Changespell Legacy

by Doranna Durgin

  "All right," Arlen said crossly. Besides, maybe if he backtracked to the peacekeepers, he could find an open trail to Anfeald from there. "I have to get Grunt before he starts bleeding from the ears. We'll put some distance in before we settle in for the night. No point in being anywhere near when the FreeCast agents descend here tomorrow."

  He pulled Grunt back out of the woods, watching as the gelding became instantly besotted with Lady, going so far as to duck his head and make a foal-mouthing gesture at her while Lady gave the gelding no more than a polite sniff. "Poor old Grunt," Arlen murmured. " I appreciate you even if you are missing your manly parts."

  But he had no real thought behind his words, and no real appreciation of their odd little caravan—two horses at complete liberty, one of which kept his distance and the other of which led the way, followed by an obsequious gelding of roughest breeding and his person-by-default, a lanky wizard with an unusually developed road gait and the precinct's ugliest shirt, its tattered condition and impending doom a mercy. His thoughts—and his heart—were at Anfeald, making every step he took in the opposite direction a trial in determination. "We'll stop it," he said, and startled them all by suddenly whirling around to walk backward, pointing a warning finger at the glob of distorted woods as his voice raised to a shout, "and then we'll be back !"

  Three pairs of equine eyes riveted to his strange behavior; three sets of ears pointed his way in concern.

  Arlen tugged his ugly orange tunic back into place, then snatched his jacket from atop Grunt's pack to ward himself against the evening cold, all the while pretending he didn't feel foolish under the scrutiny and muttering to himself, "Well, we will ."

  Stop the damage. Create protection. Return to Anfeald . . . in that order.

  With a hand on Lady's withers as they walked, Arlen retreated into his thoughts. Shield theories.

  Protection. Without it, he didn't think he—or anyone else—would ever make it home.

  Carey returned Jaime's old schoolmaster mount, JayDee, to her stall, glancing at Sabre's expectant look on the way by. He'd never presume to ride Jaime's Grand Prix dressage mount—no one rode Sabre but Jaime, and Carey's less theoretical, more intuitive style of riding would make him a poor match for any upper-level dressage horse—but he'd taken to longeing the horse in a variety of careful exercise programs gleaned from Jaime's books, hoping to keep him decently fit during this long and unplanned layoff.

  JayDee he presumed to ride, keeping himself fit—working through the bad days of gulping ibuprofen and surreptitious coughing—and more to the point, occupied. Out of Dayna's way, she who would not be nagged. Just as well; from the constant expression of worry she'd taken to wearing, she nagged herself enough for all of them. Even so, as he encountered her at work—first in the solitude of the little office room and more recently in the middle of the airy indoor ring, a lap desk and lawn chair as her furnishings and plenty of space for experimental magics—he invariably fought the urge to question her. How much longer , that's all he wanted to know. Simple enough, wasn't it?

  How much longer.

  "I'll be back," he told Sabre, who'd been returned to the stall that had so recently housed Ramble.

  Finding himself unable, this once, to leave Dayna alone. Suliya he left cleaning stalls, fresh from her own ride on the lower-level lesson horse during which she'd copied the warm-up exercises Carey employed.

  More power to her. Maybe by the time they got back, she'd truly be ready to learn those things she'd thought she already knew.

  Dayna stood in front of the chair, the wood-topped lap desk set carefully to the side on a square of plywood that kept the arena dirt from crawling into her papers. Her closed eyes held a slight squint at the corners; her mouth moved in a soundless mumble—and as ever, she looked incongruously slight compared to the power she could wield . . . was wielding.

  Wheeler leaned against the kickboard rail nearest to her—just under the ring letter H. If his arm still pained him, it wasn't evident. Then again, with Wheeler, who could tell? Watchful but relaxed, he lounged in the startling combination of his expensive Camolen trousers and one of Mark's colorful country-themed shirts, a thing of blocky red-and-black color and pearl-front snaps, rolled at the cuffs and untucked at the waist . . . and he did it with such insouciance that no one would ever guess he was stranded in a strange world and watching someone he'd intended to abduct and now suddenly depended upon.

  Carey, well versed in the folly of interrupting an uncertain wizard in mid-spell, stopped at the entrance to the indoor ring and waited. Within a few moments Dayna's concentration was replaced by satisfaction, and she opened her eyes. She spotted him immediately. "Couldn't be good any longer, huh?" she asked, but not without understanding.

  He shrugged, and then had to ask. "How's it going?"

  "I fixed the shield," she said, her satisfaction foremost again.

  "What shield?" Startled, he didn't sound nearly as appreciative as he knew he ought to be; he caught a glimpse of Wheeler's faint amusement as Dayna wrinkled her nose at him. Undeterred by any of it, he headed out into the ring.

  "The one I've got up around me right now," she said, with perfect timing; her smile said she knew it.

  That stopped him, feeling a little foolish but not so foolish as if he'd run right into it and bounced off. A quick scan showed no sign of it; he frowned. What was she up to?

  "You won't see it." She pushed back her sandy hair, recently trimmed from its shaggy Camolen cut to the wedge-like style she'd had when they'd first met. It suited her—short, sharp, and no-nonsense. "The problem with using magic here is that it disperses so quickly—quickly enough that I figure at least half of the storage stones went to waste when I sent Jess out. So I've been playing with that inverted shield spell I pulled on the goon-lady at Starland." She glanced at Wheeler. "You would be the goon-guy," she informed him. "One of them, anyway."

  "Yes," he said, amusement intact. "I understood that."

  "The remaining goon-guy," she said, in case he hadn't gotten that . Threats, Dayna-style . . . but Carey wasn't sure how much she meant it anymore. If anything, Wheeler's friend-foe spell tests were now more friend than foe, and he certainly seemed to consider that Dayna and Carey had been stalled here long enough to let his employers do . . .

  Whatever it was they'd intended to do. For good or for bad.

  Although recently, Carey had seen the faintest hint of anxiety in Wheeler . . . a doubt, and an increased attentiveness to Dayna's efforts. Never a nag . . . never getting in the way . . .

  But the man wanted to go home. Was ready to go home.

  Carey didn't like Wheeler; knew he'd turn on them if necessary. But in an odd way he also fully trusted the FreeCast agent to indicate if necessary came to pass. Enough so he didn't add to Dayna's not-so-subtle threats. He said, "So you've got a shield, something we can't see. And it keeps magic in . . ."

  "But doesn't mess with anything else," Dayna said, back to being satisfied. "We can go in and out, we can maintain a certain density of magic, and Suliya can run back and use the bathroom at the last minute before we spell out of here, because you know she'll forget."

  "I heard that!" Suliya shouted. A moment later a forkful of fresh manure flew from the aisle into the arena, making Carey duck but missing Dayna completely.

  "Good," Dayna said, deadpan enough so Carey knew she was teasing. "Maybe you'll remember to pee before you join the rest of us this time."

  "Guides," Suliya said, still out of sight—within a stall and working, from the varied and muffled sound of it. "Did I know we were going to a shopping place where the bathrooms would be hard to find? Did I know this place was so uncivilized? Just that one time—"

  "So is that it?" Carey said, deciding to ignore their byplay . . . especially since he hadn't taken a hit from the contents of Suliya's badly aimed fork. "The shield, the travel spell . . . you have what we need? We can go home?"

  "I'm not sure how much like home it'll be," Dayna said, suddenl
y sober. "I've made contact a few times through the spellstones Ramble left behind, and things feel really . . . wrong." She glanced at Wheeler.

  "It'll pass, you said. I hope you're right."

  Being Wheeler, he didn't respond with token words of reassurance. "They've had more than enough time," he said. "I wouldn't take anything for granted. I'm not."

  She turned on him with accusation. "You were ."

  He nodded, unaffected by her anger, by the sudden sharp look Carey turned on him. "I was," he agreed.

  "Now I'm not. Now . . . now I don't like the sound of what you've told me about the magic, and I think we need to get back."

  "Great," Dayna said. "Just great."

  Right. The man who'd kept them here for the sake of his once-removed employers, so sure that SpellForge would resolve its—and Camolen's—problems—now felt just as sure that SpellForge hadn't .

  Meaning that perhaps Carey and Dayna could have done some good — Except— "We couldn't have returned before you were ready, anyway," Carey said, realizing it anew. "What's there when we go back . . . is what's there when we go back." And let's go back now . Just as soon as they could haul Mark from the farm's financial work over which he struggled to say his farewells, just as soon as they could make themselves ready . . .

  Carey was ready now .

  "Try it," Dayna suggested, nodding at the nothingness between them. "If it works like I think it will, I'll just hold onto this spell and we'll go."

  Carey gave her a doubtful glance, thinking for an instant that he would indeed run right into and then bounce off the shield, much to Dayna's not-so-innocent amusement. But a glance at her face—just a trace of worry, but more excitement than anything—convinced him otherwise. As Suliya drifted to the edge of the aisle, watching with fork in hand, Carey took careful steps forward, not entirely sure he'd know when he passed the invisible boundary into magic.

  One moment he was waiting for that first tingle of magic . . . and the next something seemed to burst within him, an agony of heat exploding in his chest—so he could barely see Dayna's alarm, so when he started to say I'm in trouble all he got out was a dazed, "I—" as something inside him gurgled the words and he clutched at the front of his shirt, pulling it as if that would pull off the pain. Dayna rushed in to grab at him, trying to slow his descent as his knees gave way, and by then he was coughing. Deep, wet coughs and when the blood splattered his hands, he only stared, stupefied, unable to think beyond that which somehow tore him apart from the inside.

  By then Wheeler joined them and not only kept Carey upright but snapped a few nonsense words over him, roughly hauling him away from Dayna's magic. "I'm sorry," he said, just as roughly. "I thought I'd botched the spell—I didn't know it was just dormant—"

  Carey couldn't hear him; Carey couldn't spare the thought to hear any of them, to see any of them. He tore mindlessly at his blood-soaked shirt with his blood-covered hands, clawing at his own chest, bright crimson fluid streaming down his chin as Wheeler finally lowered him to the ground with an entirely unWheeler-like curse and the faintest hint of panic.

  Cool Wheeler, upset.

  Calm Wheeler, panicked.

  Nothing could have scared Carey more.

  Chapter 26

  He's dead, Suliya thought, not even knowing why. Just seeing the blood, astonishingly bright, hearing Carey gasp and cough and choke.

  He's dead.

  She ran a few steps into the indoor ring where Dayna bent fervently over Carey in his throes of . . . whatever had happened, and where Wheeler knelt, trying to say something to Dayna, totally ignored until Dayna whipped her head up to shout at him, "What did you do ? I know it was you, I know it!"

  Suliya stopped short at that, hesitating where she could still see all of them, not yet part of them . . . and suddenly certain she had nothing to offer. Her fingers wrapped around the long wood handle of the stall fork, clenched tightly; she discovered it in her grip and threw it away. Somewhere. She didn't know, didn't care.

  "Remoblade," Wheeler said, answering Dayna in a single clipped word as he turned Carey on his side with efficient ease. Suliya felt a chill hit her spine. Remoblade. Remote blade. So unlawful it wasn't funny, but the checkspells interfered with surgeon's spells and couldn't be employed.

  "Remo what ?" Dayna said, not of much help with whatever Wheeler was trying to do. "I swear, Wheeler, you start talking or I'll find some way to turn you inside out!"

  "Keep him on his side," Wheeler ordered her as Carey fought them, a drowning man searching for air and operating on instinct; flailing, beyond intellectual thought, he made it almost to his knees before Wheeler carefully but capably took him down again. "His bad side. He's bleeding in his lung; we need to keep the other one clear. It won't be so bad after that first hit."

  Dayna threw her weight on Carey's hip, got a glimpse of Suliya, and snapped, "Get Mark. Get him now ."

  Suliya ran. She left an aisle of startled horses, heads lifted and ears pricked, in her wake, and she stopped short at the double doors to bellow at the house, at the open window of the room in which he sat. "Mark! Mark, boot the poot out here!"

  She saw a shadow approach the window, crouching down to peer between the open dark curtains; she gestured frantically at him, her arm windmilling her urgency. Immediately, the shadow retreated; Suliya ran back to the arena, right up to the struggle in the dirt.

  Or not so much of a struggle, for Carey had subsided somewhat, and though she hadn't intended it, she'd come to a stop right in front of his face, close enough to see his lids half closed and his eyes glazed over in pain and shock. Blood dribbled from his mouth and soaked into the dirt beneath it, but not so copiously as that first horrifying glimpse she'd gotten.

  "—remote blade," Wheeler was saying to Dayna. "Doesn't leave a mark on the outside, acts on the inside. This one was more like a vibrating burr than a blade—bigger initial shock value, and then more damage—" He suddenly cut himself off as he seemed to hear his own words, and realized to whom he said them.

  Too late. As Mark pounded up behind Suliya, cursing his own intensely muttered alarm, Dayna lost control. "Oh my God ," she said. "Do you even think about what you're saying? Do you even think about what you do ? What kind of a—" But she, too, managed to cut herself short, to leave room to snap, "Get it out of him. Get it out right now ."

  Wheeler shifted, kneeling behind Carey to let his own thighs act as a bolster, keeping Carey right where he wanted him. Looking at Carey's pale face, Suliya felt a sudden sting of renewed horror.

  "Ay!" She crouched down and poked him. Poked him hard, on a collarbone where she figured it would hurt but not mess with whatever Wheeler had done. Hazel eyes sparked, showing more awareness . . . smarter awareness. "Yeh," she said. "You just hang around. I still want that promotion—"

  Wheeler said, "It is out. That mnemonic I used . . . I'm not good with spells. Or I might have realized—"

  "You did this that first fight," Mark said suddenly, his posture changing from tense and startled to looming , and making Suliya wish he wasn't behind her. "Didn't you? And he ended up at the hospital and you didn't say anything."

  "I thought the spell failed!" Wheeler lost his composure and started to rise; Dayna snatched his sleeve and he caught himself, stopping Carey as he threatened to roll onto his back. "I thought the interference had nullified it, that it ran its course with little damage. I had no idea it was waiting for an infusion of magic!"

  "It doesn't matter right now," Dayna said grimly. "Look at him." For that instant, they quieted, leaving space for the harsh, liquid sound of Carey's breathing, the groan that came with every breath. The long muscles of his neck stood out in stark relief with the effort of it. But his eyes . . . his eyes were coming back to them, helped along by Suliya and her poking, definitely following the conversation.

  But when he tried to add something, the effort turned into a liquid cough; he rose to his elbow to spit blood into the dirt.

  "Nine one one," Mark said w
ith some certainty, as if that should mean something to the rest of them.

  To Dayna it did. "Can they treat him at that hospital?"

  Wheeler said, "It's just an injury now. The magic is gone."

  "We were about to leave. We could still do it. The healers—" Dayna hesitated, looking at Carey. "God, Carey, you always get yourself in such a mess. First a compost spell, now an internal eggbeater—I swear —" Her hands, resting on his leg, tightened briefly.

  He jerked in a single cough of wry laughter. Compost? Suliya thought, considering him. Was that the spell Calandre had thrown at him, the one no one talked about but that had left him half a courier?

  She supposed she'd want it kept quiet if someone tried to compost her like garbage, too.

  Wheeler bypassed all of it for the practical. "You're the one who's so concerned over the magic's changes, maybe the healers can't —" He hesitated, leaving Dayna room to snap at him.

  "Then we won't go back. We'll call an ambulance—but we've got to decide!"

  Suliya had never seen such conflict on Wheeler's face as the agent said, "If he goes to your hospital, we'll have to leave him behind. SpellForge—"

  Carey's eyes widened at that; he gave an ineffective push against the ground as if he might rise further, choking on words that never made it past his throat; Wheeler restrained him without even seeming to think about it. They argued about him, above him . . . while Suliya watched him.

  "Yes, and what about SpellForge?" Mark said, distinctly menacing in posture and stare considering how easily Wheeler could have put him down. "First you don't want anyone going anywhere. Now you say you can't wait. Too bad for you, buddy, that Carey's more important than what you do and don't want—"

  "SpellForge," said Wheeler, unaffected by Mark's threat, raising his voice for those first few words and then dropping down to dark, dry certainty, "seems to have failed. And they haven't done what's right when it was necessary—when their failure became obvious—or the magical interference would be improving , not getting worse by the day."