Changespell Legacy (39 page)

I've missed you, I've missed you
all
. We need you here. I don't understand—"

"Why I would go back to be with a horse? As a horse?" Anger seeped out, but it wasn't at Jaime, wasn't fair to make Jaime think it was. She watched Jaime closely, trying to gauge her expression and reaction.

"I thought I understood some things about being human, but I didn't. I thought I understood some things about being friends . . . about being
lovers
—but I didn't. I can no longer be certain of my friends, and without that, I am not sure of the point in being human. In trying so hard to learn what it's all about." She shook her head; Jaime had gone from looking puzzled to frowning in a most unhappy way. "I need time,"

Jess said, then nodded at the cannister that had been bumping against her shoulder for so long and bore every sign of it. "I have done what I can. Now I will go do something for me. And for Ramble.
He
needs me, too. If you let us, we will use the furthest fields, the ones Carey was going to leave fallow this year. If not . . . we will find a place."

"Let you!" Jaime cried, comprehension beginning to dawn. She'd lost Arlen . . . in a way, she was about to lose Jess. "Of course I'll
let
you! I can't believe—I wish—" She stopped, clenching her hand around the film cannister, a hand that only moments ago would have reached for Jess instead, still wanted to reach for her now. But Jess had put distance between them with her words. Had removed Jaime's ability to take for granted their relationship, just as Carey and Dayna had removed Jess's ability to rely on their support and presence. Finally Jaime blurted, "But what about Carey?"

Jess didn't react. Or rather, she tried not to. But the calico was not to be fooled; he sensed her sudden tension and leapt lightly away, boxing the ears of the little black-and-white cat on the way. Carefully, Jess said, "Carey isn't here. And if he makes it back . . ." She stopped, took a considering breath, and wished the cat were still in her lap, giving her his warmth and affection. "There are some things he never accepted about who I am. He tried to pretend it wasn't so, but . . . I don't think he'll want anything to do with me now."

Jaime didn't understand. Not with that look on her face, the taken-aback, eyebrows drawn together over worried eyes. She might have been about to ask . . . but she hesitated on her words, and what eventually came out was, "Will you at least eat something? Rest again before you go? You look done in, Jess."

She
was
done in. But she was also through traveling, and could spend her days in a secure field that, not so far in the future, would hold more grass than she and Ramble could eat in a summer of grazing. She would be all right.
They
would be all right. Still, she gave Jaime a thoughtful, faraway look and said, "Eat something, yes. I have a sudden want for those spicy chicken parts you taught the cook to make."

She didn't think she could have startled Jaime any more . . . but without removing that startled gaze from Jess—expecting to be corrected at any time, no doubt, by this friend who eschewed meats and strong seasonings—Jaime contacted the kitchen and ordered the Buffalo chicken wings. Jess ate two servings.

And then she left, cantering out of the stable on worn black hooves, the cannister no longer bumping at her shoulder.

A
rlen stopped short in front of Grunt, who promptly ran up against his back, jamming his heavy shoulder into Arlen's kidney. Arlen gave an
oof
of both pain and surprise, and snapped, "Pay attention, Grunt."

Grunt whuffled the bemused noise of a horse who's been woken from a nap and nibbled absently at Arlen's uppermost arm. Even affectionately, one might say.

But Arlen was in no mood to notice, not with the landscape before him warped so sickeningly. He shook Grunt off and draped the lead rope around a tree branch, automatically taking the opportunity to scrape the mud from the sides and bottoms—and sometimes the tops—of his boots, using the nearest handy rock.

As an afterthought, he picked up the rock and hefted it into the distorted area before him. It landed with a hollow, mildly reverberating
thonk
—the wrong kind of noise altogether for a rock hitting soft spring ground—and rolled until it hit a jagged protrusion that Arlen didn't even try to identify. Maybe it had once been a tree; maybe a rabbit. For all he knew, maybe a chunk of cloud; there was no telling how high the damage rose.

Around him, the rest of the landscape didn't seem to notice anything amiss at all. A small flock of steel-grey birds fluttered in the brush to his left, the males flashing the brilliant orange of their underwing display in an attempt to impress the world in general. The air was still, the sun warm, and there were even sections of the trail—the edges and high points—that held firm beneath his feet. The woods around him had a familiar feel, with bud-studded branches in accustomed silhouettes and the bark patterns he was used to, as well as the varying but generally easy to navigate terrain—gulches he could easily avoid, shallow creeks that cut mild beds through soft soil and stopped at hard bedrock, glittering in miniature rapids over a profusion of water-rounded stones.

Anfeald Woods, or coming close.

But such normality was becoming harder and harder to find. The damage before him loomed large and impressive, but he'd realized only this morning that it was possible to stop at any random point along the trail, scan the woods, and find a spot of distortion. Small ones, barely discernible against the cheerful disorder of the woods . . . but they were there. And the large areas were becoming harder and harder to circumvent, forcing him to take Grunt far out of their way . . . although if he'd had a better sense of direction, he might well have wasted less time finding the trail again.

More than once he'd wondered if he'd be able to reach Anfeald at all. Not because of the hardship—he was tougher and leaner than he'd ever been, and if the oft-mucky footing of early spring slowed him, the warming days made up for the annoyance—or because he'd been accosted by many more men of the same ilk as the illfated fellow who'd found him so many small towns ago.

No, it was as he pondered the distressed pockets of landscape, as he skirted the edges of them, now sometimes running into two or three obviously separate occurrences with overlapping borders, that he wondered if he'd make it home. Sooner or later, he'd find himself trapped. And sooner or later, upon finding an actively distorting area, he'd have to try to follow the instigating energy to its source . . . thus giving himself away to whoever wanted him out of the way.

Supposing they were still looking at all.

Were they smart, they'd be turning their attention to the distortions, as was all of Camolen. But somehow he doubted they'd see it that way. "Too convenient for me," he said to Grunt, who paused from his browsing to give Arlen a doubtful look. Arlen turned his attention back to this latest roadblock and felt common sense give way before a sudden surge of anger.
I want to go
home
, burn it!
Home to Jaime if she still somehow waited for him, home to his familiar workshop and his defenses, where he could throw himself into solving this problem whose solution so obviously eluded whoever now ran the Council.

Home to his frequent and good-natured arguments with Carey over matters between landers and wizards, home to Jess's natural ebullience, her touchingly open nature, the amusing sly looks she cast at Arlen whenever she meant to tease Carey.

Home to the familiar—which none of
this
was. Not the travel, the vulnerability, the inability to use the magic that had long ago become second nature—
Damn whoever's behind this
. "Damn them all to the lowest hell!" he said with such abrupt vehemence that Grunt stopped chewing altogether and Arlen realized how loud he'd been in the otherwise pleasant activity of the woods. He gave the gelding a pat, and thus reassured, Grunt went back to wrapping his flexible lips around the stubbiest of sprouting greens. Ruefully, Arlen told him, "If I do enough shouting, I won't have to use magic for them to find us. Whoever
they
are in the first place."

He knew the look of an enforcement agent when he saw one. He just didn't know who'd sent his. Too bad Grunt had trampled the man so thoroughly.

Or, remembering the helplessness of being drugged—
over
drugged—and the intent in the big man's eye, maybe not too bad at all. Maybe . . . just right.

It still left him in this mess. It left Camolen in this mess, with only Arlen remaining as a Council-level wizard, and unable to use his skills to help either himself or his people. Although . . .

He reached through his open coat front and dug around in the deep baggy pockets of the horrible orange tunic he'd acquired way back near Amses—he fervently hoped to wear the thing to shreds before anyone he knew actually saw him in it—and pulled out a handful of cheap spellstones. He'd intended to get closer to home—perhaps to
be
at home—when he experimented with these, but now he thought perhaps he had a better chance of getting there if he did a little poking around on the spot.

He already knew that raw magic incited the disturbances, even once they seemed to have solidified and gone dormant. He couldn't use his own signature-ridden magic to experiment with small spells, but . . .

He picked out a spellstone he thought he recalled as being designed to enhance one's sexuality—utter nonsense, since those kinds of spells had to be customized for the recipient, but people did ever hope—and triggered it.

The stone produced a small wash of token magic—thin magic to Arlen's magical sense, with a tinny one-note feel to a man accustomed to producing orchestral magic himself. Grunt, too, felt it, and regarded Arlen with a sudden hopeful interest that alarmed Arlen enough so he took a few steps aside.

"One of the reasons I like cats," he said pointedly to Grunt, "is that they seldom hump your leg."

But he didn't lose track of the purpose of the experiment, even as Grunt briefly pawed the ground in his frustration, gave up, and returned to his favorite pastime of pulling food into his mouth.

Arlen could have pawed the ground in frustration, too, for as the spellstone went dark, the disturbed area didn't so much as ripple. "Not that anything else has made sense lately," he said, ignoring the frequency with which he'd been offering asides to the gelding. Wizards were supposed to be eccentric, especially theoretical specialists like himself. Everyone said so.

Then again, only a theoretical wizard was likely to have the ability to do what he tried next. Choosing a spellstone he believed was meant to offer a hokey greeting appropriate to new parents, he tossed it at the disturbed area and invoked it in mid-flight.

An image appeared above its travel arc, glowing with purples for congratulations and gold for luck but looking subtly
wrong
somehow; he couldn't read the words against the backdrop of melted reality, and then when the active spellstone landed, he didn't have the chance to try—for the melted reality spasmed in reaction, reaching for the stone, enfolding it, warping the colors into the swirl of mixed landscape hues.

Arlen tensed, taking a few steps back and ready to run, but once the spellstone had been engulfed, the warping activity ceased, leaving the distortion with new splots and globs of bright color that should have faded as soon as the spellstone discharged . . . and didn't.

Arlen frowned at the mess, rubbed a finger down the mustache he didn't have, and muttered, "Well,
that
wasn't right." He searched the spellstones piled in his hand, poking them aside with his finger until he found a similar one—meant for the newly partnered, but close enough. Same gaudy colors, same bright message . . . he triggered it, this time knowing it wouldn't affect the disturbed area from here and giving all his attention to the spell itself.

Words hung in the air, incomplete and sagging, the colors uneven and the pithy message hard to read.

On a quick hunch—this was his strength, this troubleshooting process—he moved a step closer to the disturbed area, and watched the cheery greeting fall apart completely, scattering into illegible lumps of quickly fading color.

No wonder the new Council hadn't been able to get anything but the most basic of services up and running again. Whatever this effect was, wherever it came from, it gobbled up raw magic like candy, thriving on it; it grabbed conventional magic only with the most direct of contact. But even in disdaining conventional magic, it interfered with it, breaking down spell structures and distorting the results. Arlen looked askance at Grunt, realizing he was perhaps luckier than he'd first suspected at the benign results of that sexual enhancement spell.

And then the questions crowded in. What if he ran all these experiments on an actively warping area, what then? That, too, was something he could try without revealing himself to those who watched for his magical signature; following the activity to its source was not, and would have to wait as long as possible—although initiating either experiment depended on finding an area of actively warping reality.

Arlen dumped the spellstones back into his unpleasantly orange pocket and closed the coat around himself, fastening the toggles in the cooling afternoon. Ahead of him lay the huge area of disturbance, one he wanted to skirt before sundown. A glance behind showed two other easily identified areas of nastiness, small enough to wrap his arms around if he'd had any such desire. To the side he found a fist-sized spot, a blackish blot on which one of the male birds perched, flashing his underwings for all to see.

He came to the grim realization that he'd have much less trouble finding an active warp than he liked to admit.

Home.

"I'm trying," he said to Jaime. But only Grunt heard him.

"I'm
trying
," Dayna said, fighting an overwhelming load of guilt and pressure as she faced the impatience of her friends. Well, minus Mark, who was at work, and plus Wheeler, whom she'd come to appreciate more and more in a visual sense—not quite so bland as he'd seemed upon first glance—but whom she would never call a friend.