“Oh, well, that won’t be any problem. They released us, after all, so there aren’t going to be any official grudges or anything being kept.”
“That still isn’t what I meant. Don’t you remember?—they stopped us because they were having trouble with black sorcery and equipment malfunctions?”
“Yes—and I told you at the time that black sor—” He broke off abruptly. “Oh, bloody hell,” he said, very softly.
She nodded, feeling a shiver go up her back. She’d just made the correlation a few minutes ago herself. “Which means the spirits have been in Shamsheer at least that long. And if their influence is centered in Ordarl …”
“We could wind up back in the hot seat again if we land there,” Ravagin said heavily. “Or maybe even if we just fly over the place. Damn it all—we need to know more about what we’re up against here.”
“Couldn’t we try some spirit-detection spells—?” She bit at her lip. “No, of course not—they need a demogorgon around to function.”
Ravagin nodded “Right. Which is where the real crunch comes: we’re having to fight these spirits without knowing which of the usual rules apply. If any of them.”
“All right, then. In the absence of rules, let’s try logic.” Easing down carefully onto her back on the sharp mesh, Danae stared at the gridwork above her for a minute and then closed her eyes. She was considerably more tired than she’d realized, and it was an effort to try and think. “They were waiting for us the minute we got back to Shamsheer, and they challenged us without even stopping to ask who we were. Which implies—” They’re ready for an all-out war? She shivered suddenly.
“Which implies,” Ravagin picked up the thread, “that they knew we were coming and had to be stopped. Which means there’s some sort of communication between Karyx and Shamsheer. Oh, sure—the spirit that cried out when we escaped across the telefold. Sound travels perfectly well across the thing; the Shamsheer contingent just has a messenger standing by in the Tunnel—”
“My God—that’s it!” Danae interrupted, jerking bolt upright as it suddenly struck her. “That’s it, Ravagin—that’s how the spirits got here. All you need to do is bring a spirit into the Tunnel, leave him there while you cross the telefold, and then do a standard specific-name invocation. That affects only the called spirit, without the need for any demogorgon influence.”
“But an invocation—” Ravagin broke off and swore viciously under his breath. “An invocation brings a spirit from the fourth world to Karyx. Across a world boundary. No wonder they tried to stop us—as soon as you know there’s an entirely separate fourth world to Triplet, the rest follows immediately.”
Danae swallowed as another thought occurred to her. “It also means that they’ve got at least one human ally here. The person who brought them across.”
Ravagin rubbed thoughtfully at his cheek. “Yeah. Well … at least they’re still not able to get across on their own. I guess that’s something.”
Danae shivered as images of Melentha’s face, twisted by hatred and fury, floated up from her memory. To have to face something like that again … “I almost wish it were the other way around,” she muttered.
“No, you don’t,” Ravagin shook his head. “Think about it a minute. The Ordarl soldiers said the malfunctions had been going on for—how long did they say?”
“Several weeks.”
“Right. So if the spirits’ human dupe were actively participating in a bid to conquer Shamsheer, he surely would have brought over enough of them to take control of every bit of machinery on the planet. Right?”
“Well … okay, I guess so.”
“But they haven’t done that—if they had, we would never have gotten this far. And several weeks should have given them enough time to make their move.” Ravagin paused, forehead wrinkled in thought. “So they haven’t got a whole army here. Which means their dupe very likely only brought over a limited number of them, for whatever damnfool reason of his own. In fact, he may not even realize yet that they’ve gotten out of his control.”
It sounded reasonable enough, at least to Danae’s increasingly foggy mind. “Okay. So then what?”
Ravagin hissed out a breath. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “If I were bringing over a spirit to test spells on, I wouldn’t use anything more powerful than a sprite … but those trolls sure as hell weren’t being controlled by something that limited. We could be dealing with djinns here—maybe even peris or demons. I just don’t know.”
Danae closed her eyes again. “I don’t think I even care at the moment what we’re up against. As long as they let us get some sleep.”
“Point,” he grunted with a tired sigh of his own, easing down onto the mesh beside her. “We’ve got at least a couple of hours before the sky-plane exodus starts. A little sleep’ll do both of us good.”
Not quite close enough to touch her … “Ravagin?” she asked tentatively. “If the spirits have gotten into the Tower with us … do you think they could send a sky-plane or a castle-lord’s bubble in here to push us out?”
“I doubt it,” he answered. “Towers seem to work under their own very specialized rules. If a spirit started monkeying with them, I think it would find itself pretty quickly cut out of whatever circuit it was in.”
“Oh.”
For another moment the faint background hum of the Tower was the only sound in Danae’s ears. Then, with a rustle of clothing, Ravagin moved right up next to her. His arm slid across her stomach; his several-day growth of beard tickled lightly at her ear. “This what you wanted?” he murmured.
She felt blood rushing to her cheeks … but she’d gone through too much with Ravagin to hold onto false dignity now. “Yes,” she admitted. “I’m not feeling all that brave at the moment.”
His arm tightened comfortingly. “If it helps,” he murmured, “neither am I.”
Two hours later, they were again flying beneath the night sky, sharing their sky-plane with an oddly shaped piece of ribbed metal that Ravagin guessed was part of a rainstopper mechanism.
It was crowded aboard the carpet, but with reliable edge barriers between her and the rest of the universe, Danae almost didn’t even care how close to the edge she had to sit. For a while she watched the stars overhead, but shortly after they passed over Castle Ordarleal the fatigue tugging at her eyelids again proved too much to handle. Stretching out as best she could, she again fell asleep.
“Danae!”
She snapped awake in an instant at his hiss, heart thudding as the horrible dream images faded reluctantly from before her eyes. “Ravagin?” she hissed back, twisting up into a sitting position and looking wildly around. Dawn was just beginning to break behind them to the east; ahead, Ravagin was kneeling at the sky-plane’s front edge, peering at the ground below. Even in the dim light she could see that his body was tensed. “What is it?” she repeated, louder this time.
“We’re coming down,” he murmured over his shoulder. “Damn it all—we’re coming down right inside Castle Numanteal.”
“What?” she gasped, crawling over to his side. Sure enough, they were losing altitude … and the six-sided castle wall was directly ahead. “We can’t land there. Can we?”
“Not without causing a stir,” he said grimly. “No one’s supposed to fly into a castle enclosure without permission. Damn. I hope Castle-Lord Simrahi is in a good mood today.”
Danae licked at dry lips. They were close enough now to see the trolls standing watch at the top of the wall. Automatically, her fingers sought the crossbow pistol at her side. If these trolls chose to shoot first and debrief later …
But the machines stood passively, giving no indication that they even saw the intruders, let alone cared about them. Of course the trolls weren’t worried, she realized: in a few seconds the sky-plane would make a tight left-hand semicircle and settle down into the castle’s landing area, and then the trolls could come down and examine them at their leisure. She braced herself; the sky-plane began to turn—
r />
But to the right, not the left. Directly toward—
Danae gasped. “The manor house?”
“Damn!” Ravagin snarled. “Sky-plane: follow my mark. Mark. Mark, damn it, mark!”
It was no use. The sky-plane continued on unperturbed, straight toward the manor house. At least, Danae thought wildly, we’ll still be outside when we land. The ten-meter approach distance will keep it from taking us inside—
And suddenly she knew what was about to happen. And why. “Ravagin!” she said. “My dream! I had another dream about demon-controlled trolls.”
“Hell,” he said, very quietly.
And as Danae watched with frozen impotence, the sky-plane slid neatly and impossibly through an open window and glided into the manor house.
Chapter 36
IT WAS QUITE PROBABLY the most unusual sight the employees of Castle Numanteal had ever seen. And possibly, Ravagin thought grimly, one of the most subtly terrifying.
Certainly if the expressions of those setting out places at the long table were anything to go by. Frozen in place, some with the gilt-edged plates they were holding suspended above the table in motionless hands, the servitors all stared wide-eyed at the sky-plane as it slid through the window into the high-ceilinged dining room and floated across it. In the room’s sudden silence the faint clatter of pots and pans and conversation from the kitchen beyond could be clearly heard, and Ravagin abruptly realized it was toward that noise that their rogue sky-plane was making a leisurely turn. Behind him, he could hear a hooting from the walls outside as the trolls there sounded the alarm; beside him, Danae’s fingernails were digging into his arm. Do something! the grip seemed to say; but for the first time since their escape from Melentha he felt totally helpless. The sky-plane ducked down toward the floor as it aimed for the kitchen door—
Beside the table, someone screamed … and the frozen disbelief broke into total pandemonium.
“Keep down!” he snapped automatically to Danae as a handful of silverware flew up at them and scattered harmlessly away at the sky-plane’s edge barrier. All around them, the servitors were making up for their earlier inactivity, either scurrying madly to get out of the sky-plane’s path or else running toward it in an attempt to stop it; mixed in with the angry shouts and screams were calls for weapons and trolls. Another flight of silverware ricocheted off the barrier directly in front of Ravagin’s face, making him flinch. From the corner of his eye he saw Danae unlimbering her crossbow—“Put that down!” he barked at her. “You can’t use it anyway—you want us to look hostile to them?”
“You think we look peaceful the way we—”
She broke off with a gasp as, with a sudden jerk, the sky-plane came to a midair halt.
What the—? A horrible suspicion rose up into Ravagin’s throat—“Sky-plane: follow my mark. Mark.”
And without any hesitation whatsoever, the machine curved smoothly away from the kitchen doors toward the direction he’d indicated.
“What are you doing?” Danae shouted in his ear.
“Trying to get us the hell out of here!” he snapped back. “The spirit’s gone; I’ve got control again. Sky-plane: follow my mark, mark.”
The carpet swung around in a one-eighty-degree curve back toward the window they’d entered by … but even as it did so, Ravagin realized with a sinking feeling the spirit’s sudden departure hadn’t been a mistake. The window was directly ahead, perhaps fifteen meters away … and abruptly the sky-plane slowed and came to a gentle halt.
Ten meters from the wall.
“Ravagin!”
“Shut up, Danae,” he snarled back, all his fury and tension and suffocating sense of helplessness welling up his throat and flooding out toward her. “I can’t do anything, damn it all—the sky-plane thinks it’s outside approaching a building.”
The shouts around them had taken on a tone of triumph as the servitors saw the intruders apparently at a loss. A hundred plans flashed through Ravagin’s mind … a hundred plans, each of which stood a good chance of getting them killed before they could even get out of the dining room. The precise fate, no doubt, that the spirit had planned for them.
There was no way out. Which meant there was only one chance left for survival.
He took a deep breath. “Sky-plane: land,” he said, fumbling his sword and scorpion glove from his belt and pushing them up against the edge barrier. “Danae; get your hands away from that crossbow and put them on your head. We’re surrendering.”
The sky-plane landed, and in a moment they were surrounded by a ring of knife-wielding servitors who stood there menacingly, clearly at a loss as to what to do next. They were still sitting there quietly on their sky-plane when the trolls and human guards finally arrived.
For Ravagin, Castle-Lord Simrahi was something of a surprise.
He was young, for one thing, as castle-lords went: no more than forty-five, though in the full trappings of his rank he looked perhaps ten years older. The full trappings were a surprise all by themselves; they were seldom used except for formal protectorate events or when a castle-lord would be meeting with his peers. To see Simrahi dressed that way for what boiled down to a simple indictment hearing was more than a little unnerving.
As it was no doubt meant to be. Scanning the huge room as his flanking guards brought him forward, Ravagin noted with a sinking feeling that what appeared to be the full senior court were also present, including advisors, minor nobles of the protectorate, and even commoner observers. Clearly, Simrahi was determined to start his investigation with all the psychological weight on his side.
Making Ravagin and Danae sweat in the cells beneath the manor house for four hours while the event was being staged hadn’t hurt, either.
The stir that had accompanied Ravagin’s appearance had died down by the time he finished the long walk to the bar set a few meters before the castle-lord’s chair. Probably staged that, too, he decided, giving the faces an unobtrusive once-over. The faces stared back, either blankly or with carefully measured hostility. A rubber-stamp crowd, almost certainly—here to applaud the castle-lord’s decision.
Which was to be expected from a Shamsheer protectorate, of course; and to some extent it actually made Ravagin’s task easier. It meant there was only one man in this entire forbidding crowd whom he had to convince of his innocence.
A bearded advisor type standing beside Simrahi took a pace forward. “The court of Castle-Lord Simrahi is now seated,” he intoned. “The prisoner will first state his name and home.”
So Simrahi wasn’t much for flowery pronouncements, despite his fondness for the other trappings of office. Doesn’t want his time wasted unnecessarily? Ravagin wondered. “I am called Ravagin,” he said, keeping his voice respectful yet firm. “I call no land but Shamsheer my home.”
The advisor wasn’t to be put off. “Then state the land and village of your birth,” he said.
“I was born somewhere inside the borders of the Trassp Protectorate, to parents who were also wanderers,” Ravagin replied evenly. It was a story he’d used more than once before, and while a bit unusual it was also almost impossible to disprove. “Whether or not my parents registered my birth I do not know.”
“A convenient tale,” the bearded man said with barely hidden scorn. “And your companion?—does she also have no home?”
“She is a citizen of a small village named Arcadia in the depths of Darcane Forest,” Ravagin said, working hard to keep his voice and expression steady. This one wasn’t nearly as safe, but there was little he could do about it. If Simrahi bothered to cross-check with the soldiers who’d stopped them in Ordarl Protectorate he wanted the stories to mesh. At least this one would take time to disprove.
That thought was apparently on the advisor’s mind, too. “A forest village far from any place with a crystal eye, ay?” He snorted. “How very convenient.”
“Do you wish convenience or truth?” Ravagin countered. “Convenience would have all justice done away with.” r />
“You speak of justice, do you?” the other spat. “You, who used black sorcery to defy the laws of magic and of the Castle-Lord Simrahi’s realm?”
“I’ve already told the guards and the cell-wardens that the behavior of that sky-plane was no doing of mine,” Ravagin said, letting some heat creep into his voice.
“A story as totally without proof as that of your origin,” the other said.
“But equally true,” Ravagin shot back. “If you prefer another explanation, perhaps you can explain to the castle-lord and the assembled court why I chose to use these alleged powers to enter his manor house in the clear light of day. And why I would exhibit such power and cleverness and yet fail to damage either him or his household.”
“The burden of proof is not upon the castle-lord—”
“Enough,” Simrahi said quietly.
The other bowed and stepped back into his place in line, where he glowered silently. Ravagin shifted his attention to the castle-lord, found him staring thoughtfully back. “You speak as one accustomed to courts and the presence of the lords of Shamsheer,” he said, his voice smooth and cultured. “That by itself sets you apart from the common man of Shamsheer. And I will further admit your tale has much to commend it. Tell me, would it stand equally well against the scrutiny of my crystal eye?”
Ravagin felt his stomach muscles tighten. No, it damn well wouldn’t, at least not if Simrahi was willing to put forth enough effort to really dig into it. “Of course it would, my lord. My companion and I have nothing to hide.”
The other’s thoughtful expression didn’t change. “Of course not. Tell me, Ravagin, what is your profession?”
“I deliver private messages,” Ravagin told him. “Those who wish to send such communications may hire me to travel the long distances—”
“Such as between traitors among my kitchen servitors and their allies outside?” Simrahi barked.
Ravagin blinked, thrown off balance by both the question and Simrahi’s sudden change. “No, of course not, my lord.”