly looked their way, starting in alarm.

"It was bound to happen." Ehren closed his legs around Ricasso. The horse surged forward, his big hooves scrabbling slightly on the uneven footing; he finally found his balance and moved out in a powerful canter.

The wizard didn't hesitate an instant. He whirled back to his spell casting, waved a complicated gesture, and ran back under the overhang. As Ehren closed on the spot, he saw the flick of a tail beyond it— but Ehren was willing to bet he had the better horse. He urged Ricasso forward.

But Ricasso— he who took great heart from such a chase— suddenly slowed, his steps turning high and prancing. And there came a rumble in the air, reverberating deeply inside Ehren's chest until he coughed in response.

What the Hells
?

A stone pinged off his thigh and another off Ricasso's neck, and above the growing noise he heard Laine's shout of warning. "
Run, Ehren!
"

As a larger rock bounced off his shoulder and drew blood, Ehren suddenly understood the rest of Laine's garbled words.
He spelled an avalanche!
A quick glance behind showed Laine galloping back to the wagon, where Shette frantically pushed at the alarmed and uncooperative mules.

An avalanche, and he was directly in its path.

Ehren gathered the reins and slapped them across Ricasso's rump, across the lathering flesh of a horse so willing he'd never felt that sting before. Ricasso's abrupt burst of speed nearly unseated Ehren, and then the horse raced flat out across the uneven path, stumbling and slipping and running ever faster each time another rock hit his sweat-dark coat. When they reached the overhang, Ehren ducked, throwing himself down beside the bay's neck. He clutched desperately at the black mane; his legs slipped against Ricasso's wet hide as rock scraped along his shoulder and dug into his thigh.

It would have been better to stop beneath the relative safety of the overhang, but Ehren was no longer in control. They cleared the dank cool length of protection, and he barely had time to raise his head before the horse plunged up and over a giant chunk of skidding rock. Ehren's face slammed against Ricasso's crest, stunning him. He clung to the runaway animal, his body moving with the lunging gallop of its own accord.

When the horse finally slowed, Ehren became aware of his fingers, tangled painfully tight in thick mane. The burn of his shoulder and thigh plucked at him, and the warm flow of blood down his leg echoed Ricasso's scalding body between his legs. Ricasso trembled, trotting in jerky, high-stepping movements, his ears swiveling this way and that.

"Easy, son," Ehren said, disentangling one cramped hand to slide his hand along the horse's neck, sluicing away the foam. Still more than a little dazed himself, he gingerly straightened to look around.

The valley had widened out, its features grown gentler and more inviting, greenery sprouting along the little creek. As Ricasso finally slowed to a walk on his own, Ehren rearranged the knot of fingers, mane, and reins into something that made sense, and rotated the shoulder that must have taken more than one blow. The entire right side of his body was a shout of bruises, and he checked his sudden impulse to dismount and inspect Ricasso.

Once down, he wasn't at all sure he would make it back up again— and he didn't think it was time for that yet.

Ricasso snorted, loud and hard enough to rock Ehren with movement of his body. He snorted again, ducked his head down, and gave the bit a quick cross-jawed chew. "Good boy," Ehren told him softly, offering him another pat and letting the reins slide through his fingers.

Only then did Ehren straighten to attention at what he was finally focused enough to see. Just ahead of them, down below the trail and half in the creek, lay a man. Even from a distance Ehren could see the bright splash of blood soaking the ground around the man's head, almost obscuring the rock there.

Whoever and whatever the man was, Ehren's only clues would be what he could glean from the body. Even the horse was gone, taking its brands and breeding with it. Painfully, Ehren slid from Ricasso's back, clutching the snarled mane when his legs threatened to give way. He glanced back at the settling finality of dust-hazed rocks behind him—
Laine, Shette, fate unknown
— and went to do his job.

~~~~~

"Get back, get back!" Shette screamed at the mules as the first stone missiles shot past them. The muted roar of moving rock swelled, but the mules struggled to respond. Their efforts fast edged into panic— Laine threw himself off Nell and jerked Shette away from the mules as Spike reared, plunging in the harness and triggering Clang's fear. They fought one another, the harness, and the weight of the wagon as Laine grappled with Shette.

"You can't do anything for them— now
run
!" He pressed Nell's reins in her hands and gave her a shove. A massive chunk of rock slid into the side of the wagon, and it lurched toward them— Shette seemed suddenly to realize their danger, and lit out for the back of the caravan.

Laine ran for Shaffron, who was tied to the back of the wagon. The horse struck at him, wild with fear, and Laine made several aborted attempts before he finally darted in to jerk the lead rope free— Shaffron wheeled around and galloped away.

Laine wasted another instant for a regretful glance at his mules— but when he saw Clang go down under a wave of stone, he ran.

His whole world became the roar of tumbling stone and the unsteady ground beneath his feet. He raced by another abandoned wagon and its panicking team, and a third wagon whose occupants were still trying to back it. At the fourth wagon he dared to turn around— and there stopped short, overcome by awe at the mass of stone tumbling so inexorably down the hill where he'd only just been. A pebble pinged off his forehead; he scarcely felt it.

Eventually the rock stopped moving and the rumble died away, replaced by several wailing children and an array of horses and mules calling anxiously to one another. The sounds came to him as though through a filter of cloth, and still all he could do was look at the spot where he'd been. Where Ehren had been, and where there was now nothing but jumbled stone, some as big as the mules there were now no sign of.

"Laine." It was Machara's voice, and it sounded far away. He just blinked. Her hand came down on his arm and squeezed it, painfully. "Laine, what the Hells happened?"

"Avalanche," Ansgare said, puffing up on foot behind them and stopping on the other side of Laine from Machara. "This spot has always made me nervous. But surely nothing we did triggered— Laine, where's Shette?"

"Back a ways," Machara said shortly. "With Sevita, crying her eyes out. Better to ask, where's Ehren?"

At that, Laine gathered his wits. "I don't know," he said. "He was on Ricasso. He tried to outrun it."

"If he didn't, I doubt we'll ever find him." Machara's voice was grim, and her grip on Laine's arm had turned into something less urgent, and more consoling.

"We
didn't
cause this, Ansgare," Laine said suddenly, turning away from the avalanche for the first time. Another large stone ricocheted down the hill before them, triggering a trickle of tiny slides at its impact points. "There was someone here working magic. We surprised him, and he started the avalanche. I'll bet it was the spell he was setting up in the first place. If we hadn't seen him..." He met the shorter man's gaze, settling his odd-colored eyes on Ansgare's suddenly flinty blue ones.

Ansgare took a slow, deep breath, controlling everything but the flare of his nostrils. "That's it, then. We're a caravan of merchants, not warriors and magic users. We can't fight
this
. We'll stick to Therand for a while. That Sherran of Grannor keeps her country safe for the likes of us."

"But there's got to be a
reason
!" Laine burst out. "No one would go to all this trouble for
nothing
!"

"Son, I don't
care
about the reason. It's obvious enough that we're stepping on someone's toes. The old wandering spells didn't keep us out, so someone's upped the stakes. If we'd triggered this slide while were in the middle of that section, we'd have lost more than—" He stopped short, looking ahead to assess just what they
had
lost.

"My mules," Laine said, really realizing it for the first time. Hardly loveable, they were still companions. And they'd spent their last few moments in terror, anchored to a wagon in the path of several tons of deadly rock. "And..."