Triplet (20 page)

Danae muttered something under her breath. “God. Let's get the hell out of this place.”

Ravagin glanced at the sun one last time to check their direction and then hunched down into his saddle. “I'm with you,” he nodded … and felt a shiver run up his spine.

Up ahead, somewhere, would be the hook in whatever this trap was that the demons of Coven had set for them.

They rode steadily for almost three hours, following a route that Ravagin insisted was the way they'd both come the night before; and as they continued on with no sign of hindrance or trickery from Coven, Danae's dread slowly faded into a sort of mid-level tension. The sun was still climbing in the sky—somehow, it seemed incredible that their whole stay in Coven had amounted to only about an hour—and the forest was alive around them with the chirps of birds and the scurrying sounds of small animals. Of the larger predators that Danae knew must live in Morax as well there was no sign.

“Aha,” Ravagin said, his voice jerking her out of a nervous contemplation of the tree branches above them. “I told you this was the right path. Here's the clearing where I met the peri last night.”

“Oh, great,” Danae growled, looking around them with rekindled apprehension. “Let's move on before it comes back.”

“And pass up what may be our best chance for a rest stop?” Ravagin rode to the middle of the clearing and swung down from his horse. “Come on, relax a little.”

“Re
lax?
How can you even
think
of relaxing at a time—”

“Danae.” Ravagin held up a hand as he took a few stiff-looking steps. “I don't understand what the hell's going on, either, but if they'd wanted to stop or kill us, they would have done so a long time ago. Whatever else they've got on their ethereal little minds, I think we really
are
being allowed to go. So come over here and get the kinks out of your muscles.”

“But it doesn't make any sense,” Danae grumbled, dismounting and leading her horse toward Ravagin's. He was right, she realized: her legs and rump felt awful. “Why let us go? Especially when we'd figured out their secret?”

“Maybe there's a higher principle involved,” he shrugged. Moving a few meters to the side, he stooped over and reached down. “It could be that whatever they wanted to do to us doesn't work properly on non-Karyxites. Or maybe the demogorgon in charge of this part of the planet overruled the demon.”

“Why should it? Demogorgons aren't supposed to pay much attention to what goes on in human society here. There aren't even any spells to invoke them.”

“Sure there are.” Ravagin straightened, holding two halves of a broken sword. “Who do you think you're invoking when you do a spirit-detection or protection spell or something?”

Danae frowned. “Those are handled by a demogorgon?”

“Or else by an elemental—I'm not sure anyone knows which. But it's definitely one of the two great powers. How else do you think those spells work?—by magic or something?”

She looked sharply at him; but if he was ridiculing her he was hiding it well. “I thought all this
was
done by magic,” she said stiffly.

He shook his head, turning the broken sword over in his hands. “One sword, shot completely to hell. Melentha's going to be furious. Magic, huh? Yeah, I suppose you could consider this magic if you wanted to. I've always found it works better to think of it as an automated voice-command system, with the network being composed of spirits instead of computers. The words by themselves don't have any real power behind them; it's the spirits who respond that do all the work.”

He was right, of course. Danae swallowed her reflexive urge to continue what would only be a futile argument and glanced back in Coven's direction. “So why did they let us go?”

“Let's not talk about it until we're out of the forest, okay?” Ravagin said quietly.

She looked at him sharply. “You don't understand it either, do you?”

“I've already said I didn't. I also said I don't want to talk about it. You want me to repeat it in Standard and Shamahni?”

“Why?” she countered. “You think we'll reason out something they were afraid we would see there and bring them down on us?”

“The possibility
had
crossed my mind,” he growled. “And considering what just nearly happened to you in there, I'd have thought you'd be showing a little more caution yourself.”

“In other words you'd rather run from danger than try to understand it.” She snorted. “Well, I'm sorry, but I'm the one who was kidnapped, and I'm not going to let it go that easily. Besides, what can they do to us here that they can't do just as easily in Besak or even in Melentha's fancy fortress? Hmm?”

Slowly, Ravagin looked up from his contemplation of the broken sword, and she swallowed hard at the ice in his eyes. “You're perhaps forgetting that I know about my place in your little psychological experiment,” he said at last. “If this is part of it, I strongly suggest you back off. If it's not, then I'll tell you right now you're a fool. Whatever else the demons of Coven have going, we know enough already to make us a danger to them. Yes, they let us go; but maybe it was because they didn't realize how much we'd figured out. And even if they did, it may not take a hell of a lot to tip the balance back the other direction. If you want to consider it cowardly, that's your privilege … but try to keep in mind that I've brought over three hundred clients to Karyx over the past sixteen years
and
gotten them out safely. When you've got a record like that, let me know.”

For a moment they stood facing each other in silence. Danae licked her lips once, but she couldn't find any words to say. “I'm sorry,” she said. “I didn't mean to offend you.”

He dropped his eyes. “Forget it.” For another moment he gazed down at the broken sword in his hands. Then, abruptly, he hurled the shards violently into the trees across the clearing. “Mount up, and let's get moving.”

Feeling the blood flooding into her face, Danae obeyed.

Once again, Ravagin had succeeded in making her feel like a child. This time, unfortunately, she'd deserved it.

“W
ELL,” MELENTHA SAID WHEN
Danae had finished, “that's as interesting a story as I've heard on Karyx in a long while. You ever consider working Besak as a bard?”

Danae leaned hard on her temper. “It's true,” she said, keeping her voice steady. “Every word of it.” She turned to Ravagin, sitting silently off in a corner of the conversation room. “Come on, Ravagin,
say
something. Tell her I didn't make this up.”

“Unfortunately, my dear,” Melentha put in, “Ravagin knows enough about Karyx not to take everything he sees at full face value.”

“What are you suggesting—that it was all an illusion?” Danae scoffed. “Give me a little more credit than
that.
”

“Illusions on Karyx can be very convincing,” Melentha shrugged. “You've seen at least one doppelganger since you've been here, and that's actually one of the simpler ones. Someone who knows what he's doing can make extremely elaborate illusions.”

Ravagin stirred. “Only if he's willing to put forth a
lot
of effort.”

“Well, of course—”

“So what was the purpose?”

Melentha frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Okay, let's assume the whole incident
was
an illusion,” Ravagin said. “Fine; but we start with the robe, and the robe was unquestionably real—you had it here long before we arrived. Ditto for the sleepwalker effect, unless you want to admit that someone can send spirits past your post line without causing even a ripple of reaction from your trapped demon. That means that Danae was kidnapped for some other purpose; and that someone with the necessary ability just happened to find out about it in time to sidetrack her to a fake Coven where he'd set up this grand illusion.”

“The perpetrator didn't have to send spirits across the line,” Melentha pointed out. “She's worn the robe out into Besak any number of times—maybe someone there put the djinn into it.”

“Subtly enough that you couldn't spot it?” Danae put in.

Melentha threw her an annoyed look. “Believe it or not, there are people on Karyx who know more about spirit-handling than I do. I don't find that particularly significant.”

“So again we're back to the question of
why,
” Ravagin persisted.

“Maybe as a joke,” Melentha suggested, getting to her feet with cat-like grace. “Maybe she offended someone. Or maybe she interested someone too much with her composite bow and he was hoping to scare her into revealing the method of construction to him.”

“So as far as you're concerned, it's over and done with?” Danae asked tartly.

Melentha's expression was almost excruciatingly condescending. “Whatever it was that happened to you—or whatever it was you
thought
happened to you—you got out all right, didn't you? If you want to dwell on it for the rest of your stay here, that's your privilege. But I don't see any point in it myself.” She turned to Ravagin. “If you'll excuse me, I have to recall some spirits before I get all the safe houses on Karyx into an uproar over nothing.”

She glided from the room. Danae muttered a caustic epithet at the closed door, then turned on Ravagin. “A lot of help
you
were,” she snapped. “You could at least have scorched that nonsense about the whole thing being a dream. You were there too, you know.”

Ravagin grimaced. “Unfortunately, she had a point. Illusion on Karyx
can
be extremely real.”

Danae stared at him. “You aren't serious. Ravagin, we were
there.
”

“Yes, I remember,” he said dryly. “And if it helps, I don't really think there were any illusions involved. Aside from the one we'd already agreed on, I mean, the one about Coven being almost deserted.”

“So why didn't you
say
anything to Melentha?”

“Because there's a slight possibility she was right,” he admitted. “As she said, I
have
experienced the kind of illusion a genius spirithandler can create.”

“So reality is up for grabs here—is that what you're saying? I don't buy that.”

“No, it's not quite that bad. Full-sensory illusions are devilishly hard to maintain over any length of time, especially if there's more than one person involved or if the creator winds up having to improvise along the way. And they also don't seem to translate to long-term memory quite the same as real events.”

Danae considered that. “So what you're saying is that maybe by the time we leave Karyx we'll know whether all of that really happened?”

“Something like that.” He caught the look on her face and shrugged. “I'm sorry, Danae, but there's nothing more we can do about it at the moment.” He stood up. “You'll have to excuse me; but unlike you, I didn't get any sleep at all last night. I'll see you in a few hours.”

She pursed her lips. “Sure. Look … I'm sorry for all the trouble this caused you. I
do
appreciate your coming after me like you did.”

“No extra charge,” he said equably. “Besides, it was hardly your fault. I suggest that you stick around the house until I get up. We'll have time to go into Besak later today if you really want to, but I don't want you going there alone.”

He left; and Danae let her lip twist into a grimace.
Don't go into the street, Danae. Don't make up stories, Danae.
“What's it going to be next?” she snarled into the empty room. “ ‘Play nice and don't get dirty, Danae?' ”

Slapping the floor beside her cushion, she got up and strode to the window. A spotting of cumulus clouds had formed in the sky since their arrival back at Melentha's mansion, and occasional shadows could be seen skating across the lawn and post line toward Besak to the west. And beyond the village—

“It was
not
a dream,” she said aloud. “It was real.
Real.
I
know
it was.”

Then why are you so vehement about it?
a small voice seemed to whisper in the back of her mind.

Because she really
wasn't
sure.

For a long minute she stood there, watching the clouds occult the unnaturally dim sunlight and thinking about what Melentha and Ravagin had said about Karyx's brand of illusion. Of short duration, incapable of reacting well to the bombshell that she and Ravagin were from another world, playing to a limited audience—the Coven experience fit the pattern they'd described all too well. And if Ravagin was right, she wouldn't know for a long time whether it had been real or not. If she ever found out at all.

“I do not accept that,” she called out toward the post line. “You demons can be as clever as you want; you're not going to screw around with my head like that. You understand?”

There was no answer.
All right, Danae; enough of the tantrum, already. Think it out.
She had Melentha's statement that her own internal evidence was no good. An independent observer? But Ravagin had been the only one there, and he'd already disqualified himself as a judge. That left only the demon-possessed people of Coven themselves … and there was no way she would travel that road again, even if she were given a guarantee that she would again be allowed to leave. And that was it. All who'd been present accounted for.

Or was it?

Danae caught her breath as a new possibility suddenly hit her. Crazy … but it might just give her the answer.

At an unknown but possibly extreme risk to herself. She sobered at the thought, knowing what Ravagin would say if he knew what she was considering. And what Melentha would say.

That she was being childish.