Changespell Legacy (36 page)

Jess couldn't blame Ramble; he hadn't had the chance to learn human habits. But she turned annoyance on herself, and she broke the moment that somehow seemed to hold them all. "It's gone," she said. "Now we'll go, too."

Dayna gave the slightest of sighs—the sound of relief, and also the sound of heavy responsibility. "I'm not sure where you'll end up, you know."

"I know." They'd talked about it the night before, briefly, before she and Carey had retreated to their privacy. Originally, the spell had dumped them out somewhere between Anfeald and Siccawei—Arlen's first attempt to bring someone back to Anfeald, off the mark. Dayna thought it might do the same, but since they were triggering it from a different location, she couldn't be sure. Dayna knew it held safeguards, that they wouldn't materialize inside a tree or rock . . . but that was all of which she was certain.

"We'll return. We'll recover. We'll eat. And we'll find Anfeald from wherever we are."

"You sound so certain," Mark said, a wistful note in his voice as he absently raised an arm to wipe the sweat off his cheek against the sleeve—the spring day, creeping past noon, had gone warm and humid, and the normally airy barn gave them no relief, not with hay bales blocking the airflow down the aisle.

"I am," Jess responded, aware of her own surprise. "For the first time in a while." She crossed her arms to grab the hem of her crop-top shirt, and Ramble took it as his cue, tugging at his own clothes in undisguised eagerness to be rid of them.

"This is where you leave," Carey said abruptly to Wheeler, even as Mark said, "Whoa, wait a minute Jess—give me a chance to say good-bye while you've still got some clothes on."

Jess tossed her head in mild irritation. "It doesn't matter."

But to them it did, and she knew it. And she did want to say good-bye to Mark. They hadn't spoken much about it, hadn't said
I might never see you again
, but they both knew it, just as Mark knew he might not see his own sister again. When he reached for Jess he did it in typical Mark fashion; arms open wide, he wrapped a big hug around her and lifted her right off her feet in spite of the fact they were nearly of the same height. "There," he said, and set her down to give her a kiss on the cheek. "That should last me until next time." But when he stepped back to look at her he faltered, and took her in for another, gentler embrace. "Okay," he said in her ear. "I admit it. There's never enough Jess until the next time."

"Never enough Mark," she said, knowing well enough why he jammed his sunglasses back on the moment he broke away. Men. She would teach him to cry, sometime. The next time, if there was one.

He took another step back and turned on his heel, grabbing Wheeler's good arm with none of the careful physical respect they'd given the SpellForge agent up to that point, literally dragging him the first few surprised steps out of the barn.

But Wheeler followed the rest of the way without resistance, only one backward glance at Carey and then Jess. After that, Dayna pinned Suliya with an unwavering, sky-eyed gaze, until Suliya belatedly threw her hands up and left, giving Ramble a reluctant glance as she closed the door behind her.

Ramble by then was out of his clothes, the spellstones sitting on top of the haphazard pile of material while he hovered in the stall doorway, waiting for permission to leave.

If nothing else, he was returning to Camolen with better manners than when he left.

Jess held out her hand and he came to her, though her eyes never left Carey. They'd said their good-byes the night before. The day before, when Carey had made his choices. And possibly long days before that, when he'd determined to bring Ramble here in the first place. She wasn't sure, and she could see from his expression as he moved up beside Dayna that neither was he. "We'll make it back," he said.

"Soon. I'll see you in Anfeald."

Anfeald. Home to her, whether she was horse or human. She wanted to say he might be safer if he stayed here, with SpellForge agents after him and magic gone awry in Camolen. But he'd take it the wrong way, the way she didn't mean it, so she stayed silent, watching him. Hoping he could read her as well as ever, barring those times he refused to listen at all. That he could see she wasn't leaving him, but that she was returning to something else.

"Soon," was all she could say, and she could barely get it out at all. Quickly, unable to bear it any longer, she stripped off her clothes, threw them out of the spell area, and stood in the aisle with Ramble's warm broad hand in hers.

"Here goes," Dayna said. "See you on the other side, Jess."

"Thank you," Jess told her, removing her gaze from Carey just long enough to catch Dayna's eye, to make the words mean more than just two simple syllables.

Dayna nodded, closing her eyes to concentrate, her storage stones clenched in one hand and the magic rising around her. Rising around Jess and Ramble, percolating right through them. And Carey lifted his head, his eyes full of purpose, opening his mouth to call something, an offering. "
Braveheart
," he said, but—startled—bent over for a sudden fit of harsh, deep coughing.

When he straightened the magic had her, slower than a spellstone as Dayna pulled it together but just as strong, percolating up through her skin and bone and muscle with Ramble's scared and tightening grip on her hand the only counterpoint. When Carey straightened— He stared at the bright red blood covering his palm, put fingers to the blood at his lips, lifted them to stare in disbelief. Looked over his hand to meet her eyes, a moment of shock and significance passing between them.

The magic took her away.

S
he remembered this.

All of it.

The harsh change, the shock that came with it, not easing from one form into another, but being jerked out of one and crammed into the other. The dull ease with which she could simply continue to lie on the rough ground, rocks jabbing her skin and a damp drizzle leaking down from a featureless grey sky to bead upon her deep dun coat. The droplets collected, marking the time Lady spent stretched out on her side as they gathered, outgrew themselves, and rolled down her well-sprung barrel, leaving damp trails behind. Water beaded on her long black lashes, framing dull eyes. Water beaded on her whiskers and dribbled into her exposed nostril, inspiring not so much as a twitch.

Not at first.

Hampered by the rough transition, Lady floundered in the leftover Jess-thoughts, the ones full of concepts and meanings too complex for her abilities. She needed an anchor, a single simple thought to start with. Something to build on.

Blood.

Wrongness.

Her legs flailed in a brief spurt of energy, hooves scraping against the rocky ground, churning up clots of lime mud and grey, wintering moss; she heaved herself up to rest on her chest, front legs stretched awkwardly before her. Beside her, a palomino, his gold coat deepened by blotches where water soaked through at hip and shoulder and the slabby curve of rib, lay motionless aside from shallow, eratic breathing.

Blood.

Wrongness.

Message for Anfeald.

She braced her front legs against the top-slick ground, digging down to a firmer base, and shoved herself to her feet to stand braced, head down, long mane and forelock obscuring her eyes and a coating of mud along one side turning her into a half-and-half horse—half dun with all the primitive markings a dun could carry, and half coated by light clay with gravelly little rocks sticking to her skin, smirching the boney features of her face above eye and cheek and jaw.

Lady again. A rough, hard slap from one form to another, but Lady again. Home.

Blood.

Carey, coughing so hard, looking at his own frothy bright blood with befuddled surprise. Back in what Lady vaguely thought of as the
other world
, knowing only that she couldn't reach it . . . knowing she'd chosen to leave and now feeling the pull of her fear for him.

She lifted her head slightly, snorting harshly to clear her nose of water and mud—and as much as the memory-sight of Carey's blood worried her, the sight of the palomino relieved her. Ramble. Himself again. She took a step closer, running her whiskers along his hip, taking in the strong wet and musky scent of him. His ear flicked; he knew she was there. But his open eyes were as dull as hers had been, and he offered her no other response.

She nickered at him, barely making a sound. Question and request.
Get up. Get moving. Find yourself.

The ear subsided; the eye closed.

She nuzzled his hip again—and when he didn't respond, she bit him.

His head jerked up; she bit him again. Hard enough to hurt, not hard enough to wound. He surged to his feet, a two-toned horse just as she, and stood with his head lowered to shake like a dog—orange-streaked mane flopping, small stones flying, freeing himself from the confines of what until so recently he'd been. And then he snorted—great big sneezy snorts, as wet as the drizzle around them, a whole series of them.

When he lifted his head, his eyes had brightened. He knew he'd come back to what he wanted to be, and unlike Lady, he'd hardly been human long enough even to consider taking on the form again. He was simply Ramble, a palomino stallion who had once been human and who for some time—a short while or maybe the rest of his life—might, if he chose, have a certain insight on human behavior.

Although it looked as though he might choose
not
. For he lowered his head again, bogging it, leaping into a back-arching buck and then another, squealing and grunting and charging a small circle with the pure physical expression of aggressive joy at shedding that human form. His second circle around he tried to entice Jess into the game, but she tucked her tail and haunches and tipped her head to warn him off with flattened ears; he veered away.

After a moment he approached her more courteously, waiting for permission to come all the way to her, to arch his neck over hers and most demurely nibble along the base of her mane. Flirting, but not strongly. Connecting.

Claiming.

It felt strange. Strange because Lady, sorting equine memory, could not remember a time since first becoming Jess that she'd had a simple, quiet social moment with a herd member. Strange because the Jess-voice in her head made mild protest, trying to draw her attention to Carey and to Jaime at Anfeald.

But thinking of Carey made Lady think of blood and wrongness, and having Ramble's ministrations comforted her. And thinking of Jaime and Anfeald . . .

The hay bale beside them made a welcome distraction, and for a long while, that was as far as she got; she and Ramble fed together—she neatly, he by tearing away great chunks of hay and trying to work it into his mouth before he lost any of it to the mild wind. Lady ate until her stomach filled, twitching her withers against the irritating movement of a wet, unfamiliar braid and its burden, the round black thing Mark had attached to her. The courier pouch, as unfamiliar as it was.

The courier pouch. The one she had to take to Jaime. She wasn't ready to leave the hay yet, not for good, but she lifted her head to consider the trail to Anfeald.

The ground beneath them was sloped; that around them, rolling. The clay and limestone soil supported tough, scrubby bushes with stout thorns, faded brown to her eyes and with plenty of room to navigate between clumps. The bushes themselves reeked of goat and goat droppings; the damp, cool air told her about the copious hares that frequented the area, and brought her the fading scent of pursan—a predator cat not quite big enough to threaten a horse, but all the same not a creature Lady wanted to encounter.

She eyed the trees on the opposite hill—stunted, bare-branched trees, just the thing for a medium-sized eater of things. She hoped, with the part of her that had learned to think more complexly since she'd added her human side to her makeup, to avoid that hill on the way to Anfeald. Beyond it, and who knows how many hills beyond that, mountains stabbed up at the sky like giant snow-capped teeth. She hoped, too, to avoid crossing such rough territory.

But she didn't know if they could.

Because she had no idea where they were, or how to reach Anfeald.

"I don't
know
," Dayna said, glaring at Carey, unable to dampen her annoyance even at his pale face and tormented expression, his features suddenly tight and a smear of blood on his shirt that led her glance to his hand. "You cut yourself," she said. "You'd better do something about it."

A cough rumbled in his chest. "I will," he told her.

"I don't
know
," Jaime said, glaring at Hon Chandrai. "I haven't authorized the use of any major magic, and Natt and Cesna are busy enough just keeping this hold secured and healthy. If you want to figure out who burst in on the eastern province, you're going to have to do it yourself."

Chandrai glared back at her. "We will," she told Jaime. "And you'd better hope we don't find you involved."

"
I don't know,
" Arlen said, staring with thoughtful but puzzled resignation at the hardened bloom of distortion by the edge of the narrow trail. Crowded by trees, darkened by shadow and early spring cloud-gloom, the spot had almost escaped his notice. "I think we're going to have to get involved. And sooner than I'd planned, at that."

Grunt bit the tender twiggy end off a tree branch and snorted wetly, not a comment Arlen found useful one way or the other.

Throughout Camolen, the meltdowns bloomed. Random blooms, some no larger than an apple, some big enough to flow across the horizon, engulfing all that stood in the way. Some met with old blooms, solidifying together in handshakes of startling vigor. Some made their own way. One small community became entirely circled, and immediately began rationing food while those within only hoped they lived long enough to starve to death.

Camolen knew.

Not the cause, not what to do about it, not how to stop it or in which direction they might run to escape it. But what had killed its wizards, what had left it without services, what had separated families and brought the daily life of its people to a terrifying standstill . . .