Triplet

  Hart smiled lopsidedly. “If you’re suggesting I take my job too seriously … don’t. There isn’t any way to take bodyguarding too seriously.”

  “Uh-huh.” Ravagin paused, casting around for another topic of conversation. “So. You mentioned earlier that you’d talked to Gartanis. Did he say anything about what happened to his lar?”

  “Not really, but as I said earlier he was furious that Melentha would attack him so brazenly.”

  “So he knew Melentha was behind it?”

  “Oh, certainly. I get the feeling he’s at least suspected her involvement with demons for a long time. A pity we can’t enlist him onto our side in fighting her.”

  “We tell a Karyxite about Shamsheer and Threshold and we’ll be dog meat as far as Triplet Control is concerned,” Ravagin told him.

  “Yes, I understand the rules,” Hart said. “I also don’t give a damn about rules if breaking them will make a life-and-death difference.”

  Ravagin thought about the automatic penalties that accompanied the illegal disclosure laws. Penalties even Cowan mal ce Taeger might find himself helpless to alter … “Let’s wait and see what Danae comes up with before we try anything that drastic, shall we? Besides, didn’t you mention earlier that Gartanis had already given you some help?”

  “Spells designed to break a path through Melentha’s defenses,” the other shrugged. “Useless, really, for the way the game’s changed.” He paused, an odd expression on his face. “These more elaborate spells—the spirit-protection ones and all—they’re distance-oriented, aren’t they? As in their effect decreases as distance from the spell-caster increases, I mean.”

  “Well …” Ravagin considered. “Yes, to some extent that’s true. Why?”

  Hart was silent a long moment. “If Danae is able to get this spirit invisibility thing … I want you to help me arrange things so that I’m only partially covered by it.”

  “There’ll be no need for that,” Ravagin assured him. “There won’t be any trouble getting the spell to cover all of us equally well.”

  “I understand, but that’s not what I meant. I intend to leave you two as soon as we’re protected and make my own way back to the Tunnel, arriving—ideally—a day or so after you’re already through. With only partial invisibility, I should be able to attract and thus draw off the bulk of Melentha’s surveillance and attack.”

  It was something he should have expected, Ravagin realized in retrospect, but it still came as a shock. Only someone ignorant of the dangers of Karyx would even have thought up such a scheme, let alone suggested it. “Forget it,” he said when he found his voice. “I’m not leaving you here as a moving target for whatever the hell the demons might decide to throw at you.”

  “Then you automatically expose Ms. mal ce Taeger to greater danger,” Hart responded coolly. “Is that how conscientious Couriers do things?”

  “And what if you get caught?”

  “What of it? I’m not your responsibility; Danae is.”

  Ravagin felt his molars grinding together. “And you don’t think it would endanger her for you to be caught and questioned?” he snapped.

  “No,” Hart said calmly. “I’ve been trained to resist that sort of interrogation—certainly for the few days it’ll take you to get her to safety. Face facts, Ravagin: letting me draw off the pursuit is the best chance you’ve got, and you know it.”

  “Hart—damn.” Ravagin sighed. “All right, you win. But you get yourself killed out there and you’ll be in big trouble.”

  Hart smiled slightly. “I’ll remember that.” He nodded toward Danae. “Something’s happening.”

  Ravagin shifted his attention. “She’s coming out of it, I think,” he said. “She’s starting to cast shadows again …”

  And with an abrupt gasp, Danae collapsed to the ground.

  Ravagin and Hart reached her at about the same time. “Danae?” Ravagin called tentatively, patting her cheek. “Danae? Come on, come on—say something.”

  “Not till you stop shouting and slapping me,” she said hoarsely, her eyes still squeezed shut. “Oh, that’s loud. What time is it, anyway, noon?”

  “About dawn,” Hart told her. “Are you having problems with your eyes?”

  “You could say that. I don’t think I can open them—it’s too bright out there.”

  Hart threw Ravagin an odd look. “I’ll shade them with my hand. Okay; try opening them a bit.”

  “No—no good,” she said. “It’s still too bright. God, I hope this isn’t permanent.”

  “We’ll just have to wait and see,” Ravagin told her, fishing a handkerchief from his pocket. “Let’s try a blindfold, see if that at least cuts down the glare.”

  “Yes,” she said slowly a minute later. “Yes, that helps. Everything else seems okay. I, uh—do I look okay otherwise?”

  “Near as I can tell,” Ravagin assured her. “So … what happened?”

  “The demogorgon took me back to the fourth world. It’s weird there, Ravagin—really weird. Oh, and I got the spell we need, too. But I can only use it once.”

  “Why?” Hart asked.

  “The demogorgon said it would fade from my memory after I’d done it once.”

  “I take it you didn’t mention your mnemonic training—”

  “He already knew about it. Said it wouldn’t make any difference. God, that’s bright, Well; you ready to become invisible to spirits?”

  Hart and Ravagin exchanged glances. “Whenever you’re ready,” Ravagin told her. “Any idea how long the spell’s good for, by the way?”

  “Not really. All he told me was that it would last long enough.”

  “I hope he knew what he was talking about,” Hart muttered.

  “Me, too,” Danae nodded with a shiver. “Well … help me sit up a little.”

  Ravagin complied, sitting down next to her and putting his arm around her shoulders to give her some support. Hart, he noted peripherally, had taken advantage of the distraction to quietly move a meter away from them. “Ready?” Danae asked.

  “Yes,” Ravagin nodded.

  “Okay. By the way, the demogorgon warned me this might hurt a little.”

  The demogorgon turned out to be right.

  Chapter 28

  “IF IT HELPS ANY,” Ravagin’s voice came, too loudly, in her ears, “it looks like a line of storm clouds will be blocking off the sun in a half-hour or less. If they don’t dissipate too quickly, they ought to keep it under cover until sundown.”

  Danae didn’t reply. She was thoroughly sick of this whole mess. Sick of the blinding white glare that continued to burn into her eyes through both eyelids and three wrappings of cloth, sick of the loud swish-thud of their horse’s hooves in the tall grass, sick of the exaggerated rolling motion of the animal and of the oppressive pressure of Ravagin’s body pressing against her back. The encounter with the demogorgon had effectively left her in a reverse sensory deprivation tank, and after nearly half a day of it she was ready to go insane.

  She’d risked her life to buy them all a way to escape. A difficult, dangerous decision, one she’d made in a responsible, adult manner … and in return, Ravagin and Hart had once again chosen to treat her like a child.

  Behind her, Ravagin cleared his throat—a loud, raspy sound. “Look, Danae, we’re going to be arriving at Findral fairly soon, and I’d like to be back on speaking terms before we get there. I understand why you’re mad, but Hart was determined to go ahead with it, the same way you were hell-bent on doing the demogorgon invocation yourself. You can hardly defend one example of bull-headedness and not the other, now, can you?”

  Danae gritted her teeth hard enough to hurt. “Oh, you understand why I’m mad, do you? Well, maybe you think you do, but then your style of thinking has never been too good where my feelings have been concerned.”

  “So explain it to me. Come on—the silent treatment’s gone on long enough.”

  She took a deep breath. “Did it ever occur to you that I just mi
ght like to have some input into a major decision like that? That as a thinking, rational part of this team I had a right to be in on it? No, of course it didn’t. I’m just Danae, the brainless heiress who has to be taken care of like she was still eight years old.”

  Ravagin waited until she was finished, until the echoes of her voice had faded from her sensitized ears. “I suppose that’s one way to look at it,” he said. “It’s not the way I intended it, but … Well, all right. Suppose you’d been consulted. What would you have said?”

  “What difference does it make now?”

  “Come on, humor me. Would you have agreed to let Hart risk his life drawing the pursuit away?”

  “Agree to let him get himself killed, you mean? Of course I wouldn’t have.”

  “But that’s his job, isn’t it? He’s paid for taking this kind of risk for you—and for getting killed in the process, if it comes down to that. Right?”

  “That is about as cold-blooded—”

  “No, answer the question first. Isn’t that his job?”

  She tried forming three denials … but none of them made it past her lips, and eventually she gave up. “All right,” she sighed. “Yes, I suppose that’s how he sees it.”

  “All right, then. From his point of view, this decoy plan was the best way he could see to do his job. You wouldn’t have been able to change his mind. All an argument would have accomplished would have been to make him wonder whether he should instead have stayed here at your side … and that kind of doubt would have been a handicap he might never have gotten rid of. Is that what you would have wanted, to have given him something else to have to fight?”

  “No, of course not—”

  “Fine. Then you’re saying you’d have been able to sit here, hiding all of your doubts where he couldn’t see them, and given him your permission to go off and get himself killed in your behalf?”

  “You make it sound so damn brutal …” She trailed off as her brain suddenly registered something her ears had picked up. Something in Ravagin’s voice. … “That is what happened, isn’t it? Only with you doing it instead of me? You didn’t like the plan, either.”

  “It’s the best possible plan for our safety—yours and mine.” Abruptly, Ravagin sounded very tired. “It’s also the worst possible one for Hart.”

  For a long minute there was no sound but the swish-thud of the horse’s hooves and the droning of wind and distant insects. “It’s not a matter of being treated like a child, Danae,” Ravagin said at last. “It’s the simple fact that there are certain no-win situations in this universe—and a no-win situation requires a no-win decision. When you’ve lived through enough of them, the way Hart and I have, you begin to realize that sharing the guilt around with others doesn’t make your piece of it any easier to carry.”

  He fell silent … and for that minute, at least, the quiet pain in his voice overshadowed the glare in Danae’s eyes. Groping in front of her, she found Ravagin’s hand on the horse’s reins and held it. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

  He didn’t reply; but a moment later his free hand reached tentatively around her waist to hold her tightly against him. Almost painfully tightly … but she didn’t mind.

  If she couldn’t help share his guilt, she could at least try and share some of his pain.

  It was after sundown, and the white glare in her eyes had subsided to merely a dazzling gray, when Ravagin called a halt. “How do you feel?” he asked as he helped her off the horse.

  “Like I just spent four hours riding a car with oval wheels,” she grunted, wincing. The pins and needles in her legs and buttocks were almost painful in their intensity. “I never realized just how much horses bounce when they walk.”

  “No signs of this sensory stuff wearing off?”

  “I can’t tell. Where are we?”

  “About a kilometer from the village of Findral. Or, rather, from where the edge of Findral’s nighttime lar will be.”

  “We going to spend the night there?”

  “That’s what I’m currently trying to decide.”

  He was silent for a long minute, and Danae found that if she ignored the countryside sounds around her, she could actually hear the faint sounds of humanity from the direction of the village. “What’s our other choice?” she asked. “Spend the night out here?”

  “Under the circumstances, that’s not really an option. The risk of bandits aside, we’re in fairly desperate need of food and rest. No, our only other real choice would be to backtrack along the road toward Besak and find an isolated inn that has its own lar at night. Unfortunately, we have the same problem in either case.”

  “Me?”

  He snorted gently. “Your eyes and ears, actually, but it boils down to the same thing. You’re going to attract a lot of attention, and we can hardly pretend you got lost from a blindman’s bluff squad.”

  “How about if we say I’ve got a severe head injury or something?” she suggested. “That way we could pass these off as bandages and also explain why I’m staying isolated in the room.”

  “And that we’re on our way to Citadel to consult one of the master healers there? Yeah, that’s the obvious explanation … except that if we try it in Findral someone’s bound to suggest calling in one of the local healers.”

  And since healers invariably consulted with spirits … “So if we use that excuse we have to go for the isolated inn instead, right?”

  “Right.” He didn’t sound very enthusiastic. “We unfortunately get the opposite problem there, that we’ll have less of a crowd available to hide in. If Melentha’s got human agents scouring the area yet … well, if one of them spots us, we’ll just have to deal with him, that’s all.”

  Danae shivered. Earlier, her sensitized ears had read pain in Ravagin’s voice. Now, she could hear equally clearly the death there. “We’d better get going, shouldn’t we? Before we create more of a stir by asking someone to take down their lar to let us in?”

  “Point. Circulation all restored? Good. I’ll give you a hand getting back up and we’ll get going.”

  Locked in her blindness, Danae had no idea what the lay of the land was like, and so for the next several minutes she rode with the uncomfortable vision of riding through a vast wasteland with the nearest inn ten or more kilometers away. It was almost with a shock, then, when she suddenly noticed the sounds of life penetrating the cloths around her ears, and realized that Ravagin was guiding the horse off the road onto what felt like a dirt trail.

  “Remember,” Ravagin murmured into her ear, “you’re very sick. No sudden, confident motions—in fact, let me lead or carry you as much as possible, okay?”

  “Right,” she muttered back … and a moment later they were there.

  The attached stable was small—that much she could tell from the echoes—and a small stable implied a small inn. That wasn’t unreasonable, she realized; this close to Findral, the inn’s main business would be only those travelers who missed the evening cutoff for getting into the village itself. But the smells of the place bespoke at least an attempt at cleanliness, and as Ravagin set about discussing price with the innkeeper’s wife she heard the faint hum of a protective lar being invoked. All in all, she decided, a not unreasonable place for fugitives to spend the night.

  “Okay, try it now. But take it easy.”

  Reluctantly, Danae began untying the bandages. The blackness that had finally settled in in front of her eyes was as welcome as cold water on a steaming day, and she hated to give up that relief so soon after gaining it. But Ravagin had a point … and besides, she as yet had no proof that her eyes were still functional. Eventually, she would have to try this, and it might just as well be now.

  Setting her teeth firmly together, she lifted the cloths away and opened her eyes.

  They worked. The room itself was still quite adequately bright—the cracks around the window shutters almost hurtingly so—but she could see perfectly well.

  Perhaps too well. In the lines of Ravag
in’s face she could detect a quiet dread that he probably thought was better hidden. “Well, go ahead,” she said. “Aren’t you going to hold up some fingers or something for me to count?”

  Some of the tension went out of Ravagin’s face, and he exhaled with obvious relief. “Whoof. Good. I don’t mind telling you—well, never mind. How bright is it?”

  “Like maybe mid-morning on a clear day. What’ve we got, just the light seeping in from outside?”

  “Yeah—and there’s not a hell of a lot of it. A firebrat tethered around the corner of the building by the road, looks like. Okay. You feel up to taking care of yourself for a few minutes while I head downstairs to get us some food?”

  She found the grace not to say anything sarcastic. Hart’s single-minded concern for her safety—and its consequences—were too fresh in her mind for her to find fault with Ravagin’s version of that same concern. “No, I’ll be fine. Get going, I’m starving.”

  “Okay.” He groped in the—for him—darkness for her hand, gave her the short sword Hart had left them before he took off on his own. “Remember, if anyone should come in, you’ve only got the advantage until he gets a light started. If it’s not me or the innkeeper with a tray, kill him fast.”

  “I understand.”

  The tension was back on his face, but he rose and left without another word. She remembered to shade her eyes as he opened the door, but whatever the inn was using for hallway illumination wasn’t too bad and it was no more than a few seconds before the feint purple blob faded completely from before her eyes.

  With a sigh, she put the sword down on the bed beside her and stretched out, closing her eyes. So here we are, she thought tiredly. The ones who are going to shatter whatever the hell the demons are up to on Karyx and beyond. One aging Courier, and one complete and total dead weight.

  Dead weight.

  The words echoed painfully around her head. Dead weight. Worse even than just useless. With her eyes and other senses like this she couldn’t run or fight or do anything else to help get them through Melentha’s gauntlet and back to the Tunnel. Ravagin would have to lead, guide, or carry her everywhere they went until she recovered from the effects of that demogorgon contact.