The last two years had wrung that naivete right out of her. She knew what people could do to each other, the things they could justify to themselves if they even bothered to justify them at all. So she was less gracious than she might have been, and quite probably more suspicious than she should have been.
That they took it in stride bothered her as much as anything. "Who more than you would ?" said the man, somewhat apologetically.
"When it comes to Council business, Arlen is just as discreet as he's supposed to be," Jaime said. "I'm not even of Camolen, as you must know. When it comes down to it, Cesna, Natt, and Carey know more about his work than I do." As soon as she said it, she knew she'd made a mistake; the woman's head lifted, her eyebrows raising ever so slightly over unremarkable hazel eyes.
"That's a point," she said. "Perhaps we could speak to Carey. Chesba mentioned him, also."
Jaime gave a firm shake of her head. "No," she said. "He's busier than I am, trying to hold things together, and so far you've done nothing but waste my time—I'm not about to let you waste his. I'm not sure what information you're digging for, but if the Council's not dead, they surely have a good reason for making us think they are." Offhand, she couldn't think of one, though a little voice in her head sang at the thought that someone else believed Arlen might yet live. "I'm not about to second-guess them, and if Chesba wants to pursue his suspicions, he'll have to do it somewhere other than Anfeald."
The woman regarded her coldly; the man less so. Good cop, bad cop . Except they weren't cops at all.
Then what, exactly? This world might be alien to her, but she'd been here long enough to know that the Landers used their individual precinct guard for enforcement and investigations, just as the council looked to the country-wide organization of peacekeepers. Spies, then? The Camolen CIA and KGB?
If so, then she doubted she could take anything they'd said at face value.
Unless, of course, they were simply and truly assistants to Chesba, poking and prodding where they didn't quite belong. She supposed if she were a lander during this crisis, she'd want to get her information from somewhere other than the general news dispatch the new Council had used to announce Camolen's loss.
While the woman had continued her cold regard, the man relaxed in his seat somewhat, ran a hand over hair that didn't need rearranging, and said with casual precision, "We know someone's been working magic here. Magic beyond Arlen's apprentices."
Caught flatly astonished for the second time in this conversation, Jaime nonetheless found herself recovering more quickly. Dayna's world-travel spell. She hadn't realized that her friend's quirky brilliance had brought her so far, that the spell had been beyond Natt and Cesna. She kept her reaction on the inside, showing Chesba's people nothing more than a mild shrug. "Which has what to do with what? If it had been Arlen, you would have recognized his touch."
The man shrugged. "Signatures have been distorted before. We learned that last summer, as I know you're aware."
This time his outrageousness made her laugh out loud. "You think Arlen would take mage lure to enhance his ability? The most powerful wizard in Camolen?"
"It might depend," the woman said, unaffected by Jaime's amusement, "on what he thought he was up against."
Jaime leaned her chin on her fist and looked at them both a moment. "You know," she said, "I've got things to do. I'm not sure what you're trying to accomplish, but I'm not interested in participating. I'll have someone escort you out." No doubt it was the ultimate rudeness to fail to offer them a night's lodging—winter roads with disrupted road crews, the day more than half gone, the travel booths non-functional . . .
Too bad.
Thanks to Cesna's eavesdropping, there was a burly man waiting outside the door by the time the two nondescript visitors gathered themselves and left the room. Jaime recognized him as one of the groundskeepers, but he acquitted himself well in his role as an unobtrusive bouncer. Cesna herself joined Jaime in the room a few moments later, offering her little more than a puzzled look.
"And to think," Jaime told her, "we were worried that they were here to scope the place out for a new wizard."
"Scope?" Cesna said, and then shook her head, apparently putting the word into context. "That may still come," she said. "I don't know what this was about. But I think you should know . . . while you were talking to them, one of the grooms came up to let me know they'd been seen coming out of the job room, and I could have sworn I heard someone upstairs. Nothing obvious was missing, but—"
"But our courier assignments are pretty much there for the world to see," Jaime said. "Well, so they know who we've got out on the road. They don't know what we're carrying—and even if they did, I can't think of anything eyes only out there today, anyway."
"They were asking about Carey," Cesna said. "There's enough information in that room for them to figure out he's not here . . . and we don't expect him to be here any time soon."
Jaime breathed a frustrated curse. "And can they really tell," she asked, not at all sure she wanted the answer, "just what kind of heavy-duty magic they felt?"
Cesna gave her head a quick shake, toying with the ends of her ponytail. "No," she said. But then she hesitated, mouth barely open.
"What?" Jaime said flatly.
"No one can pinpoint an exact spell," Cesna said reluctantly, "but they can identify things like the complexity and power involved in a spell. And there are only so many spells with the same combination of those elements as the world-travel spell."
Jaime felt suddenly tired; she closed her eyes, rubbing the lids gently with her fingers. She didn't know what her visitors had truly wanted, or what they'd walked away with . . . or even what they'd do with whatever they'd learned. But they hadn't been straight with her, and that was never a good sign. And— Her head snapped up; she looked into Cesna's startled watery blue eyes. "They were in the stable,"
Jaime said. "They know the palomino's gone."
And like everyone else in Camolen, they knew that the palomino Ramble was the only living witness to what had happened.
"They could figure it out," she whispered. "Where Carey is . . . why he took the palomino . . ."
"Does it matter?" Cesna said, slowly sitting in a chair without taking her gaze from Jaime's.
She hoped not. But— "Only," she said, "if they don't want anyone else to know what Ramble knows."
Chapter 14
Jess crouched along the outside wall of the squat, brown-painted nature center, not quite willing to sink down to the wet ground. Around her the park offered the very picture of happy nature—the rain stopped, the songbirds out in force, and just enough sunshine to make diamond sparks off the bright green leaves.
It'd been a long time since she'd been this miserable.
Even now, the park naturalist stood alongside the green Metroparks pickup truck in the small parking area before the nature center, talking to the ranger behind the wheel; both of them glanced her way with alarming frequency.
She knew they meant to be kind, that they were worried about her . . . a woeful woman waiting for her friend to show up, every word out her mouth making her seem odder than the one before, every passing moment increasing her worry . . . surely her friends would know to come look for her here. Surely they'd made it to the main parking lot safely once she'd distracted the ranger and they had had the wet nature trail to themselves. Surely they'd somehow gotten Ramble under control . . .
She shivered, trying to remember if she'd felt this sick after the first time the newly crafted world-travel spell had brought her here. Probably . . . she just hadn't known it. Hadn't known what this human form was supposed to feel like. That it shouldn't tremble like this, and that her vision shouldn't grey out when she stood up. That even weak human limbs shouldn't be rubbery beneath her.
With a tug to pull her sweatshirt sleeve down over her hand, she caught it in her fingers and rubbed the back of her covered wrist over her brow, trying to ease the ache there. When she looked up
, the naturalist was heading toward her with purpose, and with the ranger on her heels.
"We've been talking," the woman said; her name tag, now that she'd removed her poncho, was readily visible. Mary Carter . Jess stared at it, strangely mesmerized, her thoughts foggy and drifting. Mary Carter crouched down to Jess's level; the ranger stood behind her, thumbs hooked into his belt, one moment too uncomfortable at the impending conversation to look directly at Jess, the next raking his gaze over the rain-darkened color of her hair, her larger-than-normal irises. The woman's skin around her eyes wrinkled more deeply, and she said, "We're not comfortable with the fact that you can't give us a contact number, and that you don't look well. We'd like to take you to a hospital."
Jess shook her head. "This is where my friends know to find me."
"It would be easier," the ranger said, "if you could tell us where to find them ."
She could only shake her head again, trying not to let them see her shiver. Not shivers from being damp on this warm, humid spring day. Shivers from within, from a body too harshly wrenched from one state to another. If they thought she was truly sick, they'd never leave her alone. She said, "We are new to this spot. I don't know what road inn to use."
They exchanged a glance, and she wondered what she'd said that wasn't quite right this time, even knowing the way she formed her words alone might bring those expressions. "But this Mark fellow lives here," the ranger said. "That's what you told us. Don't you even have a last name? We'll look him up in the book."
She remembered the hugely thick book of thin pages and tiny print, and shook her head yet again.
Caution, this time. If they found his name in the book once, they could find it again. They could find him .
They might try to check up on her . . . they might tell someone else. They—the local peacekeepers and guards—might stumble across Ramble. And she knew from her early days here, from what had happened to the chestnut gelding turned red-headed man, what they'd do if they discovered Ramble.
They'd take him away. They'd put him in a small, closed-in space with no way to communicate with him, or to understand what he really needed. She shivered again, this time purely from memory. The chestnut, dead in the street . . . "Jessie," said Mary Carter, "you aren't leaving us much of a choice. Your friends will know to check the hospitals when they don't find you here."
"No," Jess said, unable to hide a hint of panic this time. Her heartbeat pounded loudly in her ears, fast and uneven and somehow stealing the breath from her lungs.
The ranger reached down and took her upper arm, not an unkind grip but enough to draw her to her feet. "It's best this way . . . Mary and the park volunteers will be here for the rest of the afternoon—if your friends come looking, they'll learn you're at Marion General."
They'd ask her questions she couldn't answer, they'd find all that was strange about her, they'd take her to that iron-barred place where they'd kept the chestnut— "No!" she cried, trying to yank herself free, not caring that several people near their cars—locking doors, shucking raincoats, loading up with binoculars and water bottles—looked over to stare at her.
The woman said, "Bill, maybe we should let the police handle this—"
True panic gripped her even as she struggled to think through it, knowing if only her heart would stop racing and her legs didn't feel so weak she wouldn't be so scared and unable to stop herself from pulling against him— just like the horse she was, an astonishing revelation that made her laugh out loud with the absurdity of it all—something she shouldn't have done, she saw that right away. Saw the doubt flee from Mary Carter's face, and felt the ranger's fingers clamp more firmly on her arm. The laugh turned to a sob.
"Jess!"
A sweeter voice she'd never heard, instantly recognizable in spite of the time since she'd last heard it.
Deep and easygoing and always sounding like there was a smile behind it. "Mark!"
She found him by following the gazes of the naturalist and ranger, too rattled to place him on her own.
There, striding across the parking lot, more breadth to his shoulders than the last time she'd seen him but still with a carefree quality in his movement, even facing two uniformed park officials with a squirming handful of nearly hysterical— "Jess!" he said again, not so loudly this time, just making the point. He opened his arms slightly and the ranger looked at the naturalist; she gave the slightest of nods and Jess was free, sprinting gracelessly to throw herself at him with such force that he staggered, laughing.
But it was a quick laugh, and he ran a hand across her back and said, "Easy, there, Jess, everything's fine," in a way that told her everything was , that the others were safe—though he didn't neglect those two uniformed park officials, both of them coming across the brief strip of grass to join him. "I'm sorry," he said. "She's . . ." and he hesitated, finally adding, "a special child, if you know what I mean."
"She seems like more than that," Mary Carter said. "She seems ill. Not to mention barefoot ."
"Lost the shoes again, eh?" Mark buffed the damp sweatshirt across Jess's back; she rested the side of her face against his windbreaker and— just like the horse she was—let herself rely upon his strength and confidence. "She's just scared," he told the naturalist. "She gets that way. I thought she was with a friend, or I never would have taken so long to get here."
"Mmm," said Mary Carter, not sounding entirely convinced.
But not arguing. Not talking about taking her to official places where people would ask questions and Jess wouldn't be able to answer them. Not stopping Mark as he guided her around in a clear intent to leave.
And as she let Mark lead her away, calling back thanks to the unconvinced naturalist and ranger, as she trusted in his feet to take them the right direction and his knowledge to reunite her with Carey and Dayna, some small part of her started thinking again.
Thinking about Ramble. That he had no one to trust, and no one to follow. He was here in this strange world at the behest of people he didn't even know . . . and he was truly alone.
Carey took an impatient glance inside the stall where Ramble slept off the effects of travel and changespell . . . not to mention a heavy dose of Valium. Unlike Jess, who had a sweetness in repose even when at her most horsey in nature, Ramble's strong-boned recalcitrance somehow came through despite his slack-jawed position in the fresh and deeply bedded stall. He lay as a horse on his side, twitching occasionally as though his fear and uneasiness had worked its way through the drug.
Thank the guides Mark had been able to bring the tranquilizer—and even that his mix-up in the timing between here and Camolen had made Dayna's somewhat panicked phone call from the park a necessity so he could grab the old dental visit prescription on his way out. By then Ramble had become irritated and balky, and Carey had twice twisted his ear to bring him back into a state of better manners, feeling a supreme wrongness about the need to do so to another man. He very much doubted they'd have gotten Ramble into Mark's battered vehicle without the drug, which had hit Ramble's stressed system fast and hard.
Now they just needed for him to wake up, so they could start working with him . . . so Carey could get a sense of just how long it would take before Ramble could convey something of what had happened to him. Jess was using single words within days, he'd been told, and very simple sentences soon after. But along with whatever boost the changespell had given her, Jess had had the benefit of a human-intensive upbringing . . . and Carey had had the habit of talking to her on the trail.
He doubted very much this changed palomino had any such advantage. For a moment, looking at the long, ragged flaxen-and-orange-streaked hair of the man inside the stall, looking at his rugged frame and exotic skin tones—more of a golden tan than Jess's smooth toasted brown skin—he very much doubted they could overcome the disadvantages the palomino's basic training gave them.
For a moment, he believed Jess had been right from the start . . . their journey here was nothing but folly.
But it was a short moment, brought on by stress and worry . . . Jess, gone off somewhere with the park naturalist, sick from the change and no doubt frantic with worry. Mark hadn't even gotten out of the car as Carey and Suliya dragged Ramble out; he'd peeled back out of the driveway with the tires spitting gravel, on his way back to the park to try to find her.
Dayna came down the barn aisle—a wide, airy aisle built to Jaime's specifications, with the indoor ring attached on one end and huge double doors facing the old farmhouse on the other, ten stalls on each side with several of them a huge, double stall such as the one Ramble now occupied. Clean white paint made it bright, and hunter-green trim turned it cheery. The hayloft and storage stalls filled the place with the scent of hay, and even without cleaning spells, Mark and his crew of manure movers kept the place fresh.
Jaime's pride and joy, whether she was in Camolen with Arlen or pursuing her career here in Ohio.
Carey had once blown out all the windows and panicked the horses into shell shock with a bungled spell . . . a decision that kept Jaime from ever fully trusting his judgment again.
In retrospect, he couldn't blame her.
In retrospect, he'd do it again.
And maybe he just had.
Dayna glanced around, double-checking the hay bales stacked across the aisle to block Ramble's end stall from view; Mark had already pinned a cheery sign on the other side to waylay boarders' questions: Hay Overshipment! Sliding double doors at the end of the aisle provided the only access to Ramble, and they'd already installed a chain and lock. She nodded satisfaction, then looked at the sleeping palomino.
"Good thing Jaime has this thing about dentists—we'd never have gotten him here without that Valium."
She sounded as wrung out as Carey felt. "God, I feel like I've run a marathon. Suliya is in the house sleeping it off. I don't see how Jaime does this so often."
Changespell Legacy Page 15
