Changespell Legacy (26 page)

"Nosy, Rita," Mark said, a tone of voice that told Dayna he really did know this woman . . . and also that he believed she was capable of discerning more than most. That she wanted to. Dayna looked over her shoulder, annoyed; he should have known better than to let Suliya come, if that were the case.

Clearly he was operating in pure Mark Mode . . . too laid back to notice things that really did matter.

Lighten up, Dayna
. Mark's imagined voice in her head, his knee-jerk response to her need to control all the details. Of everything. Maybe this time he was right.

And meanwhile Suliya all but jumped up and down and clapped her hands. "Oh, yes!" she said. For a rich girl, sometimes she seemed astonishingly naive. Even Dayna had to hide a smile when Suliya added, "A reading of what?" in that same eager voice; the woman who'd shown her the stones didn't bother to hide her own amusement.

Dayna turned to the stones. Cut crystals, polished ovals . . . minerals and gems and a few that looked purely artificial. Satisfaction. It might take some hunting, the stones might not be quite right, but she'd find what she needed here. She hunted for the first pick, pushing her forefinger through the stones; touching them. Trying to get a feel for them, as she'd be able to do on Camolen and finding the power so faint she couldn't be sure.

Dayna couldn't help herself—looking at the plethora of stones before her, feeling her own spellstones in the pocket of her jeans . . . and wondering. A test, just a small test, just to see if it was worth buying the stones at all.

Saddened, Jess left Ramble with another apple and a few slices of melon; like her, he preferred many small meals instead of fewer large ones. And saddened, she almost missed the fact that there was a new message on the white board, even though they'd taken to leaving the pantry door open as they waited for Jaime's delayed reply.

Like the last, this one was full of what Dayna had eventually termed "static"; like the last, it was terse and to the point, even with the requested repetition.
Ha-visitors -ooking fo-Arlen b-cause of world-tra—l
s-ell detectio-. Now think t-ey follo— -ou. B-c-reful.
Staticky, but not unreadable.
Had visitors looking for Arlen because of world-travel spell detection.
That made more sense than the first time, then . . . very few people knew Dayna was willing to attempt magic of that complexity, or that because of her ability to mix raw magic and conventional magic, she could actually accomplish such spells.

Now think they followed you. Be careful.

She had to blink at that. Followed them? Why?

To stop us
. Of course. But how could anyone understand enough of their goals here to
want
to stop them? And who would want to in the first place?

She couldn't think it through, not with the unhappy taste of Ramble's reaction clogging her mind.

Dayna was gone, in town with Mark and Suliya; Jess had come in earlier to get Ramble's apple as they were preparing to leave. Carey had been asleep then—unused to the medicine Mark had given him, although Mark assured them it was commonly used and quite safe, this ibuprofen—and as far as she knew, he hadn't yet woken. She brushed hay and wood shavings off her clothes while she was still in the kitchen, and went to find him.

Yes, still asleep. On a bed for which Mark had apologized; all of the farmhouse's extra beds were narrow single-person beds, even the one that was Jaime's own. It didn't matter to Jess; hers was in the same room with Carey and she slept in either.

Now she watched him a moment, his back to her, crowded up against the wall as if it was all that kept him from tipping over. Even in his sleep he favored his sore leg, keeping it gingerly bent. Although the spring day was warm enough to keep Jess in a T-shirt, he'd drawn the worn navy bedspread over his arms, rumpling the covers into an impossible mess.

Jess eased into the bed, stretching out behind him, doing her best not to disturb him. Just considering him. Watching him, reaching out to touch his hair only when the urge became irresistible.

It woke him, but just barely. "It's me," she said, close enough to his ear to use the barest of murmurs.

"I'm thinking."

"Is everything—"

"Fine." And it was, for the moment. Long enough for her to watch him and touch him and consider . . . things. His hair was so unlike hers, so fine in comparison—if not nearly as fine as Jaime's or Dayna's. Blond, but nothing like the palomino's . . . darkest gold, almost brown near the roots and the nape of his neck where he had it cut short. Mixed strands of ashy browns and deep blond on top, where he'd let it grow longer and the forelock often fell over his brow. Very human, all in all. "I need to think."

"And it helps to do
that
to me?" He was awake enough to put humor in his voice, and she knew exactly what she was doing to him, although for once that was not her intent.

"Yes," she said. "To be with you."

He gave her a wordless grumble and fell silent; she thought he dozed, though sometimes he leaned into her hand.

Very human. And he loved her. She had no doubt of it . . . day in and day out, just like any two humans.

She sometimes caught him just looking at her . . . smiling. Or he touched her arm in the middle of a conversation about something else altogether, or ran his hand down her back, just the way she now traced a finger down his shoulder, found a knot of tension, and gently worked it out.

He loved her.

But there were things he hadn't faced, hadn't accepted. If he were truly at ease with the Lady part of her, he wouldn't avoid riding her. And he hadn't—not since he'd known her as Jess. He'd even changed the subject when she mentioned it.

Of late, she was beginning to believe he couldn't reconcile the fact that he felt one way about humans and another about horses. She wasn't even sure it was so wrong, intellectually . . . but it hurt her nonetheless. And now, when she saw what he'd been willing to do to Ramble—
for nothing
—it bothered her all the more.

He rolled back, half trapping her, and looked over his shoulder. "Jess," he said, half in amusement and half all-serious, "you're killing me."

"I just needed—"

"To think. I know." Still sleepy sounding, his voice laced with affection, he said, "You keep doing that, and I'm going to give you something to
think
about, all right."

She smiled, but it felt small and sad. She said, "Ramble doesn't know anything. Nothing to help
us
, I mean." He knew well enough why he'd been brought here, and how useless it had been. "And Jaime thinks someone followed us here."

"Waitaminute, waitaminute." He twisted around in the narrow space she'd left him, ending up propped on one elbow and facing her. Carey. So human. So driven . . . but not so driven he no longer failed to understand the consequences.

This time, he'd accepted them for someone else. For Ramble.

He said, "You talked to him? Really
talked
to him?"

She nodded, watching him, still half lost in her thoughts. His was a face that could have come from a horse. Not a rough-edged Ramble type of horse, but something finely bred. Although he had not quite the nose for it; not enough expression in his nostrils, and too much in his forehead. She reached to smooth one of the lines she'd just created there, and he gently but firmly caught her hand.

"Why didn't you wait? What did he say? What
exactly
did he say?"

Best not to answer that first question, not when the answer was
I needed to protect him from you
. "He says a man was there. He only saw a little. And he felt magic from the man. Then he ran. That's all."

"That's something," Carey said . . . but he frowned.

Jess sank back down on the bed, looking up at him. "Not new. Not if you believed Dayna. She felt the magic . . . that means someone had to have been there. We knew. We didn't
have
to bring Ramble here."

Gently—more gently than she wanted, she could tell that by his preoccupied frown—he said, "We couldn't know without trying." He ran a hand over his face, still looking tired, and absently rotated the shoulder on which he wasn't leaning. "That can't be everything. He'll remember more, if we keep asking—"

"No," Jess said flatly. It was, she realized from the surprise on his face, a command. "He has said what he knows."

"Jess—"

She sat up suddenly; there wasn't enough room on the bed for both of them that way, so she slid off and stayed kneeling there where he could see her, could understand how serious she was. "
No
. He won't talk to you . . . he understands why he is here and he knows he can tell us nothing of worth. Carey," she said slowly, watching the surprise linger in his eyes, and close enough to mark the mixed brown and green of them, "if you try, I will take him away."

That shocked him; he flinched, though she doubted he knew it. Mingled with the shock was a sudden pain, and the draw of his brow against it.

"Yes," she said softly, and with perfect understanding. "It hurts. I know." She was beginning to think this was what being human was all about. Being capable of hurting the people about whom you cared the most.

He drew a deep breath, pushing himself upright and swinging his legs over the edge of the bed, making a halfhearted effort to pat the covers back into place. "All right," he said. "We'll talk about it later."

"We just talked about it." She sat back on her heels, not giving ground. Not this time. She could handle Ramble away from the barn; she was the only one. She had a spellstone to get back home; she would use it.

"And we may well talk about it again!" His voice rose, came out nearly as a shout, not a tone he'd ever used with her before.

She looked steadily back at him.

He threw his hands up. "We've got enough to deal with right now without getting stuck on this, all right?

What about this message from Jaime?"

She frowned at him, not satisfied with the way he'd left things about Ramble . . . but realized she'd pushed hard, decided to give him the time to deal with it. "I left it on the board."

He didn't hesitate. He got to his feet and headed out the door. Jess followed more slowly, and found him contemplating Jaime's poorly transported words, frowning. As she came up beside him he shook his head. "Damn, I wish we could talk to her."

"Someone wants to stop us," Jess said. "I don't know why. You and Dayna did this to
help
."

He gave her a wry look, his mouth twisted in a self-deprecating way. "Even if you think we're wrong."

"I think you're wrong," Jess said readily. "But I know you did it to try to help."

"For someone to want to stop us, they'd have to know what we were doing. Or
think
they knew." Carey shook his head again. "I can't put it together. Let's leave it here, see if the others have any glowbursts about it." He gave a sudden glance around the kitchen, the worn honey-pine cabinets and table and its markedly empty silence. No television in the background, no leftover snacks on the kitchen counter.

"This isn't a good time to be separated. If someone's here and they came prepared, they could have finder spellstones."

"Mark took Dayna to look for spellstones," Jess told him. "Empty ones, for Dayna. She found out magic doesn't work from scratch here. She said something about doubling spellstones."

Carey winced.

"Is that bad?" Jess asked.

He said, "Not if it works."

Payys. Another small town, barely big enough for the livery. Arlen gave a sigh of relief as he spotted its sign, and then another when the woman wielding a stall fork was amiably willing to take on Grunt for the night.

The smaller towns. They were used to being bypassed by the rest of Camolen . . . and therefore much less disturbed by the disruptions that had everyone else scrambling to maintain themselves, running short on supplies anyway, and in general not behaving as the civilized folk of Camolen ought to. Not that life in the small towns seemed normal—people were worried, and conveniences had been unsettled. But for all of that, they seemed to go on with day-to-day life, wary and waiting for someone to tell them what was going on.

No one ever mentioned the kind of destruction Arlen had seen on the road . . . and seen again this very day, the smallest patch of oddness just off the road. He'd spent some time studying it, but when he'd given it a subtle prod of magic—just a dollop, not directed toward any kind of spell—it twisted itself inside out, doubled while he blinked, and drove him to retreat.

At least it had given him something to think about until the next time he found one—and he had no doubt that he would.

"Wantin' grain for the horse?" the woman said, barely pausing in her work with the fork. "I'm about to start feeding, but yours ought not get any for a while . . . I'll put it in a bucket here if you want, and start him on some hay."

"I'd be grateful," Arlen said, unloading the pack sacks and stripping the saddle from the gelding's back, letting the blanket sit there a while longer while the animal cooled.

Carey would be surprised at how much he'd learned about horses.

"Damn well better have the chance to tell him," Arlen muttered, earning a glance from the woman as she shoved her full wheelbarrow down the puddled, dirt-packed lane in front of the stall row. He gave her an embarrassed shrug and lugged his gear to the empty stall she'd pointed out to him. Grunt needed grooming, and then he'd need his grain—but Arlen wanted nothing more than to sit numbly and not move, here in his ugly-clothes persona and his upper lip that so keenly felt the cold . . . even his nose seemed colder without the mustache. Just sit and . . . sit. Exhausted in body and mind.

He found a wooden feed bucket with a broken handle, flipped it over, and plunked his cold posterior upon it. Just to sit.

And, he thought suddenly, to hunt for Jaime. He'd never reached for her at this time of day . . . always at night, when he was tired and presumably so was she. Elbows on knees, face in hands, he went looking.