Changespell Legacy (28 page)

"What," Rita said firmly, leaning over the counter with a deck of large cards in one hand, "are you doing?"

"Uh . . ." Dayna said, hunting for inspiration, still caught in her flush of success and very much caught out in the effort, "I—"

Mark leaned back against the cash register and raised an eyebrow, crossing his arms and suddenly, somehow, looking like the substantial and responsible one of the two of them. "What
are
you doing?" he asked. "Of all the places . . ."

"I didn't know anyone would
feel
it," Dayna blurted, now hunting for composure. Stupid, of course . . . there were plenty of people on this world who could no doubt detect and even manipulate magic, just as Dayna herself had been able. But she'd never realized her sensitivity before she'd reached Camolen, and it never occurred to her . . .

Of all the places.
But that didn't mean she had to explain herself, or that she couldn't pretend she hadn't already effectively admitted she'd done anything at all. "Let me finish looking through these stones, and we can go."

"But did it work?" Suliya asked. "Weren't you going to—"

In unison, Mark and Dayna said, "Shut up, Suliya," except Dayna said it through her teeth. Mark only gave her a patient but implacable look.

"Burnin' poot," Suliya muttered. Dayna quickly picked out a tourmaline, a malachite, another agate, several nice onyx stones, and for kicks, a man-made deep blue egg of varying satin tones that the sales clerk muttered was fiber-optic material. Nothing here approaching the hard gems she'd have liked to use for the energy storage she had in mind, but then again even the gold they'd brought would only go so far.

Rita put the cards aside with a gesture of finality. "I'm afraid the energy here is too disrupted to focus on the reading any longer. Where
did
you say you were from?"

Again in unison, Mark and Dayna said, "She didn't." Then exchanged a wary glance, entirely unused to being of one mind.

The bells to the shop door jangled, and a fresh breeze blew through the incense-thick air.

"New deck of tarot cards," the new arrival said, as if they'd all been in whatever conversation he'd been carrying on in his own head. Dayna gave him no more than a glance—a medium-sized, duck-footed man with a shining dome of a forehead and the bright chip of an earring somehow out of place beside his soft features.

"Your third this week," Rita said, even as the woman with Dayna gave the man a look and sighed.

"The others just aren't
right
," he said. "They don't
feel
right. I was doing a reading for a friend last night, you know, and we both agreed. We don't think the—"

He's going to say "vibes," Dayna thought, and made herself look quickly at the shadowed industrial tan linoleum tiles at her feet, unable to stop her amusement. She'd never heard anyone in Camolen say
vibes
.

"—vibes are right."

Vibes
. Not even the proprietors of little roadside healer shacks, offering fixes conventional healers could not with slick infomercial-like patter, said
vibes
.

"As they never will be, if you don't give them a chance," Rita said with some asperity, blissfully ignorant of Dayna's thoughts. "Not that I'm not glad to sell you another deck—"

The door was yanked open again, having never settled to a fully closed position. Busy little place, Dayna decided as the sales clerk moved to greet the new arrival; Dayna got only a glimpse of the tall, willowy woman who entered. Nondescript, aside from her bearing, with mousy coloring and mousy clothing.

Although those clothes— Mark cut off her view, dragging Suliya by the hand. "You almost done here?"

"Almost," Dayna said, adding to Suliya, "here, hold these," even as she dumped her cache of stones into Suliya's free hand.

"If this is your idea of shopping, I don't think much of it," Suliya grumbled, tilting her hand to shift and examine the stones.

Dayna gave an absent shake of her head. "No, this is hit and run."

"More like errands than shopping," Mark offered, pulling out his billfold, eyeing the price sign and estimating the cost to tug out a few fives.

"Wow, you must like crystals." The tarot-deck man edged in behind Dayna. Dismayed, she caught Mark's eye; he gave a tiny one-shoulder shrug. She knew the sound of someone wanting to make conversation so they could eventually talk about themselves. The man liked crystals. He liked the feel of them. He liked their . . .

Vibes.

Suliya got an impish look on her face, one Dayna didn't like at all, and said, "They're spellstones."

The brat
. Dayna hastily scooped up a few more stones. "I'm done," she announced, and caught Rita's eye. "There's fifteen here in all."

With a clatter of keys on the old cash register, Rita rang them up; Mark eased through the clutter of the store to pay for them.

But Dayna was right; the man wanted to talk about himself, not listen to Suliya's answer—to the point that he seemed not to notice she
had
. "I put them around the house, you know?" he said. "It makes a nice healing zone, you know? All my friends say so. That when you walk into the house, you can just feel the vi—"

Suliya said, "Here. Look at this one."

Guides
. "Dammit, Suliya—"

And Suliya's glance said it all, written right there on the perfect sepia tones of her face. The face of a young woman used to having influence, who'd had enough of Suliya do this and Suliya do that and especially
Suliya, shut up
. As the man's finger reflexively touched the stone Suliya held out—the crystal-cut agate Dayna had doubled—Suliya triggered it. Both women from the shop jerked at the feel of magic, Rita's eyes narrowing as she dumped change in Mark's hand, her sales clerk pivoting around from the rune she showed the other customer— Friend or foe. A blue aura surrounded the man, glowing far too brightly to have been mistaken for any trick of the light; he looked at his own hands, astonished and utterly wordless for perhaps the first time in a decade. Blue light surrounded Rita and the sales clerk as well, both of them clearly holding their breath, eyes wide and caught between wonder and fear.

"Oh," Suliya said, not looking at all pleased despite the perfect results of her prank. "Oh poot. Dayna—"

And Dayna looked where Suliya was staring. At the woman customer.

The woman customer limned in orange light. Fading now, but still unmistakable, as was the suddenly satisfied expression on her face as she gently pushed the sales clerk aside. "You made that so easy," she said.

Her clothes—mousy, but passing for funky post-hippie . . . and equally at home in Camolen as casual wear.

Dayna clutched her original friend-foe spellstone in one hand, her remaining selection of fresh stones in the other. Suliya gave her a panicked, apologetic glance, and Dayna gave a sharp shake of her head. "I don't know how she followed us here, but you didn't do it. She must have had a finder spellstone. Or known about—"
The Dancing Equine. Carey and Jess and Ramble . . .
"The Dancing Equine. Yes. It's already being taken care of," the woman said. Annoyance crossed her face and she moved to the center of the store, stopping short when Mark straightened from the counter, stuffing his wallet back in his pocket and looking far more imposing than Dayna had ever expected of him.
Mark, grown up at last
. The woman touched her tunic just below the notch of her collarbone; no doubt the series of lumps there were her spellstones. She'd come prepared. She said, "You and your friends have a distressing habit of ignoring the rules and running off to do good."

Mark flexed his hands slightly, looking both ready and wary. "And the people who try to stop us have a convenient habit of failing."

"But
why
try to stop us?" Suliya blurted. "Maybe we're not supposed to be here, but we're only trying to find out what's gone wrong at home—"

"
What's gone wrong
is being attended. No one needs to know the details—"

"Get burnt," Dayna snarled at her. "The Council is dead. And I was
right
. A single tragic incident, my lovely ass. You know about the static, I'll bet. Whoever you are. And you don't want to accept responsibility—"

Behind the counter, Rita stealthily reached for the phone—911, that's all they'd need. "No!" Mark told her. "Rita, don't."

"Don't,
my
lovely ass." Rita glared at him, but drew her hand back. "I want you all out of here, right
now
."

"Exactly my intent," the woman said. "More or less."

Mark rolled his eyes, very much a
here we go again
expression.

Very low, Dayna said, "Get her spellstones."

The woman gave her a disapproving look as Mark hesitated, too aware of the woman's ability to invoke the stones as long as they touched her skin. "Don't ask me how you even made it this far," the woman said, and magic flared around them, strong magic. Rita and her sales clerk cried out; the clerk scrambled away, darting back behind the counter to leave Mark and Suliya and Dayna on the cluttered sales floor with the duck-footed man inching back to disappear between the hanging items of clothing.

Strong magic. Complicated magic. Enough to take them back to Camolen or imprison them for interrogation or simply turn them to ashes on the spot. Whatever she had on those spellstones . . .

But
only
what she had on those spellstones, whereas Dayna stood with all the magic of Camolen at her disposal if she could but somehow pause a spellstone in progress and draw on the connection.

Dangerous. Untried.
Do it.

She flashed Mark a look, a warning. Closed her eyes, knowing he'd move to protect her if needed—if he could. And invoked the friend-foe spellstone, wishing she had something more complex, something that wouldn't be over so quickly— She pounced. With the precision of a surgeon, she pounced. The invoked spell, released from the stone and still connected to it, stopped in mid-process, and hung there, the pressure of the magic beating within her like deep emotions threatening to explode.

And they would, if she couldn't control them. If she didn't guide them.

The obvious—a shield. They all carried shieldstones, but those were simple stones triggered by the use of magic against the wearer—not, say, against the building which could then fall upon the wearer.

She knew the shield spell well; she wove it in an instant—and then, in sudden inspiration, she called it up again, inverted it, and placed it over the woman. And then with Mark calling her name, grabbing her arm, the magic burgeoned around her, threatening to get out of hand. In borderline panic she siphoned it to the side, to the empty spellstones waiting in her hand, struggling to maintain control and suddenly aware that she didn't know how to stop the flow.

"Dayna!" Mark shook her this time, and hard. And then to Rita and her friend—"Stay put! She can't protect you if you don't
stay put
."

"Stop it!" Dayna snapped, gritting her teeth, trying to yank her arm from his grasp. "I'm—I can't—"

"Open your eyes, dammit!"

In the background, someone whimpered.
Suliya
. Or the man hiding in the clothing. Dayna couldn't be sure and didn't care. Panting with the effort, she slowed the influx of magic long enough to blindly grab a random fistful of stones from the display at her side—new, uncharged stones to soak up the magic and give her a moment to think.

She opened her eyes. She could see the shield; she didn't know if Mark could, or if he just assumed it, but clearly Rita saw something; she and her friend clutched each other, staring, ramrod stiff with the fear of making a wrong move. The air of the shield wavered—a shimmer here, a coruscating glitter there.

Through it, Dayna found the woman—trapped in a bubble of Dayna's making with the furious energies of a discharged but unfulfilled spell beating against it, unable to turn back on the protected woman, unable to make its way out, and visible only through the violently sparking effect against the shield.

The woman within looked at her with both fury and horror. "You rife little idiot—what have you done?"

"What you couldn't." Dayna's words came out breathlessly, holding a myriad of feelings. Her own fear, her wonder at what she'd done.
Was doing
. And at the looming, surging threat she'd created. "You shouldn't have come.
You should have left us alone
."

"Dayna, we need to talk to her," Mark said urgently—no longer tugging, but still gripping her upper arm.

Not at all sure he had her attention.

"Guides alive!" Suliya said. "Look at—all the stones—"

All
of them, not just the ones Dayna touched, but all the ones within her shield, still in their display tray . . . glowing.

The clothes rack moaned.

Mark, at her side, at her ear, insistent. "Dayna, don't do anything—"

She turned on him. "I don't have a choice!" Not as the magic built, the raw magic with which she was so good—except it now came at her like air whooshing into a vacuum. "I've got to plug it with something—and she's all I've got!"

"
What?
No!
No!
" The woman looked wildly around herself, her hand reaching for her spellstones. Her shieldstone. "You can't!"

She couldn't work a direct spell on the woman . . . but Dayna's inverted shield surrounded her, a bubble of insulation that she
could
affect with magic. "Relax," she muttered, pulling her wavering control back around her, biting her lower lip in utter concentration. "With any luck this won't hurt at all."

The world-travel spell. She'd memorized it for the spellstones; she'd never expected to invoke it on the spot. And she had no idea how the conflicting streams of magic would interact . . . the shieldstone, the inverted shield, the invoked magic swirling around inside . . . or what it might do to the woman within it all. So many forces battling each other in this small earthbound shop . . .