Changespell Legacy (14 page)

She should know.

A
rlen shifted, hunting for a more comfortable position in the front corner seat of the long-bodied coach.

Only the second full day of coach travel, and already—despite the well-padded seats and coach stabilizing spells—he was beginning to rue his bony posterior, an anatomical feature that until now had always seemed perfectly adequate. Until now, with another small town behind him and yet another batch of passengers in this modestly but comfortably appointed coach.

He hadn't become used to the exposed skin between his nose and upper lip, or to sitting through hours of travel, unable even to refine his spellwork lest someone recognize his signature . . . but Arlen had already perfected the evasive smile and nod procedure. The businessman with dubious taste in clothing and not much to say, but amiable whenever he said it. Never offering any indication of his desperate need to reach home, or the privileged knowledge that drove him there.

He'd had no luck reaching Jaime, uncovered no information regarding whatever disaster had befallen the Council—and, in fact, his fellow travelers still seemed to lack any awareness a disaster had occurred at all. Most of them crabbed about the service disruptions in a good-natured way; a few were rude and intemperate. None appeared to realize that the problem went far, far beyond their inconvenience.

Arlen's first attempt to eavesdrop on the wizard dispatch had met with a blocking shield of profound strength. He'd had no doubt he could bypass it . . . but not without revealing his presence in the process.

So he remained as ignorant as the rest of the populace—or nearly so—and sat here in this coach—eight passengers on a side, drawn by a six-horse hitch in a comfort-and safety-spelled coach body with the driver in a separate, enclosed compartment in the front with a door between the sections—exchanging the occasional murmur of conversation, reading a book on the history of needlework techniques and patterns . . . and determined to vary the strain on his anatomy by renting out a horse for the next leg of the journey. A fast horse.

The coach jolted, instantly grabbing his attention—the way these long-bodied road coaches were spelled, the passengers shouldn't have been able to feel the biggest of road holes. Another jolt, and he heard the driver's curse right through the door against which he sat; the other passengers lifted their heads from their reading or their naps, showing the alarm that Arlen was trying to hide. Fifteen other people, all of them trying to get home after being stranded on unexpectedly one-way travel booth trips, suddenly more intimate with each other than ever intended as they jostled back and forth, grabbing seat arms and muttering apologies.

A third jolt and the long coach suddenly slewed around, trying to make a turn for which it was never meant; the driver shouted to his horses, panic in his voice, and the wheels lifted beneath Arlen, tossing him upward to the accompaniment of screams— As swift as that, he ran through a quick spell to bleed inertia, sending the energy opposite to the coach's slewing motion. As swift as that, the coach settled back to the ground and came to a halt, jerking slightly as the horses hit the end of the suddenly motionless harness.

Men and women looked around, dazed, untangling themselves from each other and their belongings, and as their hushed conversation changed from inquiries about each others' conditions to the first demands of "What the burning hells was
that
?" the driver called back for them to stay calm and stay in the coach.

Arlen was already calm, but he had no intention of staying in the coach. He dropped his book on his saddlebags—he hadn't even lost his place—and slid the door open just wide enough to exit as unobtrusively as possible, knowing the others would soon follow suit regardless. Skipping the step-up to hop straight to the ground, he glanced back over the road—a main coach road, packed dirt heavily maintained by a conglomeration of coach service wizards—and found the cause of the initial jolts.

Misshapen, discolored areas potted the road like deformed cow patties, gleaming with a sheen he'd never seen in nature. No coach was designed to navigate such obstacles; no coach service wizard would have allowed the obstacles—whatever they were—to remain, not for an instant. They were enough to cause what would have happened here had he not— Used magic. Flung his signature around for the world to perceive.

Small magic
. Someone would have to be looking for him, or be very nearby, to have detected it at all.

Not much chance of either, given that he was probably presumed dead.

He found the driver, a small pot-bellied man with a cap covering his obvious baldness and a seamed face that had been on the road for a lifetime, ostensibly checking the near-side lead horse, still visibly trembling in reaction, and with his attention wandering inexorably back to the road ahead.

Or what was left of it.

The road ran through the snow-covered rough northwest country, pastures and farmland nestled between rugged rock formations on which the dark stone of southern exposures had drawn the sun and left stark patterns of black with white-filled and shadowed crannies. Sparsely populated between towns, the land remained undisturbed by man during all but the most temperate times of the year, the brown ribbon of road the only sign that people came this way at all.

Now, in truth, that road twisted back on itself like a ribbon, crumpled into a ball and thrown to the ground to settle slowly down upon itself. The snow-covered rock formations lurched in gravity-defying angles, pocked with randomly melted areas that had nothing to do with sun and shadow.

Arlen stood by the driver a moment, neither of them saying anything; the horses had stopped only a length or two before the road, sheening with unnatural swirls of color, turned inside out on itself. Arlen squinted at it, trying to make sense of what he saw to no avail; his gaze skipped away, repelled by the foreign nature of the elements before him. He glanced at the driver and found the short man staring with such open-mouthed bafflement that there was no question about his own difficulties.

And while every whit of common sense Arlen possessed shrieked
danger!
at top volume, he took a step closer, and another, focusing on not the whole indescribable scene, but only that small part of it closest to him. A gyration of earthy colors in slick but uneven surfaces. Dirt and rock caught in a roiling boil and solidified in the moment.

But
how
? And
why
? The wizard in him immediately began sifting through spells, wondering what to combine with what to achieve this horrifying effect—while the very sensible man in him fought not to turn on his heel and run as far and fast—

To the side, the road burbled. It twisted, it warped . . . it slid toward him like oil slicking across downhill ice.

"Burn it right
off
," the driver gasped as Arlen skipped backwards, all thoughts of wizardry vanishing and nothing left but the wisdom of escape. The spot subsided even as Arlen retreated out of danger, but from the corner of his eye he spotted another dark bubble of activity.

He didn't know what it was, he didn't know what had caused it . . . but he knew it was growing. And he knew, watching the process corrupt yet another precious few inches toward the front hooves of the snorting coach team leaders, that nothing living would survive that process. "Turn these horses around," he told the driver. "Get us back to the last connector."

Wide-eyed, the man said, "Look at this team—look at the coach! It's not
made
to turn around on road this width. It
can't
."

"It can," Arlen said grimly. "It
will
, unless you want to be stranded out here on foot with . . .
this
." He waved his hand at the miasmic scene before them.

"I'll unhitch the horses," the man said. Behind them, the other passengers had disembarked and were milling uncertainly, all in one piece and apparently not willing to move as close to the oddity of the road ahead as Arlen. "We can take turns riding them back to town—"

"The coach can turn," Arlen repeated, calling on the authority of his Council voice for the first time since this trip had started, pinning the frightened man with a gaze full of certainty.

Realization crossed the man's tense features. "It was you," he said. "We should have tipped over . . . we didn't. That was you."

Arlen wasn't willing to say that much out loud. "The coach can turn," he said, imbuing his words with as much meaning as he could.

This time the man nodded, the lines of his face deepening with the difficulty of the situation. He said, "Sit up front with me for a while, be easier for you to work that way," and gave the near-side leader a pat; the horse was no happier than they to be so close to the unnatural remains of the countryside. Then he turned, reluctantly wading into the group of passengers to explain that the couch wouldn't be going any further, asking them to load up again so they could get themselves away from here. . . .

Arlen only half heard the querulous and frightened replies as he stood by the team of pretty matched bays, their snorts and bit-jingling as much a part of the background as his fellow passengers. None of it could compete for his attention, not with this strange magic in front of him. Magic, because nothing else could have caused these disruptive and surrealistic changes. Strange, because . . .

He hadn't felt it. There was no signature, no surge of magic. Just the stuttering creep and crawl of growing damage.

He wasn't yet sure just what had happened to the Council. But he suddenly knew where to start looking.

Strings of spellstones clattered softly against one another, dangling from Dayna's hand so thickly she could barely hold them all as she headed for the third floor meeting room where the travel team had quietly gathered supplies. Stones so Jaime—who planned to stay in Camolen—could trigger the message board she and Arlen had devised for quick information dumps between worlds, stones so each of them could return to Camolen, stones of protection, stones for every little thing Dayna could think of—and that she thought had the slightest chance of working when their strongest ties to Camolen's magic would come through her.

She'd gotten quite good at making spellstones in her year and a half of intensively tutored time here . . . and she'd gotten even better at it in the last day—especially when it came to choosing the right stones for the job. Even now she glanced at her collection of glimmering, active stones and gave silent thanks to Arlen for keeping such a complete stock of quality materials. Hard stones, crystals and gems—some of them drilled for chains, some of them set into wire harnesses. Small enough to be inconspicuous, light enough so carrying them was no great hardship.

The others, too, had been preparing. Jaime would stay behind to keep Anfeald running, and to supervise the stables; she'd been cribbing notes since the day before, at least until evening came and she found refuge from her strange new nightly malady in a heavily dosed goblet of wine. Jess had been gathering clothing for the palomino's use as a man, and for her own immediate use upon arriving in Ohio—for she, too, was starting the journey as a horse. And Carey . . .

Carey had spent his time communing with Jaime and Natt and Cesna, all of them talking as fast as they could to try to address all the necessary details to keep Anfeald running smoothly under any contingency—right up to the very possible arrival of a new master or mistress for the hold. Both Anfeald and Siccawei were prized precincts, and the new Council wouldn't let them go without wizards for long.

Dayna closed her eyes and shuddered off rising goosebumps at the thought of anyone but Sherra running Siccawei. The hold, the city . . . the very precinct had been infused with her quiet habits of celebrating life. Not so surprising, given her interest in healing . . . in providing people with a place
to
heal.

Like Dayna, newly arrived in Camolen, full of rogue magic and anger and self-defensive defiance.

It was all still there, of course—a year and a half was nothing on a lifetime's habits. But she liked to think some of her edges had softened.

Maybe.

Stones in one hand, a small personal duffle in the other—she wouldn't need to take much, not with a number of her things in storage at Jaime's farmhouse—she navigated the turn in the doglegged hallway and found the door to the room already open.

Not that they'd been trying to keep their plans especially secret—Natt and Cesna knew, had both seemed too exhausted to argue about it; Cesna, in particular, looked about ready to drop, and seemed more grateful than concerned about their intent to gather information from the palomino. But with Suliya in the mix, Dayna wasn't making assumptions about how quickly their attempts to be quiet would shift to indiscreetly loud protests about this, that . . . and whatever.

To her initial relief, she found the room empty but for Jess, bent over the table with her long hair falling forward to obscure her features. And then on second thought, and at the heavyhearted look she found on Jess's face when Jess brushed her hair back and looked up to greet her, the relief fled.

Jess was, after all, the only one of them dead-set against this plan. Even Suliya thought it was a good idea; she just didn't see why she was part of it. But Jess . . . Jess came not to help them, but in spite of them. Because she couldn't stand the thought of the palomino facing the world as a human without someone who truly understood him.

Who knew exactly what he was going through.

"Ay, Jess," Dayna said in greeting, as cheerfully as circumstances allowed.

Jess hesitated, hands pausing as she folded a pair of loosely tailored pants they hoped would fit the palomino as a man. "You sound like Suliya."

Dayna wrinkled her nose. "It's catching, I guess." She spread the spellstone strings out on the table that took up half the room—it was already covered with clothing, letters from both Dayna and Jaime to people in Ohio—and as much gold as they thought they could safely and easily carry. They had no intention of being distracted by lack of funds, and with the slight difference in the value of gold on the two worlds, Arlen's petty cash easily covered what they felt comfortable taking. "Got some stones for you, Jess. Nothing heavy duty—just if you need to send a message back, or need to reach one of us in an emergency . . . that sort of thing."