Triplet

  The troll’s blade arced down to catch the upper arm of the Z, the stiffened whip deflecting it just enough to send it wide of its intended mark. Ravagin countered instantly, slashing the whip hard across the troll’s face. The machine staggered backward with the impact, waving its arms for balance—

  And Ravagin coiled and snapped the whip out to wrap around the troll’s legs. With a horrendous thud the machine slammed flat on its back.

  And lay still.

  Danae took a deep, shuddering breath. “Ravagin …?”

  “I think it’s over,” he said, wincing as he carefully massaged his right upper arm. “Come on.”

  Swallowing, she started tentatively forward, a wary eye on both inert trolls. If this was some sort of trick on their part …

  But they remained motionless, not even stirring as Ravagin leaned over and relieved them both of their swords. “Well, at least we got some new weapons out of the deal,” he remarked tiredly. “Too bad they’re not spark-swords.”

  Danae shook her head. “I give up,” she said. “What the hell just happened here?”

  He frowned at her. “I thought you’d figured it out. You’re the one who distracted them with that spirit-protection spell, after all.”

  “The—? Oh.” She felt heat rising to her cheeks. “That wasn’t really planned. It was just a reflex reaction, I guess, left over from too much time on Karyx.”

  “Yeah, well, reflex or not, it worked beautifully. Not really worked, of course, the way it would’ve on Karyx. But it did enough.”

  “Did enough what? Are you trying to tell me Shamsheer trolls can be that easily distracted by words in a language they’ve never even heard before—?”

  “Not the trolls, Danae. The spirits.”

  She opened her mouth, closed it again. “If that was supposed to be an explanation, it didn’t work. Try again?”

  Rubbing the sweat off his forehead, Ravagin glanced skyward. “I just hope there aren’t any more of them on their way … Look, you saw just as fast as I did that there was something seriously wrong with these trolls. Way out of their jurisdiction, though they thought they were still there, giving the wrong responses, having to stop and think their way through what should have been a pretty standard challenge and rebuttal session—the whole thing was cockeyed.”

  “I caught the jurisdiction part, anyway. All of that was wrong?”

  “Uh-huh. And then, when they finally attacked, they couldn’t seem to handle all of their systems at once—they could shoot but not simultaneously process incoming sensory information, to the point where it took an incredible amount of time for them to even notice that they’d missed me. And for that spell to have distracted them the way it did—” he shook his head. “That was the last bit of proof.”

  “Proof for what?”

  “Proof that you were right. Some of Karyx’s spirits have invaded Shamsheer.”

  An icy chill ran down Danae’s back. “You mean … there were spirits controlling the trolls? How in the worlds could they do that?”

  Ravagin shook his head, slipping his scorpion glove back onto his belt. “I don’t know. But remember that on Karyx, anyway, the spirits are able to interact some with matter, especially on the microscopic level. Maybe that’s how they’re doing it here.”

  Danae thought back to the throbbing pain in her side that had been the result of her tangle with the demon in Melentha’s mansion. “So instead of finagling synapse chemistry and neuron pathways like they do there, here they’re fiddling with microfine circuits?”

  “It seems reasonable enough. In fact, compared to what they handle on Karyx, pushing picoamps of current around must be a breeze.”

  “Oh, God.” Danae felt her knees begin to shake, and let herself sink awkwardly to the ground. “You have any idea what this means?”

  “In terms of our safety or Shamsheer’s?”

  “Either. Both.”

  “It’s a hell of a mess for both of us.” Ravagin took a deep breath. “Look, before we go looking for a place to give up in, let’s see if there’s a bright side we can look at. One: we don’t know how many spirits are actually here—and if there’re only a few of them we’ll have a pretty good chance of getting through their cordon. Shamsheer is a mighty big place for two people to lose themselves in.

  “Except that we eventually have to get to the other Tunnel.”

  “Yes, well, we’ll cross that one when we get to it. And second: it’s clear that these spirits, at least, were way in over their heads on this one. You and I and a dozen more shouldn’t have been able to handle even one troll, let alone two. But apparently there’re so many separate systems the spirits couldn’t keep control of all of them. Which is what eventually tripped them up—they got sloppy and let the trolls realize where they were, which in turn tripped the deadman switch.”

  Danae looked down at the motionless trolls. “The what?”

  “We call it the deadman switch. It prevents people from stealing trolls and transporting them out of their home Protectorate for illegal purposes. Basically puts them into a shutdown mode once they’re a certain distance outside their boundaries. Once activated, it supposedly can’t be lifted except back at their original castle and by their castle-lord.”

  “Not even by something inside with the circuitry?”

  “Yeah. Well …” Ravagin looked down at the trolls and grimaced. “That is a point. Let’s not hang around to find out. You as good with a crossbow as you are with a throwing knife?”

  “I’ve never used a crossbow, but I’m pretty good with normal projectile guns. Hart made me learn all this stuff when I was younger.”

  “Good for him.” Reaching down, Ravagin pried the crossbow pistol from the troll’s grip and then collected both sets of spare bolts. “Take one of the swords, too,” he said, handing the weapons to her. “I don’t think we should take the time to go hunt for our daggers, if you don’t mind. Come on—let’s go.”

  “Wait a second,” Danae growled as a horrible thought suddenly hit her. “You mean you knew they wouldn’t be able to shoot straight and you still threw that dagger at me?”

  He turned back, frowning. “I threw it to miss you. Didn’t you notice?”

  “No, I did not notice,” she said stiffly. “And I’d appreciate it if next time you’d try and find a safer way to handle things.”

  “I’ll do what I can. Come on; we’ll try for the Darcane Forest way house, about ten kilometers due south.”

  She blinked. “We’re going on foot? With a perfectly good sky-plane right over there?”

  “You mean the sky-plane that brought the bewitched trolls here?” he asked pointedly.

  “Yes, I mean—oh.” Danae glanced back at the sky-plane, licked her lips. “Yeah. Okay; on foot it is.”

  “And stick close to me,” he added over his shoulder as he started off toward the edge of the clearing. “A few of the forest’s predators—not many, but a few—do hunt during the day.”

  Great. Gritting her teeth, Danae hefted the crossbow and followed.

  Chapter 34

  TWO HOURS LATER, AFTER struggling their way through perhaps a kilometer of the forest, Ravagin finally called it quits.

  “This isn’t going to work,” he panted as he sank down beside Danae against a thick-boled tree and let his sap-stained sword sag to the ground between his feet.

  “No argument from me,” Danae sighed, her half-closed eyes showing slits of white as she kicked mechanically at the green frond wrapped loosely around her leg. “What are these vine things, anyway?”

  “Berands fronds,” he told her, slashing carefully at the offending plant. “They catch and eat the large slug-like things that move around under the dead leaves. They’re not really strong enough to be dangerous to people, but normal walking pace is just slow enough for them to have time to react. If we were sitting still or riding horses there’d be no problem.”

  “I don’t suppose there’s any chance of that? Sitting still, I mean, and
maybe getting in a couple of hours of sleep while we’re at it?”

  “Unfortunately, there are lots of things in the forest more dangerous than Berands fronds,” he said, fumbling out his prayer stick and looking up. Overhead, the nearly-solid forest canopy showed a small patch of blue sky; just wide enough, he estimated, to let a sky-plane through. “But you’re right; we can’t keep this up any longer. I pray thee, deliver unto me a sky-plane.”

  Danae pried her eyes open. “I thought you didn’t want to use sky-planes.”

  “I don’t,” he admitted. “But it looks like we either risk it or we lie down and die here.”

  Danae nodded and closed her eyes again. No argument on that one, either, Ravagin thought, looking down at her. She must really be tired. Laying his sword down, he ground his knuckles into his eyes. One of them ought to stay awake until the transport came …

  The swish of dead leaves and undergrowth as the sky-plane came to a soft landing in front of them startled him out of his light doze. Shaking his head to clear his eyes, he snatched up his sword and looked quickly around. No trolls, no predators. They’d been lucky. “Come on, Danae,” he grunted, shaking her arm. ‘Time to go.”

  “Wha—? Oh. Already?”

  “Yeah. Come on—a little effort now and you can be in a real bed in ten minutes.”

  “Sold,” she murmured, getting to her feet with a sigh.

  The trip to the forest way house took about five minutes, and Ravagin spent the entire time with his stomach tied in a tight knot. But the sky-plane performed with normal Shamsheer perfection, taking them exactly where he’d indicated and settling them down in front of the way house door without even a bump.

  Danae had fallen asleep again during the trip, but she woke up enough to do most of her own walking as Ravagin guided her inside and to one of the bedrooms. “Where is everybody?” she mumbled once as he steered her past the kitchen/dining area and toward the bedroom wing.

  “Probably no one else is here,” he told her. “The place isn’t manned full-time, like the way houses in the cities are.”

  “Mmm.”

  He took her to the first bedroom they reached and helped her make it to the bed. She flopped down across it, and was instantly asleep.

  He took a deep breath, feeling his own fatigue washing up against the edges of his mind as he gazed down at her. It was a large enough bed … for a long moment he was tempted to simply collapse there beside her and not bother finding a room of his own. But there were things he really ought to do before he could sleep, and with a sigh he went out, closing the door behind him.

  A tour of the entire house came first, to make sure he and Danae were in fact alone. He took his time, trying to watch for anything that might look out of place. But the house was empty, and as nearly as he could tell everything was where it was supposed to be. You’re getting paranoid, he chided himself as he headed for the kitchen. You get a couple of renegade trolls, and you think the whole planet’s out to get you.

  Though that was basically what had happened on Karyx …

  He took a couple of minutes more to make sure the house’s climate control was set at a good sleeping level, then used his prayer stick to have the kitchen prepare dinner for them in eight hours. Then, feet dragging noticeably, he headed back to the bedroom wing. Bypassing Danae’s room, he opened the door next to it …

  Renegade trolls.

  He thought about it for a long minute. Then, sighing, he closed the door and retraced his steps back to Danae’s room. She hadn’t moved noticeably since he’d left her. Slipping the sword and scorpion glove from his belt, he laid them on the floor within easy reach from the bed and lay down next to her. Setting his mental alarm for eight hours, he dropped off to sleep.

  Danae awoke with a gasp, the vivid dream of green-glowing trolls fading only slowly from in front of her eyes. For a long minute she just lay there on the bed, staring at the ceiling as she listened to her heart pounding and tried to break through her disorientation and remember where she was.

  Something moved next to her—

  She jumped violently, twisting her head in sudden fright, only to find that it was Ravagin moving in his sleep beside her. Taking a deep breath, she expelled it, and for another moment lay still, wondering if she should try and go back to sleep. But between the dream and the shock she’d just had, she was wide awake. Moving carefully, she eased her legs over the edge of the bed and sat up. Her scalp itched furiously, and as she scratched vigorously at it she realized her whole body felt more or less the same way. Small wonder—it’d been days since her last shower. Standing up, she made her way to the door and out into the hall.

  The bathroom was a couple of doors further along down the wing. She spent the first minute taking care of her bladder; then, stripping down, she got into the shower, a good-sized booth designed to look like the area beneath a small waterfall. The water, coming over the top of a rocklike overhang in a wide sheet, completed the illusion, splashing into mist from the floor. It was also waterfall-chilly, though not as cold as she’d feared it might be—Ravagin must have neglected to get the heater started before coming to bed. Still, any clean water was welcome, and the chill helped drive the last bits of sleepiness from her brain. It was, she thought as the water cascaded down around her head and shoulders, almost impossible to feel demoralized as long as you were clean.

  She’d finished scrubbing herself to a high gloss, and was standing beneath the radiant drier, when she first noticed the odor.

  She sniffed cautiously, then more deeply, the cozy sense of well-being evaporating with the rest of the droplets on her skin. Even given all she didn’t know about Shamsheer’s smells, there was something wrong with this one. Something ominous … and it was getting stronger. Scooping up her clothes, she opened the bathroom door and stepped out into the hallway—

  And straight into an inferno of smoke and fire.

  “Ravagin!” she screamed, ducking halfway back into the bathroom and throwing a look down the hall. The flames running up the walls and flickering through patches of the floor, she saw with sudden horror, were heaviest directly outside the bedroom where Ravagin was still sleeping. Oh, God, no, she thought wildly. “Raυagin!” she shouted again.

  “Danae!” his answering call came, almost inaudible through the crackle of the flames. “Hang on—I’ll be right there—”

  “No!” she shouted back. “The hall’s on fire.”

  Through the smoke she saw the door down the hall crack open. “Where are you?” he called.

  “Over here, in the bathroom. There aren’t any windows in here!”

  “I know. Let me think.”

  For a few heartbeats there was no sound but the roar of flames, and for the first time Danae noticed an oddly strong wind blowing down the hallway toward Ravagin’s room. Must be an opening down that direction for the air to be coming in from, she realized. “Ravagin? What’s down the other direction?”

  “More bedrooms and storage,” he called. “Okay. Go back to the shower and turn it on as high as it’ll go. Have you got anything that you can use to stuff into the drain?”

  “Just my clothes.”

  “Use your bodice—you can afford to lose that. Soak the rest of your clothes and put them on. Keep the door closed while you do it.”

  “Right.”

  The operation seemed to take an eternity, but it was probably only a couple of minutes before she was dressed in the dripping clothes and easing the door open again. The water that had collected inside flowed gently out, adding steam to the smoke already there. It also snuffed the flames directly by her feet, and for a moment she dared to hope it would be enough to cut her a path back to the bedroom. But a quick look crumbled that hope completely. The entire ceiling and floor seemed to be ablaze now, creating a solid wall of flames in both directions.

  And she was now thoroughly trapped.

  “Ravagin?” she shouted, fighting to keep her rising panic out of her voice. There was no answer, and for
a horrible second she wondered if he’d gone out the window. Deserted her … “Ravagin!”

  “I’m right here,” his voice came reassuringly through the roar—but from the wrong direction. Twisting around, she peered through the smoke the other way down the hall. Facing directly into the odd wind was a mistake, and in seconds her eyes were watering blindly with smoke and soot. But in that first second she’d been able to make out a dim figure beyond the flames. “I’m still here!” she shouted back, rubbing furiously at her stinging eyes. “Can I get through that way?”

  “We don’t have any choice. Are your clothes and shoes still wet?”

  “Yes, and the water’s still flowing around my feet.”

  “Okay. Go back and get your bodice; you’ll want to put it over your head. Hurry—we haven’t got much time.”

  She didn’t need the urging. Ten seconds later she was back at the door, the sopping bodice wrapped around her face and hair. “Are you still there?” she called, feeling the panic rising again. “I can’t see you.”

  “I know—I can barely see you. Grab hold of this.”

  And like magic a thin cord appeared through the flames in front of her. It wasn’t until she’d grasped it and its tip curled firmly around her hand and wrist that she realized what it was: the whip of Ravagin’s scorpion glove. “Got it,” she called.

  “Now make sure your eyes are covered, and then grab the whip with your other hand.”

  “Ready.”

  “Okay.” He paused, and she could sense somehow that he was bracing himself. “On the count of three I want you to come around the corner and toward me like all of Melentha’s demons were right on your tail. I’ll help pull; you concentrate on keeping your feet under you. Ready? Okay: one, two, three.”

  Clamping her jaw tightly, Danae leaped out into the hallway—