“You could have walked away from that parking lot,” Carey said, his voice rasping on a growl that could have been pain, could have been anger. He’d made it to his knees now, shoving one foot out so he could rise—but Willand put her hand out, and he settled instead—his face scraped, his arm bruised and swelling, but no deep cuts, no broken bones.
Jess, too, stayed where she was—sitting back on her heels, looking like she was settled in... and not like she could explode into movement any time she wanted.
She could. She would. She looked at Carey to tell him so, and he gave her the slightest shake of his head.
But if not now, when? When would they ever have a better chance?
She saw it in his eyes, then. It wasn’t the when.
It was him.
He couldn’t do it. He’d pushed himself for days, ignoring his limits, battering his body, and he had nothing more to give. His eyes were full of hazel anger, and frustration... and truth.
“I could have walked away from that parking lot,” Ernie agreed as Shammel joined them. His face turned into a snarl of anger. “And you could have just given me that gold.”
“Now, now,” Willand said. “That’s a waste of energy, Dayton. Leave them to me. That’s why you gave me the mage lure, isn’t it? So I could walk out of that prison house and amuse you with these two. We’ll take care of their friends in due time.”
“Don’t count on it,” Carey muttered.
Willand made an offhand gesture and Carey grunted as though struck, his head rocking backward. In a moment, blood trickled from his mouth. Jess tensed inside her deceptively relaxed pose and wondered when.
When she should move... when she should take the chance—and when it would become too late.
“Watch out for the mare,” Shammel said, sounding lazy. “She’s a little unpredictable.”
“Keep your place,” Ernie growled.
“I am, I am,” Shammel said, not sounding the least intimidated. “You want me to take a blockade run? Fine. But that’s a Hells of a dangerous trip, and you don’t have enough gold to make it worth my while.”
“I will,” Ernie said, unperturbed, his gaze not leaving his captives. “Soon enough.”
“Let me put it this way, then. I can’t carry enough gold to make it worth my while. The mare though... the woman. Jess. I’d do it, for her.”
“She’s not going to be a woman much longer,” Willand said. “Now that I have her here, I’ll figure out how to spell her back to a horse—and keep her that way.”
Shammel eyed Ernie, a challenge in his eye. “Your choice, Dayton.” And he looked over at Jess, his black eyes touching her the same as if he’d used his hands—a long and searching examination.
“No!” she said, head lifting, phantom ears back flat. “I am not for you.” And she couldn’t help it—she looked at Carey, even though she sensed it was the exact wrong thing to do.
Ernie nearly crowed with delight. “Ohh, that’s it, is it? You been riding her every way you can, Carey? Did you have to tell her whoa to get her to stand still for it? Does she neigh for you when you touch her right?”
“You bastard,” Carey snarled, and launched himself at Ernie.
“No!” Jess cried, thinking of nothing but Carey—not Willand, not escape, just keeping Carey from being hurt. But by the time she moved, Ernie had already met Carey’s stumbling charge and countered it, knocking him to the ground and kicking him, sending him rolling away from Ernie’s boot—again and again, until he curled around himself and took the next kick with an agonized groan.
No! Jess flung herself at Ernie’s back, ears back, teeth bared—and found herself blindsided, knocked flat and trapped. Shammel. She struggled, bucking beneath him, her cap flying and her hair in her face.
“That is enough,” Willand said, her voice ringing—carrying enough command to stop them all.
“Men,” she snorted, striding over to stand between where Ernie had stopped kicking Carey and where Shammel sat on Jess. “Have you got it out of your system, now?”
Panting, Jess twisted to finding Willand with her with her hands on her hips and her expression exasperated.
“Good,” Willand said, when no one answered. “Because you’d better. Shammel, she’s going to be a horse. That’s the way I want it, and that’s the way it’s going to be. I might, however—because it amuses me—consider a negotiation. You bring the mage lure back, and I’ll let you have her—as a horse.”
“But—”
“Shut up! With a little more time, I can modify the spell so she turns human when she comes into heat. I assume from your previous drool that’s what you want?”
Shammel hesitated, as if waiting for a but. When it didn’t come, he leered down at Jess. “You shouldn’t have messed with me, sweetheart.”
He sifted through her hair, ignoring her glare, and came up with her spellstones. He let them trickle through his fingers until he found the traditionally lapis shieldstone, and cut it free with a jerk of his knife. Rolling it between his thumb and forefinger, he displayed it to Willand.
“Fine. Dayton, drag him over here—I only want to cast this knock-out spell once. And Shammel, unless you want to take an unexpected nap, you’d better get off her.”
Carey, his head lolling, landed beside Jess with a thump; she twisted, desperately trying to see how badly he’d been hurt. Shammel leaned close, gasping her chin with cruel fingers. “Take a good look at him, sweetheart,” he said. “It’s the last time you’ll see him through human eyes.” Then he climbed off her hips, unmindful that he stepped on her along the way.
Instantly, Jess started to her feet—and found Willand standing above them, her hands poised and her lips mouthing some memnotic phrase. She threw herself over Carey as if putting herself between him and the spell could make any difference.
She had an instant’s impression of the sharp smell of his blood, the tang of his sweat—the sweeter, nearly obscured odor beneath it all that had always been simply him.
Then her cheek pressed against his, and her hair swept over them both like a dark dun curtain of night.
~~~~~~~~~~
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“It’s right up ahead,” Benlan said, his swollen nose giving the words a nasal tone. “The gorge is just on the other side of it.” Otherwise, the terrain had flattened considerably, offering them diminishing cover.
Katrie dismounted, giving the terrain a skeptical eye. “We’ll do better on foot from here.”
Stiffly, Dayna dismounted beside her, eyeing the open space. “The shields ought to help protect us from casual notice.”
Ander was slower to put his feet on the ground—angry at being separated from Jess, and then angry that Jaime had acted so quickly to follow that Ander himself hadn’t had the chance. Even now, he glanced behind, the impulse to join them still evident in his reluctance, his expression—in the words he almost but never quite said out loud.
They tied the horses in a cluster of trees. Dayna took a deep breath, reaching for her confidence. “They have detection spells, I’m sure, but we shouldn’t trigger them. If they’re actively looking, that’s another story. There’s no way my spells are going to stand up against a targeted hunt.”
Katrie gave Benlan a hard look. “Is there anything else we should know?” she asked. “Keeping in mind that you’ll be secured right outside the yard? You leave out something that trips us up, it’ll be the outlaws coming to deal with you afterward.”
He shook his head, a weary gesture. “There’s nothing. I’m not stupid. I’m better off with you, and I know it—if you blame me for not wanting to cross Willand directly, then you’re the stupid one.” He gingerly touched his nose. “It doesn’t matter. You’re not going to win this.”
“Thank you very much Mr. Cheerleader,” Dayna snapped. “As a pep talk, that was amazing. Now, is there anything else we should know?”
He gave it a moment of thought. “It’s a crude place, and not very big. The barn isn’t
much better, but it’s bigger—that’s where we spend most of our time.” He shrugged. “Cinny, the cook, stays in the house. She doesn’t understand the work and she doesn’t want to.” His eyes lit with a final spark of defiance. “There’s no reason to harm her.”
Katrie shrugged. “There’s no reason to.” She gave Dayna a thoughtful look. “You’re running this thing,” she said. “But if it was me, I’d go in slow and keep it simple. We know who they are—we can wait until they’re all in one place, set the null wards around that building, and leave it like that.”
“We wouldn’t even need the raw magic,” Dayna said, with enough relief to tell her how much her confidence wavered. “Can you trigger the null wards?”
Katrie scoffed. “Those things are made so the lowliest rank of peacekeeper can trigger them—I’ve been strongarming at Sherra’s long enough to do it in my sleep. You do have them, don’t you?”
“I took charge of them at the beginning of the trip.” Dayna gave her a wry grin. “It would have been ugly if Carey had ridden off with them.”
“Good,” Katrie said, but she’d turned her attention to Ander, her face full of unforgiving speculation. “Look,” she said. “I know you wanted to go with Jess—we’re all worried. But if we don’t make it out of here, we can’t do anything to help them. We need you—and we need you here. Not thinking about there.”
His bright blue eyes reflected surprise, and then his mustache quirked to the side. “All right,” he said. “That’s fair.”
She nodded. “Dayna, do you want me to take the lead until we spot them?”
Yes! Take the lead! Take over! Be in charge and let the decisions be on your head! But Dayna closed her mouth on the threatening gibberish, and merely nodded. I should get an Oscar for this.
They walked quietly through the woods. Only Katrie seemed in her element, which didn’t surprise Dayna in the least. But when the hold—not so very far from the horses, after all—came into view, it was time to reach down and re-engage the façade of confidence that had gotten her this far. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, searching for the anger she’d felt when she’d heard about Jess’s kidnapping... the sheep... the meditators... She thought about Rorke’s twisted body, and about the threats she and her friends had received.
“Dayna?” Ander asked, his voice low and close. “You ready for this?”
She snapped her eyes open. “Yes,” she said—and was.
For a while, though, they simply watched the cabin—a dilapidated thing, long abandoned by whatever hermit had built it. The shingles were broken and thinning, the chinking dotted with generous gaps. The barn, also log, had sections that had never been airtight, and Dayna imagined she saw movement within.
Cinny appeared once or twice in the doorway of the cabin, a middle-aged woman spare of frame and brisk of movement who kept herself busy—shaking out bedding, drawing water from the well by the door.
No one else made an appearance. Dayna exchanged a look with Katrie, who seemed to be waiting for Dayna. Decision time.
“Let’s move a little closer,” she said. “Katrie, you can move ahead and start setting the wards. I’ll be ready to throw magic at them if they spot you through those gaps.”
Katrie nodded as if it all sounded perfectly reasonable to her. Maybe it even was.
“Leave me here,” Benlan said. “Tie me if you have to, but leave me here.”
“There’s no reason to bring him in any closer.” Ander said it like he was trying to convince himself, standing hipshot behind a tree and frowning down at where Benlan crouched beside the cover of a hazel bush.
“Do it,” Dayna said, watching Katrie.
Ander went to work, his movements efficient and impersonal. In moments Benlan was well-trussed, an expression of professional misery etched on his swollen face. Ander gave him a grin, affable now that the man was tied. “We’ll be back for you.”
“Yeah, right,” Benlan muttered, but when Dayna glared at him, he clamped his mouth shut and looked the other way. It wasn’t enough to keep them from gagging him. Just in case.
Carefully, they moved closer to the barn—crawling here, flattening out there, using every bit of cover they could. When they finally made it to the last big tree between them and the barn, Dayna found herself shaky and sweating—and expecting to be struck by lightning at any moment.
But there they were, the three of them, lying on their bellies in the woods, groundcover damp beneath them and insects tracking them down. We’re here.
Katrie gave her a look—now?—and Dayna nodded.
And there was no turning back.
~~~~~
She opened her eyes.
Just a crack, and images flooded in. The colors weren’t right. Flat. Her body felt out of true with itself, and she wasn’t quite sure how to move it.
Then a fly landed on her ear and she twitched it.
Lady. She was Lady. Not her choice, she could tell right away it hadn’t been her choice. Never did she feel such disorientation when she’d reached for her Lady-shape on her own.
Whump! A booted foot bounced off her stomach, and she jerked her head up—
Or tried to. But someone—who?—had tied her head down close to the ground. Eyes open, rolling in fear as she tried to take in the whole of her surroundings, Lady remembered where she was.
And who had her.
Shammel bent over to grin in her face. “You know who’s boss, now, ey?” He walked a tight circle around her, and Lady’s ears followed his progress. Carey. Where—?
There he was, a heap of human out of focus to her from this angle; she couldn’t move her head enough to see more clearly.
Something slammed down against her side, a significant weight. She scraped her hooves against the ground—a futile effort, as long as he kept her head tied down. She strained against the tie just enough to see that Shammel was sitting on her side.
Just sitting there. Grinning at her.
But Willand came over and snapped something at him; Shammel replied in a rude tone, slowly rising from his living footstool. He came to Lady’s head, fussing with something by her chin.
It took her a moment to realize he’d freed her. She surged upward, finding her feet in a violent movement that would have propelled her right over Shammel—if he hadn’t jerked his arm, exploding pain across the bone of her face. She flung her head up and danced backward a few steps.
A chain—he had a chain across her nose.
Lady stood frozen—unwilling to risk the wrong move, just enough Jess in her thoughts so she wouldn’t give Shammel the satisfaction. She found herself on the other side of the clearing from the fallen tree, not far from the cabin itself. Ernie sat in its doorway, watching them, and Carey—
He leaned against a tree stump, his head sagging down on his chest. Sleeping? Dead? She stretched her neck, calling him with a low intense whicker that got no response.
She pawed the ground, demanding. Take me to him!
“Stop it,” Shammel said, twitching the chain. She laid her ears back and pawed again, narrowly missing his foot. Carey!
“No, no... that’s all right.” Willand stood beside her, hands on hips. “Take her over there. I want her to get the full impact of the situation.”
“She’s a horse,” Shammel said. He reached up and flicked at her braid—for the first time, Lady realized she still had the spellstones. All but the shieldstone. There they were, and she could do nothing with them. Nothing.
Shammel led her to Carey. “She’s not going to think about this like Jess would, you know.”
“She’ll understand,” Willand said, pacing their progress. “And she understands she’s stuck as a horse for as long as I want her to be—just as she was the last time we had her. It’ll be enough.”
Lady pulled against the lead as she neared Carey, ignoring the cut of the chain. She ran her nose over his hair—sweat, dust—and down his neck, trying to raise some response. She lipped his shirt—blood, and the smell
of fear. She whuffled into his face, feeling the puff of his own breath come back into her nostrils. Alive.
And then she swung her head around to look at Willand, her ears back, her chin tight, her hatred clear.
Willand laughed. “I told you,” she said. She moved near Lady’s head. “Yes, you damn meddling mare, I have him. And as soon as I figure out the key to trapping you like that, I’ll start on him. I think Calandre had a good idea with her compost spell, and I think I’ll do it again. Only slower.” She considered it. “Much slower. And you can watch, Jess. You won’t be able to do a damn thing about it.” Willand smiled at that, looking smug and satisfied. “Then, of course, I’ll track down the rest of you. I particularly look forward to dealing with Jaime.”
“She’s a horse,” Shammel said again, his voice full of disdain and his gesture leaving slack in Lady’s lead.
Faster than either of them could react, Lady’s head flashed out, teeth bared, fastening on Willand’s arm. She bit down hard—and she didn’t let go.
Twisting, Willand rained fisted blows on her head, all of which hurt Willand more than Lady. “Get her off!” she cried. “Get her off!”
Shammel slapped the chain hard against Lady’s nose, sending sparks of pain all the way up through her eyes. Lady held fast, grinding flesh. Finally Shammel grabbed her upper lip and twisted, overloading the sensitive nerves there—not so much with pain, but the shock of it. Lady felt Willand’s arm slip through her teeth, leaving a scrap of her tunic behind.
Shammel released her nose and grabbed her ear, wrenching it down until Lady thought he was ripping it right off. She twisted her head to ease the cruel grip and he held her there—head halfway to the ground, legs spraddled wide to accommodate, nostrils flared with emotion.
Willand stood before them, holding her arm—tears of pain running down her face, and tears in her voice when she laughed. Laughed.
“You see? She’s much more than just a horse. She’ll see, and she’ll know. She’ll watch her Carey die.”
~~~~~~~~~~~
The Changespell Saga Page 56
