Changespell Legacy (23 page)

She thought not. But she wasn't sure.

Chandrai responded directly to Linton, pinning him with that cold gaze. Jaime winced. Poor Linton. He didn't have a clue. All he knew was that Carey was gone, trailing a hunch about the Council deaths.

"Forbidden spells," Chandrai said, her words hard and precise, "are forbidden spells even if the checkspells have failed. We overlooked the illicit spellcasting here the first time—knowing what chaos Anfeald Hold must have been experiencing, and that someone here could have easily appropriated an old spellstone . . . frankly, we had other things on our minds. But while our situation is still every bit as dire as it was, we cannot overlook a second event."

What? Maybe Jaime
didn't
know what the woman was talking about. She gave a mute shake of her head. Certainly Dayna had cast that first spell, her signature not surprisingly obscure to the former Secondary Council. But the spell itself was beyond Cesna and Natt. "Maybe we should wait for Arlen's apprentices," Jaime suggested, when Chandrai offered no other information. "I think you're about to waste perfectly good intimidation over something we know nothing about."

"Frankly, it's annoying enough that I've expended the time and energy to travel here in the first place,"

Chandrai said. "I assure you, I would not be here without good reason—and my certain knowledge that both spells were triggered from the grounds of Anfeald leaves me less than willing to listen to naive denials."

"Oh, please," Jaime said, forgetting her wariness for a moment of utter irritation. "You won't even tell me exactly what you're talking about, probably
exactly
in case I don't already know—you don't want to spread the word about just
which
forbidden spell is now available to anyone who wants to try it. And we don't have walls around Anfeald, either the precinct or the hold grounds. I'm not denying that you detected whatever you detected, but I'm damned well saying I know nothing about it." And she didn't, she told herself silently. Not that second spell, anyway. Chandrai seemed to consider it one and the same as the first . . . which meant someone additional had cast the original world-travel spell.

For an instant she wondered who, and how they could have acquired it in the first place—and why they
would
, with so much going on around them. The answer came quite naturally.

The two who had visited her. They'd been in Carey's office; Cesna had been sure she'd heard something in Arlen's workroom. They, too, had felt the spell. They'd known Carey was gone.

They'd gone after him.

Time to do a more thorough check of Arlen's workroom—and to beef up the security spells.

Locking the barn door after the horse was gone.

Quite literally, in this case, with the palomino in Ohio. Jaime bit her lip to keep an inappropriate smile at bay.

Chandrai noticed anyway, damn her, frowning in an affronted manner. "There's hardly anything amusing about this situation. In case you haven't noticed, Camolen is in trouble, and it hardly behooves
any
of us for me to waste my time like this."

"Then don't," Jaime said simply. "Tell me enough so I can try to help, or leave me alone to help as best I can on my own." She lifted the twisting object that had once been trailing rein ends. "Do you think we don't know there's more going on than you've told
any
of us?"

In a flash, Chandrai lost her hard-edged composure. "Where did you get that? The site of the Council's death is off limits!"

Linton said dryly, "Those of us who travel by conventional means often run into strange things on the trail. Those
used
to be the ends of my reins."

"Have you told anyone else about it?"

"I'm more interested in what you can tell
us
about it," Jaime said. "Plenty of us have felt from the start that there's more to this than someone's decision to do away with the Council in a single, stand-alone incident.

What Linton saw today pretty much confirms that."

"Plenty of us?" Chandrai said, the hint of unease on her face speaking volumes in one who had been so controlled. "Explain, please."

Jaime didn't need to say
Carey and Dayna and Arlen's apprentices
. No need to bring them into it at all. She jerked open a desk drawer, pulled out a thick pile of recent messages, and thumped them down on the desk. "Don't you think we talk to each other?" she said dryly. "Those of us who were left behind?"

Horains' daughter. Zygia's brother. Head couriers, lovers, family members, landers and those now trying to keep the bereft precinct wizard holds functioning.

"You must tell no one of your experience," Chandrai said. She nodded at the awkward twist of stiffened, distorted reins. "I'll take that."

"You must be kidding," Jaime said. "I've got couriers running these roads every day. Either what happened to the Council members was an attack and it's spreading, or they
did
something and
that's
spreading, or the whole thing is just some inexplicable event that the wizards went to check out and got killed, and
that's
spreading. As long as you're not talking, all the rest of us can do is guess. But I'm sure not sending my people out there without warning them to watch for this kind of phenomenon. I can't believe you'd even consider asking me!"

Chandrai winced slightly, and gave a single nod of her impeccably groomed head. "I suppose it's of no use in any event," she said. "If you've discovered corruption, then others are bound to do the same.

Because," and she met Jaime's gaze evenly, "you're right. It's spreading. We don't know how it started, or how it was controlled to kill the Council, but the first known corrupted area is what they were investigating when they were killed. But most importantly . . . we don't know how to stop it." She offered Jaime and Linton the merest hint of a wry expression. "We've been trying to avoid widespread panic."

Linton said suddenly, "That's why the dispatch is barely working. It went down because of the Council's death, but you've kept it that way. To keep the word from reaching anyone who hasn't actually seen this . . .
corruption
."

"Essentially," Chandrai said, releasing a faint sigh. "Although that's simplifying matters considerably. Even were we not interfering, the dispatch would hardly be up to normal operations." But her companionable moment was over, and she pressed her lips—magically tinted to the most natural of been-kissed reds—firmly together before adding, "Perhaps now you understand why I'm here—"

"No," Jaime said, cutting off the admonishment she'd seen coming. "I only know that we'd still be utterly in the dark if someone hadn't triggered illicit magic in this area, and you hadn't come to scold me about it.

And I think it's about time the other families knew at least this much—and the peacekeepers and precinct guards, while you're at it.
We
are not the problem here . . . but we're the ones who have to deal with it."

"You are entirely too certain of your place in this world," Chandrai said, annoyance stiffening her posture.

"Maybe," Jaime said, though it took effort to hide the fear she felt at those words. Fear of being sent back, of never finding closure for Arlen's death. Never truly convincing herself he was gone, that he wasn't waiting somewhere for someone to find and help him.

Her.

"Or maybe," Jaime added, "it operates enough like mine that I know exactly my place in this world." She gave Chandrai her most matter-of-fact look, the one that meant
this is the way it is, and there's nothing
you can do to change it
. "Doing my damndest to keep the people I care about as safe as they can be."

She leaned back in Carey's chair, watching Chandrai try to decide how to deal with her unrepentant rebellion, well aware of Linton's impressed but alarmed regard. "Let me know," she said, "if you ever figure out what those spells were all about."

Chandrai gave her a tight smile. "Let me know," she said, "when you decide to tell us what
you
know."

J
aime wasted no time after Chandrai left. With the day turned into evening, she knew she didn't have much time to waste . . . not if the evening ague came on her—and it hadn't missed a day yet.

She all but bolted from the office, calling back over her shoulder, "I've got to check Arlen's workroom . . . see if Natt and Cesna can tell if anything's missing—"

She didn't expect Linton to come with her; his concerns centered around the stable, and he'd only just come in from a long day of riding. But he did, and right on her heels as she headed away from the stables and into the hold proper, aiming for the stairs. "I can't believe you spoke to her like that," he said, and she couldn't decide if he was admiring or appalled. "Do you
know
how miserable she can make your life?"

"Other than kicking me out of the hold?" Jaime said, somewhat grimly. "I suppose she can probably blacklist me, but only unofficially. Just because she's a Council wizard doesn't mean she gets to do as she pleases."

"Guides, aren't you the calm one." He shook his head, took her arm, stopping them both at the base of the dark stairs. "If she convinces the others that you're involved in the use of a forbidden spell, you'll spend time in confinement." Jaime looked pointedly at his arm, but he didn't release her. If anything, his grip tightened slightly, even as his eyes narrowed. "Just exactly
where
did Carey go?"

Jaime hesitated, wondering about the laws here, and how much Linton could know before he, too, took on risk. "He's looking for answers."

After a moment, he released her, his otherwise benign features taking on a cast of distrust that the darkened stairwell only accentuated. "Answers," he repeated, and the suspicion was in his voice, too.

"Linton," Jaime said, "have you ever known Carey to back away from something that needed to be done? Even when everyone else says he's wrong?"

"I haven't known him as long as you," Linton said, but it was an admission of sorts.

"And you barely know me at all. But I've learned something about myself in these past few years . . . I'm not so different from him. We have different priorities, but somehow . . ." She thought about his comment that she could be confined for involvement with a forbidden spell. Deep down she'd known it; after her involvement in Calandre and Willand's hearings, she couldn't help but know it, even if she weren't familiar with the exact laws. She'd just avoided thinking about it so she wouldn't feel the fear she felt now.

Confined. No horses, no chance to throw herself into the kind of riding that made her soul sing. Or possibly banished from this world. No Jess, no Dayna . . .

She already had
no Arlen
.

That was the thing to focus on. Doing something about that, even if it only meant finding out what had happened so she could dig her way out of the wondering. Find some sort of closure. And, if Dayna was as right as Jaime thought she was, keep it from happening to someone else.

She looked straight at Linton and said, "If I could tell Chandrai anything about that second spell, I would. Because I think
someone
needs to figure it out, and damn fast."

"You had no right," he said. "Either of you. You had no right to get me involved in something that could come crashing down on me. I've got a family here in the hold, a little girl—"

"Don't you
get
it?" Jaime said, cutting him off, her voice raised nearly to a shout. "You're
not
involved.

And if you want to stay that way, you'll stop questioning me right
now
."

Linton stopped short, mouth still open, startled as he thought her words through.

She said, "Your best bet is to trust us. Trust Carey, because you know him. Trust me . . . because Arlen did, and Carey does."

She watched him think about it, going through hesitation, lingering at the impulse to dive in and be a part of it all—this time by choice. And then he gave the faintest of nods.

Jaime sighed with relief . . . and moved right on to other matters, figuratively sweeping the previous conversation under the rug.
It never happened
. How
Mission Impossible
could she get? "What I need is for you to talk to all the other couriers. Let them know what you saw, and if anyone else has seen anything like it, I want to know. All of us are on alert for it from now on. I want any sightings mapped and watched. If we have to, we cut our message load and spend more time scouting."

He winced. "No one'll like that." Not the landers, or the separated families, and especially not the peacekeepers and precinct guard.

"We'll play it by ear," she said, and at his puzzled expression, added, "Take it as we go. Make decisions as we get more information."

"Map it as we walk it," he said, understanding clearing his features.

"That's it." Jaime triggered the permalight in the lower stairwell and gave it a grateful glance. These days, she barely had enough concentration to maintain a glowspell the size of a firefly, not that she'd ever been any good at it.

"I'll post a meeting for tomorrow morning before the riders go out," he said. "I guess . . . it would be best if I just went back to the job room and made sure we've got all of tomorrow's outgoing accounted for."

"Everything but whatever you brought in with you." Jaime rubbed her forehead, suddenly aware that she'd had a distinct tingle of warning there for some moments, buried beneath the intensity of their conversation and the ramifications of Chandrai's visits. She fumbled for the flask by her side, barely hearing Linton's questioning comment, gulping it down just in time— The evening ague rolled over her like a storm, crashing headlong into the magically enhanced dosage.

She knew Linton caught her as she fell; she heard his bellow for Gertli.

And then she was gone until morning.

"Big bootin' whee," Suliya said, staring critically at Mark's computer monitor, her hand on the back of the chair Dayna occupied, scooted up just beside Mark's own desk chair. "Just the same as the dispatch, really."