Changespell 01 Dunn Lady's Jess Page 11

  Jess eyed her uncertainly, but her fisted hands seemed to relax a little.

  "What about it, Carey?" Jaime asked, taking him by surprise. "You ever put a beginner up on Dun Lady's Jess?"

  "No," he said without hesitation. "She's not that kind of horse. You've got to be a thinking rider with her."

  "Anybody else but you ride her at all?" Jaime persisted—even though the realistic little voice in her head insisted the whole conversation was absurd.

  "Sure," he said. "Arlen's always having to contend with people who're politicking him—and every once in a while it suits him to humor them. Since he's got a reputation for one of the best courier fleets in the region, the horses get attention, too." He nodded at Jess. "Lady's a pretty mare, elegant . . . a little more compact than you might think from what you see of her. Quick, though. She tends to catch the eye. Sometimes they ask to ride her. Sometimes I let them."

  It was, Jaime thought, an awful long answer to her question. The answer of a man who was trying to justify himself. Jess, though, was now paying him more attention than she gave Sunny. "They asked for me?" she questioned. "Me? They thought I was a good horse?"

  "Thought?" Carey snorted. "You are a good horse, Lady."

  The turn of the conversation was . . . far from what she had been looking for. Uneasily, Jaime said, "I was just wondering if she could relate to having a rider who was stiff and tense."

  Carey shrugged. At first she thought he wasn't even going to make the effort to search his memory, but then his know-it-all attitude fell away, victim to a pleasant grin. "Hey, Lady, you remember that wizard's son, the one who couldn't even spell a night glow?" At her blank expression he realized, "No, you wouldn't remember that part. Tall, skinny guy, walked like he had a pike stuck up his ass. Sat that way in the saddle, too."

  Jess perked up, forgetting her fears and twisting in the saddle so she could see him as she traveled the circle. "I stepped on his foot!" she recalled with just a little too much enthusiasm; Jaime saw her quick double check to see if Carey had noticed the slip.

  "You sure did," he agreed, letting it pass if he had.

  Jess laughed. "He sat with his feet stuck out like this," she continued, locking her knees and pointing her toes east and west. "He was awful!" she decreed and, looking down at herself, laughed again.

  Carey's grin broadened; it was hard to look at Jess' laughter and not smile. "He was awful."

  Jaime smiled for a different reason. Jess, absorbed in amusement, had relaxed. Sunny sighed a huge sigh, one Jess could not fail to feel through the saddle, and was now softly chewing the bit, a contented little gesture. And Jess looked down at him, and then over to Jaime, as understanding dawned.

  "I was riding like that man," she said. "With a pike up my ass. And now I'm not, and Sunny likes it much better."

  "Didn't you?" Jaime asked mildly.

  She nodded, and then, with a sly smile, asked, "Do you think Sunny will try to step on my foot?"

  * * *

  Carey sat on the low stool that resided by the arena aisle gate, absently kneading his quickly healing arm as he watched one of Jaime's advanced students longeing a lesson horse. The critical nature of his gaze was more attributable to Jaime's refusal of his own offer to exercise the horses while she was gone than to any slight errors he might have seen in the student's effort. Cathy, her name was, and she seemed to know her way around Jaime's barn pretty well.

  The Dancing was a beautiful setup, Carey had to admit, and when it came right down to it, he almost admired Jaime's firm but pleasant refusal of his riding services. She'd pointed out that she'd never seen him ride and she didn't want to fool with it, only one day before the show. It was his pride that was growling, not his common sense.

  But it was all tangled up in something that wasn't merely pride, and that was his strong and even fearful conviction that this small group of friends had no concept of what they were dealing with—not when it came to Derrick, or to magic in general. Petite Dayna wasn't even thoroughly convinced that Lady was a horse. Was a horse, and not what Jaime seemed to think, used to be a horse and now human. Association with Arlen had taught Carey that not even magic could change the essential nature of any creature.

  He nodded to Cathy as she passed by, leading in the horse to exchange it with another. The clothing on this world was certainly something to get used to. Despite a certain level of sophistication lent to it by mage technology, Camolen had not yet discovered the stretch fabrics which changed bodies from vague shapes under loosely tailored clothing to distinct shapes and movements. He'd had to work hard at nonchalance two days earlier when he'd found Lady wearing those breeches for her first ride. Part of Lady's essential nature was her beauty, and that certainly hadn't changed, even if she was more exotic than conventional. He caught himself wondering how she was doing at the horse show.

  Behind him, a horse paced briefly in its stall and squealed. JayDee. In heat, and announcing it to the world, hoping she could get somebody interested. Just like Lady when she—

  Carey gave an internal shudder and cut the thought short—or tried to. He and Jaime had had a short and somewhat awkward conversation in which Jaime mentioned that Jess the woman was not dealing with any kind of monthly cycle, and did he suppose she would stick to her equine cycles? Probably. Thank goodness spring had passed with no sign of such an event, for Lady in heat was a . . . was a . . . was less than demure.

  Stop it! She's not human! No little wonder he couldn't get his thoughts aimed in the right direction; as long as he sat here looking at horses, how could he expect himself to ponder anything else? Back to the house, he decided, rising and shoving the stool against the wall. He ducked under the cross-ties, gave the horse there an absent pat, and murmured a reply to Cathy's, "See ya," wondering why everyone in this place seemed to use that phrase, regardless of the chance that it might be true.

  In the house he found Mark, with whom he'd had little contact so far but whom he judged to be amiable enough. Mark was in the final stages of preparing the boxed ingredients of what he called macaroni and cheese; he looked up from the stove and said, "You want some?"

  It smelled good enough . . . worth a try. "Sure," Carey allowed. He was still getting used to the idea that obtaining almost any kind of food was as easy as walking into one of many stores. He wasn't, however, spending a lot of effort to get used to this world, despite the purchase of new clothes and his much shorter hair. He hoped he wouldn't be here long enough to make familiarity a necessity.

  Mark dropped two plastic bowls on the table, dumped the macaroni into them, and hooked a chair with his foot, sitting with a thump. "Not the greatest stuff, but I don't do much cooking when Jaime's at one of her shows," he said.

  Carey thought it was odd to apologize for offering food and nearly said so. Instead, he said, "I'm grateful you and Jaime are letting us stay. I hope it won't be for long."

  "I thought you didn't have a way to get back home," Mark said through a mouthful of macaroni. He swallowed and added, "You really think this Derrick guy'll try to find you?"

  "I know he will," Carey said positively, testing a cautious forkful of the pasta. Not bad. "I suppose he might try to go home, but I doubt it—Calandre's a pretty tough mistress, and he'd do better to stay in this world than try to return to Camolen without the spell."

  Mark frowned, and spent an obvious moment chewing on words as well as his dinner. "Some of this doesn't make sense to me. I mean, how do things work over there? Who's in charge? Isn't there someone who does this James Bond stuff for a living? The Feds, the Camolen CIA?"

  Carey ignored the unfamiliar references. "There is . . . but there isn't." He waved off Mark's protest with his fork. "It kind of works like your states, from what I've picked up so far. Camolen isn't one country, it's about two dozen little ones called precincts. Originally they were just territories held by powerful wizards. For the most part wizards aren't interested in politics . . . but they do tend to attract people looking for power or securi
ty."

  "And the precincts formed around them."

  Carey shrugged. "It's part democracy, part inheritance . . . lander control tends to stay in the family."

  "Like the Kennedys." Mark nodded, amused by yet another reference that sailed by Carey.

  "Whatever. Even now, though, people tend to think of Anfeald as Arlen's and Siccawei as Sherra's—or Erowah as Calandre's. But each precinct has its own guard, and a Lander Council."

  "So who's really in charge?"

  "Depends on who you ask." Another shrug. "It's the wizards that hold us together as Camolen. A long time ago they decided that if they didn't create a council to police one another, they'd tear the continent apart. Now people can go to the Lander justice sessions with complaints, and the Landers go to the Wizards." He grinned. "I understand life was pretty interesting before that."

  "Spare me," Mark muttered. "It's been interesting enough around here lately."

  Carey snorted. "Yeah." He took a deep breath. "Anyway, major political squabbling tends to upset the wizards—too distracting—so that helps to keep things quiet. And the landers usually stay out of the wizards' way, unless they're really causing problems."

  "Like Calandre."

  "She's been pretty good lately—until this. They'll be in on that soon, if they're not already." Carey held out his bowl for seconds when Mark got up to help himself. "But everything rides on that checkspell—and keeping Arlen's spell out of Calandre's hands in the first place. That brings it right back to me. Somehow I've got to get those spellstones back and get home."

  Mark inserted some obviously reluctant reality. "Maybe you're not connected to your magic after all—maybe there's no point to butting heads with Derrick."

  Carey echoed the gesture. "There's only one way to find out, now."

  "How's that?" Mark asked with interest.

  "Try Arlen's spell," Carey said matter-of-factly, looking up from the bowl to see Mark's reaction, which turned out to be intense curiosity.

  "Can you do that?"

  "Probably not. I've never done magic, aside from a few simple spells almost everyone knows."

  "Can't hurt to try, I suppose," Mark said, scraping the last of the food from his bowl.

  Carey didn't say anything. It could, indeed, hurt to try. If Arlen had been right, and he had some tie to Camolen that let him bring magic into this world, a botched spell could wreak havoc. But if he took it slow . . .

  "Well, whatever you're going to do with that manuscript, I'd find a good hiding place for the thing," Mark advised, dumping his bowl into the sink, along with the other dishes that had accumulated since Lady and Jaime had left.

  "Hide it? Why?"

  Mark gave him a surprised look. "Because your friend Derrick knows Jaime lives here, that's why."

  Carey fought through astonishment, and then anger. How in the nine heavens had Derrick found this place? And how could Jaime have neglected to tell him about it? "Derrick knows . . ." he said slowly, closing his eyes.

  "Jay forget to tell you?" Mark asked. "Yeah, I'll bet she did. She gets like that before a show, and things have been a little . . . odd around here lately anyway. Old Derrick came by a couple weeks ago—he was checking all the stables around here, looking for Jess. It's hard to believe he wouldn't recognize Jaime when we were at the LK."

  "So of course he'd come back here again," Carey muttered, half to himself, suddenly glad he'd stowed Derrick's bow and quiver under the couch he'd been sleeping on. He decided that tonight, he would string it. "He'll probably come as a thief would," he told Mark. "At night, or when no one's home. Hiding the spell sounds like a good idea."

  "Hey, I know just the place." Mark squirted a liberal amount of thick blue liquid over the dishes as he ran hot water; he ended the task with a flourish and returned the bottle under the sink. "Toss your bowl over here, huh? Might as well get this done before they take over the kitchen." He fielded the bowl that Carey obligingly—and literally—threw to him, and explained, "This is a pretty old house. When they built it, they used a pier foundation—didn't put in a basement, aside from a little storm cellar. Since then the family's been digging it out. It's done, now, but there's one wall that's not blocked up yet. It leads right under the front porch crawl space. A guy your size could get in there easy—heck, I'm skinny enough to do it—but Derrick's big enough he probably wouldn't even think about it. We can put the spell inside a couple zip locks and stash it under there, if you want."

  It was just clever enough to suit Carey. Except . . . "Zip locks?"

  "Yeah, plastic bags. It'll keep the paper dry." Mark glanced at Carey's lack of understanding—Camolen had spells for such things—and said, "Never mind, you'll see. Anyway, it'd be easier to do it before dark, if you want to."

  Carey glanced out the window over the sink. Another hour till sunset, maybe. "I want to get a quick look at the spell, first," he said. "Just so I can get an idea of what I'm working with." A look he'd been wanting for two impatient days, and that he didn't dare try to take until he felt clear of the fatigue and drugs of his captivity.

  "I don't know how you're going to do that," Mark called after him as he went to get his saddlebags, also under the couch. "It's sealed pretty well."

  It would be, Carey thought, dropping to his knees to fish the saddlebags out, retrieving the bow and quiver while he was at it. Fortunately, the spell that would release those seals happened to be one of the few he knew—although he doubted Arlen realized it. But it was inevitable that a wizard's top courier would pick up something of magic, over the years. And Carey had been with Arlen for . . . ten years, twelve? Ever since his adolescence. He absently thumbed the courier's ring he still wore.

  He pulled the manuscript out of the saddlebags and rested it on his thighs, contemplating the idea of trying it himself, and the possible consequences. Maybe he'd use the indoor arena. He didn't think any pyrotechnics would affect an area larger than that, although the noise might alarm the horses. He ran his fingers along the edge of the thick, creamy vellum and sighed. What a mess. You're the only one I know who will invoke that crystal, Arlen had said. Given a second chance, Carey wasn't certain he could be trusted to do the same again.

  Mark came in the family room, leaned down to look over Carey's shoulder. "See? We thought about getting into it—Jaime was going to take it to OSU, see if they could identify the language, but decided against it when they couldn't do anything with a copy of the letters on the front. But we decided we'd just rip the thing up, so we left it."

  Magic, Carey had learned, was little more than a series of mnemonic devices that channeled the user's will, which in turn guided the power of the magic. That was the one problem with magic, and the reason he'd never given any thought to learning more than he already knew—any power that was used in a spell was also channeled through the magic-user's body, and the more potent the spell, the more the power. No, thank you. Fortunately, the spell for releasing Arlen's seal required little in the way of concentration or magic.

  And it would tell him if he had any hope at all of employing magic in this world. With a glance at Mark, Carey closed his eyes and took the deep breath that triggered his own minor level of concentration. His fingers spelled out the short formula, and with a wash of relief greater than he'd expected, he felt the slight tug of magic pass through body and soul. When he opened his eyes, the seal didn't look any different, but it was warm putty to his fingers, and peeled right off the vellum.

  Mark, still close over his shoulder, gave a low whistle. "Holy shit—it's for real!"

  Carey couldn't keep the satisfaction out of his voice. "Yes, it's for real—and it's my first step home."

  * * *

  Well into dark of the next evening found all of the household members at work, trying to wrap up the end of a busy day. Carey ferried flakes of hay for the horses' bedtime snack—a chore Jaime did trust him with—while Mark fumbled around in the dark, hauling in the sacks of grain that should have come in while it was still daylight,
but which had been forgotten in a day of fence mending. They were both tired, and Mark was slow—slow enough that Carey had once checked, and found him listening to the owls in the small patch of woods behind the paddocks. Carey couldn't blame him.

  The third party at work was Keg, the ever-busy farm dog, who took off in his nightly rounds of the property. It was Keg who first alerted Carey to trouble, although at the time he was more concerned about his skirmish with the baling twine than he was about what Keg might find to bark at. It took a moment for him to recall Mark's warning of the previous day, and by then he'd heard the unmistakable grunts of a fight.

  He flung aside the loose twine and ran outside, momentarily blind in the darkness. The dog's barking was close now, and had escalated into fury; Carey followed the noise to the front of the house, and had just made out the two figures struggling there when he was stunned by a thunderous blast of noise. Keg silenced immediately, and through the ringing in his ears, Carey shouted Mark's name.

  "Son of a bitch!" Mark yelped in way of an answer, and by then Carey had found his night vision, and could see Mark struggling with a larger man he'd nonetheless managed to get partially pinned. "On the ground, Carey—get the gun!"

  It was a dark moon and the gun was invisible on the dark grass; not until a car drove by and its headlights glinted off the steel did Carey see it, and then they all three dove for it at the same time. Carey's hands closed around the warm barrel and he rolled away and up to his knees, brandishing the weapon even though he had no idea how to use it. Three wary figures stared at one another for the merest instant as they each deciphered who was who, and then Carey pointed the gun more accurately and advised, "Stand fast, Derrick."

  "You don't even know what a gun does," Derrick sneered, nonetheless following instructions.

  "I saw enough of those movies you watched to tell me exactly what it does," Carey said, mostly bluff. "I know what you're after, Derrick, but you might as well forget it. I don't have the spell anymore."