“There are rumors—nothing more,” Habri shrugged. But the intensity of his expression belied the casualness of the words.
Danae twisted her head to frown up at him. “But you said a revolt would be suicide.”
“Yes, I did,” Ravagin nodded, keeping his eyes on Habri. There was something else there … “And since Guard Master Habri here was eavesdropping on us he doesn’t need me to repeat the reasons why it’s suicide. Not to mention any extra reasons he knows that we don’t. So why all the fuss?”
“You answer my question first,” Habri said coldly. “Why are you here?”
“We’re passing through; nothing more,” Ravagin sighed. “We were being chased by agents of another power—the demons your people heard us speak of—and thought that a good way to put them off our trail would be to detour through the nearest Dark Tower. So we did. The sky-plane we hitched a ride on came here—” he shrugged—“and its little sortie into the dining room you already know about.”
“So you do admit, then, that you have certain unknown powers over magic? At least to the ability to reach into Dark Towers?”
Ravagin stared at him … and the last piece fell into place. “You’re one of them, aren’t you. One of those plotting to overthrow the castle-lord.”
Habri’s face had turned to stone. “You are indeed perceptive, Ravagin. Perhaps too much so.”
Danae’s hand gripped Ravagin’s arm. “You wouldn’t dare kill us,” she stated firmly. Her tone startled Ravagin: it was as good an imitation of forceful contempt as he’d ever heard. “You wouldn’t be here at all,” she continued, “unless you wanted something from us, and wanted it badly. What?”
Habri took a step toward them, his eyes flashing fire at her as his right hand dipped beneath his cloak to grip a knife hilt there. “I need take no insolence from either of you, woman,” he bit out. “Not from your protector, and certainly not from you.”
“I wouldn’t be quite so hasty if I were you,” Ravagin spoke up, matching his own tone to Danae’s cue. “Remember that you don’t yet know which of us has whatever it is you need.”
The other froze in place, his eyes darting back and forth between Danae and Ravagin. His lips parted once, closed; then, clenching his jaw, he dropped his hand from his weapon and moved back a pace. He took a deep breath, and inclined his head fractionally. “Your point,” he acknowledged with passable aplomb. “My mistake, and my apologies. It is clear that neither of you is what you seem.”
“Apology accepted,” Danae said coolly. “For now, at any rate. So. Let us hear your request.”
Habri’s eyes settled on her. “I want you to get me into the castle-lord’s chambers, past the trolls guarding the door,” he said bluntly. “Tonight.”
The cell’s tiny window had been showing the blackness of full night for several hours by the time Habri returned for them. “You have my weapons?” Ravagin whispered as the other eased open the door.
“Outside,” Habri hissed back, gesturing impatiently as he stood in the doorway. “Quickly—the guards have been diverted, but they will be back soon.”
Which meant Habri’s rebellion wasn’t nearly as widespread as he’d tried to imply that afternoon. For a second Ravagin toyed with the idea of flattening the traitor as he left the cell, decided against it. A good thing too; as he stepped past Habri and on into the corridor, he saw the other had brought three heavily armed men with him.
The guards fell into step behind him and Danae as Habri took the lead. Ravagin could feel the tension in Danae’s hand as they walked, and he glanced over once to give her a reassuring smile. Whatever the deficiencies of Habri’s organization, it was surely good enough to at least spring a couple of prisoners from the castle-lord’s cells.
And it was. A minute later they emerged through a thick door into a hallway of the main manor house. A few turns later they reached what appeared to be the kitchen area; another heavy door took them into one of the four entrance hallways that led to the outside from the relatively narrow base of the manor house. A minute after that, they were out in the night air.
“Don’t relax yet,” Ravagin murmured as Danae gave a quiet sigh of relief. “We’re still inside the castle walls, you know, and there are a lot of guards and trolls between us and the rest of Shamsheer.”
“So let’s use that fact,” she whispered back. “Call the trolls down on us, expose Habri as a traitor—”
“His word against ours?”
“—and … oh. But—”
She broke off, and Ravagin looked around to see Habri step up to them. There was a glint in the other’s eye that Ravagin didn’t at all care for. “Well, sorcerer,” Habri said, proffering Ravagin his scorpion glove. “The time is now. My men are prepared; all that is lacking is a path into the castle-lord’s chambers. So. Are you ready to open that path?”
“More or less,” Ravagin nodded, taking the glove and slipping it on. The familiar tingle told him the weapon was ready … and for the first time in hours he felt somewhat less than naked. With a weapon again in his hand—
I could get both of us killed, he reminded himself sternly, forcing down the adrenaline rush. The only way they were going to get out of this was to play out the scheme he’d come up with in the hours since accepting Habri’s offer. “I’ll need some other devices first,” he told the other. “A watchblade, prayer stick, firefly, and the sky-plane we arrived on.”
Habri raised his eyebrows slightly. “You made no mention of any of this earlier,” he pointed out.
“I didn’t know earlier that I’d be needing it,” Ravagin said tartly. “You want into Simrahi’s chambers, or you want to stand here and argue?”
Habri pursed his lips, then nodded. “Wait here,” he instructed, and turned away.
Ravagin took a step backward, letting his eyes drift casually around the area. The windows in the lower parts of the manor house still showed some lights, indicating that despite the late hour the day still hadn’t ended for many of the castle-lord’s servants. Above the overhang, where the slender tower of Simrahi’s private section rose from the flat roof of the lower manor house like the stem from an inverted mushroom, all was dark. “What in the world do you want with that sky-plane?” Danae murmured at his side.
“I don’t care about the sky-plane,” he answered back. “What I want is the spirit inhabiting it.”
A moment of silence. “I thought you said the spirit left it while we were flying around the dining room.”
“I was wrong. I was concentrating so hard on the fact that the sky-plane had started avoiding walls again that I completely missed the fact that it was even flying at all.”
“Aren’t sky-planes supposed to work inside buildings—?” She broke off with a snort. “No, of course they’re not. Damn—I missed it too.”
“There wasn’t all that much time for analytic thought,” he reminded her. “You see the implication, though, don’t you? If the spirit didn’t leave the sky-plane at that point, maybe it wasn’t able to leave at all.”
He sensed Danae shake her head. “That doesn’t necessarily follow,” she said. “Besides, it clearly got in somehow. Shouldn’t it be able to get out the same way?”
“Maybe; maybe not. Getting in or out could be a tedious process, and it’s possible that once we were captured the spirit decided to stick around and make sure we were properly arrested and executed.”
“All right, all right—suppose the thing is still there. Then what?”
Ravagin took a deep breath. With the danger of eavesdroppers hanging around their cell he hadn’t dared discuss any of this with Danae earlier, and he was suddenly afraid that she would find a completely obvious flaw in the scheme that would leave it torn to shreds. Putting their chances for escape in roughly the same shape. “If the spirit is there, I think there’s a chance I can take control of it,” he told her. “There are special geas spells that allow control by people other than the one who invoked the spirit in the first place—”
“You mean the manifold geas?” Danae snorted. “I tried it at least twice back on Karyx without it doing me an atom of good.”
“That’s because the manifold geas requires the person who invoked the spirit to add a special addendum phrase at the time of the invocation. There’s another one you can sometimes use for a short time whether the spirit’s had any prior preparation or not.”
“Oh, is there now? I wish someone had thought to teach that one to me.”
“Actually, there were a couple of very good reasons no one did,” he said. “One of them being that none of the Couriers want inexperienced clients taking over spirits and messing around with them.” The other reason being considerably nastier … but it was still possible he wouldn’t have to use it. With a little luck—and a little carelessness on Habri’s part—they might still be able to fly out of here from under the would-be usurper’s nose. “Anyway, if I can control the spirit, I may be able to get it to leave the sky-plane and enter the watchblade Habri’s bringing me. I can then give it a transference order and throw the watchblade at one of the trolls guarding the entrance to Simrahi’s private tower.” He spread his hands. “Presto, if I’m lucky: instant amok troll.”
“And in the confusion Habri goes in and takes over?”
“In the confusion, you and I get the hell out of here on the freshly exorcised sky-plane,” Ravagin corrected. “One troll out of however many Simrahi’s got on his door isn’t doing to do Habri a damn bit of good.”
“What about the trolls and guards on the outer wall?”
“The trolls shouldn’t stop an outgoing sky-plane, middle of the night or not. The other guards—“ Ravagin shrugged helplessly. “We’ll just have to risk it. The last thing I want is for us to be around here when Habri and Simrahi start at it in earnest.”
A movement off to the side caught Ravagin’s attention: four men lugging a limp sky-plane between them. “Looks like our transportation’s arrived,” he murmured to Danae. “Stick close to me and be ready to jump when I do.”
Approaching from another direction, Habri arrived just as his men eased the sky-plane to the ground in front of Ravagin. “Ah—the sky-plane has arrived,” he said with a nod. “Good. Here are the other items you requested.”
Ravagin frowned at the firefly, prayer stick, and ordinary knife in the other’s hand. “What about the watchblade?”
Habri smiled thinly. “I trust, Ravagin, that you don’t consider me a fool. To give you a blade that will always find its mark when I’m not even certain you’re fully on my side?” He shook his head. “No, my good sorcerer. If you have the black arts you claim, you can surely succeed without any such assistance. Just as you can surely succeed without the aid of your companion.”
With a shock, Ravagin suddenly noticed that four large men had silently gathered around them while he and Habri had been talking. “What do you mean by that?” he asked carefully, “If you think I can do this without Danae’s aid—”
“That is exactly what I mean,” Habri said. He glanced over Ravagin’s shoulder, and abruptly there was a white shimmering hovering between his head and Danae’s. A spark-sword blade …
Danae made a sort of strangled gasp as hard hands gripped Ravagin’s arm and pulled his hand away from hers. “You will open the path for us,” Habri said flatly, his eyes on Ravagin’s face as other hands took Danae’s arms and moved her toward the shadows by the entrance hallway behind him. “Knowing your companion is back amid the attackers should strengthen your resolve, should it not?”
Ravagin took a deep breath. The temptation to use the scorpion glove, to wrap its whip around and around that face … “All right,” he said through clenched teeth, “I’ll try it alone. But the minute you have access to Simrahi’s tower I want her released. You understand? Released, unharmed, and out here in the courtyard.”
“So you can make your escape?” Habri shrugged. “Yes, I rather expected that was your chief goal in agreeing to help me. Well, no matter. As soon as I’m in the castle-lord’s chambers I’ll have no further need of you.”
“The feeling is mutual.” Ravagin looked down at the sky-plane lying at his feet. Now he had no choice; he had to get the traitors into Simrahi’s tower. And that meant using the spell … “Get all your men back,” he ordered Habri. “But keep them ready. When I open the way, you’ll need to be ready.”
The other nodded silently and stepped back … and Ravagin stepped forward onto the sky-plane.
The carpet didn’t move as Ravagin walked to its center; didn’t so much as quiver as he got down on his knees and gazed down into its decorated surface; didn’t in any way indicate it might be anything more than just a normal part of Shamsheer’s miracle technology. For a long moment Ravagin wondered if perhaps it was nothing more, wondered if the spirit that had betrayed them had perhaps already departed as Danae had suggested it might.
He could almost hope it had. If the spirit was gone he wouldn’t have to do this thing he’d sworn never to do …
Licking his lips, he took a deep breath. There was nothing to be gained by hesitating now. If the spirit was there, he was already as prepared as he was going to be for what was ahead. Leaning forward, he brought his hands down onto the surface of the sky-plane. “Mish-trasin-brikai,” he said softly. “Ormahi-insafay-biswer. Harkhonis-mirraim-suspakro.”
And with a surge like a mild electric shock, Ravagin felt the spirit rise up through his hands.
And flood into him.
Chapter 39
HE GASPED … OR, RATHER, sensed dimly that his body had gasped. Just as he sensed dimly that he was no longer attached to that same body.
He’d heard stories from others who’d done this, but none of them had prepared him for the sensations now flooding his mind. Or rather, for the lack of sensations. Being buried alive in cotton with a flaming torch in your face … drowning in spices, unable to breathe and yet with sharp odors jabbing into nose and brain … drifting on an intangible sky-plane with a drastically ingrown edge barrier locking all muscles in place—he’d heard all of those metaphors and others over the years. None of them even came close. All of mankind’s most basic fears—falling, drowning, blindness—seemed to explode on him at once … and even as he fought to gain balance, to be able to think clearly amid the sudden panic, a flame seemed to burst beneath his unfelt feet, sweeping over him, burning his skin to a crisp blackness as the parasite spirit attacked and burned and fought to either control or destroy him—
Wait a second. I’m not even attached to my body at the moment—how can I feel like I’m on fire?
And with that single rational thought, the whole thing unraveled.
Ravagin took a shuddering breath—and then another, savoring the sense of being whole again. Illusion—the whole thing was illusion. Wasn’t it, my little companion?
The parasite spirit didn’t answer. Ravagin wasn’t sure a parasite spirit even had enough intelligence to communicate … but whatever it lacked in intellectual capacity it more than made up in raw emotion. He could feel the hatred and rage of the creature as it swirled like a ghostly and impotent tornado through his mind—rage at being defeated and under Ravagin’s control, hatred at some more basic and permanent level. It was the first time Ravagin had ever touched a spirit this deeply … the first time he’d ever realized how truly alien the spirit world was. A trickle of sweat ran down between his shoulderblades, and he was dimly aware that he was shivering violently. And not just because of the chilly night air.
Presently, the dark introspection faded, and the world around him began to reappear before his eyes. He was still kneeling on the sky-plane, his hands curled into fists pressed tightly against his abdomen. His shirt was soaked with sweat, his head ached fiercely, and there was oozing blood where his fingernails had dug into his palms; but all in all, it hadn’t been as bad as he’d expected, even from something as relatively simple as a parasite spirit. Lesson number one: spirits aren’t nearly as strong on Shamsheer as they are on Karyx.
A damn good thing, too …
“Sky-plane—” He broke off, worked moisture into his mouth, and tried again. “Sky-plane: rise one varn and follow my mark: mark.”
He could feel the spirit resist … but for the moment, at least, it had no choice but to obey him. The sky-plane rose a meter and floated gently toward the entrance hallway Ravagin was pointing to.
“I was starting to think you had fallen asleep,” a soft voice came from behind him.
Ravagin jerked as Habri stepped up to pace the sky-plane. “No one ever tell you not to sneak up behind people?” he growled.
Habri shrugged casually … but as Ravagin’s sky-plane hesitated only a moment before crossing the ten-meter limit a touch of awe added brittleness to his features. “You were a long time casting your spell,” he said after a brief pause. “But I can see that the results were worth the wait. If your other sorcerous powers are as potent—”
“What do you mean, a long time?” Ravagin interrupted him. “What was it, five minutes? Ten?”
Habri threw him an odd look. “Half an hour at the least. Perhaps a few minutes more.”
Ravagin felt a new chill run up his sweat-soaked back as, for the first time, he noticed that the manor house was almost entirely dark now. The servants had finished their chores and retired for the night … and he’d lost thirty minutes of his life during that battle. “It took longer than I expected,” he said to Habri through dry lips. Even to him the excuse sounded lame.
“Your companion seemed to think so, too,” Habri said. “I think that fact was more worrisome to my men than the delay itself.”
“She’s never actually watched me do this spell before,” he improvised. So Danae was being held nearby, somewhere where she could see the courtyard. He tucked the fact away for possible future reference.