Changespell Legacy (3 page)

She bears the wounds to back up her story. Wounds with shrapnel made of twisted metal hazel bush bark.

"He's not
here
?" Jaime said, sounding every bit as unhappy as she looked, as well as slightly disoriented after her distinctly magical journey from one world to another.

"
I'm
here," Jess pointed out. She stood by the door of the special world transfer chamber in the lower level of Arlen's stone-carved hold. Jaime looked good to her eyes, but then Jaime always looked good to her eyes, even when she had an unusual haircut that made her look like she'd just gotten out of bed, short and mussed and almost certainly on purpose, since she'd never failed to groom herself before. The first glimmers of grey showed among the dark strands, silver peeking out from her bangs.

Jess had never known Jaime's age . . . the oldest of the friends she had met in her first days as a woman, all of them from the same small area on Earth. Older than Dayna, younger than Arlen—whom she'd always known, if not always as a woman. And Arlen's hair was older than the rest of him, greyed like a grey horse, starting early and heading steadily for silver-white. Jess had always thought it a shame that the wizard lacked dapples.

"And I'm glad to see you," Jaime said to Jess, running a hand through her hair, ruffling it even more. "But if you were expecting Carey and you got
me
, you'd be disappointed, too—"

"Teasing," Jess interrupted, and grinned.

Taken aback, Jaime just looked at her a moment. Then a smile crept in at the corners of her mouth.

"You've gotten better at that."

"Yes." Jess, her grin down to an amused twist of mouth, held out her hand to take the overnight bag hanging from Jaime's grip. "Carey says Arlen is out doing Council business, and Natt says the Council just called a rush field meeting to investigate something strange."

"They
have
changed from last year," Jaime said, giving up the bag and emerging from the booth. "Used to be they'd take reports and consider their actions for at least a month or two when something strange happened. Now they're actually out on a field trip?"

Jess remembered the look on Natt's rounded face when he'd relayed the news; her amusement at teasing Jaime faded altogether. "Things have not changed all
that
much."

Jaime caught her meaning right away. "So this is something pretty alarming." She followed Jess out into the main hall of the first floor, an asymmetrical floor plan that had never confused Jess as it did everyone else who first arrived here; her sense of direction wasn't easy to fool, and she found the several floors of the hold with their branching, seldom-square rooms fit Anfeald's nature perfectly. Carved from one of Anfeald's characteristic thin-soiled eruptions of rock with the entrance at the bottom and Arlen's private rooms built to rise just above the natural surface, the hold was solid, dependable, and just a little bit quirky. Like Arlen himself, Jess thought.

Carey waited for them by the stairs, close enough to have caught Jaime's words. "Alarming," he agreed, "but whatever's up is new enough that no one seems to know anything about it. Even news-mongering Aashara isn't spreading gossip—although she's been pretty careful about Council matters since last summer."

Jaime sighed. "I suppose it's been quiet for a while now. Too much to hope it could last forever."

Giving in to impulse, Jess petted the ruffled and deliberate disarray of Jaime's hair, a soothing gesture she remembered being on the receiving end of in her days of early training. "It
is
quiet. Dayna has not panicked Sherra for days now. Did you bring new pictures of Sabre? Is Mark happy bossing the barn while you're gone?"

"Happier than I thought he could be," Jaime admitted as they headed up the stairs. They were stone, like the rest of the hold, climbing with angled flights that didn't match in length or direction—also like the rest of the hold. Large windows lit the stairwell with soft skewed shadows, spelled with an invisible barrier to keep the cold out and the clumsy in. "He's really settled into the role . . . I'm not sure Dayna would recognize him. He's grown up a lot in the last year . . . and he's not that skinny guy anymore, either."

"Then you should bring pictures of him, too," Jess said wistfully. It had been a long time since she and Carey traveled to Ohio, to Jaime's barn on her family's old dairy farm property, the Dancing Equine.

World-travel spells were strictly controlled, with two layers of fail-safe checkspells erected at all times.

Jaime was the only one with dispensation to move between worlds, and had a special spell that allowed for her travel—and her travel only. Had the Council not owed her so much—and owed Arlen so much—Jess had no doubt they would have told the couple to choose a world and stick to it.

As it was, Jaime split her time in what she'd called the universe's longest commute. And Jess could well understand why she was unhappy to find Arlen gone.

"We asked the cook for that black deer venison you like so much," Carey offered as they topped the last of the stairs and headed down the hall—past the apprentice studies, past Arlen's five-walled workroom with its giant picture window overseeing the gardens and pastures of his domain—to Arlen's personal rooms.

"Quit trying to cheer me up," Jaime said. "I intend to pout for a while longer. Maybe until Arlen gets back."

"Oh," Jess said, disappointed. She led the way into Arlen's common room, a welcoming place of layered rugs over stone floor, bookshelves, and a sitting area that often disappeared under his various needlework projects. She left Jaime's bag by the end of an overstuffed couch and sighed. "Maybe I should go work on my reading, then."

Carey laughed out loud, and Jaime said gently, "That's one of those things people say when they
don't
want you to quit doing something, Jess. I
am
sad that Arlen's not here . . . dammit, I'm annoyed, too—but it doesn't mean I don't want to spend time with you. How about we try a lesson, after dinner? Is that new covered ring still heated?"

"Natt's keeping it warm for us," Carey said, even as Jess said, "Yes!" in response to both questions.

"Good," Jaime said. "I hope you planned for an early dinner . . . Ohio timing doesn't quite match up, as usual. I'm starved, and now that you've teased me with that venison—"

"No tease," Carey said, helping himself to the rocking chair by the window and stretching his bad leg out with a wince that made Jess frown—though she'd learned to hide it, to keep such faces on the inside.

Winters were hard on him, and she knew it by the grateful way he accepted warm packs and liniment rubs in the evening—but this was not evening, and it was not private. So she looked away, and thus managed to catch the astonished delight on Jaime's face as she peered into the room that had once been a guest room and now held some of Jaime's things from Ohio—her custom-made, adjustable-width dressage saddle, which she forbore to keep in the tack room while she was gone; a full wardrobe that didn't fit in a bedroom closet Arlen had never made for two; a collection of books by Camolen's riding masters, past and present . . .

"There's a light in here!" Jaime said. "It almost looks like a fluorescent bulb!"

Carey absently kneaded his thigh. "I can't speak for that, but I can tell you you're one of the few in the hold to have one of SpellForge's permalights."

"Permalights," Jaime mused. "Someone on Earth could have come up with that name."

"Invoke the thing, and it stays lit, even when the wizard walks away, falls asleep, whatever. Thousands of starter spells in the same stone, too—right there at the base of it."

"Wow," Jaime said. "All those hours I put into learning how to keep a glow going when I wasn't really giving it my full attention." She looked back to give Carey a wry look. "Or maybe I should say,
trying
to learn how."

"Oh, the old-school wizards are scandalized." Carey pushed the calico cat from his lap, guiding the demanding creature toward Jess where it repeatedly bumped its head against her leg. She sat cross-legged on the thick carpets and tugged gently at its tail until it stood foolishly on its head, purring.

Carey snorted at them both and turned his attention back to Jaime. "They think allowing such a thing will ruin the next generation of wizards—that children won't learn the proper discipline to hold glowspells, and that they'll learn them late in the first place. Using glowspells has always been the first indication of a child's talent."

"Hmm," Jaime said. "Well, they may have a point. Now the parent can trigger the spell and walk away.

But you know, even with parents plunking kids down in front of televisions, the kids who enjoy reading still start before anyone thinks they can."

"Pretty much a summary of the opposing arguments I've heard, minus all the blustering," Carey said. "In any event, Arlen thought you'd like it."

"He would have liked to see your face when you noticed it," Jess said. "But I saw, and I'll tell him."

"I wouldn't worry about it," Jaime said. "I'm sure I can find a way to express my appreciation when I see him." She left the guest room, tossed her bag inside the bedroom, and said, "One nice thing about spell travel . . . no need to freshen up. Now, what about that dinner?"

Carey pushed himself up from the rocker as Jess stood in one smooth motion, not bothering to uncross her legs until she was up. She followed them from the room, but couldn't help a glance back over her shoulder. The hold seemed empty without Arlen; she would be just as glad as Jaime when he came back.

S
outh of Anfeald, midway between Siccawei's new sub-hold and the dry riverbed, the ground heaves like thick molasses going into a boil—and then settles, as solid as it has ever been. Sherra stands off to the side, looking for signs of the exploding hazel bush. It has melted into something else.

Tied at a distance, her palomino mount rattles air through its nose; it is as wary as she, and cannot seem to decide whether to watch before or behind itself. It lifts its head to call to the empty woods, a stallion's cry.

"Hush," Sherra says absently, thinking it anxious. She knows only as much of horses as she must, and in this place she has other things on her mind. Keeping an eye on the quiescent earth, she gathers her concentration for the spell that will tag this spot for the Council wizards, allowing them to accomplish the tricky business of transporting without a formally established booth.

The horse calls out again, craning his head against the halter lead; this time he sounds less demanding, more welcoming—a lower call, more musical. Sherra ignores him, finishing her spell, unaware of the subtle creep of earth before her.

Almost immediately the Council begins to arrive. Seventeen of them altogether, the very best of Camolen's best . . . everyone but Arlen, who is too far away to accomplish free transport. The wizards who oversee all of Camolen's magic, policing their own, protecting everyone else.

None of them have ever seen anything like this growing miasma in northern Siccawei's woods. None of them know what has caused it. They throw a tentative identifier spell at it, the most basic of spells that identifies only intent—benign or malignant. They don't expect it to work.

It doesn't—but the ground heaves at the offense, and a tree trunk spits out what was once a bird.

They eye each other in alarm, and Sherra steps forward to invoke the most gentle of healing spells, the most benign of magic. All seventeen of them stumble backwards in alarm as pebbles spurt up from the muddied, melted patch of woods, ducking as the missiles rain down through the trees.

The palomino snorts alarm.

There will be no more magic used here; they will bring in null wards to contain this spot while they try to understand it—although even Camolen's finest find themselves uncertain it can be understood at all. They congratulate themselves on acting so quickly, on keeping news of this strange area so confidential so they can respond to it without inciting panic.

The palomino nickers; even Sherra recognizes it as a greeting.

But they see nothing. No one.

And then they feel the magic.

It is not of their making.

Raw magic, magic without control, without signature. It brings the disturbed woods to sudden, violent life. The ground reaches for them—

Carey shifted his weight, gave his leg a subtle stretch, and leaned over the rails of the indoor ring to watch the growing frustration on Jess's face—an interesting contrast to Jaime's slightly distracted patience. She knew as well as Carey that Jess's biggest challenge as a riding student was that she expected too much of herself—expected to understand new things right away, expected to do them right the first time, expected to figure things out before she was told.

Just because her every gesture, every expression, spoke so loudly of who—and what—she was.

Because she had an insight no one else could match.

Carey knew, and Jaime knew, that there was such a thing as expecting too much, even from a riding student who had started life as a horse. But Jess hadn't yet accepted that philosophy.

Carey glanced behind him as someone entered the long, wood-sided structure; this end held what was meant to be a large viewing area separated from the riding area by wooden fence rails and a wide gate.

But Anfeald held more individual training sessions than it did schooling clinics, and inevitably the generous viewing space did double duty as storage, with hay overflow, training rails, rakes and shovels and wheelbarrows nibbling away at its edges.

Sliding the door closed he found not Arlen—only a day into Jaime's visit, and she already had them looking to every open door in sympathetic anticipation—but Suliya, her riotously curly, deep-mahogany hair spilling free from its binding. She went to rummage among the manure forks.

He hadn't failed to notice that she often turned up when Jaime gave lessons, or that she tended to lurk in his own shadow. And he suspected she thought she hid her feelings better than she did—that it didn't show when she disagreed with Jaime, or that she'd hidden her resentment at her starter position in Anfeald. Or her resentment when she saw Jess going out on a run, whether or not it had been meant for Suliya.