As he pulled the door open, she moved restlessly, looking for escape—her haunches tucked, her ears flattened. But when she snaked her neck in warning, he spoke sharply. “None of that!” he told her, pushing inside the stall. She presented him with her haunches, tail clamped, ready to let fly with a kick that would—
The rope whistled through the air, whipping the knot into her rump with a loud smack of assaulted flesh. She grunted, kicking out of reflex, but without any coordination.
Smack! The rope landed again, splitting the flesh over her hip, and she bolted up against the corner of the stall—panicked, brainless, and searching for escape.
Shammel stood quietly until she stopped driving herself against the splintered wood boards. In the next stall, the gelding snorted anxiously, his movement rustling straw. Finally, Lady turned to face this human and his rope. After a moment, Shammel stepped forward.
Lady bared her teeth. The rope blurred in a snap of movement, landing on her cheek, on her neck—on her neck again. She half-reared, and suddenly Shammel stood quietly again.
“She makes a threat,” he told the others, “and you nail her. Don’t push too hard—give her a chance to think about it, or she’ll break her neck trying to escape. She knows she’s supposed to stand and let you approach her. It won’t take much to convince her.”
As if to prove his point, he took another step closer. Ears flattened, head raised, quivering, Lady let him do it.
And she let him take another, and another, until he was beside her, and had slipped the rope around her neck just behind her ears. A coil of it went around her nose and through the neck loop, and then she was standing haltered, back hunched, tail still clamped—but standing.
He turned to the team behind him. “You see? Now come on in here and take her, so she understands you’re going to handle her.”
In that instant, Lady thought about taking the biggest chunk of his shoulder she could, driven by her fear and the overwhelming revulsion from her inner Jess at being handled by this man. But he still had the rope, and the knotted end still dangled free.
She stood for him.
Benlan came forward, prodded by a look from Willand. “All we need is the shieldstone to start with,” he said. “Then we can hold her with magic.”
Shammel shrugged. “You should know how to deal with her,” he said. “But it’s your choice. Come hold her. I’ll get your shieldstone.”
With obvious reluctance, Benlan entered the stall. But Lady had no desire to protest, not even when Benlan took the trailing rope of Shammel’s crude halter and Shammel himself ran his hands over her.
“She’s in heat,” Shammel said, amusement—and a little something else—clear in his voice. “Too bad you can’t change her back now. I’d like to see what that’s like, to have a woman in heat.”
“You’re disgusting,” Willand told him as Shammel ran his hand down Lady’s tail. “Quit toying with her and get the stones. They’re right up there in her mane, as any idiot can see.”
“Bitch,” Shammel muttered, resentful heat behind the word, no matter his care that it was only loud enough for Lady’s ears. He returned to her neck, his fingers sifting through the hair at her crest and coming up with the strings of spellstones. “They’re not coming out easy,” he told the wizard, as if he hadn’t just spat an imprecation at her. “She’s got them sewn into a braid, and she wasn’t taking any chances when she did it.”
“Then cut them out.” Willand made an impatient gesture. “I have work to do, and you’re wasting my time.”
Shammel smiled at her, a slow, lazy smile. “Got a knife?”
Lady knew the word. And she knew Shammel had one, because no courier went without the small, specialized pocketknife that could cut tangled reins, splice broken leather, and pick stones from a horse’s hoof.
“Someone must have one,” Willand said, as Shammel turned his back on the team to fuss with Lady’s mane and run his hands down her spine. Lady tilted her head to watch him, eyes rolling; Benlan took an uneasy step back.
Shammel made no move to reach for his courier’s knife; his face held a quiet, secretive smile, and Lady suddenly understood, as much as the Jess in her could.
Willand had insulted him, and she shouldn’t have. Not this man who liked his petty revenge. His satisfaction, until he wiped it off his face and turned to face the wizard again, was evidence enough. “No one has a knife, then?”
“This is ridiculous,” Willand said. “One of you find a knife and get those spellstones, and bring them to me when you’re done. I’ll be in my workroom.” She turned on her heel and left, her blonde hair bobbing against her shoulders as though in emphasis.
Shammel appeared to have been waiting for her departure. “Sorry, friends, I’ve got to go—I detoured from a run when you gave me that lovely little magical tap on the shoulder. You shouldn’t have any problem with the mare now.” He gave Lady a pat on the neck, just below the swollen lump he’d created.
She didn’t so much as flick an ear at him. Pretending he didn’t exist was the only insult she had left.
The courier left the stall without looking back, and the remaining wizards simply stared at one another a moment. Carefully, Benlan removed the rope from her head and backed out of the stall.
“I dunno, Ben,” one of the men said. “She looks safe enough, I suppose.”
“Well, she wasn’t safe enough this morning, I can tell you that,” Benlan said fervently, closing the stall door. He left the rope coiled carefully by the side of the door. “Shammel can damned well get those stones off the next time he’s here. I’m not going in there.”
Lady didn’t move. Her welted flesh throbbed with heat and pain; her spirit quailed, stunned by the turn of events. Deep inside, the Jess voice seemed stunned as well. It stayed silent, letting the equine part of Lady deal with the aftermath of Shammel’s rough handling.
The group before her didn’t seem any happier.
“I don’t know why she thinks she can treat us like that,” said the shorter woman. She was middle-aged and stocky, with plain features and brown hair she’d drawn tightly back from her face to fall in a thin braid down her back. “Dayton brought her into this after all the rest of us, and she’s not even working on our main project.”
“She’s ruthless, Renia, and we’re not,” Benlan said pointedly. Beside him, a portly, balding man nodded, his eyes worried.
The tallest man in the group shook his head. “You’re fooling yourselves if you think this is all about presenting Camolen with your made-to-order menial labor—your wolf-guards and badger-miners and meek little rabbit-servants.” He laughed, and even Lady could tell he was laughing at them, though she had no notion why this little group suddenly seemed to separate into parts. “By the time I’m finished, your little production line of workers won’t be worth talking about.”
Lady snorted, starting to realize that whatever dangers this place held for her, no one planned to come back into her stall just now. The tall man eyed her, a contemplative look. “If the thought of revenge keeps that woman going, more power to it,” he said. “She’s the best thing that could have happened to us—she has more drive and initiative than the rest of you put together.”
Renia looked more than a little uncomfortable. “This isn’t just an animal, Jenci. She’s been human for too long not to treat her as such.”
“Shammel didn’t have any problem,” Benlan said wryly, leaning on the truncated stall door to regard Lady. A short while earlier, she would have flattened her ears at him. Instead she declined to acknowledge him. “He’s seen her as human, and look how he treated her.”
“Shammel isn’t someone I’d choose to model my behavior after,” Renia said, disgust in her voice.
“Don’t get righteous on us,” said the tall woman. “They’re all animals, and we treat them like animals. Look how hard it’s been to train that one cairndog bitch we changed. She’ll stand guard all right, but damned if she doesn’t steal something ever
y time we turn our backs on her. She is what she is.”
“Exactly why I’m coming at this from a different angle,” Jenci said. “You’ll see. In the end, it’ll be my work that’s most valuable.”
This started another round of argument, and Lady knew she should listen for what Jess might make of it later on—but she was full of things human and full of pain and full of despair. She turned her back on them as they headed for the door. She heard the groan of its stressed old hinges, and the scrape of it across the ground, and then turned her attention inward, to the throbbing of her wounds and the jarring memory of Shammel’s assault on her.
He thought he’d had her cowed—but she’d been merely been stunned, surprised by abuse she’d never endured before. Abuse she certainly wouldn’t let happen again.
~~~~~~~~~~
Chapter Twelve
“I understand the peacekeepers’ urgency,” Arlen said from his worktable. Or rather, Carey realized that Arlen had said it, some moments earlier.
That, and something about the way they kept disappearing.
He stirred from his spot by Arlen’s biggest workroom window, where he’d been staring down the hot, painfully dusty road from the hold.
Arlen opened his mouth as though he was going to say something reassuring, reconsidered, and merely shook his head, slowly, as if to himself.
Carey knew why. No one had seen any sign of Lady, and Arlen had had no luck with his attempts to trace her—just as the rest of the Council failed to find Willand, or any sign of the wizard who had been scattering pathetic changespell victims across central Camolen.
At least the new changespell team had managed to turn the mule back to his natural form—although the animal had proven to be completely unmanageable, and had been magically transported to high northern pasture where no one would ask anything of him again.
“I don’t know how the peacekeepers can be just disappearing,” Carey said, finally wrenching his thoughts back to Arlen’s initial comment. “They’ve got backup spellstones to trigger if they run into trouble, not to mention the shift wizard who keeps track of them all.”
“And don’t think those things haven’t been remarked upon,” Arlen said. He lit the flame under his potpourri pot, changed his mind, and put it out again, all without moving a finger. “But it’s clear there’s something going on. Two more went missing this morning.”
Carey gave him a swift, questioning glance, well aware there had been no incoming couriers from the peacekeepers, and that he hadn’t sent any out to them, either.
“I set up a cipher for the dispatch,” Arlen said. “But news like this isn’t critical to keep from our invisible foes. The concern is over word leaking to the general population—and you know there’s always some young wizard lurking in the Dispatch and nosing about where they don’t belong, just to prove he—or she—can do it.”
“Hackers,” Carey said.
Arlen repeated flatly, and without comprehension, “Hackers.”
Carey was back to looking out the window. “That’s what Jaime called them earlier today. Has to do with computers, and people who break their security.”
“Ah,” Arlen said, his voice significant. He’d been to Ohio several times himself, and his introduction to Jaime’s computer had not been a total success.
After another moment of silence during which Carey thought—again—that they’d better get rain soon or there would be no second cutting of hay, and then wondered if that was really a dark cloud just off to the west, Arlen spoke. “In any case, the point is that despite all precautions, something—or someone—is getting hold of the peacekeepers. And they’re doing it without any apparent motive.”
“Blame it on the mystery wizards,” Carey said absently.
“As a matter of fact, we are.” Arlen crossed his arms, propped there against his high worktable chair.
Carey knew he was being less than conversational, knew Arlen had better things to do than explain this sort of thing to him, knew he should be down in the barn, checking the job-sheet and making sure Klia wasn’t too busy making eyes at Ander to get her stalls cleaned.
Carey wished Ander would simply return to Kymmet, though he knew it would never happen. But if Jess came back—when Jess came back—Carey didn’t want him around, spouting his strong opinions about what Jess should or shouldn’t do. Even in silence, Ander was a constant reminder that there had been other ways to approach Jess after her transition to a working courier—and a reminder that maybe Carey’s hadn’t been the best way.
“She’s only been gone a few days,” Arlen said gently, breaking through Carey’s thoughts. “Give her a chance, Carey. She’s not a quitter. You said that from the very start.”
From when Lady had been born, Arlen meant. From those first wobbly steps, taken an astonishingly short time after the Dun Lady had given birth.
The Dun Lady had another foal by her side this season, a dark bay with deep black points and the same grit and spirit shining in her eyes as Dun Lady’s Jess had shown in her early days. Carey had high hopes for her... but he’d had higher hopes for Jess, and more personal ones.
“No,” he said to Arlen. “She’s not a quitter.” He glanced away from the heat-distorted fields and into Arlen’s concerned brown eyes. “I think I’ll go for a walk.”
It was clear lunacy to leave the stone-and-magic cooled rooms of the hold, but Arlen only nodded. “I’ll call you if anything comes up.”
~~~~~
The spellstone.
Lady thought about being Jess, and how Jess’s clever human hands could unlatch this stall door to freedom. She tried her best to stop thinking stallion, and instead grasped futilely at the concept of triggering the spellstone. Motionless, eyes half-closed... she might have been sleeping.
But she was working as hard as she had in her life—and failing.
There wasn’t so much as a trickle of magic in the air. Nothing but oppressive heat and humidity, and empty water buckets. The black gelding had knocked his over, and bumped it around his stall in a hopeful way.
Spellstone. Jess.
Nothing.
Nothing but the muted rumble of distant thunder. Lady flicked her ear at it. Rain. She lifted her nose to the scent of water in the air, and to the rising breeze now slipping through the gaps in the side of the old barn. She’d like to be out in it, with the drops drumming on her back and trickling down her sides, browsing on tender, water-soaked leaves to slake her thirst.
Spellstone!
Lady snorted in irritation as nothing happened—and then fell silent, ears pricked, at the sound of human voices. Benlan and Renia. Spellstones, said the Jess voice from within, coming alert for the first time in a long afternoon spent in aching desperation. But that voice wasn’t a suggestion, or another push to trigger the changespell.
It was fear, and warning.
Lady remembered Shammel’s hands on her neck, tugging on the spellstone braid. They want the spellstones. Her protection. Her chance to escape.
And Benlan would have the rope.
Lady turned her rump to the stall door and waited. In between rumbles of thunder and one distinct flash of lightening, the two wizards scraped open the barn door and approached her stall.
“I hate this,” Benlan grumbled. “She could kick my brains out. Look at her, she’s got those back feet ready to go.”
“I don’t like it any better than you do,” Renia said. “I still think whipping her just made things worse... but I don’t think you’re going to get in there now without it. He said she was in heat, and I think that’s supposed to make them difficult, anyway.”
Lady stood, her tail clamped and her head raised, turned just enough so she could see the rope in Benlan’s hand. She didn’t give him a chance to use it.
Her leg flashed out, slamming into the stall door as Benlan reached for the latch. Renia gave a startled little scream, jumping back from the stall; the black gelding neighed a low, anxious question.
Wham! She kic
ked the stall again, even as she saw the rope make a less than authoritative stroke at her haunch, one that wouldn’t have hurt if it hadn’t landed on the lump Shammel left behind.
Outraged, Lady spun in the stall and charged the door, ears flattened and neck snaking, sending Benlan stumbling backward. She half-reared before the shortened stall door, and the Jess-self reared up with her—insistent and urgent. Jump it!
Jump it, and be free.
Jump it and run right over the man staring at her, jaw agape.
Jump it, spellstones intact, the way home clear...
Lady settled on to her haunches, her front feet dancing as she battled between Rules and freedom. And then every muscle in her back and haunches bunched, her front feet tucked tightly to her chest, she flung herself over the door from a standstill, her back cannons scraping along the splintered wood even as she landed lightly in front.
Renia screamed again, throwing herself aside. The gelding dashed from side to side within its walls, calling after Lady as her back feet touched down and she scrambled for footing, her hooves skidding on the rock-hard packed dirt of the barn floor. Benlan had fallen before her, his arm raised as though it could protect him when her hoof came down hard on his thigh.
She ignored his scream and Renia’s cries, and bolted for the exit. Closed, it was closed!
Go! demanded the Jess voice—along with every instinct Lady had. Go!
She charged it, slamming it with her shoulder and taking it right off its damaged hinges. Thunder rolled in counterpoint to the noise of her escape, followed by another flash of brilliant, too-close lightning. Lady charged down a rutted, weed festooned lane, past a precariously tilted chicken house and along a half-fallen zig-zag of a stacked-wood fence. Lightning splashed white light off an old farmhouse and by the time those within roused to her escape, she was almost too far away to hear their shouting.
The Changespell Saga Page 42
