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Chapter 18

Carey hesitated at the screen door off the kitchen, staring out at the barn, glancing back over his shoulder to the kitchen. Empty now, although it bore signs of his lunch, a pan soaking in the sink from his rewarmed sloppy joes.

Sloppy joes. He could only imagine that Jaime, in coming to Camolen, had encountered food with equally idiosyncratic names. He looked into the living room where Jess read one of Jaime's old books, something about a black stallion. He supposed that to Jess and Ramble, the two worlds weren't so different. Both equally strange, and full of the strange ways that humans named and built and handled things.

Ramble. He needed to talk to Ramble. To see for himself that there was no little detail, no question Jess might have neglected to ask simply because she did look at the world through equine-tinted eyes. From the sound of it, Ramble had only glimpsed the culprit . . . but what if that glimpse revealed a piece of clothing—a boot such as couriers often wore, the hooded half-cape favored over winter clothing by those in the northern regions of Camolen? When they had so little to work with, the details mattered . . . 

But Jess . . . 

She hadn't been bluffing. Short of physically restraining her—and keeping her that way—he wouldn't be able to stop her from taking Ramble away. From taking herself away.

Carey leaned his forehead against the worn white paint of the screen door frame, feeling the unaccustomed weight of this world settle around him. On him. A bone-deep fatigue he had no healer here to counteract, an awareness of his own unsoundness that brought back vivid memories of the days after he'd been hurt, when no one was sure just how well he'd recover from the spell Calandre had used on him—or even, for a while, if he'd recover at all.

Settling on top of that came Jaime's words. He didn't understand how or why someone would come after them, but he trusted that the threat was a real one . . . and that anyone with the resources and wherewithal to track them down would be smart enough to prepare finder spellstones. They wouldn't have to know this world; they wouldn't even have to know that Jaime's farm was called the Dancing Equine.

Although if it came down to it, he wasn't betting against that last. Plenty of people knew just a little bit about Jaime—Arlen's companion, the horsewoman from another world, and she who had spoken against both Calandre and Willand in a very public venue. Certainly anyone who took lessons from her at Anfeald knew the name of her farm.

They'd had a string of quiet days here. An opportunity to acclimate Ramble, to try to uncover his answers. Days in which they had no idea what was happening in Camolen, and during which their failing message system proved inadequate for true communication. It was only ever meant for quick notes, not full manuscripts. Thick, block letters, not fine script. And even at that, it faltered . . . the newest words had come through even more faintly than the previous ones.

For the first time he wondered if they could get back at all.

Any way he looked at it, the quiet days were over. As soon as Dayna finished with her spellstone hunt, they'd gather their things and go.

He lifted his head, looked at the barn. Last chance, it said to him. Once he's back in Camolen with you, he's a horse again. 

Carey pushed the door open.

In Starland, in the wake of Dayna's surreptitious magic, the shop clerk's head jerked up, pinning Dayna with an astonished, dark-eyed stare. "What—" she started, and stopped, open-mouthed. Behind the counter, engrossed in some sort of reading with Suliya that had involved the flipping of cards, Rita gasped out loud.

Dayna came back from the concentration of doubling the lightest spellstone she carried—the friend-or-foe spell—and looked at the jeans-clad woman before her with a surprised embarrassment. The stones nestled snugly in her palm, one agate from Ohio with a typical cut-crystal shape, long and narrow and faceted. The other agate from Camolen—also long and narrow, but with unevenly rounded edges and a satin polish. Similar stones from different worlds, black with delicate white-lace patterns. Both now carrying the friend-or-foe spell.

She'd done it. She'd drawn Camolen's faltering energy through the existing spellstone to double it on the Ohio stone.

She just hadn't expected anyone to feel her do it.

"What," Rita said firmly, leaning over the counter with a deck of large cards in one hand, "are you doing?"

"Uh . . ." Dayna said, hunting for inspiration, still caught in her flush of success and very much caught out in the effort, "I—"

Mark leaned back against the cash register and raised an eyebrow, crossing his arms and suddenly, somehow, looking like the substantial and responsible one of the two of them. "What are you doing?" he asked. "Of all the places . . ."

"I didn't know anyone would feel it," Dayna blurted, now hunting for composure. Stupid, of course . . . there were plenty of people on this world who could no doubt detect and even manipulate magic, just as Dayna herself had been able. But she'd never realized her sensitivity before she'd reached Camolen, and it never occurred to her . . . 

Of all the places. But that didn't mean she had to explain herself, or that she couldn't pretend she hadn't already effectively admitted she'd done anything at all. "Let me finish looking through these stones, and we can go."

"But did it work?" Suliya asked. "Weren't you going to—"

In unison, Mark and Dayna said, "Shut up, Suliya," except Dayna said it through her teeth. Mark only gave her a patient but implacable look.

"Burnin' poot," Suliya muttered. Dayna quickly picked out a tourmaline, a malachite, another agate, several nice onyx stones, and for kicks, a man-made deep blue egg of varying satin tones that the sales clerk muttered was fiber-optic material. Nothing here approaching the hard gems she'd have liked to use for the energy storage she had in mind, but then again even the gold they'd brought would only go so far.

Rita put the cards aside with a gesture of finality. "I'm afraid the energy here is too disrupted to focus on the reading any longer. Where did you say you were from?"

Again in unison, Mark and Dayna said, "She didn't." Then exchanged a wary glance, entirely unused to being of one mind.

The bells to the shop door jangled, and a fresh breeze blew through the incense-thick air.

"New deck of tarot cards," the new arrival said, as if they'd all been in whatever conversation he'd been carrying on in his own head. Dayna gave him no more than a glance—a medium-sized, duck-footed man with a shining dome of a forehead and the bright chip of an earring somehow out of place beside his soft features.

"Your third this week," Rita said, even as the woman with Dayna gave the man a look and sighed.

"The others just aren't right," he said. "They don't feel right. I was doing a reading for a friend last night, you know, and we both agreed. We don't think the—"

He's going to say "vibes," Dayna thought, and made herself look quickly at the shadowed industrial tan linoleum tiles at her feet, unable to stop her amusement. She'd never heard anyone in Camolen say vibes.

"—vibes are right."

Vibes. Not even the proprietors of little roadside healer shacks, offering fixes conventional healers could not with slick infomercial-like patter, said vibes.

"As they never will be, if you don't give them a chance," Rita said with some asperity, blissfully ignorant of Dayna's thoughts. "Not that I'm not glad to sell you another deck—"

The door was yanked open again, having never settled to a fully closed position. Busy little place, Dayna decided as the sales clerk moved to greet the new arrival; Dayna got only a glimpse of the tall, willowy woman who entered. Nondescript, aside from her bearing, with mousy coloring and mousy clothing. Although those clothes—

Mark cut off her view, dragging Suliya by the hand. "You almost done here?"

"Almost," Dayna said, adding to Suliya, "here, hold these," even as she dumped her cache of stones into Suliya's free hand.

"If this is your idea of shopping, I don't think much of it," Suliya grumbled, tilting her hand to shift and examine the stones.

Dayna gave an absent shake of her head. "No, this is hit and run."

"More like errands than shopping," Mark offered, pulling out his billfold, eyeing the price sign and estimating the cost to tug out a few fives.

"Wow, you must like crystals." The tarot-deck man edged in behind Dayna. Dismayed, she caught Mark's eye; he gave a tiny one-shoulder shrug. She knew the sound of someone wanting to make conversation so they could eventually talk about themselves. The man liked crystals. He liked the feel of them. He liked their . . . 

Vibes.

Suliya got an impish look on her face, one Dayna didn't like at all, and said, "They're spellstones."

The brat. Dayna hastily scooped up a few more stones. "I'm done," she announced, and caught Rita's eye. "There's fifteen here in all."

With a clatter of keys on the old cash register, Rita rang them up; Mark eased through the clutter of the store to pay for them.

But Dayna was right; the man wanted to talk about himself, not listen to Suliya's answer—to the point that he seemed not to notice she had. "I put them around the house, you know?" he said. "It makes a nice healing zone, you know? All my friends say so. That when you walk into the house, you can just feel the vi—"

Suliya said, "Here. Look at this one."

Guides. "Dammit, Suliya—"

And Suliya's glance said it all, written right there on the perfect sepia tones of her face. The face of a young woman used to having influence, who'd had enough of Suliya do this and Suliya do that and especially Suliya, shut up. As the man's finger reflexively touched the stone Suliya held out—the crystal-cut agate Dayna had doubled—Suliya triggered it. Both women from the shop jerked at the feel of magic, Rita's eyes narrowing as she dumped change in Mark's hand, her sales clerk pivoting around from the rune she showed the other customer—

Friend or foe. A blue aura surrounded the man, glowing far too brightly to have been mistaken for any trick of the light; he looked at his own hands, astonished and utterly wordless for perhaps the first time in a decade. Blue light surrounded Rita and the sales clerk as well, both of them clearly holding their breath, eyes wide and caught between wonder and fear.

"Oh," Suliya said, not looking at all pleased despite the perfect results of her prank. "Oh poot. Dayna—"

And Dayna looked where Suliya was staring. At the woman customer.

The woman customer limned in orange light. Fading now, but still unmistakable, as was the suddenly satisfied expression on her face as she gently pushed the sales clerk aside. "You made that so easy," she said.

Her clothes—mousy, but passing for funky post-hippie . . . and equally at home in Camolen as casual wear.

Dayna clutched her original friend-foe spellstone in one hand, her remaining selection of fresh stones in the other. Suliya gave her a panicked, apologetic glance, and Dayna gave a sharp shake of her head. "I don't know how she followed us here, but you didn't do it. She must have had a finder spellstone. Or known about—" The Dancing Equine. Carey and Jess and Ramble . . .  

"The Dancing Equine. Yes. It's already being taken care of," the woman said. Annoyance crossed her face and she moved to the center of the store, stopping short when Mark straightened from the counter, stuffing his wallet back in his pocket and looking far more imposing than Dayna had ever expected of him. Mark, grown up at last. The woman touched her tunic just below the notch of her collarbone; no doubt the series of lumps there were her spellstones. She'd come prepared. She said, "You and your friends have a distressing habit of ignoring the rules and running off to do good."

Mark flexed his hands slightly, looking both ready and wary. "And the people who try to stop us have a convenient habit of failing."

"But why try to stop us?" Suliya blurted. "Maybe we're not supposed to be here, but we're only trying to find out what's gone wrong at home—"

"What's gone wrong is being attended. No one needs to know the details—"

"Get burnt," Dayna snarled at her. "The Council is dead. And I was right. A single tragic incident, my lovely ass. You know about the static, I'll bet. Whoever you are. And you don't want to accept responsibility—"

Behind the counter, Rita stealthily reached for the phone—911, that's all they'd need. "No!" Mark told her. "Rita, don't."

"Don't, my lovely ass." Rita glared at him, but drew her hand back. "I want you all out of here, right now."

"Exactly my intent," the woman said. "More or less."

Mark rolled his eyes, very much a here we go again expression.

Very low, Dayna said, "Get her spellstones."

The woman gave her a disapproving look as Mark hesitated, too aware of the woman's ability to invoke the stones as long as they touched her skin. "Don't ask me how you even made it this far," the woman said, and magic flared around them, strong magic. Rita and her sales clerk cried out; the clerk scrambled away, darting back behind the counter to leave Mark and Suliya and Dayna on the cluttered sales floor with the duck-footed man inching back to disappear between the hanging items of clothing.

Strong magic. Complicated magic. Enough to take them back to Camolen or imprison them for interrogation or simply turn them to ashes on the spot. Whatever she had on those spellstones . . . 

But only what she had on those spellstones, whereas Dayna stood with all the magic of Camolen at her disposal if she could but somehow pause a spellstone in progress and draw on the connection. Dangerous. Untried. 

Do it.

She flashed Mark a look, a warning. Closed her eyes, knowing he'd move to protect her if needed—if he could. And invoked the friend-foe spellstone, wishing she had something more complex, something that wouldn't be over so quickly—

She pounced. With the precision of a surgeon, she pounced. The invoked spell, released from the stone and still connected to it, stopped in mid-process, and hung there, the pressure of the magic beating within her like deep emotions threatening to explode.

And they would, if she couldn't control them. If she didn't guide them.

The obvious—a shield. They all carried shieldstones, but those were simple stones triggered by the use of magic against the wearer—not, say, against the building which could then fall upon the wearer.

She knew the shield spell well; she wove it in an instant—and then, in sudden inspiration, she called it up again, inverted it, and placed it over the woman. And then with Mark calling her name, grabbing her arm, the magic burgeoned around her, threatening to get out of hand. In borderline panic she siphoned it to the side, to the empty spellstones waiting in her hand, struggling to maintain control and suddenly aware that she didn't know how to stop the flow.

"Dayna!" Mark shook her this time, and hard. And then to Rita and her friend—"Stay put! She can't protect you if you don't stay put."

"Stop it!" Dayna snapped, gritting her teeth, trying to yank her arm from his grasp. "I'm—I can't—"

"Open your eyes, dammit!"

In the background, someone whimpered. Suliya. Or the man hiding in the clothing. Dayna couldn't be sure and didn't care. Panting with the effort, she slowed the influx of magic long enough to blindly grab a random fistful of stones from the display at her side—new, uncharged stones to soak up the magic and give her a moment to think.

She opened her eyes. She could see the shield; she didn't know if Mark could, or if he just assumed it, but clearly Rita saw something; she and her friend clutched each other, staring, ramrod stiff with the fear of making a wrong move. The air of the shield wavered—a shimmer here, a coruscating glitter there. Through it, Dayna found the woman—trapped in a bubble of Dayna's making with the furious energies of a discharged but unfulfilled spell beating against it, unable to turn back on the protected woman, unable to make its way out, and visible only through the violently sparking effect against the shield.

The woman within looked at her with both fury and horror. "You rife little idiot—what have you done?"

"What you couldn't." Dayna's words came out breathlessly, holding a myriad of feelings. Her own fear, her wonder at what she'd done. Was doing. And at the looming, surging threat she'd created. "You shouldn't have come. You should have left us alone."

"Dayna, we need to talk to her," Mark said urgently—no longer tugging, but still gripping her upper arm. Not at all sure he had her attention.

"Guides alive!" Suliya said. "Look at—all the stones—"

All of them, not just the ones Dayna touched, but all the ones within her shield, still in their display tray . . . glowing.

The clothes rack moaned.

Mark, at her side, at her ear, insistent. "Dayna, don't do anything—"

She turned on him. "I don't have a choice!" Not as the magic built, the raw magic with which she was so good—except it now came at her like air whooshing into a vacuum. "I've got to plug it with something—and she's all I've got!"

"What? No! No!" The woman looked wildly around herself, her hand reaching for her spellstones. Her shieldstone. "You can't!"

She couldn't work a direct spell on the woman . . . but Dayna's inverted shield surrounded her, a bubble of insulation that she could affect with magic. "Relax," she muttered, pulling her wavering control back around her, biting her lower lip in utter concentration. "With any luck this won't hurt at all."

The world-travel spell. She'd memorized it for the spellstones; she'd never expected to invoke it on the spot. And she had no idea how the conflicting streams of magic would interact . . . the shieldstone, the inverted shield, the invoked magic swirling around inside . . . or what it might do to the woman within it all. So many forces battling each other in this small earthbound shop . . . 

She shouldn't have come.

For a moment Dayna feared she'd lost the threads of the new spell amongst it all—so much magic! But—

"There!" She shouted triumph as the world-travel spell engulfed the inverted shield and snatched it away, along with an entire rack of rune jewelry.

Sudden silence. Maybe it had actually been silent already, the magic roaring only in Dayna's ears . . . but now, even for her, true silence reigned. The shop's stones no longer glowed, although Dayna thought she detected a suspicious glimmer winking out from among them. The blue fiber-optic egg she held sparked with definite energy, and she quickly tucked it in her pocket.

As if she could hide what had happened here . . . 

"Burnt spellin' poot guides," Suliya said, apparently not willing to leave anything out. Dazed, she looked around the store, and then at herself. Checking herself for missing parts. "Bootin', Dayna!"

Mark cleared his throat. "We'll, uh, pay for the missing stuff," he said, nodding to the one empty spot on the floor next to where the woman had been standing.

"Damned right you will," Rita said, the perspicacity returning to her tone, though a pale imitation of what it had been.

"What," said the sales clerk faintly, "did you do to her?"

"Theoretically, I sent her home," Dayna said. "But . . ." But, nothing. That wasn't a sentence she needed to finish. But I probably killed her in the process wouldn't reassure anyone right now, not to mention the cold spot the possibility left in her own stomach.

Self-defense. It had been self-defense.

She'd seen people die before. She'd been involved in causing their deaths. But nothing like . . . 

Not like this. One on one. Just Dayna, just the other woman. Now gone.

Self-defense, she told herself most firmly, as Mark cast a sympathetic glance her way. An empathetic glance. He'd been the first of all of them, armed with bow and arrows . . . self-defense. It still counted as killing.

The two Starland women stared at her. From the clothing rack, the male customer stared. Even Suliya stared. "Bootin'," she said again, this time only whispering to herself. "Just plain . . . bootin'."

Self-consciously, Dayna deposited the extra stones back into their container and smoothed her cutely flowered, cap-sleeved top—straight from the junior department at Sears only a few years earlier, and how much more innocuous could one small wizard look?—with her now empty hand. The awkward man had emerged just far enough from the clothing rack to watch her, wary, eyes wide and infinitely alarmed.

She smiled at him. "Now those," she said, "were vibes."

Curled up in the corner of the worn and comfortable living room couch, Jess stared at the pages of her book, no longer seeing the words . . . but thinking about them. About how the boy and the horse, stranded, learned to trust each other. To work together for survival. And then how hard the boy fought to keep them together, refusing to compromise when it came to the horse's well-being.

So she had once assumed of Carey.

Not that she now assumed otherwise . . . she just wasn't certain anymore. Decisions and reactions that had once come automatically now took thought . . . now brought worry.

She closed the book, gazing at the dramatic color and composition of the cover. Nice stallion. Chewed on a thumbnail a moment, wondering how much longer Dayna and Suliya would be in town and how long after that until Dayna and Carey agreed it was time to go home. And then she frowned, coming into alert, her thumb forgotten at the edge of her lip. Magic.

Significant, flaring magic.

She felt the implications of it in the very pit of her stomach, in the cold dark spot that suddenly appeared there; the fine hairs on her arms prickled up. Dayna would use such magic only if driven to it by dire circumstances . . . and if someone else wielded it, then Jaime's warning had come none too soon. Or maybe not soon enough.

"Carey?" she said, thinking him out in the kitchen, where he'd bumped around making himself something to eat and then settled, reading one of Jaime's horse magazines—she wasn't sure. Only when she lost herself in a book did she fail to track every aspect of her surroundings, and now she realized she'd truly let herself go; Carey didn't answer. After a few quick silent, barefooted steps to check the first-floor rooms, she realized he wasn't even in the house.

Not the barn. 

Please, not the barn. Not doing the one thing she'd told him she wouldn't allow. Couldn't allow, not for Ramble's sake.

She fled the house, ignoring the ring of the telephone behind her, and ran straight into the barn, where—

Where seeing Carey at Ramble's stall stopped her as surely as if she'd run into a wall. And hit her just as hard.

He glanced up at her. It was no consolation at all that he looked miserable, that he actually leaned against the stall bars with his back to Ramble, not trying to communicate at all. Having tried, and failed, given up—and leaving the path of it written on his face.

Jess forced herself to walk down the aisle, all the way to Ramble's stall. She glanced inside to find Ramble sitting cross-legged, facing the corner so stiff-backed he actually trembled a little. Angry stallion. Offended.

Carey wouldn't meet her gaze.

In a voice as stiff and trembling as Ramble's back, Jess said, "Was it worth it?"

Carey shook his head. "I don't know. I don't think so. But I don't think I could have not tried, either." He gave her a helpless look. "None of it makes any sense. Not the death of the Council, not the way Camolen's services collapsed so thoroughly, not Jaime's warning . . . Guides, how can Arlen be dead? Dead, just like that, with no one knowing why, and no one but a horse knowing how? My world is falling apart around me, and if I try hard enough, I'm supposed to be able to fix it. That's the way it always works . . . if I try hard enough." His voice cracked on the last words; he gave a despairing, sardonic cough of a laugh that might just as well have been a sob, and rubbed circles over his eyes with the flats of his fingers.

As if when he looked at her again, he might possibly see something different. Someone who was receptive to his self-deprecating little semblance of a smile.

Her heart broke for him.

It broke for herself, too.

In a low but remarkably even voice she said, "My world is falling apart around me, too, but as long as I could depend on you—trust you—I was all right. Now . . . all the rules have changed at once. Nothing is the same, not the world, not the people in it. Not you."

"Jess . . ."

She gave a sharp shake of her head. "I have only my own rules now. Only my own self to trust, and to make decisions. I will get my things, and then Ramble and I are going home. You should come back too. I don't think it's safe here anymore. But I think you'll do as you want, and not what matters to anyone else."

"Not what I want—" For a brief moment, he looked aghast. "Not what I wanted—I had to try. To fix—" He stopped, gave a short shake of his head. "It doesn't matter right now. What happens next matters. I'm not going to try to stop you from taking him."

"You should come too." She tipped her head at the house. "Get your things. Get everyone's things—be ready. Didn't you feel the magic?"

"Magic?" he said, looking suddenly haggard. Giving up. She'd never seen that in him. Never. "I should have . . . I must have been . . . distracted."

With Ramble. She didn't say it. She said, "From town. Maybe Dayna . . . maybe someone else. And Jaime said—"

"Just what the hells is going on?" he said, interrupting with utter frustration. "When is this going to start to make sense?"

"When it is too late," Jess said before she could stop herself . . . maybe because in her mind, it was already too late. Lives and patterns that could have—should have—withstood the changes were stretched out of shape, distorted past ever returning to what they'd been.

It wasn't something she'd ever comprehended as being possible. Rules were rules. You lived your life by them; she'd been trained and grown up by them, and respected them. She thought she'd learned the new human rules, and she'd been living by those, too.

Now she was learning that sometimes humans discarded all their rules, all their understandings between one another, and left even the most important people in their lives floundering. Not true to anyone, not even themselves.

Carey only looked at her, complete in his misery, and no longer attempted to explain himself. Finally, for once, accepting a thing as not possible. "Maybe," he said, after a heavy moment, "it's time to go—"

Jess lifted her head, drawn by the faint change in motor sound of an approaching vehicle. A downshift. A car preparing to turn.

Whatever Carey had done, he hadn't lost his ability to read her. "Not Mark's?" he asked in a low voice.

She gave the slightest shake of her head, listening hard.

He pushed himself away from the stall as tires crunched on the gravel driveway; two doors opened, then closed, and the vehicle moved away. "Charter coach," he said, a guess that nonetheless sounded confident. And grim. In this world, only those without cars used charters . . . older people.

Or those from out of town.

Even those from other worlds.

Think they followed you, Jaime had written. Be careful. 

Touching a hand to his chest where his spellstones made a small lump under one of Mark's least garish T-shirts, Carey asked, "Do you have your shieldstone?"

"And Ramble's." In no-nonsense economy of movement, she went to Ramble's stall, shooting open both latches and yanking the door aside. "Ramble," she said, "I know you have anger. But this is danger, and I'm here to protect you. Will you wear the stones?"

He turned around just far enough to scowl at her. Like his clothing, the stones were something to take off; Jess had taken to carrying them herself.

She said, "They will protect you, too. From magic."

In a startlingly abrupt movement, he rose to his feet, shoved himself across the stall, and stopped before her, lowering his head slightly. She looped the stones around his neck, tucking them under his shirt so they touched skin, and the instant she finished, he whirled away and returned to his corner, his lips twitching in want to bite and his hard jaw made harder with tension.

Jess left him there, went to stand on tiptoe to peer out the wire-protected stall window. Two men hesitated before the barn; one wore what looked like new jeans, and the other a pair of fine cloth trousers, pleated, cut up the front to allow for ankle boots, and with a subtle shimmer Jess well recognized. Expensive cloth, spell-protected from tearing.

Camolen cloth. It went with their shortcoats, with the casual collarless shirts they wore beneath. In Camolen, unremarkable clothing in unremarkable colors, just as the men themselves were hardly likely to catch anyone's eye. Attractive but not striking, average in height and shape. One the color of light tea, the other of Carey's coloring. Nothing special.

If they hadn't been from another world.

"They are here for us," she said in a low voice as the men exchanged quick words, gesturing between house and barn, eventually deciding to stick together and to head for the barn first. "They're coming. They aren't big . . . but they could be strong." One touched his chest; the other dipped a hand into his pocket. "I think they must have magic."

"Maybe," Carey said, returning from the direction of the hay stall. "Depends on how prepared they are. We'd hoped Dayna could draw on magic from here—they may have done the same."

She turned from the window to find him standing in the open stall door, his back to it. Ready. He'd grabbed the dull old hunting knife Mark used to cut the hay twine and it hung from his hand, unobtrusive, half obscured . . . but like him, ready.

Run. They ought to run. Any sane horse would know it.

But not with Ramble . . . Ramble, who wouldn't understand, who would be as much of a problem as the men who'd come for them.

Jess watched out the window until the men entered the door in the middle of the length of the barn, the door that came through the tack room and that no one from the house ever bothered to use. Only visitors and owners. Then she moved to the middle of the stall, where she could still see beyond Carey but was closer to the door—feeling trapped, but not willing to leave Ramble—Ramble, who could comprehend none of this, who still sat in the corner with his back to the world. Alone.

Carey's fingers clenched and uncurled around the handle of the knife as they heard the men enter the aisle, unable to see them past the hay-bale barrier. Maybe the men would be as fooled as the horse owners who had been trooping in and out during the evenings, perfectly willing to accept that Mark had received a hay shipment big enough to fill the entire end of the aisle, never realizing the hay bales were only stacked two deep and Ramble lived in the stall beyond.

Maybe . . . 

Jess found she'd stopped breathing to listen, and forced herself to take in a deep and surprisingly shaky breath. Ramble heard it, turned to look at her, his mouth open—

"Shh," she said, barely making sound behind it, lifting a hand to stay him where he was—surprised to find that shaking, too. Not now, Ramble, oh not now— 

But Ramble didn't have to give them away. Not with the voices coming close to the hay bales and one man saying, "There's another stall beyond here; I saw it outside. And there's plenty of light showing in the window. I'll be burnt if those hay bales are stacked all the way through."

Carey's fingers clenched then relaxed around the knife, his posture stiff.

Afraid, Jess realized suddenly. Outmatched and knowing it. He was a courier, not a warrior. A courier, not a wizard. And one man against two, struggling with his body's limits since his arrival here.

She moved up behind him and murmured in his ear, "Two of us. And Ramble will not be taken. Three."

He cast her a grateful look—and in another instant both of them jerked to attention as the top bale of hay fell inward. Within moments the intruders had tossed enough bales into the aisle behind them to walk through, kicking the first bale out of the way.

The darker of them looked at Carey and Jess and then took in Ramble beyond—Ramble, on his knees and interested, now, in the new arrivals. Interested and wary, but hardly alarmed in spite of Jess's warning, in spite of her obvious concern.

No longer assuming they had the same interests.

"I hate it here," the man said. "Don't make this hard. I'm not in a good mood."

"I feel for you," Carey said. "Neither am I."

"The question is," the lighter man said, nodding at Ramble so far, "what has he told you?"

Jess said in a low voice, "Nothing. He knows nothing. Leave him alone."

The man gave her a grin of what looked like true amusement. "He's safe. All we have to do is take him back and he's a horse again; he can't talk then."

"He can barely talk now," Carey said. "How the hells did you even know we were here, or that we had the palomino?"

Jess glanced at Ramble, who seemed more wary. Annoyed, even. She'd be, in his place. But he still had no idea—

"Here's how it's going to go," the light man said, ignoring Carey's question. "We're taking you back to Camolen. Once the situation there is settled enough that you can't interfere, you'll be released."

Nothing about Carey's body language made Jess believe the man, although when he spoke it was as if he wasn't concerned about the intruders in the least. As if they were in casual negotiation. "Interfere with what?"

The light man said, "That would be telling." He glanced at his partner, whose blandly pleasant features showed impatience. "See it, Carey. You're two couriers, and we . . . we're good at what we do. Shieldstones can be removed. You want things to turn out well, just come along."

"No," said Jess.

"Carey," the light man warned.

"He does not speak for me," Jess informed them.

"I told you," the darker man grumbled to the lighter. "Waste of time."

And Carey said, "But she speaks for me. We'll return on our own terms. Whoever you sent after Dayna failed—"

We don't know that. But Jess was silent.

"—and I'd like to be here when she gets back."

So casual. Though his stance was anything but, and Jess found herself easing back, and Ramble snorted and—

Someone moved first. She didn't see who and she couldn't even tell what, just that Carey doubled over and then he hit the stall bars, the knife falling from his hand, the light man grabbing his spellstones right through the T-shirt, yanking—

Jess scooped up the knife in a desperate furor with no strategy and no skill, but still with the astonishing quickness to slash the knife down the man's arm, leaving him hissing with surprise and pain, turning from Carey with a precision movement that disarmed her even as the darker man came in with brute force and slammed her against the stall, her head hitting the bars so the world turned black and distant, but not so distant she couldn't hear Ramble roar, "Mine!"

Something knocked her aside; she clutched at the bars and didn't go down, but wasn't on her feet . . . yet no one touched her. The world came back slowly, and even then she didn't understand what she saw. Carey, on his feet, sparring with the lighter man and taking the worst of it—but he had the knife again, and he had a grin on his face, a strange grin that Jess found frightening and reassuring at the same time though she barely had time to regard it as anything at all before she had to throw herself aside, stumbling into the stall. The empty stall.

Ramble. Ramble who didn't understand, but knew when another stallion touched his mare. Hurt her. Mine. And the darker man—not as fast as his partner, not as precise—didn't know how to defend himself against a man who fought not as a man, but a horse. Going for the throat. Hammering blows to chest and sides in a strange overhand punch, quicker and stronger and driven by more feral instincts than his thinking opponent could hope to draw on. Bloodied, the man went down, and should have stayed down—for as horses did, Ramble drew back to let him admit defeat—but gave no quarter when the man bulled back to his feet, back into the fight. Ramble's grunts were of rage; the man's of pain and not a little surprise.

And Carey held his own—a delicate balance with which Jess, climbing to her feet, was loathe to interfere. Not until a chance shift in position allowed the lighter man to see his partner's fate, and he muttered a curse, flying into action—moving quickly, so quickly Jess stood stunned as he danced around Carey in a sinuous pattern, ending up behind him to place one resounding blow to Carey's back, one so hard the very sound of it made Jess hurt and Carey drop straight to the ground.

"Stay down!" the man snapped, and she thought it was to Carey but realized the man shouted at his partner—and his partner, listening or else at last simply unable to rise again, ceased to trigger Ramble's fury.

She thought about going for the lighter man, and wasn't sure; she thought about yanking Ramble aside and wasn't sure, and then she heard Carey make a strange gasping noise and knew. She threw herself between Carey and the lighter man, glaring him off—but he wasn't attacking any more. He froze, looking at her, assessing her, both of them caught in an instant of hesitation to see what the other would do.

And then something eased within him; he backed up, seeming more resigned than anything and dripping blood from the cut she'd inflicted; blood from that cut sprayed across the white boards of the stalls, painted by the pattern of his own whirling movement. He gave her the slightest of nods.

Disbelieving, distrusting, Jess risked a glance at Carey—he made a whooping noise, the sound of someone with all his breath knocked away struggling to take in that first deep gulp—and the lighter man didn't move. Didn't try to take her spellstones, didn't swoop in on Carey.

He doesn't think he has to.

She didn't understand it and didn't care. Ramble, uncertain now, retreated to the doorway of his stall. "Jess?" he asked.

"Attaboy, Ramble," she said without looking at him. "Good job. Whoa there a moment—" She eased a hand to Carey's shoulder, to where the warmth of his exertion dampened the thick cotton T-shirt, still not sure how long she could look away from the lighter man.

He said, "You stay down there, and we're on truce. Whoa, if you prefer it."

She gave him a quick glare, but didn't see any sarcasm much as she searched, automatically stroking Carey's back, too aware of the movement of muscle and rib playing beneath his skin as he worked through whatever the man had done to him.

"It didn't have to be this way," the man said.

"Yes," Carey said, still choking for breath but levering himself up on his arms to glare, to take in how things had sorted out. "It did." The darker man down, and hurt. Ramble in the stall doorway, now looking entirely to Jess for guidance and still ready to go after anyone who entered what he considered his personal territory. The lighter man bleeding, but . . . looking like someone who'd won.

Except that as he watched Carey recover, he frowned. The frown of a man expecting something else.

Carey said, "We're not going with you."

Exasperated, the man said, "My people just want you out of the way for a while. Not interfering."

Bitterly, Jess said, "How can you think we would trust you? Our friends are dead. The Council is dead."

His expression twitched and went oddly blank. "That was a mistake," he said. "They didn't understand what they were dealing with. None of them—my people, your people . . . wizards and their burnin' magic. Rife, all of them." He gave a disgusted shake of his head.

His partner, crumpled up against the wall where Ramble had left him, stirred. "Just . . . kill . . . them."

"We can get the job done without that," the man said sharply, annoyed. "Things are under control here; they're not going anywhere. You take yourself back and have them send a replacement."

Jess flushed with sudden anger. Things were under control. This man had not been trying to hurt them, not even after she cut him; until that last moment when he'd turned on Carey with such speed and precision, he'd only been trying to control them. To take the shieldstones and return them to Camolen as he'd said from the start.

If he wanted to hurt them, any one of them, he could. Even Ramble.

"Ramble," she said, "I'm safe from this man. Do you understand? Even if he touches me, he does not possess me. If you go back in the stall, I'll come sit with you in a while."

"Yes?" he said doubtfully, looking at the man he'd hurt, and at the perfectly bland, bleeding stranger who seemed to understand what she was trying to do, for he took another step back, and Ramble's gaze left him and watched how she knelt by Carey, still rubbing his back with absent, soothing gestures.

Carey caught her eye, gestured minutely with his chin. Move away.

She felt like she was tearing something inside herself . . . but to her surprise, it was a wound already opened. A tear first made when she'd found Carey in here with Ramble in the first place, only—somehow—moments ago.

She stood. She moved away. "Yes," she told Ramble.

He flicked his head up with the internal conflict of it, and took a step back. "Come sit," he said.

"I will." She hesitated, not wanting to lie to him, not able to do as he wished . . . not wanting to draw him back out again by thwarting him directly. "I have to talk to this man. You can listen if you want. But we made a mess, and we have to clean it up. If you stay in there, we can clean it up faster."

He sighed hugely, gave his own tongue a thoughtful chew or two, and backed into the stall, sliding the door closed himself.

"Attaboy," she murmured. Beside her, Carey tried to climb to his feet, failed—and held up a hand to stay her when she would have gone back to him.

"I'll get there," he muttered. "Just knocked the wind out of me, that's all."

"Should have done more than that," the man said, without any particular heat behind it. He moved to the end of the barn, sliding closed the barn door Jess had left ajar, latching it, and then grabbing some of the baling twine Mark habitually looped around the bars of the hay stall to secure the inner handles. "You can open it," he told them, eyeing them as he tied a final knot, "but not before I reach you. So save us all some trouble and sit still a moment."

Carey gave a short laugh and threw himself into a fit of coughing, through which he said, "I'm the one who hasn't managed to get up yet, remember?"

"Or maybe you just haven't bothered." But the man didn't dwell on it; he shrugged out of his shortcoat as he walked down the aisle, passing between Carey and Jess with no apparent concern even as he took a quick look at his bleeding arm. The look he gave Jess was one of appraisal—almost, she thought, of approval. "Took me by surprise with that one. You're quick. But it won't happen again." Approval, but . . . warning. He completed the rip she'd made in his shirt sleeve and held the arm out to her. "Tie that off, will you?"

Numbly, she did.

No longer bleeding quite so freely, he crouched by his partner, fished around at the darker man's neck, and pulled out a chain of spellstones, quickly sorting through them to find the one he wanted before lifting the injured man's unresisting hand and pressing the stone into it, closing dark fingers around it. "I'm getting out of range," he said. "Trigger the burning thing, get yourself back. Have them send Lubri out. Not Mohi, you hear? You've seen where brute force is going to get us."

"Go root yourself," his partner said, not bothering to insert any malice, although Jess wasn't sure he had the energy to do so anyway. When the man stepped back—ending up between Carey and Jess and not, Jess thought, by any accident—his partner triggered the stone, sending a wash of magic over the aisle. The air rippled, a gentle current turned violent, and cleared.

"Reinforcements on the way." The man took another step or two back, so he could look at both Carey and Jess at the same time. "I understand your concerns, but I was told if you come back with me, you'll be safe, and released once you can no longer interfere."

"Dead people don't interfere," Carey said dryly. He no longer tried to rise, but sat back on his heels, looking better—as if it were a decision to stay down, and not a necessity. Still clearing his throat with a strange and puzzled expression, a flush came high on his cheeks to replace the utter paleness of shock.

Jess looked at the man from beneath a lowered brow and said, "What did you do to him?"

"I—"

A sudden blast of magic took the conversation away, surprising the remaining intruder as much as Jess and Carey—not reinforcements then—and he even pulled Carey to his feet, all of them moving back, squinting, trying to understand what they saw. "What?" Ramble demanded from the stall. "What?"

And then the magic faded and Jess did understand. She understood all too well. Although her memories from the site of the Council's death were from her equine eyes—colors severely washed out, focus entirely different—she had no trouble recognizing the same effect. Here. In the aisle of Jaime's barn.

What had once been the man's partner was now a lump of skin, jagged bloody bones, pulped and strangely extruded muscles mingled and entwined with what might have been painted flagstone.

And the smell . . . 

Jess hadn't known there would be a smell when the magic-gone-awry was fresh. Not this smell . . . not so much of it.

Ramble made a choking noise and fled to the corner of the stall. Carey turned his head away, muttering a single faint curse. But the man walked a few steps closer, eyeing that which had been his partner. He even leaned down, broke off a piece of the unnaturally brittle flagstone, and studied the paint a moment before flicking the stone away to shatter against the wall.

When he faced them again, he dusted the touch of the stone off against his pants, for the first time favoring the arm Jess had cut. "My name is Wheeler," he said with a strange finality. "I think we're going to get to know each other a lot better than we expected."

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Contents
Framed

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Contents

Chapter 18

Carey hesitated at the screen door off the kitchen, staring out at the barn, glancing back over his shoulder to the kitchen. Empty now, although it bore signs of his lunch, a pan soaking in the sink from his rewarmed sloppy joes.

Sloppy joes. He could only imagine that Jaime, in coming to Camolen, had encountered food with equally idiosyncratic names. He looked into the living room where Jess read one of Jaime's old books, something about a black stallion. He supposed that to Jess and Ramble, the two worlds weren't so different. Both equally strange, and full of the strange ways that humans named and built and handled things.

Ramble. He needed to talk to Ramble. To see for himself that there was no little detail, no question Jess might have neglected to ask simply because she did look at the world through equine-tinted eyes. From the sound of it, Ramble had only glimpsed the culprit . . . but what if that glimpse revealed a piece of clothing—a boot such as couriers often wore, the hooded half-cape favored over winter clothing by those in the northern regions of Camolen? When they had so little to work with, the details mattered . . . 

But Jess . . . 

She hadn't been bluffing. Short of physically restraining her—and keeping her that way—he wouldn't be able to stop her from taking Ramble away. From taking herself away.

Carey leaned his forehead against the worn white paint of the screen door frame, feeling the unaccustomed weight of this world settle around him. On him. A bone-deep fatigue he had no healer here to counteract, an awareness of his own unsoundness that brought back vivid memories of the days after he'd been hurt, when no one was sure just how well he'd recover from the spell Calandre had used on him—or even, for a while, if he'd recover at all.

Settling on top of that came Jaime's words. He didn't understand how or why someone would come after them, but he trusted that the threat was a real one . . . and that anyone with the resources and wherewithal to track them down would be smart enough to prepare finder spellstones. They wouldn't have to know this world; they wouldn't even have to know that Jaime's farm was called the Dancing Equine.

Although if it came down to it, he wasn't betting against that last. Plenty of people knew just a little bit about Jaime—Arlen's companion, the horsewoman from another world, and she who had spoken against both Calandre and Willand in a very public venue. Certainly anyone who took lessons from her at Anfeald knew the name of her farm.

They'd had a string of quiet days here. An opportunity to acclimate Ramble, to try to uncover his answers. Days in which they had no idea what was happening in Camolen, and during which their failing message system proved inadequate for true communication. It was only ever meant for quick notes, not full manuscripts. Thick, block letters, not fine script. And even at that, it faltered . . . the newest words had come through even more faintly than the previous ones.

For the first time he wondered if they could get back at all.

Any way he looked at it, the quiet days were over. As soon as Dayna finished with her spellstone hunt, they'd gather their things and go.

He lifted his head, looked at the barn. Last chance, it said to him. Once he's back in Camolen with you, he's a horse again. 

Carey pushed the door open.

In Starland, in the wake of Dayna's surreptitious magic, the shop clerk's head jerked up, pinning Dayna with an astonished, dark-eyed stare. "What—" she started, and stopped, open-mouthed. Behind the counter, engrossed in some sort of reading with Suliya that had involved the flipping of cards, Rita gasped out loud.

Dayna came back from the concentration of doubling the lightest spellstone she carried—the friend-or-foe spell—and looked at the jeans-clad woman before her with a surprised embarrassment. The stones nestled snugly in her palm, one agate from Ohio with a typical cut-crystal shape, long and narrow and faceted. The other agate from Camolen—also long and narrow, but with unevenly rounded edges and a satin polish. Similar stones from different worlds, black with delicate white-lace patterns. Both now carrying the friend-or-foe spell.

She'd done it. She'd drawn Camolen's faltering energy through the existing spellstone to double it on the Ohio stone.

She just hadn't expected anyone to feel her do it.

"What," Rita said firmly, leaning over the counter with a deck of large cards in one hand, "are you doing?"

"Uh . . ." Dayna said, hunting for inspiration, still caught in her flush of success and very much caught out in the effort, "I—"

Mark leaned back against the cash register and raised an eyebrow, crossing his arms and suddenly, somehow, looking like the substantial and responsible one of the two of them. "What are you doing?" he asked. "Of all the places . . ."

"I didn't know anyone would feel it," Dayna blurted, now hunting for composure. Stupid, of course . . . there were plenty of people on this world who could no doubt detect and even manipulate magic, just as Dayna herself had been able. But she'd never realized her sensitivity before she'd reached Camolen, and it never occurred to her . . . 

Of all the places. But that didn't mean she had to explain herself, or that she couldn't pretend she hadn't already effectively admitted she'd done anything at all. "Let me finish looking through these stones, and we can go."

"But did it work?" Suliya asked. "Weren't you going to—"

In unison, Mark and Dayna said, "Shut up, Suliya," except Dayna said it through her teeth. Mark only gave her a patient but implacable look.

"Burnin' poot," Suliya muttered. Dayna quickly picked out a tourmaline, a malachite, another agate, several nice onyx stones, and for kicks, a man-made deep blue egg of varying satin tones that the sales clerk muttered was fiber-optic material. Nothing here approaching the hard gems she'd have liked to use for the energy storage she had in mind, but then again even the gold they'd brought would only go so far.

Rita put the cards aside with a gesture of finality. "I'm afraid the energy here is too disrupted to focus on the reading any longer. Where did you say you were from?"

Again in unison, Mark and Dayna said, "She didn't." Then exchanged a wary glance, entirely unused to being of one mind.

The bells to the shop door jangled, and a fresh breeze blew through the incense-thick air.

"New deck of tarot cards," the new arrival said, as if they'd all been in whatever conversation he'd been carrying on in his own head. Dayna gave him no more than a glance—a medium-sized, duck-footed man with a shining dome of a forehead and the bright chip of an earring somehow out of place beside his soft features.

"Your third this week," Rita said, even as the woman with Dayna gave the man a look and sighed.

"The others just aren't right," he said. "They don't feel right. I was doing a reading for a friend last night, you know, and we both agreed. We don't think the—"

He's going to say "vibes," Dayna thought, and made herself look quickly at the shadowed industrial tan linoleum tiles at her feet, unable to stop her amusement. She'd never heard anyone in Camolen say vibes.

"—vibes are right."

Vibes. Not even the proprietors of little roadside healer shacks, offering fixes conventional healers could not with slick infomercial-like patter, said vibes.

"As they never will be, if you don't give them a chance," Rita said with some asperity, blissfully ignorant of Dayna's thoughts. "Not that I'm not glad to sell you another deck—"

The door was yanked open again, having never settled to a fully closed position. Busy little place, Dayna decided as the sales clerk moved to greet the new arrival; Dayna got only a glimpse of the tall, willowy woman who entered. Nondescript, aside from her bearing, with mousy coloring and mousy clothing. Although those clothes—

Mark cut off her view, dragging Suliya by the hand. "You almost done here?"

"Almost," Dayna said, adding to Suliya, "here, hold these," even as she dumped her cache of stones into Suliya's free hand.

"If this is your idea of shopping, I don't think much of it," Suliya grumbled, tilting her hand to shift and examine the stones.

Dayna gave an absent shake of her head. "No, this is hit and run."

"More like errands than shopping," Mark offered, pulling out his billfold, eyeing the price sign and estimating the cost to tug out a few fives.

"Wow, you must like crystals." The tarot-deck man edged in behind Dayna. Dismayed, she caught Mark's eye; he gave a tiny one-shoulder shrug. She knew the sound of someone wanting to make conversation so they could eventually talk about themselves. The man liked crystals. He liked the feel of them. He liked their . . . 

Vibes.

Suliya got an impish look on her face, one Dayna didn't like at all, and said, "They're spellstones."

The brat. Dayna hastily scooped up a few more stones. "I'm done," she announced, and caught Rita's eye. "There's fifteen here in all."

With a clatter of keys on the old cash register, Rita rang them up; Mark eased through the clutter of the store to pay for them.

But Dayna was right; the man wanted to talk about himself, not listen to Suliya's answer—to the point that he seemed not to notice she had. "I put them around the house, you know?" he said. "It makes a nice healing zone, you know? All my friends say so. That when you walk into the house, you can just feel the vi—"

Suliya said, "Here. Look at this one."

Guides. "Dammit, Suliya—"

And Suliya's glance said it all, written right there on the perfect sepia tones of her face. The face of a young woman used to having influence, who'd had enough of Suliya do this and Suliya do that and especially Suliya, shut up. As the man's finger reflexively touched the stone Suliya held out—the crystal-cut agate Dayna had doubled—Suliya triggered it. Both women from the shop jerked at the feel of magic, Rita's eyes narrowing as she dumped change in Mark's hand, her sales clerk pivoting around from the rune she showed the other customer—

Friend or foe. A blue aura surrounded the man, glowing far too brightly to have been mistaken for any trick of the light; he looked at his own hands, astonished and utterly wordless for perhaps the first time in a decade. Blue light surrounded Rita and the sales clerk as well, both of them clearly holding their breath, eyes wide and caught between wonder and fear.

"Oh," Suliya said, not looking at all pleased despite the perfect results of her prank. "Oh poot. Dayna—"

And Dayna looked where Suliya was staring. At the woman customer.

The woman customer limned in orange light. Fading now, but still unmistakable, as was the suddenly satisfied expression on her face as she gently pushed the sales clerk aside. "You made that so easy," she said.

Her clothes—mousy, but passing for funky post-hippie . . . and equally at home in Camolen as casual wear.

Dayna clutched her original friend-foe spellstone in one hand, her remaining selection of fresh stones in the other. Suliya gave her a panicked, apologetic glance, and Dayna gave a sharp shake of her head. "I don't know how she followed us here, but you didn't do it. She must have had a finder spellstone. Or known about—" The Dancing Equine. Carey and Jess and Ramble . . .  

"The Dancing Equine. Yes. It's already being taken care of," the woman said. Annoyance crossed her face and she moved to the center of the store, stopping short when Mark straightened from the counter, stuffing his wallet back in his pocket and looking far more imposing than Dayna had ever expected of him. Mark, grown up at last. The woman touched her tunic just below the notch of her collarbone; no doubt the series of lumps there were her spellstones. She'd come prepared. She said, "You and your friends have a distressing habit of ignoring the rules and running off to do good."

Mark flexed his hands slightly, looking both ready and wary. "And the people who try to stop us have a convenient habit of failing."

"But why try to stop us?" Suliya blurted. "Maybe we're not supposed to be here, but we're only trying to find out what's gone wrong at home—"

"What's gone wrong is being attended. No one needs to know the details—"

"Get burnt," Dayna snarled at her. "The Council is dead. And I was right. A single tragic incident, my lovely ass. You know about the static, I'll bet. Whoever you are. And you don't want to accept responsibility—"

Behind the counter, Rita stealthily reached for the phone—911, that's all they'd need. "No!" Mark told her. "Rita, don't."

"Don't, my lovely ass." Rita glared at him, but drew her hand back. "I want you all out of here, right now."

"Exactly my intent," the woman said. "More or less."

Mark rolled his eyes, very much a here we go again expression.

Very low, Dayna said, "Get her spellstones."

The woman gave her a disapproving look as Mark hesitated, too aware of the woman's ability to invoke the stones as long as they touched her skin. "Don't ask me how you even made it this far," the woman said, and magic flared around them, strong magic. Rita and her sales clerk cried out; the clerk scrambled away, darting back behind the counter to leave Mark and Suliya and Dayna on the cluttered sales floor with the duck-footed man inching back to disappear between the hanging items of clothing.

Strong magic. Complicated magic. Enough to take them back to Camolen or imprison them for interrogation or simply turn them to ashes on the spot. Whatever she had on those spellstones . . . 

But only what she had on those spellstones, whereas Dayna stood with all the magic of Camolen at her disposal if she could but somehow pause a spellstone in progress and draw on the connection. Dangerous. Untried. 

Do it.

She flashed Mark a look, a warning. Closed her eyes, knowing he'd move to protect her if needed—if he could. And invoked the friend-foe spellstone, wishing she had something more complex, something that wouldn't be over so quickly—

She pounced. With the precision of a surgeon, she pounced. The invoked spell, released from the stone and still connected to it, stopped in mid-process, and hung there, the pressure of the magic beating within her like deep emotions threatening to explode.

And they would, if she couldn't control them. If she didn't guide them.

The obvious—a shield. They all carried shieldstones, but those were simple stones triggered by the use of magic against the wearer—not, say, against the building which could then fall upon the wearer.

She knew the shield spell well; she wove it in an instant—and then, in sudden inspiration, she called it up again, inverted it, and placed it over the woman. And then with Mark calling her name, grabbing her arm, the magic burgeoned around her, threatening to get out of hand. In borderline panic she siphoned it to the side, to the empty spellstones waiting in her hand, struggling to maintain control and suddenly aware that she didn't know how to stop the flow.

"Dayna!" Mark shook her this time, and hard. And then to Rita and her friend—"Stay put! She can't protect you if you don't stay put."

"Stop it!" Dayna snapped, gritting her teeth, trying to yank her arm from his grasp. "I'm—I can't—"

"Open your eyes, dammit!"

In the background, someone whimpered. Suliya. Or the man hiding in the clothing. Dayna couldn't be sure and didn't care. Panting with the effort, she slowed the influx of magic long enough to blindly grab a random fistful of stones from the display at her side—new, uncharged stones to soak up the magic and give her a moment to think.

She opened her eyes. She could see the shield; she didn't know if Mark could, or if he just assumed it, but clearly Rita saw something; she and her friend clutched each other, staring, ramrod stiff with the fear of making a wrong move. The air of the shield wavered—a shimmer here, a coruscating glitter there. Through it, Dayna found the woman—trapped in a bubble of Dayna's making with the furious energies of a discharged but unfulfilled spell beating against it, unable to turn back on the protected woman, unable to make its way out, and visible only through the violently sparking effect against the shield.

The woman within looked at her with both fury and horror. "You rife little idiot—what have you done?"

"What you couldn't." Dayna's words came out breathlessly, holding a myriad of feelings. Her own fear, her wonder at what she'd done. Was doing. And at the looming, surging threat she'd created. "You shouldn't have come. You should have left us alone."

"Dayna, we need to talk to her," Mark said urgently—no longer tugging, but still gripping her upper arm. Not at all sure he had her attention.

"Guides alive!" Suliya said. "Look at—all the stones—"

All of them, not just the ones Dayna touched, but all the ones within her shield, still in their display tray . . . glowing.

The clothes rack moaned.

Mark, at her side, at her ear, insistent. "Dayna, don't do anything—"

She turned on him. "I don't have a choice!" Not as the magic built, the raw magic with which she was so good—except it now came at her like air whooshing into a vacuum. "I've got to plug it with something—and she's all I've got!"

"What? No! No!" The woman looked wildly around herself, her hand reaching for her spellstones. Her shieldstone. "You can't!"

She couldn't work a direct spell on the woman . . . but Dayna's inverted shield surrounded her, a bubble of insulation that she could affect with magic. "Relax," she muttered, pulling her wavering control back around her, biting her lower lip in utter concentration. "With any luck this won't hurt at all."

The world-travel spell. She'd memorized it for the spellstones; she'd never expected to invoke it on the spot. And she had no idea how the conflicting streams of magic would interact . . . the shieldstone, the inverted shield, the invoked magic swirling around inside . . . or what it might do to the woman within it all. So many forces battling each other in this small earthbound shop . . . 

She shouldn't have come.

For a moment Dayna feared she'd lost the threads of the new spell amongst it all—so much magic! But—

"There!" She shouted triumph as the world-travel spell engulfed the inverted shield and snatched it away, along with an entire rack of rune jewelry.

Sudden silence. Maybe it had actually been silent already, the magic roaring only in Dayna's ears . . . but now, even for her, true silence reigned. The shop's stones no longer glowed, although Dayna thought she detected a suspicious glimmer winking out from among them. The blue fiber-optic egg she held sparked with definite energy, and she quickly tucked it in her pocket.

As if she could hide what had happened here . . . 

"Burnt spellin' poot guides," Suliya said, apparently not willing to leave anything out. Dazed, she looked around the store, and then at herself. Checking herself for missing parts. "Bootin', Dayna!"

Mark cleared his throat. "We'll, uh, pay for the missing stuff," he said, nodding to the one empty spot on the floor next to where the woman had been standing.

"Damned right you will," Rita said, the perspicacity returning to her tone, though a pale imitation of what it had been.

"What," said the sales clerk faintly, "did you do to her?"

"Theoretically, I sent her home," Dayna said. "But . . ." But, nothing. That wasn't a sentence she needed to finish. But I probably killed her in the process wouldn't reassure anyone right now, not to mention the cold spot the possibility left in her own stomach.

Self-defense. It had been self-defense.

She'd seen people die before. She'd been involved in causing their deaths. But nothing like . . . 

Not like this. One on one. Just Dayna, just the other woman. Now gone.

Self-defense, she told herself most firmly, as Mark cast a sympathetic glance her way. An empathetic glance. He'd been the first of all of them, armed with bow and arrows . . . self-defense. It still counted as killing.

The two Starland women stared at her. From the clothing rack, the male customer stared. Even Suliya stared. "Bootin'," she said again, this time only whispering to herself. "Just plain . . . bootin'."

Self-consciously, Dayna deposited the extra stones back into their container and smoothed her cutely flowered, cap-sleeved top—straight from the junior department at Sears only a few years earlier, and how much more innocuous could one small wizard look?—with her now empty hand. The awkward man had emerged just far enough from the clothing rack to watch her, wary, eyes wide and infinitely alarmed.

She smiled at him. "Now those," she said, "were vibes."

Curled up in the corner of the worn and comfortable living room couch, Jess stared at the pages of her book, no longer seeing the words . . . but thinking about them. About how the boy and the horse, stranded, learned to trust each other. To work together for survival. And then how hard the boy fought to keep them together, refusing to compromise when it came to the horse's well-being.

So she had once assumed of Carey.

Not that she now assumed otherwise . . . she just wasn't certain anymore. Decisions and reactions that had once come automatically now took thought . . . now brought worry.

She closed the book, gazing at the dramatic color and composition of the cover. Nice stallion. Chewed on a thumbnail a moment, wondering how much longer Dayna and Suliya would be in town and how long after that until Dayna and Carey agreed it was time to go home. And then she frowned, coming into alert, her thumb forgotten at the edge of her lip. Magic.

Significant, flaring magic.

She felt the implications of it in the very pit of her stomach, in the cold dark spot that suddenly appeared there; the fine hairs on her arms prickled up. Dayna would use such magic only if driven to it by dire circumstances . . . and if someone else wielded it, then Jaime's warning had come none too soon. Or maybe not soon enough.

"Carey?" she said, thinking him out in the kitchen, where he'd bumped around making himself something to eat and then settled, reading one of Jaime's horse magazines—she wasn't sure. Only when she lost herself in a book did she fail to track every aspect of her surroundings, and now she realized she'd truly let herself go; Carey didn't answer. After a few quick silent, barefooted steps to check the first-floor rooms, she realized he wasn't even in the house.

Not the barn. 

Please, not the barn. Not doing the one thing she'd told him she wouldn't allow. Couldn't allow, not for Ramble's sake.

She fled the house, ignoring the ring of the telephone behind her, and ran straight into the barn, where—

Where seeing Carey at Ramble's stall stopped her as surely as if she'd run into a wall. And hit her just as hard.

He glanced up at her. It was no consolation at all that he looked miserable, that he actually leaned against the stall bars with his back to Ramble, not trying to communicate at all. Having tried, and failed, given up—and leaving the path of it written on his face.

Jess forced herself to walk down the aisle, all the way to Ramble's stall. She glanced inside to find Ramble sitting cross-legged, facing the corner so stiff-backed he actually trembled a little. Angry stallion. Offended.

Carey wouldn't meet her gaze.

In a voice as stiff and trembling as Ramble's back, Jess said, "Was it worth it?"

Carey shook his head. "I don't know. I don't think so. But I don't think I could have not tried, either." He gave her a helpless look. "None of it makes any sense. Not the death of the Council, not the way Camolen's services collapsed so thoroughly, not Jaime's warning . . . Guides, how can Arlen be dead? Dead, just like that, with no one knowing why, and no one but a horse knowing how? My world is falling apart around me, and if I try hard enough, I'm supposed to be able to fix it. That's the way it always works . . . if I try hard enough." His voice cracked on the last words; he gave a despairing, sardonic cough of a laugh that might just as well have been a sob, and rubbed circles over his eyes with the flats of his fingers.

As if when he looked at her again, he might possibly see something different. Someone who was receptive to his self-deprecating little semblance of a smile.

Her heart broke for him.

It broke for herself, too.

In a low but remarkably even voice she said, "My world is falling apart around me, too, but as long as I could depend on you—trust you—I was all right. Now . . . all the rules have changed at once. Nothing is the same, not the world, not the people in it. Not you."

"Jess . . ."

She gave a sharp shake of her head. "I have only my own rules now. Only my own self to trust, and to make decisions. I will get my things, and then Ramble and I are going home. You should come back too. I don't think it's safe here anymore. But I think you'll do as you want, and not what matters to anyone else."

"Not what I want—" For a brief moment, he looked aghast. "Not what I wanted—I had to try. To fix—" He stopped, gave a short shake of his head. "It doesn't matter right now. What happens next matters. I'm not going to try to stop you from taking him."

"You should come too." She tipped her head at the house. "Get your things. Get everyone's things—be ready. Didn't you feel the magic?"

"Magic?" he said, looking suddenly haggard. Giving up. She'd never seen that in him. Never. "I should have . . . I must have been . . . distracted."

With Ramble. She didn't say it. She said, "From town. Maybe Dayna . . . maybe someone else. And Jaime said—"

"Just what the hells is going on?" he said, interrupting with utter frustration. "When is this going to start to make sense?"

"When it is too late," Jess said before she could stop herself . . . maybe because in her mind, it was already too late. Lives and patterns that could have—should have—withstood the changes were stretched out of shape, distorted past ever returning to what they'd been.

It wasn't something she'd ever comprehended as being possible. Rules were rules. You lived your life by them; she'd been trained and grown up by them, and respected them. She thought she'd learned the new human rules, and she'd been living by those, too.

Now she was learning that sometimes humans discarded all their rules, all their understandings between one another, and left even the most important people in their lives floundering. Not true to anyone, not even themselves.

Carey only looked at her, complete in his misery, and no longer attempted to explain himself. Finally, for once, accepting a thing as not possible. "Maybe," he said, after a heavy moment, "it's time to go—"

Jess lifted her head, drawn by the faint change in motor sound of an approaching vehicle. A downshift. A car preparing to turn.

Whatever Carey had done, he hadn't lost his ability to read her. "Not Mark's?" he asked in a low voice.

She gave the slightest shake of her head, listening hard.

He pushed himself away from the stall as tires crunched on the gravel driveway; two doors opened, then closed, and the vehicle moved away. "Charter coach," he said, a guess that nonetheless sounded confident. And grim. In this world, only those without cars used charters . . . older people.

Or those from out of town.

Even those from other worlds.

Think they followed you, Jaime had written. Be careful. 

Touching a hand to his chest where his spellstones made a small lump under one of Mark's least garish T-shirts, Carey asked, "Do you have your shieldstone?"

"And Ramble's." In no-nonsense economy of movement, she went to Ramble's stall, shooting open both latches and yanking the door aside. "Ramble," she said, "I know you have anger. But this is danger, and I'm here to protect you. Will you wear the stones?"

He turned around just far enough to scowl at her. Like his clothing, the stones were something to take off; Jess had taken to carrying them herself.

She said, "They will protect you, too. From magic."

In a startlingly abrupt movement, he rose to his feet, shoved himself across the stall, and stopped before her, lowering his head slightly. She looped the stones around his neck, tucking them under his shirt so they touched skin, and the instant she finished, he whirled away and returned to his corner, his lips twitching in want to bite and his hard jaw made harder with tension.

Jess left him there, went to stand on tiptoe to peer out the wire-protected stall window. Two men hesitated before the barn; one wore what looked like new jeans, and the other a pair of fine cloth trousers, pleated, cut up the front to allow for ankle boots, and with a subtle shimmer Jess well recognized. Expensive cloth, spell-protected from tearing.

Camolen cloth. It went with their shortcoats, with the casual collarless shirts they wore beneath. In Camolen, unremarkable clothing in unremarkable colors, just as the men themselves were hardly likely to catch anyone's eye. Attractive but not striking, average in height and shape. One the color of light tea, the other of Carey's coloring. Nothing special.

If they hadn't been from another world.

"They are here for us," she said in a low voice as the men exchanged quick words, gesturing between house and barn, eventually deciding to stick together and to head for the barn first. "They're coming. They aren't big . . . but they could be strong." One touched his chest; the other dipped a hand into his pocket. "I think they must have magic."

"Maybe," Carey said, returning from the direction of the hay stall. "Depends on how prepared they are. We'd hoped Dayna could draw on magic from here—they may have done the same."

She turned from the window to find him standing in the open stall door, his back to it. Ready. He'd grabbed the dull old hunting knife Mark used to cut the hay twine and it hung from his hand, unobtrusive, half obscured . . . but like him, ready.

Run. They ought to run. Any sane horse would know it.

But not with Ramble . . . Ramble, who wouldn't understand, who would be as much of a problem as the men who'd come for them.

Jess watched out the window until the men entered the door in the middle of the length of the barn, the door that came through the tack room and that no one from the house ever bothered to use. Only visitors and owners. Then she moved to the middle of the stall, where she could still see beyond Carey but was closer to the door—feeling trapped, but not willing to leave Ramble—Ramble, who could comprehend none of this, who still sat in the corner with his back to the world. Alone.

Carey's fingers clenched and uncurled around the handle of the knife as they heard the men enter the aisle, unable to see them past the hay-bale barrier. Maybe the men would be as fooled as the horse owners who had been trooping in and out during the evenings, perfectly willing to accept that Mark had received a hay shipment big enough to fill the entire end of the aisle, never realizing the hay bales were only stacked two deep and Ramble lived in the stall beyond.

Maybe . . . 

Jess found she'd stopped breathing to listen, and forced herself to take in a deep and surprisingly shaky breath. Ramble heard it, turned to look at her, his mouth open—

"Shh," she said, barely making sound behind it, lifting a hand to stay him where he was—surprised to find that shaking, too. Not now, Ramble, oh not now— 

But Ramble didn't have to give them away. Not with the voices coming close to the hay bales and one man saying, "There's another stall beyond here; I saw it outside. And there's plenty of light showing in the window. I'll be burnt if those hay bales are stacked all the way through."

Carey's fingers clenched then relaxed around the knife, his posture stiff.

Afraid, Jess realized suddenly. Outmatched and knowing it. He was a courier, not a warrior. A courier, not a wizard. And one man against two, struggling with his body's limits since his arrival here.

She moved up behind him and murmured in his ear, "Two of us. And Ramble will not be taken. Three."

He cast her a grateful look—and in another instant both of them jerked to attention as the top bale of hay fell inward. Within moments the intruders had tossed enough bales into the aisle behind them to walk through, kicking the first bale out of the way.

The darker of them looked at Carey and Jess and then took in Ramble beyond—Ramble, on his knees and interested, now, in the new arrivals. Interested and wary, but hardly alarmed in spite of Jess's warning, in spite of her obvious concern.

No longer assuming they had the same interests.

"I hate it here," the man said. "Don't make this hard. I'm not in a good mood."

"I feel for you," Carey said. "Neither am I."

"The question is," the lighter man said, nodding at Ramble so far, "what has he told you?"

Jess said in a low voice, "Nothing. He knows nothing. Leave him alone."

The man gave her a grin of what looked like true amusement. "He's safe. All we have to do is take him back and he's a horse again; he can't talk then."

"He can barely talk now," Carey said. "How the hells did you even know we were here, or that we had the palomino?"

Jess glanced at Ramble, who seemed more wary. Annoyed, even. She'd be, in his place. But he still had no idea—

"Here's how it's going to go," the light man said, ignoring Carey's question. "We're taking you back to Camolen. Once the situation there is settled enough that you can't interfere, you'll be released."

Nothing about Carey's body language made Jess believe the man, although when he spoke it was as if he wasn't concerned about the intruders in the least. As if they were in casual negotiation. "Interfere with what?"

The light man said, "That would be telling." He glanced at his partner, whose blandly pleasant features showed impatience. "See it, Carey. You're two couriers, and we . . . we're good at what we do. Shieldstones can be removed. You want things to turn out well, just come along."

"No," said Jess.

"Carey," the light man warned.

"He does not speak for me," Jess informed them.

"I told you," the darker man grumbled to the lighter. "Waste of time."

And Carey said, "But she speaks for me. We'll return on our own terms. Whoever you sent after Dayna failed—"

We don't know that. But Jess was silent.

"—and I'd like to be here when she gets back."

So casual. Though his stance was anything but, and Jess found herself easing back, and Ramble snorted and—

Someone moved first. She didn't see who and she couldn't even tell what, just that Carey doubled over and then he hit the stall bars, the knife falling from his hand, the light man grabbing his spellstones right through the T-shirt, yanking—

Jess scooped up the knife in a desperate furor with no strategy and no skill, but still with the astonishing quickness to slash the knife down the man's arm, leaving him hissing with surprise and pain, turning from Carey with a precision movement that disarmed her even as the darker man came in with brute force and slammed her against the stall, her head hitting the bars so the world turned black and distant, but not so distant she couldn't hear Ramble roar, "Mine!"

Something knocked her aside; she clutched at the bars and didn't go down, but wasn't on her feet . . . yet no one touched her. The world came back slowly, and even then she didn't understand what she saw. Carey, on his feet, sparring with the lighter man and taking the worst of it—but he had the knife again, and he had a grin on his face, a strange grin that Jess found frightening and reassuring at the same time though she barely had time to regard it as anything at all before she had to throw herself aside, stumbling into the stall. The empty stall.

Ramble. Ramble who didn't understand, but knew when another stallion touched his mare. Hurt her. Mine. And the darker man—not as fast as his partner, not as precise—didn't know how to defend himself against a man who fought not as a man, but a horse. Going for the throat. Hammering blows to chest and sides in a strange overhand punch, quicker and stronger and driven by more feral instincts than his thinking opponent could hope to draw on. Bloodied, the man went down, and should have stayed down—for as horses did, Ramble drew back to let him admit defeat—but gave no quarter when the man bulled back to his feet, back into the fight. Ramble's grunts were of rage; the man's of pain and not a little surprise.

And Carey held his own—a delicate balance with which Jess, climbing to her feet, was loathe to interfere. Not until a chance shift in position allowed the lighter man to see his partner's fate, and he muttered a curse, flying into action—moving quickly, so quickly Jess stood stunned as he danced around Carey in a sinuous pattern, ending up behind him to place one resounding blow to Carey's back, one so hard the very sound of it made Jess hurt and Carey drop straight to the ground.

"Stay down!" the man snapped, and she thought it was to Carey but realized the man shouted at his partner—and his partner, listening or else at last simply unable to rise again, ceased to trigger Ramble's fury.

She thought about going for the lighter man, and wasn't sure; she thought about yanking Ramble aside and wasn't sure, and then she heard Carey make a strange gasping noise and knew. She threw herself between Carey and the lighter man, glaring him off—but he wasn't attacking any more. He froze, looking at her, assessing her, both of them caught in an instant of hesitation to see what the other would do.

And then something eased within him; he backed up, seeming more resigned than anything and dripping blood from the cut she'd inflicted; blood from that cut sprayed across the white boards of the stalls, painted by the pattern of his own whirling movement. He gave her the slightest of nods.

Disbelieving, distrusting, Jess risked a glance at Carey—he made a whooping noise, the sound of someone with all his breath knocked away struggling to take in that first deep gulp—and the lighter man didn't move. Didn't try to take her spellstones, didn't swoop in on Carey.

He doesn't think he has to.

She didn't understand it and didn't care. Ramble, uncertain now, retreated to the doorway of his stall. "Jess?" he asked.

"Attaboy, Ramble," she said without looking at him. "Good job. Whoa there a moment—" She eased a hand to Carey's shoulder, to where the warmth of his exertion dampened the thick cotton T-shirt, still not sure how long she could look away from the lighter man.

He said, "You stay down there, and we're on truce. Whoa, if you prefer it."

She gave him a quick glare, but didn't see any sarcasm much as she searched, automatically stroking Carey's back, too aware of the movement of muscle and rib playing beneath his skin as he worked through whatever the man had done to him.

"It didn't have to be this way," the man said.

"Yes," Carey said, still choking for breath but levering himself up on his arms to glare, to take in how things had sorted out. "It did." The darker man down, and hurt. Ramble in the stall doorway, now looking entirely to Jess for guidance and still ready to go after anyone who entered what he considered his personal territory. The lighter man bleeding, but . . . looking like someone who'd won.

Except that as he watched Carey recover, he frowned. The frown of a man expecting something else.

Carey said, "We're not going with you."

Exasperated, the man said, "My people just want you out of the way for a while. Not interfering."

Bitterly, Jess said, "How can you think we would trust you? Our friends are dead. The Council is dead."

His expression twitched and went oddly blank. "That was a mistake," he said. "They didn't understand what they were dealing with. None of them—my people, your people . . . wizards and their burnin' magic. Rife, all of them." He gave a disgusted shake of his head.

His partner, crumpled up against the wall where Ramble had left him, stirred. "Just . . . kill . . . them."

"We can get the job done without that," the man said sharply, annoyed. "Things are under control here; they're not going anywhere. You take yourself back and have them send a replacement."

Jess flushed with sudden anger. Things were under control. This man had not been trying to hurt them, not even after she cut him; until that last moment when he'd turned on Carey with such speed and precision, he'd only been trying to control them. To take the shieldstones and return them to Camolen as he'd said from the start.

If he wanted to hurt them, any one of them, he could. Even Ramble.

"Ramble," she said, "I'm safe from this man. Do you understand? Even if he touches me, he does not possess me. If you go back in the stall, I'll come sit with you in a while."

"Yes?" he said doubtfully, looking at the man he'd hurt, and at the perfectly bland, bleeding stranger who seemed to understand what she was trying to do, for he took another step back, and Ramble's gaze left him and watched how she knelt by Carey, still rubbing his back with absent, soothing gestures.

Carey caught her eye, gestured minutely with his chin. Move away.

She felt like she was tearing something inside herself . . . but to her surprise, it was a wound already opened. A tear first made when she'd found Carey in here with Ramble in the first place, only—somehow—moments ago.

She stood. She moved away. "Yes," she told Ramble.

He flicked his head up with the internal conflict of it, and took a step back. "Come sit," he said.

"I will." She hesitated, not wanting to lie to him, not able to do as he wished . . . not wanting to draw him back out again by thwarting him directly. "I have to talk to this man. You can listen if you want. But we made a mess, and we have to clean it up. If you stay in there, we can clean it up faster."

He sighed hugely, gave his own tongue a thoughtful chew or two, and backed into the stall, sliding the door closed himself.

"Attaboy," she murmured. Beside her, Carey tried to climb to his feet, failed—and held up a hand to stay her when she would have gone back to him.

"I'll get there," he muttered. "Just knocked the wind out of me, that's all."

"Should have done more than that," the man said, without any particular heat behind it. He moved to the end of the barn, sliding closed the barn door Jess had left ajar, latching it, and then grabbing some of the baling twine Mark habitually looped around the bars of the hay stall to secure the inner handles. "You can open it," he told them, eyeing them as he tied a final knot, "but not before I reach you. So save us all some trouble and sit still a moment."

Carey gave a short laugh and threw himself into a fit of coughing, through which he said, "I'm the one who hasn't managed to get up yet, remember?"

"Or maybe you just haven't bothered." But the man didn't dwell on it; he shrugged out of his shortcoat as he walked down the aisle, passing between Carey and Jess with no apparent concern even as he took a quick look at his bleeding arm. The look he gave Jess was one of appraisal—almost, she thought, of approval. "Took me by surprise with that one. You're quick. But it won't happen again." Approval, but . . . warning. He completed the rip she'd made in his shirt sleeve and held the arm out to her. "Tie that off, will you?"

Numbly, she did.

No longer bleeding quite so freely, he crouched by his partner, fished around at the darker man's neck, and pulled out a chain of spellstones, quickly sorting through them to find the one he wanted before lifting the injured man's unresisting hand and pressing the stone into it, closing dark fingers around it. "I'm getting out of range," he said. "Trigger the burning thing, get yourself back. Have them send Lubri out. Not Mohi, you hear? You've seen where brute force is going to get us."

"Go root yourself," his partner said, not bothering to insert any malice, although Jess wasn't sure he had the energy to do so anyway. When the man stepped back—ending up between Carey and Jess and not, Jess thought, by any accident—his partner triggered the stone, sending a wash of magic over the aisle. The air rippled, a gentle current turned violent, and cleared.

"Reinforcements on the way." The man took another step or two back, so he could look at both Carey and Jess at the same time. "I understand your concerns, but I was told if you come back with me, you'll be safe, and released once you can no longer interfere."

"Dead people don't interfere," Carey said dryly. He no longer tried to rise, but sat back on his heels, looking better—as if it were a decision to stay down, and not a necessity. Still clearing his throat with a strange and puzzled expression, a flush came high on his cheeks to replace the utter paleness of shock.

Jess looked at the man from beneath a lowered brow and said, "What did you do to him?"

"I—"

A sudden blast of magic took the conversation away, surprising the remaining intruder as much as Jess and Carey—not reinforcements then—and he even pulled Carey to his feet, all of them moving back, squinting, trying to understand what they saw. "What?" Ramble demanded from the stall. "What?"

And then the magic faded and Jess did understand. She understood all too well. Although her memories from the site of the Council's death were from her equine eyes—colors severely washed out, focus entirely different—she had no trouble recognizing the same effect. Here. In the aisle of Jaime's barn.

What had once been the man's partner was now a lump of skin, jagged bloody bones, pulped and strangely extruded muscles mingled and entwined with what might have been painted flagstone.

And the smell . . . 

Jess hadn't known there would be a smell when the magic-gone-awry was fresh. Not this smell . . . not so much of it.

Ramble made a choking noise and fled to the corner of the stall. Carey turned his head away, muttering a single faint curse. But the man walked a few steps closer, eyeing that which had been his partner. He even leaned down, broke off a piece of the unnaturally brittle flagstone, and studied the paint a moment before flicking the stone away to shatter against the wall.

When he faced them again, he dusted the touch of the stone off against his pants, for the first time favoring the arm Jess had cut. "My name is Wheeler," he said with a strange finality. "I think we're going to get to know each other a lot better than we expected."

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