"Ramble," Jess said, getting a clear reaction to his name, then pointing at him and repeating it. He watched her—alert, as instantly aware of her true identity as she'd been with the changed animals the summer before and interested simply because she was a mare and he a stallion. She gestured to herself. "Dun Lady's Jess. Jess."
And so his learning started. Learning she rewarded with a less stern attitude on her part than on their initial encounter, less of a rebuff to his flirting, and on occasion an actual responsiveness—the willingness to admire him, to give him a throaty nicker of interest.
She wasn't in season. If he'd known her well, he wouldn't have attended her so. But he was alone, and she was a new mare, and—separated from his world, all he knew was to impress himself upon her.
She fell into it naturally. Thinking as he thought, seeing his world through both his newly human eyes and her barely aged memories. Feeling his frustrations when he couldn't comfortably move about on four legs—he stubbornly tried it for a while—and understanding his sullen retreat into himself each time he discovered anew that he was indeed human.
But as she had, he learned quickly. He understood her words long before he played with forming his own. And no matter how she struggled to deal with her mixed feelings, her growing uncertainty about how her human friends and lover had handled their decisions, her anger at his situation, Ramble somehow knew how much she cared.
No one other than Jess went into his stall. He wouldn't allow it.
Jaime sat behind Carey's desk off the job room and let her face sink into her hands. Not despair, exactly . . .
Anticipation.
Rather than getting better, her attacks of mind-boggling misery had become distinctly worse. She never knew just when in the evening they'd hit; she'd taken to carrying a stoppered vial of medicated wine with her, and had learned to throw it back in a single swift gulp at the first sign of trouble. Simney understood the problem no better than ever, and Cesna made a project of digging up any and all reference books in Arlen's collection with the slimmest chance of providing clues; as far as Jaime knew, she was poring through one of them now.
Meanwhile, Jaime tried to reconcile the large number of pending messages with the much smaller number of Anfeald's couriers and the fact that she'd pulled a horse from the roster this evening. Too many ribs showing through his winter coat, and he'd stumbled with his rider today. No matter how many messages waited, she wasn't putting him on the roads tomorrow. At the same time, the messages funneling through Anfeald represented the best efforts of the precincts to keep their services running, the checkspells in place, the people safe . . . all things not to be taken lightly.
Still, it wasn't like any of the deliveries contained the answer to the mystery of what had happened to the Council, or why someone would come looking for Arlen, misrepresenting themselves as Chesba's people.
A quick run had confirmed that much. Imposters, come and gone without leaving any clues to their true nature and intent.
"Jaime."
She looked up toward the job room door and found Linton, the ranking courier and, as she thought of him, her co-conspirator in running the stables. He hadn't asked for the job; he hadn't ever wanted to do anything but ride. But he knew the horses and he knew the riders, and he was happy enough to offer his wisdom if she would be their mouthpiece.
Now he looked at her with concern, his face scratched and bruised at the leading edge of a thinning hairline, his thick wool shirt ripped, and something unidentifiable dangling from his hand. "Are you all right?"
She gave a slight snort. "Me? I'm fine. Just tired, like everyone else. And waiting. If I have to drug myself insensible, Gertli"—her erstwhile bouncer from several days earlier—"is ready to drag me back upstairs."
"With any luck it'll check for a bit," he said, and laid his unidentifiable something on the scarred wooden desktop. Long, muddy brown, writhing . . .
"It looks like giant freeze-dried earthworms in a mating dance," she observed. "And what happened to you? Looks like you got into a fight with a tree."
"Exactly that," he said, plucking ruefully at the tear in his sleeve. "I ran into something out on the trail."
"I would have thought the horses too tired to shy at anything by now."
He entered the room, slumping down in the single, plain wooden chair placed haphazardly at the corner of Carey's desk. A half-mended bridle hung over the back of it, and Linton sat unheeding on the thin saddle pad someone had dropped carelessly on the seat. "If she hadn't," he said, nodding at the earthworms, "I'd probably look something like that."
She stared again at the object, unable to make any sense of it, and shook her head. "I don't understand."
"Those are the ends of my reins, and see if I don't ride with shorter ones from now on."
She gave him an impatient frown. "Just tell me. What are you talking about?" But in the back of her mind, she thought she might know. She recalled Dayna and Jess's description of the meltdown area where the Council had died and she was very much afraid that she might know.
He shifted uneasily. "We weren't going very fast . . . just a sloppy little jog. Thank the guides—because this thing popped up on the edge of the trail between one blink and another." He shook his head. "It just . . . it almost looked like a giant fist squeezed the trees together, and what I saw was what oozed out between the fingers. Cammi booted right out of there—did a turnabout. The reins must've whipped out into that . . . spot."
"And your shirt?"
"Jagged edges of something that weren't there an instant earlier. Not a single instant." Linton shuddered. "Never much thought of myself as a coward, Jaime, but I'll tell you I never want to see the like again."
She didn't doubt it. Jess and Dayna had had the same reaction to the area where the Council died. But . . .
It was dark outside. Carey's personal job room was deep in the hold with no access to sunlight, but Jaime knew well enough what time it was; she had reason to keep track these days. It was dark now, and it had been dark for a while. "How'd you even see it?"
"I had a light with me—we all carry 'em now. Too easy to take a bad step in the dark when you're tired, no matter how well you know the trail." He rubbed a hand down his face, pulling his features long for a moment. "Guides saved me on that one. Had to have been more than luck, because I'm telling you—I hadn't triggered the light for more'n an instant before I came upon this mess."
"Damn good luck if that's all it was."
Linton, distracted, twisted to look over his shoulder. "Gertli's in the job room. You expecting him?"
Jaime shook her head. "I'm in here," she called; the evening misery was later than usual today; perhaps he'd gotten worried. "I'm still okay."
"That's not it," Gertli said, wearing a slightly puzzled expression—habitual of late—as he peered through the doorway at her. By dint of his size alone, he'd recently come to act as an unofficial peacekeeper for Jaime . . . a role for which his gentle personality left him ill-suited. But the precinct peacekeepers were currently as overworked and understaffed as the couriers, and Jaime'd had little choice but to recruit him.
Gertli frowned, an expression that made his harsh features—big-boned, with brows that met in the middle at the slightest excuse and a once-damaged nose slanting off to the side—downright fearsome. "Just had someone pop up in the travel chamber. She says . . ." and he glanced outside the job room and lowered his voice dramatically, "she says she's with the Council. The new one."
Jaime and Linton exchanged quick and equally startled glances; then she looked down at herself, quickly assessing her appearance—not much better than when she'd welcomed the two "assistants" who hadn't been from Chesba at all. "Here?" she asked Linton. "Or in one of the meeting rooms? I suppose the null room would be an insult . . ."
Gertli cleared his throat. "She's waiting here." A roll of his eyes indicated the job room behind him.
"Guides," Linton sighed. He pulled his chin again and said, "Well, if she's that eager to talk to us"—with no warning, he meant, and the notable lack of courtesy to fail to stay in the comfortable chamber area until the unprepared hosts could be found and apprised of her arrival—"then by all means. Here is fine." He stood, removed the bridle and saddle pad from the chair, and looked around the room, at a loss.
"Here," Jaime said, taking the gear and dumping it behind the desk, along with the remains of the reins. Linton came around to stand by her side, and by then the woman had supplanted Gertli at the doorway.
She was no one Jaime had met before . . . or if Jaime had seen her, the woman simply hadn't made an impression. Too bland in nature and presentation, with a costly wizard-cloth longsuit in the most subdued of autumn colors that did nothing to bring out her small features or complement her olive complexion. She'd swept her hair back in a stern up-do too immobile to be anything but magically fixed in place.
Jaime did her best to keep dismay from her face, but Linton showed it for both of them. She couldn't blame him. Between the precipitous arrival of the wizard and her unyielding appearance, Jaime couldn't imagine this would turn into anything close to a social call.
"Welcome to Anfeald," she said, leaving out any excuses for the crude reception. Saying anything else would carry implicit criticism for the woman's failure to warn them. The dispatch was, after all, working well enough for that. She gestured at the seat and said to Gertli, who still hovered uncertainly in the job room beyond, "Let Natt and Cesna know we have a visitor, will you? And ask the kitchen to send some refreshments."
"That won't be necessary," the woman said, twitching the long tails of her suit aside as she sat. "I doubt I'll be here that long. Arlen may not have mentioned me to you; my name is Hon Chandrai." With title, no less, on a remarkably informal world that rarely used them. "While I was on the Secondary Council I did some work with him on the world-travel checkspells. Please . . . let me extend my condolences. These are far from the circumstances under which I wish I'd become a member of the Council. Arlen was an extraordinary wizard."
"He was," Jaime said, "an extraordinary man." The new Council, at least, didn't seem to think Arlen still lived, unlike her previous two visitors.
Jaime herself . . . knew she'd never quite believe, not until she saw the evidence with her own eyes. Or heard it from someone who had been there.
Like the palomino. Gone, now . . .
And this woman knew it. Jaime gave her a sudden sharp look, saw Chandrai watching her with hawk-like focus, her remarkably dark eyes cold but otherwise expressionless.
Of course they knew. Jaime should have been expecting this visit from the moment she'd ushered the falsely identified man and woman out of the null room, and even more so once Cesna mentioned how easily the invoked world-travel spell could be categorized as what it was by those with the skills to perceive it in the first place.
Like someone who'd actually worked with Arlen on the checkspell.
Linton stood at the side of the battered desk, watching the swift, unspoken byplay between them and looking utterly lost. Jaime felt for him . . . but he'd either catch up along the way or wait for an explanation.
Without preamble, Chandrai spoke—Hon Chandrai, and every gesture and expression seemed designed to remind them of the fact. Did she think she'd intimidate Jaime, who spent her time—her personal time—with Chandrai's superior in their field of magic? Who had testified against a rogue wizard and stood her ground against that wizard's sadistic apprentice? Who had twice helped Camolen avoid crises only slightly less threatening than the one they faced now? Chandrai said: "Unusual circumstances notwithstanding, I'm afraid you've got a lot to answer for."
"You said what?" Linton blurted, a borderline polite version of I beg your pardon.
Jaime knew what the woman was talking about . . . but she wasn't about to suggest it. So she raised her eyebrows in surprise and didn't commit herself to words. Chandrai might not intimidate her . . . but the truth was that Jaime had no idea just how much power the woman did have over her. Could Jaime be detained for her participation in the forbidden spell? Would the Council even bother, with everything else on their plates?
She thought not. But she wasn't sure.
Chandrai responded directly to Linton, pinning him with that cold gaze. Jaime winced. Poor Linton. He didn't have a clue. All he knew was that Carey was gone, trailing a hunch about the Council deaths. "Forbidden spells," Chandrai said, her words hard and precise, "are forbidden spells even if the checkspells have failed. We overlooked the illicit spellcasting here the first time—knowing what chaos Anfeald Hold must have been experiencing, and that someone here could have easily appropriated an old spellstone . . . frankly, we had other things on our minds. But while our situation is still every bit as dire as it was, we cannot overlook a second event."
What? Maybe Jaime didn't know what the woman was talking about. She gave a mute shake of her head. Certainly Dayna had cast that first spell, her signature not surprisingly obscure to the former Secondary Council. But the spell itself was beyond Cesna and Natt. "Maybe we should wait for Arlen's apprentices," Jaime suggested, when Chandrai offered no other information. "I think you're about to waste perfectly good intimidation over something we know nothing about."
"Frankly, it's annoying enough that I've expended the time and energy to travel here in the first place," Chandrai said. "I assure you, I would not be here without good reason—and my certain knowledge that both spells were triggered from the grounds of Anfeald leaves me less than willing to listen to naive denials."
"Oh, please," Jaime said, forgetting her wariness for a moment of utter irritation. "You won't even tell me exactly what you're talking about, probably exactly in case I don't already know—you don't want to spread the word about just which forbidden spell is now available to anyone who wants to try it. And we don't have walls around Anfeald, either the precinct or the hold grounds. I'm not denying that you detected whatever you detected, but I'm damned well saying I know nothing about it." And she didn't, she told herself silently. Not that second spell, anyway. Chandrai seemed to consider it one and the same as the first . . . which meant someone additional had cast the original world-travel spell.
For an instant she wondered who, and how they could have acquired it in the first place—and why they would, with so much going on around them. The answer came quite naturally.
The two who had visited her. They'd been in Carey's office; Cesna had been sure she'd heard something in Arlen's workroom. They, too, had felt the spell. They'd known Carey was gone.
They'd gone after him.
Time to do a more thorough check of Arlen's workroom—and to beef up the security spells.
Locking the barn door after the horse was gone.
Quite literally, in this case, with the palomino in Ohio. Jaime bit her lip to keep an inappropriate smile at bay.
Chandrai noticed anyway, damn her, frowning in an affronted manner. "There's hardly anything amusing about this situation. In case you haven't noticed, Camolen is in trouble, and it hardly behooves any of us for me to waste my time like this."
"Then don't," Jaime said simply. "Tell me enough so I can try to help, or leave me alone to help as best I can on my own." She lifted the twisting object that had once been trailing rein ends. "Do you think we don't know there's more going on than you've told any of us?"
In a flash, Chandrai lost her hard-edged composure. "Where did you get that? The site of the Council's death is off limits!"
Linton said dryly, "Those of us who travel by conventional means often run into strange things on the trail. Those used to be the ends of my reins."
"Have you told anyone else about it?"
"I'm more interested in what you can tell us about it," Jaime said. "Plenty of us have felt from the start that there's more to this than someone's decision to do away with the Council in a single, stand-alone incident. What Linton saw today pretty much confirms that."
"Plenty of us?" Chandrai said, the hint of unease on her face speaking volumes in one who had been so controlled. "Explain, please."
Jaime didn't need to say Carey and Dayna and Arlen's apprentices. No need to bring them into it at all. She jerked open a desk drawer, pulled out a thick pile of recent messages, and thumped them down on the desk. "Don't you think we talk to each other?" she said dryly. "Those of us who were left behind?"
Horains' daughter. Zygia's brother. Head couriers, lovers, family members, landers and those now trying to keep the bereft precinct wizard holds functioning.
"You must tell no one of your experience," Chandrai said. She nodded at the awkward twist of stiffened, distorted reins. "I'll take that."
"You must be kidding," Jaime said. "I've got couriers running these roads every day. Either what happened to the Council members was an attack and it's spreading, or they did something and that's spreading, or the whole thing is just some inexplicable event that the wizards went to check out and got killed, and that's spreading. As long as you're not talking, all the rest of us can do is guess. But I'm sure not sending my people out there without warning them to watch for this kind of phenomenon. I can't believe you'd even consider asking me!"
Chandrai winced slightly, and gave a single nod of her impeccably groomed head. "I suppose it's of no use in any event," she said. "If you've discovered corruption, then others are bound to do the same. Because," and she met Jaime's gaze evenly, "you're right. It's spreading. We don't know how it started, or how it was controlled to kill the Council, but the first known corrupted area is what they were investigating when they were killed. But most importantly . . . we don't know how to stop it." She offered Jaime and Linton the merest hint of a wry expression. "We've been trying to avoid widespread panic."
Linton said suddenly, "That's why the dispatch is barely working. It went down because of the Council's death, but you've kept it that way. To keep the word from reaching anyone who hasn't actually seen this . . . corruption."
"Essentially," Chandrai said, releasing a faint sigh. "Although that's simplifying matters considerably. Even were we not interfering, the dispatch would hardly be up to normal operations." But her companionable moment was over, and she pressed her lips—magically tinted to the most natural of been-kissed reds—firmly together before adding, "Perhaps now you understand why I'm here—"
"No," Jaime said, cutting off the admonishment she'd seen coming. "I only know that we'd still be utterly in the dark if someone hadn't triggered illicit magic in this area, and you hadn't come to scold me about it. And I think it's about time the other families knew at least this much—and the peacekeepers and precinct guards, while you're at it. We are not the problem here . . . but we're the ones who have to deal with it."
"You are entirely too certain of your place in this world," Chandrai said, annoyance stiffening her posture.
"Maybe," Jaime said, though it took effort to hide the fear she felt at those words. Fear of being sent back, of never finding closure for Arlen's death. Never truly convincing herself he was gone, that he wasn't waiting somewhere for someone to find and help him.
Her.
"Or maybe," Jaime added, "it operates enough like mine that I know exactly my place in this world." She gave Chandrai her most matter-of-fact look, the one that meant this is the way it is, and there's nothing you can do to change it. "Doing my damndest to keep the people I care about as safe as they can be." She leaned back in Carey's chair, watching Chandrai try to decide how to deal with her unrepentant rebellion, well aware of Linton's impressed but alarmed regard. "Let me know," she said, "if you ever figure out what those spells were all about."
Chandrai gave her a tight smile. "Let me know," she said, "when you decide to tell us what you know."