A thin trickle of blood worked its way down from her nose to her upper lip, and stopped.
Arlen said softly, “Natt, go intercept Kesna and Sherra. Let them know there’s no hurry.”
Natt, decidedly pale, wasted no time; he was out the door before he finished nodding.
Jaime stared at the body in a sort of horrified fascination, but Arlen frowned.
“That doesn’t make sense,” he said. “She’s right. They should have been trying to retrieve or kill her; they had no way to know she was stalling us, still hiding their location. Even if Dayton—Ernie—knew she’d die within days, they had no way to know she wouldn’t talk during that time.”
But Jaime was thinking of Renia’s last words. Of Willand on mage lure. Of Willand... after she makes you pay...
Arlen regarded the body, and his frown deepened. He moved to Renia’s side, sweeping his hands through the air an inch away from her body—until, in mid-motion, he abruptly froze. “Guides damn,” he said, so entirely uncharacteristic that Jaime just blinked at him. “Get out!” But he didn’t wait for her to react—he shoved her at the door.
Jaime yelped in protest, stumbling to catch her balance and failing—sprawling on the hard stone floor beyond the room. Arlen came out behind her so fast that he tripped on her, and then fell on top of her—but he didn’t waste time in apologies. He twisted to face the room, still on top of Jaime and grinding her painfully into the floor.
A gesture, and the door closed; a flare of light and it was sealed, then sealed again. Arlen’s eyes narrowed in concentration; his hands moved in a complex dance. The walls of the hallway common to the room fairly shimmered with light and Jaime twisted to see—
Whummp! Instinctively, Jaime threw herself down again, covering her head with her arms, cringing with the anticipation of the violent, flying debris from that explosion.
Nothing. Arlen rolled off her back and onto his knees—sitting back on his heels, resting his hands on his thighs, and tipping his head back to breathe deeply.
Jaime relaxed, her cheek resting against the cold stone. “And what,” she asked, as calmly as possible, her words blurred by the pressure of the stone, “was that all about?”
“They must have suspected her,” Arlen said. “They must have been prepared. Smart, very smart.”
“Tell me,” Jaime said, a quiet but implacable demand.
“They seeded her,” Arlen said. Then, realizing he’d no doubt made little sense to Jaime, he took one final, deep breath and explained, “The button on her trousers had been spelled. No doubt all of her trousers had been tampered with. They were listening to everything we said to hear. They could have killed us all at any time—but as long as she wasn’t talking, or wasn’t saying anything they couldn’t live with, they had a chance to learn what we knew about them, and what we were doing about them—and there was no point in revealing just how strong they are.” He shook his head. “A listening spell right here in my own hold, shielded so well I couldn’t tell. It must have been very frustrating for them when she sickened so quickly.”
“I don’t understand.” Jaime hitched herself up on her elbows. “Couldn’t she have found it?”
Arlen gave her a long look. “Just because she had strength doesn’t mean she had the years of schooling in how to use it.”
She heard the note of hurt in his voice, knew he’d perceived her belief that Renia had been the stronger wizard—without the distinction that she wasn’t necessarily the better wizard. “Oh,” she said, her voice rather small.
“I’m not sure why they triggered the thing at all,” Arlen went on, as if the unspoken part of the conversation hadn’t happened at all. “I should have ended up on top of you in the hall and feeling quite foolish when nothing happened. Renia was dead—there wasn’t much we could learn from the body. At least, nothing that would affect them, although it probably would have told Sherra a great deal about what happens when you withdraw from mage lure.”
Jaime made a grim, derisive noise. “Because Willand lost her temper, that’s why. She doesn’t like it when the game doesn’t go her way.” In her mind, she heard Renia’s last words. After she gets that horse... after she makes you pay...
She took a deep breath. “Willand’s not going to like this—she’s not going to like it at all.”
After Willand gets that horse...
She looked at Arlen. “We’d better warn Jess.”
~~~~~~~~~~
Chapter Nineteen
Jess pushed her sunglasses back up her nose and turned her fractious horse away from the low morning sun.
With the hot days filled to overflowing, she had taken to starting the days before the early dawn. And Ander often invited himself along, refusing to let her leave Kymmet’s stables alone.
As much as she wanted her independence, Jess understood. Just maybe she didn’t really want to be out here alone, anyway. Even if she did need the space to work through moments like these, when her young mare refused an obstacle she’d readily scrambled through during the last several training rides.
This deep narrow stream was just wide enough that jumping it wasn’t practical or the least bit safe; in the past, the mare had readily scrambled down, through, and up again.
Today she was having none of it.
Jess, hot and red-faced after the mare’s short bucking fit, wished she was Lady so she could bite this mare’s rump and drive her over the bank. Instead, she sat quietly on the tense animal and asked her, for the moment, for nothing.
When the horse seemed unlikely to explode again, Jess turned her away from the stream and started back for the stable.
Ander rode up beside her. “She’s capricious. She might do for light-duty work, but I’d never place her in a stable where she’d have to come through in a pinch.”
“I know,” Jess said, unhappy to admit it. The mare was unpredictable; had always been that way. She’d hoped to work through it. “Koje won’t like it.”
Ander snorted. “You told Koje last fall that this horse was iffy at best. It’s not your fault you couldn’t shake her out of it. You should know as well as anyone that horses are like people—sometimes, you run into one that you’d do just as well without.”
“Yes.” Jess gave the mare a single, quiet pat, then asked her to relax her neck and bend it first right, then left, feeling the tension ease out of the blocky sorrel body. “This, I think, was her last chance.”
“I’ll back you on it,” Ander said, shifting his quiver strap on his shoulder. He never rode without it these days. Once it had simply been habit—a chance for fresh game or target practice—but now it was a deliberate and somber choice. “Koje will just have to sell her to someone who only does road-riding.”
Jess nodded as their path curved toward the low sun. Ander didn’t even squint—Jess felt the tiny whisper of magic as he invoked the spell to shade his eyes from the sun. She knew she ought to learn it, too—as well as the spell that protected her skin from burning—but equine habits were hard to break, and she had learned about sunglasses and baseball caps long before she knew of spells for her eyes.
They rode through rough scrub meadow combined beside stretches of fallow and active fields, heading for the cooler Kymmet-owned woods, and...
And what was that?
“Ander,” she said uncertainly, eyeing the fallow field ahead of them, where the ground and sky subtly writhed. The whisper of magic swelled—not Ander’s personal sunblock spell at all.
Ander followed her gaze, frowning. Like Jaime, he rarely felt the touch of magic from a spell. “What?”
Jess pointed—though the effects were becoming obvious. Something was pulling itself out of thin air before them, something large.
Something unfriendly.
Hating to take her eyes off it, Jess twisted in the saddle, looking behind.
“Maybe we should go back and around.” They could cross the stream and cut over, picking up the long looping road to Kymmet.
“It mig
ht not have anything to do with us. With you,” Ander said.
Jess gave him a look, and he shook his head. “No, I don’t believe it, either. I just don’t know if I want to turn my back on it... we’re not all that close. Let’s just—Hells! “
Jess’s ears popped as the spell abruptly solidified—and then it was all she could do to stay on the panicking mare. As the horse whirled and fought, Jess could no longer watch the field; her nose told her a better story.
Sharp acrid smoke, watering eyes... the bright glare of flames on a dry and fallow field.
“Jess!” Ander’s voice, breaking through the chaos of movement from the mare—whirl and rear, plunge and rear again. “Jess,” he bellowed, “Let her go! It’s moving!”
Of course it was moving, fire always moved, but if she let the mare go in this panic, there was no telling—
Another bellow cut through Jess’s struggle of thought—and this time, it was not Ander. It was deep and booming, and its thunder blasted hot air across Jess’s skin. She made a sound of deep surprise and released the mare from reins and seat.
They shot forward with the drive of the mare’s bottled fear, and Jess instantly realized she was only along for the ride. The horse plunged through a field of stunted crops, galloping hard—leaving Jess to ride it out, the horse’s mane whipping back on her hands in a tangle of fingers, hair, and rein.
Ander galloped alongside her, urging his horse on—fear on his face. It made Jess look back—and then she was desperately sorry she had, for the magic was as much creature as it was fire, and it flowed after them with sinuous serpentine grace, leaving spatters of fireballs behind. Smoke billowed upward as fire spread in the drought-primed ground and quickly fanned itself to strength in the draft of the fire snake.
She stood slightly in the stirrups, going from passenger to jockey. How long before the horses gave out at this speed? She snuck another look to see that they were gaining distance on it, but Ander’s cry of warning brought her whipping back around.
The creek.
Of course, the creek. There was no way the mare could manage it at this speed—but she’d slung her head in the air and the bit meant nothing to her; a splob of foam whipped away from her mouth and landed on Jess’s face. She left it there, sawing cruelly on the reins, trying to at least turn the runaway and abruptly realizing she couldn’t, that she had to ride with the mare, urging her right over the creek.
The jump no horse could make.
Ander fell back as he fought his horse back down to negotiate the bank, and Jess forgot about him, concentrating on that one spot on the other side of the bank, that sweet spot where the mare’s front feet would have to land to carry them both to safety—and then they passed the place where the mare should have been gathering herself to jump, and she gave a sudden wild shy, realizing where she was—and then tried to make the jump anyway.
Jess sunk her heels low and found the saddle just in time for the futile leap, the opposite bank looming fast and high—
The mare’s flailing forelegs hit the rising bank... and snapped.
Jess catapulted out of the saddle, landing hard. All the air left her lungs; her sight went black. She rolled and came to a sprawled, ungainly stop in a flop of limbs and streaming hair.
She gasped for air, her wind knocked away—and then the pain of the fall flooded in. Ander shouted for her, barely audible over the crackle and spit of the approaching fire. Then he threw himself down next to her, his hands on her face, turning it so he could look into her blinking eyes. The sunglasses hung brokenly across her face; he tore them off and threw them away.
“Jess,” he said, his face so close that the puff of his breath made her blink. “Jess, come on, we’ve got to—” He looked up and his eyes widened—he threw his body over hers. Jess felt more than heard the heavy footfalls of Ander’s horse as it scrambled up the bank and galloped past.
“C’mon, c’mon,” he said, rising up to shake her into response—and not gently.
She cried out at the pain of it, and Ander glanced over his shoulder and back to her, his face suddenly hard and determined. He jerked her up and snatched a grip around her ribs, pulling her in close as he dragged her backward to the creek.
The heat sizzled off her exposed skin and crisped her eyes as he released her to jump down. Then he grabbed her tunic, tugging her back until she slid off the bank and landed heavily on him, splashing them both down into what remained of the drought-dried creek.
She suddenly found herself able to struggle, even though not everything was working quite right.
“No—” He grunted and flung a leg and arm over her, weighing her down into the water along with him. It flowed sluggishly around her head, tickling against the sides of her face and the corners of her eyes. She would drown, she would die in the water, and she reared—she tried to rear—the roar of fire passed above them, dribbling sparks and flame to hiss in the water—
Ander’s lips touched her ear. “Easy, Jess,” he said, his voice as soothing and the cool water on her skin. “Shhhh,” he said, blending with the roar of the fire. “Easy.”
Some trace of sense trickled back into her head.
She’d fallen from the mare. She was in the creek with Ander.
The fire snake had just passed overhead, blindly missing the deep, narrow cut of the creek. Fire crackled along both sides of the banks, but they were safe, submerged in the water. She was not going to burn... and she was not going to drown.
But she hurt.
She wanted to tell Ander she understood all these things as she stopped struggling beneath him, but instead she just whimpered, a sound that caught in her throat.
“Shhh,” he said. “All right. You going to stay there?” He waited for her faint nod, and made sure she wouldn’t flounder when he released her. Then he crept to the bank, cautiously climbing it until he could just see over the edge.
“It lost us,” he said. “It’s... I think it’s following my horse.” He slid back down and turned his back to the bank, leaning against it, his face bleak, his eyes touched with horror. “Everything’s on fire... it’s just sweeping across the fields.”
“Fire watch,” Jess managed. The drought fire watch would make sure the fire was extinguished. They were probably already on their way.
“Yeah, right,” Ander said, and gave a shaky laugh. “They’ll put it out. And they’ll find us, too. It’ll be all right, Jess.”
“Okay,” she said.
“Okay,” he echoed, although the foreign colloquialism sounded odd coming out of his mouth. He stood, and he looked as shaky as Jess felt. “Let’s get you out of the water. Can you move?”
Jess considered it. “I think yes,” she said, after wiggling her toes in her wet boots and gingerly flexing her legs. She tried her shoulders next and froze at the stabbing pain. “Ow!” she said, almost as in wonderment.
“Let me help.” Ander sat behind her in the muddy creek bottom, helped ease her into a sitting position, and guided her back along the bank. Jess gulped uneven, pained breaths, stunned again at how she hurt.
Ander waited for her to recover and ran his hands along her shoulders and ribs—a light, careful touch; she allowed it, flinching when she had to. “Collarbone’s broken,” he said. “A rib or two. Anything else, I can’t tell.”
“I rolled,” Jess observed. “That’s better than bouncing.”
Ander’s chuckle bumped against her. “Definitely better than bouncing.”
“The mare—”
“She’s dead,” Ander said flatly. “And that thing probably caught the gelding by now.”
“I could be dead, too,” Jess said, suddenly realizing it, and then realizing exactly what had happened in those moments she lay dazed on the ground above. For Ander had successfully negotiated down the bank and into the creek—into safety.
And then he’d come out again.
“You should have stayed in the creek, Ander,” she said, aghast. “You should have stayed safe, not come a
fter me.”
“Jess,” he said, and held her a little tighter. After a moment, he said it again. “Jess. How could I not?”
It hit her then. Finally, she understood. Sitting in Ander’s arms, her head leaning back on his shoulder and his voice and breath in her ear, she felt from him the same quiet intensity that pervaded Carey in those times when he had feared for her. When he first told her he cared for her. That he loved her.
But this time, it touched nothing deep inside her except surprise.
Ander was her friend—wasn’t he? Wasn’t that the way it was supposed to be, with humans—one love, and many friends?
In a new kind of daze, Jess rested against him and said nothing. Out in the middle of burning Kymmet fields, sitting in the muddy bottom of a sluggish creek with the black banks rising high on either side of them and her broken bones grumbling a rising complaint, she let him hold her—and wondered what she was supposed to do when it came time to ask that he let go.
~~~~~~~~~~
Chapter Twenty
Dayna sat at the big wooden table of the farmhouse kitchen and quashed a moment of envy at how easily Rorke had handled his assistant’s position with the changespell team—the warm water, the finely tuned stove spells.
That envy was easier to chase away these days—even if she hadn’t finally come across a day when Rorke had left things untidy, and when the faint odor of food going bad hung in the air. Since she’d worked so hard at eliminating the habit of raw magic from her spells, Dayna had done pretty well herself.
Eschewing raw magic hadn’t turned out to be as much of a problem as she’d expected, either—she’d developed a reaction to it, and found it gave her an immediate headache and low grade aches and pains for hours—never mind the way it fuzzed up her current spell and kept her from returning to it for hours.
It wasn’t hard to figure out when she’d let it slip into her work—and she had plenty of incentive to keep her spells pure.
The Changespell Saga Page 49
