Changespell 01 Dunn Lady's Jess (10 page)

He swallowed, licked the dry lips. Didn't bother to open his eyes again. "Help me," he said. "He's given me something . . . I can't
think
—" his brows lowered, his eyelids spasmed, in the painful frustration of the moment. "If he finds Lady . . . he can't. Can't let him get the spells—" he opened his eyes and stared directly at her, focused for one moment of intense effort. "
Help me
."

She stared back, impotent. Help him? How? Call the police? He was probably on the wrong side of the law to begin with. Untie him and muscle him out of here? Sure, when she was reincarnated as Arnold Schwartzenegger. Then his words tickled at her awareness. "Lady?"

"Lady," he repeated wearily, his head falling back, his eyes closed again. "Sweet Lady. Ran her heart out for me . . ."

Oh, God, she couldn't believe it.
Didn't
believe it. But the coincidence was too much to resist. "Jess?" she whispered.

"Lady," he murmured, drifting away from her.

All right. So she didn't know what she'd do with him. Whatever was happening here, it wasn't
right
. She had to start somewhere. She plucked at the tightly tied ropes with nerveless, fumbling fingers, breaking first one, then another of her nails, without ever getting a good hold of the cotton fibers. Another grimace, and she bent over the rope, applying her teeth, getting the first sign of compliance, a spark of hope—

A key fumbled in the dead bolt. With a small squeak, Dayna started upright, staring at the door in panic. Then she dove to the floor and scurried under the empty bed, oh-so-thankful for her diminutive stature and her size 2 frame.

A brief burst of light sliced across her limited field of view; two worn boots passed by and the door closed with a negligent click.

"Stir your bones, Carey," Derrick said, his voice discordantly loud after the hushed tones of Dayna's recent conversation. "If you want something to eat you'll show a little life. You might even get a chance to take a piss."

Carey! The name barely registered against Dayna's fear, but some small part of her did hear it. Heard Carey's mumbling response as well, hoped he had enough wits about him to keep from giving her away. Clenching and unclenching her fists in an attempt to distract herself from almost unbearable terror, Dayna was otherwise as still as she could be. She listened while Derrick dealt with the bindings that had stymied her, heard the snake of rope against rope and the moan as he hauled Carey upright. It was easy to follow their clumsy progress to the bathroom, not so easy to force her petrified muscles to respond. But she managed to scrabble to the door; trembling so hard she could barely get the doorknob turned, Dayna literally crawled from the room.

Dayna and Eric showed up, midday, at The Dancing. Jess saw them arrive, watched from the tack room window as Eric, more focused than usual, escorted Dayna to the big double sliding doors at the end of the aisle, taking them out of her sight. Jess carefully hung the bridle she'd just cleaned, and went to the tack room door to pick them up as they entered, staring unabashed at Dayna.

The small woman was always a little stiff; it came along as part of her many rules for self and others. But today she seemed smaller, tighter. And wasn't she supposed to be working today? Wasn't that the reason Mark had the day off?

Jaime was in the indoor ring, doing concentrated work with her high level competition horse, Sabre. Jess knew she wouldn't notice the arrivals, and wouldn't want to be interrupted. She stepped out in the aisle to greet them when they drew near, about to pass without noticing her quiet presence.

"Jess," Eric said, and his voice gave the name more significance than a greeting deserved.

"Eric," she returned, her own voice in the low end of husky and still awkward with the syllables. She looked at Dayna who, uncharacteristically, was allowing Eric's arm around her shoulders, plainly upset. In the unthinking honesty that was Jess, she sought to comfort. She moved close to Dayna, a hug without arms; it was only as an afterthought she added that human facet of the gesture.

She was taken completely by surprise when Dayna began to sob. She didn't hear the grief and pain that came with her own cries, but instead, a frightened, childlike quality. After only a moment, Dayna's boyish frame ceased its shaking, and drew away from Jess, wiping her reddened eyes with the back of her hand, staring at Jess like she hadn't quite expected to find comfort there.

Eric said quietly, "Dayna had quite a scare this morning."

Jess heard the clop of Sabre's powerful stride and held her questions. Jaime was coming, and she would say anything that needed to be said, would ferret out the last bit of information that mattered. For Jess had no doubt that it would matter, that it was not coincidence that Eric had brought the shaken Dayna here.

Jaime stopped just behind Jess and murmured, "Stand," to the horse. There was a pause, conspicuous in its lack of greeting. Then, "What's going on?"

Jess stepped away, putting her back against the wall to allow Jaime into the group. She reached to retrieve Sabre's discarded halter and held it out as Jaime slipped the gelding's bridle off. Jaime gave him half a granola bar and left him in cross-ties. "So?" she prompted, tugging her gloves off and tucking them into her waistband.

"I got into Derrick's room today." Dayna's voice husked into a low whisper.

"He caught you," Jaime said, with a glower on her face that was meant for Derrick.

Dayna nodded, then changed her mind with a quick shake of her head. "I hid under the bed."

"Dayna,
why
? You're an employee—you could have told him you were checking on the plumbing, or the light bulbs, or
anything
."

"I didn't think he'd let me go, knowing what I'd seen," Dayna said, regaining some of her natural asperity. "He had a man in his room, drugged and tied. Hurt. He called him—"

"Carey," Jess breathed.

"Carey," Dayna affirmed.

"Carey!" This last was Jaime, caught completely by surprise. "Did you talk to him?"

"Just a little. He wasn't in very good shape—and what he did say didn't make much sense. He was worried about someone getting hold of . . . something. I think he said 'spells.' "

Jaime frowned. "Did you call the police?"

"I thought you two didn't
want
the police in on this," Dayna said, looking from Jaime to Eric. "So I waited."

"No! No police," Jess said decisively. She had not lost her equine memory, which was as formidable as any elephant's. The uniformed men had done nothing but blunder, as far as she was concerned—taking her unawares in the fountain, scaring the chestnut into his fatal run.

"Okay, okay," Jaime said, holding a hand up for time out. She turned back to her horse and hauled up on the girth billets to free the buckles, tugged the saddle off the gelding's towering back. "Start from the beginning, Dayna. There's no point in arguing over what to do until we understand what's happened."

Jess tossed her head impatiently, but Jaime caught her eye, and she responded to the directive within that gaze. She took a deep breath and blew softly through her nose, and listened.

"I've told you most of it," Dayna shrugged. "This guy was tied to one of the beds. He was dirty and smelly, and had a pretty gross bandage around his arm. I didn't get much from him—I'm pretty sure he was drugged. He was worried about some kind of . . . well, 'spells' is what he said. And he talked about Lady."

Jess stood straight up. "Lady," she murmured.

Dayna scowled slightly. "He didn't say Lady was a horse."

Jess snorted expressively but kept her thoughts to herself.

"Well, he
didn't
. Just said he was worried about someone getting hold of these spells. I was trying to untie him when Derrick came back." A scowl. "Scum."

"I noticed." Jaime checked the heat of Sabre's chest and returned him to his stall. "Jess, do you know what Carey meant when he said 'spells'?"

Jess sifted through memories of the time before, distinct but hard to translate into human terms. She knew Carey was most likely to be concerned about that which they took from Arlen's stable to the other stables—lately, usually Sherra's, a woody, friendly place with the best of grain, the leafiest green hay. And she also knew Arlen could make unexpected things happen, and that Carey referred to these things under the generic name of "spells." She wasn't sure how Carey could put one of those spells into the saddlebags, but . . .

"Arlen did spells," she said finally, frowning in concentration, staring at the aisle's rubber mat floor. "He sometimes gave spells to Carey, I think. We took them from one stable to another. We were on a run when men chased us, and then I was here."

They stared at her, offering various expressions of amazement. Finally Eric said, "I had no idea you could speak so well."

"She's a smart one," Jaime said brusquely, responding to the uncertain look on Jess' face. "She knows there's no point to talking unless you have something to say."

"What sort of spells did Arlen do?" Eric asked. Dayna stepped away from his arm and wrapped her own arms around her waist, listening without committing to acceptance.

"I—" Jess started, and faltered. It was so difficult to be sure what they might consider a spell. So many of the strange things of this place seemed like things Arlen might have done. "He can move things without touching them," she offered tentatively. "He can make his voice come out of nowhere, when he's at a different part of his bar—um, house. Once I saw him stop a fight across the yard. He said words and pointed and the two foals—children—stopped. Tied by hobbles you could not see, I think."

Eric and Jaime exchanged a frown. He said, "Are you thinking—"

"That sealed document. With the strange writing. I'm beginning to think there's a reason the OSU language people couldn't ID it."

"I don't like this," Dayna said. "It's beginning to make too much sense." And she tightened her arms around her slight torso and shivered.

"Jess," Eric said thoughtfully, taking obvious stock of her strong, dusky features, "why haven't you told us any of this before?"

Jess laughed, short and sharp, almost a snort. "You call me Jess instead of Lady. You whisper that I am mad. You give me Words: Easy, Jess. It's all right, Jess. When Carey said Words, he never lied to me. If he said, 'easy,' I knew I could trust him to take care of the scaring things. You—you tell me I am not Dun Lady's Jess. You tell me
easy
—but you lie! You have not taken care of anything!"

Eric's brows folded together in dismay. "Jess—" he started, and then couldn't seem to find the words he was looking for. Jaime did better.

"I'm sorry," she said. "It's easier for us to deny what we don't understand than to try to face it."

Jess studied them a moment, her dark-eyed gaze resting longest on Dayna, who shook her head.

"I'm sorry, too," Dayna said. "Because I still won't—can't—accept all of what you say."

Jess took a deep breath that filled the most remote areas of her lungs, and let it trickle audibly between her teeth. "At least those," she said, "are true words."

Jess stared into the fizz of her glass while Jaime finished the inanities involved with pouring drinks for four people. It was all right, she thought, to play with bubbles when she had little else to accomplish. But now, Carey was found. And he needed her. Jess left the bubbles alone.

"When you first got here, you didn't know our language," Eric said, ignoring his own drink. "But you learned it so fast. How'd you do that?"

Jess watched Dayna draw squiggles on the bar with the condensation ring from her glass. Not listening, she concluded. "The words were not new," she said. "Just the meanings."

"Except for a few," Eric concluded. "Blanket." He smiled, inner amusement. "I guess that's not surprising, given the rest of your story."

Dayna seemed to suddenly realize what she was doing, and reached for a paper napkin to wipe up the water lines.

"Tell us what happened, Jess," Jaime said abruptly. "Now that we're ready to listen—and that we seem to have some decisions to make."

So Jess told them, using the words she hadn't been able to find on that first morning at Dayna's small house. She painted for them her unique view of the uneventful morning's ride, of the sudden ambush as they'd entered the patch of woods that was after the grassy scrub and before the deep, dry riverbed. With her inner eye on the memory, her body unconsciously following the dip and shove of her narration, she missed the grim look that traveled between Jaime and Eric as she told of knocking two riders to their death. When she told of her own fall, she faltered, and her dark eyes refocused on Jaime's kitchen, and she gave them a puzzled little look. "Maybe Arlen . . . ?"

"You think it was one of his spells," Eric said thoughtfully, reaching an absent hand to capture Dayna's, which had moved to clean up the condensation and little spills from
all
their glasses. She gave an annoyed sigh and sat still, obviously against her inclination.

Jess shrugged. "What else besides a spell could change me like this?"

"Are you really listening to yourselves talk?" Dayna asked.

"We're listening," Jaime assured her. "Maybe it's about time."

Jess brought them all back to the subject uppermost on her mind. "Carey."

"Yeah. Right. Carey." Eric frowned gently. "What about this guy Derrick, Jess?"

"He aimed the flying stick at Carey. We were almost upon him when we fell."

Jaime repeated, "Flying stick."

"Arrow," Dayna said without thinking; her own words seemed to catch her by surprise. "Derrick had a bow and a full quiver in his room."

Eric grinned indulgently at her. "Pretty helpful for an unbeliever."

Dayna frowned and waved him away with a flip of her hand. "I saw them just hours ago. It made me realize what she was trying to say."

Jaime ignored her. "Right. He was chasing you then, and he's got Carey now. And you want him back."

"Damn straight," Jess said emphatically, creating a moment of astonishment in Eric before he burst out laughing.