"I'm surprised you feel that way," Chiara said, and looked it. "I thought Jaime was a good friend of yours."
"She is," Dayna said stoutly. "Which is why I wish you people weren't taking such a damn long time to make up your minds."
"If Jaime's really headed for Arlen's hold, she won't get there till sometime tomorrow," Chiara assured her, pushing the notebook aside. "Theo's is on the other side of the village, half a day further away from Arlen's than we are. And even if a courier can make it here from Arlen's in one day, not everyone can—and Gacy said there were two men plus the wizard woman, and one horse for each. That means Jaime is riding double with one of them."
"How does he know that?" Dayna blurted. Carey certainly didn't.
Chiara wrinkled her nose. "Uh . . . I'm not sure I was supposed to let that slip." She hesitated and allowed, "Gacy ran a spell on the place while Carey was recovering from the blast he took. You can get certain details from a location, not like clear pictures, but clear enough. The wizard was a woman, and she had two men with her—the ones who actually killed Theo." Her expression turned grim. "They were a little rough, but Gacy said it seemed Jaime'd be safe enough during the trip to Arlen's."
"And no one told us?" Dayna asked incredulously.
Chiara's response was a sensible one that made Dayna all the more angry. "Why? It wouldn't really have eased your mind, would it? And Carey's been so . . . strange since he came back to Camolen. Unpredictable."
Dayna didn't know about that. She felt pretty sure she could predict exactly what Carey was going to do. And she was just as sure that she'd be in on it.
Dayna broke away from Chiara easily, when the woman had put away her list and sat down to review her brief notes about Dun Lady's Jess. She wasted no time in locating Mark, who was learning to fletch arrows, and gave him the nod which meant she'd been successful. He made a more or less graceful exit from his group and together they hurried to Carey's cell, a pleasant little room that was a luxury compared to the courier's quarters he'd occupied before.
"You got them," he said with satisfaction the minute he saw them. They easily stepped through the barrier that was keyed only to him, and he closed the door on their secrets. Dayna answered his greeting by pulling her hand out of the pocket it almost convulsively occupied, and let the stones and chain trickle through her fingers and into his grasp.
"I got something else, too," she told him. "Chiara told me Gacy ran some kind of spell at Theo's. He knows there were three of them, and three horses—so Jaime's riding double with one of them. They," and she nodded at the ceiling, indicating the upper rooms where the wizards and students worked, "figure it'll be tomorrow before they get to Arlen's place."
Carey nodded absently, his eyes narrowed as he worked out the distances for himself. "I'd have to agree with that," he said after a minute. "Good. If we get out of here tonight . . . riding in darkness, keeping the speed down for you guys . . . we can make it to a good base midday after tomorrow, and I'll trigger the recall from there."
"I don't get it," Mark muttered, shaking his head. He looked at Carey and said, "I still can't understand why they took Jaime in the first place."
Dayna looked at him, hesitating. She'd heard enough discussion of the latest development in the workrooms to understand any courier was at risk, a possible source of information. She also had come to understand that Carey's line of dun horses was well known within the sphere of his travel. Mark, bless his soul, had as usual been immersed in the bits and pieces of everyday life, assuming with a certain naivete that the rest of the world was as straightforward as he was. The circuitous reasoning that took everyone else to the conclusion that Jaime was a bargaining chip had escaped him, and for once she thought maybe his way was the best. "I can't understand it either," she said firmly, startling Carey—with whom she'd already discussed the possible dangers that might await Jaime. She gave him a quick, hard look, and he hid his surprise behind a shrug that said he, too, was at a loss to explain the abduction.
Not quite as naive as all that, Mark narrowed his eyes, giving her a doubting look that might have actually led to confessions of the truth if there hadn't been a knock at the door. Carey dropped the spellstones around his neck and tucked them out of sight, nodding to Dayna to open the door.
Sherra was waiting for her on the other side, her fine, thick hair in the kind of disarray that meant she'd been pushing it around during deep discussion. "All three of you," she said, as Dayna gulped inside, certain that her theft had been discovered. "Well, that makes things a little less complicated. Would you like to talk in the great room?"
"What?" Carey snorted. "And trust me not to try anything stupid?"
Irritation flickered across her face, but she mastered it and said, "If you're going to come along, you'll have to stop sulking—or don't you want to know what's been happening, and what will probably happen?"
"I want to know," Mark volunteered. "I want to know if anybody's going to help Jaime."
"Then come along. I don't have much time, and my throat is dry." She gave the flicker of the door spell a dismissive gesture and it faded to allow Carey freedom as she turned and led the way down the hall. Dutifully they followed; they found the great room hollowly empty of its usual bustle and Dayna looked around in distrust.
"Most of them are out making preparations," Sherra said, helping herself to a tumbler of water from a half-full pitcher, and sitting down at the closest bench. She stared at the water in a moment of concentration and the tumbler frosted up. Dayna's unexpected flicker of envy at the ease with which the wizard had cooled her drink made her blink, but she easily put it aside to concentrate on the conversation at hand—even if her gaze did return to that frosted tumbler a time or two.
Carey rounded the end of the table to sit opposite Sherra and then leaned over the wood, weight on his elbows, impatience on his face. "So things are happening," he said. "Are you going to tease us, or tell us about it?"
"For one thing, we've decided it's not safe for the other wizards to be out on their own," Sherra said without preamble. "Theo wasn't the only wizard with trouble over these past few days, though no one else was killed. We're not even risking couriers to spread the news. Those that can handle mage travel are already arriving, and have been in conference with me for some time now. The others will be met by armed escort. This little hold was never meant to be a fortress, but it'll be protecting many frightened souls by tonight." She took a sip of water and met Carey's gaze, an even, hazel stare of judgement.
"You kept me here so I wouldn't stir up trouble for everyone else while I was going after Arlen," he said. "And now you've got the trouble anyway, and Arlen is still a prisoner."
"That's right," Sherra said. "It was the decision that seemed most prudent at the time. I'm not going to second-guess it."
"There's more to this," Mark said suddenly. "You didn't bring us in here to tell us it was going to get crowded around here."
"No, I didn't." Sherra took a deep breath and smoothed back some of her ruffled hair with one hand. "As Carey said, we've got the trouble anyway. There's no longer any point in delaying a physical approach to Arlen's hold. There are already Anfeald men and women gathering—the ones that haven't been overwhelmed by Calandre's people—and we're coordinating our movements with the Lander Guard. We'll be joining them all late evening, two days from now, by mage travel—it'll take that long before they're ready, unfortunately, and we do have an amazing number of spellstones to set up, never mind arranging formation travel. Early the next morning, we'll . . . well, for want of a better word, we'll attack."
"We?" Carey said pointedly.
"We, the wizards that can be spared from the work here," Sherra said, once more meeting his accusing stare with unruffled calm. "Wizards who are capable of mage travel," she defined further. "We won't be carrying any baggage with us, Carey—that's the way it's got to be."
"This baggage happens to know Arlen's domain better than anyone else you can get," Carey respon
ded heatedly. "If you're going to go after Calandre, you're going to need what I know."
"We're not going after Calandre."
"You're not?" Mark blurted in surprise. "Then you've confused the hell out of me."
"There's no point in going after her. She'll have plenty of advance warning—we have to assume she's intercepting at least half of the messages we've got flying around, despite our precautions—and she'll have a retreat set up. We would need many more wizards than we'll have if we wanted to try a quarantine spell."
Dayna frowned. "Then . . ."
"You're just going after Arlen," Carey said, relief showing in his eyes as he closed them and leaned back. "Even if you're doing it just to try to keep the spell from her, you're finally going to get him out of there."
Sherra's expression started out as stern and faded to sad. "I'm sorry we've given you cause to think like that," she said, taking inventory of Mark and Dayna's accord and shaking her head. "I've already told you that she may very well have that world-travel spell already, and is simply trying to expand the time she has to wield it. She's risked everything for this, you realize. We may not actually get our hands on her before we finish cleaning up her mess, but she'll be an outcast, nonetheless, and eventually, she will come to justice. But if she's been able to use this time to run amok in other worlds, she just may get her hands on something that we can't deal with—and then, she'll have us. If our motivation was simply Calandre, it's still much to our advantage to stay here and work on the checkspell."
"You're going after Arlen," Dayna murmured to herself; it was meant to be to herself, they all looked at her.
"Yes. We no longer have any reason not to try."
"Then let me come," Carey said fiercely. He reached over and intercepted her hand on its way to the cool tumbler, and captured her fingers in a grasp that made her wince. "I can get in there and back out again before any of her guards even know someone's there. Hell, I can use that special recall—" She was shaking her head and his tone grew desperate. "Sherra, what have you got to lose? I can get him out!"
"I, too, know my way around that hold, Carey," Sherra said, gently disentangling her fingers. "And I can protect myself against the magic she's likely to throw my way. I can even protect Arlen. But I can't guarantee I can protect all three of us."
"I'm not asking for guarantees!" Carey cried, and slapped his hand down on the table in frustration, turning abruptly away from all of them.
Sherra's obvious sympathy did nothing to melt the resolve in her voice. "I've told you our plans because I thought it would ease your mind. You'll have to return to the room for another day, until it's too late for you to rush in on horseback—a horse you'd have to steal, by the way—and then you can join the rest of the local people, who are already preparing for any physical attacks that might come this way—not an unlikely prospect, given the wizards that will still be here." She shoved her tumbler into the middle of the table and stood, gesturing to the other end of the room, where Gacy had unobtrusively joined them. "Now, I have plenty of work to get done. Gacy will escort you back to the room and reset the spell when you're ready. Wish us luck."
"You'd better believe it," Mark said fervently. He waited only until she was across the room, then gave Carey a little frown of puzzlement. "If it's too hard to magic along people who can help, and they won't get there any sooner anyway, why don't they just ride to Arlen's?"
Carey gave a snort of laughter. "Because so few of them can ride!"
Dayna nodded. "That makes sense. If they're good enough to mage travel, they probably don't bother going long distances any other way."
"They sure don't," Carey agreed. "It's going to be a real surprise when they find out I've gotten there first."
"Do you still think we should do it?" Dayna frowned.
"Hell, yes," Carey responded without hesitation. "Whatever magic Sherra has, she can't duplicate that recall spell. Calandre's sure to have magical barriers in place, and Sherra's only option will be to try to chip a hole in them. The recall isn't going to have to batter its way through, because its origin is within the hold." His confidence faltered, and he scowled faintly. "If I understand it right, that is."
When he looked to Dayna for confirmation, she could only shrug. "I certainly haven't gotten into anything like that," she said. "Ask me for different colors of glow balls, why don't you."
"Well," he said, with renewed determination that dared them to gainsay him, "All I can do is get us set up, and then try it. But if we're going to make it, we've got to go tonight."
"You're forgetting the threshold spell," Dayna reminded him pointedly.
"The stone that keeps magic from acting on me will probably do the trick—it's a handy little stone. And if it doesn't," he smiled, a trifle too airily for her comfort, and she knew what was coming next—"that's where you come in. That spell has an on-off switch—you've seen it work. Surely you can figure out how to flip the switch."
She wondered if he would have spoken so offhandedly about on-off switches if he hadn't spent time on her own world. "Right," she said sourly. Dayna, the unwilling wizard. The thing was, he was right. She had absorbed at least that much.
He shrugged. "The details plan themselves after that. We sneak into the stable, saddle up the horses I've already got picked out, and ride out."
"The gate," Mark reminded him.
"I don't think we'll have any problem," Carey asserted. "I doubt the guard's been alerted to stop people who are going out, especially since Sherra thinks I'll be safely tucked away in that room. Otherwise, well . . . we'll have to handle it." He picked up Sherra's tumbler and sipped the cool water, pensive but apparently satisfied—much more satisfied than Dayna herself, as she stared at the strong lines of Carey's lean face and his deep-set eyes, less shadowed than usual in this airy eating hall.
"And then we ride for—how long? A day?"
"Day and a half, probably."
"A day and a half, until we reach some nice little spot that you think is a good defensible camp for us to wait in while you zap into Arlen's place and snatch up Arlen and Jaime."
His gaze moved back to her, a certain amount of amusement held therein. "Dayna, relax. I know just where the nice little spot is—and Calandre's people just aren't familiar with the area. It'll be a safe place to get our breath and decide our next move. That's going to depend on how much trouble Sherra's forces have stirred up—they'll probably be in the area soon after I get into the hold. We may even be able to count on them for help."
"May," Dayna snorted skeptically. As Carey briefly rolled his eyes in frustration, she said, "Don't give me that look—being aware of details is my strength, Chiara said so."
"Children," Mark murmured reprovingly, a comment so out of character that it did indeed shut them both up. Then Carey shrugged.
"We'll make most of it up as we go along, I'm afraid, Dayna. There's nothing I can do about that—except maybe get some more sleep so I'll be ready for whatever comes our way." He stood up, and nodded to Gacy when the other came to attention. "At least she stuck me in a room with a good bed," he added wryly, and strode to meet Gacy, his shoulders set with such determination that they would have clearly given him away, had Sherra been there to see.
* * *
It must be broken, Jaime decided, not for the first time, as her fingers hovered above the bridge of her nose. She'd been breathing through her mouth for the past three days, barely able to eat the rough rations she was given because of her tender mouth and lips. But for all their disregard for her injuries, the wizard woman and her two cohorts had not offered to hurt her any more, either. At first Jaime had hoped the woman, Willand, would provide sympathetic support, given the way she'd stopped the beating at the cabin, but she soon realized the woman's motives had had nothing to do with her. Everything the woman did centered around whether it would improve her status in Calandre's eyes, and she had offered Jaime no favors, no conversation, and no hope. Jaime did her best to keep her end of any co
nversation to nods and one-word responses, trying hard to conceal that she came from Marion, Ohio. She had the feeling that information would give her much more attention than she wanted.
The travelers had broken camp extra early this morning, and Jaime had gathered that they expected to make Arlen's place by late afternoon. She squinted as they broke out of a thick stretch of woods and into hot bright sunlight, and then, warned only by the shift of Willand's weight, she grabbed the scant security of the saddle cantle just as their horse shifted into a canter. Jaime had never ridden double before this trip—at least not in the back seat—and she'd discovered it was an entirely different experience, one that often left her mounted only by determination. Willand never bothered to tell her before a gait transition, or when the changeable terrain presented them with dips or fallen trees. Since her pride wouldn't allow her to clutch Willand's waist, Jaime had only the back of the saddle to cling to, and it wasn't always enough.
The prolonged canter took them first by well-tended vegetable gardens, and then a small group of livestock pens, while a craggy hill jutted up in the background and looked over it all. Not until they were slowing down in front of the abrupt hill did Jaime see the straight, man-made lines of Arlen's hold, a structure that melded with the rock that supported it and was clearly inside the hill as much as it was on top of it. Behind the hill, the landscape was a green panorama of similar miniature mountains thrusting up through tended pasturelands.
"Off," Willand said shortly, even as she stopped the horse. "And don't be stupid enough to run. You won't get far."
Jaime slid right off the horse's rump, preferring it to the clumsy process of trying to dismount without bumping into Willand. Don't be stupid enough to run, indeed, she sniffed internally, and indulged in an uncharacteristic daydream of a shrieking Willand on her runaway horse. As long as she was this close to Arlen, Jaime certainly wasn't going to run without trying to take him along. Especially not while Whiskers—whose real name she refused to remember—was still mounted.
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