"I don't want to explore it. I don't even want to be here. What I want is to go home." Fierce words, determined face under its short wedge of rumpled sandy hair.
"We all want to go home," Jaime told her. "They have other things to worry about, Dayna."
"They have the time to force me to learn magic!"
Carey looked straight at her and, without sympathy, said, "They've seen what an untaught magic user can wreak on this world. If they insist that you learn the basics, then that's what you'll do. Even if they lock you in a room and force feed it down your throat."
Dayna flushed in angry recollection. "That's exactly what they said they'd do."
"Then maybe you should think about cooperating," Jaime said gently. "It'll be a lot easier on you. And it'll keep your mind off going home. That's why I volunteered to ride courier."
"And I still don't like it," Carey said. "But as long as Sherra's said yes, let's go talk to Morley. I want to make sure he understands the kind of assignments you get."
"I can take care of myself," Jaime said, gathering her dishes as she got up from the table. "I'm not a kamikaze, no matter what you might think."
Carey gave her look of clear skepticism, but Mark just grinned. "Have fun, Jay."
"Oh, go clean a stable," she told him and gave him a sisterly pinch on the arm.
* * *
Lady flicked her tail at a fly and found herself—yet one more time—mildly surprised when thick black hair actually brushed her side in response. It was not something she understood, this surprise, just as she failed to understand why feeling out the world with her whiskers was such a preoccupation, or why she occasionally expected to see something else with her eyes.
Given too much time to concentrate on such physical vagaries, Lady became as irritable as during her springtime heat. Her courier runs with Jaime were a blessed relief.
She didn't know why this new person was riding her; she missed Carey's wooing voice in her ear. Jaime's praise, although welcome, did nothing to fill that silent space. And her touch was nothing like Carey's. Light, almost evanescent, it lacked his firmness, yet somehow managed to be just as reassuring. And, as Lady had discovered, the sensitivity of Jaime's touch was not an indication of weakness. Balking for balking's sake warranted a swift and potent reaction, and Lady soon gave up on the subtle little tricks she liked to pull with anyone but Carey.
Besides, the work they did together quickly captured her complete attention. Jaime showed her how to extend herself, lengthening trot strides with power and suspension. She learned how to collect those same strides into an equally powered and elegant gait, building on the careful basics that had made her a balanced and responsive courier mount. Half-passes from one side of the road to the other let her play with diagonal movement, crossing her legs forward and sideways until she snorted with something that kept wanting to be pleased laughter.
Sometimes, it was almost enough to drive away the nagging feeling that something—some unique and important part of her—was missing.
* * *
Extended trot—now! Jaime fed energy into Lady's dun sides and captured it in the reins, pushing the mare into big bold strides of extension. Not too many . . . stop it while she's still successful . . . and quietly she brought the mare back down into a good working trot, gently slapping the side of the sweat-darkened neck, affectionately ruffling the thick dark mane up and down Lady's crest. There would be no more dressage work on today's run; the days of constant work were wearing the edge off the energy of a horse Jaime had found to be nearly tireless. Lady snorted, dipped her head to take advantage of the rein Jaime fed out, and trotted on in an even rhythm, though soon she'd need a break.
For Jaime the courier runs meant time for dressage—and they meant opportunities to think. Out on runs that rarely took more than half the day coming and going, she was usually back in time to pitch in with whatever was needed at the village. Last week she had helped with dredging stronghold wells, not all of which were in constant use—but all of which would have to flow freely to provide clean water to the community if under siege. This week it was the tedious process of mowing and gathering the first cutting of hay—although it had been interesting to watch the students come out and place mold-retardant spells on the fodder, a spell she deeply coveted for her own Ohio hay. After that she thought to wonder how many other subtle ways magic was at work in this community, where mechanical technology had never advanced past swords and plowshares because magical technology took care of so many necessities. She became caught up in the strangeness of the culture, and diverted by the uses of everyday magic, some of which she was becoming familiar with. She had even had some success with the glowspells, and no longer needed the rarity of a candle in the room she was now sharing with Dayna—although the feel of using magic was uncomfortable for her, rather like an unreachable tickle in the back of her throat.
If it was a tickle to Jaime, magic was a gall to Dayna, who was learning in spite of herself. Withdrawn and unwilling, Dayna attended the daily work of Chiara and several of Sherra's other students, all of whom had had their lessons suspended for the duration. And although they were now trusted with the commonplace magics that helped to run the stronghold, the students obviously felt a little left out of the pivotal checkspell work, and were glad to immerse themselves in the new if unwilling project of Dayna. Jaime smiled at the thought of her petite friend wielding magic with competence.
Mark applied himself in the only area he felt he could be of use—stronghold and village defense. Though the weaponsmaster continued to drill Mark, along with Katrie and the other men-at-arms, it had quickly become plain that close confrontation would not come naturally to her brother, with or without weapons. But youthful Boy Scout experience in archery had unexpected benefit, and he spent several hours a day in practice. Jaime only hoped that he'd never have occasion to use his new skills.
Beneath her, Lady lowered her head and snorted, bored with the slow pace of their breather. "All right," Jaime told her, checking the ground ahead of them for the guide. A small pinprick of light that was too bright to look at directly, it was the maplight Sherra had mentioned, and it kept her on the unfamiliar routes to the wizards scattered near Sherra's stronghold. After only a few runs, Lady had learned to follow the guide, too, which gave Jaime a chance to keep an eye on their surroundings. Not that there was much to see in this forested area. There were few families still staying outside the fields surrounding the village; the rare soul she met on the road was invariably aloof and occasionally hostile, and she wasn't sure she blamed them, for she looked upon each as a potential enemy herself.
Although she wasn't in any danger, not really. She was sent on short and simple routes, and already had several of them memorized. Sometimes her ride had nothing to do with the actual checkspell at all, but was simply the result of curtailed spellspeak. Eventually the wizards would gather to pool their work, but after some initial confusion, they had come to the unanimous decision to work separately for as long as possible. A horde of wizards all gathered in one place presented a much too-tempting target for Calandre. Instead, the couriers were exposed in regular travel between wizards. And, as Jaime was far too aware, they rode without the safe retreat of a recall spell. Too risky. And she hadn't quite believed it wasn't feasible to tie a recall spell to some neutral place that would give Calandre no advantage, even though Carey had shaken his head and muttered something about the preparation and maintenance of a recall site when she broached the idea to him.
It was hard to understand his dismissal, when two couriers had already been badly hurt, and when it seemed like a solution was obvious. Jaime tried to remind herself of the way her beginning students were blithely unaware of some of the riding theories that were so clear to her. With an inward hmmph at her self-admonishment, she lifted Lady into a trot, posting in an automatic rhythm that her body knew too well to bother involving her brain. It occurred to her that this job was one she might well be doing for some time, dep
ending on how things went for Camolen.
Two hours by her watch—useless for anything in these elongated days except to mark the length of her journeys—out of the stronghold, and verging on the first in a series of grassy knolls with bedrock too close to the surface to allow trees, Jaime's guide veered from the moderately well-used trail she was on, and Lady followed, until a small cabin materialized in front of the background of trees and the guide disappeared like a burst soap bubble. Perched at the top of the hill, it had an abandoned look to it. This was a new route, one Morley had grumbled and assigned to her anyway, and Jaime didn't feel particularly welcomed by the dwelling's starkness. A log cabin should be homey and inviting, not foreboding.
She stopped Lady in the trampled grass before the cabin and dismounted, replacing the bridle with a halter so Lady could pick at the grass, and hobbling her as well. This was the boring part of the run, this waiting for the recipients to digest her messages and frame some sort of reply. Sometimes it even meant sitting around and waiting for the magic user's return, for all that they knew she would be coming. This one hadn't shown his face yet, which meant he was probably out on some wizardly errand.
She went to the door to knock anyway, dropping the bridle by the side of the entrance—but as she raised her hand, the door swung away. The man who greeted her smiled in a way that made her want to step back, and said, "Play time."
Play time? She did take that step, and was about to identify herself when his hand shot out and grabbed her wrist, jerking her inside before she could even think to resist. She stumbled, caught herself, and found herself staring into the open, filmy eyes of the dead man on the floor. As she gaped at the gruesome, slashing wounds that had killed him, someone else grabbed her by the shoulders and literally picked her up off her feet, slamming her against the wall. Air whooped out of her lungs as she hit the wall again, and then again, rag-doll limp. Her vision greyed; she gasped for breath and blinked her tearing eyes back into focus, discovering a whiskered face shoved up close to her own. It was an unpleasant, leering face, and she flinched from what she saw there.
"Surprise," he said. "You guys are easier to catch all the time."
She wanted to say something daring, something to show she wasn't terrified. Instead she found herself mute, capable only of the whimper that trickled past her throat.
"The message?" the man asked, tightening his hold, hitching her a few more inches up the wall, moving a few inches closer.
"Saddlebags," Jaime finally managed to whisper, after hesitation earned his fingers digging deeply into the muscles of her arms. He looked away long enough to nod at someone she hadn't yet seen, and she took the opportunity to get some impression of the place, something more than the door, the dead man, and the wall behind her back. She discovered that the dwelling was completely trashed, and that a woman was sifting through the contents of a cluttered table, frowning in an unsatisfied way.
"For your sake," the man said, letting her slide down a little so her feet took most of her weight again, "I hope we find a copy of the spell in those saddlebags. Not all these stupid little pet wizards can have it memorized already."
"I don't know what's in the message," Jaime ventured, knowing the spell wasn't. She tried not to think of the consequences, although the dead man gave her a pretty good idea. Then again, death was probably the easiest of what was waiting for her. No Amnesty International on Camolen.
"It's not here!" a matter-of-fact voice called from the front yard. "D'you know of any other stable that runs duns besides Arlen's?"
"Lots of duns to be had," grumbled the whiskered man, dragging Jaime over to the door in such an absent way she knew immediately that he counted her as no possible threat at all. In the doorway he paused and added, "but not that quality."
The man who'd greeted her was standing by Lady's head; did that mean there were only the three of them? As if that made a difference. "Looks a lot like that mare we found in Arlen's barn—you know, the one that dumb shit Gandy run to death."
Whiskers stared at Lady, his eyes narrowing as he nodded slightly. "She does at that. I think maybe we'll bring this one with us. Calandre might find some use in her."
The other man snickered unpleasantly. "Yeah, like maybe Arlen'll be more cooperative if he doesn't want to see you hurt, courier."
Jaime opened her mouth to say that Arlen didn't even know her, but realized she was hardly likely to be believed. She wanted to spit at the man, and fought the unfamiliar desire to rake her work-shortened nails across his face. Instead she looked at the ground and took a slow, deep breath, guessing that subservient cooperation was the most likely to leave her unbrutalized.
The woman came out of the house, stuffing a sheaf of papers into the leather container that looked like nothing more than an executive briefcase; neither it nor her expression fit well with her pert-nosed features and soft blonde hair. "I'm through here," she said brusquely. "It was a waste of effort. The man had nothing."
"One less wizard on their side," Whiskers said reasonably. "Gerrant, go get the horses." Gerrant looked up from the hobbles he'd just taken off, hesitant, and Whiskers' grip on Jaime's arm tightened with his irritation. "Go on—she's not going anywhere."
A grumble and a shrug, and Gerrant left to do as he was told, heading for the woods behind the cabin. Lady stood uncertainly, knowing she was free and that there was tension in the air, and Jaime suddenly realized that Lady was the only one who could tell Sherra what had happened here. A haltered horse galloping back to the stable would cause a fuss much sooner than the slow realization that the newest courier had taken longer than her run required. So much for subservient cooperation.
A quick glance at Whiskers confirmed his distraction; satisfied that Gerrant was seeing to the horses, he'd turned his attention to the woman and was watching her set up some kind of spell at the cabin's door.
Jaime took a deep breath and tore loose from his grasp, scooping up the bridle, sprinting for Lady. In the back of her mind she hoped to mount and make a run for it, but the sight of Jaime and her angry pursuit sent Lady jigging away. Just as the man's grasp plucked at her shirt, Jaime swung the bridle reins in a big circle that ended resoundingly against the tense muscles bunching in Lady's rump, and the mare bolted. If only she ran to the closeness of Sherra's and didn't head instead to Arlen's—
A rough tackle slammed Jaime to the dirt, crushed by Whiskers' weight on top of her. He trapped her between his knees, jerked her around to face him, and hit her hard. Pain shot through her head as it bounced off hard ground, and through her face as he hit her again and again and—
"Stop it." The voice was cold and derisive and held aloof disdain. The onslaught faltered; Jaime gulped for air and choked on blood, spitting and gasping, as the woman's voice continued, "That's enough. She's not in any shape to run again and Calandre will want something to work with. You'd better leave it for her."
Immediately the man got off her, unable to resist one last jab with his booted toe. "I hope you like riding double, sweetheart. We're going to know one another very well before this trip is over."
"She'll ride with me," the woman said, her voice more distant as she moved away. "Together we'll hardly add up to the weight your horse will carry with you alone. Now get her to her feet. Gerrant's coming."
He shrugged, and leaned down to haul Jaime up in an almost offhand way. But he held on to her, and this time she was almost glad for the support. She swiped feebly at the blood running freely from her lips and nose and waited, stupidly dazed, as Gerrant emerged from the woods with three horses in tow. She was so focused on the epicenter of pain in her nose that Whiskers had to shake her arm when it came her turn to mount behind the woman. Zombielike, she did as she was told and was soon riding away from Sherra's at a trot that jarred her pains with every step.
* * *
Carey patted the sweaty black neck before him and urged the horse up the short but exceptionally steep bank they faced. Denied the chance to help Arlen or Jess, he'd
taken up his job with a vengeance, riding every day and sometimes twice a day. It hadn't taken too many such days to wear him down, and that's the way he wanted to keep it. While he was caught up in the aches and cramps of his body, in watching the trails for Calandre's threats and avoiding the pitfalls of rough travel, he actually managed to provide distraction from the can'ts that loomed so large in his life.
One of those can'ts he'd discovered early on, as he was saddling Lady for his first run. He was tightening the girth in easy stages when he realized he couldn't just mount up and ride as if she was only his mare Lady. Having given Jess the respect she was due, as a woman, he couldn't fall back to that easy partnership they'd had, in which he was master. He couldn't pretend he'd never kissed her—or that she hadn't kissed him back. Honest in everything, Jess had made no attempt to hide the confusion—and the passions—he created in her.
So in the end it was a good thing Jaime was riding for Sherra, for he doubted Lady would have responded well to a completely new rider, not with the turmoil she'd been through. Even if he'd never managed to tell Jaime so . . . he thought she knew anyway.
The black stumbled and Carey gave himself a mental kick. You're not supposed to be thinking about this. Frustrated, he turned his attention vigorously back to the run, turning the horse toward another bank in this rough shortcut with a, "Hup! Hup!" of encouragement. The black strained upward, Carey's body gave a groan of effort, and he returned to work with the grim satisfaction of its distraction.
When he finally reached Sherra's stronghold, Carey rode into a courtyard of commotion. His first impulse was to ignore it and return to the stable, but then he saw what was causing the disturbance.
Lady ran loose in the courtyard, saddle on her back and halter on her head, evading all attempts to capture her. At the moment the job was being tackled by several young children and a few of the household workers, none of whom had the skill or nerve to bluff Lady out.
Changespell 01 Dunn Lady's Jess Page 22
