Changespell Legacy (47 page)

Horse scent tingled in the breeze as they approached the trail fork from Anfeald Hold; she lifted her head, hunting the source. Behind her, Ramble called out his challenge, a great deep bell of a voice with grunts of punctuation no other horse could mistake for anything but a stallion. Several horses answered, and then Lady's ears pricked to Jaime's faint and anxious call. "Arlen!"

Without thinking, Lady picked up her speed, moving into an extended trot that sent Arlen bouncing on her back; reflexively, he clamped his legs to her sides.

With the trail juncture in sight, full of milling horses, bordered by a fading meltdown, Lady broke into a startled canter, a choppy gait full of the contradictions she felt. "O-oh no," Arlen said, his teeth clicking as he bounced; he yanked on her mane, the only thing at hand. "Whoa!"

And then she caught wind of
others
, her equine senses geared more toward intensity of odor than finesse of identification but still she instantly thought
human
. In the woods around them, closing on them, but she couldn't
think
with Arlen thumping and bouncing and grabbing at her. With the sudden downwind rustle of brush, a figure emerged from the camouflage of leaves and dull brush almost at her feet; it was all she could do to keep from shying out from under him.

"Whoa!" Arlen cried, completely unaware of those
others
, clenching her barrel with his long legs and hauling on her mane. Metal gleamed dully along an astonishingly long blade, and quite abruptly Lady did just as she'd been told, tucking her butt and dropping her head so Arlen flew neatly over her withers, rolling onward and out of reach. The blade flashed down to score her shoulder and she kicked out wildly, catching only the edge of a sleeve as the blade descended again.

Ramble screamed, a stallion's challenge, and knocked her aside, knocked her
down
— She wrenched herself aside, trying to avoid Arlen's sprawling figure, trying to avoid the meltdown in progress, well aware that more agents converged upon them.

Armed men and women, ready to turn the hunt into a kill.

"Arlen!" Jaime screamed, her cry of greeting turning to one of horror as the woods seemed to boil with brown-clad agents—only a handful, but how many did it take to kill a man gone head-over-heels off his horse? Lady had saved him with that very tumble, but now he lifted his head from the dirt with a dazed slowness, unable to defend himself; Lady herself hit the ground hard just behind him, legs splayed and thrashing the air as she fought to right herself. Ramble screamed again, this time with pain, and then the man he'd engaged screamed as well—but only for an instant.

"Burnin' poot!" Suliya cried from behind her, almost masking Dayna's equally emphatic curse.

Jaime didn't waste time or breath on curses; she jammed startling heels into her mount's sides and headed across the intersection of trails to Arlen. In the next moment a blur of dark bay movement—
Wheeler's horse
—blocked her way, shoving her gelding aside with such force that the horse almost went down; Jaime pushed her hands forward to give rein, clutching mane and urging the horse to keep its feet as Wheeler surged ahead into the melee.

"Close up!" Dayna shouted behind her. "Close up, we can use the shield—"

Closing up
was just what Jaime had in mind—but now she hesitated, confused by the action as a pack-loaded dark brown gelding trotted by with choppy, anxious steps. Lady struggled back to her feet, blood splashed on her deep sand coat, black mane and tail flying; she spotted an agent heading for Arlen and lunged for him while behind her Ramble struggled to rise, hamstrung so badly one hind leg flopped uselessly with his efforts. Wheeler jammed his horse between Arlen and yet another agent, and would have flung himself off to join the fray if something hadn't hit him in the chest and stuck there, stunning him and stopping him utterly short, a motionless figure in the middle of chaos.

But he'd given Arlen the time to get to his knees, to find Jaime and Dayna and Suliya and shout, "The shield! Get over here!"

"Close up!" Dayna repeated, running her horse into the back of Jaime's.

"But the shield lets people
through
—" Jaime said, bewildered, still trying to see how many of the enemy were left, if even now someone charged up behind Arlen— No. They'd have to get through Lady first.

She drove her horse right up to Wheeler's mount, aware he was trying to say something and couldn't, that he didn't look right, and she did a flying dismount, kicking free of the stirrups and flipping out of the saddle to land on her feet, already running to Ramble. The stallion who'd been there at the start of it all, and now couldn't even rise . . . she snatched his flaxen mane and pulled. Pulled hard. "Up, up,
up
," she cried, giving him something to throw his head against, a counterbalance for his malfunctioning leg. Up he came, stumbling forward, stopping only when she threw her arms around his neck and told him "Whoa, whoa," in the calmest voice she could muster.
Close up—
She left him by Wheeler's horse and whirled to find Lady holding off an agent who would have come up on Arlen's back—lightning-fast front leg strikes from a perfect warhorse levade, snaking neck threats, as of yet untouched by the woman with the long knife who looked determined to get past but somewhat taken aback at facing a horse determined to stop her.

Front leg strikes. Jaime blinked, realizing this was a Lady she didn't know . . . a Lady gone on the offensive, not merely defending herself or Arlen. Aggressive. Ears flattened, eyes squinting and focused and hard. Before Jaime could do so much as suggest that the woman back off, the agent lost the considerable odds against her; Lady's hoof hit her collarbone with a crack; the blade hit the ground. And Lady reached out and took that broken shoulder in her teeth to shake the woman like a rag doll and throw her aside.

Then Jaime spotted someone else beyond the woman, a man wisely breaking off his sprint to Arlen, calculating whether he could reach Arlen before Lady reached
him
.

Jaime knew the answer. So did Lady, who snaked her neck down and trembled with readiness.

The man took an abrupt step backward.

To Jaime's astonishment, Lady leapt for him. "Lady, no!" she cried, lunging forward as if there were something she could actually do to stop the mare.

Lady whirled, as fast,
faster
, than anything Jaime had ever seen. Poised for action, resenting interference, she turned on Jaime. Appalled at the trickle of fear she felt—fear of
Lady
—Jaime somehow knew
not
to order the mare around,
not
to tell her she was wrong.

To appeal to her as an equal.

"Please," Jaime said. "Please don't, Lady. He's backing off—" And then in desperation she blurted, "We're going to shield; we need you with us—"

Her nostrils flared to their utmost and ears still half-flattened, Lady gave Jaime a hard stare . . . a long stare. When she came out of her fighting stance she did it with such deliberation that Jaime realized it wasn't acquiescence in the least. It was
decision
.

She found herself shaking in the aftermath.

Lady went straight to Ramble, meeting him nose to nose across the tail of Wheeler's horse and blocking Jaime between Ramble and Wheeler. Unable to reach Arlen, Jaime stood on her tiptoes a few futile times and finally subsided. Arlen was there, somewhere beyond the quarters of Wheeler's horse and the back of Dayna's; he was safe. She shifted to call under the horse's neck. "We're all here!"

"Grunt?" Arlen called back, evoking a moment of utter, baffled silence that even the forest seemed to respect. "Grunt!" Arlen repeated impatiently. "My horse! Does someone have my horse?"

"I have a packhorse," Suliya called back from the other side of the horse-human huddle.

"That's Grunt," Arlen said with relief, and then to Dayna, "Here we go, then—"

The magic flared and stuttered, so strained that even Jaime felt something amiss; she fought to get past Ramble and found herself squeezed up against Wheeler's horse, her hands almost immediately covered in something wet and slick and soaking into the bay's dark coat. Blood. Startled, she glanced up at the slumping agent, finding him lolling much closer to her face than she expected and—catching his gaze—she gasped at his stark complexion and the exquisitely wry look in his eye. Held there, she opened her mouth to say something, except nothing came out. Nothing at all, until Arlen said, "Good job!" in the background and she glanced up to find the shield had stabilized, leaving them inside a bubble with a shifting, oily sheen.

The agents—three of them now—hesitated across the wide intersection of trails, looking to one another as if one of them should be able to identify the effect . . . but no one could.

Of course not
, Jaime thought, smugly proud. It was Arlen's magic in test flight and working just as it should.

At least, as far as she could tell.

"Ay!" said Suliya from the other side of Wheeler and the loaded packhorse and Dayna's horse. "Ay!"

And she suddenly popped up from under the belly of the packhorse, bumping the nose of Wheeler's bay, quickly soothing the animal as it shifted away, pinning Jaime more firmly between Ramble and the bay.

Suliya ended up just inside the bubble, hands on hips, staring out at the men. "Time to get bootin', you think?"

Several of the agents offered an immediate curse at the sight of her; only one of them voiced what they all knew. "Suliya?" It was a stocky woman, and she stepped forward with a long, curving knife in hand but out of guard position. Lady snorted at her; Jaime took it for displeased recognition. The woman said, "Do you know how hard your father's been looking for you?"

"I've been . . . away." Suliya smiled slightly . . . not pleasantly. "Now I'm back. And I'm telling you to go away. Unless you want to
harm
the daughter the SpellForge head chair has been hunting so hard?"

One of the men gestured roughly at the clump of people and horses behind her; Jaime, soothing Ramble—he trembled with pain, now, and still bled freely—eased her hip free of Wheeler's jabbing deadweight toe and turned so she could see the man's expression more clearly.

Uncertain. And . . . frightened. A big man, a capable man . . . full of muscle and strength. Frightened.

With the inflexibility born of that fear, he said, "They can't stop the mangles until we stop everyone who's interfering with their efforts."

"Interfering!" From the center of the clump—and to judge by his voice, still on the ground—Arlen said, "You pliable idiots! How could I have been interfering back when your people accosted me in Payys?

That's just an excuse! If they had a fix, they'd have used it already!"

"You
planned
to interfere," the man said stolidly. "You're
here
."

"Damn," Arlen muttered, low enough so Jaime could barely hear him. "He's got me pinned on that one."

Suliya, cocking one hip and crossing her arms, said, "My father's had plenty of time to fix the meltdowns.

The
mangles
. It's our turn, now. And did I mention how my father will react if you hurt me?"

"I can burnin' well tell you how he'll react if we fail!"

"
Guides
," said Suliya, and threw her hands in the air. "I tried," she added over her shoulder. "All right then, here's what's spellin'. This shield protects us from the . . . er, mangles. No magic in here, none at all.

We can go right through an active meltdown." She scowled at them, looking every inch the head chair's daughter despite her rumpled condition. "If you won't go away, we'll
have
to."

"How're you—" the man started.

"Spellstones," said the woman. "I saw him do it before. He'll toss one right into that dying mangle over there and trigger it from where he is. He can do it, he really can—"

"Actually," Arlen said, quite modestly and still totally obscured from Jaime's sight, "I have a whole handful. Twelve or so—"

"More like twenty," Dayna said.

"There's another thing," Jaime said, startling them all; she didn't think they'd even noticed her until this moment. "Anfeald couriers are already spreading the word about the permalight spells. SpellForge doesn't have any secrets anymore."

Wheeler spat blood between the horses and pushed himself upright enough that Jaime could clearly see the knife hilt emerging from his chest, quivering with every movement he made, every word he formed. "I wouldn't be here if SpellForge was running us true," he said, barely loud enough to be heard. "My partner died for their lies. You will, too."

"Wheeler," said the man flatly, the threat inherent. "I thought that was you. If you weren't already—"

"Shut up!" Suliya cried, so fiercely that Jaime made an instinctive movement to grab her arm—and realized she was still trapped behind Ramble's trembling, drooping form, one she'd duck under if she weren't afraid he might actually fall on her.

But Suliya stayed within the shield on her own, coming up short at its boundary—though her back tightened at Wheeler's harsh, short laugh.

"Whatever happens to me, I dealt true," he said. "And I didn't close my eyes to SpellForge lies just because I was afraid of the head chair or FreeCast."

Lady snorted, her alarm drawing Jaime from the male agent's anger; she thought at first one of the other agents might be closing on them, creeping along the edge of the meltdown at their backs to come through a shield that was meant to keep only magic out. But the woman agent's eyes widened. "Mangle!" she said, turning on them with fury. "You didn't need to—we haven't—"

"I
didn't
," Arlen said, trepidation filling his voice.

Jaime jerked around to see it coming, a roil of movement like a tidal wave through the woods; without thinking, she clutched Wheeler's leg, terrified beyond thought in spite of their shield—their untried shield— exploding trees and screaming rocks and twisted birds and the smell— She closed her eyes and covered her head and screamed, unheard even to her own ears. Ramble staggered and went down; Wheeler's horse took a hit of some kind, jostling Jaime to her knees and making her suddenly aware there was as much danger within the shield as out if the horses panicked. She crawled blindly up against Ramble's side, using his bulk for protection—cracking her eyes open once but only for an instant, unable to bear the turmoil of warping reality and still—she knew only because she felt it in her throat—screaming. So caught up in the here and now of the horror that
here
meant everywhere and
now
meant forever.