“I wasn’t suggesting you do so,” Hart shook his head. “My point was that there clearly are rules that will work in Shamsheer. We may not know what they are; but there ought to be others elsewhere who do.”
“Like on Karyx,” Danae said thoughtfully. “Gartanis, maybe?”
“He’s as likely to know something as any of the other spiritmasters,” Ravagin shrugged. “Horribly illegal to take a Karyx native through to Shamsheer, of course.”
Hart snorted gently. “You really care about that?”
“I stopped worrying about the legalities a long time ago.”
From behind Danae a troop of waiters appeared and began setting out a dinner that the others must have ordered before Ravagin’s arrival. It was, in retrospect, exactly the sort of meal Ravagin would have expected from a place like the Double Imperial: a large number of plates, each with modest to minuscule servings of elaborately sculpted food. The uncomfortable landed-fish sensation threatened to reappear, but he found that if he could ignore the surroundings and food design and look on it as just an ordinary sampler-style dinner, he could untie the stomach knots enough to relax and actually taste the food. Which, though far out of his experience, was generally pretty good.
For the most part they ate silently, both from an apparently mutual desire to concentrate on the food and also because the constant bustling to and fro of the waiters would have made coherent conversation difficult in any case. But after about forty-five minutes the steady stream of waiters carrying new plates ceased, and the dessert and caffitina were served, and they got back down to business.
“All right,” Ravagin said, poking carefully with his fork at a stiff and astonishingly sturdy creation of cream and fruit flavoring. “It seems to me that before we can tackle the Shamsheer demon there are two or three basic hurdles we have to consider. First of all, in order to get any real control over him, we’re almost certainly going to need to know his name. Second, to get that name we’re going to have to find the damn fool who brought him into Shamsheer in the first place. And third, once we’ve got the name, we need to have some idea in mind as to exactly what we’re going to do with it. That about cover it?”
“Covers it and a half,” Danae snorted, shaking her head. “That’s an awful lot of ground to cover in two days, Ravagin. Especially since we haven’t got the faintest idea who this damn fool, as you called him, might be.”
“Perhaps we can at least narrow down his location,” Hart suggested. “You said someone in Ordarl Protectorate told you they’d been experiencing equipment problems?”
“Yes,” Ravagin nodded. “And the trolls that first attacked us were from Feymar Protectorate, while the trolls that Simrahi’s people cleared out from their territory were from Trassp Protectorate. Take your pick.”
Hart made a face. “I see.”
“Hang on, it’s not quite that bad,” Ravagin assured him. “We know that our target must have spent a good deal of time in Karyx to have had the knowledge and insight to pull this off in the first place. It’s also pretty certain he’s on Shamsheer at the moment; or if not, that he spent a fair amount of time there in the recent past.”
“Why?” Danae asked around a mouthful of cream.
“Because whatever he intended to do with the demon—research or anything else—would have taken some time to accomplish,” Ravagin told her. “That points to someone official, either a Courier or someone on staff at one of the way houses.”
“Assuming you’re right, what sort of numbers are we talking about?” Hart asked. “Ten possibilities? A thousand?”
Ravagin shrugged. “We’re probably starting with something on the order of six or seven hundred altogether. We should be able to drastically narrow that down, though, by checking experience records.”
“And med/psych records,” Danae put in.
Ravagin frowned at her. “What do you mean?”
She gave him a tight smile. “Don’t you remember, Ravagin?—my official reason for going into the Hidden Worlds was to study their psychological effects on Couriers.”
“Oh, right.” He grimaced. “We seem to have lost that thread somewhere along the way.”
“Yeah; but before we did I collected a fair amount of impressions on the subject. Particularly on how excessive spirit contact seems to affect the personality.”
Ravagin studied the end of his fork, mentally leafing through his list of friends and acquaintances who’d spent time on Karyx. “Are you implying,” he said slowly, “that it isn’t so much absolute time on Karyx that matters, but how much contact you’ve had with the spirits there?”
“It seems to be a combination of the two.” She hesitated. “And there isn’t just one reaction to consider. For example … the emotional burnout you had seems to have been a direct result of not giving in to spirit influence. As if—”
“As if they couldn’t control me, so they were working on driving me out?” Ravagin growled with a sudden flash of insight. “Why, those bastards. That is what they were doing, isn’t it? Those ethereal little bastards.”
“It’s just a theory—”
“But it sure as hell sounds reasonable.” Ravagin jabbed his fork viciously into his dessert, trying to imagine a demon’s face there. It seemed to help. “Okay; it sounds like a good approach,” he told her. “The only catch in it is that med/psych records are on the restricted access list. I don’t know any of the appropriate passkeys to get in.”
“Can I phone into the computer from outside the Crosspoint Building?” Hart asked.
“No. It’s a sealed system.”
“How close is your phone to your terminal?”
“Oh—” Ravagin measured out half a meter between his hands. “About that far.”
Hart nodded. “Then it can be done. I’ll get you the appropriate gadget later this evening. You’ll have to sneak it in and get it set up, I’m afraid, but it’s a simple procedure and I’ll include a set of instructions.”
“What about the passkeys? Getting into the computer won’t get you those.”
Danae snorted. “That’s the least of our worries,” she said. “The system doesn’t exist that Hart can’t perk. I should know—he’s been tracking me down through perk-proof systems for the past four years.” She shot him a lopsided smile. “Funny how I never appreciated that talent before.”
“My only real talent in such things lies in searching out the proper experts,” Hart shrugged. “Fortunately, there are several such experts on Threshold.”
“Whom you’ve already made contact with?” Danae suggested.
“Of course,” he said equably. “Part of my job.”
Chapter 43
HART’S “GADGET” TURNED OUT to be something that looked like a standard computer record cube linked by a wide cable to a phone message disk. It arrived via special messenger at Ravagin’s house at eleven in the evening, about an hour after he’d returned home from Danae’s hotel suite and the continuation there of their council of war. Smuggling it into the Crosspoint Building was nerve-racking but otherwise uneventful, and just before midnight he called back to the hotel from his desk to report that the interface was in place.
The initial list of suspects came to eight hundred and sixty-four. Eliminating those who’d never been to Karyx dropped it to six hundred twenty-one; weeding out those whose last trip there had been over a year ago brought it to just under four hundred.
Sometime about three-thirty in the morning Hart’s unnamed associate cracked the med/psych passkey, and while Ravagin dozed at his desk they copied all the relevant files over for Danae to study. By five o’clock, when Hart woke him up to remind him about disconnecting the interface before anyone else came in and caught him with it, she had the list down to fifteen.
By the time he’d packed up the interface, left the building, and driven to Gateway City and their hotel, it was down to one.
“Omaranjo Saban,” Ravagin read out loud, settling tiredly into a chair and scanning the hard copy Danae
had made of the man’s files. Master of the way house in Feymar Protectorate, barely eighty-five kilometers from the Shamsheer/Karyx Tunnel for the past ten months; previous post had been four years at the way house in Citadel on Karyx. Personality profile …
“You know him?” Danae interrupted his reading from the chair where she was slumped, gazing blankly out the window at the reddening sky.
Ŗavagin shook his head. “Met him once in Karyx, I think, but our group didn’t stay long and I don’t remember anything about him. Four years—that’s a long time to be on Karyx.”
“About the same as Melentha,” Hart spoke up from another corner of the room. “According to his file, he kept his post the same way she did, by simply requesting extensions of the original appointment.”
Ravagin nodded grimly. “That’s one of the things we’re going to have to change about the way people are assigned. Danae, you really think he’s the one?”
“I don’t think there’s any doubt,” she said wearily, rubbing her eyes with her fists. “His personality changes are almost a parallel to Melentha’s, and no one else even comes close.”
“Hart?”
“I don’t know anything about Ms. mal ce Taeger’s psych study,” the other said with a shrug. “But from a pure right place/right time analysis he certainly fits. Though I’d feel better if we could come up with a reasonable motive for him.”
“Insanity,” Danae murmured. “Too much time with demons on the brain and poof—” She spread her hands, sunburst fashion. “Instant psychological lobotomy.”
“It may be even easier to explain than that,” Ravagin said, skimming a part of the psych report. Saban’s frustration level … “Anyway, it doesn’t really matter. What matters now is stopping him and putting the cork back in the bottle.”
“Yeah.” Danae took a deep breath. “Okay. When do we start?”
Ravagin looked at Hart. “Can any of your specialized contacts get a pass for Danae to get into the Hidden Worlds?”
“No need,” the other said. “I’ve already taken care of it.”
“You have? When?”
“While I was on the computer, of course. It’s all been filed and even properly approved. Though in all honesty the faster you get us in, the less chance there’ll be of someone spotting it and making embarrassing inquiries.”
Ravagin gritted his teeth. Speed was indeed imperative … and yet, on the other hand, the farther away he got from the council of war and the plan they’d hatched during it, the more the second and third thoughts were beginning to crowd into his mind. “I’ve been thinking,” he said slowly, “that maybe we’ve hammered this scheme out a little too quickly. For starters, maybe I should be the one to go into Karyx—”
“And leave Hart and me to confront Saban and his pet demon?” Danae asked, closing her eyes. “Come on, Ravagin—we hashed all the stuffing out of this earlier.”
“You’ll excuse me if I don’t like the thought of sending you into danger again,” Ravagin snapped.
She opened her eyes, and for a moment he thought she was going to snap back at him. The way she had when they first headed into the Hidden Worlds, when his chief concern was whether they’d still be on speaking terms by the time they got back to Threshold.
But those days were gone forever. “If it comes to that,” she told him quietly, “I don’t like the thought of you going into danger, either. And don’t try to kid me; you’ll be in at least as much of it in Shamsheer as I will be in Karyx. Believe me, I am not overly enthusiastic about going in there again—you show me a way we can all stay here and still stop the threat of spirit invasion and I’ll take it.”
“There’s no reason for you to go into Karyx, Ms. mal ce Taeger,” Hart spoke up. “I can do this just as well as you can.”
“You know why we can’t do that,” Danae sighed. “I’m the one who spent all that time with Gartanis, remember? The one he taught dark spirithandling spells to? Not to mention being Ravagin’s companion during the mad dash across Shamsheer.”
“Yes, I remember all the arguments,” Hart said. “I don’t recall it being mentioned during those arguments that I met Gartanis, too.”
“Under an alias,” Danae sniffed. “Hardly the same credentials, all things considered.”
“It may not make any difference—”
“But it might. Admit it; it might. And it’s sure as hell not something we can afford to take chances with.”
Hart took a deep breath and sighed. “I unfortunately can’t argue with you, Ms. mal ce Taeger,” Hart said. His voice was one of resignation … and yet, in his eyes was a glint that reminded Ravagin of something. “I suppose I should consider myself lucky that you’re at least not trying to slip out on me this time.”
Danae shivered slightly. “No, this time I’ll be glad of all the protection I can get.”
“I’ll do my best,” he assured her. “I suppose that’s settled, then. Ravagin, when do you want to leave?”
Ravagin licked his lips briefly. “We’ll all need to get some sleep first,” he said, bringing his mind back to the subject with an effort. That glint in Hart’s eye … “Eight hours at the least. We’ve been up more or less all night, and under the circumstances I think we should assume we’ll need to hit Shamsheer at a full sprint. Let’s make it four this afternoon at the Crosspoint Building.”
“Isn’t that a little late in the day?” Danae murmured, clearly halfway to falling asleep right there in her chair.
“I’ll tell them you want to fly over Kelaine City at sunset. They’ll buy it—clients are always making crazy requests like that.”
“Four o’clock, then,” Hart nodded, getting to his feet. “Ms. mal ce Taeger, I’ll be right next door if you need me. Ravagin, there’s an extra bed in the other room if you’d care to sleep here.”
“No, thanks,” Ravagin shook his head. “I’ll sleep better in my own house.”
“Very well. Pleasant dreams, then.” Ravagin left; and it was as the suite door closed behind him that he abruptly remembered where he’d seen that glint before. In the early dawn in the marshlands of the Davrahil River on Karyx … when Hart had made up his mind to sacrifice his life for Danae.
They rendezvoused at the Crosspoint Building precisely at four o’clock. No one questioned or tried to stop them as they went through the checkout procedure, proving that Corah Lea had indeed kept her promise to leave Ravagin’s name on the Courier Corps’ duty roster.
Perhaps more surprising was the fact that there was nothing waiting for them as they walked out of the Tunnel into Shamsheer. Ravagin had half expected they would have to talk their way past some of Castle-Lord Simrahi’s soldiers, or even be forced to outfight another of those commandeered trolls the spirits seemed determined to throw at them. But the Tunnel entrance was clear, and the sky-plane that came at their command took them to the tiny village of Phamyr without any signs of hesitation.
At Phamyr they switched sky-planes and headed northeast, and as night closed over them they reached the southwest part of the Trassp Protectorate and the southern shore of Lake Trassp. Fed by six rivers, with three thousand square kilometers of surface area, the lake served as the major source of water for both the southern half of the protectorate and also for the Tweens area immediately to the west. From the sky an almost complete ring of village lights could be seen hugging the lake’s shore, a panorama which some of Ravagin’s clients in the past had found interesting. At the moment, though, far more important than scenery was the fact that Lake Trassp was the center of an extensive fishing industry.
Most of which had already closed down for the night … but with a little persistence Ravagin found what he was looking for.
“What do you think?” Ravagin asked Hart as they all sat around the small inn room they’d hired for the night.
The other shrugged, holding up one corner of the large fishing net for a closer inspection and giving it a stiff tug. “Well enough made, I suppose, as these things go. Certainly strong
enough to handle any fish you might find in a lake this size. But we’re talking a lot more weight here than that of the average fish.”
“My question was more aimed at whether you’re going to be able to set it up in the first place,” Ravagin said with a touch of asperity. “The net itself isn’t going to last very long no matter how we slice it. So to speak.”
Beside Ravagin, Danae shifted uncomfortably in her seat but said nothing. “Of course I can set it up,” Hart said, folding the net and laying it aside. “You’ll need to give me a few hours’ head start, but the techniques are perfectly straightforward. The real question is whether you’re going to live long enough for it to do any good.”
“I wish to hell,” Danae growled, “that for once in your life you’d try to be a little diplomatic.”
“No, he’s right,” Ravagin shook his head. “But I should be safe enough. The Darcane Forest’s pretty dense—Danae, you can attest to that—and once I’m in among the trees there shouldn’t be any way for a sky-plane to get to me.”
“Too dense for a sky-plane, but not too dense for a man on horseback?” Hart asked pointedly. “Perhaps; but you make the assumption that the demon will indeed come after you with a sky-plane. Suppose he merely commandeers a troll and chases you on foot?”
The same question had occurred to Ravagin. Often. “If he does, then I’m in trouble,” he admitted. “But my guess is that he won’t think to do that. He’s presumably been on Shamsheer long enough to have become used to the convenience of sky-planes, and I think that by the time he realizes his mistake it’ll be too late for him to backtrack. Anyway, I don’t really have any choice. We know the parasite spirits can enter and exert limited control over sky-planes; weakened the way they seem to be here, I don’t think they’ll be able to do the same with horses. I’d rather take my chances with the forest and your skills with that—” he gestured to the net—“than wind up being flown somewhere nice and deserted where the demon can kill me at his leisure.”