Changespell by Doranna Durgin

Author:Doranna Durgin [Durgin, Doranna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
Publisher: Blue Hound Visions
Published: 2013-02-19T07:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 17

Jaime struggled to contain her ongoing resentment against Renia—a woman who somehow felt unjustly persecuted when others objected to the consequences of her behavior. While Jaime just wanted to—

Yes. To hit her.

Jess, at least, had gotten on with her life. She and Ander had left for Kymmet, her face and neck still marked by ugly, fading bruises and her expression wavering between uncertainy and determination.

But Renia still found it hard to believe her group had been considered outlaw from the start. Even the day before, when her friends had torn apart a swath of Anfeald without second thought.

"Plenty of wizards go into seclusion when they're working on a new spell," she'd said in the conference room, after she'd finally begun to talk. "So what if a group of us got together and did the same? We weren't working on anything forbidden."

"How do you know?" Arlen asked her, much more equitably than Jaime would have been able. "There's a procedure for developing major new spells, and it involves running a prospectus through the Council. In fact, the Council hasn't— or hadn't yet made up its collective mind regarding work on generalized changespells. As you can imagine, they feel strongly about it at this point. You and yours may take credit for that."

Renia's pallid face flushed deeply. "We're a bunch of low level wizards, and the Council always made sure we knew it. A formal application would have been dismissed on those grounds, and you know it. We never would have had a chance to do it your way."

"You might have tried," Arlen said mildly—but his voice hardened, then. "You might have gotten some helpful guidance on what is and what is not considered humane treatment of experimental spell subjects."

"What, after they turned us down?" Renia said. "I don't think so. Look, all we wanted to do was spell an effective change in certain animals— the ones that would be especially suited for some of the occupations humans are doing now. Once trained, they'd be twice as good at it. And they wouldn't require the same sort of compensation."

Jaime's temper, already at its edge, flared high— but when she turned it on Renia, she found her voice already buried in similar reaction from Carey and Ander.

At once, they all realized that Jess, the voice that should have been the loudest, remained silent.

But the look in her dark eyes was cold enough to give Jaime a chill.

Deliberately, she rose to her feet, every movement full of the lithe athleticism that proclaimed her other. The black stripe that was mane and forelock in Lady's form spread out over the sandy buckskin of the rest of her hair, and her nostrils flared slightly in loud equine statement.

She was, Jaime thought, as much horse as anyone in human form could get. She flaunted it before Renia, and stamped it with her pride.

And then she turned to Arlen and said evenly, "I saved her life because I was human enough to do it. I came here to find out if she was human enough to have deserved it, and now I know.

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