Changespell Legacy Read online

  Changespell Legacy

  by Doranna Durgin

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2002 by Doranna Durgin

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

  A Baen Books Original

  Baen Publishing Enterprises

  P.O. Box 1403

  Riverdale, NY 10471

  www.baen.com

  ISBN: 0-7434-3544-3

  Cover art by Carol Heyer

  First printing, June 2002

  Distributed by Simon & Schuster

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  Production by Windhaven Press

  Printed in the United States of America

  To Alan—our Bookhound—and

  all the people who loved him.

  Many thanks to suspects usual and new: to Barbara Gampt for things Ohio, to Judith, who always catches the things no one else does, to Jennifer for the missing scene, to the SFF gang who cheered me on, and to Jenni McPhail for trusting me with Phoenix Fire—who believes she should have her own book but finally, after many food bribes, accepted that I couldn't change Lady from a courier-bred dun to a grey Arabian in the middle of a series.

  (And you may blame this book on Lucienne, who quite wickedly said "What if . . . ?")

  WHOA!

  With the trail juncture in sight and full of milling horses, Dun Lady's Jess broke into a startled canter.

  "O-oh no," Arlen said, his teeth clicking as he bounced; he yanked on her mane, the only thing at hand.

  "Whoa!"

  And then Lady caught wind of others in the woods around them, closing in on them. With the sudden downwind rustle of brush, a figure emerged from camouflage of leaves and dull brush almost at her feet.

  "Whoa!" Arlen cried again, completely unaware of those others , clenching her barrel with his long legs and hauling on her mane. Metal slashed at them, 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. Ramble screamed, a stallion's challenge, and knocked her aside, knocked her down —

  She wrenched herself away, trying to avoid Arlen's sprawling figure, well aware that more agents converged upon them.

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

  BAEN BOOKS by Doranna Durgin

  Dun Lady's Jess

  Changespell

  Changespell Legacy

  Barrenlands

  Touched by Magic

  Wolf Justice

  Wolverine's Daughter

  Seer's Blood

  A Feral Darkness

  Other Books

  Star Trek: The Next Generation—Tooth and Claw

  Earth: Final Conflict—Heritage

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  BAEN BOOKS by Doranna Durgin

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter 1

  Arlen meant to be home before now.

  With the Lorakan Mountains looming on the western skyline to remind him just how much land lay between here and Anfeald, he calculated the distance to the nearest travel booth versus the time before Jaime's next visit.

  He wasn't going to make it.

  From one world to another she would come, from Ohio on Earth to Anfeald in Camolen, and she'd find him . . .

  Absent.

  Not that anyone would be able to tell her why—not Carey, his close friend and head courier, who thought Arlen attended the special field calling of the Council of Wizards in Siccawei. Not his two apprentices, who thought the same. Not the Council itself, with a renewed emphasis on confidentiality after the events of the previous summer, the rogue wizards and their mage lure-enhanced powers run amok in Camolen with far too many people chatting about the particulars.

  They'd overcome that trial—Arlen and Jaime, Carey and Jess, and Dayna, ever twiddling with her forbidden raw magic on the sly. It had been more the others than Arlen himself, who'd first been hampered by Council strictures and then by recovery from a long-distance blow dealt by an enhanced and vengeful wizard.

  The thought of it made him wince. Without the mage lure, Willand would never have been able to touch him. And even knowing she'd had it . . .

  Well, he'd underestimated her.

  But his friends—armed more with determination and wits than conventional magic—had taught the Council a lesson about acting instead of reacting. About shaking off the strictures of their endless debates to choose action —even to the point of taking to a trail in Siccawei without him.

  So here Arlen stood, gazing at the moonrise over the mountains with three layers of heartland jackets over his Jaime-gifted silken long underwear and OSU sweatshirt, and a blanket from the road inn wrapped tightly around his shoulders on top of it, his breath frosting the air and riming his thick grey-shot mustache. A porch board creaked under his foot, reminding him of the need for quiet with an inn full of grouchy winter travelers at his back.

  He could send Jaime a spell message through the Mage Dispatch service, but that would only reveal his location to the alert and nervous mage lure-runners he'd come here to thwart. They had reason for their nerves—the old border guard spells against them had worked once, and with the study he'd done this past week, the spells'd soon work again.

  But not until he made it home. Back to warmer Anfeald in south-central Camolen, to the winter-burnt pastures and hills, the turned-over garden fields, the deep-honed respect for his wizard's power from Anfeald's landers and the casual irreverence from Carey in spite of it. And Jaime. Commuting between worlds, rearranging her life to spend nearly half her time here with him. In another day she'd be sitting in the rocker by the thick-silled open window of his personal rooms, one spell heating the room and another keeping the heat from escaping. She'd have the old black and white cat on her lap while the young calico male tried to impress her with his antics and headstands.

  But she'd be waiting for him . Wondering, perhaps worrying, probably annoyed on top of it all.

  Like most powerful wizards, Arlen rarely pulled himself up into a saddle. Town coaches, shoe leather, mage travel with transfer booths . . . they all came more easily. Even so . . . in the morning, he'd see about securing a horse, one to get him to the nearest transfer booth three townlets down the road in Amses.

  Jaime would be waiting. And for once, Camolen rested quietly around him.

>   Branches warp and ooze, merging into one another. Winter-flattened ground cover of fall leaves compresses into a blanket over the earth and melts into the roots of the tree, swirling old golds and dulled crimsons into silvery bark to obscure the small den-hole there.

  An uneasy ground squirrel bolts for that hole.

  Half the squirrel makes it home. Rich brown fur merges into the red-gold-silver patch where its life ends, following twisted eddies of matter.

  Hoofbeats sound in the cold winter air. Dun mare, deep buckskin with black points, a black line down her spine, and wiser eyes than most. Alone, unhindered save for the padded leather girth and chest band holding a courier's pouch over her withers, she prances to a stop, sampling the air with widened nostrils and the raised neck of a wary posture, alert for movement, for scent, for something on which to pin her attention. To define the wrongness she feels here.

  After a moment, she snorts and moves on, her equine vision unable to perceive the frozen patch of distortion by the side of the trail. Too still, too close for her to see out of that eye at that angle.

  With a flick of her tail, Dun Lady's Jess leaves the birth of death and destruction behind her, never knowing it's there at all.

  Chapter 2

  Suliya swept the main aisle of Anfeald Stables, spending more energy on resentment than she did on the chore itself. She should have been out on a courier run today, burn it all, and here she was doing cleanup chores instead. Inspecting stalls, rewrapping bandages, mixing a warm winter mash . . . and sweeping up the inevitable clots of mud, melting ice chunks, and wasted hay. Half the day's horses were still out, slowed by the roads despite seasonal spells meant to clear them. No doubt their riders were wind-chilled and stiff and more than ready to return home, but Suliya longed to have been one of them.

  The only rider making fewer runs out of Anfeald than she was Carey—and everyone knew he had to keep his schedule light because of the wizard-inflicted damage he'd taken a year and a half earlier.

  Suliya was the last of the couriers hired to rebuild the stable after that summer, and initially she'd counted it a rare opportunity. Anfeald's reputation was spotless, their horses impeccably bred and trained.

  Working here meant the opportunity to watch Jaime Cabot apply her unique Earth riding theory—and to watch others take lessons under her, a bonus earned by the top-performing couriers. Working here meant being in Arlen's hold, and Arlen's reputation as a man of power had risen considerably these past few years. Working here meant being one of the best.

  If she ever got the chance.

  Her father hadn't believed she would . . . that she could. "Try one of the smaller barns," he'd advised her, even upon showing her the trail. "Someplace they might tolerate your lack of discipline." She hadn't believed it of him—that he'd truly reach the end of his patience. That he'd truly withdraw his support. Not the SpellForge head chair, so full of his public image.

  At three years old, she'd wandered his giant work suite unchecked. At ten, she sat in on meetings, met her tutor's requirements, took riding lessons, and charmed everyone she met. By sixteen she was bored and jaded and knew that the best way to reclaim her family's distant attention was to push boundaries in all ways.

  And at nineteen her father overrode her mother's wishes and did what she'd never believed possible.

  He kicked her out.

  Not without money in her pocket, but without direction, without—other than the ability to ride—discernible worldly skills.

  But with a goal. She'd show him he was wrong. She could find her own success, make her own way. If she ever got the chance. If Carey ever took her seriously.

  She shoved the broom over the cobbled floors—spelled so the horses wouldn't slip, just as spells kept the under-mountain stables supplied with constantly circulating air and made sure the cistern-stored water stayed fresh—and considered the reason she was sweeping and not riding. Sweeping and not proving her worth to Anfeald and Carey.

  Carey's girlfriend, that was why.

  Carey's girlfriend, who'd decided to move from Kymmet Stables to Anfeald, arriving only a moon's span after Suliya herself and yet automatically slotted as a senior rider, with authority over Suliya and almost everyone else there. If it weren't for Jess, Suliya was certain she'd have been moved up from her starter position to something more meaningful, maybe even to a junior courier. But Jess had arrived, taking on the training of the young horses, taking on the occasional run, making Suliya more of a backup rider than anything else.

  And leaving her sweeping the aisles.

  The sound of raucous laughter echoed down the hall from the job room at the back of the stall aisle; four of the couriers were back for the day, drinking hot tea and warming themselves over exaggerations of their past exploits. Envy tugged at Suliya, but she couldn't blame them for her situation. They'd all been here before her, some of them since the summer Carey was hurt and everyone else had been killed.

  Still . . .

  She wished she didn't feel so left out. Or that she even knew how to join in.

  At that choice moment, one of the massive front doors eased open, making way before the rising night wind. "Ay!" Suliya exclaimed, jumping to get her broom placed over the pile of sweepings—but not quickly enough. As a dun mare walked into the stable, the swept hay scattered along the length of the aisle and settled back into the corners from which it had come. A lone dun mare, elegant even in her winter coat, ice on her whiskers and fetlocks, ice weighting the end of her tail, and a unique harness carrying a bulging courier's pouch just behind her withers.

  Carey's girlfriend.

  Suliya glared at the mare unnoticed as she ran to shut the door, securing it with its own weight behind the slight bump in the floor. The dun—Lady, they called her, when she was her horse self—stopped in the middle of the aisle, shook vigorously, and lifted her head with perked ears to scent the air.

  "He's not here," Suliya said brusquely, taking a hank of the dun's mane up behind her ears and giving a slight tug. Lady's spellstones clinked dully there, sewn into several braids. With them, she could return to the woman Jess, but not here in the middle of the aisle. There was a special stall set aside, where Jess kept a change of clothes and which Anfeald used as a mid-aisle storage stall.

  Lady hesitated—not surprisingly, since they'd moved the stall only days earlier, swapping it out with another to separate two horses who'd taken to kicking at each other. But Suliya tugged again, perhaps not as gently as she might have, and Lady followed her—right into the wrong stall.

  Suliya realized it immediately. But something wicked spoke within her, something tied to her resentments and envy. She slid the stall door closed without latching it and went back to her sweeping. Let Lady change to Jess and ask for clothing—when Suliya brought it, maybe Jess would notice that Suliya existed in the first place.

  After a moment, Lady sorted out the situation—wrong stall, no clothing waiting here—and gave a short, sharp snort of annoyed objection. In another moment, she changed. Suliya couldn't feel the magic—few of the couriers had that kind of sensitivity—but she heard a difference in the way the stall bedding rustled, and knew it had been done. She dumped her recaptured hay sweepings into the waste bin, listening, ready to grab up some clothes.

  After a long, considering silence, the door slid open; Suliya turned to see Jess step out into the aisle without a stitch of clothing, the courier harness dangling from one hand. Barefooted on the cold cobbles, she gave no sign of discomfort—or embarrassment—as she headed for the correct door, two stalls down. She appeared not to notice Suliya's near-gaping consternation, nor the appearance and startled reaction of two grooms from a stall at the far end where they'd been releveling the floor.

  She carried herself with absent dignity, and she was beautiful—long lean legs and flanks, erect carriage, masses of dark sand hair spilling down her back with a strikingly black centerline the longest section of all and echoed in a faint dark line down her spine. Suliya was
struck by the feeling that this was the first time she'd actually—truly—seen the woman. Seen that she was so human . . . and so obviously not.

  As Suliya stood frozen with the broom in her hands, she heard Carey's cheerfully teasing call to the two grooms—coming from within the hold, he could see nothing but their stupefied expressions. He walked around the corner into the aisle just in time to see Jess disappear into her stall. Even from the middle of the aisle, Suliya could see his eyebrows shoot up to disappear behind the uncontrolled fall of his dark blond forelock. Without hesitation, he came on.

  For a moment, Suliya held out the hope that he'd aimed himself for Jess . . . but a few strides told her otherwise. Slightly uneven strides, another leftover from the summer that had torn through these stables, but otherwise the perfect image of a courier rider. Tall enough and substantial enough to hold the strength for rough, long rides, lean enough to keep unnecessary weight off the horses' backs. And experienced enough to run Anfeald Stables in spite of his relative youth—Morley, head of the Siccawei Stables, was nearly fifty. Carey struck Suliya as a hard thirty.

  Suliya, at just under twenty, intended to be running her own stable by his age as well. Or earlier.

  But as he approached, she winced inside; thinking of his reputation, the things that had gained him this post several years earlier. Uncompromising standards. An eye for detail. And the willingness to do what had to be done, no matter what it was, to accomplish the job before him—be it delivering a message or saving Arlen's life.

  He wasn't likely to offer quarter to the lowliest of his couriers.

  Then again, she'd only made a mistake.

  "What," he said, bemused as he nodded at Jess's stall, "was that all about?"

  Poot! Fess up. Fess up now . "I must have put Lady in the wrong stall. We just changed them—"

  He gave her a look, one that expressed his protective annoyance—but he didn't berate her for leaving Jess to walk naked from one stall to another. Then again, he knew Jess best. Maybe he would have anticipated her decision to stroll from one stall to the other. Suliya certainly hadn't.