Triplet

Chapter 34

Two hours later, after struggling their way through perhaps a kilometer of the forest, Ravagin finally called it quits.

"This isn't going to work," he panted as he sank down beside Danae against a thick-boled tree and let his sap-stained sword sag to the ground between his feet.

"No argument from me," Danae sighed, her half-closed eyes showing slits of white as she kicked mechanically at the green frond wrapped loosely around her leg. "What are these vine things, anyway?"

"Berands fronds," he told her, slashing carefully at the offending plant. "They catch and eat the large slug-like things that move around under the dead leaves. They're not really strong enough to be dangerous to people, but normal walking pace is just slow enough for them to have time to react. If we were sitting still or riding horses there'd be no problem."

"I don't suppose there's any chance of that? Sitting still, I mean, and maybe getting in a couple of hours of sleep while we're at it?"

"Unfortunately, there are lots of things in the forest more dangerous than Berands fronds," he said, fumbling out his prayer stick and looking up. Overhead, the nearly-solid forest canopy showed a small patch of blue sky; just wide enough, he estimated, to let a sky-plane through. "But you're right; we can't keep this up any longer. I pray thee, deliver unto me a sky-plane."

Danae pried her eyes open. "I thought you didn't want to use sky-planes."

"I don't," he admitted. "But it looks like we either risk it or we lie down and die here."

Danae nodded and closed her eyes again. No argument on that one, either, Ravagin thought, looking down at her. She must really be tired. Laying his sword down, he ground his knuckles into his eyes.

One of them ought to stay awake until the transport came...

The swish of dead leaves and undergrowth as the sky-plane came to a soft landing in front of them startled him out of his light doze. Shaking his head to clear his eyes, he snatched up his sword and looked quickly around. No trolls, no predators. They'd been lucky. "Come on, Danae," he grunted, shaking her arm. "Time to go."

"Wha—? Oh. Already?"

"Yeah. Come on—a little effort now and you can be in a real bed in ten minutes."

"Sold," she murmured, getting to her feet with a sigh.

The trip to the forest way house took about five minutes, and Ravagin spent the entire time with his stomach tied in a tight knot. But the sky-plane performed with normal Shamsheer perfection, taking them exactly where he'd indicated and settling them down in front of the way house door without even a bump.

Danae had fallen asleep again during the trip, but she woke up enough to do most of her own walking as Ravagin guided her inside and to one of the bedrooms. "Where is everybody?" she mumbled once as he steered her past the kitchen/dining area and toward the bedroom wing.

"Probably no one else is here," he told her. "The place isn't manned full-time, like the way houses in the cities are."

"Mmm."

He took her to the first bedroom they reached and helped her make it to the bed. She flopped down across it, and was instantly asleep.

He took a deep breath, feeling his own fatigue washing up against the edges of his mind as he gazed down at her. It was a large enough bed... for a long moment he was tempted to simply collapse there beside her and not bother finding a room of his own. But there were things he really ought to do before he could sleep, and with a sigh he went out, closing the door behind him.

A tour of the entire house came first, to make sure he and Danae were in fact alone. He took his time, trying to watch for anything that might look out of place. But the house was empty, and as nearly as he could tell everything was where it was supposed to be. You're getting paranoid, he chided himself as he headed for the kitchen. You get a couple of renegade trolls, and you think the whole planet's out to get you.

Though that was basically what had happened on Karyx...

He took a couple of minutes more to make sure the house's climate control was set at a good sleeping level, then used his prayer stick to have the kitchen prepare dinner for them in eight hours. Then, feet dragging noticeably, he headed back to the bedroom wing. Bypassing Danae's room, he opened the door next to it...

Renegade trolls.

He thought about it for a long minute. Then, sighing, he closed the door and retraced his steps back to Danae's room. She hadn't moved noticeably since he'd left her. Slipping the sword and scorpion glove from his belt, he laid them on the floor within easy reach from the bed and lay down next to her. Setting his mental alarm for eight hours, he dropped off to sleep.

Danae awoke with a gasp, the vivid dream of green-glowing trolls fading only slowly from in front of her eyes. For a long minute she just lay there on the bed, staring at the ceiling as she listened to her heart pounding and tried to break through her disorientation and remember where she was.

Something moved next to her—

She jumped violently, twisting her head in sudden fright, only to find that it was Ravagin moving in his sleep beside her. Taking a deep breath, she expelled it, and for another moment lay still, wondering if she should try and go back to sleep. But between the dream and the shock she'd just had, she was wide awake. Moving carefully, she eased her legs over the edge of the bed and sat up.

Her scalp itched furiously, and as she scratched vigorously at it she realized her whole body felt more or less the same way. Small wonder—it'd been days since her last shower. Standing up, she made her way to the door and out into the hall.

The bathroom was a couple of doors further along down the wing. She spent the first minute taking care of her bladder; then, stripping down, she got into the shower, a good-sized booth designed to look like the area beneath a small waterfall. The water, coming over the top of a rock-like overhang in a wide sheet, completed the illusion, splashing into mist from the floor. It was also waterfallchilly, though not as cold as she'd feared it might be—Ravagin must have neglected to get the heater started before coming to bed. Still, any clean water was welcome, and the chill helped drive the last bits of sleepiness from her brain. It was, she thought as the water cascaded down around her head and shoulders, almost impossible to feel demoralized as long as you were clean.

She'd finished scrubbing herself to a high gloss, and was standing beneath the radiant drier, when she first noticed the odor.

She sniffed cautiously, then more deeply, the cozy sense of well-being evaporating with the rest of the droplets on her skin. Even given all she didn't know about Shamsheer's smells, there was something wrong with this one. Something ominous... and it was getting stronger. Scooping up her clothes, she opened the bathroom door and stepped out into the hallway—

And straight into an inferno of smoke and fire.

"Ravagin!" she screamed, ducking halfway back into the bathroom and throwing a look down the hall. The flames running up the walls and flickering through patches of the floor, she saw with sudden horror, were heaviest directly outside the bedroom where Ravagin was still sleeping. Oh, God, no, she thought wildly. "Ravagin!" she shouted again.

"Danae!" his answering call came, almost inaudible through the crackle of the flames. "Hang on—I'll be right there—"

"No!" she shouted back. "The hall's on fire."

Through the smoke she saw the door down the hall crack open. "Where are you?" he called.

"Over here, in the bathroom. There aren't any windows in here!"

"I know. Let me think."

For a few heartbeats there was no sound but the roar of flames, and for the first time Danae noticed an oddly strong wind blowing down the hallway toward Ravagin's room. Must be an opening down that direction for the air to be coming in from, she realized. "Ravagin? What's down the other direction?"

"More bedrooms and storage," he called. "Okay. Go back to the shower and turn it on as high as it'll go. Have you got anything that you can use to stuff into the drain?"

"Just my clothes."

"Use your bodice—you can afford to lose that. Soak the rest of your clothes and put them on. Keep the door closed while you do it."

"Right."

The operation seemed to take an eternity, but it was probably only a couple of minutes before she was dressed in the dripping clothes and easing the door open again. The water that had collected inside flowed gently out, adding steam to the smoke already there. It also snuffed the flames directly by her feet, and for a moment she dared to hope it would be enough to cut her a path back to the bedroom. But a quick look crumbled that hope completely. The entire ceiling and floor seemed to be ablaze now, creating a solid wall of flames in both directions.

And she was now thoroughly trapped.

"Ravagin?" she shouted, fighting to keep her rising panic out of her voice. There was no answer, and for a horrible second she wondered if he'd gone out the window. Deserted her... "Ravagin!"

"I'm right here," his voice came reassuringly through the roar—but from the wrong direction.

Twisting around, she peered through the smoke the other way down the hall. Facing directly into the odd wind was a mistake, and in seconds her eyes were watering blindly with smoke and soot. But in that first second she'd been able to make out a dim figure beyond the flames. "I'm still here!" she shouted back, rubbing furiously at her stinging eyes. "Can I get through that way?"

"We don't have any choice. Are your clothes and shoes still wet?"

"Yes, and the water's still flowing around my feet."

"Okay. Go back and get Your bodice; you'll want to put it over your head. Hurry—we haven't got much time."

She didn't need the urging. Ten seconds later she was back at the door, the sopping bodice wrapped around her face and hair. "Are you still there?" she called, feeling the panic rising again. "I can't see you."

"I know—I can barely see you. Grab hold of this."

And like magic a thin cord appeared through the flames in front of her. It wasn't until she'd grasped it and its tip curled firmly around her hand and wrist that she realized what it was: the whip of Ravagin's scorpion glove. "Got it," she called.

"Now make sure your eyes are covered, and then grab the whip with your other hand."

"Ready."

"Okay." He paused, and she could sense somehow that he was bracing himself. "On the count of three I want you to come around the corner and toward me like all of Melentha's demons were right on your tail. I'll help pull; you concentrate on keeping your feet under you. Ready? Okay: one, two, three."

Clamping her jaw tightly, Danae leaped out into the hallway—

A blast of hot air hit her square in the face, burningly hot even through the streaming bodice. Dimly, she felt her entire body blistering where she stood; but even as she took her first step, she found herself flying through the burning hallway. Her arms felt like they were being pulled out of their sockets; she stumbled once, her feet striking what felt like liquid lead—

And abruptly she slammed into something solid that caught her and half dragged, half led her into sudden coolness.

"Ravagin," she gasped, clutching him tightly.

His hand slid over her face, pulled the bodice free. "It's okay, Danae—you're safe now," he soothed her.

She took a shuddering breath, blinking enough of the tears out of her eyes to see that they were in another bedroom. Across the room a broken window was blowing a stiff breeze toward them. "I thought Shamsheer houses were more fireproof than this," she gasped.

"They also come with built-in detectors and fire-fighting systems," Ravagin growled. "Our little friends apparently figured out a way to shut them down."

"Our—?" Danae's stomach tightened into a knot. With the fire driving all other thoughts from her mind she hadn't even made the connection. "The spirits?" she whispered.

"Who else? Come on—let's get out of here before they come up with something else to try."

Together they headed over to the broken window, and Ravagin took a careful look outside. "Looks clear. I'll go first, you come down after me. Watch the broken glass."

It was indeed clear outside, and a moment later they were hurrying around toward the front of the house, keeping to the middle of the narrow grass strip between the house and the edge of the forest.

Above them the roof of the house was beginning to crackle though there was remarkably little smoke and as yet no visible flame. "How did they do it?" she asked Ravagin. "I mean, even if they could knock out the anti-fire system, how did they get enough heat to start a fire in the first place?"

"They must have gotten into the central control system and found a way to overload the wiring throughout the house," he replied grimly. "Damn them, anyway. I never even thought they might do something like this."

They rounded the corner—and skidded to a halt.

Resting up against the front of the house was a huge, spindly circle sitting vertically on a wheeled base. A white haze filled its circumference, a haze that mixed with a billowing mass of black smoke streaming out its for end. "My God," Danae gasped. "What in the worlds is that?"

"It's a giant fan," Ravagin growled. "It's pulling the smoke out of the hallway, probably so as to give the fire a good head start before we smelled anything and woke up. Gives the fire a good air flow, too, of course."

Danae stared at the huge device. "But where did it come from? You're not going to tell me they had something like that in storage here, are you?"

"Not hardly," he said grimly. "There's a Forge Beast out back. I guess they got into that, too."

Forge Beast: a computerized forge capable of designing and making any desired metal object, the definition from her orientation came back to her. "They must have been in the house for hours—

maybe even since before we got here."

"Maybe," Ravagin said slowly. "On the other hand... well, it should be easy enough to test."

She watched, frowning, as he stepped to the nearest tree and sliced a thick branch off with his sword.

"What are you going to do with that?" she asked.

"See just how strong this fan really is. Stay here."

"Ravagin—" She bit down on the protest. He surely knew what he was doing....

Carefully, he moved to within a few meters of the fan and stood there for a moment studying it.

Then, taking hold of his branch with the whip of his scorpion glove, he extended it as close to the fen as it would go—flipped it into the blades—

And with a horrendous grinding of broken metal, the blades shattered into shrapnel.

"Well, that settles that," Ravagin said as he walked back to where Danae stood. "Extremely cheap construction, probably thrown together in less than an hour. Which means that it took them—" he glanced at the sun, glinting now between the trees to the west—"eight or nine hours to find us, get into the various systems and learn how to use them, build the fan and get it into position, and actually start the fire."

"That's pretty fast," Danae said, a sinking feeling tightening her stomach.

"Yeah," Ravagin nodded heavily. "But it could have been worse. Such as if you hadn't woken up and taken that shower."

Danae swallowed, remembering. "It was a bad dream that woke me up. One where trolls had the green glow of demon possession."

Ravagin cocked an eyebrow at her. "Interesting. You may still have some spirit sensitivity left over from your demogorgon contact. Could prove useful."

"If we can get to civilization in one piece, you mean—" She jumped as a sudden crash came from the house beside them. "What—?"

"Part of the roof caving in, probably," Ravagin said.

She glared at him. "How can you be so damned calm about it?" she growled.

"Only because anger and panic won't gain us anything," he told her. "Like it or not, Danae, we've gotten ourselves tangled up in another battle of wits with spirits; and just like it was on Karyx, we're not going to be able to outfight them. So we're just going to have to outthink them."

Danae took a deep breath, fighting for some calm herself. She was only partially successful. "All right. So how do we outthink ourselves away from here without them catching on?"

"I've got an idea." Pulling the prayer stick from his belt, he raised it to his lips. "I pray thee, deliver unto me a sky-plane."

"You think that's wise?" she asked as he returned the stick to its place. "The way this whole prayer stick network works implies there's a central dispatch somewhere. If they've gotten into that—"

"Actually, I think that network probably was the way they traced us here before," he admitted. "But our only other choice is to walk out, and with night coming on in a few hours I'd personally rather take my chances with the spirits. Besides, I've got an idea that might shake them off our trail, at least temporarily. Meanwhile—" he glanced over to the house, where flames were starting to flicker on the roof—"I tossed your crossbow and other stuff out the window earlier. I suggest we collect them and move a little further into the forest."

The sky-plane was nearly an hour in arriving, which Ravagin took to be a good sign. "It means the spirits didn't have a gimmicked one standing by near here," he explained, "which implies this one is clean."

To Danae it didn't imply nearly that much. "Suppose they just held it over behind the trees somewhere for fifty minutes and then let it come?"

"Because any sky-plane that sat on the ground in response to a send-order would automatically be classified as damaged and power to it cut off until it was time for it to go to a Dark Tower for repair," he told her. "Sky-planes are notorious for being grounded when anything seems out of order."

She eyed the fringed carpet dubiously. "Well... maybe. It still doesn't get us out of here without the spirits knowing where we've gone."

"No," Ravagin agreed. "But this might." Stepping over to the sky-plane, he drew his sword and drove it straight down into the carpet's center.

"Ravagin!" Danae yelped. "What—?"

And suddenly she understood. "You've damaged it," she breathed. "That means... it'll have to go to the Dark Tower."

He took a deep breath and nodded. "And it'll go there without a prayer-stick call or anything else from us that can be traced. I hope."

Danae looked down at the carpet. "I guess we'll find out."