Triplet

Chapter 22

Damn him. Damn her. For that matter, damn this whole stupid planet. Flopping over under her blanket onto her back, her brain fighting stubbornly against the sleep the rest of her body wanted, Danae stared at the starlight filtering through the curtains onto her ceiling. It wasn't fair for Ravagin to pull the rug out from under her like this—it just wasn't fair.

It wasn't her fault. None of it. Not the demogorgon invocation—Gartanis had all but pushed that on her, what with his talk of fated contacts and future apocalypses and all. Not the friction with Melentha, either, which she suspected was a factor in Ravagin's decision—it had been Melentha who'd been riding her all this time, not the other way around. And certainly not the whole mess with Coven—it had been the demons there who'd been pulling all of those strings. Damn the demons, too.

The demons.

Danae frowned at the ceiling, her mind jumping back to her evening arrival from Besak and the confrontation with Melentha's pet demon. There hadn't been anything like that before today, not in all the trips she'd made in and out of that gateway since arriving on Karyx.

What had made that one trip different? The fact that she'd been to Coven and dealt with the powers there? No—the demon hadn't even twitched when she and Ravagin had returned together from Coven that morning. Alternatively, could it be the fact that she'd just learned the demogorgoninvocation spell and was carrying Gartanis's incense focuser? That was probably more reasonable...

except how had the demon known about it?

Communication with all those other spirits, perhaps? The Twenty Worlds' sketchy understanding of spirithandling seemed to take as a basic assumption that each spirit operated basically as a free agent, interacting little except where ordered to do so. But her experience with Triplet's fourth world now put that assumption on extremely shaky ground. Was there, in fact, an entire spirit society, operating perhaps along hierarchical lines, that included such lines of communication as the post line demon's knowledge had implied? Then that green patch she'd seen leave the post line after she'd passed it could have been one of the demon's parasite spirits, sent by the demon himself to alert Melentha that Danae was back at the house. Ravagin had implied he knew she'd been to Gartanis before she told him about the trip. Presumably Melentha's demon had learned about it from another spirit from Besak, perhaps another parasite spirit under his control but not trapped into the post line. It opened up all sorts of new possibilities; if spirits were in fact being summoned from a separate world instead of from some vague sort of limbo, an information exchange would be almost inevitable once they were released back into their own world.

Into their own world...

Danae stared at the ceiling, almost feeling the blood draining out of her face as a horrible thought struck her. Into their own world...

Quietly, she rolled out of bed and fumbled for her clothes, hands shaking with sudden dread as she fought in the dark to get dressed. It abruptly made sense now: their sudden expulsion from Coven, the vision that Gartanis had tried to describe to her—

And why the demon in the post line had tried to stop her from finding out about the fourth world's existence.

The hallway was dark and silent as Danae slipped out of her room. Hardly daring to breathe, she hugged the wall as she tiptoed to the next door and carefully opened it. Inside, she made her way toward the bed, a vague shape in the starlight. "Ravagin?" she whispered tentatively.

"What is it?" his soft voice answered instantly. "Danae?"

"Yes," she whispered back, finding the edge of the bed and sitting down on it. "I've got to talk to you right away. I think I know why we were thrown out of Coven."

There was the sound of shifting blankets as Ravagin's dim form elbowed itself to a sitting position in front of her. "Why?"

She hesitated, her dread giving way slightly before the fear that this was going to sound crazy.

"Remember first of all that it was only when they realized we were outworlders that they froze up and kicked us out. We wondered at the time whether that meant they didn't have some power or authority over us that they needed."

"I remember," Ravagin said, the first hint of impatience creeping into his voice. "This couldn't have waited until morning?"

Danae licked her lips. "No, I don't think so. You see, we were exactly backwards. It wasn't that they couldn't do something to us. It was instead that we could have done something to them. Or rather, that the rest of the Twenty Worlds could."

"Danae, would you kindly refrain from mentioning—"

"Look, Ravagin," she hurried on, "what would happen if the two of us disappeared on Karyx? They'd stop sending people in, wouldn't they, at least until they had some idea what had happened?"

"Not necessarily. We've lost people here before."

"Lost them dead, yes, but not totally missing. Right?"

"All right," he sighed. "For sake of argument, let's say they'd close down travel here until they found us. So why should Coven care about that?"

Danae took a deep breath. "Because they don't want access to the Tunnel cut off. Because they're using it to get into Shamsheer."

"That's ridiculous," Ravagin snorted. "Spirits can't pass through the Tunnel."

"Why not?"

"Because they're not humans, and only humans can pass through the Tunnel."

"That's an assumption," she pointed out, shaking her head. "An assumption based on the belief that Triplet is only three worlds. But we know now that there are really four here."

"So what does the number have to do with anything?"

"It tells us that when we invoke spirits we're bringing them across a world-world boundary. Which says immediately that under certain conditions spirits can pass between worlds."

"Well... all right, maybe here they can. But the Shamsheer-Karyx boundary is different."

"Why?"

He was silent for nearly a minute. "It still doesn't make sense," he said at last. "Spirits can't get into Shamsheer—otherwise the place would be crawling with them."

"How do you know it isn't—?"

"And furthermore," he cut her off, "why would they bother? What does it gain them?"

"Maybe it's an extension of what they're going for here: control of the human society."

"Oh, come on, Danae—aren't you letting your imagination run away with you just a little?"

"We agreed that the Karyxites are growing ever more dependent on spirithandling and spiritenhanced items, didn't we?" she countered doggedly. "Isn't Coven proof enough for you that that dependency is being deliberately pushed by the spirits themselves?"

He exhaled slowly. "Yeah. Coven. Demons in charge of a spirit-trapping operation. It is a pretty strong indicator, I'll admit—but only insofar as Karyx is concerned. I don't buy the Shamsheer invasion bit. For starters, there simply isn't a good mechanism for them to get across the teleport."

"Why can't they just drift across?" she suggested. "They're noncorporeal, after all. Or even come out melded with a traveler, maybe in a fractional-possession state."

"Nope," he shook his head. "The early explorers to Karyx did some careful experiments along those lines and pulled a straight zero. The telefold treats spirits like local objects and won't pass them.

Period."

"Or at least it didn't back then," she argued. "Doesn't prove the spirits haven't come up with a new approach that does work. What about that sleepwalking syndrome you mentioned—God, was that only yesterday? You'll recall that Melentha's fractional-possession checks didn't turn up anything, but I was sure under some sort of influence."

Ravagin hissed thoughtfully between his teeth. "You sure were," he admitted. "I suppose it's possible. But it's hard to believe the telefold could be fooled like that."

"Why not? We know even less about the telefold than we do about Karyx's spirits. Besides, if there's no invasion under way, we're back to not knowing why Coven let us go in the first place."

"So how's that different from where we were this morning?" he said dryly. "Get off the bed, will you?"

"What are you doing?" she asked as she stood up and took a step back.

"Getting dressed, of course," he grunted. His dim figure swung its legs out of bed, and there was the sound of rustling cloth. "You are suggesting we head out to the Tunnel right away, aren't you?"

She opened her mouth, closed it again as all the warnings she'd heard about nighttime travel on Karyx flashed through her mind. "Uh... no, not necessarily. I mean, it would be dangerous. Wouldn't it?"

"Sure it would. But if you're right about all this, the demons are likely going to wish they'd kept us in Coven after all... and the longer we stick around, the longer they've got to find out about it and correct their mistake."

A shiver went up Danae's back. "God. You're right. Come on, let's get moving."

"I'm glad you agree," Ravagin said. "... Oh, hell."

"What?"

"Damn. Well, it's just that I had Melentha double-secure the house tonight in case you decided to contest my decision by skating out on us. We'll have to get her to ungimmick it."

Danae felt her stomach knot up. "Can't you do it by yourself? I know there are spells to release spirits you didn't personally trap."

"Yeah; and most of them are tricky beyond belief, either in execution or in consequences if you don't do it exactly right. I'd rather just wake her up and tell her we're leaving early. We don't have to tell her why." He stood up, reached to the nighttable for his short sword. "Come on; let's go." Taking her arm, he started toward the door—

And abruptly the room blazed with green light.

Ravagin had the faster reflexes. "Man-sy-hae or1antis!" he shouted before Danae could do more than throw her arm up to shield her eyes against the sudden glare.

But to no avail. The green light remained steady... and as Danae's eyes adjusted she realized with a gut-wrenching feeling that it was coming from a ring of glowing green shapes spaced along the walls surrounding them.

Green demon shapes. "Ravagin—" she gasped in horror.

The slamming open of the room's door cut her off. "Fool," a deep, mocking voice came from the hallway. "Did you really think a simple spirit-protection spell would avail against me?"

Danae caught her breath as that voice clicked in her mind. "Ravagin—that's the demon-possessed man who talked to us in Coven—!"

And Melentha walked into the room.