Changespell Legacy (31 page)

Jess hadn't known there would be a smell when the magic-gone-awry was fresh. Not
this
smell . . . not so much of it.

Ramble made a choking noise and fled to the corner of the stall. Carey turned his head away, muttering a single faint curse. But the man walked a few steps closer, eyeing that which had been his partner. He even leaned down, broke off a piece of the unnaturally brittle flagstone, and studied the paint a moment before flicking the stone away to shatter against the wall.

When he faced them again, he dusted the touch of the stone off against his pants, for the first time favoring the arm Jess had cut. "My name is Wheeler," he said with a strange finality. "I think we're going to get to know each other a lot better than we expected."

Arlen
. She'd felt him earlier in the day . . . Jaime was sure of it.

Sure of it, or wishful thinking?

Total denial, Jaime told herself with finality. Stuck in limbo too long, no proof of his death other than a melted landscape where he might have been standing . . . too many other things going on to accept the grief.

Arlen.

The hope hurt.

Here it was well into evening, and she felt fine. No hint of the evening ague, long past any time she'd grown to expect it.

Although she had her dosing vial on hand. Close on hand.

Arlen, do it again. Touch me. Make me certain.

The hope . . . was a wonderful pain.

Jaime dropped the courier report she hadn't been looking at onto Carey's desk, letting it settle atop the others. Meltdown central, that's what they should call this place. Here where she mapped courier reports of the burgeoning dangers of the landscape. Not just Anfeald, either—not since word quickly spread about her undertaking, and now Camolen's couriers passed along sightings from their own precincts along with their message loads in a strange underground movement to deal with the dangers.

She wondered if the new Council even knew of the project, or understood the need for it—or if they were so tied up in the abstract hunt for answers that they'd lost track of the need for a practical response.

One thing Camolen sorely lacked, given its otherwise sophisticated nature: disaster site teams. No Red Cross on this side of the world-travel spell.

Jaime glanced up at the country map newly tacked up on the wall—the precincts of Camolen, from westmost Therand and Solvany to a few remote, sparsely populated eastern precincts whose precinct wizards didn't even make it onto the Council. She took no comfort in the fact that those territories remained unsullied by the red pencil she'd used to mark sightings; very little information came in and out, and the rugged mountains blocking them from neighboring lands outside Camolen—Jaime didn't even know their names—made for plenty of territory where meltdowns would go unnoticed. Therand and Solvany, too, were all but cut off from the rest of Camolen. Without travel booths, the Lorakan mountain range reduced travel to whatever managed to come through the two mountain passes.

This time of year, that wasn't much.

It didn't matter. There was enough red splotted over the main of Camolen to indicate how quickly the meltdowns were spreading. The more detailed map of Anfeald hung beside the job board, where the couriers could check their routes for danger spots.

And still none of them had any idea what was going on. She'd heard murmurings among the couriers, warnings to avoid invoking magic near one of the meltdowns—that magic seemed to irritate them and enlarge them. Thinking back to what Linton had said, it made sense . . . he'd had his narrow call after invoking a light.

Whatever else he'd wanted to say to her that evening had been lost . . . as well as her intent to have Arlen's workroom thoroughly inspected, although that task had since been done, with maddeningly nebulous results. Yes, the apprentices thought things had been disturbed. No, they couldn't be sure . . . right now, things were disturbed as a matter of course.

Jaime gave a gurgle of frustration and turned back to her paperwork. She'd already made assignments for the next day and put them aside for Linton to refine; now she'd moved on to what she considered optional in this triage situation. Topmost on the pile of Camolen's thicker, slightly textured paper sat a pale blue trifold addressed to Carey with a logo of magically stamped gold and bright turquoise.

SpellForgeIndustries
.
One of Camolen's biggest commercial spellmaking companies.

Say what?

She fumbled with the seal, a general delivery seal that nonetheless required her to trigger it before it would release.

Jaime Cabot, not meant for magic. Consort of a wizard.

Maybe
. If she'd been right about what she'd heard. Felt. Touched.

Arlen.

Finally the wax softened under her fingertips, and she was able to peel it off, wondering how long it would be before SpellForge came up with a reuseable sealer spell as she balled it up and tossed it in the low, square receptacle beside the desk.

The paper spilled open, releasing a smaller packet even as it rebounded to its original flat shape. She hadn't even known such spelled paper existed.
Fancy
. The embossed lettering at the top identified it as being from the desk of an executive at SpellForge; the exact nature of the man's position escaped her.

Board member, she would have guessed.

I regret to bother you in this time of need and confusion, but find it necessary to make contact over a purely personal matter. Understanding that my estranged daughter may well have chosen not to inform Anfeald of her family affiliation, I ask you to keep this missive in closest confidence—for which reason it will disintegrate for your convenience, once you trigger the spell embedded at the bottom of the page.

Estranged as she is, my daughter Suliya has kept in touch with her younger sister, who now informs me there has been no contact from her of late, beyond any expected delay from the current crisis. Given the uncertain state of things, I would appreciate any word of her you might be able to provide. Enclosed also is a private letter for Suliya; among other things it expresses our wishes that she return home until Camolen stabilizes—a wish I reiterate to you and hope you will respect despite whatever employment agreement you have with Suliya.

"Like father, like daughter," she muttered, fingering the smaller packet and setting it aside. Suliya, a SpellForge child, struggling to be ordinary and yet still shaped by her foundation.

It explained a lot.

Given the uncertain state of things, I would appreciate any word of her you might be able to provide.

Jaime gave a short shake of her head. "I don't think so," she murmured.

Let someone else tell the board member of Camolen's most influential spell corporation that his daughter was off on another world, and that Jaime hadn't been able to contact that world despite her best efforts.

She gave a wistful glance at the message board she'd brought down from Arlen's quarters and hung beside the map, using magicked sticky tape that released at a touch and would have been snapped up on Earth and turned into an industry bigger than Post-It notes.

Her last message had been desperate and to the point.
Can you hear me?
Normally the messages disappeared once they were sent. This one waited, sad and scratchy-looking . . . and backwards. Bounced back at her.

Not enough power behind it, with all the disturbance within Camolen?

She hoped that was all it was.

Arlen. Carey, Dayna, and Jess . . .

So much hope, bundled up inside her, making her heart rush off into racing little dances when she least expected it.

"Please be right," she whispered to her heart, and set Suliya's unopened letter aside.

Dayna felt the magic even as Mark broke speed limits on rural Prospect-Mt. Vernon Road to reach the Dancing Equine. "Hurry," she told him, clutching the seatbelt that crossed her chest and all but bouncing on the truck's bench seat. The only thing that stopped her was that Suliya was already doing just that in the middle of the seat, a living example of just how annoying it could be.

Mark slewed the truck into the Dancing Equine's gravel driveway and Dayna shoved the door open, reaching for that very long step to the ground. "Stay here," she said.

"Not gonna happen," Mark told her, setting the parking brake and jumping out of the driver's side.

"Then stay
behind
," Dayna threw over her shoulder, already heading for the barn. "You may be the guy, but I'm the wizard."

She was sure she heard him mutter, "
In training
," but he did indeed hang back, and kept Suliya with him.

Dayna went to the end of the barn and yanked on the closed door—and succeeded in doing nothing but twinging something in her shoulder. How could it be locked from the inside? This was the only— "Go around," Carey called from inside.

He didn't sound right. Strained. She exchanged a glance with Mark to see if he heard the same, and saw her own wariness reflected in his warm brown eyes. Eyes that weren't meant to be wary, but were born to be just what they were—goof-off guy eyes with a soft heart lurking beneath.

They went around. Through the central, people-size door into the tack room and beyond to the main aisle of the long facility, where they simultaneously stopped short at the sight of the hay bales haphazardly thrown about the aisle and the very obvious passage into Ramble's hidden area.

Dayna motioned for Mark to stay back, and when he hesitated she hissed, "I
mean it
." It took a renewed glare—and Suliya's hand on his arm—to get a nod from him.

She eased up to the hay bales, several storage stones in hand, and where Mark would have had to push his way through the gap, she slid through without so much as the whisper of hay against the flowered pattern of her shirt.

Jess was the first one she saw, and she regarded Dayna with such restrained tension that Dayna readied herself, bringing to mind the barrier spell she'd decided upon during the drive from town—going on the assumption that if everyone here had a shieldstone, a barrier spell was the only way to avoid physical confrontation. Her gaze skipped right over Carey, registering something not quite right but not hesitating there, and when she found the man slightly apart from them both, standing in the shadow of the closed doors, she knew she'd been right to prepare. Bland and attractive, like the woman in the New Age shop.

Camolen clothing that at first glance passed for contemporary American style. Blood all over one arm; hell, blood tracking the walls and floor.

She didn't know why Jess and Carey were just standing there. She didn't have any idea where the terrible smell came from, and only a faint awareness of the strange blob against the wall by her side.

Those were all things to figure out later. Now, without hesitation, with only the quick lip-biting expression of concentration she'd developed in the last year, she tapped the storage stones and threw the barrier around the stranger.

He flinched at the feel of magic, was visibly taken aback at the appearance of the barrier—not quite the same magic as the shields she'd so recently employed, but similar visuals. Enough so he'd know it was there. To the others she said sharply, "Do you still have your shieldstones?" and hoped the answer would be yes, or she'd have to come up with an inverted shield on top of the barrier.

Carey shook his head, glancing darkly at the stranger. But Jess, after a glance into the stall to check Ramble, nodded. Just one of them to protect, then. Dayna put the inverted shield spell uppermost in her thoughts and stepped into the blocked area, allowing Mark his first good view of the scene—and his first double take. Unlike Dayna, he zeroed right in on the blobby area.

"You guys have Salvatore Dali in to redecorate while we were out?" he asked, utterly bemused.

But Dayna, getting her first good look at it, felt the blood drain from her face. "That's the same meltdown effect we found in Camolen. Where the Council died," she said for Mark's benefit, and what little humor he had instantly faded.

"There was another man here," Jess said, her dark eyes flashing briefly at the blond man behind the barrier—he hadn't moved, he hadn't said anything, but by his stiffened posture he knew quite well what Dayna had done. "He tried to go home."

Suliya crowded up behind Mark and made a noise of utter disgust. "Ay, what's
this
?"

Dayna eyed the mess, suddenly and regretfully able to pick out several fingers clutching at air. "Guides," she said. "He must have hit a bad spot going in. I
knew
there was more to this than one incident. I
knew
it." She gave her prisoner a quick, angry eye. "I'll bet you know it, too."

"He's not talking about what he knows," Carey said. "Jaime did try to warn us, but it didn't come through well."

Dayna couldn't take her eyes away from the puddle of human and landscape melted right into the wall and floor; she barely heard Mark offer a quick explanation of the action in Starland. Her own inner words came much more loudly.
What happens when
we
try to return?
And on the heels of that thought, the sharpest pang of homesickness she'd ever felt.
I want to go home.
Camolen. Home. Still a home with many unexplored aspects; a home in which she was a virtual stranger.

But
home
.

She gave herself an internal shake. She'd figure it out. They'd augment the spells with storage stones . . . they'd send something on ahead to make sure the way was clear. She'd figure it out.

At the moment, she had to get a better idea of what was happening here and now. A glance at Jess gave her no clues; she stood between Carey and Ramble's stall like a stiff thing, all her natural grace gone, her expression deadened to everything except some secret internal conflict she didn't seem likely to share.

Not with the way she didn't quite look at any of them.

Carey, on the other hand, was far from stiff. Rubber-kneed, she would have said. Bemused somehow.