The Changespell Saga

by Doranna Durgin

  “I thought the spell failed!” Gifferd lost his composure and started to rise; Dayna snatched his sleeve and he caught himself, settling back behind Carey. “I thought the interference had nullified it, that it ran its course with little damage. I had no idea it was dormant in there!”

  “It doesn’t matter right now,” Dayna said grimly, and Suliya followed her gaze to Carey. The harsh, liquid sound of Carey’s breathing filled their silence, the groan that came with every breath.

  But his eyes... his eyes were coming back to them; he rose to his elbow and spit blood into the dirt.

  “Nine-one-one,” Mark said with some certainty, as if that should mean something to the rest of them.

  To Dayna it did. “Can they treat him here?”

  Gifferd said, “It’s just an injury now. The magic is gone.”

  “We were about to leave. We could still do that. Get him to Arlen’s healer—” Dayna looking down Carey, and her short laugh sounded more like a sob. “God, Carey—first a compost spell, now an internal eggbeater—I swear—”

  He made a face at her, jerking as his breath caught.

  Suliya merely stared. Compost? Was that the spell Calandre had thrown at him, the one that had left him half a courier? Rootin’ ninth level—

  Gifferd interrupted her revelation. “Maybe the healers can’t—”

  Dayna didn’t let him finish, either. “Then we won’t go back. We’ll call an ambulance—but we’ve got to decide!”

  Suliya had never seen such conflict on Gifferd’s face. “If he goes to your hospital, we’ll have to leave him behind. SpellForge—”

  Carey pushed against the ground, choking on words of protest that never made it past his throat; Gifferd restrained him without even seeming to think about it.

  Mark cursed again, moving closer—glaring with menace in spite of Gifferd’s obvious ability to put him down. “First you don’t want us going anywhere. Now you say you can’t wait. Well, maybe it’s not up to you—”

  “SpellForge,” Gifferd said suddenly, “has failed—or they’d have been in touch. They not only failed, they didn’t do what was right and go to the new Council for help—or the interference would be improving, not getting worse by the day.”

  “By the hour,” Dayna interposed in a mutter. “So you—what? Think we need to rush back and save the day? And you couldn’t have said this earlier?”

  “Before now, this moment, did we have a way to return?” He gave her a bitter look. “And would you have believed me if I had?”

  “Yes,” she said, a sharp gleam in her eye. “I’m the one feeling the changes in the magic, remember?”

  “Then use the spell now! If we can go back, we must go back! No one else knows what’s happening—”

  “None of the other agents?” Suliya said in surprise, the only one accustomed to FreeCast ways.

  Gifferd gave an impatient shake of his head, absently helping Carey as he pushed himself more upright. “They were never told. I was never told.” At their unanimous surprise, he added, “I believe I mentioned that I find out what I need to know.”

  Mark understood first. “With the magic going gonzo, if you don’t leave soon, you could be stranded here forever. Dayna—”

  “I’m not making that decision unless I understand,” Dayna told him. “Not if it means leaving Carey behind.” She looked at Gifferd—looked hard. “I find out what I need to know, too.”

  Only Suliya saw the way Carey’s eyes widened at the thought of being left behind, the way his blood-rimmed lips soundlessly formed a single word. Jess.

  Gifferd shrugged. “What you need to know is that the permalight spell came with an unexpected price.”

  Dayna jerked at the blow of it. “Guides, those things are everywher—” And cut herself off with a shake of her head. “They’ll figure it out. Surely, they’ll—”

  “How?” Gifferd asked sharply. “The Council is dead. They shouldn’t be, but some panicked SpellCast fool drew up raw magic to conceal himself, and in the process killed every single wizard skilled enough to follow the casting trail to the permalight spells.” He hesitated, but shook his head and let his words stand.

  “I’ve followed trails—” Dayna started—but slumped instead of finishing. “But always a very strong spell, to a single spellcaster... not a diffuse effect to a multitude of sources.” She glanced at Mark. “He’s right. It’s different. I don’t even know if it could be done.”

  Gifferd said, “If SpellForge had done the right thing, the light spell would be forbidden by now. There might not yet be a checkspell, but they’d have put a cap on the worst of it. The interference wouldn’t have escalated. Not the way it has.”

  “You’re guessing,” Dayna said. But she looked down at her hands, no longer resting on Carey’s leg but fingers clenching each other.

  “I believe,” Gifferd said, emphatic in it. “But... it might already be too late to stop the destruction.” He narrowed his eyes, tightly gauging Dayna’s response. “Do what you want. But I want to go back now.”

  “Ay!” Suliya said. “Someone has to tell them!” She glared at Gifferd. “Someone who hasn’t been bought.”

  Gifferd flinched, surprising her—but Dayna had turned to Carey, an unusually vulnerable look in her eyes. “Carey... normally I’d trust Camolen’s magic over Ohio’s HMOs any day, but there’s no predicting—I’ll come back for you, if it’s all at possible, I swear I’ll come back—”

  “No!” he said, forcing out the ragged but emphatic word and then paying for it with a round of coughing and spitting.

  Suliya knew what he wanted. She found her voice surprisingly firm. “He needs to go back. He has to make things right with Jess.”

  Gifferd said flatly, “Carey, you could die. Without ever seeing her.”

  Carey took the most careful of breaths, spoke in the most cautious of whispers—words that were still as strong as anything he’d ever said. “Death,” he said, “would be knowing I didn’t even try.”

  Gifferd and Dayna exchanged a glance, brought Mark in on it.

  “Ay!” Suliya said again. “You heard him. If we go back, he goes back.”

  Dayna let out a long breath that could only be acquiescence. But when Carey turned a grateful gaze to Suliya, mouthing a thank-you, she didn’t know whether to be relieved for what she’d done for him, or frightened of what she might have done to him.

  ~~~~~

  Jaime opened bleary eyes to diffuse dawn light, instantly alarmed but taking another moment to realize why.

  Natt, here in her room.

  He was as ruffled as she’d ever seen, with the light, fine shadow of his beard creating hard lines on his soft face and his eyes still a little gummy. He wore a thick, layered silk dressing gown and carried the scent of a woman’s perfume.

  “What is it?” Jaime asked as soon as she found her tongue, her fingers clutching the bed covers. “Not a mangle here—?”

  “Grace of the Guides, no,” Natt said, an instant of horror crossing his newly chubby features. “But the arrival alarm went off for the travel booth.”

  “I thought we’d deactivated all unnecessary spells.” Jaime swung her legs out of the futon bed and groped beneath the frame for her slip-ons, her alarm rising. For they might be cut off from the rest of Camolen, but they’d had one final dispatch missive: avoid using magic, especially avoid using it in an affected area—and avoid raw magic under any circumstances.

  They’d all immediately recalled Dayna’s claim to have felt raw magic before the old Council died—and wondered if the Council had finally figured that out for itself.

  “We hardly expected anyone to be able to transfer in,” Natt said, and the strain in his voice told her he’d been shaken by their error, too. “No one thought of it.”

  “Who is it?” She stood, impatiently finger-combed her hair back from her face, and pulled a light sweater over her ankle-length sleep shirt.

  “It’s not who. It’s what. And I think you can answer t
hat question better than any of us.”

  “Do I like the sound of that?” Jaime grabbed a mint from the bowl by the door in lieu of pausing to brush her furry teeth.

  Natt held a candle to light their way. “No one’s sure.”

  She followed too close on his heels, then surged ahead when the ground floor travel booth came into sight. Kesna waited there with her own candle, one of the old thick stumps under severe rationing. Camolen had gone years... generations... without any significant need for them. No rolling blackouts, no sudden loss of conveniences because someone somewhere took out a power pole. The candles were old, stashed away in the back corners of drawers and cupboards, and precious.

  Not that they offered enough light for Jaime to believe what she thought she saw in the travel booth, folded and neatly centered in the enclosed stone space.

  Sabre’s cooler.

  With a wordless exclamation of surprise, she pushed into the booth and snatched up the fine wool cooler, a dark teal blanket banded in black with a ropy net lining, tailored to be slung loosely over a hot horse. Over Sabre, her horse—she knew it as soon as she felt the familiar material, and before her searching fingers came across the embroidered name and logo. The Dancing Equine.

  “It’s Dayna,” she said. “Dayna and Carey.” And the young woman, Suliya. “They’re at the farm, and they’re coming back.”

  “Here?” Natt scoffed. “Not according to the spells you say they had with them, they’re not. When they return, they’ll end up out toward—”

  “Here,” Jaime said firmly. She left the chamber, thrusting the cooler at Natt’s mid-section so he had no choice but to take it. “This came from my farm. Who else do you think would send it?”

  “Why send it at all?” Kesna said, a softer protest. Unlike Jaime, she’d taken time to dress, but her fine, light brown hair hung limply about her shoulders and pillow-blotches still marked her young face.

  “We haven’t been able to talk for nearly a month,” Jaime said. “Maybe longer. And they know we’re having trouble with magic, because that’s why we haven’t talked. This could be a heads-up; it could be a test. It could be both. With any luck we’ll know within a few moments.”

  Kesna lifted her head slightly, a listening attitude. “Yes,” she said. “Here it comes.”

  “Guides.” Natt’s soft voice took on a new kind of horror. “What’s that kind of magic going to do to the area?”

  “It’s Dayna,” Kesna said, her eyes big and hollow in the angled light of the candle she held. “She’s so careless with raw magic—!”

  Jaime wanted to protest, to tell them Dayna was hardly careless at all—she just employed that which they would not. But it didn’t matter, because the end result would be the same. No raw magic. Not even for Dayna.

  “We’ll let her know,” Jaime said firmly. “And we’ll just have to hope she’s not—” using it now, but she didn’t finish the thought out loud.

  She didn’t need to. They all knew. And she didn’t have the time, because the air inside the travel chamber rippled, an uncharacteristic effect. It rippled and wavered, and—somewhere between one blink and another—figures appeared slowly stabilized, a pond of matter recovering from disturbance, crowded into a space meant for one, maybe two... not four.

  Four?

  Those figures hardly seemed to be aware of their welcoming party—and Jaime hardly knew what to make of them. Dayna and Suliya and—? Who? And—”Carey!”

  Dayna dropped to her knees where Carey struggled to rise, trying to say something—and failing. “We need a healer,” she said, a voice of peremptory authority not much like Dayna at all. “He should have stayed, dammit!” She scowled. “We need a healer now.”

  “Go,” Natt murmured to Kesna.

  Jaime stared at the stranger—a lean man in Mark’s shirt and a pair of Camolen-cut pants. “Who’s this?”

  Dayna tossed the answer over her shoulder. “Gifferd. Came to abduct us, changed his mind. More or less. It’s a long story and Carey’s—”

  She closed her eyes, and Jaime abruptly knew she was hunting spells—and that if she couldn’t find one, she’d be just as likely to make something up on the spot.

  “No!” she cried, getting everyone’s startled attention—Suliya’s wide-eyed startlement, Gifferd’s unsettling gaze, Dayna’s blink of surprise. Carey lifted his head, his eyes glazed and unfocussed; for the first time Jaime saw the blood. Oh Guides, that can’t be good. The blood, and the gurgle, and the blue tinge of his lips, the grey of his skin noticeable even in the candlelight.

  Natt closed in on them, coming down hard on the heels of Jaime’s command. “No magic,” he said. “No raw magic, Dayna.”

  “I knew that,” Dayna said, surprisingly mild. She knelt by Carey. “But—”

  “Dayna,” Jaime said, “We’re using candles for light.”

  She realized it for the first time, showing the shock of it; they all did. Suliya’s lip trembled slightly, and then she looked away from them all.

  “Those bastards,” Gifferd said. “They said they’d do the right thing.”

  “What bastards?” Jaime asked. “No, wait—I don’t care.” She pointed at Gifferd. “You—get out of the way.” And wasn’t quite sure why Suliya flinched when Jaime grabbed the man’s arm and pulled him out of the chamber so she could get in. Gifferd came along readily enough, bemused as he was.

  She crouching beside Carey, looking for the cause of the bright frothy blood—he took hold of her arm, his grip surprisingly strong, his scowl fierce with frustration and his eyes full of pain. “What happened?”

  “Another long story. He should have stayed there, dammit!”

  Suliya whispered, “He had to—Jess—you know he had to—”

  Jaime knew what he needed. “She’s here, Carey.” He didn’t need to know where, or in what form. “She’s here. She’s well. She brought me your notes, and I told the peacekeepers.”

  The corner of his mouth twitched. “Good job,” he said, without any true sound behind it.

  Jaime abruptly stood, dragging Dayna up with her and then right out of the booth.

  “Jaime—!” Dayna yanked her arm away.

  “Dayna,” Jaime said back at her, keeping her voice low. “Listen up, because you have a lot of catching up to do. We’re in big trouble here.” Jaime welcomed Natt and his candle into the conversation with the slightest lift of her chin. “I wish you’d all stayed in Ohio, if you want to know, but Carey—”

  “Even if we wanted to use magic, the spells aren’t reliable,” Natt said as Dayna started to protest. “Kesna’s getting the healer, but she’s limited to physical remedies and—if she risks it—the vaguest of healing spells. You know damn well that isn’t good enough for this.” He sounded as broken as Jaime felt, and Jaime reminded herself that he and Carey had been working together for some time now.

  “We didn’t know,” Dayna said, her voice as low as Jaime’s, the words coming out with difficulty. “We knew it was bad, but—”

  “I just wish I could send you right back—but for all I know, the magic of your arrival gave us a mangle outside the front door, or even within the hold. We just can’t. His only chance is to stop the mangles, and no one even knows what’s causing them.”

  Dayna gave them a grim little triumphant smile. “We do.”

  ~~~~~~~~~~

  Chapter Thirty

  Lady browsed beside Ramble and Grunt, three horses moving slowly deeper into the woods with the leftover drizzle from the dawn rain dampening their coats and the giant splashes from disturbed branches soaking through to the skin

  Lady kept them close to Arlen, who chewed—and chewed—some tough trail fruit leather. His shapeless floppy hat drooped over his eyes, leaving her only a view of his bristly jaw.

  He was not meant for being on the trail. For though he’d grown tougher and efficient, he’d also lost weight, going from lean to thin in a way that showed even under his layers of clothing.

  If she’d b
een human she might have rationalized his constant expression of vague concern and discontent to the circumstances—the damage and danger all around them. But she was equine, so she simply recognized it for what it was. Homesickness. Longing. A certain conflict of purpose with needs.

  Things she felt herself. Felt and couldn’t understand and dismissed... or tried to.

  She’d browsed too deeply into the woods, too close to the nearest corruption. She snorted gently and reversed course, a thoughtful choice that ever set her apart from other horses.

  Lady, once touched by Jess, had never again been only a horse.

  No matter how desperately she’d tried. No matter how she’d depended on her time with Ramble to take her back to what she’d been.

  And Lady, more than only a horse, knew well that the scattered new scent of approaching strangers meant no good for Arlen.

  She called to him, strident and loud. Not the call of only a horse.

  Arlen hastily re-wrapped his breakfast and shoved it into his coat pocket, looking out at the woods with enough wary regard so she knew he’d understood the warning. He seemed to consider his gear, as though judging how fast he could slap it on Grunt’s back and be away from here—but in the end he backed up against a tree in a posture that Lady well recognized.

  He was taking a stand.

  She moved closer, her neck raised and arched, her prancing steps infused with the intent of a war mare ready to protect her own.

  He stopped her with a gesture, and she made herself wait, her body language bringing Ramble to attention—ready to protect her if not Arlen. Grunt watched them all with a stupid curiosity, moist greens drooping from the corner of his mouth.

  The approaching agents cast aside their stealth. Two from the woods and one from the trail, all reminding Lady of peacekeepers in their movement and attitude, although one of the two men carried a barrel stomach under his barrel chest and the other had plenty of grey in his hair and lines in his face. The woman, too, was stocky, filling her muddy-colored lightweight jacket out to the seams.