“I don’t know how,” Carey muttered. “When you’re that full of yourself, there isn’t room for anything else.” He hadn’t intended for her to hear, but suspected from her sudden sour look that she had.
“Are we all through hissing and spitting at one another?” Calandre asked. “Because I really do want that spell. And I can make things quite miserable for your friends until I get it.”
“Can she?” Mark asked Arlen.
“We’ll hope Jess gets back soon,” Arlen said tightly. “Very soon.”
Carey knew that tone, that expression. His mouth went one swallow drier, his stomach a gulp sicker.
“Let me show you,” Calandre offered to Mark. “I don’t want you thinking about going for your bow, anyway.”
The dull snapping sounds were clearly audible, perhaps even amplified for effect. Mark yelped, a sound of surprise more than distress, as his leg went out from under him. But his groan of, “Oh, shit,” as he clutched his arm and bent over that leg was nothing but pain.
“Mark,” Jaime breathed, her own obvious fears abandoned as she dashed to her brother’s side.
“Broken,” he told her. “Both of them. Damn.”
Crouching next to him with one hand on his shoulder, she looked up at Calandre. “You coward!”
Calandre merely sat where she had stood, seemingly unaffected by Jaime or her anger. “Do you understand yet? I can’t get at Arlen, but I can reach you. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it, how long he can stand to watch this?” Her finger moved up to her chin again, this time to tap it in a show of contemplation. “I’m going to let you think about this for a minute,” she said. “But not much longer. It’s a boring game once people stop screaming and start dying.”
“Arlen!” Dayna glared up at him, the saddlebags forgotten in her hand. “How can she do something like that? Why isn’t there a checkspell on this kind of magic?”
“Yeah, Arlen,” Mark said through gritted teeth, “why the hell isn’t there a checkspell on this kind of magic?”
“Because this kind of magic is the most elemental form of kinetic magic,” Arlen said grimly. “It doesn’t even take much effort. It’s used every day for a host of mundane things—just like everything else she twists to use against others.”
“Yes, but—” Calandre protested from above, “you’ve got to have a good imagination. Those without a truly creative spirit would never think of this one, for instance—unless you want to give up that spell now?”
For a moment Carey wondered if that simply wouldn’t be the easiest thing. Surely Sherra’s people were close to a checkspell, if they hadn’t arrived at it yet. Surely there wasn’t enough time for Calandre to cause any real trouble with the world-travel spell. Such a tempting thought, just give her the spell and then walk away from this hollow unharmed—
Except that no matter what they did, Arlen was too much of a threat to her. He’d never be allowed to walk away. And, by default, Carey and the others were doomed as well.
“No takers, hmm? Well, I can’t say I’m surprised. So, let’s see—Willand, dear, keep an eye on things for me. This is going to take a bit of concentration. I enjoy the fine detail work, don’t you, Arlen?” She crossed her legs and closed her eyes while the four of them exchanged glances of dread and wondered who it would be this time.
In another moment Carey felt the fine tinglings of threshold pain running along his arms and shoulders, flowing down to encase his torso...running along the lines of his bones to thigh and shin. He looked at his outstretched hand, but there was no outward sign of the effect. He glanced to her and found he was being watched—him alone. None of the others, then.
Good.
“A little closer to home, Arlen,” Calandre said. “Higher stakes.”
“Carey?” Arlen asked, sending a swift look of alarm and concern.
“I don’t know what it is.” Carey shuddered as the tingling turned to a burn, overworked muscle on overload. “Except that it’s going to hurt.”
“Quite a lot, I should think, depending on how good my control was,” Calandre said. “If I got clumsy, he won’t last as long. The idea is to keep the major organs out of the process for as long as possible.”
“Arlen...” Carey said, finding that his legs would no longer hold him up; inner flames engulfed them. “Arlen...”
“Carey!” Arlen just missed breaking Carey’s mostly gentle collapse to the ground. “Damn you, Calandre! What spell is this?”
“Something fiendishly clever, I assure you,” she replied, satisfaction coating her voice. “A variation on the spell used to make compost.”
“What!” Dayna and Jaime cried in tandem. Jaime’s voice came from beside her brother, but Dayna knelt at Carey’s feet, holding his ankles against the quivering in his legs. “Arlen, what does that mean?” she demanded. “She’s not...not turning him into...into—”
“No,” Arlen said heavily. “We have a common little household spell that’s used to speed the breakdown of garbage material. It acts on the smallest units in the material, destroying their structure—”
“She’s breaking down every cell in his body?” Dayna asked in horror.
“Major organs last,” Calandre called down. “I want Arlen to have a little time to think about this. I’m not sure how reversible this spell is—the healing arts are obviously not my specialty—but I can stop the process, if I’ve a reason.”
No, Carey thought. Arlen couldn’t give up the spell, not when it would be for nothing. She was going to kill them all in the end. He tried to say it out loud, and all that came out was a gurgling sort of groan that didn’t even make sense to him.
~~~~~~~~~~
Chapter Twenty-Two
Jess stared hard at the man who rode up behind her, thinking she knew him from someplace—and someplace other than the little detention area they’d both just left. She said, irritated for both herself and his horse, “If you let him drink too much before you came after me, he’s going to colic,” and tossed her head as she asked for a little more energy in the gray’s trot. The man didn’t have any apparent weapons, and she had no intention of stopping now; they were nearly to the five-road intersection.
He didn’t respond, other than to keep pace with her, drawing nearly even with her and mumbling to himself—and then giving her an annoyed stare. “Now that should have worked,” he muttered, then addressed her directly. “Listen here, woman, I want to talk to you. Slow down a little, will you? I can barely ride when I’m not trying to make intelligent conversation.”
She took another look and saw this was certainly true. Good. A nudge and the gray snorted, pushing his nose out a little as he put another notch of effort into the gait—one that she easily posted and one that bounced the man mercilessly.
“You’re Jess, aren’t you?” he said, his voice bouncing along with his bottom, and punctuated with an “Ouch!” as he came down on the saddle wrong. His horse’s tail lashed in annoyance and Jess had the impression the tall man was about to get dumped. It had been her intention, but....
“Jess. Yes,” she said, not quite ready to slow the pace. “I told that woman so.”
“There aren’t very many of us who know Carey personally,” the man said desperately. “There are fewer who know his dun mare has also been a woman.”
Cautiously, Jess slowed to a walk, moving as far away from him as she could—but she needn’t have worried. The man was too involved in regaining his precarious seat and easing his saddle sores to even think about grabbing at her. “But you do,” she said. “Know about me, I mean.”
“I do. I was there when we discovered Jaime had been taken,” he said. “My name is Gacy.”
Another moment’s scrutiny brought her the memory. “I saw you at Sherra’s when I came back without Jaime,” she said. “You were getting ready to ride out.”
“Right,” he said ruefully, “and I wasn’t any better at it then, either.”
“My friends are trapped by one of Calandre’s men,”
Jess said. “Arlen is with them. He has used magic—”
“For this poor pitiful finder that’s trying to get you to turn around?” Gacy asked, and Jess twisted to find the glow trailing her, faithfully pointing out the direction to Sherra.
“Yes. I was supposed to bring back help. Carey said they would believe me.”
“We’ve been extremely careful with Sherra,” Gacy said. “She’s our best chance of getting through this mess, and we couldn’t chance that Calandre would send some unmagical threat her way.”
“I don’t care about the why. I want help for my friends,” Jess said. “And now I think I’m the only help they’re going to get.” Briefly, she wished for her own swift legs instead of those belonging to this stolid gray. She gathered the reins, preparing to canter, and he hastened to do the same.
“Don’t lose me, Jess. Once we’re there I can send for help. It might draw Calandre but I can hold her off for a little while.”
His mumbled, “I think,” was, she decided, not meant to be heard.
Gacy did his best to keep the pace she set, a fast pace that was not kind to either the riders or their horses. He always fell behind when she trotted, though, and as the distance to the hollow decreased, so did Jess’s patience. They were midway between the big intersection and the hollow when Gacy, at that point barely within hearing distance, called her with a breathless shout. With much irritation, she stopped the big gray, who was finally reaching his limits. She turned in the saddle to demand why the wizard had stopped her, when she felt it, too.
It was a sensation similar to those that hit her when she changed from Lady to Jess, but this time it didn’t snatch her, it buffeted mildly around her. When Gacy was close enough to hear her normal speaking voice, she asked, “What is that? Is it magic?”
“It’s magic, all right, of a hefty sort,” he said. “And it’s Calandre’s. If I had to guess, Jess—”
“She’s already there!” Jess cried in alarm, pushing the gelding into a canter before she’d even finished speaking.
“Jess, no!” Gacy yelled after her, hopelessly out-ridden. “Don’t just run up on her! Jess!” he hollered, growing fainter. “Be careful!”
She’d be careful, all right. There was no point in running headlong into the hollow so she needed her own rescue. She nursed the idea of running headlong into Calandre instead—but in the end, prompted by the fast-fading gray, she dismounted a quarter mile from the hollow. She tied the horse by the side of the trail, a message of sorts to Gacy, and walked quietly up to the hollow entrance—her phantom tail twitching, her feet a little confused by the impulse to prance nervously.
Jess crouched behind a thick, waxy-leafed shrub and looked out onto the point, the only weak spot for the protective little pocket in the rock-walled basin. Their guard was there, leaning against a tree off to the side—a tired posture that conveyed his relief at handing the reins over to his superior. On the point sat a relaxed-looking woman whom Jess did not recognize, and who she thought was Calandre. And standing next to her—
Willand. She instantly recalled the way this same figure had stood in the doorway of the wizard’s cabin, and she remembered, too, the things this woman had done to Jaime. Her head went up, ears back. Both women were close enough to the edge of the point that she easily saw herself—an internal image that had four legs—pushing them over the edge. She also saw herself going with them, but the landing wouldn’t be too hard if she used Willand as a pillow. She relished the image a moment and set it aside—and even though no others came immediately to mind, she couldn’t bring herself to just sit behind the protective shrub.
Jess moved carefully away from her cover and toward the two women, trying hard to acquire a sneak that was not in her body’s vocabulary. She still felt their magic, not as intense but still active, and she heard Arlen’s shout carry up from the hollow, a cry of alarm that sounded very much like Carey’s name. She crept toward her goal—a difficult, silent stalk that struggled against both her equine run from danger and an angry mare’s desire to trample the ones who threatened her own. She closed in on them, gathering herself for a rush, when a new feel of magic flooded the air. Jess dropped to the ground as both women whirled to look behind her, at the spot where Gacy stood.
“Shield, Willand!” Calandre snapped, and yet a third taste of magic washed the air as the faint sparkling expanded from Calandre’s body to wall the point and the hollow—with Jess included.
“Too late,” Gacy said, making no attempt to get any closer. “I just called Sherra—she’ll be here any minute.”
“Any minute will be too late for Carey,” Calandre said mockingly, a comment that clutched at Jess’s heart. “And there’s nothing to keep me here when I feel them coming, is there?” She looked back down into the hollow. “Meanwhile, you still have a chance to save this man, Arlen.”
Save Carey. Avenge Jaime. The thoughts crowded Jess’s common sense, urging her to action; she twitched with the impatience of it, and suddenly Calandre focused on her.
“What is this?” she asked, frowning, flipping a stray bit of magic at Jess that slid past without touching her. “She’s protected!”
“That’s the one who got away,” the man said, straightening unwillingly from his observer’s slouch. “I’ll take care of her.”
Jess rose, a coiled, ready spring. She tried to center her thoughts, to make them sensible, to stop the heat of anger; in failure, she exploded into motion, a sprint with such speed it took the man completely by surprise and barely left Willand time to realize it was she who was under attack and not her mistress. Jess slammed the blond woman down against the roots of a tree, and the shield instantly dissolved. Dazed, Willand tried to claw her way right up Jess, and Jess grabbed her, using Willand’s own momentum to hurl her into Calandre. Next to her, a stone exploded, showering her with fragments.
A larger rock blew up in front of her and Jess ducked behind her own arms, but only until the air was clear enough for her to dive through; she landed on Calandre’s thin frame and fastened both hands around the woman’s neck, so close to that angular countenance that the wild disarray of Calandre’s dark crinkly hair mixed with Jess’s coarse dun strands. A small sharp-edged rock bounced off her shoulder and her injured wrist screamed at the effort—but those were distant pains, not to be heeded.
“Let Carey go,” Jess hissed at Calandre, staring into black eyes and flexing her hands over a neck so thin-skinned she could feel the rings of cartilage there. Calandre’s fingers tore at Jess’s wrists, then clawed at her face, her concentration too shattered to engender magical assault—though there was magic flowing all around them, uncontrolled magic, dangerous magic.
“I can’t stop the spell if you’re choking me,” Calandre gasped hoarsely. Then, in the blink of hesitation she’d created, she snatched at Jess’s oversized tunic, ripping the chain of spellstones away. She smiled, a ghastly expression on a face turning dark, and though her words were choked, they were still deadly. “I can’t stop the spell anyway, pathetic child. Join Carey in death!” And she turned the wild magic at Jess.
Jess gasped at the onslaught, unprepared for the way it called to the Lady in her. She reeled between the divided comprehension of two different creatures, vaguely aware that Calandre pried her hands away, that Willand was screaming and tugging at her shoulders, that Carey was dying and the woman responsible was about to get away and that she was two different minds, two different bodies, the same soul...tearing itself apart to be all things at once—
Carey is dying—
Something within her hardened. What she could not do for her own sake, she found she could do out of fury and passion for another. I am Jess, she told herself, the thought choking through the chaos inside her. Squeezing her eyes closed, she thought hard about her clever human hands, the things they could feel and the strength they held. Base animal instinct, kill or be killed, joined with outrage and centered in on retribution; Jess lost track of what was happening around her, focusing
only on keeping herself where she was, who she was.
Then, suddenly, there was no ground beneath her knees, no Calandre between them. Her hands were empty—but they were still hands—and the breeze on her face meant she was moving. Only then did she feel the grip under her arms and her knees and realize she was being carried, by whom and to where unknown. Her eyes snapped open and she jerked against the hands that held her, nearly wrenching herself free.
“Deep-fried Hells, woman, I almost dropped you!” snapped a voice in her ear as the hands grappled to reestablish their hold.
“Where—” she started, twisting again, but this time only to look about herself. It was a strange perspective, but she managed to recognize the path into the hollow. “Put me down!”
“I don’t think so,” he said. She tilted her head to look back at him, a view of an unfamiliar, upside-down face. “We’ve been told to carry you down here and that’s what we’re going to do—you can do as you please once you’re out of our care.”
She did not fight them; as confused as she was about just what had and was happening, she sensed no harm in these two—and this was where she wanted to go, anyway. She endured the undignified journey with impatience, until they gained the hollow and gently tipped her up to her feet, making sure she was steady before they actually released her.
She gave them not another thought, but stumbled hastily to the back pocket of the hollow where everyone else congregated, and where she somehow knew Carey must be. Mark limped out from the huddled activity and caught her shoulders, spinning her around with her momentum. “Jess...” he said, warning and regret, not even letting her turn to look for Carey.
“Let me go to him,” she said, words that wavered between a demand and a request for reassurance.
“They don’t know if they can save him,” he told her, brutal truth. “They’ve got specialized healers here, and they got the process stopped, but there was a lot of damage done.”
This was nonsense to Jess, who had not seen Calandre’s spell in process. The extra people, she assumed, were Sherra’s, and that they were trying to help was enough to know for now—never mind when they arrived, or how long they’d been here. She tugged away from Mark and pushed through the people in the rocky niche where she and Arlen had shared a meal only that morning. “Carey,” she said, breathlessly, looking for him, searching a crowded scene of strangers and friends. She was surprised to see Calandre, alive, lying on a horse blanket and looking little more than a fragile collection of limbs. Her gaze skipped from the defeated wizard to Jaime’s sudden realization that she was there, to Arlen’s bent, concerned visage to—“Oh,” she said, a small sound with no force behind it.
The Changespell Saga Page 31
