Triplet

Chapter 28

"If it helps any," Ravagin's voice came, too loudly, in her ears, "it looks like a line of storm clouds will be blocking off the sun in a half-hour or less. If they don't dissipate too quickly, they ought to keep it under cover until sundown."

Danae didn't reply. She was thoroughly sick of this whole mess. Sick of the blinding white glare that continued to burn into her eyes through both eyelids and three wrappings of cloth, sick of the loud swish-thud of their horse's hooves in the tall grass, sick of the exaggerated rolling motion of the animal and of the oppressive pressure of Ravagin's body pressing against her back. The encounter with the demogorgon had effectively left her in a reverse sensory deprivation tank, and after nearly half a day of it she was ready to go insane.

She'd risked her life to buy them all a way to escape. A difficult, dangerous decision, one she'd made in a responsible, adult manner... and in return, Ravagin and Hart had once again chosen to treat her like a child.

Behind her, Ravagin cleared his throat—a loud, raspy sound. "Look, Danae, we're going to be arriving at Findral fairly soon, and I'd like to be back on speaking terms before we get there. I understand why you're mad, but Hart was determined to go ahead with it, the same way you were hell-bent on doing the demogorgon invocation yourself. You can hardly defend one example of bullheadedness and not the other, now, can you?"

Danae gritted her teeth hard enough to hurt. "Oh, you understand why I'm mad, do you? Well, maybe you think you do, but then your style of thinking has never been too good where my feelings have been concerned."

"So explain it to me. Come on—the silent treatment's gone on long enough."

She took a deep breath. "Did it ever occur to you that I just might like to have some input into a major decision like that? That as a thinking, rational part of this team I had a right to be in on it? No, of course it didn't. I'm just Danae, the brainless heiress who has to be taken care of like she was still eight years old."

Ravagin waited until she was finished, until the echoes of her voice had faded from her sensitized ears. "I suppose that's one way to look at it," he said. "It's not the way I intended it, but... Well, all right. Suppose you'd been consulted. What would you have said?"

"What difference does it make now?"

"Come on, humor me. Would you have agreed to let Hart risk his life drawing the pursuit away?"

"Agree to let him get himself killed, you mean? Of course I wouldn't have."

"But that's his job, isn't it? He's paid for taking this kind of risk for you—and for getting killed in the process, if it comes down to that. Right?"

"That is about as cold-blooded—"

"No, answer the question first. Isn't that his job?"

She tried forming three denials... but none of them made it past her lips, and eventually she gave up.

"All right," she sighed. "Yes, I suppose that's how he sees it."

"All right, then. From his point of view, this decoy plan was the best way he could see to do his job.

You wouldn't have been able to change his mind. All an argument would have accomplished would have been to make him wonder whether he should instead have stayed here at your side... and that kind of doubt would have been a handicap he might never have gotten rid of. Is that what you would have wanted, to have given him something else to have to fight?"

"No, of course not—"

"Fine. Then you're saying you'd have been able to sit here, hiding all of your doubts where he couldn't see them, and given him your permission to go off and get himself killed in your behalf?"

"You make it sound so damn brutal..." She trailed off as her brain suddenly registered something her ears had picked up. Something in Ravagin's voice.... "That is what happened, isn't it? Only with you doing it instead of me? You didn't like the plan, either."

"It's the best possible plan for our safety—yours and mine." Abruptly, Ravagin sounded very tired.

"It's also the worst possible one for Hart."

For a long minute there was no sound but the swish-thud of the horse's hooves and the droning of wind and distant insects. "It's not a matter of being treated like a child, Danae," Ravagin said at last.

"It's the simple fact that there are certain no-win situations in this universe—and a no-win situation requires a no-win decision. When you've lived through enough of them, the way Hart and I have, you begin to realize that sharing the guilt around with others doesn't make your piece of it any easier to carry."

He fell silent... and for that minute, at least, the quiet pain in his voice overshadowed the glare in Danae's eyes. Groping in front of her, she found Ravagin's hand on the horse's reins and held it. "I'm sorry," she whispered.

He didn't reply; but a moment later his free hand reached tentatively around her waist to hold her tightly against him. Almost painfully tightly... but she didn't mind.

If she couldn't help share his guilt, she could at least try and share some of his pain.

It was after sundown, and the white glare in her eyes had subsided to merely a dazzling gray, when Ravagin called a halt. "How do you feel?" he asked as he helped her off the horse.

"Like I just spent four hours riding a car with oval wheels," she grunted, wincing. The pins and needles in her legs and buttocks were almost painful in their intensity. "I never realized just how much horses bounce when they walk."

"No signs of this sensory stuff wearing off?"

"I can't tell. Where are we?"

"About a kilometer from the village of Findral. Or, rather, from where the edge of Findral's nighttime lar will be."

"We going to spend the night there?"

"That's what I'm currently trying to decide."

He was silent for a long minute, and Danae found that if she ignored the countryside sounds around her, she could actually hear the faint sounds of humanity from the direction of the village. "What's our other choice?" she asked. "Spend the night out here?"

"Under the circumstances, that's not really an option. The risk of bandits aside, we're in fairly desperate need of food and rest. No, our only other real choice would be to backtrack along the road toward Besak and find an isolated inn that has its own lar at night. Unfortunately, we have the same problem in either case."

"Me?"

He snorted gently. "Your eyes and ears, actually, but it boils down to the same thing. You're going to attract a lot of attention, and we can hardly pretend you got lost from a blindman's bluff squad."

"How about if we say I've got a severe head injury or something?" she suggested. "That way we could pass these off as bandages and also explain why I'm staying isolated in the room."

"And that we're on our way to Citadel to consult one of the master healers there? Yeah, that's the obvious explanation... except that if we try it in Findral someone's bound to suggest calling in one of the local healers."

And since healers invariably consulted with spirits... "So if we use that excuse we have to go for the isolated inn instead, right?"

"Right." He didn't sound very enthusiastic. "We unfortunately get the opposite problem there, that we'll have less of a crowd available to hide in. If Melentha's got human agents scouring the area yet... well, if one of them spots us, we'll just have to deal with him, that's all."

Danae shivered. Earlier, her sensitized ears had read pain in Ravagin's voice. Now, she could hear equally clearly the death there. "We'd better get going, shouldn't we? Before we create more of a stir by asking someone to take down their lar to let us in?"

"Point. Circulation all restored? Good. I'll give you a hand getting back up and we'll get going."

Locked in her blindness, Danae had no idea what the lay of the land was like, and so for the next several minutes she rode with the uncomfortable vision of riding through a vast wasteland with the nearest inn ten or more kilometers away. It was almost with a shock, then, when she suddenly noticed the sounds of life penetrating the cloths around her ears, and realized that Ravagin was guiding the horse off the road onto what felt like a dirt trail.

"Remember," Ravagin murmured into her ear, "you're very sick. No sudden, confident motions—in fact, let me lead or carry you as much as possible, okay?"

"Right," she muttered back... and a moment later they were there.

The attached stable was small—that much she could tell from the echoes—and a small stable implied a small inn. That wasn't unreasonable, she realized; this close to Findral, the inn's main business would be only those travelers who missed the evening cutoff for getting into the village itself. But the smells of the place bespoke at least an attempt at cleanliness, and as Ravagin set about discussing price with the innkeeper's wife she heard the faint hum of a protective lar being invoked.

All in all, she decided, a not unreasonable place for fugitives to spend the night.

"Okay, try it now. But take it easy."

Reluctantly, Danae began untying the bandages. The blackness that had finally settled in in front of her eyes was as welcome as cold water on a steaming day, and she hated to give up that relief so soon after gaining it. But Ravagin had a point... and besides, she as yet had no proof that her eyes were still functional. Eventually, she would have to try this, and it might just as well be now.

Setting her teeth firmly together, she lifted the cloths away and opened her eyes.

They worked. The room itself was still quite adequately bright—the cracks around the window shutters almost hurtingly so—but she could see perfectly well.

Perhaps too well. In the lines of Ravagin's face she could detect a quiet dread that he probably thought was better hidden. "Well, go ahead," she said. "Aren't you going to hold up some fingers or something for me to count?"

Some of the tension went out of Ravagin's face, and he exhaled with obvious relief. "Whoof. Good. I don't mind telling you—well, never mind. How bright is it?"

"Like maybe mid-morning on a clear day. What've we got, just the light seeping in from outside?"

"Yeah—and there's not a hell of a lot of it. A firebrat tethered around the corner of the building by the road, looks like. Okay. You feel up to taking care of yourself for a few minutes while I head downstairs to get us some food?"

She found the grace not to say anything sarcastic. Hart's single-minded concern for her safety—and its consequences—were too fresh in her mind for her to find fault with Ravagin's version of that same concern. "No, I'll be fine. Get going, I'm starving."

"Okay." He groped in the—for him—darkness for her hand, gave her the short sword Hart had left them before he took off on his own. "Remember, if anyone should come in, you've only got the advantage until he gets a light started. If it's not me or the innkeeper with a tray, kill him fast."

"I understand."

The tension was back on his face, but he rose and left without another word. She remembered to shade her eyes as he opened the door, but whatever the inn was using for hallway illumination wasn't too bad and it was no more than a few seconds before the faint purple blob faded completely from before her eyes.

With a sigh, she put the sword down on the bed beside her and stretched out, closing her eyes. So here we are, she thought tiredly. The ones who are going to shatter whatever the hell the demons are up to on Karyx and beyond. One aging Courier, and one complete and total dead weight.

Dead weight.

The words echoed painfully around her head. Dead weight. Worse even than just useless. With her eyes and other senses like this she couldn't run or fight or do anything else to help get them through Melentha's gauntlet and back to the Tunnel. Ravagin would have to lead, guide, or carry her everywhere they went until she recovered from the effects of that demogorgon contact.

If she ever did. Gartanis hadn't done so.

Unbidden, tears came to her eyes. Child, she flung the word at herself like an epithet. So, you wanted a chance to make the hard decisions, huh? Well, great, because here's a beaut of one all ready for you.

And there really wasn't any question as to which way the decision should go. Ravagin knew as much as she did about what the spirits were up to... and Ravagin stood a far better chance of getting back through the Tunnel on his own. Hart had made his own sacrifice to get the word through. Now it was her turn.

And if she was going to desert Ravagin, she would never have a better chance than right now.

Rolling off the bed and onto her feet, she stepped to the window, squinting against the light coming in around the worn shutters. Theoretically, the inn's lar defined her boundaries for her... but there was nothing that said a lar would or even could block anything it couldn't detect. And there was certainly nothing to be lost by trying.

Except perhaps their only weapon against the searching spirits.

She stopped, hand on the window sash, and swore under her breath. But there was no way around it.

Half the advantage of being invisible was the fact that the searching spirits didn't yet know about it.

If the lar couldn't detect her, it would surely notice that something had passed through its protective ring... and when it reported that fact, either Melentha or someone else would surely come to the proper conclusion.

She couldn't risk it, not even to give Ravagin a clear shot at the Tunnel.

Or in other words, she was in the clear. She didn't have to sacrifice herself. Didn't have to make the hard decision.

As, somehow, things had always seemed to work out for her. How many of the hard decisions along the way, she wondered suddenly, had yielded to that same kind of logic? And how much of that logic had been little more than rationalization? She opened her mouth again, searching her memory for the most vile word in her vocabulary... and paused.

Somewhere, she could hear a faint hissing.

The lar, was her first, hopeful thought. But that hum had been different, and she could in fact still hear it beneath this louder and closer sound.

Louder and closer...

Carefully, she lowered her hands from the window back to her sides and turned around. Nothing was visible... but facing this direction, the hiss was definitely louder. She licked her lips, heart beginning to beat loudly in her ears. An uncomfortable tingle raised the hairs on her arms...

And through the thick wooden door a red shape floated.

Danae bit down hard on her tongue. A djinn, a small bit of rationality in her brain seemed to whisper. Only a djinn. But the rest of her brain wanted to scream.

She'd never seen a djinn like this. Never seen any spirit with the sheer and horrible detail with which she was seeing this one. The spindly physique, like an emaciated mockery of the human form; the grotesquely misshapen head with its pointed jaw and gaunt cheekbones; the eyes—

The eyes. Redder than the rest of the creature, they sparkled with intelligence and hatred as they swept the room. Danae watched it drift slowly through the air, hardly daring to breathe as those terrible eyes swept the room. It couldn't see her—somehow, even in the rising swell of panic, there was never even a shadow of doubt in her mind about that. But the spirit was indeed searching for something—that much, too, was certain. And if it happened to touch her... or even heard her...

She bit down on her tongue again... and as the djinn circled over toward the bed a glint of reflected light there caught her eye. The short sword Ravagin had left her.

Carefully, eyes on the djinn, she moved slowly toward the bed. Djinns were about the most powerful spirits that could be permanently trapped in a tool or weapon, and the necessary spell was correspondingly tricky. But once bound in the sword, the creature should be incapable of hurting them.

Would it still be able to communicate with the rest of the spirit world? There was no way to know.

The djinn moved away from the bed, and Danae froze in mid-step. It drifted toward her... not quite on a direct line... she held her breath...

Concentrating on the djinn, she didn't notice the approaching footsteps until it was too late to do anything. The door came open; and as she threw her arm up to shield her eyes, she caught just a glimpse of a figure silhouetted against the glare from the hallway.