Triplet

Chapter 10

It wasn't until the echoes of his shout were beginning to fade away and Ravagin heard Danae's startled gasp that he realized he'd forgotten to warn her he would be invoking a sprite as soon as they'd crossed the telefold into Karyx. "Sorry," he said over his shoulder. "I didn't mean to scare—"

He broke off as a flicker of glow-fire appeared in front of him. "I am here, as you summoned," it said in a squeaky, almost unintelligible voice.

"Scout down the Tunnel—that direction," Ravagin ordered the sprite, pointing ahead. "Examine both the Tunnel and the area for a hundred varna around its exit for other humans, wild beasts, or trapped spirits, and then return to me."

The glow-fire flared momentarily and vanished. "The lockers are over here," Ravagin told Danae, turning around and reaching out a hand to find her.

"You could have warned me before you shouted like that," her voice came from his right. Oddly enough, she didn't seem upset.

"Yeah. Sorry." Stepping to the Tunnel wall, he found the lockers and got one open. "You need some light?" he asked as he chose some clothing by feel and held hers out into the darkness.

"No," she said, almost too quickly. Her hand found his, took the clothes, and retreated. Keeping an eye out for the sprite's return, Ravagin shook out the tunic and trousers to make sure no insects had taken up residence there and began to dress.

He was almost finished when the glow-fire reappeared. "There are no other humans, beasts, or spirits within the region," the squeaky voice reported.

Ravagin nodded. The exit into Karyx was usually clear, but it never hurt to make sure. "Good. Then I want you to take a message to a woman named Melentha living in a large house just to the west of Besak: that Ravagin and one other have come and will be arriving tomorrow. Carash-mahst."

Again the sprite flared its understanding and vanished. "Whenever you're ready," Ravagin told Danae, fastening his last buckle and locating a short sword on the locker's weapons shelf. "I'd like to try and get a few kilometers toward Besak before nightfall."

"All set," Danae grunted, and he sensed her come to his side. "Do I get any weapons here, or don't women carry blades on Karyx either?"

"Many of them do," he said. Groping for her hand, he placed a sheathed dagger into it. "Your profile said you'd had some knife training, but just the same don't draw it unless you absolutely have to.

Stick with your spirithandling spells, or better still just stand back and let me handle any trouble."

She snorted, but fastened the weapon to her side without comment. Ravagin debated invoking a dazzler, decided against it, and started along the Tunnel. They could make it through well enough without light, and once outside he could be a shade more discreet about making sure she had her outfit on straight, anyway. He'd stomped her toes enough this trip—though why he should give a damn about that he didn't know. After the shoddy way she'd pressured him into this trip in the first place he didn't owe her anything but guidance and protection and the most basic of courtesies.

They walked the rest of the way to the Tunnel mouth in silence. Ravagin gave Danae's garb a quick once-over as they started up the last ramp-like section, found she'd indeed managed to get all the primitive buckles and ties fastened properly. They stepped out into Karyx's more muted sunlight—

"Huh," Danae grunted, looking around. "Hardly worth invoking a sprite to check this place out."

Ravagin shrugged. She had a point—no animal in its right mind would live in the hilly wasteland that surrounded them on all sides. "It's worse just a few kilometers northwest of here," he commented. "The Cairn Waste is about as desolate as any place could be."

"So I'd heard. Site of some long-ago battle or something, wasn't it?"

"That's the legend. No one knows for sure."

"Couldn't you ask a spirit?"

"There are some things even a geas spell won't make them talk about," he shook his head. "The Illid ruins and Cairn Waste are one of them." He glanced around one last time, pointed toward the east.

"The road between Besak and Torralane is about ten kilometers that way."

"Who is that woman you sent the message to?" Danae asked as they started off through the mounds.

"Melentha's the mistress of the Besak way house, like Essen was in Kelaine City," Ravagin explained. "It's standard procedure on Karyx to inform one of them when you're coming—travel here's a bit riskier than on Shamsheer and it's a good idea to have someone making sure you don't just disappear out in the wild somewhere."

He glanced at Danae, saw her swallow visibly. "I see," she said with forced calmness. "A shame we don't have sprites on call back home—seems a pretty efficient way to send messages."

"The novelty fades after a while," Ravagin told her dryly.

"I suppose so."

They walked in silence for several minutes more, and after a bit Ravagin noticed her throwing frowning glances at the sky and the landscape around them. "Anything wrong?" he prompted.

"I'm not sure," she said slowly. "The light seems... funny, somehow. Not bright enough or something."

He nodded, impressed in spite of himself. Most visitors noticed the anomaly eventually, but few picked up on it this quickly. "Karyx's sunlight is about ten percent dimmer than that of Shamsheer, which in turn is that much dimmer than sunlight on Threshold. Have you ever been to Earth or Ankh during a partial solar eclipse?"

"Ah—yes," she said, understanding flickering across her face. "You're right; that is what it's like—

the sunlight's the right color and all, but not the right intensity."

"Yeah. Only it's not an eclipse in this case—the sun's just dimmer. Just one of the sizeable collection of things we don't understand about this place."

"But the stars are the same as you see from Threshold, aren't they?"

"As far as we can tell, bearing in mind we can't bring in the necessary instruments for an exact check. No, all three worlds are in the same place in the universe—every study anyone's ever invented has come to that tentative conclusion. But remember that there's no particular reason why the suns of the three have to be the same. Certainly the terrains of the worlds are different, so we're not just experiencing different dimensional manifestations of the same planet."

"How do you know?" she countered. "I mean, the equivalent spot on Shamsheer is covered with dense forest—how do you know it didn't have all these mounds, too, before the tree roots wore them down? And who knows what Threshold's landscape looked like before the original inhabitants blew it into the stratosphere?"

A pat answer rose to Ravagin's lips... and stayed there unvoiced. How had the savants and investigators come to that conclusion, come to think of it? "Well... there's a good-sized ocean inlet about seventy kilometers west of here at Citadel that definitely doesn't show up in either of the other worlds," he said slowly. "On the other hand... there've been some tremendously powerful spiritmasters in Citadel's history, and if one of them had decided he wanted the city to have ocean access, he might very well have been able to force an elemental to dig that inlet for him."

Danae shivered suddenly. "With an elemental he could probably have gotten the whole ocean dug for him. Unless their power's been exaggerated."

"It's hard to exaggerate elementals' power," Ravagin said, feeling his stomach tighten. "Almost as hard as imagining the kind of damn fool who would try invoking one of them in the first place. I don't even like working with demons and peris, personally." With an effort he forced his mind back to the original question. Could the worlds in fact be more identical than was generally conceded?

With some difficulty he tried to imagine a superposition of the Shamsheer and Karyx maps...

"The Morax Forest east of here could be the same as the Darcane back on Shamsheer," Danae murmured. "Just receded to the east a hundred kilometers or so—maybe by whatever made the Cairn Waste. The South Fey River in Shamsheer would be somewhere in Citadel's inlet—that doesn't help us any. The North Fey River...?"

"There is a river up there somewhere," Ravagin nodded. "But I'm not sure precisely where. Part of the problem is that we don't know all that much about Karyx's landscape—travel is by foot or horseback, and we rarely wind up going more than fifty or sixty kilometers from the Tunnel. Funny no one's thought of this before."

"Oh, they probably have," Danae shrugged. "And then rejected it for some perfectly good reason."

She sighed. "Doesn't really matter, I suppose. Just theoretical brain-gaming."

"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. We'll 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—

"Phzni-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.