Triplet (11 page)

“So what else is there here?” he said dryly. “It's not like studies of Karyx have any application to the real universe.”

“You sound like Essen,” she snorted. “I don't suppose it's occurred to you that the spirits we find here may not be unique to this place.”

“If you're talking about all the Earth legends and stories—”

“
And
most religions, too,” she cut in. “Virtually all of them make provision for spiritual beings.”

“But spiritual beings that are different from those of Karyx.”

“Who says?” she said hotly.

“Just take a minute and look at the facts,” Ravagin said, feeling his temper beginning to slide out from under his control. He'd never much cared for people who couldn't have a discussion without turning it into an argument. “The spirits here are easy to invoke, easy to control, interact directly with the physical universe, and their presence is
very
apparent. Contrast that to all the legends—
or
the religious stories, if you'd prefer—that you remember.”

She clamped her jaw tightly, but he could see in her eyes that she was indeed thinking about it. “You think the legends are just that—legends?”

“I have no idea—I'm not a theologian. All I'm saying is that anything you learn about spirit characteristics and control here will have no direct application to life off Karyx because spirits like these don't seem to exist off Karyx.”

“So you
do
agree with Essen's philosophy.”

“There's no agreeing or disagreeing, damn it,” Ravagin snarled. “There are no sides to be taken here—it isn't a contest or war or something. In many ways I happen to prefer Karyx to Shamsheer; so what? All Essen was saying is that Shamsheer's technology is at least based on scientific principles, and that if we can find out how it works there we can make it work in the Twenty Worlds, too.”

“If science really
is
a universal.” She held up her hand before he could reply. “Sorry—I'm not really trying to start any arguments.”

“Could've fooled me,” Ravagin muttered under his breath.

“What'd you say?”

“Nothing,” he growled. “Let's step up the pace a little—I want to try for one of the inns a few kilometers down the road.”

They kept on, but within another hour it was clear they weren't going to make it. Danae was trying—he could grudgingly admit that much—but her preparation for the trip had clearly not included building up her leg muscles for this kind of continual up-down climbing, and he was forced again and again to reduce the pace or risk leaving her behind. The latter idea had a certain nasty appeal—he could invoke a djinn to watch over her progress, after all—but it wasn't really a serious option. Keeping most of his attention on their surroundings, he began working on the problem.

They reached the last row of mounds about an hour before sunset, and there Ravagin called a halt. “There's no way we're going to make any of the inns tonight,” he said, studying the strip of dirt and gravel through the lengthening shadows of the mounds that were slowly but steadily creeping over it. “We might as well find a good spot around here and set up a camp. Are you hungry?”

“A little,” she admitted, gazing out over the road. “There's not much cover out here, though. Wouldn't we do better to head for that little grove of trees?” She pointed south along the road.

“The lack of cover isn't all that important,” Ravagin told her. “The presence or absence of bandits is much more of a consideration, and I'd just as soon avoid such blatantly obvious places for travelers to stop.”

“But we could invoke a lar to protect the camp, couldn't we?” Danae persisted.

“We could and we will,” Ravagin nodded. ‘The problem is that any bandits we meet will have some knowledge of spirithandling, too. Spirit battles can be fun to watch, but not at close range. Well do better to stay out of sight here—”

A scrape of two stones together was all the warning he got, but for anyone who'd survived as long as he had on Karyx it was enough. He spun around, snatching his short sword from its sheath, just in time to see a huge disheveled man doing his best to sneak up on them around the mound. With a hoarse battle roar, he abandoned his attempts at stealth and switched to a full, head-down charge.

“Get back!” Ravagin snapped at Danae, bringing his sword up into ready position. The other's blade was a full-sized one, and in addition he was sporting the small armguard/buckler favored by bandits who liked to be at least a little inconspicuous. Against them Ravagin's weapon was definitely a poor second … but fortunately, he didn't have to rely on steel alone. There were half a dozen ways for a good spirithandler to trip up the unwary—

“
Plazni-hy-ix!
” Danae shouted abruptly from the side. “Jinx arise!'

“Damn!” Ravagin snarled under his breath. A
jinx
invocation, of all the stupid things! A hazy brown cloud formed around the bandit; without so much as pausing, the thug plowed through it and swung his sword in a high overhand cut—

Sidestepping, Ravagin caught the blade on his sword's guard and deflected it away. The bandit's inertia kept him going for several steps before he was able to skid to a halt. Ravagin took advantage of the breather to move further up the mound where he would have at least a slight high-ground advantage. The brown cloud had meanwhile followed the bandit, positioning itself around him with the same lack of effect as before.

Danae obviously saw that, too. “Jinx—” she began.

“Get rid of it!” Ravagin shouted to her, spitting dust. The bandit was moving toward him again, an entirely too cunning expression on his face. “You hear me, Danae? Release the damned thing.”

“But—all right.
Carash-hyeen.
”

The bandit was ready. “
Man-sy-hae orolontis!
” he shouted as the brown cloud faded. “Try your tricks
now,
sorceress.”

Ravagin favored the other with a tight smile that was ninety percent bravado. “So you know how to do basic spirit protection, do you? Not surprising. Not very impressive, either.”

“Talk while you're able,” the bandit responded, giving Ravagin a broken-toothed grin of his own. He continued warily forward, sword held at the ready.

“
Sa-doora-na,
” Ravagin called. “
Sa-doora-na, sa-doora-na, sa-doora-na.
”

And abruptly there were four more of him standing there.

The bandit stopped in his tracks, eyes bulging. Ravagin had rather expected him to be taken by surprise; doppelganger invocations weren't especially common. No more than a temporary solution, of course, but it ought to at least buy him the time to try something more effective. With the bandit's spirit protection in place none of the usual frontal assaults would work fast enough to be of any real use … but Ravagin had always preferred more subtle approaches, anyway. “
Sa-khe-khe fawkh pieslahe;
bring a flood,” he intoned … and a second later an instant artesian well appeared between him and the bandit as the nixie he'd invoked forced ground water to the surface in obedience to his command.

The bandit spat a curse as the flow reached him, washing around his ankles and rapidly turning his footing to slippery mud. “You will die painfully, spirithandler,” he snarled. Stepping sideways, he moved toward the edge of the small river flowing around him … heading toward the spot where Danae was crouching.

Ravagin gritted his teeth. Almost ready …
Now.
“
Carash-kakh!
” he snapped, releasing the nixie. The water flow cut off, the bandit staggering momentarily as the current he'd been fighting against vanished. He glanced at Ravagin, grinning—“
Sa-trahist rassh!
” Ravagin called, making the placement gesture and then crossing his fingers. With a
whoosh
of flame a firebrat blazed into existence—

And as the heat hit the water, the hillside abruptly erupted with a dense cloud of steam.

The bandit bellowed with rage, but it was a rage rapidly turning to uneasiness as the steam swallowed up his intended prey. Ravagin didn't wait for him to regain his mental balance; dodging around the blazing firebrat, he dived into the cloud, senses alert. His hand brushed the other's arm and he ducked low, jabbing his sword toward where the bandit's ribcage ought to be. A swish of air over his head showed the other's last reflexive attempt to cut him in half—

His blade jarred against bone and slid past … and it was over.

Ravagin backed away from the body, soaked to the skin with sweat and steam and the splashed mud of the bandit's final landing. “
Carash-carsheen,
” he said with a sigh. The firebrat vanished, and a minute later the worst of the steam had blown away. “It's all over,” he called to Danae, who was still in a half crouch a dozen meters away, knife in hand.

She straightened up, eyes still looking confused … “Oh, right,” he nodded, glancing at the four doppelgangers still surrounding him. “
Carash-meena, carash-meena, carash-meena, carash-meena.
”

The images vanished. “Cute,” Danae said stiffly, jamming her knife back into its sheath as he walked up to her. Her eyes drifted once to the bloody corpse, moved quickly away. “I suppose that's just one of the tricks you pick up after you've been here awhile.”

“The doppelgangers or the fire and water?”

“Both.” Her lips were pressed tightly together. “The lecture probably comes next; but before you begin, whatever happened with the jinx wasn't my fault. That was the invocation spell I was taught, and if it was wrong—”

“Relax,” Ravagin sighed, sheathing his sword. “The spell was fine. It was the application that you fou—that was wrong.”

“What do you mean? A jinx is a spirit of confusion, isn't it?”

“Sure, but it only works if you have two or more opponents there to confuse,” Ravagin explained patiently. “It's not so much an internal confusion as an external one—it's supposed to foul up coordination between adversaries, get rid of their numerical advantage over you.”

“Oh.” Danae grimaced. “Well … I'm sorry. No one ever thought to make that clear to me.”

Did you think to ask?
Ravagin wondered; but he kept the sarcasm to himself. “Thanks anyway,” he said instead. “In the future, though, I'd rather you'd just try to keep out of my way unless I ask for help.”

“Yeah. Sure.” Danae turned abruptly away from him and started climbing up the nearest mound. “Well, what are we waiting for?” she snapped back over her shoulder. “If we're going to camp here overnight we'll want to set up a shelter, won't we?”

Ravagin shook his head in tired disgust. It was precisely that kind of unthinking reaction to criticism that could make a Courier's life in Karyx a hell on wheels … and far too often got him killed.

Taking a deep breath, he set off after her, watching the surrounding mounds closely. In case the bandit hadn't been a loner.

T
HE COOL NIGHT BREEZE
drifted across Danae's face, and for the third time since nightfall she came awake with a start. For a long minute she lay still, heart pounding, fighting against the feeling of dread that had suddenly seized her. No sounds except those of occasional insects or small animals broke the silence of the night; certainly nothing to suggest there was anyone sneaking up on them. A meter to her right, Ravagin's breathing was steady in his own sleep—surely he would have come awake himself by now if anything was amiss.
Nerves, girl,
she chided herself.
That's all—just a case of nerves.

That, and sleeping out on a bare hillside without even a blanket between her and the hard ground. Stifling a groan, she rolled from her side onto her back, easing the ache there. Directly above her, the stars were almost hurting in their brilliance.
I wonder if they're muted like the sunlight is,
she thought. Though the way they were blazing down it hardly seemed likely.

Lowering her eyes, she gazed at and through the barely visible haze surrounding them. The lar Ravagin had invoked, circling their camp like a soundless, spectral whirlwind. Supposedly a powerful first line of defense against anything that should choose to attack them … Moving as quietly as possible, Danae got to her feet and began walking toward the haze. There was no resistance, no evidence of anything between her and the rest of Karyx but fog or imagination; nothing that could be remotely considered a defense—

Abruptly, the fog thickened in front of her, condensing in on itself like a reversed film of an explosion. She stopped, stomach tightening with sudden nervousness as a three-meter piller of living smoke formed in her path. For a moment she looked at it, wondering what would happen if she tried to reach out and touch it. The lar
was
supposed to be on their side, after all … but on the other hand it was Ravagin, not her, who had invoked it. Carefully, she backed up toward her place on the hillside, watching as the lar gradually spread itself into a defensive circle again. By the time she lay back down there was again nothing between her and the rest of Karyx but a hazy fog.

Licking her lips, she closed her eyes.
We're perfectly safe here,
she told herself.
Perfectly safe.
Eventually, she convinced herself enough to fall asleep.

But the vague feeling of dread refused to go completely away, and her dreams were troubled ones.

“We should be able to rent a couple of horses at one of the inns down the road,” Ravagin told her as they finished their breakfast. “At that point the trip to Besak will only take a couple of hours.”

Danae nodded silently, taking one last mouthful of aromatic meat and tossing the bone aside. Ravagin had hunted down the small animal sometime before dawn, roasting it over a fire ignited by a firebrat he'd let her invoke. The fact that she'd done the spell flawlessly was a small nugget of satisfaction against the general malaise hanging over her this morning. The bad dreams and poor sleeping conditions of the previous night, she'd decided, perhaps coupled with a lingering remnant of culture shock. Once they reached Besak and she had a halfway-decent bed to sleep in this would all blow over.