Triplet (32 page)

“I seek no such extortion,” Ravagin assured him. “Nor do I threaten you,” he added as the other's eyes slipped momentarily to the short sword at Ravagin's waist. “I seek only your cooperation in what is already due me.”

That elicited another snort. “What is due you, save lodging for the night?”

“
And
breakfast in the morning. I have already paid you for that, if you recall.”

The other blinked in surprise. “Then what is this all about?” he demanded. “Breakfast will be served at sunup.”

“Ah—and
that
is what this is all about. I would like my breakfast right now, packaged for travel.”

“For—? And where do you propose to go traveling at this hour? The stable?”

“I propose to go out,” Ravagin told him calmly. “For this you will need to release your lar.”

The innkeeper had a lot of other things on his mind, but even so that one seemed to hit him right across the face. “You want
what
?” he all but shouted before he could catch himself and lower his voice. “I cannot do that!” he hissed. “My guests—the safety of my inn—”

“I have no time for an argument,” Ravagin cut him off, putting an edge of icy steel into his tone. “This unwarranted attack has worsened my companion's condition, and I must ride out to seek aid for her. Or will your magistrates claim that forcing the ill to suffer unnecessarily is also within an innkeeper's rights?”

The other clamped his jaw tightly. “I will have the meal prepared immediately,” he growled.

“Good. And I will need another room for my companion, at least until the firebrat in our old one vanishes. Without charge, of course.”

For a moment it looked like the innkeeper was going to argue that one. But with a sharp nod he turned and disappeared into the inn.

Twenty minutes later, the packed provisions on his back, Ravagin sat astride his horse at the western edge of the protective circle. “All right,” he said. “You may release the lar.”

“Are you certain you wish to do this?” the innkeeper standing beside him asked nervously. “You will be unable to reach anyone in Findral until their own lar is released at dawn.”

“Then I will have to bypass Findral and find aid from one of the spiritmasters who live alone beyond the village,” Ravagin told him shortly. “Whatever I do, it is my business.
Your
only concern in this matter now is to make sure my companion is provided with the quiet and rest she needs. If you think that beyond your skills, tell me now and I will take her to someone who possesses such abilities.”

It was impossible to tell in the dim light, but Ravagin thought the innkeeper's face went red. Turning stiffly toward the humming mist ahead, he held out a hand. “
Carash-melanasta!
” he snarled—

And the humming stopped.

“Farewell,” Ravagin said, nudging his horse forward. The other didn't answer; he was already hurrying back toward the inn, where he needed to stand to ensure the lar he would be invoking would encircle the entire grounds. Smiling tightly, Ravagin continued on, heading back toward the Besak-Findral road. A short ways from the inn there was a slight rise; on the far side of it, out of sight from prying eyes, he reined to a halt.

And waited, sweating, for about a thousand years.

But finally, he heard the approaching footsteps, and a couple of minutes later Danae was back in the saddle with him. “Any trouble?” he asked her, kicking the horse into a fast trot.

She shook her head. “It was a longer drop from the window than I expected, though.”

“Sorry. I couldn't think of a good excuse to lose the innkeeper for a minute to come around and catch you.”

“Oh, that's okay.” She paused. “You really think it'll fool them?”

“Probably not,” he admitted. “On the other hand, we lost nothing by trying it. If they send a scout ahead of the main force, the innkeeper can honestly tell them that only one of us has left. Not a particularly opaque deception, but with Hart already having split off on his own, they may conclude that you and I have done the same thing. If it makes them concentrate some of their strength on the inn longer than they have to, we'll have gained a bit.”

“And if they don't fall for it?”

He shrugged. “We reach the confrontation sooner. That's all there is to it.”

She sighed and fell silent, and Ravagin settled back into the increasingly familiar pattern of riding and watching. Around them, Karyx was alive with the subtle sounds of night … the sounds of night, and all the dangers that accompanied them.

It was, he knew, going to be a long ride.

T
HE DJINN HOVERED BEFORE
her, its grotesque face barely centimeters from her own, its flame-red eyes glowing with hatred and dark satisfaction.
I see you,
it seemed to say, and though she couldn't hear it with her ears, the spirit's message was abundantly clear.
Your invisibility is gone. We will hunt you down and burn your thoughts with such pain as you have never before imagined.
It paused, as if waiting for her to plead for mercy. But her tongue was frozen to her mouth; and as the silence lengthened she saw to her horror that a new image had joined the first: the carved demon-face from Melentha's archway. Like the djinn, it glared at her; unlike the other spirit, there was an amusement to its gaze that chilled Danae's blood even more than the djinn's hatred had done …

“Danae!”

With a start, she woke up. “Ravagin?” she croaked through dry lips. The glow that had been seeping through her blindfold had changed to unmitigated black, and for a horrible second she wondered if she had gone blind. “Ravagin!”

“It's okay, Danae, I'm here,” his voice came, tired but soothing. “Another bad dream?”

“Oh, God. Yes.” She licked her lips, working moisture back into her mouth. “Ravagin … I can't see anything.”

“It's okay—there isn't actually anything in here
to
see. The sun's gone down, about an hour ago. ‘

“An
hour
ago?”

“That's right,” he confirmed. “I hope you got some good rest for having slept the day away; I sure as hell didn't.”

Danae grimaced. “I'm sorry—my fault; I kept waking you up, didn't I? I don't understand it—I haven't had nightmares like this since I was seven.”

“Let's hope we never do again,” he said, and this time she could hear the tension in his voice. “I suspect it's the locale, not anything internal to either of us.”

“You had nightmares, too?” she asked, pushing herself to a sitting position.

“Yeah—watch your head.”

“Right.” She felt above her with one hand as she massaged the small of her back with the other. An undersized cave on the southern edge of Cairn Waste wasn't exactly the kind of accommodations she'd been hoping for when they fled from the inn, but it had been the best Ravagin had been able to come up with as dawn had begun coloring the eastern sky and her eyes had started screaming for some relief from the light. The place had certainly taken its toll; in addition to the terrifying dreams, a quick inventory showed that she had aches in a dozen places, souvenirs of the chill and damp and the hardness of the floor.

On the other hand, they'd survived the day without being found by either Melentha's gang or any of the more bestial predators of the region. All in all, a fair enough trade. “Have you gone outside at all since morning?” she asked.

“Once or twice. Mostly watching out for either of those gangs we outran on the way here, but we apparently gave them the slip.”

She nodded, pulling off the blindfold and rubbing furiously where the cloth had made her skin itch. “I suppose it's only fair for the demogorgon's curse to be good for
something.
”

“I'd say being able to spot trouble twice as far away as it can see you qualifies as good for something, yes,” he said with a touch of the old Ravagin dryness. It was a part of his personality that Danae hadn't seen much of since the escape from Melentha's house. A part of him, she suddenly realized, she'd rather missed.

“I hope you left me something to eat,” she asked, feeling a strange heat rushing into her cheeks.

“Yeah, but you may not like it much.” He rummaged in the innkeeper's pack, pulled out two hand-sized loaves of bread. “I think the same thing that gave us all those wonderful dreams is also affecting our taste buds,” he added, handing her one of the loaves. “Be prepared.”

Cautiously, she tried a bite. Usually this style of bread loaf had a light, sweet taste to it bordering on her usual definition of pastry. This one was as insipid as packing material. “Yeych,” she growled, forcing herself to chew and swallow. “No wonder no one lives in Cairn Waste anymore. What do you suppose is causing it?”

“I don't think anyone knows for sure,” he shrugged. “But after what you've told me about the fourth world and all … my guess is that this may be a weak spot between that world and Karyx.”

“Like a half-finished Tunnel, you mean?”

“Something like that. In fact, the builders may have planned to build a Tunnel somewhere around here and just never gotten around to doing it.”

She thought about that. “So it's not enough of a Tunnel for them to actually break through, but they
can
get close enough to affect us?”

“It's just a guess.” He took a bite of his own loaf, made a face. “Though I can tell you that if
I'd
been in charge of planning Triplet, I sure as hell wouldn't have let these damn spirits get even this close to me.”

“We'll take that up with the appropriate authorities. If we ever find them.” Danae hesitated. “You still want to try for the Tunnel tonight?”

Ravagin exhaled tiredly. “I don't see any point in delaying it. Unless you've come up with some new reasons I haven't heard yet?”

She grimaced, but he was right: all her arguments for a different day or time for their break had already been soundly scorched. The guards Melentha would have at the Tunnel would certainly be expecting them to move under cover of darkness, which might have argued for a daylight blitz … except that with Danae's eyes the way they were such a move was out of the question. And putting it off to another day did nothing but delay the inevitable. “No, you're right,” she sighed. “We might as well go ahead and get it over with. If she gets us, she gets us—that's all there is to it.”

“That's the spirit,” Ravagin nodded, getting stiffly to his feet and walking stooped over toward the cave's mouth where their horse was tethered. “Half pessimism, half fatalism. Just remember, if she's still thinking at all straight, she's going to recall that killing us could be hazardous to her masters' plans. Or at least killing you could be.”

“That's great comfort,” Danae muttered, brushing the crumbs off her hands and standing up into a cautious crouch. “Game on, let's get going.”

There was still a hint of afterglow in the western sky, which to Danae's affected eyes left the world almost as brightly lit as if it were noon. Seated in front of Ravagin on the horse, she again took up her previous night's role as lookout, watching and listening for anything that might mean trouble. In the Cairn Waste, she'd discovered yesterday, that largely boiled down to scanning the horizon for other riders or large animals. Cover here was virtually nonexistent, save for occasional large rock formations and—increasingly—a gradually rolling landscape as they headed southeast into the region of the Cairn Mounds. In those cases, where her eyes couldn't serve, her hearing had to; but the Cairn Waste had earned its name honestly, and they neither saw nor heard anyone as they made their way along.

It wasn't until they began picking their path around and between full-fledged mounds, barely half an hour after starting out, that Danae realized just how close to the Tunnel their cave had been. “Nothing like spending the day on the enemy's doorstep,” she muttered as Ravagin called a halt and found a scraggly bush to loosely tether their horse to.

“Can you think of a better place to hide than right under their noses?” he whispered back. “Besides, who'd be crazy enough to spend a whole day in the Cairn Waste?”

“That's great logi—yeep!”

“What?” he hissed, swinging around with sword already half out of its sheath.

“Over there,” she told him, nodding nervously toward the spot of green haze moving slowly across the mounds a hundred meters ahead.

Ravagin took a deep breath, easing the sword back down. “Nice to know we're in the right place. Can you see any detail, or is it just a green blob?”

“Uh … nothing. Though it
is
kind of far away.”

He grunted. “Chances are good it's a parasite spirit, then, not a regular demon. Interesting, I'd have thought Melentha could have pulled enough firepower to have nothing but the highest-level demons and peris watching the place.”

“Maybe with our invisibility she's given up on unbound spirits,” Danae suggested.

“Or else it means Hart's doing a slapjack job of leading the goose chase,” Ravagin grunted.

Danae bit at her lip. “Whatever Hart does, he does well,” she said quietly. “That's all part of his job, as he's so fond of saying.”

They stood there quietly for another minute, watching as the parasite spirit ahead continued on to eventually vanish between two mounds to their left. Then Ravagin took her hand and together they started forward.

It was harder than Danae had anticipated. Her sole previous experience with the Mounds had been during their walk from the Tunnel to the Besak-Torralane Village road at the beginning of the Karyx leg of their trip, and it rapidly became apparent that that had
not
been a representative section of the landscape. The mounds to the north of the Tunnel were at the same time more angularly rocky and more gravelly, making footing treacherous and the consequences of missteps painful. Danae's enhanced vision gave her surprisingly little advantage, not much more than Ravagin's experience and greater knowledge of the area gave him.