“You’re too hard on yourself,” Chiara said impatiently, as if she’d read Dayna’s thoughts. She tucked a few strands of curly brown hair behind one ear. “You’ve had to learn twice as much as any new student here, and you’re still not behind schedule.”
“That’s not enough to put me on a Council committee.”
Chiara eyed her askance. “This is a privilege, Dayna, not a punishment.”
Right. A committee where she’d probably be ignored because of her inexperience and taint of raw magic, and an assignment that would take her away from the things she wanted to pursue. The shielding. The need to maintain vigilance against these mystery wizards.
Chiara read that answer on her face. “Dayna, you’re one of very few people who’ve actually invoked a changespell. That counts for a lot.”
Dayna sent her an incredulous look. “I was desperate! I just did it! And I used raw magic—no one wants that!” She could still feel that desperation lurking in her soul—what it had been like to be trapped in a small niche of rock while Dun Lady’s Jess, injured and pushed beyond her limit, fought to stay on her feet. Those hooves had been so close—
“And now that you have some training, you can use your memory of what happened to help reconstruct the spell the way it should have been done,” Chiara said. “You’ll have plenty of guidance, don’t worry. Rorke is just going to fetch and carry and take it all in—but you’re going to be right in the middle of it.”
Dayna sighed heavily before she could stop herself.
Chiara narrowed her eyes. “Better eliminate that attitude before you join up with them,” she said. “Things are happening, and you’re going to be part of it. The rest of us are just going to hear about it.”
Dayna smoothed her tunic, brushing futilely at the simple material as though she were already under the scrutiny of her experienced new team members... her mind racing.
For she wanted answers... and they could hardly keep her out of the flow of information when she was right there.
“I’d better throw some things together,” she said. “Where am I going?”
“Anfeald,” Chiara said.
“Well, why didn’t you say so?” Dayna tossed her hands in the air—half exasperation, half capitulation. “I’ve been trying to wrangle a visit to Jaime for days!”
~~~~~
Jess dangled the string of spellstones before her, letting them catch the sunshine and throw facets of early afternoon light onto the dry, yellowed grass of the pasture.
Rain, she thought, with the memory of drought-grass taste in her mouth. She plucked a long, crisped seed stalk from the ground beside her. We need rain. But it wasn’t what she really had in mind, sprawled here beneath her pasture tree.
Spellstones.
Arlen had made up a new batch of changespells for her, gleaming little stones of sapphire and onyx. She had yet to braid them into her hair, where she’d grown used to their subtle clinking—grown fond of it, even, just as she’d liked the occasional ceremonial bells Carey added to her saddle.
But here she was, about to go on a Lady run, knowing that once again that she’d have to depend on someone else to trigger the change to Jess. She made a snorting noise, pure equine disgust.
She’d had to fight for this run as it was. There they’d been, Carey and Ander and Arlen, all discussing—no, be honest—arguing over her decision to continue to running for Arlen.
It wasn’t as if Carey and Arlen didn’t need the help. With two unknown and untraceable wizards at work, Willand’s escape, and the new checkspell team ensconced in Arlen’s third floor, the percentage of courier messages had gone up again. None of the important communication went by dispatch during a time when they hadn’t defined what the errant wizards could or would do.
Jess’s help was no longer a luxury; it was necessity.
And there was Ander, saying she couldn’t possibly ride, not when Willand was free and still hated Jess. Not when those errant wizards were fooling with changespells—spells to which Jess would be especially vulnerable.
And there was Carey, too—his face stubborn, hands on hips, telling Ander to let Jess make her own decisions.
She’d been wistful at that, watching them argue from the courier duty room. She’d wondered why Carey didn’t try to protect her, too, and then she’d wondered why she wanted him to.
Arlen hadn’t said too much, only that he was perfectly willing to accept Jess’s decision.
Jess wished Jaime had been there, with her common sense and her unerring ability to strip a discussion to the heart of the matter. But Jaime was with Dayna, who wouldn’t have much free time once the final members of her new changespell team arrived.
So Jess had ended the argument by walking into the middle of it and declaring her intention to go. She’d been posted to the local Peacekeeper hold, where they’d experienced recent and inexplicable losses—teams gone out on patrol, never to return.
In fact, Jess had gone there two days earlier, which was how she knew the trail had washed out to a rough ride—a ride she would prefer to negotiate as Lady. She’d told the three men as much, and then she’d left them to come here and think it all over.
Ander tried to make decisions for her; she didn’t like that. Carey refused to help her make decisions, and she wasn’t sure she liked that, either.
And she really didn’t understand why he’d mumbled and stuttered and given some obviously fabricated excuse when she playfully lured him into the stall where he’d occasionally brought women friends before he ever knew her as Jess.
She was still learning about human emotions, but she knew how she felt.
And even though he’d been so ill he could barely stand after Calandre hurt him, he’d still managed to find her, to comfort her, and to make sure she knew he loved her.
She wondered if he’d changed his mind.
She snorted again, in a way she no longer did in human company simply for the looks it drew. She’d never figure people out, not really. So she might as well just get on with the business of being Jess.
And Jess was born to run, not to hide from people like Willand. It was time to change to Lady and get human matters out of her system for a few hours.
She walked the dusty road back to the stable, where she absently greeted one of the other riders—and rounded the corner to the tack room to collide with wiry Shammel, the job rider.
She skipped aside nimbly enough to disengage from him, avoiding his grasp—but not his unpleasant grin.
“You’d better watch where you’re going,” he said, and then laughed, heading for the main stable door.
She frowned after him, wondering at his presence here—but he was on his way out the door. Eventually she shrugged and went to the tack room to claim Lady’s special courier harness. Shammel had likely hoped Carey would rehire him now that the pressure was on—but she was confident Carey would not.
Harness in hand, she picked up her cargo—a thin sheaf of sealed pages in a waterproofed cover—signed out, and headed off to an empty stall to change. There, she disrobed and folded the clothes, hanging them over the stall door. She fastened the absurdly large harness around her neck and body, and took a deep breath, and—
Exhaled a noisy equine sigh of happiness. The dim corners of the stall brightened around her; the lovely scent of hay and grain turned sharp and distracting. She yawned hugely and shook off, settling the harness more properly in place. Good. Sometimes it didn’t, and then she’d have to find some human who understood what the problem was.
Grain. Had some careless horse spilled his portion? Lady snuffled in the bare corner beneath the grain box, sensitive lips easily able to sort grain from the other nonsense there. She wuffed a few breaths at it, blowing away wood chip dust. Grain.
Peacekeepers. Lady stopped lipping at the spilled grain, her ears tilting back with attention. That was the Jess-voice, deep in her head—the one she had to listen to, even though it was equally important to avoid the more complex conce
pts her equine brain couldn’t process.
Deliver to the Peacekeepers.
Lady snorted. So much for finding the last bits of grain.
She opened the unlatched door open with a nudge, and walked out into the aisle. At the main stable door, she waited patiently for someone to come along and undo the chain stretched across the opening, a precaution against loose horses.
Other loose horses.
Klia found her there in a few moments. The girl awkwardly patted her shoulder, unlatched the chain, and stepped to the side.
Lady trotted out without hesitation. Peacekeepers. She was on her way, with the kind of freedom that Lady without Jess had never been given. Out on the road, gearing up into a lope, snorting into the wind and letting out her speed until she was galloping, tail flagged high and black legs flashing too fast to follow.
When she slowed, it was to prance, full of herself, knees lifting high in the natural passage Jaime had taught her how to sustain. Her head was high, too, and she snorted again, a high, resounding noise that was meant to warn of purzhan or bear, but that served to announce her presence to the world.
No one answered, of course. There was no one else in sight, although she’d passed several pedestrians and one four-horse coach on the way out. After a few moments she dropped down to a walk, shook her neck so her mane flapped against her neck, and heaved a big sigh. Then she was back on the job, trotting toward the turn-off with a brisk, business-like tempo. Soon enough she found the rugged shortcut, and that was a strictly walk and scramble operation.
She crested the shortcut’s jagged, crumbly ground of an overhang with ease a mounted horse and rider couldn’t have managed and connected with the main road, where she shifted into a trot, smelling creek water ahead.
What?
A flutter of downwind motion caught the corner of her eye. She slowed, still trotting as she lifted her nose to the breeze—nothing—and turned her head, searching the dried fields along the roadside.
Ditches lined the fields, filled with thick, high meadow growth that rustled in the hot breeze. Nothing.
The Jess in her didn’t like it. There’d been something, she knew it. Lady increased her pace, and then she saw it again—someone running in the ditch, a flash of dark material within the light meadow growth—and instantly shifted to a canter.
A man charged out into the road ahead, arms waving madly, whooping in wild alarm sounds. Lady stopped short, ears clamped tightly to her skull. Threats, these men. She danced between them until the glimpse of a third man overcame hesitation and she charged down the road, not bothering to snap at the pin-prick of a fly bite at her neck. She didn’t want to run the man down—she knew better than to—
To—
She stumbled as the ground swooped wildly before her hooves, then plunged onward, her movements uncoordinated and exaggerated.
Run!
Both the Jess and the Lady inside her flared into fear, desperately trying evade the man who now stood in the road, hands on hips, looking small and wiry and...
Shammel, said the Jess voice, and Lady felt a flare of honest equine hatred that couldn’t keep her from stumbling to her knees.
Furious, she snapped at him, though he was clearly out of reach—laughing. She lunged back to her feet, tottering like a newborn foal, and snapped at the new fly on her shoulder—earning only a surprising mouthful of feathers. Fear replaced fury.
A blinding, searing fear that followed her into darkness.
~~~~~~~~~~
Chapter Ten
“What do you mean, she didn’t make it?”
His eyes stinging with the dust and sweat of work with an energetic young horse, Carey turned away from the job board—where Jess had indeed not yet signed in.
“Just what I said,” Ander spat at him, his bright blue eyes full of anger instead of the charm that so easily drew women. “They’re asking about her through dispatch, because she hasn’t even arrived. She’s had time to get there and back again!”
“It’s a rough road, and a hot day,” Carey said—but Lady, unhindered by a rider, easily could have been there in an hour. Should have been.
“You wanted her out there,” Ander said, fury in his tight voice. “You wanted her to make her own decisions. Now you’ve got what you wanted, all right, because someone’s got her.”
Carey said sharply, “Don’t jump to conclusions”—but a sharp pang of fear knotted his stomach. “Someone might have grabbed her up, thinking she was a stray. It happens. The last time, we had her back before nightfall.”
“Was Willand on the loose then?” Ander said, moving in from the doorway to stand close—too close, looking down on Carey from his greater height. “Were there rogue wizards out messing with changespells?”
Carey looked up at him, and fear made way for anger. “Back off, Ander. I didn’t shove her out there. I left her the freedom to make the choice.”
Ander laughed, entirely without humor. “Right, Carey. And if a parent gives a one-year-old the choice to do just what she wants, is that the responsible way to care for her?”
“Jess is far more than a one year-old child!” Carey said, and his grip on his temper slipped a little further. “Guides-dammit, Ander, you know that! I can tell just exactly what you think of her by the way you look at her!”
Ander stayed where he was—too close. His voice grew cool. “She has a choice, Carey. That’s what you keep saying. She can choose what—who—she wants.”
“Not if I—” Carey started, completely forgetting the difference in their sizes and the new limitations of his body as his temper flared and he grabbed Ander’s tunic front.
“Boys.” It was Jaime, her voice flat with disapproval. “If there’s anyone acting like a one-year-old, it’s you two. And yes, everyone in the stable could hear you. So you want to break it up, and try again? Use your brains, and see if you can do Jess some good?”
Carey’s hands fell to his sides. Without the anger, he was suddenly acutely aware of the worry. The pain at the thought of Jess in trouble.
“If those wizards have Jess, there isn’t anything we can do that will help,” he said. “It’s up to Jess.”
And Jess was stuck inside Lady, unable to change herself back.
~~~~~
Lady noticed the smells first.
Moldy straw, close to her nose. Old wood. And above it all, a mixture of animal scents. Some were horse; most were not. They were wolf and wolf-cousin, the cairndog. There was the scent of purzhan, and at least one earthy badger. And, of course, the ammonia smell of old urine, overlaid with the pungency of carnivore excretion.
It took her dulled brain a moment to realize the danger. Those who eat! Lady’s legs flailed without coordination as she sought purchase in the scant straw; dirt chunks pinged off the sides of her enclosure. Eyes rolling with fear, she at last managed to fling her unnaturally heavy head off the ground, getting her legs beneath her to rise.
And, that accomplished, could do no more than stand there, trembling unsteadily, swaying and barely able to catch herself. She lowered her head and braced her legs, breathing hard enough to scatter the straw beneath her nose.
She wanted nothing more than to run, knowing she was stalled and that her body was for some reason failing her. Dimly, the Jess-voice trickled into her awareness. Don’t panic, it said. Easy. Don’t panic. Sweat trickled down her flank and neck. It was closed-in here, and hot—and she was thirsty. Very thirsty.
She smelled water nearby, and raised her head for a first good look in the dim light. A stall.
An old stall, with one board missing between her and the occupant of the neighboring stall —another horse, but that wasn’t her main concern, not with thirst nagging her. The stall door rose chest high—it’d been higher at one time, but it, too, was clearly missing a board.
Water. It was here somewhere. Carefully, Lady took a step, almost falling. The next step was better, and just a few more got her to the door.
Cautiously, she put
her nose over it—just far enough for her widened nostrils to investigate the scents. Then she pulled back, making little huffhuff breaths, to think. A persistent fly buzzed around her head.
Horse to the left of her. To the right were all the carnivores, and across from her sat stacks of cages—rabbits, ferrets—even rats. Lady gave a snort of disgust—their smell was almost stronger than that of the eaters.
But nothing moved in response to her appearance. Nothing seemed to care. She took another step, exposing her whole head.
There they were, those who eat. Down at the end of this barn, with one short row of stalls and the rest of it full of half-walled, partially torn out sections that held cages. Closer to Lady, the cages held a wolf and a cairndog. At the far end of the barn, the cages were taller, and held... she wasn’t sure. They were human, at least partly human, and partly clothed. But they were on all fours despite the height of their cages, and as she watched, one of them snarled a lazy snarl at her.
Lady snorted loudly and withdrew into her stall. She had not seen water; she had not seen a way out. The barn’s only light—fading evening light—came from gaps between the boards. No open doors, no evident windows.
She snorted again, moving uneasily... checking each corner of her stall. The horse next to her stuck its nose through the missing board, exposing a questing black muzzle. Lady ignored his overtures as her anxiety rose again.
No water, no food, no fresh air, no human she could trust...
Unless she could call them—unless there was someone in earshot. She lifted her head and neighed her distress to anyone who could hear her.
But no one came.
~~~~~
Carey crouched by the side of the narrow road, glaring at the back of Ander’s head. His fingers crumbled the dry, clay-heavy dirt edging a hoofprint.
Lady had taken this short-cut, all right. He stood, trying to hide his stiffness, and squinted up the rugged switchbacks, his reins trailing from one hand.
The Changespell Saga Page 40
