Arlen. She'd felt him earlier in the day . . . Jaime was sure of it.
Sure of it, or wishful thinking?
Total denial, Jaime told herself with finality. Stuck in limbo too long, no proof of his death other than a melted landscape where he might have been standing . . . too many other things going on to accept the grief.
Arlen.
The hope hurt.
Here it was well into evening, and she felt fine. No hint of the evening ague, long past any time she'd grown to expect it.
Although she had her dosing vial on hand. Close on hand.
Arlen, do it again. Touch me. Make me certain.
The hope . . . was a wonderful pain.
Jaime dropped the courier report she hadn't been looking at onto Carey's desk, letting it settle atop the others. Meltdown central, that's what they should call this place. Here where she mapped courier reports of the burgeoning dangers of the landscape. Not just Anfeald, either—not since word quickly spread about her undertaking, and now Camolen's couriers passed along sightings from their own precincts along with their message loads in a strange underground movement to deal with the dangers.
She wondered if the new Council even knew of the project, or understood the need for it—or if they were so tied up in the abstract hunt for answers that they'd lost track of the need for a practical response.
One thing Camolen sorely lacked, given its otherwise sophisticated nature: disaster site teams. No Red Cross on this side of the world-travel spell.
Jaime glanced up at the country map newly tacked up on the wall—the precincts of Camolen, from westmost Therand and Solvany to a few remote, sparsely populated eastern precincts whose precinct wizards didn't even make it onto the Council. She took no comfort in the fact that those territories remained unsullied by the red pencil she'd used to mark sightings; very little information came in and out, and the rugged mountains blocking them from neighboring lands outside Camolen—Jaime didn't even know their names—made for plenty of territory where meltdowns would go unnoticed. Therand and Solvany, too, were all but cut off from the rest of Camolen. Without travel booths, the Lorakan mountain range reduced travel to whatever managed to come through the two mountain passes.
This time of year, that wasn't much.
It didn't matter. There was enough red splotted over the main of Camolen to indicate how quickly the meltdowns were spreading. The more detailed map of Anfeald hung beside the job board, where the couriers could check their routes for danger spots.
And still none of them had any idea what was going on. She'd heard murmurings among the couriers, warnings to avoid invoking magic near one of the meltdowns—that magic seemed to irritate them and enlarge them. Thinking back to what Linton had said, it made sense . . . he'd had his narrow call after invoking a light.
Whatever else he'd wanted to say to her that evening had been lost . . . as well as her intent to have Arlen's workroom thoroughly inspected, although that task had since been done, with maddeningly nebulous results. Yes, the apprentices thought things had been disturbed. No, they couldn't be sure . . . right now, things were disturbed as a matter of course.
Jaime gave a gurgle of frustration and turned back to her paperwork. She'd already made assignments for the next day and put them aside for Linton to refine; now she'd moved on to what she considered optional in this triage situation. Topmost on the pile of Camolen's thicker, slightly textured paper sat a pale blue trifold addressed to Carey with a logo of magically stamped gold and bright turquoise. SpellForge Industries. One of Camolen's biggest commercial spellmaking companies.
Say what?
She fumbled with the seal, a general delivery seal that nonetheless required her to trigger it before it would release.
Jaime Cabot, not meant for magic. Consort of a wizard.
Maybe. If she'd been right about what she'd heard. Felt. Touched.
Arlen.
Finally the wax softened under her fingertips, and she was able to peel it off, wondering how long it would be before SpellForge came up with a reuseable sealer spell as she balled it up and tossed it in the low, square receptacle beside the desk.
The paper spilled open, releasing a smaller packet even as it rebounded to its original flat shape. She hadn't even known such spelled paper existed. Fancy. The embossed lettering at the top identified it as being from the desk of an executive at SpellForge; the exact nature of the man's position escaped her. Board member, she would have guessed.
I regret to bother you in this time of need and confusion, but find it necessary to make contact over a purely personal matter. Understanding that my estranged daughter may well have chosen not to inform Anfeald of her family affiliation, I ask you to keep this missive in closest confidence—for which reason it will disintegrate for your convenience, once you trigger the spell embedded at the bottom of the page.
Estranged as she is, my daughter Suliya has kept in touch with her younger sister, who now informs me there has been no contact from her of late, beyond any expected delay from the current crisis. Given the uncertain state of things, I would appreciate any word of her you might be able to provide. Enclosed also is a private letter for Suliya; among other things it expresses our wishes that she return home until Camolen stabilizes—a wish I reiterate to you and hope you will respect despite whatever employment agreement you have with Suliya.
"Like father, like daughter," she muttered, fingering the smaller packet and setting it aside. Suliya, a SpellForge child, struggling to be ordinary and yet still shaped by her foundation.
It explained a lot.
Given the uncertain state of things, I would appreciate any word of her you might be able to provide.
Jaime gave a short shake of her head. "I don't think so," she murmured.
Let someone else tell the board member of Camolen's most influential spell corporation that his daughter was off on another world, and that Jaime hadn't been able to contact that world despite her best efforts. She gave a wistful glance at the message board she'd brought down from Arlen's quarters and hung beside the map, using magicked sticky tape that released at a touch and would have been snapped up on Earth and turned into an industry bigger than Post-It notes.
Her last message had been desperate and to the point. Can you hear me?
Normally the messages disappeared once they were sent. This one waited, sad and scratchy-looking . . . and backwards. Bounced back at her.
Not enough power behind it, with all the disturbance within Camolen?
She hoped that was all it was.
Arlen. Carey, Dayna, and Jess . . .
So much hope, bundled up inside her, making her heart rush off into racing little dances when she least expected it.
"Please be right," she whispered to her heart, and set Suliya's unopened letter aside.
Dayna felt the magic even as Mark broke speed limits on rural Prospect-Mt. Vernon Road to reach the Dancing Equine. "Hurry," she told him, clutching the seatbelt that crossed her chest and all but bouncing on the truck's bench seat. The only thing that stopped her was that Suliya was already doing just that in the middle of the seat, a living example of just how annoying it could be.
Mark slewed the truck into the Dancing Equine's gravel driveway and Dayna shoved the door open, reaching for that very long step to the ground. "Stay here," she said.
"Not gonna happen," Mark told her, setting the parking brake and jumping out of the driver's side.
"Then stay behind," Dayna threw over her shoulder, already heading for the barn. "You may be the guy, but I'm the wizard."
She was sure she heard him mutter, "In training," but he did indeed hang back, and kept Suliya with him.
Dayna went to the end of the barn and yanked on the closed door—and succeeded in doing nothing but twinging something in her shoulder. How could it be locked from the inside? This was the only—
"Go around," Carey called from inside.
He didn't sound right. Strained. She exchanged a glance with Mark to see if he heard the same, and saw her own wariness reflected in his warm brown eyes. Eyes that weren't meant to be wary, but were born to be just what they were—goof-off guy eyes with a soft heart lurking beneath.
They went around. Through the central, people-size door into the tack room and beyond to the main aisle of the long facility, where they simultaneously stopped short at the sight of the hay bales haphazardly thrown about the aisle and the very obvious passage into Ramble's hidden area.
Dayna motioned for Mark to stay back, and when he hesitated she hissed, "I mean it." It took a renewed glare—and Suliya's hand on his arm—to get a nod from him.
She eased up to the hay bales, several storage stones in hand, and where Mark would have had to push his way through the gap, she slid through without so much as the whisper of hay against the flowered pattern of her shirt.
Jess was the first one she saw, and she regarded Dayna with such restrained tension that Dayna readied herself, bringing to mind the barrier spell she'd decided upon during the drive from town—going on the assumption that if everyone here had a shieldstone, a barrier spell was the only way to avoid physical confrontation. Her gaze skipped right over Carey, registering something not quite right but not hesitating there, and when she found the man slightly apart from them both, standing in the shadow of the closed doors, she knew she'd been right to prepare. Bland and attractive, like the woman in the New Age shop. Camolen clothing that at first glance passed for contemporary American style. Blood all over one arm; hell, blood tracking the walls and floor.
She didn't know why Jess and Carey were just standing there. She didn't have any idea where the terrible smell came from, and only a faint awareness of the strange blob against the wall by her side. Those were all things to figure out later. Now, without hesitation, with only the quick lip-biting expression of concentration she'd developed in the last year, she tapped the storage stones and threw the barrier around the stranger.
He flinched at the feel of magic, was visibly taken aback at the appearance of the barrier—not quite the same magic as the shields she'd so recently employed, but similar visuals. Enough so he'd know it was there. To the others she said sharply, "Do you still have your shieldstones?" and hoped the answer would be yes, or she'd have to come up with an inverted shield on top of the barrier.
Carey shook his head, glancing darkly at the stranger. But Jess, after a glance into the stall to check Ramble, nodded. Just one of them to protect, then. Dayna put the inverted shield spell uppermost in her thoughts and stepped into the blocked area, allowing Mark his first good view of the scene—and his first double take. Unlike Dayna, he zeroed right in on the blobby area.
"You guys have Salvatore Dali in to redecorate while we were out?" he asked, utterly bemused.
But Dayna, getting her first good look at it, felt the blood drain from her face. "That's the same meltdown effect we found in Camolen. Where the Council died," she said for Mark's benefit, and what little humor he had instantly faded.
"There was another man here," Jess said, her dark eyes flashing briefly at the blond man behind the barrier—he hadn't moved, he hadn't said anything, but by his stiffened posture he knew quite well what Dayna had done. "He tried to go home."
Suliya crowded up behind Mark and made a noise of utter disgust. "Ay, what's this?"
Dayna eyed the mess, suddenly and regretfully able to pick out several fingers clutching at air. "Guides," she said. "He must have hit a bad spot going in. I knew there was more to this than one incident. I knew it." She gave her prisoner a quick, angry eye. "I'll bet you know it, too."
"He's not talking about what he knows," Carey said. "Jaime did try to warn us, but it didn't come through well."
Dayna couldn't take her eyes away from the puddle of human and landscape melted right into the wall and floor; she barely heard Mark offer a quick explanation of the action in Starland. Her own inner words came much more loudly. What happens when we try to return?
And on the heels of that thought, the sharpest pang of homesickness she'd ever felt. I want to go home.
Camolen. Home. Still a home with many unexplored aspects; a home in which she was a virtual stranger. But home.
She gave herself an internal shake. She'd figure it out. They'd augment the spells with storage stones . . . they'd send something on ahead to make sure the way was clear. She'd figure it out.
At the moment, she had to get a better idea of what was happening here and now. A glance at Jess gave her no clues; she stood between Carey and Ramble's stall like a stiff thing, all her natural grace gone, her expression deadened to everything except some secret internal conflict she didn't seem likely to share. Not with the way she didn't quite look at any of them.
Carey, on the other hand, was far from stiff. Rubber-kneed, she would have said. Bemused somehow. Dayna wasn't entirely sure he was truly focused on the conversation.
That left the man behind the shield, with his collarless casual exec shirt and exquisitely tailored trousers of tough, spelled material. Dayna narrowed her eyes, suddenly realizing that those trousers reminded her of nothing more than a stylish version of something a martial artist on this world would wear. Waist pleats along with the sharply pressed front leg creases, topping ankle boots of fine, soft leather that would make for the lightest of feet. "Who are you?" she said. "Your friend in the New Age store didn't have much of a chance to answer questions before she left."
Suliya eased through the gap in the hay, and Mark frowned at it. "Gotta fix that," he said, kicking the bottom hay bale into place and stepping over it to retrieve the rest. "Never mind me. I can hear." Dayna nodded, but no one else even seemed to notice. Not Jess with her inner struggle and Carey with his detachment or Suliya, who frowned thoughtfully as she moved closer to the prisoner, walking the border of the barrier to view him from all angles and then pressing her lips together to regard him with hands on hips.
"Like I said," Carey told Dayna. "He's not talking—other than to say his name is Wheeler. I think it's clear enough someone on the other side decided we're a threat, which means they believe Ramble knows something—"
Dayna scowled at no one in particular. "How would anyone even know the possibility existed?"
Absently, nibbling a fingernail as she stared at Wheeler, Suliya said, "Gossip. News. We knew he was the only survivor before we went to Second Siccawei, didn't we?"
"But no one even knew the Council was dead!"
She gave Dayna an impatient look. "Of course they did. We knew. Anyone at a Council wizard's hold knew. The Secondary Council knew. The landers found out next, you can be sure . . . and from there it probably went official. What juicier little bit to add along with it could you have? 'The only survivor was a horse'!"
Carey said, "That sounds like the voice of experience."
Suliya waved a negligent hand. "I know how secrets get out, if that's what you mean. Seen plenty of it." Abruptly, she pointed directly at Wheeler. "You. You've done work for SpellForge through FreeCast."
Wheeler gave her the barest of smiles. He'd tucked the hand of his wounded arm into his belt, and seemed not much discomfitted by his tenuous situation. "I'm surprised you remember. Then again, I'm surprised to see you here. I can assure you the SpellForge board has no idea you're involved."
"I don't answer to them," Suliya said, annoyed. "I never did. That was Papa's problem, wasn't it?"
"I think he considered his problem to be the fact that you're a spoiled brat," Wheeler said. "It's open to individual interpretation, of course."
"Poot," she snarled at him, after just enough hesitation to reveal that his words had struck home. She turned her back on him and said in an offhand way, "There's a consortium of spell corps who like to push the limits; SpellForge is in it. They call themselves FreeCast. FreeCast maintains teams of what they like to call fieldworkers. Wizards, fistmen . . . they convince people not to make a loud fuss when something happens to go wrong. You'd be surprised what the Council doesn't know about." She jabbed a thumb at Wheeler over her shoulder. "He's done some bodyguard work for my family through FreeCast."
Dayna gave Wheeler a careful look, surprised to find him as casual as before—not angered by Suliya's words, and possibly even amused by her. Despite herself, Dayna was impressed. She, too, had been captured by what amounted to the enemy—or at the least, faced such opposition in desperate straits. She knew how she reacted.
Not like this.
"Tsk," he said. "Your father would be disappointed."
Suliya cast the most dismissive of glances over her shoulder. "I'm doing exactly what he wanted—standing up for something other than myself. For something I believe in. It just doesn't happen to be what he believes in."
Carey gave her a strange look—partly wary, Dayna thought . . . and partly disbelief. "Suliya, just who is your father?"
She waved him off. "He's on the board. It doesn't matter." But her mouth twisted in an embarrassed expression, and she said, "I never thought I'd be ashamed of him. I've always been proud of where I came from . . ."
Jess said suddenly, "You don't know he is part of this."
Suliya glanced at Wheeler; her face had gone a little sad. "I think I do."
Wheeler quite studiously didn't respond. Instead he looked at Dayna and said, "Where the hells did you come from, anyway? My recon calls you a 'second-year student who lacks the discipline to stay away from raw magic'—and you took out Argre in this world without magic."
"She started it," Dayna said, stung by the discipline remark. She held out her hand, showed him the stones. "I stored up some magic and I used it on her." Yeah, maybe it hadn't been quite that simple. "And you don't know squat about magic, do you? Your people are afraid of raw magic because it's harder to use, not easier. I just didn't happen to grow up with people telling me it was impossible, so I do it."
"You stored—" He stared at the stones, shook his head. "I've never heard of anyone even considering such a thing."
She shrugged. "So I like to color outside the lines."
But Carey, all too practical, said, "It's a brilliant idea . . . but not one Camolen wizards have any reason to come up with. I'm not surprised they didn't anticipate it."
"I'll bet Argre was," Wheeler said. "But then, she always went for the offensive magic too quickly. Foolish."
"Just like your pal who wanted to kill us instead of reason with us?" Carey said, absently rubbing his knuckles in a small circle against his chest. "And you wonder why we don't trust your word that we'd be safe if you took us back?"
For the first time, Wheeler lost his composure; his face darkened. "If I'd taken you back on my word, I would have seen to your safety."
"Excuse us if we don't care to test you on that," Dayna said. She glanced at Carey, a significant look that he didn't miss. "The question is, what do we do with you now?"
Jess didn't care what they did with Wheeler. "I want to go home," she said, using her low voice, glancing up from beneath a quietly lowered brow because she'd been staring at the ground and didn't bother to raise her head all the way. Interrupting, completely, Dayna's train of thought. Carey looked away; he'd known this was coming.
She'd warned him, after all.
She said, "We know what Ramble couldn't tell us. We know FreeCast has something to do with the static and the meltdowns. People in Camolen need to know . . . the message board isn't working right. And I want to go home. Ramble wants to go home. He needs to be a horse again."
"But—" Mark turned from shoving the last hay bale back into place, turning to Jess in shock, looking from her to Carey.
"I want to go back," she said firmly.
"Jess, we don't even know if we can go back," Dayna said, as surprised as Mark. "And we need more time to pry information from this guy. Wheeler."
Jess looked at Wheeler; he returned her regard with the perfectly pleasant expression of someone unintimidated in spite of his situation. And she looked at Carey again, who'd turned back to her with a subtle plea in his face.
It tore her, made a clenched spot at the bottom of her throat that wanted to cry out loud. But she knew . . .
If she didn't do this for Ramble now, if she didn't do it for herself, respect her own feelings enough to act on them . . .
Either way, something ineffable would change. Something ineffable already had.
"You stay here then," she said. "I will not. I promised Ramble."
Tentatively, Mark said, "We could send something ahead, make sure the landing spot was safe. It'd be a different spot than the, um . . . than that guy used, wouldn't it?"
Wheeler sounded like a man who didn't want to remind anyone he was there. "The spell came from your wizard's records . . . but our people tweaked it for return location. You've got a chance."
"Hay," Jess said with finality. "Send hay. Then send us. We can have a good meal before we journey back to Anfeald." The original travel spell had dumped them a good day's journey from Anfeald the first and only time they'd used it.
"A whole travel spell for hay," Dayna said—but she was just being Dayna, and not truly objecting at all. From her resigned expression, she'd already thought of sending something ahead . . . and simply hadn't mentioned it, holding back with the hope that Jess herself wouldn't come up with it, and therefore wouldn't go.
Glancing between Carey and Jess, Mark said, "Jay does need to know what we've learned. All of Camolen needs to know it. Maybe you can turbocharge the spell with stored magic, like you did at Starland."
"I still can't guarantee it'll get through," Dayna told him, her expression speaking as loud as her words. Whose side are you on?
"But you think it will," Jess said. She knew Dayna that well. "Will you do it? Ramble and I can use his spellstone to send the hay first, and mine to get there, but . . ."
"But having a little turbocharge would be nice," Mark finished for her, having failed to shrink before Dayna's irritation as usual, his implacable expression making it quite clear he wasn't interested in taking sides one way or the other.
Dayna nodded at Wheeler, a jerk of her head. Angry. "And what about him? I can't do everything at once."
Wheeler leaned against the big aluminum door with his barrier. "You don't really need to worry about me. We know where my travel spell leads." He cast a regretful look at what was left of his former partner, then settled his frown on Suliya, long enough that she shifted uncomfortably. "Your father . . ." he said—stopped, shook his head, and started again—"I have the idea that SpellForge and FreeCast went dogleg on me with this one—told me to bring you all back and told the other two agents to . . ." he hesitated " . . . clean up."
Stricken, Suliya would look at no one. But Carey said, "Why would they?"
Wheeler shrugged. He'd been trapped long enough, still long enough, that Jess found he was not so bland as he'd first looked. That like Jaime, his nose showed signs of having once been broken, if not badly. That he had a scar through one eyebrow, and one on his chin—faint ones. Character marks. He said, "Because that's how I work, and they wouldn't have gotten me on the job otherwise."
"And they wanted you because you're the best," Carey said flatly.
Wheeler gave a faint grin. "If there wasn't something weakening the magic, you'd have good reason to know it." He shrugged. "My mistake. But it doesn't matter. If they broke faith . . . you've nothing to worry about from me. You tell me more about what's going on, you might even find me on your side . . . because I have to wonder how much else they didn't tell me."
Dayna snorted, planting her hands on boyish hips. "Very convenient for you. So we just let you go, even after what you've done here. What you tried to do."
"I'm not sure you have much choice," he said. "You don't seem like the sort to kill in cold blood. None of you. And I guarantee you that conventional means won't hold me."
Carey scrubbed a hand through the short hair at the back of his neck, suddenly looking tired of the whole thing. "He's got a point, Dayna."
She gave him a furious glare. "You didn't learn enough from Ernie? You let him go . . . and boy, didn't that come back to haunt us!"
Jess understood Dayna's fear. She understood what it was like to watch the world making decisions around her, and in spite of her. But she said, "This man is not Ernie."
"Guides, just use a burnin' spellstone on him," Suliya said, her voice thin and a little thready. Your father, Wheeler had started to say to her. Not the SpellForge board or FreeCast—and if Jess understood that, so did Suliya. Whatever was happening, her father had a direct role. "It'll tell you where he stands, won't it? Or use a liar spell. Just quit biting at each other about it!" And she whirled to stomp off—and couldn't. Not with the aisle once more blocked by a wall of hay, and Wheeler himself behind a barrier against the double doors. With a faint noise of despair, she turned against the hay bales and hid her face, removing herself from the space in the only way she could.
Jess felt a tug of compassion, an impulse to go rub the young woman's back and tell her easy . . . but she stayed where she was. If she was going to feel for someone right now, it had to be Ramble.
And herself.
"That's a good idea," Mark said, giving Dayna a hopeful look. "You can do that, can't you?"
"Of course I can—but these storage stones aren't endless." Unexpectedly, she tossed him the one she'd just used, muttering in the most sardonic of tones, "Eat all you want. We'll make more." And almost immediately waved off Wheeler's frown, Carey's raised eyebrow, Jess's tilt of head. "Forget it. Old television commercial. Yes, I can do that. Yes, it's a good idea."
"Good," Jess said. "Then you can go back to thinking about sending Ramble back. With me."
"I think you should wait," Dayna said bluntly, although she hesitated as someone drove up to the barn—car door closing, tack room door opening and closing, a few moments of casual bumping around in the tack room itself, and then someone came into the aisle, evidently thinking herself alone to judge by her pointed comment about the odor she encountered.
"That's Caitlin," Mark said. "Her horse is at the other end of the aisle. Keep it down and we'll be fine."
"If you wait," Dayna persisted, barely seeming to notice the interruption, "I can be more certain of the magic, and take us all back at once. And we might have more information to give to Jaime."
Wheeler smiled. "I wouldn't count on that. I don't have details. I know someone went out to contain a situation with the Council and it went very wrong—the idiot used raw magic for an illusion spell, and triggered a mess. I know the initial problem involves magic—can't imagine you hadn't guessed that. I believe it somehow involves a SpellForge product, but that's common sense when you put the facts together. And I was told you were interfering—making the situation for SpellForge worse than it had to be, and that my job was to get you out of the way so SpellForge could handle things its own way."
Suliya jerked away from the hay, her face flushed and crumpled with emotion. "I'll be spelled if that's all! You know something about my father—you know things he's done. You as much as said it!"
"I might," Wheeler told her, surprisingly gentle. "But it's irrelevant to this conversation, and I have no reason to breach that faith."
"Tell me," she demanded, roughly wiping hay from her damp cheek. "Tell me!"
Her reaction brought Ramble to the front of the stall; he watched with a curious tilt to his head, ears fully perked. Or they would have been.
They would be again, soon. When he was back in Camolen. A horse again. Jess let Mark go to Suliya, playing a role somewhere between big brother and friend; she stayed in the conversation with Dayna. "You see. Nothing to wait for."
Carey started, stricken. "You want to go now?"
"Now," she said.
From over Suliya's head and its trembling curls, Mark said, "Look, I'm with you, Jess, but I think it's worth an overnight. Dayna's already pulled off some pretty serious magic today. And we should make one last try to contact Jaime—even if we can't get all this information through to her, maybe we can get some sense of what's happening there. Try to prepare you for it."
Jess looked at Dayna, trying to ignore Carey's palpable relief, the way he leaned back against the wall, the deep, trying-to-be-surreptitious breath he took. Dayna, too, had sagged a little, as if she'd let some of the air out of herself. "He's right about that," she said. "I've done too much already. And this isn't exactly a spell we want to go wrong . . ."
Jess felt the flare of her own nostrils, irritation made manifest. But she glanced at Ramble, who said, "Tomorrow," and nodded, and she gave a slight nod herself. "Tomorrow," she repeated. "But not beyond. Because today is already too late."