Changespell Legacy (27 page)

So easy, after all these nights, to fall right into it . . .
Jaime, I'm here. I'm alive. I'm coming.
Over and over again, never expecting an answer from someone with so little ability with magic, but hoping at least to feel the connection.
Jaime, I'm here. I'm alive. I—
He startled at the suddenness of it. The brief clarity of
Jaime
, the shock of contact— A voice of satisfaction, far too close to his ear. "Been looking for you, wizard. Should have kept your magic to yourself."

Jaime lifted her head from the message she penned to Chesba, gratitude for his cooperation and quick reply in confirming that the two representatives who had visited her were none of his, after all. On the stack of outgoing messages beside her elbow was another to the local peacekeeper station, asking about the two. But her pen—a nib pen, beautifully appointed and fit to the human hand, but a nib pen nonetheless—dripped a large blot of ink on the message, unheeded. The evening ague? Now?
Now
? It nibbled at her, swelling; she closed her eyes against it, unprepared.

But as it swelled, heading for unbearable—not
pain
so much as pressure—it popped, clearing for an instant of— "Arlen?" she whispered.

Arlen jumped to his feet, stumbled over the bucket, and ended up standing there with it in his hand, feeling foolish on all counts.
Should have kept the magic to yourself, wizard
.

Even, apparently, the small spells. Spells that should have disappeared under the weight of daily magic use in Camolen without the application of intense scrutiny.

I've been looking for you.

Arlen eyed the man, found him far too close for comfort. Not a wizard—muscle. Hulking and obvious muscle, with shoulders that took a coat twice as wide as Arlen's and still it didn't close properly. He'd be highly protected from personal damage spells, then. No easy inertia spells, no spells that acted directly against him at all. And he'd be fast—at this distance, faster than a complicated spell. Faster than almost
any
spell, if the man was trained to the signs of a wizard's concentration.

Arlen would bet this particular man was trained in any number of things . . . none of them pleasant. "You must have been looking for some time, then," he said.
You must have known to look in the first place
.

"The Council deaths were no accident. You had someone there. You
knew
I was still alive." He cocked his head, still thinking like a wizard going after puzzles. "Who are you with? What's this all about?"

"I don't think you need to know that."

Damn. Not an obliging villain, then. Not someone with an ego who could be prodded into verbosity.

Someone with a job . . . who intended to do it.

"Get your horse," the man said, looking every bit like he was capable of doing this particular job. His flat nose attested to his experience; Arlen imagined he'd find scarred knuckles beneath the man's worn black leather gloves. The knuckles of those gloves were thickened, weighted. "You're about to have an accident on the road."

Arlen gave him a disbelieving stare. "You're not serious."

The man couldn't be. One more step toward Grunt and he'd be out of reach, and out of reach was far enough to accomplish whatever spell he wanted.

The man raised a finger as if in sudden discovery and, using a voice that let Arlen know he'd been played with, said, "Ay, right." He held out his hand, opened it . . . within his meaty palm lay a small vial. "Drink this first."

Arlen gave the vial a dubious look.

"I can kill you here," the man suggested. "I don't
want
to . . . the manure heap behind this place isn't big enough to hide a body. If you drink it, then you can delude yourself into believing you've bought yourself enough time to escape me somehow."

That made a certain amount of uncomfortable sense. "No doubt it's one of those mind-muddling doses meant to keep me from working magic."

"No doubt it's spelled to take effect immediately, too. Now take it, before I get bored and that manure heap starts looking bigger."

I am, Arlen thought, more than my magic.

At least, he hoped he was.

Cautiously, he held his hand out; the man tipped the vial into it. Arlen thumbed off the cap and poured the thick, honey-colored liquid onto his tongue. It tasted of honey as well . . . and by the time he'd swallowed, he felt his ability to concentrate fly away like so many bees. He gave the vial a respectful glance—what he suspected looked like a stupidly vapid respectful glance—and inanely returned it to the man.

"Now get your horse. Bring him here and saddle him." The man crossed his arms and spoke as though to a particularly dim three-year-old.

Arlen couldn't blame him. A dim three-year-old probably had quite an edge over him at the moment.

But physically, he was fine. No stumbling; no staggering. Nothing to draw anyone's attention. Run? He was headed in the right direction . . .
away
. . .

He thought the man could probably run just as well. Probably better. And that he'd only continue to follow Arlen.

"Get the horse," the man reminded him, patiently enough.

Arlen discovered he'd stopped halfway there. "Sorry," he mumbled without thinking.

Make that a dim
two
-year-old.

So stop trying to think.

Do.

He reached Grunt's stall, only a few doors down the equipment-littered aisle. Grunt gave him an eager greeting, stretching his coarse, winter-whiskered head over the door—no stall bars for this small establishment, although the stall sidewalls went to the low, slanting ceiling—in obvious expectation.

Puzzled, Arlen followed the horse's gaze.

The bucket. He still had the bucket, hanging limply from his grasp. Most carefully, he set it down beside the stall and reached for Grunt's halter and lead rope.

Grunt gave him a look of utter disbelief and fled to the back of the stall.

"Grunt," Arlen said in disappointment. "It's not a very big stall. Even I can see the inevitable outcome here, and I can't put two thoughts together." He opened the stall door; it swung out, effectively blocking the aisle leading outside and to escape. No, no running. But when he went into the stall after Grunt, he looked again at the blocked aisle, and several thoughts tried very hard to rub together and come up with an idea.

Stop trying to think.

Do.

Arlen whirled the end of the lead rope in a short circle and cracked it sharply against Grunt's haunches.

Grunt quivered in astonished offense, not quite believing Arlen meant it.

"Put the halter on him and bring him here," the man said, not quite as patiently, unable to see through the sidewalls.

"Trying," Arlen said, even as he wound up for another smack.

Grunt saw it coming.

Grunt believed.

He dug his hind feet through the cheap straw bedding and into the dirt below, and he bolted from the stall in the only direction he could.

"Idiot!" the man exclaimed, high alarm building in his voice. "Whoa, whoa!"

He was a big man; Arlen looked out the stall to find him standing with his arms outstretched, enough to intimidate poor agreeable Grunt to a dancing halt.

Couldn't have that.

Don't try to think.

Do.

Arlen grabbed up the bucket, rolled it under Grunt's jigging feet, and charged down the aisle with a whoop, swinging the lead rope fast enough to make it sing through the air.

Grunt danced insanely atop the bucket for the merest instant before he broke, trampling over the man who would kill Arlen and leaving in his wake first a heartfelt curse of alarm and then involuntary cries of pain. As Arlen had long suspected, Grunt was not one of those nimble creatures who might have successfully avoided soft squishy things underfoot in tight spaces.

The liverykeep came charging out of the feed room, a metal scoop in one hand, a bucket in the other.

"What the rootin'—" she started, but then words apparently failed her.

Words were failing Arlen, too, who had just enough presence of mind to note that Grunt had well and truly stopped at the other end of the stall row and that perhaps whoever had prepared the vial had overestimated Arlen's weight. Or had known his weight . . . but not the fact that he'd lost some of it while traveling. He swayed over the man, he with the unfortunate iron-shod hoofprint in the middle of his bleeding face, and said with much import, "He tried to take my horse."

"Guides damn him," the woman said, irritated, nudging the man's foot with her own and not even eliciting a groan. "Another one to haul to the poor-healers." She gave Arlen a narrow-eyed look. "You don't look so good. You got a problem, get to the healers before I have to drag
you
, too."

"Drugged me," Arlen announced importantly. "So I'd be too stupid to stop him. Ha. Too stupid
not
to . . ."

She waved irritably at him. "Then get to the road inn and sleep it off. I'll deal with the horse. Stupid fool."

This to the badly injured man on the muddy, mucky floor. "I'm going to have to install a friend-foe detector with that new SpellForge perma-feature. Damned if that won't cost me some shine. Hey—you hear me? Get yourself to that road inn or—"

Arlen smiled, most beatifically, as the world spun a long, slow circle around him. Not at all alarming.

That, too, had to be . . . the . . . "Too late," he told her, and slowly deflated into a remarkably boneless heap, his last thought that of what it would be like to be dragged all the way to the road inn.

C
arey hesitated at the screen door off the kitchen, staring out at the barn, glancing back over his shoulder to the kitchen. Empty now, although it bore signs of his lunch, a pan soaking in the sink from his rewarmed sloppy joes.

Sloppy joes. He could only imagine that Jaime, in coming to Camolen, had encountered food with equally idiosyncratic names. He looked into the living room where Jess read one of Jaime's old books, something about a black stallion. He supposed that to Jess and Ramble, the two worlds weren't so different. Both equally strange, and full of the strange ways that humans named and built and handled things.

Ramble. He needed to talk to Ramble. To see for himself that there was no little detail, no question Jess might have neglected to ask simply because she
did
look at the world through equine-tinted eyes. From the sound of it, Ramble had only glimpsed the culprit . . . but what if that glimpse revealed a piece of clothing—a boot such as couriers often wore, the hooded half-cape favored over winter clothing by those in the northern regions of Camolen? When they had so little to work with, the details
mattered
. . .

But Jess . . .

She hadn't been bluffing. Short of physically restraining her—and keeping her that way—he wouldn't be able to stop her from taking Ramble away. From taking
herself
away.

Carey leaned his forehead against the worn white paint of the screen door frame, feeling the unaccustomed weight of this world settle around him.
On
him. A bone-deep fatigue he had no healer here to counteract, an awareness of his own unsoundness that brought back vivid memories of the days after he'd been hurt, when no one was sure just how well he'd recover from the spell Calandre had used on him—or even, for a while, if he'd recover at all.

Settling on top of that came Jaime's words. He didn't understand how or why someone would come after them, but he trusted that the threat was a real one . . . and that anyone with the resources and wherewithal to track them down would be smart enough to prepare finder spellstones. They wouldn't have to know this world; they wouldn't even have to know that Jaime's farm was called the Dancing Equine.

Although if it came down to it, he wasn't betting against that last. Plenty of people knew just a little bit about Jaime—Arlen's companion, the horsewoman from another world, and she who had spoken against both Calandre and Willand in a very public venue. Certainly anyone who took lessons from her at Anfeald knew the name of her farm.

They'd had a string of quiet days here. An opportunity to acclimate Ramble, to try to uncover his answers. Days in which they had no idea what was happening in Camolen, and during which their failing message system proved inadequate for true communication.
It was only ever meant for quick notes,
not full manuscripts.
Thick, block letters, not fine script. And even at that, it faltered . . . the newest words had come through even more faintly than the previous ones.

For the first time he wondered if they could get back at all.

Any way he looked at it, the quiet days were over. As soon as Dayna finished with her spellstone hunt, they'd gather their things and go.

He lifted his head, looked at the barn. Last chance, it said to him. Once he's back in Camolen with you, he's a horse again.

Carey pushed the door open.

In Starland, in the wake of Dayna's surreptitious magic, the shop clerk's head jerked up, pinning Dayna with an astonished, dark-eyed stare. "
What
—" she started, and stopped, open-mouthed. Behind the counter, engrossed in some sort of reading with Suliya that had involved the flipping of cards, Rita gasped out loud.

Dayna came back from the concentration of doubling the lightest spellstone she carried—the friend-or-foe spell—and looked at the jeans-clad woman before her with a surprised embarrassment.

The stones nestled snugly in her palm, one agate from Ohio with a typical cut-crystal shape, long and narrow and faceted. The other agate from Camolen—also long and narrow, but with unevenly rounded edges and a satin polish. Similar stones from different worlds, black with delicate white-lace patterns.

Both now carrying the friend-or-foe spell.

She'd done it. She'd drawn Camolen's faltering energy through the existing spellstone to double it on the Ohio stone.

She just hadn't expected anyone to
feel
her do it.