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* * *

Jaime looked tired, Carey thought, not envying her the difficult job of keeping the truck from grounding out on the rough terrain. The steering wheel jerked with each twist of the front wheels over rock and bump, and he wanted to offer to spell her—but the truth was, not even Mark was as good as she with the manual transmission. Jaime was up to the tricky shifts, and able to downshift from second to first at the same time she slammed them from regular to low four-wheel drive, an intricate dance of clutch and two gearshifts that Carey knew he could never imitate, not with his limited experience.

But they were making good time. Not better than a mounted party, but certainly faster than if they'd been on foot. Too bad they'd have to abandon the vehicle soon; they'd gone from flat, dusty old riverbed to rocky scrub, and the truck would never make it past the fringes of the woods they now approached.

The Chevy seemed to stick for a moment, then lurched forward. Jaime frowned as she put it in neutral and wiped her sweaty, dusty face on the once-clean hem of her shirt. "Bladder break," she said, cutting the engine. "I've got to check the left front wheel."

They disembarked, slowly stretching their assorted cramps and strains. Carey's legs were so stiff from trying to keep them out of Jaime's way that he wasn't sure, at first, that they were going to hold him. Mark dropped Lady's lead and flexed his arm, kneading the bicep, and Dayna headed for the other side of the truck with a taciturn warning that the men had better stay where they were.

"Oh, damn," Jaime groaned from the forbidden side of the truck, giving the tire a token kick. "Flat as they come," she informed the guys. "Got a big spear of rock stuck in it."

"Spare's all right, isn't it?" Mark asked, although he looked far from eager at the prospect of changing it.

"Never mind," Carey said. "The gas is almost gone and we can't go much further than this, anyway. I think we should lay a little false trail with what gas we have left, and go on foot from there."

"Without changing the tire?" Jaime said, aghast. "We'll ruin the wheel!" But before Carey could say anything, she laughed at herself and said, "Listen to me. As if it matters."

"We couldn't take the time even if it did matter." As Dayna came around the truck, looking self-conscious, Carey looked at the truck cab and sighed, then nodded to Mark. "Trade places?"

"Sounds good to me," Mark agreed. "Variety if not relief."

Dayna scowled. "It's not so great from where I sit, either," she said. "I'll bet Carey's knees are just as bony as Mark's."

That, at least, was a bit of the real Dayna coming to the fore. Mark gave her a big loud kiss on the forehead on his way by, and Carey pulled her into the truck before she could respond.

"Okay, Jay," Mark announced as Carey closed the door and reached out for Lady's halter lead. "We're ready to ramble."

Carey guided Jaime off of the faint road and into rougher territory, where rocks scraped the truck's skid plate with tortured sounds, and the wheel rim slid and screeched its way forward. He was forced to drop Lady's lead, but not surprised when she followed along in their trail of her own volition. Lady minus any aspect of Jess would have done that, and this slow pace was—and had been—no real effort for her. It was forty-five minutes later, as they made their way through increasing brush, mowing down small trees and dragging undergrowth, that the engine gave a couple of sad coughs and sighed into silence.

"That's that, then," Jaime said, pulling the emergency brake with what looked like the last of her strength. "What now?"

"Out!" Dayna said emphatically, wiggling around to find the door handle. Rather than endure the bouncing, Carey hastily found it for her, and helped her out with enough force that she gave a small squeak.

They stretched and groaned while Lady wandered among them, nipping the sweet new growth off of twiggy trees. Finally, Carey said, "There's no point in trying to hide this thing. The trail's far too clear."

"I thought that was the whole point," Dayna said. "Lay a false trail, right?"

He grimaced an acknowledgement. "It's hard to break old habits," he said. "But you're right. We'll backtrack along the trail we just made. Do your best not to disturb the ground any more. These guys won't be stupid."

"Just a minute," Jaime said. "I'm going to look through the truck and make sure there's nothing here we can use." She rooted around in the truck, flipping the seats forward and digging through the accumulation of years. Mark quickly joined her, and a small pile of things grew on the ground.

"I think you're forgetting something," Dayna said firmly, looking squarely at Carey. "We're not just leaving Eric lying in there like that."

Carey steeled himself for a battle. "I don't think we have any choice, Dayna. We can take him out of the truck and find a protected place for him, but we don't have the time to—"

"We do have the time to!" she said heatedly. "He's dead and he can't even be buried on his own world—you can bet he'll be buried on this one! Until he is, I'm not going anywhere!"

Mark and Jaime abandoned their truck search to listen, and Carey felt frustration well up inside. "You don't seem to think I'm serious about any of this!" he exploded. "You want the truck clean before we put Eric inside. You want a map and a set of the rules before we start out. Can't you understand what I've been trying to tell you since you found me in that hotel? These aren't games! They aren't your TV stories, where you can turn off the set and go to your nice soft bed! We're dealing with a woman who will not hesitate to kill anyone who gets in her way—and who may have already killed one of the most powerful men in Camolen."

Dayna swallowed visibly, but crossed her arms over her stomach and stared defiantly at him.

"Damn!" Carey swore, turning away from her, closing his eyes and trying to get a handle on a temper that was just about out of control. When he turned back to her, his eyes were hot and his voice too level. "Listen up. We will find a secluded place for him, and we will cover him with rocks. The moment I see you slacking off, that's it—we're done, even if I have to carry you away from here kicking and screaming. Afterward we'll be marching double time, and we're not going to be able to stop until we reach Sherra's. That's a choice you'll be making for all of us here, if you won't change your mind about this."

Dayna looked uncertainly at Mark and Jaime, who were visibly alarmed by Carey's frustrated explosion; they, it was obvious, believed him, and had been infected by his urgency. Then she looked away from all of them, and her face crumpled. "He was my friend," she said through a sob. "No one just let me be . . . me, like Eric did."

"All right, Dayna," Jaime said softly.

Mark exhaled a deep breath. "It's not going to be easy. C'mon, Carey, let's get to it. Dayna, find a spot you like and start picking up rocks."

Dayna didn't hesitate. She walked briskly into the thickening brush while Mark went around to the back of the truck and Jaime gathered the booty from the truck and dropped it into the empty grain sack that had been there as well.

"It's a good thing I never clean this thing out," she muttered, coming around to help the men as she tied the bag closed with another length of hay twine. "We've got a flashlight, a couple flares, my old jackknife . . . a fishing lure and some almost tangle-free line—"

"Later, Jay," Mark grunted, trying to handle Eric's stiffened body, his face a stoic mask—or trying to be.

"I found a place!" Dayna announced from a hundred yards away, jumping so that she momentarily appeared above the brush. "Over here! You got it? I'm going to start on the rocks!"

"And work gloves," Jaime said with satisfaction, slapping them down on the lowered tailgate. "I'll take 'em first—you want second dibs, Mark?"

"I'll take them," Carey said, shaking his head when Mark looked at him for the nod to pick up Eric. "You've got another job, Jaime. Maybe the hardest one."

"What?" she asked blankly.

"Get on Lady and go," he replied shortly. "We've cut our chances in half—hell, to practically nothing—with this foolishness. You've got to tell Sherra we're here. She'll send someone out to meet us, and if they get to us in time, maybe we'll make it after all."

"Me?" Jaime said in total shock. "You're the one who knows the spell, Carey. You're the one who knows the territory. And you're the one we can't risk, not if we take this as seriously as you're trying to get us to."

He stepped close to her, looking down at her guileless dark brown eyes which were searching his for some sort of answer. Not shrinking from a job they both knew would be just as hard as the burial and march. "Lady knows the way," he said softly. "Just keep the sun on your left, when you can see it."

"But, Carey—"

"If I go—if I leave you alone—you're all dead." He closed his eyes at the impossibility of it all and said, "Please, don't argue. You're the only one besides me who can ride bareback, and whom Lady trusts enough to obey without a bridle."

"Jess trusts me," Jaime said. "We still don't know how much of her—" But she stopped short at the look on his face and said, "Okay. I won't waste any more time. Keep the sun on my left. What else?"

"There are a number of good roads—well, what passes for a good road in those woods—that will take you there. Head into the sun for half an hour or so and then put it on your left and go into the woods. Lady'll keep you going right, and you'll hit a road sooner or later. Don't waste time second-guessing yourself and blundering around looking for one. Got it?"

"Got it," she said, smiling wanly. "At least I've got my breeches on."

A small attempt at a joke but he appreciated it anyway. "I'll give you a leg up," he said, and gave the short whistle that would call Lady to them.

* * *

The first few moments on Lady's back were bizarre ones, as Jaime tried hard to think of her as just any other horse she was sitting on for the first time—in Ohio, not Camolen. The dun mare, too, had reservations; her ears went back flat, hidden in the thick mane, and her back humped up under Jaime's seatbones.

"Lady," Carey said sharply, and Lady lowered her head and snorted in what could only be called disgust, nearly jerking the halter twine out of Jaime's hand. Jaime stroked her neck and gave Carey, then her brother, one last look.

"Good-bye, Eric," she said, and gave a gentle squeeze of her calves. It had only then occurred to her that she would miss the important ritual of formal good-bye, and she felt unanticipated sorrow about it. But Lady was moving forward, a hesitant walk with her head held high and bobbing uncertainly, awkwardly turned to keep one cautious eye on Jaime.

"Straighten out, Lady," Jaime said sternly, using her back and hips and a squeeze on the halter lead in a half-halt that surprised the mare. She asked for a trot, twisting her fingers in the long black mane to help her weather the inevitable stumbles from the uneven ground. Lady obliged, but clearly expressed her opinion about the strange situation by making it an uncomfortable, hollow-backed gait.

Another half-halt, ineffective. "Quit!" Jaime snapped, thinking that the ride was going to be torture if she couldn't get more cooperation than this. She grasped a hank of mane and pulled herself up over the tense neck. Speaking right into the mare's ear, she said, "Jess, whatever part of you is left in there knows that this is nonsense. We're not leaving Carey, we're trying to save him. And you damn well know that I'm not going to do anything to hurt you. I want you to round up and put yourself into a good frame, or I won't have the only sore ass around here!"

The mare stopped short. They were only just out of sight of the truck, and Jaime held her breath, knowing that if Lady chose to wheel around and run back to Carey, there was nothing she could do to stop it. But they just stood there, the black-tipped ears swiveled back at Jaime. Thinking. Then came subtle differences in the body beneath Jaime. The mare's neck lowered, her head adopted a vertical angle, and her back rounded gently into Jaime's seat. Then, without waiting for the request, she moved into a springy trot, picking her way around the dips and bumps in her path.

"Jess," Jaime breathed. She's still there. Some part of her is really still there.

* * *

Dun Lady's Jess moved steadily onward, having transmuted her human trust into equine acceptance of Jaime's requests. Her sturdy hooves found good footing on the uneven ground, and her muzzle—whiskers and all—twitched at the delightfully intense smells of the world around her—smells which told her of the cool woods long before she and Jaime actually reached them.

Out in the open there had been little sign of travel, but once under the trees they hit a wide, relatively smooth path after only a short while of stumbling, catching hoof and fetlock in fallen branches and skidding off leaf-hidden rocks. Small birds chittered at them and fluttered away through the underbrush, leaving the woods silent around them.

Dun Lady's Jess knew this path and knew where they were going. At Jaime's quiet signal, she swung into a smooth, steady canter, glad for the distraction of work.

For some part of this no longer fully equine creature was coming out of the shock of transition and moving into a deeper shock. The thoughts she was trying to process were beyond her, and the emotions she felt were far more complex than had ever assailed her before. She was afraid for Carey, trying to comprehend the loss of Eric, and nearly panicked over the fate of a certain human named Jess.

The mare leaned into the thin twine halter, ignoring its bite, and lengthened her strides. No time for the perplexing muddle of human thoughts in a horse's mind. No time for the fear and distress the half-formed thoughts created. Time only for running, running until her breath came harshly in her throat and her muscles burned. Running until Jaime's gentle cues with the biting twine became insistent demands, and Dun Lady's Jess slowed to a fast walk, sweating with far more than the efforts of her ground-eating canter.

* * *

"I wish I knew how far this place is," Jaime grumbled, and Lady flicked a quick ear back to listen. "You know, I'll bet." She wiped her sweaty face on the hem of her now thoroughly grimy shirt and suggested, "How about a trot, kiddo." Lady moved out without complaint, starting the first in a series of walk-trot-canter cycles that found the path growing almost wide enough to be called a road, but with no sign of their goal.

Or of anybody else, for that matter. Although filled with urgency and a constant harangue from the doubtful inner voice Carey had told her to ignore, Jaime stopped Lady at the small creek that crossed their path, and slid off the sweat-backed mare to splash her own face and take the drink she'd been waiting so long for. She added a couple of quick stretches and then made a clumsy bareback mount, thanking Lady for her rock-steady patience.

Back to the trotting. The spring had gone out of Lady's gait, and Jaime grew spooked as she realized how alone they were. Dark green shadows in mottled sunshine gave her imagination plenty of places to hide bad guys, but it wasn't until she closed her eyes to chase away the illusory threats that she truly ran into trouble.

Voices.

Her eyes flew open as Lady tensed beneath her; together they located the backs of a small group of men ahead of them, just coming into view in the slightly wandering path. One of them must have heard her, for they all turned to look, and then stare, at her.

Maybe she should just trot right by them, give them a nod and nothing else. A standoffish kind of bluff. It was no business of theirs what she was up to.

They must have read her mind for they moved apart, and three abreast was all it took to block her way. Lady geared down to a walk of her own accord, and they were close enough so Jaime clearly heard it when one of the men said, "Well, burn my balls! What kind of a woman we got here?"

Suddenly Jaime remembered the strange expression on Carey's face the first several times he'd seen women in form-fitting breeches, and she felt as good as naked. A tiny stiffening of her back brought Lady to a halt, a safe distance away. People. There really were people in this other world, and their clothing, although normal enough to her eyes—pants, soft-soled ankle boots and shirts in an assortment of sleeve lengths and collar styles—was somehow subtly off. The colors weren't quite what she was used to—too deep a green, an odd iridescent teal . . . she took a deep breath. We're not in Kansas anymore. . . .

What's more, the men were well-armed with knives and short curved swords, and wearing identical leather armbands with some sort of device painted on them—probably enough to tell her whether they were friend or foe, if she'd known what to look for. They stared at one another for a moment, until she hazarded a tired sounding, "You're not just going to let me pass, are you?"

"Depends on who you are and where you're going," one of the men replied promptly.

"My name is Jaime Cabot and I'm going in this direction," she said, just as promptly.

A snort greeted her pronouncement. "Bullshit if I ever heard it."

"That's because," Jaime said, carefully neutral, "I don't suppose it's any of your business. I don't mean any harm and that's what matters, isn't it?" She wondered if it might be worth chancing the whole truth. If they were from Sherra's, they might actually help her.

If they weren't, they might kill her.

The third man, the one who'd been silent all this time, finally spoke, and Jaime realized with a start that the tall, sturdy figure was in fact a woman, her lanky figure hidden in her loose sleeveless shirt, her waist obscured by the weapons and equipment on her belt, just like women cops at home. "That's not good enough, not in these times," the woman said. "Especially not with an odd-looking package like yourself." She put a hand on her knife hilt and eyed Jaime pensively. "I don't think we can afford to let you just wander on your way—no matter who you're for. Too many questions about you, woman."

"Look, I'm not trying to make trouble. I just want to get by," Jaime said warily. And somehow, before she even thought about it, she found her mind was made up, and she was startling Lady with abrupt heels. The dun hit a gallop in three strides and the men-at-arms jumped out of her way—but not before one of them got a good hold of Jaime's ankle and pulled her right off Lady's slick back.

Jaime landed gasping on the relatively soft form of her assailant and was struggling to get away from him even as she finished falling, clawing her way across his body. Her fingers found and grasped the hilt of his long knife, but before she could brandish the threat someone else jerked her head back by the short, thick braid of her hair. She cried out in surprise and pain, a yelp that was echoed by someone behind her as Lady's hoofbeats grew loud and close again, and were punctuated by the solid sound of hoof against flesh.

Jaime's head was free and she was on her feet, whirling to locate all three of them. One was down, clutching a hip, the other was rising, his hand slapping at the empty knife sheath, and the woman was—was behind her! Jaime turned just in time to see the heavy pommel of a huge knife heading for her head, too close to avoid. Then dancing dun horseflesh flashed behind the woman and strong white teeth snatched that knife-wielding shoulder, lifted the woman off the ground, and tossed her effortlessly aside.

Jaime ran to her champion and threw herself astride in a mount she wouldn't have dreamed she could make, and Lady thundered down the path, taking them far away from any feeble foot pursuit. She was still running full tilt when the path abruptly opened into a narrow swath of cleared ground that rimmed a thick log wall.

Jaime almost fell off then, clutching mane and riding air as Lady pivoted to follow the wall without cutting her speed. When they reached the thick path that was clearly a main entrance, Jaime was ready for the equally sharp turn into the gate, and rode it much better—which didn't make any difference in the long run, for to Lady's obvious surprise, the gate was closed, and although she reared up in an effort to stop in time, they both crashed hard into the stout wooden structure. A face full of flying black mane swept Jaime into oblivion, but not before her mind's eye flashed her a picture of Carey, Mark and Dayna running into three very annoyed men-at-arms.

* * *

Carey, tired and grim. Dayna with a dirty, tearstained face going pale with exhaustion—a body pushed to the limit. Stumbling. Mark, catching her, speaking to her, holding a branch out of her way. But where was Jess?

"Carey!" Jaime called. "Carey, where's Jess?"

"You're all right."

It was a calm androgynous voice, a voice that knows it has things under control. Jaime immediately felt better about everything, and then opened her eyes in alarm as she remembered just what "everything" was.

"Carey's out in the woods!" she said, even before she had completely taken in the plump, middle-aged woman sitting cross-legged on the ground beside her in a subdued blue split skirt and long tunic. The woman had a cap of thick, greying, ash brown hair and remarkably calm brown eyes; she greeted Jaime's statement with a raised eyebrow.

"I thought I just saw him," Jaime started, then faltered, confused, "but that doesn't make any sense." She was on her back, and aside from the woman, could see little but the trees that towered above her, and it suddenly occurred to her that she was still in one piece, despite the hard fall she'd taken. Carefully, she rolled to her side, testing to see that everything still worked before she sat up—but she couldn't find any of the aches and pains that should have been assaulting her after such a hard collision.

She discovered she was just outside the now-open gate, but Lady was nowhere in sight. Within the walls there were plenty of people going about their business, casting an occasional curious glance their way but leaving them alone.

"I—I'm afraid I'm confused," she confessed to the woman, looking down at her torn breeches and knowing she had not overestimated the seriousness of the fall. And I know I saw Carey, Dayna and my brother in the woods.

"I'm not surprised," the woman nodded; her earrings, two flat teardrops of bright peacock blue, swung with the motion. "Healing on a head injury often leaves the patient a little befuddled. It'll pass."

"Healing on a head injury," Jaime repeated without comprehension, and decided it was more important to get to the heart of the matter. "I need to talk to Sherra right away. Can you take me to her?"

"Easily," the woman asserted and spread her arms. "Here I am, in all my glory."

Jaime blinked, but wasn't taken aback for long. "I'm here for Arlen's courier, Carey."

"Ah, then that was one of his duns that you rode in on."

"Lady," Jaime responded immediately. "Where is she? Is she all right?"

"She took the collision with our gate much better than you did, dear. She's with my own head courier right now and wouldn't get better care if she were a princess."

"Carey needs help," Jaime blurted, at once overcome with the complexity of the situation. "He's out in the woods with some friends of mine, and he's got Arlen's spell. They're on foot, and he's sure some of Calandre's men are after them." For a sudden instant she wondered if she'd said the right thing, if this woman might not be Calandre instead, a very clever Calandre. But there was something about those eyes that reassured her . . .

"I felt him arrive," Sherra nodded, more to herself than to Jaime; then she focused on Jaime again and smiled. "Or should I say I felt you all arrive. Please don't worry about him, or your friends. When I felt a spell of such magnitude, I thought it might be Carey; I alerted all my people to watch for him. Now I can tell them he'll be with friends—and that Calandre's annoying little minions will be snapping at their heels." She stood up and held out a hand for Jaime, who was still feeling dazed enough that she did not question, but reached for the warm, strong grip—and then was glad of it when the world reeled around her.

"Slowly, dear. Head injuries are nothing to fool with, not even with a superb healer such as myself attending the wound."

"That's the second time you've said that," Jaime said, resolutely willing the trees to be still, and relieved when they obeyed. "My head feels fine."

"It is fine," Sherra agreed. "Much better than it was half an hour ago."

Jaime frowned. "I don't like the sound of that." She closed her eyes and felt again the labor of her friends, saw their strained faces. "Poor Dayna," she murmured. Then she looked straight at Sherra and deliberately stopped, midway through the gate. "Please tell me what happened here."

Sherra eyed her back and said simply, "All right. You and your horse galloped straight into my closed gate. I don't imagine she was expecting that—until recently, it hasn't been closed in years. She was lucky and came away with some bad bruises. You, on the other hand, must have hit the gate headfirst. Your skull was broken and you were well on your way to dying by the time I got here."

"What?" Jaime couldn't help the gasp that escaped her; something too deep to question knew that Sherra spoke the truth.

"You're not going to faint? No? Good. Tell me, do they have magic on your world?"

"No," Jaime said, her mouth on automatic while she tried to assimilate near death that had passed so quickly she'd all but missed it. Somewhere along the line, perhaps upon learning that some messages still traveled by horseback in Camolen, she had classified Carey's world as less advanced than her own—but now that rather conceited assumption began to waver, as she realized she probably would not have survived this fall back in Marion.

"I'd like to hear more about it," Sherra said firmly, tugging on Jaime's hand. "But over a cup of tea, dear, not out here where we're blocking the gate."

In a daze, Jaime allowed herself to be escorted into the hold. The first story was mortared stone, but the second was a solid log structure that radiated a homey sturdiness. On a second-story balcony, Jaime and Sherra were served tea by a woman who was obviously more friend than servant. Jaime found herself staring after the woman, futilely trying to classify what she saw into some societal structure she was familiar with. Some of her thoughts must have been evident, for Sherra spoke to them.

"Everyone's different," she said casually, sipping her tea with a satisfied nod; the purple earrings dipped and danced. "Don't form your opinions of us from what I call home. If you were up north in Camolen City, you'd find yourself looking out at tamed lands, with roads that are spelled so they never rut out, and cities that hold more people than ought to be together in any one place. The wizards are thicker up there, too, and they tend to specialize more tightly—in tall building construction, say, or traffic guides. Down here, we like a little room to ourselves; we take life at a slower pace." A wry expression crossed her face. "Usually."

Jaime glanced around the courtyard. From the balcony where they sat to the flammable nature of the construction, the hold showed very little concession to defense—even the wall didn't seem high enough to discourage anyone with real intent. "Aren't you worried?"

"About those annoying little minions?" Sherra shook her head. "I have many quiet defenses to resort to. The gate, of course, is the least of it. That troublesome thing and its wall were constructed to keep the livestock in at night, and is closed now only as a reminder for those that live here to be watchful."

Oh, yes—"There was somebody out there—" Jaime blurted, then stopped, suddenly wondering if they might have been, after all, some of Sherra's people.

"You were obviously running from someone," Sherra observed with equanimity.

"I don't know who they were," Jaime admitted. "But they got threatening, so I ran. If they were Calandre's . . . annoying minions, they were awful close to this place."

Sherra shook her head. "Then I doubt they were. We keep a close watch in the immediate vicinity—and there's no reason for Calandre's people to be hanging around quite this close."

"They had armbands," Jaime remembered. "But I didn't really see what was on them."

"Armbands are very popular these days. Don't worry about it, dear." She sat back in her comfortable bentwood chair, and the flaming orange earrings flared against the warm tones of her skin. But—

"They were blue!" Jaime exclaimed, and frowned. Well, so what, the woman had mood earrings from the '70s. Nice try, she told herself. "The earrings, I mean," she added rather lamely. "They keep changing color. You made them magic, I guess."

"No," Sherra said. "I don't do earrings. There's a young woman in Siccawei Village who has a special touch with jewelry, and I bought them from her." She smiled and fingered one of the teardrops. "But right now, I'd rather hear a little more about you and your world. I have a feeling there won't be much time for such talk once Carey gets here—I know he'll have so many questions, I won't have a chance to get any of my own in."

"Carey is . . . a determined man," Jaime said.

"Determined," Sherra repeated, as if trying the word out; she smiled. "You've come to know him well, I see."

* * *

Carey pressed a hand to the stitch in his side and mulishly kept up the pace, spurred by the oppressive prickle of fear that said time was running out. He'd stopped looking back half a mile ago, too afraid of the fatigue in Dayna's face, and tired enough so he needed to place his feet carefully to avoid a stumble. They crashed along through the woods behind him, and he knew there was no point in asking them, one more time, to try to keep the noise down. They were already doing their best.

A movement in the trees ahead brought Carey to an abrupt stop; Dayna floundered into his back and fell, panting, making no attempt to get up. Mark came up beside him and leaned face first against a wide tree, relaxing his whole body against the trunk. "If I sit down, I'll never get up," he muttered, dropping Jaime's grain sack full of goodies by his feet.

Carey gave him a sharp glance to let him know this was no mere rest stop, keeping most of his attention trained ahead of them, where the movement had not yet repeated itself.

"How close are we?" Mark asked, his voice low and filled with concern as he, too, searched the woods ahead.

"Not close enough," Carey said shortly. There—he'd seen it again, and this time there was no question. But how did they get in front of us?

Horses. He could have kicked himself for not realizing they might try this. Even though they'd probably lost his trail at the pickup, they knew well enough what his destination would be. They hadn't bothered tracking at all, but had merely ridden the established paths until they felt they were between the three fugitives and Sherra's hold, and then backtracked through the woods. Stupid, stupid.

Carey turned back to Dayna and hauled her roughly to her feet, holding her up with a cruel grip. What he really wanted to do was carry her to safety, but what he had to do was something quite different. He ignored the startled look on her face and shook her. "You made the choice," he told her harshly. "Now live with it! We're maybe two miles from Sherra's—" he turned her body to the right and kept it that way when she would have turned back to look at him, "—this direction. It's not you they want, and there's nothing you can do to help me, so get going and don't stop until you get there!"

"But—" she started, annoyance warring with confusion on her face as she turned back to look at him despite his efforts to keep her pointed correctly.

"But, nothing! Go!"

"Mark . . . ?"

"Go," Mark affirmed, and gave her a tiny little push to show he meant it.

"And you," Carey added.

Mark protested, "I can help!"

"Mark, they won't kill me, not outright. You, they'll kill." Dammit, go, you two. The movements in the woods had coalesced into three distinct figures, heading directly for them.

Mark gave a sly little grin and said, "Carey, old buddy, who taught you to shoot a gun?"

Carey blinked and then looked stupidly at the sack. There were four guns in that sack, minus only a few bullets among them. He hadn't given them a second thought after they'd left the riverside—he was back home, now, where they didn't have such things as guns.

"Me, too," Dayna said in a low voice. "I can't run any longer and you know it. And you know they won't just let me go, either."

Mark released the tie and dumped the sack before Carey could respond. "Don't fire till you see the whites of their eyes," he said calmly.

Carey raised a skeptical eyebrow. "As soon as I find out who's side they're on," he corrected, taking the automatic Mark offered him. "Watch." It was a simple spell, one that every good—and long-lived—courier knew. He closed his eyes a moment to slide into the proper concentration, and channeled the small rush of magic into the spell that would tell him if they faced friend or foe. When he opened his eyes, those who approached were limned in orange, a quiet effect that quickly faded. "The other side," he stated, glancing at Dayna and Mark to see if they'd seen the effect.

They had, of course—as had the others. One of them raised his hand in a self-confident wave, acknowledging the spell—and their intentions—and reached for an arrow to fit into the bow he held. Carey raised the automatic and rested it against the side of a tree trunk to steady his arm. Sighting along the barrel, he found the three figures and picked one, waiting just a few more moments while Dayna hesitated beside him and Mark waited, ready to back him up.

Squeeze. The gunshot was an unfathomable assault of sound in these woods on a world that had never seen gunpowder. His target faltered and fell, and the other two froze in place, unable to discern what manner of attack they were under. All too quickly they realized there had been no feel of magic, and dove for cover; Carey's precious second bullet was buried in some innocent tree.

"Nice trick," one of them called as their injured comrade struggled to crawl to safety. "But there are more of us coming, and eventually we'll get to you."

Carey turned his back to them, leaning against the same tree that had steadied his hand, his head back, his eyes closed. "If they do get to us," he said, "and we somehow still have bullets left, promise me you'll empty the guns into the ground. Maybe someone'll be able to figure the things out without the powder or bullets, but it'll take them a lot longer." Then he opened his eyes to assess them: Mark, looking unusually grim and determined, showing no sign of buckling despite an adventure that had started with a kidnapping, encompassed murder, and ended up on a different world. Carey had not realized there was that much strength beneath the easygoing person that Mark presented to the world. But Dayna looked back at him with frightened, red-rimmed blue eyes that clearly showed she had already given all she had—which was more than Carey had expected from her small frame, despite what he'd said when he'd agreed to Eric's burial.

"You think they're telling the truth?" she asked.

"Yes," Carey said without hesitation. "They wouldn't stick around if they weren't, not when we've demonstrated how easily we can kill them. And keep your head down—I saw at least one bow, and an arrow can reach us as easily as a bullet can reach them. If they hadn't been so cocky, they'd have had arrows strung before they got within range."

Mark slid behind a tree to the left of Carey, and Dayna sat at Mark's feet, her arms wrapped around her knees, her gun dangling loosely from her hand. Carey exchanged a worried glance with Mark as she began rocking slightly, her eyes closed. They couldn't afford to have her break down, not here, not now.

Then he realized she was muttering to herself, words he divined more by watching her lips than listening to her words. Goawaygoawaygoaway, she mouthed in a nearly silent chant. Goawaygoaway. And although he felt the magic, he didn't really comprehend until it was too late, until the magic was flowing steadily through a small tired body with indomitable will; then his head snapped around to peer beyond his tree.

They were going away. He gave her an incredulous glance, but couldn't take his eyes off the enemy for long. He couldn't see their faces, couldn't discern their expressions, but they were leaving, at first backing away, the two supporting the injured man between them, and then turning around to walk with even, unresisting strides. Going away. Carey looked at Dayna again, and could feel the incredulity on his face, knew he looked like an idiot as Mark stared at them all—enemies, new friend and old friend—with incomprehension.

Carey didn't dare try to explain. Dayna's concentration was unremitting, and as long as it was, she was safe. But . . . sooner or later, she was going to have to stop—and she didn't know the rules. Burning hells, he didn't know the rules, not for magic as pure and concentrated as this. He watched her silently for what seemed a very long time, although his Marion-bought watch told him it had been only ten minutes. Mark followed his lead, crouching silently between Dayna and the tree, still looking out into the woods every few minutes to assure himself the others were gone.

Finally, Carey felt it had gone on long enough—that it was better to stop the magic before she simply lost her grasp on it through fatigue. "They're gone," he said quietly. "You did it, Dayna—they're gone."

Her eyes flew open in surprise, and he knew then that she'd had no idea what she was doing, but had simply been herself at the end of her rope. "What?" she asked, as the flow of magic snapped off. Carey winced; he'd been hoping it wouldn't be that sudden, because of the—

Backlash!

Mark yipped in astonishment as a flash flood of magic snapped through their little spot in the woods, flung them to the ground, and left them there, three battered victims of its violent passage.

* * *

Jaime had a lengthy chat over Sherra's tea, during which Sherra's stout, pleasant husband joined them, and then had been shown to a small but breezy room with a narrow rope featherbed, where she agreed to lie down and rest despite her convictions that worry would keep her staring fretfully at the herb-hung ceiling.

When she woke, she decided there must have been something soporific in the tea—or maybe it came of being healed of a mortal head injury. She peered out the window in search of the sun, and although she didn't seem to be facing the right direction to find it, she decided the diffuse light meant it was early evening. When she turned back to the interior of the room, she discovered that someone had left her a lightweight tunic and a pair of slacks to replace the distinctly aromatic breeches and polo shirt she was still wearing. She had to cuff the legs of the pants so they wouldn't drag, but otherwise someone had done an admirable job of sizing them for her. And they were flattering colors, a bright berry tunic over cream trousers, which made her hair look darker and brought out her brown eyes.

Her eyes. It suddenly occurred to her that she was going to be in a fuzzy neverland when she had to take out her contacts—she shouldn't have slept in them in the first place. She went over to the small mirror that rested above a delicately rose-tinted pitcher and washbasin, and peered in it to see how red her eyes were.

They weren't. She took the mirror over to the window and tilted it to catch the light; her dark brown eyes stared solemnly back at her, unsullied by the creeping red veins that always accompanied an inadvertent nap with the contacts. But—wait a minute. She did the odd little trick of turning her eyes away and looking in the mirror with her peripheral vision, the find the contacts game. She blinked, she squinted, and she frowned, but to no avail. Okay, maybe she'd lost them in the fall. That wouldn't be unusual—or, it wouldn't be, if she still didn't have clear distance vision.

Jaime placed the heels of her hands over her eyes for a moment and then deliberately opened them again, gazing across the courtyard to the trees beyond.

She could see the leaves. The individual leaves, which should have been a blur of muddled greens. This is a world with magic, she chided herself, and wondered how many times she would have to learn that lesson. Putting it out of her mind, Jaime wandered into the hall and picked one of the several sets of stairs. She ended up in the kitchen, surprising the workers there as much as she surprised herself. It was an odd kitchen, with one big stove that seemed to be wood, and one that seemed to simply be a stone counter with painted squares on it—although she discovered for herself, by nearly burning a finger, that there was plenty of reason for the big pot there to be boiling.

A moment's observation in this curious, bustling place revealed there was one person in charge, an aged man called the spellcook. She watched with amazement, for the first time realizing how deeply Camolen had integrated magic into its society. There were preservation spells, heating spells, baking spells, cleaning spells . . . and off in the corner she discovered ice forming in stacks of ceramic trays that looked absurdly familiar. Just like Sherra's medicine, it was technology—from pragmatic to sublime—in a different form.

Lesson Number Two. This is a world with magic, she repeated to herself, a chant that was to become familiar over the next few days, even if the world did not.

Finally, she thanked them all for letting her blunder in amongst them and asked to be pointed at the courier barn. They all seemed to know just who she was and were eager to be helpful; each man and woman gave her their own version of the directions she supposed would have been simple enough if she'd only heard them once. She thanked them profusely and wandered out into the yard with absolutely no idea which way to turn—until she heard Lady's call.

It was an anxious neigh, and it pealed out several times in succession. By then Jaime had the direction, and although she had to go around a busy blacksmith's shack and a chicken coop, she arrived at the barn only moments after Lady began another round of summons. She circumvented the large barn and found the dun in one of several small paddocks that backed up against the stout perimeter wall.

"Lady," she said quietly, and the mare snorted at the sight of her, not hesitating in the pacing that had already worn a visible path along the border of the paddock. Jaime saw that her right shoulder was indeed scraped and bruised, but her stride was long and even and unaffected. "You were lucky," she said wryly, and ducked through the rails of the fence to stand in Lady's path and interrupt the fixated pacing.

Lady didn't appreciate the interference and said so with a loud wet snort as she stopped scant inches away from Jaime, bobbing her head.

"Oh, stop," Jaime said in a don't be stupid tone, wiping her cheek. "There's no point in this—he'll get here when he gets here."

"Oh, he's here, all right."

The voice startled her and she whirled, putting her back up against Lady, who snorted again—this time aggressively, protectively.

The woman held up a hand, and winced. "Don't worry," she said, rubbing her shoulder appreciatively, "I'm not here to make trouble."

Jaime took in the tall, blonde figure and had no trouble placing her. "You were on the path," she said, almost an accusation. "You could have told me you were Sherra's people—it would have saved us both a lot of trouble."

The woman shrugged. "We had the armbands on. It didn't even occur to us that there could be someone who didn't know what they meant—all of Siccawei knows what they mean—burning hells, all the lands bordering Siccawei know what they mean."

"Did you say Carey was here?"

"Him and two others. They from your . . . place, too?" The woman came up to the paddock fence and leaned on the top rail, frowning at Lady when the dun snaked her neck out and snapped in a deliberately rude threat.

Jaime closed her mouth on an admonishment and instead gave Lady a reassuring pat. "I'm sorry," she said. "She's been through a lot today."

The woman shrugged, but her expression made it clear she was still waiting for an answer.

"Yes, we all came together. The guy is my brother, Mark, and the woman is a friend, Dayna. My name is Jaime," she added as an afterthought, and wished that she could have been introducing Eric as well.

"Katrie," the woman said. "And it's true there's no magic on your world?" She sounded like she wasn't sure she believed it and Jaime laughed.

"You know, that's about the same look I had on my face when Carey was trying to convince me there was magic on yours. But it's true—there's no magic there."

"Huh," Katrie said skeptically.

Jaime asked hopefully, "Can you take me to Carey?"

She wasn't prepared for Katrie's decisive shake of her head. "We brought him in a fist ago—" she started, stopping at Jaime's expression. "What?"

"A fist?"

"Of course, a fist." Katrie stared at the ground and planted one fist one top of another until she pointed directly over her head. "Midday. That's 9 fists. Scholars have their tricky clocks for keeping time, but out away from the cities we do it our own way. It's been about one fist since we brought Carey in—and that wasn't any easy chore, I'll tell you."

Jaime's hand stilled against Lady's neck, and she had the uncanny feeling that the dun was suddenly listening, too. "Why not?"

"Three of them and three of us, and we had to carry them all the way. Sherra's with them, now." Another shrug, this time of dismissal; her job was done.

"Carry them? Why?" The hand gripped and tangled in black strands of mane. Not all three of them. Not them, too.

"My guess is magic. There wasn't a mark on them—and we'd never have found them if Neron hadn't felt the magic that came from their direction. It had to have been big, because he's no sensitive," Katrie said, matter-of-factly.

Lady lifted her head and called out again as Jaime turned away from the woman, suddenly aware that her own nonchalance since crashing the gate was all a cover. How could anyone be nonchalant in a society as alien as this one, when threat and death seemed to be all around her? She wrapped her arms around Lady's dun neck, and was shaken by the vibrations of the anguished whinnying.

"Here, now." The light touch on her shoulder startled her; she hadn't expected any gentleness from the tough looking woman who'd stood before her. "Sherra'll put them right."

"It's not just . . . it's—" Jaime faltered, talking into Lady's neck, overwhelmed by the prospect of finding just a few words to convey everything that needed to be said. Finally she settled for, "We already lost one friend getting here." Maybe two, she thought, as she felt Lady's soft black nose nuzzle gently at her shoulder.

Surprise evident, Katrie said, "You did?"

Jaime wiped her eyes on the sleeve of the bright tunic and glanced up at the taller woman, and got her own surprise at the new respect she thought she saw there.

"Would you tell me?" Katrie asked.

Jaime surprised herself by asking bluntly, "Why?"

After a moment, Katrie shrugged and said, "Curiosity, I suppose. But . . . we're all involved in your story, too. It started here and it's going to end here. And while maybe you'll find a way back home, we'll still be here, living with the results of this mess."

Jaime, too, thought a moment, looking at Katrie with her peculiarly acute vision, and seeing a blunt, tough woman who had the thoughtfulness to come up with that answer.

"Supper'll be on," Katrie said. "I'll show you how it's done here, and you'll have plenty of time to tell me your side of things."

Jaime didn't have to think any longer. "That sounds fine," she said, briefly resting her hand on the thick black stripe that traversed Lady's spine. The dun's attention was already elsewhere, and her neck vibrated with a barely voiced call.

"She must have seen them," Jaime said, climbing through the fence. "She knows he's here somewhere."

"I've seen her here on regular courier runs—she never seemed to care that much," Katrie commented.

"That," said Jaime, "is part of the story."

* * *

She had quite an audience at the meal, which was a huge buffet complete with hot soapy water in which to wash the copper-veneered wooden platters and utensils—although Jaime now knew they'd be magically cleansed in the kitchen as well, so it was sort of like rinsing the dishes before they went in the dishwasher. People wandered in and out, keeping the noise level at a loud but pleasant hum, and the food slowly disappeared as Jaime told a tableful of people how she'd met Carey. She did not, however, speak of Jess' involvement, despite her comment to Katrie. Somehow that was too personal and, she decided, not really her story, anyway. She simply told Katrie and her friends that Dayna had run into Carey at the hotel. She put Dayna in Jess' place at the YMCA, and did not mention that Carey had memorized the spell—or that he'd even inadvertently destroyed it in the first place. But she told the scrupulous truth when it came to Eric, and the caring person he'd been, and that his death had been stupid and unnecessary. And she told about meeting Katrie on the road, and turned it into a Keystone Cops adventure that even had Katrie smiling.

But she didn't learn the things that she wanted to know. No one could tell her if her friends would be all right; the best she could do on that score was discover that Sherra had left them in the hands of her students while she recovered from the work she'd done. No one cared to venture a guess on what the problem had been, or what the prognosis was—although they seemed to think it wouldn't be unusual if Jaime had to wait another day to find out. Jaime sensed they had some idea of what had gone on, but were simply too discreet to discuss it. They wouldn't even tell her about Arlen, or what Calandre had been up to in Carey's absence—someone always managed to change the subject, or she got a table full of shrugs, and eventually she quit asking. While she quietly fumed over that for the last half of the meal, she eventually realized they had done no more than she, with her altered version of Carey's adventures, and had to respect them for it.

When the talkfest adjourned, she inquired and was told the little room in which she'd napped was hers for the duration, and she returned to it, tried one more time to find her contacts—this time by candlelight, although the halls had been lit with strange spherical glows—and crawled into the soft bed, where she fretted for all of five minutes before sleep kidnapped her thoughts and turned them into a night full of frustrating dreams.

* * *

As darkness fell, Sherra's head courier brought Lady into the barn, where she ceased her calling. He stayed with her for a while, and offered her some of the choicest hay she'd ever seen, but her mouth was not for eating tonight. And though she knew the dark-skinned man, and liked him, she did not respond to his gentle words, or even react to the grooming he offered her. Eventually, he left her alone with her thoughts.

For Lady had thoughts. She didn't understand them and she didn't like them, but she had them. She was aware that something of great magnitude had happened to her; every moment of her time as a woman was etched into her excellent equine memory, but they were memories she couldn't comprehend. Far too many words bounced around in her mind, both the place and object names that she could deal with and the more abstract facets of language that she couldn't. It made her mad, and it frightened her, and more than anything she wanted Carey to return to her and make it stop.

But the very thought of the man who could, who always had, soothed her, merely created more torment. She had memories of feelings she didn't understand, and couldn't translate to her equine makeup, and they made her want to crash through the door of her stall and even through the thick wood gate, and to run her fastest through the woods, galloping until her tortured heart gave out.

In sudden frustration, she kicked the wall; a solid blow that rang throughout the barn and tingled up through her hock. Again she kicked, and again, barely controlled violence that settled into a leg-damaging rhythm which numbed her mind and distracted her from the unbearable.

"Lady!" It was Morley, the head courier, back again and fumbling at the latch to her stall. Furious at the interruption, she screamed at him and charged the stall door; he fell back and gaped at her as she began kicking the wall again. She was lost to herself by the time he ran out of the barn.

Kick, beat. Kick, beat. Kick—Morley was back again, with the same woman who had tended her shoulder. "Lady," the woman crooned, a considerate approach that earned her the same greeting Morley had received. Only Carey could help Lady now, it had ever been only Carey—except now she couldn't stand the thought of his touch, and it left her nothing.

The woman did not retreat, though Lady bared her teeth and shook her head and rolled her eye. She was . . . humming. Lady pricked an ear despite herself, then, suddenly aware she'd been thwarted, ran to the back of the stall where she pawed the straw bedding and half-reared, fighting years of training as well as her own frantic passions.

The humming was quite nice, actually. A stray wisp of color ran through Lady's thoughts, startling her; it wasn't a color her eyes could see, although . . . that other part of her had seen such things. She snorted, and suddenly realized that her legs were trembling, and that her right hind ached, and that please, please, she just wanted it all to go away and maybe this woman would do that for her. With a deep groan she approached the stall door again, and the woman put a hand to her forehead, ever humming; the soothing blues and greens washed through her mind. Without quite realizing how it had happened, Lady found herself lying in the stall with the woman beside her. She surrendered herself to those healing forces, and felt the alien part of herself sliding away.

* * *

Jaime was furious. Unfortunately, she had no one at whom to be furious—except maybe those well-meaning people who refused to tell her the details of what was happening with her friends and brother, and who insisted that while they were recovering, they were not yet ready to see her. Even then she knew it wasn't really their fault that they weren't quite sure how to deal with this woman from the world without magic. And for her part, she was tired of the constant discoveries—discovering that her bath would have indeed been a warm one if she'd only known there was a spell to trigger for it and how to do it, that the funny little chime in her head meant someone was looking for her and she should return to the great room to meet them, that she could have easily obtained a mouth cleansing spell instead of futilely scrubbing her morning mouth teeth with a towel-wrapped finger. Pah. She was still spitting out lint.

A ride, she thought, would do her good. Might do Jess—or Lady—good, too. Distract her, perhaps, and give her something to concentrate on, for the longer hours in the Camolen day seemed solely intended to provide them both with more time to worry. And Jaime was curious to see how a horse whose alter ego was steeped in the theories of dressage would respond to some focused riding.

When she arrived at the barn—fed, dressed in her cleaned, mended breeches, and anticipating a good conversation with Carey's horse, she found Lady in the same paddock—but an entirely different animal. Head low, standing in the corner with the weight shifted off her stocked-up right hind, Lady gave her an indifferent glance; the ear she flicked was merely a reflex to rid herself of a fly, nothing more.

"Jaime?"

It was not a voice she knew. Jaime turned to the dark-complected man who was coming up behind her and lifted an eyebrow in a polite but not quite welcoming response, unwilling to be distracted from Lady. His confident step faltered.

"Katrie said that was your name—Jaime," he offered in an almost question. "I'm Morley, head courier here."

"It's Jaime. What's going on with Lady?"

"That's why I'm here. We're not really sure, and we hoped you could help us."

"We?"

"Hanni and I. She's our animal handler—um, she specializes in treating animals with magic. I had to call her in for Lady last night."

"What happened?" Jaime asked, trying to keep the demand out of her voice as she quickly turned back to Lady, scrutinizing the dun.

He shook his head. "Burn me if I know. She went crazy last night after I stalled her—started kicking the wall, and then rushed me. She went after Hanni, too, but that woman's a good handler. She got the mare sedated, but couldn't really interpret the problem—although she treated it as best she could."

"Then she was doing the kicking with that back leg," Jaime said, glancing at Morley for confirmation. "Is she still sedated now, then? And what did you mean, she 'treated' it?"

He shook his head. "No, the sedation's run its course. I wish Hanni were here—she could explain a lot better. But she spent a lot of time with Lady and she's at home in the village, sleeping."

"You can't give me any idea of what she did?" Jaime asked, persistent, and beginning to feel alarm as she watched a horse who had given her no sign of recognition.

"Not really," Morley said uncomfortably. "I know, generally, how they go about working on an unknown like this—it's sort of like finding the path of the most resistance—that's where the problem is. Then they eliminate it."

"Oh my God," Jaime said, sudden dread clutching her heart. "Jess!" she called sharply, stepping up on the first rail of the fence and leaning far over the top rail. "Jess!"

Morley came up beside her, his bafflement palpable. Jaime ignored him.

"Jess! Please, Jess, come and talk to me," she pleaded, her thoughts reverberating with Morley's then they eliminate it. The horse regarded her in an unremarkable way, a mare with lean but pleasing conformation and all the extras that went with being a dun, the black points on ears, muzzle and lower legs, the thick line down her back, and the faint tiger striping on the backs of her legs. It was only Lady who looked back at her, who shook her lowered head so her thick mane flapped noisily against her neck, and who looked away to scratch her face against her foreleg.

Almost beside herself, Jaime turned on Morley. "What have you done to her! Get Hanni back here and put her back the way she was, right now!"

Morley took a step back, but was uncowed. "In the first place, 'the way she was' was making her crazy. In the second place, this is Carey's horse, not yours, and he'll be the one to make the decisions about her."

"You should have thought of that last night!" Jaime said accusingly.

"Carey wasn't available and you know it. As far as I'm concerned, Hanni saved that mare's life last night and there'll be no more said about it." His concerned and cordial attitude had cooled considerably.

"You don't understand," Jaime said, desperation setting in as she groped for some way to explain it to him, words that would make him understand just how important the Jess part of the mare was. She closed her eyes and made a concerted effort to slow her thoughts and choose her words. Calm and cool, Jaime, that's your rep. Live up to it.

But she didn't have to.

"Carey," said Morley, interrupting her thoughts with relief in his voice.

Her eyes flew open to the welcome sight of two figures approaching in two blessedly familiar walks—one loose-jointed, one self-assured. Jaime ran to meet them, grabbing them each for a quick hug that left Mark grinning and Carey surprised.

"You're all right," she said, finding Carey untouched aside from the healing cut on his face and standing back from Mark to scrutinize him, finding pretty much what she always saw in him, right down to his mildly goofy grin. "Aren't you?"

"Just fine," Mark assured her, right before his face distorted in an exaggerated twitch. She hit him lightly on the arm and said, "What happened? Where's Dayna?"

"Dayna needs a little more time," Carey said, but his comment was so matter-of-fact that she felt reassured anyway. "I heard you've been nagging the house aides unmercifully—but that none of your many questions have been answered. You want some of those answers now?"

"You better believe it," Jaime said emphatically. "But first—I think we've got a problem here."

"Why?" Carey said, glancing at Morley. "What's going on?"

"It's Jess," Jaime said heavily.

"That's what she's been calling Lady," Morley offered, still back at the paddock fence. "As far as I'm concerned, the problem's solved, but you can decide for yourself."

All three of them joined Morley at the fence and Carey spent a few moments watching the dun. "There's her shoulder, which I've been told happened on the ride in." He looked at Jaime, as if checking out her head.

"I'm fine," she said, which at this point was an absurd lie. "But—"

"I'll tell you what I told her," Morley interrupted. "Last night your mare went into a frenzy in her stall—kicking, which is why her hock is swollen. She was wild, Carey—she came after me, and she meant it. She'd been fussing all afternoon, too, but this—well, I've rarely seen the like. Hanni was in for a calving and she took Lady on. Calmed her, and took care of the upset."

"Jess is gone, Carey," Jaime said in heavy emphasis. "She was there before, you know she was. She knew me, and she listened to me out on the trail—not like a horse would, or even could. She even got me out of a sticky situation with some people who tried to stop me."

"I heard about it," Carey said, frowning at Lady, who had immediately come over to greet him, and was lipping at his outstretched hand.

"I think it was being Jess that upset her so much," Jaime said, looking away from the oh-so-horsey exchange between Carey and Lady. "And Hanni took care of it, and now I can't see Jess anywhere."

"Who in the Ninth Hell is this Jess?" Morley demanded.

Carey pulled gently on Lady's chin while she made satisfied faces. "When I went to Jaime's world, Lady came with me. Only, the magic turned her into a woman, and we called her Jess. Dun Lady's Jess."

Morley stared at him.

"And when we came back, she was Lady again. Only the Jess part of her was still there . . . ." Carey trailed off as Lady removed herself from his range and sniffed a fence post like it was the only possible reason she came to them in the first place.

"It must have confused the hell out of her," Mark said. "How could a horse deal with a woman's experiences?"

"She couldn't," Morley said firmly. "Maybe your Jess is in there somewhere, maybe not. But I still think Hanni did the right thing—unless you'd rather have lost both of them."

"No," Carey said, barely audible. He turned away from them, and looked out on the yard, which was empty of all save a goat that shouldn't have been loose. After a very long moment, he turned back to them and said, "We've got a lot to catch up on, Jaime. Let's go find a spot in the shade."

"I'm sorry, Carey," Morley offered, genuinely upset at Carey's distraught reaction. "If only I'd known about it—"

"Don't say it!" Carey turned on him fiercely, turning Morley's words into a surprised expression even as Jaime realized Morley was really saying, if she'd told me about it, this could have been prevented.

"Carey—" she started, but couldn't have gotten any further even if he hadn't broken in.

"Don't even think it," he told her, just as fiercely. "There was no way you could know, just as there was no way Hanni could have suspected what she was doing. It just . . . happened this way. Maybe," he said, continuing with some difficulty, "maybe it's for the best, anyway. Jess . . . was too vital to have lived the rest of her life trapped in a horse's mind."

"You don't believe that," Jaime said, almost as fiercely as he'd interrupted her. "I know you don't. You tried for two months to convince yourself she was nothing more than a horse in a woman's body, and you couldn't. You're not going to be able to convince yourself that—that this," and she gestured widely at Lady, "is for the best, either!"

It was Mark who captured her outstretched hand and used it to pull her into another hug, a slow, cradling hug, resting his cheek on the top of her head. "C'mon, Jay," he said. "Let's find that shade."

* * *

When Carey, armed with three cool herbal teas, arrived back at the spreading shade tree that was a central part of Sherra's backyard, he was ready to get down to business. The part of him that had been so raw and open as he confronted Lady exorcised of Jess was now closed tightly away, leaving that cold and determined courier who was capable of risking an entire barnful of someone else's horses in order to obtain his goal. A courier who could not take the time to deal with Jess, or even with the horrifying news of his six assistant riders, every one of whom had been killed.

"Mark's told me what happened with Dayna," Jaime greeted him from the carved wooden bench on which she and her brother sat, and accepted the ceramic tumbler he offered her. Carey gave another to Mark and took the bench opposite them, no longer really interested in the past, but reluctantly accepting that Jaime would need to understand what he and Mark already knew. "I can't believe she can manipulate magic so well," she continued. "I certainly haven't the faintest idea how to go about it."

"Neither does she," Carey said wryly. "Or none of us would have spent a day sleeping off the effect of the backlash." But that was not really a response to Jaime's unspoken question, so he sighed and told her what he himself had only recently learned. "Chiara—that's Sherra's most advanced student—asked me a lot about her—what kind of person she was, what kind of habits she had. . . ."

"I told her, 'inflexible,' " Mark put in, adding a quick but fleeting grin to show it wasn't meant to be a criticism. "You know how she is about keeping her own little self-imposed schedules."

"And you were the one person she could never get to pay the least bit of attention to them," Jaime said. "Oil and water, that's you two. But I think I understand what you're getting at . . . she's got a lot of self-discipline. What we might see as inflexibility can also be called . . ." and she wrinkled her nose in quick thought, "an ability to channel her energies in an orderly way."

Carey blinked. Damn good thinking there. "Right," he said. "But without the schooling, she put us all in a lot of danger. Of course she got the worst of it, and she was in pretty bad shape to begin with. But she'll probably be out and about before this evening."

"I think you're making light of the whole thing," Jaime said evenly. "Sherra was with you for an awfully long time, and went straight off to rest. But she took care of my head injury and didn't seem the least bit fazed."

"An . . . overdose of magic like that, pure magical energy . . . it disrupts the entire body," Carey said, and allowed himself a brief smile as he added, using the benefit of his time in front of the Cabot television set, "sort of like a phaser on heavy stun. It was damn hard work for her to take three of us and put us to rights again, and I won't lie to you—for Dayna it was a close thing. But she really is all right, and there's no point in dwelling on it."

"Okay," Jaime said, letting go of the topic if not the worry that settled between her brows. "Then tell me what's going on here. Did you find out anything about Arlen? And what about the checkspell—do they have one yet?"

It was then he recognized something of himself in her. No one on this world would be interested in restoring three people to Marion, Ohio, until the local crisis had passed. She had herself set on that goal, just as he had aimed himself at returning here, and right now that meant putting aside her feelings about Eric, Jess and all the strangeness that surrounded her. He glanced at Mark and wondered what was hidden behind the face that seemed to be interested in studying the bits of herbs still floating in the tea.

"No," he said, finally answering Jaime's question. "I dictated the spell to Chiara, but until then, no one here but Arlen had a complete version of it."

"Then he's still alive."

"As far as anybody knows." Carey's hand drifted to the spellstones that rested on his chest. "There's a lot of supposition going on."

"Why don't you just tell us everything you've learned?" Jaime suggested firmly. "Just start at the beginning and give us the whole thing."

Carey shook his head, not in dissent, but rather at the uselessness of it all. "And then what? You think you're going to step in and solve all our problems?"

She stared at him a moment and said, icily, "I deserve better than that, Carey. We're here because you fell into a park in Ohio, and because we took you into our lives. We rate an explanation, dammit! The only thing that's going to make all this bearable is if we know, somehow, that in the end it was all worth it."

Remorse nudged at the walls he had set in place, the tunnel-vision walls he had just seen echoed in Jaime. His quick response was self-protective, an effort to leave the walls standing. "All right, all right." He leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees, trying to organize all that he had learned just recently himself. Mark, too, had heard some of it, but for the most part had been preoccupied with Dayna's condition while Carey had been busy grilling Chiara.

"All right," he started again. "About the same time Derrick went after me, Calandre used a stolen recall spell to get into Arlen's stronghold. He would have been warned, though, that the person who showed up in his recall room was unauthorized—he must have been, or he wouldn't have been able to blast a warning to Sherra. Calandre cut him off, of course, but at least we know he probably had time to erect the security walls—uh, magic walls of force that would keep her out of his private quarters. So it's possible he's simply waiting out the siege—and she's got a surplus of armed men holding the grounds to keep away any chance of rescue—not to mention the forces that are wandering around, indiscriminately making trouble in her name."

"He has food and water to last all this time?"

Carey's inward frown was bigger than the one he let show. "Water, yes, since it's spring and rainy, and he can collect it. Food . . . I doubt it."

"And magic can't create something from nothing, can it," Jaime said. "Or, at least, you were always saying about Jess that magic couldn't change the essential nature of what she was."

But I was wrong about Jess. "Magic affects things. It reveals things. It doesn't create them, or change nonliving matter into living matter."

"All of which is a roundabout way to say that Jay is right," Mark said dryly, looking up from his tea. "Which also means that Arlen's probably pretty hungry by now."

"And he's not going to be able to keep the security walls up forever," Carey muttered. "Not once he weakens." He flopped back against the bench, his head tilted back so he looked up at the fluffy white clouds above them. Damn, damn, damn. This gets worse and worse. Jaime and Mark were quiet, giving him his thoughts.

"I've got a way to get to him," Carey said finally, abruptly. "It's foolhardy, and it'll probably get us both killed, but I do have a way."

"How can you get in there if Calandre can't?" Mark asked reasonably.

"Because I've got the only recall that can also be triggered to his private quarters." But you had to know it was there. You had to know how to use it. Carey fingered the stones again, remembering the day he'd been taught the extra nudge of triggering that would take him to Arlen's quarters instead of the stable receiving room—when Arlen had chosen him as head courier. I'm not a healer, Carey, he'd confessed, but you're going to risk your life for me on a fairly regular basis. If something should happen . . . well, you use this. I'll do all I can for you. He'd even used it once before, the day he lost Lady's half-brother. What had he been carrying? Something for Calandre, before she got so ambitious. It hadn't even been all that important, but some burning little wizardlet had thought it would be the key to his own success. Arlen had played the healer well enough on that day.

"Carey?" Jaime prompted. "I think you've wandered off without us."

"Sorry," Carey said absently, thinking about the guns stowed beneath his bed. "Nothing important. Just wondering how long it'll take me to get this rescue launched."

* * *

"Absolutely not," Sherra said. Her hand, poised over a platter of sliced venison, withdrew and momentarily tightened into a fist beside her plate. But if she was torn over her decision, there was no other sign. Carey's responsive bristling was anything but subordinate, and Jaime wondered if they were going to get into a brawl over lunch. Sherra's husband, Trent, eyed them watchfully from a few seats down.

After a moment, when Carey's attitude made it obvious he had every intention of charging off on his own despite her verdict, Sherra collected herself and said, "Our first priority—the same as Arlen's first priority, were he here to tell us—is to find a checkspell."

"That doesn't have anything to do with me," Carey said, not a whit less determined. "You do your job, and I'll do mine. I work for Arlen, if you'll remember."

"It has everything to do with you." Sherra sighed, and reached for the meat she had abandoned, bringing the conversation back down to a less confrontational mode. Jaime found herself relaxing a little, and lifted the tumbler of the herbal tea for which she was beginning to acquire a taste. Her eyes never left Carey and Sherra, who sat opposite one another at the long table—although in her peripheral vision, Mark continued his meal without slacking. He always could eat through anything.

Carey was shaking his head. "Don't stop there, Sherra, not if you're trying to get me to change my mind."

"I'm thinking," she snapped. "I have to say this just right to have any chance at getting through your thick skull."

Jaime coughed, covering laughter, and avoided Carey's gaze as it turned suspiciously on her.

"I'm missing something here," Mark said. "Carey told me about your Wizard's Council and the precinct justice sessions. Why didn't anyone in Erowah manage to warn you guys about Calandre?"

"I've wondered the same thing." Jaime looked over her tumbler and caught Sherra's gaze, raising her eyebrow. "No one noticed she was amassing manpower? Magic power?"

"I watched your television news," Carey said. "Plenty of little governmental overthrows going on. Calandre stays secluded from the rest of the precinct. Making alliances with other, lesser wizards wouldn't be all that difficult to accomplish quietly, as long as she didn't make waves in other ways. And she hasn't recently—until now." He glared at Sherra and came down hard on his next words. "And I want to know what you're going to do about it."

All right," Sherra nodded, apparently having arrived at her strategy. "Given: we're going to need all of the high-caliber wizards at work on a checkspell, and we cannot afford to be distracted. After all, there is a time limit here—as soon as Arlen can no longer keep up his security, Calandre's people will be on him. He's not going to have any resistance left, and she will get the spell from him." She nodded to herself, her thick hair stirring with the motion, her eyes on her internal scenario. Then she looked back at Carey and said simply, "Anyway, given that, we cannot afford to have you stirring Calandre up."

"Why?" Mark asked, somehow managing to time an empty mouth with the right moment to insert the question.

"Why?" she repeated, eyebrows raised in surprise. "Carey can tell you that one, if he thinks about it."

Carey scowled. "She's got more than ground forces—she's got a cadre of former students. If she throws a temper tantrum, and uses her magic against some of the innocent people between us and her, it's going to take magic to counteract them."

"Skilled magic," Sherra asserted. "There are plenty of useful spells around that can be subverted to do harm. Counteracting them would take away from our crucial efforts to get that checkspell."

"But if you rescue Arlen, you won't need to race Calandre for the checkspell," Jaime said, puzzled.

"I know it doesn't seem clear-cut," Sherra admitted. "But our priority has to be the checkspell. Even if Calandre already has the spell—even if she's already used it, for there's plenty of magic going on in that big stone hold of Arlen's—we've still got to get a checkspell in place. It might seem like whipping a horse after the race is over, but we can do our best to keep the damage to a minimum. If we anger Calandre, we're back where we started in this conversation—diverted from our essential goal."

"So," Mark said, "even though you can't be sure it's not the right thing, the consequences of having it be the wrong thing are too great to risk going after Arlen."

"Pay attention to him," Sherra said to Carey, faint humor in her voice. "You could learn from a sensible young man like this."

Carey did not take the gentle reproof well; it struck sparks in his hazel eyes. "Sensible is not what Arlen needs! He needs help, and I don't know that I'm going to sit around here wiggling my toes when I'm the one that can give it to him!"

"Oh, you won't have the time to sit around wiggling your toes," Sherra responded with satisfaction. "I need couriers aplenty to help me coordinate this checkspell business. There's no way, of course, that we're going to spellspeak our information—and there's far too much riding for the people and horses I have left. Even the addition of your mare will be of great help to us."

"Bring the others here," Carey suggested without sympathy.

"And draw us all together in one big target? I don't think so." Sherra shook her head with a wry smile.

"Could you use another rider?" Jaime heard herself saying.

"Jaime, no!" Carey said sharply. "It's too dangerous. Ask Sherra why she's so short on horses and riders in the first place!"

But Sherra was eyeing Jaime with a thoughtful look on her face. "No, it might work, Carey. It's true that I'm short because my people have been injured, but she can take the rides that are close to home, the ones to the less prestigious wizards. We can easily give her a maplight." She paused a moment in thought and then said, "That would certainly free up some of our own riders for the longer runs—the ones out of Siccawei."

Carey looked completely unconvinced. "There's no reason to put her in more danger than she's already been through."

"It's my decision, Carey," Jaime said, an edge in her voice.

"And mine," Sherra asserted. "And I think we'll try it, Jaime, with much gratitude. If you feel differently after a few runs, you can always change your mind. We'll still be that much further ahead."

Mark said cheerfully, "I can't ride like Jay can. But I clean a mean stall."

Sherra smiled. "We've no shortage of people qualified for that job. But I don't doubt we'll find something to keep you occupied."

The conversation stalled while Carey picked over his food and Sherra's attention was commandeered by a harried-looking man with a crowded page of notes. When he left, Carey looked up from the meal he had been pushing around his plate; his expression had lost its defiance, if none of its determination.

"There's something else," he said. "Another friend of mine needs help."

"That would be Jess?" Sherra asked.

He snorted. "I should have known you'd have heard about that."

"Morley," Sherra provided. "I have no answers for you, Carey. Before Hanni was forced to take action, I could have been more reassuring, but now . . . Once we get past some of the details of getting the other wizards here, and have started work on the checkspell, Chiara will try to find some time to investigate the situation."

Jaime half expected another argument, but instead Carey nodded. "It's more than I expected," he said. "Thank you."

"Don't bother—not until Chiara's managed to find that time. There's no predicting what's ahead of us, Carey. Assuming that our world will fall back into place just as it's always been is a mistake." Sherra got up from the bench seat and gathered her dishes, looking at Jaime and Mark. "I'm glad we had the chance to lunch together. If I don't have the time to speak with you at length in the near future, please don't take it amiss."

"Of course not," Jaime said, as Mark chimed in with, "Heck, no." Jaime watched as Sherra took her utensils to the washtub and cleaned them, and suddenly realized how much she admired this woman, who seemed to be as expert with people as she was with magic.

Carey had given up the pretense of eating; he clicked his tongue, luring one of the several rangy dogs that wandered the room. The animal cleaned his plate with big eager swipes of his tongue while Mark and Jaime kept their silence, letting Carey choose the path of their conversation.

"Hey, guys." The voice behind her was quiet, a little uncertain, a little embarrassed.

"Dayna!" Mark and Jaime chorused, twisting to see her. She was dressed in a simply cut shift that reached to midcalf, a deep sky blue that echoed the color of her eyes and contrasted with black lines of piping along the seams and hems. Like her own borrowed clothing, Jaime thought—simple but not without style. Dayna herself looked drawn but steady on her feet, if somewhat unsure of her reception.

Jaime and Mark wasted no time scooting away from one another, leaving room for Dayna in an unspoken invitation to sit. Unencumbered by food, she climbed over the bench and sat, quietly offering, "I already ate upstairs."

"Are you all right? You look pretty good. In fact, you look too much like a certain Dayna I know who doesn't believe in magic," Jaime teased.

"Just because it's here doesn't mean I have to like it," Dayna said, her fine brows drawn together.

"Ow." Jaime winced.

Dayna twisted the material of a long sweeping sleeve, and muttered, "Sorry. It's not you I'm mad at."

"Who are you mad at?" Mark asked.

Dayna looked like she was about to burst with anger and frustration, and it took her a moment to get her words together. "They say I have to learn magic!"

"Who says?" Mark rejoined immediately, glancing at Carey, who shrugged.

"Sherra. Her students. All the wizards here. I told them I didn't want anything to do with it."

Carey replaced his well-licked plate on the table and scrutinized Dayna. "Backlash or no, what you did saved us," he said, and when she shook her head in automatic denial, he insisted, "Yes, it did. Maybe we'd have gotten out of the situation anyway—but maybe not. The ability to channel strong magic is a rare thing, Dayna. You should explore it while you have the chance."

"I don't want to explore it. I don't even want to be here. What I want is to go home." Fierce words, determined face under its short wedge of rumpled sandy hair.

"We all want to go home," Jaime told her. "They have other things to worry about, Dayna."

"They have the time to force me to learn magic!"

Carey looked straight at her and, without sympathy, said, "They've seen what an untaught magic user can wreak on this world. If they insist that you learn the basics, then that's what you'll do. Even if they lock you in a room and force feed it down your throat."

Dayna flushed in angry recollection. "That's exactly what they said they'd do."

"Then maybe you should think about cooperating," Jaime said gently. "It'll be a lot easier on you. And it'll keep your mind off going home. That's why I volunteered to ride courier."

"And I still don't like it," Carey said. "But as long as Sherra's said yes, let's go talk to Morley. I want to make sure he understands the kind of assignments you get."

"I can take care of myself," Jaime said, gathering her dishes as she got up from the table. "I'm not a kamikaze, no matter what you might think."

Carey gave her look of clear skepticism, but Mark just grinned. "Have fun, Jay."

"Oh, go clean a stable," she told him and gave him a sisterly pinch on the arm.

* * *

Lady flicked her tail at a fly and found herself—yet one more time—mildly surprised when thick black hair actually brushed her side in response. It was not something she understood, this surprise, just as she failed to understand why feeling out the world with her whiskers was such a preoccupation, or why she occasionally expected to see something else with her eyes.

Given too much time to concentrate on such physical vagaries, Lady became as irritable as during her springtime heat. Her courier runs with Jaime were a blessed relief.

She didn't know why this new person was riding her; she missed Carey's wooing voice in her ear. Jaime's praise, although welcome, did nothing to fill that silent space. And her touch was nothing like Carey's. Light, almost evanescent, it lacked his firmness, yet somehow managed to be just as reassuring. And, as Lady had discovered, the sensitivity of Jaime's touch was not an indication of weakness. Balking for balking's sake warranted a swift and potent reaction, and Lady soon gave up on the subtle little tricks she liked to pull with anyone but Carey.

Besides, the work they did together quickly captured her complete attention. Jaime showed her how to extend herself, lengthening trot strides with power and suspension. She learned how to collect those same strides into an equally powered and elegant gait, building on the careful basics that had made her a balanced and responsive courier mount. Half-passes from one side of the road to the other let her play with diagonal movement, crossing her legs forward and sideways until she snorted with something that kept wanting to be pleased laughter.

Sometimes, it was almost enough to drive away the nagging feeling that something—some unique and important part of her—was missing.

* * *

Extended trot—now! Jaime fed energy into Lady's dun sides and captured it in the reins, pushing the mare into big bold strides of extension. Not too many . . . stop it while she's still successful . . . and quietly she brought the mare back down into a good working trot, gently slapping the side of the sweat-darkened neck, affectionately ruffling the thick dark mane up and down Lady's crest. There would be no more dressage work on today's run; the days of constant work were wearing the edge off the energy of a horse Jaime had found to be nearly tireless. Lady snorted, dipped her head to take advantage of the rein Jaime fed out, and trotted on in an even rhythm, though soon she'd need a break.

For Jaime the courier runs meant time for dressage—and they meant opportunities to think. Out on runs that rarely took more than half the day coming and going, she was usually back in time to pitch in with whatever was needed at the village. Last week she had helped with dredging stronghold wells, not all of which were in constant use—but all of which would have to flow freely to provide clean water to the community if under siege. This week it was the tedious process of mowing and gathering the first cutting of hay—although it had been interesting to watch the students come out and place mold-retardant spells on the fodder, a spell she deeply coveted for her own Ohio hay. After that she thought to wonder how many other subtle ways magic was at work in this community, where mechanical technology had never advanced past swords and plowshares because magical technology took care of so many necessities. She became caught up in the strangeness of the culture, and diverted by the uses of everyday magic, some of which she was becoming familiar with. She had even had some success with the glowspells, and no longer needed the rarity of a candle in the room she was now sharing with Dayna—although the feel of using magic was uncomfortable for her, rather like an unreachable tickle in the back of her throat.

If it was a tickle to Jaime, magic was a gall to Dayna, who was learning in spite of herself. Withdrawn and unwilling, Dayna attended the daily work of Chiara and several of Sherra's other students, all of whom had had their lessons suspended for the duration. And although they were now trusted with the commonplace magics that helped to run the stronghold, the students obviously felt a little left out of the pivotal checkspell work, and were glad to immerse themselves in the new if unwilling project of Dayna. Jaime smiled at the thought of her petite friend wielding magic with competence.

Mark applied himself in the only area he felt he could be of use—stronghold and village defense. Though the weaponsmaster continued to drill Mark, along with Katrie and the other men-at-arms, it had quickly become plain that close confrontation would not come naturally to her brother, with or without weapons. But youthful Boy Scout experience in archery had unexpected benefit, and he spent several hours a day in practice. Jaime only hoped that he'd never have occasion to use his new skills.

Beneath her, Lady lowered her head and snorted, bored with the slow pace of their breather. "All right," Jaime told her, checking the ground ahead of them for the guide. A small pinprick of light that was too bright to look at directly, it was the maplight Sherra had mentioned, and it kept her on the unfamiliar routes to the wizards scattered near Sherra's stronghold. After only a few runs, Lady had learned to follow the guide, too, which gave Jaime a chance to keep an eye on their surroundings. Not that there was much to see in this forested area. There were few families still staying outside the fields surrounding the village; the rare soul she met on the road was invariably aloof and occasionally hostile, and she wasn't sure she blamed them, for she looked upon each as a potential enemy herself.

Although she wasn't in any danger, not really. She was sent on short and simple routes, and already had several of them memorized. Sometimes her ride had nothing to do with the actual checkspell at all, but was simply the result of curtailed spellspeak. Eventually the wizards would gather to pool their work, but after some initial confusion, they had come to the unanimous decision to work separately for as long as possible. A horde of wizards all gathered in one place presented a much too-tempting target for Calandre. Instead, the couriers were exposed in regular travel between wizards. And, as Jaime was far too aware, they rode without the safe retreat of a recall spell. Too risky. And she hadn't quite believed it wasn't feasible to tie a recall spell to some neutral place that would give Calandre no advantage, even though Carey had shaken his head and muttered something about the preparation and maintenance of a recall site when she broached the idea to him.

It was hard to understand his dismissal, when two couriers had already been badly hurt, and when it seemed like a solution was obvious. Jaime tried to remind herself of the way her beginning students were blithely unaware of some of the riding theories that were so clear to her. With an inward hmmph at her self-admonishment, she lifted Lady into a trot, posting in an automatic rhythm that her body knew too well to bother involving her brain. It occurred to her that this job was one she might well be doing for some time, depending on how things went for Camolen.

Two hours by her watch—useless for anything in these elongated days except to mark the length of her journeys—out of the stronghold, and verging on the first in a series of grassy knolls with bedrock too close to the surface to allow trees, Jaime's guide veered from the moderately well-used trail she was on, and Lady followed, until a small cabin materialized in front of the background of trees and the guide disappeared like a burst soap bubble. Perched at the top of the hill, it had an abandoned look to it. This was a new route, one Morley had grumbled and assigned to her anyway, and Jaime didn't feel particularly welcomed by the dwelling's starkness. A log cabin should be homey and inviting, not foreboding.

She stopped Lady in the trampled grass before the cabin and dismounted, replacing the bridle with a halter so Lady could pick at the grass, and hobbling her as well. This was the boring part of the run, this waiting for the recipients to digest her messages and frame some sort of reply. Sometimes it even meant sitting around and waiting for the magic user's return, for all that they knew she would be coming. This one hadn't shown his face yet, which meant he was probably out on some wizardly errand.

She went to the door to knock anyway, dropping the bridle by the side of the entrance—but as she raised her hand, the door swung away. The man who greeted her smiled in a way that made her want to step back, and said, "Play time."

Play time? She did take that step, and was about to identify herself when his hand shot out and grabbed her wrist, jerking her inside before she could even think to resist. She stumbled, caught herself, and found herself staring into the open, filmy eyes of the dead man on the floor. As she gaped at the gruesome, slashing wounds that had killed him, someone else grabbed her by the shoulders and literally picked her up off her feet, slamming her against the wall. Air whooped out of her lungs as she hit the wall again, and then again, rag-doll limp. Her vision greyed; she gasped for breath and blinked her tearing eyes back into focus, discovering a whiskered face shoved up close to her own. It was an unpleasant, leering face, and she flinched from what she saw there.

"Surprise," he said. "You guys are easier to catch all the time."

She wanted to say something daring, something to show she wasn't terrified. Instead she found herself mute, capable only of the whimper that trickled past her throat.

"The message?" the man asked, tightening his hold, hitching her a few more inches up the wall, moving a few inches closer.

"Saddlebags," Jaime finally managed to whisper, after hesitation earned his fingers digging deeply into the muscles of her arms. He looked away long enough to nod at someone she hadn't yet seen, and she took the opportunity to get some impression of the place, something more than the door, the dead man, and the wall behind her back. She discovered that the dwelling was completely trashed, and that a woman was sifting through the contents of a cluttered table, frowning in an unsatisfied way.

"For your sake," the man said, letting her slide down a little so her feet took most of her weight again, "I hope we find a copy of the spell in those saddlebags. Not all these stupid little pet wizards can have it memorized already."

"I don't know what's in the message," Jaime ventured, knowing the spell wasn't. She tried not to think of the consequences, although the dead man gave her a pretty good idea. Then again, death was probably the easiest of what was waiting for her. No Amnesty International on Camolen.

"It's not here!" a matter-of-fact voice called from the front yard. "D'you know of any other stable that runs duns besides Arlen's?"

"Lots of duns to be had," grumbled the whiskered man, dragging Jaime over to the door in such an absent way she knew immediately that he counted her as no possible threat at all. In the doorway he paused and added, "but not that quality."

The man who'd greeted her was standing by Lady's head; did that mean there were only the three of them? As if that made a difference. "Looks a lot like that mare we found in Arlen's barn—you know, the one that dumb shit Gandy run to death."

Whiskers stared at Lady, his eyes narrowing as he nodded slightly. "She does at that. I think maybe we'll bring this one with us. Calandre might find some use in her."

The other man snickered unpleasantly. "Yeah, like maybe Arlen'll be more cooperative if he doesn't want to see you hurt, courier."

Jaime opened her mouth to say that Arlen didn't even know her, but realized she was hardly likely to be believed. She wanted to spit at the man, and fought the unfamiliar desire to rake her work-shortened nails across his face. Instead she looked at the ground and took a slow, deep breath, guessing that subservient cooperation was the most likely to leave her unbrutalized.

The woman came out of the house, stuffing a sheaf of papers into the leather container that looked like nothing more than an executive briefcase; neither it nor her expression fit well with her pert-nosed features and soft blonde hair. "I'm through here," she said brusquely. "It was a waste of effort. The man had nothing."

"One less wizard on their side," Whiskers said reasonably. "Gerrant, go get the horses." Gerrant looked up from the hobbles he'd just taken off, hesitant, and Whiskers' grip on Jaime's arm tightened with his irritation. "Go on—she's not going anywhere."

A grumble and a shrug, and Gerrant left to do as he was told, heading for the woods behind the cabin. Lady stood uncertainly, knowing she was free and that there was tension in the air, and Jaime suddenly realized that Lady was the only one who could tell Sherra what had happened here. A haltered horse galloping back to the stable would cause a fuss much sooner than the slow realization that the newest courier had taken longer than her run required. So much for subservient cooperation.

A quick glance at Whiskers confirmed his distraction; satisfied that Gerrant was seeing to the horses, he'd turned his attention to the woman and was watching her set up some kind of spell at the cabin's door.

Jaime took a deep breath and tore loose from his grasp, scooping up the bridle, sprinting for Lady. In the back of her mind she hoped to mount and make a run for it, but the sight of Jaime and her angry pursuit sent Lady jigging away. Just as the man's grasp plucked at her shirt, Jaime swung the bridle reins in a big circle that ended resoundingly against the tense muscles bunching in Lady's rump, and the mare bolted. If only she ran to the closeness of Sherra's and didn't head instead to Arlen's—

A rough tackle slammed Jaime to the dirt, crushed by Whiskers' weight on top of her. He trapped her between his knees, jerked her around to face him, and hit her hard. Pain shot through her head as it bounced off hard ground, and through her face as he hit her again and again and—

"Stop it." The voice was cold and derisive and held aloof disdain. The onslaught faltered; Jaime gulped for air and choked on blood, spitting and gasping, as the woman's voice continued, "That's enough. She's not in any shape to run again and Calandre will want something to work with. You'd better leave it for her."

Immediately the man got off her, unable to resist one last jab with his booted toe. "I hope you like riding double, sweetheart. We're going to know one another very well before this trip is over."

"She'll ride with me," the woman said, her voice more distant as she moved away. "Together we'll hardly add up to the weight your horse will carry with you alone. Now get her to her feet. Gerrant's coming."

He shrugged, and leaned down to haul Jaime up in an almost offhand way. But he held on to her, and this time she was almost glad for the support. She swiped feebly at the blood running freely from her lips and nose and waited, stupidly dazed, as Gerrant emerged from the woods with three horses in tow. She was so focused on the epicenter of pain in her nose that Whiskers had to shake her arm when it came her turn to mount behind the woman. Zombielike, she did as she was told and was soon riding away from Sherra's at a trot that jarred her pains with every step.

* * *

Carey patted the sweaty black neck before him and urged the horse up the short but exceptionally steep bank they faced. Denied the chance to help Arlen or Jess, he'd taken up his job with a vengeance, riding every day and sometimes twice a day. It hadn't taken too many such days to wear him down, and that's the way he wanted to keep it. While he was caught up in the aches and cramps of his body, in watching the trails for Calandre's threats and avoiding the pitfalls of rough travel, he actually managed to provide distraction from the can'ts that loomed so large in his life.

One of those can'ts he'd discovered early on, as he was saddling Lady for his first run. He was tightening the girth in easy stages when he realized he couldn't just mount up and ride as if she was only his mare Lady. Having given Jess the respect she was due, as a woman, he couldn't fall back to that easy partnership they'd had, in which he was master. He couldn't pretend he'd never kissed her—or that she hadn't kissed him back. Honest in everything, Jess had made no attempt to hide the confusion—and the passions—he created in her.

So in the end it was a good thing Jaime was riding for Sherra, for he doubted Lady would have responded well to a completely new rider, not with the turmoil she'd been through. Even if he'd never managed to tell Jaime so . . . he thought she knew anyway.

The black stumbled and Carey gave himself a mental kick. You're not supposed to be thinking about this. Frustrated, he turned his attention vigorously back to the run, turning the horse toward another bank in this rough shortcut with a, "Hup! Hup!" of encouragement. The black strained upward, Carey's body gave a groan of effort, and he returned to work with the grim satisfaction of its distraction.

When he finally reached Sherra's stronghold, Carey rode into a courtyard of commotion. His first impulse was to ignore it and return to the stable, but then he saw what was causing the disturbance.

Lady ran loose in the courtyard, saddle on her back and halter on her head, evading all attempts to capture her. At the moment the job was being tackled by several young children and a few of the household workers, none of whom had the skill or nerve to bluff Lady out.

Carey closed his eyes and dredged up the composure he would need to deal with an upset Lady, and then dismounted, leaving his own tired mount to stand quietly where it was left. "Lady," he said loudly, and all heads turned to look at him, including hers. She took one step toward him and then hesitated, allowing him to move up by her shoulder, where he stood as she craned her head around and sniffed him with the quick shallow breaths that meant she was taking in his scent. Then, reassured, she allowed him to quietly reach out and grasp the halter.

"What happened here?" he demanded, too tired for tact, too concerned to even try. "Where's Jaime?"

"The horse came back without her!" one of the children declared as the others nodded.

One of the adults shook his head helplessly and said, "The children came for help when the horse ran in, and now you know as much about it as any of us."

Where had Jaime ridden today? Carey made a quick inspection of Lady and her tack, and found only that the message was missing. He pointed at the oldest child, a girl nearly into adolescence, and gestured her over. "She'll go with you to the stable now, as long as you keep a good grip on that halter. One of you others can take my horse. Move it now," he added a little too harshly as they hesitated, and they scurried to obey. "And tell Morley to meet me in the main room."

Inside the house, he sat at one of the long, empty tables, his mind blank as his eyes idly watched a young man sweep up the residue of the last meal. All his urgency ran into a wall of helplessness that was built of his fatigue and frustration, and his inability to do the things his inner self had been railing at him to at least try. He had the sinking feeling that Jaime would be one more friend he was unable to help.

It was Mark who stumbled across him while he waited for Morley, knowing he needed to—somehow—garner Sherra's attention as well, to get her blessing on their reaction to Lady's ominous appearance. Jaime's brother. Just the person he wanted to deal with right now.

No, that wasn't fair. Carey lifted a hand in greeting as Mark sat across from him, laying an unstrung bow across the table next to a quiver of practice arrows.

"You look beat," Mark said, sounding fairly cheerful himself. "But I think I'm finally starting to get the hang of things around here. If I can only get that glowspell down . . . but hey, no need to worry about defense with me around. As long as we're attacked by big oval targets with painted weak spots, we got no problem at all."

Carey snorted, unable to resist the good-natured humor. But he shook his head in the end and murmured, "We do have a problem, though," as he stretched the arm that had been hurt in the wild run that had started this whole chain of events, and which still stiffened up faster and more thoroughly than the rest of his body. "Damn, we've got a problem."

It was still a barely audible murmur, but Mark heard it, and heard the unspoken magnitude of concern as well. "What?" he asked, just short of demand.

"Lady's come back without Jaime," Carey said. "I'm waiting for Morley—he'll be able to tell us her route today. And then, someone's going to have to come up with a Ninth Level reason to keep me from riding out after her."

Mark said, slowly and carefully, "It doesn't have to mean anything dire. She's been dumped before, no matter how much she tries to make me forget it."

"She wasn't dumped," Carey clarified. "Lady was wearing her halter. They must have been at their destination, where she should have been hobbled."

"She could have broken free," Mark offered, even as Carey shook his head.

"Something scared her, or she wouldn't have run in like she did, and had half the household chasing after her. She's not a hard catch, normally."

Mark looked down at the bow and arrows before him, fingering the stiff leather of the quiver. "Jaime's all right," he said in a stiff and determined voice, the sturdy adaptability shaken. "She's all right. She's probably on her way back on foot, embarrassed as hell."

"Maybe," Carey acceded, still not believing it. "If only Lady could tell us . . . if only we could bring back Jess . . . damn, I miss her." Not now, Carey—one crisis at a time.

Mark looked up, a sudden alert glance, and Carey turned to see what had caught his attention. Morley—good.

"Morley—" he started, but the man raised his hands to forestall demands and explanations.

"I know, I know," he said. "Lady came back without her rider. I know where she went, and right now a very brave child is daring to interrupt Sherra at work. We'll find Jaime, Carey."

Eric, dead because Carey had dropped into his life. Arlen, waiting for a rescue that wasn't coming. Jess, buried in a place where no one could reach her. "She's not going to stop me this time," he said.

* * *

Sherra never tried. To her consternation and Carey's barely repressed wrath, Morley revealed that, faced with a shortage of riders, he'd sent Jaime to Theo's, an accomplished wizard well within the territory Jaime was used to covering. Accomplished enough to draw Calandre's unwanted attention—or focus it on the courier who might be carrying some version of the spell he was helping to control. By midafternoon, in a day turned cloudy and dim, Carey rode point, the only experienced horseman in a small group of uneasy riders on already well-worn horses.

Despite his heavy exposure to horse sense, Mark had clearly not spent many hours in the saddle, and Gacy, the advanced student Sherra had assigned to the investigation, held the reins like he thought they might attack him. The fourth member of the company was Katrie, the tall blonde woman Jaime had come to trust and Carey had therefore chosen as the warrior for the group. Normally he could depend on his own reflexes and training when it came to defense, but when Sherra had pointedly suggested an escort, Carey agreed immediately. It seemed it was time to regret his taxing strategy for keeping his mind off his troubles.

He checked back over his shoulder and decided his neophyte riders could take a little speed. "Going to canter!" he called back to them, and asked his sturdy little bay mare for the transition. Morley, he decided, had been acting out of mercy—or guilt—when he gave Carey the bay for this trip; the animal's gaits were as smooth as slow river water and took no effort to sit. He knew the others wouldn't have it so easy, but he squelched his sympathies and refused to look behind until he reached the turnoff to Theo's little homestead. He found pretty much what he expected: the others straggled out behind him, easy prey for any raiding party that might be hanging around. Mark and Gacy were too busy keeping themselves ahorse to care, but Katrie shot him a look of pure ire as she stopped beside him.

"Making my job pretty damn hard," she growled at him.

He knew; he just hadn't cared, and his shrug told her as much.

"Fine," she said coldly. "But now we're here and we'll do it my way. Hold my horse and keep your ass right here until I say otherwise. I'll be back after I've had a look around." She dismounted, an awkward maneuver that still managed to show the authority of movement Carey associated with skill among the warriors.

Carey caught the reins she tossed at him, and watched her stride up the lane. When she was out of sight, he leaned back in a weary stretch, while the bay shifted to a lazy, hip-shot stance beneath him. Mark and Gacy had dismounted and were making various disgruntled noises as they experimented with walking.

"If this is the accepted mode of transportation around here, maybe I'd better take a few lessons from Jay," Mark grumbled, a comment that maintained his dogged insistence that Jaime was perfectly all right but did nothing to convince Carey it might be the truth.

"There are other ways," he said. "As long as you know two wizards you trust with a fairly complicated spell, and don't mind the side effects."

"It's not that bad," Gacy protested mildly. He gave his backside a meaningful rub and added, "It's not the only thing with side effects."

"No kidding," Mark agreed.

Carey tuned them out, going to the blank, tired space he'd been cultivating so assiduously. And then he blinked, because Katrie was standing in front of him with a mixture of annoyance and concern on her face, saying his name for what was apparently not the first time.

"Carey! What Level have you lost yourself on?"

"What'd you find?" Carey asked shortly.

"No indication anyone's there, though there was a bunch of horses earlier. I haven't translated any of the signs, yet—came to get you first. So stick to the edge of the trees when we hit the clearing, and tie up. I don't want you messing up what little that hard dry ground has to tell me." She took her reins from Carey, looped them over her horse's head and swung into the saddle, and then led the way while Mark and Gacy still struggled to mount.

The lane was short, and Carey was soon slipping his halter over the bay's bridle to tie up at one of the clearing edge's trees.

"There's a bridle in front of the cabin," Katrie pointed. "And there's an area to the right and behind the cabin that I want you three to stay away from until I'm through looking it over."

"But no one's here?" Mark asked hopefully, as though he hadn't heard her earlier proclamation.

"No one you know," Katrie said grimly. "And no one alive."

Carey had his horse secured while the others still fumbled with halters and bridles, and he trotted to the forlorn jumble of leather and metal that lay abandoned in front of the cabin. It didn't take a second glance to recognize it as the bridle Lady had been using. Nearby was a series of earth-gouging hoofprints, the sign of a startled and explosive takeoff. He left the bridle where it was and skirted the area in deference to Katrie, heading for the cabin and its ajar front door. No one alive, she'd said. Since there was no one outside, that meant—

"Carey, no!" Gacy cried as Carey reached across the threshold to push the door open. He didn't even have time to wonder before the doorway erupted in a glaring offensive of light and sound and power, enclosing him in cacophony. Then the ground smacked him between the shoulder blades, hitting him as hard as the magic. As the discordant assault faded away, it was replaced by hard, running footsteps and panting breath and anger.

"Ninth Level damnation, you should know better than that, Carey!" Gacy said from somewhere above his head, as horse sweat-scented fingers caught his chin and probed along the side of his neck by his jaw. A groan wormed its way out from deep inside him, and those same fingers patted his cheek gently.

"Is he alive?" Katrie asked, carefully dispassionate, at the same time Mark blurted, "What the hell was that?"

"Pyrotechnics, I think," Gacy said. "He's a bit stunned, but all right, I think." His voice moved further away, paused, and then pronounced, "Looks to me like there's been another wizard here, and he or she left us a childish little gesture."

"You call that a childish little gesture?" Mark said, kneeling by Carey. Carey blinked, trying to see past the multi-colored whirls of light that still obscured his vision. He thought about sitting up, but his body made no response to the suggestion; in fact, it could barely feel the comforting hand Mark had rested on his arm as he asked, "What happened to those famous checkspells you guys always talk about? How can you let a dangerous spell like that go unchecked?"

Gacy was close again. "Because very similar spells are used in some of our mining operations. We do our best, Mark, but there are certainly spells on the loose that can cause havoc if put to other than their intended purpose."

"Well, there's not much I can figure here, except that there were several horses—three, maybe," Katrie said in disgust. "We could have guessed that much without any tracks at all—although now we know for certain from the bridle that Jaime was here. Is it safe to go inside now, Gacy?"

"It spells out clear," Gacy said absently. "Here, Carey, I'm no healer, but see if this doesn't help."

Relief. His vision cleared, the haziness inside his head faded away, and even if his body still showed no inclination to sit up, he at least had the feeling it could, if he insisted. And when he heard Gacy's low voice saying, "Poor Theo," he did, indeed, insist. From his back to his knees to his wobbly feet, with Mark steadying him, he dragged himself to the cabin.

Katrie hunkered by a man's body, staring with disgust at the slashing wounds that had killed him. "No reason for this kind of brutality," she muttered, glancing up at Carey's arrival. "If this was done by Calandre's people, she's giving them a pretty long rein."

"This isn't Theo's hand," Gacy said from the long worktable he was scrutinizing. Katrie left the body for the table, and Gacy gestured at the neatly sorted papers set aside from the rest of the jumble. "And I don't think it's all here, either."

"How can you tell?" Katrie questioned, her eyes roaming the rest of the cabin, too impatient to wait for Gacy's explanation before looking for her own clues.

"For one thing, Theo works—worked—in a state of perpetual clutter. His current projects were always spread out all over the table—and he was a scribbler, always putting down cryptic little bits and pieces of his spells on paper. Like this." He pulled out one of the papers from the middle of a stack; the sheet was nearly black with ink scrawlings, illegible notes that took up the entire surface area. Gacy spread the pile out on the table, stared at it a moment, and shook his head. "There's nothing here on the checkspell or the world-travel spell. And there should be."

"That's not too surprising," Katrie said dryly. "We already know there was a wizard here to set that spell at the door. It's not too hard to figure that same person sorted Theo's stuff. Calandre's trying to figure out what kind of progress Sherra's making."

"And maybe get her hands on Arlen's spell while she's at it," Carey said. "She must be getting frustrated by now."

"But—what about Jaime?" Mark said. "They must have taken her, but why bother? She can't tell them anything."

Katrie shook her head. "I don't know the answer to that one—but I think we'd better get back to Sherra with what we do have. We need to make sure the other wizards have protection. There's no telling what else Calandre is up to, if she's decided to go on the offensive within Siccawei."

And he hadn't even precipitated things by going after Arlen. The bitter thought made way for the next, a decision that was made before Carey gave it any conscious thought. There was nothing to stop him from using the recall spell now—especially if no one knew he was going to do it. He glanced at Mark and quickly amended the resolution—there were people who would support him in this, especially considering that given a few days for travel, it was possible he would find Jaime at Arlen's stronghold as well.

Katrie was looking sharply at him. "Are you going to be all right for the ride back?"

"I'll be all right," Carey said grimly. His mind had leaped ahead to its new goals, discarding the overwork that had served him so poorly on this day. It was time to renew his resources, to retreat and recover. And then it would be time to attack.

But when they returned to Sherra's cabin, riding through the steadily falling warm summer rain, some of that new intent must have shown in Carey's face. She waited only long enough to hear the group's report, and then she took his spellstones away and put him in a guest room under house arrest.

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