Triplet

Chapter 31

The djinn hovered before her, its grotesque face barely centimeters from her own, its flame-red eyes glowing with hatred and dark satisfaction. I see you, it seemed to say, and though she couldn't hear it with her ears, the spirit's message was abundantly clear. Your invisibility is gone. We will hunt you down and burn your thoughts with such pain as you have never before imagined. It paused, as if waiting for her to plead for mercy. But her tongue was frozen to her mouth; and as the silence lengthened she saw to her horror that a new image had joined the first: the carved demon-face from Melentha's archway. Like the djinn, it glared at her; unlike the other spirit, there was an amusement to its gaze that chilled Danae's blood even more than the djinn's hatred had done...

"Danae!"

With a start, she woke up. "Ravagin?" she croaked through dry lips. The glow that had been seeping through her blindfold had changed to unmitigated black, and for a horrible second she wondered if she had gone blind. "Ravagin!"

"It's okay, Danae, I'm here," his voice came, tired but soothing. "Another bad dream?"

"Oh, God. Yes." She licked her lips, working moisture back into her mouth. "Ravagin... I can't see anything."

"It's okay—there isn't actually anything in here to see. The sun's gone down, about an hour ago."

"An hour ago?"

"That's right," he confirmed. "I hope you got some good rest for having slept the day away; I sure as hell didn't."

Danae grimaced. "I'm sorry—my fault; I kept waking you up, didn't I? I don't understand it—I haven't had nightmares like this since I was seven."

"Let's hope we never do again," he said, and this time she could hear the tension in his voice. "I suspect it's the locale, not anything internal to either of us."

"You had nightmares, too?" she asked, pushing herself to a sitting position.

"Yeah—watch your head."

"Right." She felt above her with one hand as she massaged the small of her back with the other. An undersized cave on the southern edge of Cairn Waste wasn't exactly the kind of accommodations she'd been hoping for when they fled from the inn, but it had been the best Ravagin had been able to come up with as dawn had begun coloring the eastern sky and her eyes had started screaming for some relief from the light. The place had certainly taken its toll; in addition to the terrifying dreams, a quick inventory showed that she had aches in a dozen places, souvenirs of the chill and damp and the hardness of the floor.

On the other hand, they'd survived the day without being found by either Melentha's gang or any of the more bestial predators of the region. All in all, a fair enough trade. "Have you gone outside at all since morning?" she asked.

"Once or twice. Mostly watching out for either of those gangs we outran on the way here, but we apparently gave them the slip."

She nodded, pulling off the blindfold and rubbing furiously where the cloth had made her skin itch.

"I suppose it's only fair for the demogorgon's curse to be good for something."

"I'd say being able to spot trouble twice as far away as it can see you qualifies as good for something, yes," he said with a touch of the old Ravagin dryness. It was a part of his personality that Danae hadn't seen much of since the escape from Melentha's house. A part of him, she suddenly realized, she'd rather missed.

"I hope you left me something to eat," she asked, feeling a strange heat rushing into her cheeks.

"Yeah, but you may not like it much." He rummaged in the innkeeper's pack, pulled out two handsized loaves of bread. "I think the same thing that gave us all those wonderful dreams is also affecting our taste buds," he added, handing her one of the loaves. "Be prepared."

Cautiously, she tried a bite. Usually this style of bread loaf had a light, sweet taste to it bordering on her usual definition of pastry. This one was as insipid as packing material. "Yeych," she growled, forcing herself to chew and swallow. "No wonder no one lives in Cairn Waste anymore. What do you suppose is causing it?"

"I don't think anyone knows for sure," he shrugged. "But after what you've told me about the fourth world and all... my guess is that this may be a weak spot between that world and Karyx."

"Like a half-finished Tunnel, you mean?"

"Something like that. In fact, the builders may have planned to build a Tunnel somewhere around here and just never gotten around to doing it."

She thought about that. "So it's not enough of a Tunnel for them to actually break through, but they can get close enough to affect us?"

"It's just a guess." He took a bite of his own loaf, made a face. "Though I can tell you that if I'd been in charge of planning Triplet, I sure as hell wouldn't have let these damn spirits get even this close to me."

"We'll take that up with the appropriate authorities. If we ever find them." Danae hesitated. "You still want to try for the Tunnel tonight?"

Ravagin exhaled tiredly. "I don't see any point in delaying it. Unless you've come up with some new reasons I haven't heard yet?"

She grimaced, but he was right: all her arguments for a different day or time for their break had already been soundly scorched. The guards Melentha would have at the Tunnel would certainly be expecting them to move under cover of darkness, which might have argued for a daylight blitz...

except that with Danae's eyes the way they were such a move was out of the question. And putting it off to another day did nothing but delay the inevitable. "No, you're right," she sighed. "We might as well go ahead and get it over with. If she gets us, she gets us—that's all there is to it."

"That's the spirit," Ravagin nodded, getting stiffly to his feet and walking stooped over toward the cave's mouth where their horse was tethered. "Half pessimism, half fatalism. Just remember, if she's still thinking at all straight, she's going to recall that killing us could be hazardous to her masters'

plans. Or at least killing you could be."

"That's great comfort," Danae muttered, brushing the crumbs off her hands and standing up into a cautious crouch. "Come on, let's get going."

There was still a hint of afterglow in the western sky, which to Danae's affected eyes left the world almost as brightly lit as if it were noon. Seated in front of Ravagin on the horse, she again took up her previous night's role as lookout, watching and listening for anything that might mean trouble. In the Cairn Waste, she'd discovered yesterday, that largely boiled down to scanning the horizon for other riders or large animals. Cover here was virtually nonexistent, save for occasional large rock formations and—increasingly—a gradually rolling landscape as they headed southeast into the region of the Cairn Mounds. In those cases, where her eyes couldn't serve, her hearing had to; but the Cairn Waste had earned its name honestly, and they neither saw nor heard anyone as they made their way along.

It wasn't until they began picking their path around and between full-fledged mounds, barely half an hour after starting out, that Danae realized just how close to the Tunnel their cave had been.

"Nothing like spending the day on the enemy's doorstep," she muttered as Ravagin called a halt and found a scraggly bush to loosely tether their horse to.

"Can you think of a better place to hide than right under their noses?" he whispered back. "Besides, who'd be crazy enough to spend a whole day in the Cairn Waste?"

"That's great logi—yeep!"

"What?" he hissed, swinging around with sword already half out of its sheath.

"Over there," she told him, nodding nervously toward the spot of green haze moving slowly across the mounds a hundred meters ahead.

Ravagin took a deep breath, easing the sword back down. "Nice to know we're in the right place.

Can you see any detail, or is it just a green blob?"

"Uh... nothing. Though it is kind of far away."

He grunted. "Chances are good it's a parasite spirit, then, not a regular demon. Interesting. I'd have thought Melentha could have pulled enough firepower to have nothing but the highest-level demons and peris watching the place."

"Maybe with our invisibility she's given up on unbound spirits," Danae suggested.

"Or else it means Hart's doing a slapjack job of leading the goose chase," Ravagin grunted.

Danae bit at her lip. "Whatever Hart does, he does well," she said quietly. "That's all part of his job, as he's so fond of saying."

They stood there quietly for another minute, watching as the parasite spirit ahead continued on to eventually vanish between two mounds to their left. Then Ravagin took her hand and together they started forward.

It was harder than Danae had anticipated. Her sole previous experience with the Mounds had been during their walk from the Tunnel to the Besak-Torralane Village road at the beginning of the Karyx leg of their trip, and it rapidly became apparent that that had not been a representative section of the landscape. The mounds to the north of the Tunnel were at the same time more angularly rocky and more gravelly, making footing treacherous and the consequences of missteps painful. Danae's enhanced vision gave her surprisingly little advantage, not much more than Ravagin's experience and greater knowledge of the area gave him.

But there was nothing else to do but continue on. And so they did; walking, and slipping, and bumping knees and shins, and hissing curses they didn't dare express aloud, because there was no way to know when they would be within hearing of the guards at the Tunnel. It was, all in all, a miserable two hours.

Eventually, they made it to the mound Ravagin had chosen to make their first direct reconnoiter from. Carefully, thankful the long trek was over, Danae crawled on her belly to the top and eased her head up for a look.

"Well?" Ravagin whispered in her ear. "What do you see?"

She took a deep breath. "About a dozen men," she whispered back. "Sitting or standing just in front of the Tunnel entrance. All armed, looks like. And..." She squinted. "I think I can see the haze of a lar around them."

"I'm sure you do," Ravagin grunted. "Probably backed up right against the entrance so that no one can get in."

She nodded, tears blurring her vision as all the tension and aggravation of the hike turned into frustration. Unreasonably, she knew, she'd still somehow clung to the hope that Melentha would have been foolish enough to entrust the Tunnel's defense to her spirit allies. But now, outnumbered six to one by armed men against whom their hard-won spirit invisibility was useless, the hopelessness of the situation abruptly threatened to overwhelm her...

"Hey! You okay?"

She licked her lips, sniffed once. "Of course I am. How could things possibly be better for us?"

Shuffling a few centimeters closer to her, Ravagin reached over to put an arm across her shoulders.

"Come on, Danae—you can't let it get to you," he whispered urgently. "We've still got a chance, but not if you let fatigue and poor odds and all this damn spirit influence break you down. Come on—if your father could see you now—"

"Leave Daddy Dear out of this!" she hissed, fury erupting into the black depression threatening to bury her. "If you can't remember I'm more than just an extension of my father's money and personality and influence—get your arm off me, damn it, and concentrate on thinking up something clever."

Obediently, Ravagin removed his arm... but even as Danae swiped her fists at her eyes to dry them, she thought she saw a grimly satisfied smile tugging at the corners of his lips. "All right," he said calmly. "Now: look around—carefully—and see if you can see anyone standing watch farther out from the entrance."

Gritting her teeth, Danae again raised her head. They can't see me, she reminded herself firmly. As far as they're concerned, it's pitch black out here... and I'm as invisible as if they were spirits. She took a good look, then lowered herself back down. "I don't see anyone at all," she whispered. "Just the dozen or so down there."

Ravagin nodded. "Uh-huh. Interesting. Melentha's definitely lost her ability to think tactically."

"You could have fooled me," Danae growled back. "Besides blocking the only exit from this triple damned planet, they also just happen to be standing in the middle of a lar, which makes them impregnable from any attack we could possibly come up with."

"Impregnable?" Ravagin shook his head, a thoughtful look on his face. "Not even close—which is why I said Melentha's lost her touch. Tell me, what's the problem with sitting inside a lar circle?"

"Ravagin, this is no time for guessing games—"

"It's the fact that you're rooted to the spot there yourself, isn't it?" he continued as if she hadn't spoken. "Sure you're immune from any attack, at least for awhile... but if the attack keeps up, it'll eventually get through. And you're stuck there until it does."

"Great—except that we haven't the resources for that kind of attack," she pointed out.

"True, but maybe we can come up with something that looks like one. Quiet a minute, please, I have to think." He pursed his lips, gazing out into the darkness. "Okay," he said at last. "Okay, I see what she's got in mind. A small group, close in to the Tunnel, with no firebrats or dazzlers to tip us off...

she's hoping we'll be lulled by the apparent inactivity all around and just walk right into their arms."

Frowning, Danae lifted her head again. They certainly were being unnaturally quiet for men on boring nighttime guard. On the other hand— "But then why aren't they waiting inside the cave where we wouldn't have had any chance at all of seeing them?"

"Partly because Melentha and the demons aren't too bright. Partly because the cave there is supposed to be even more haunted than the rest of the Cairn Mounds."

"Spirit-possessed men shouldn't care about ghost stories."

"Agreed," Ravagin nodded. "Which implies our little invisibility trick has forced her to give up using possessed people. Definitely a development in our favor."

Or else, Danae thought, the spirit-possessed ones are hiding inside the cave. But even she could see now that it didn't really matter. No matter who or what might be inside the Tunnel, she and Ravagin would still have no option but to go charging through and take their chances. "All right, I'm game," she sighed. "I guess. So how are you going to fake a major attack on their lar?"

"I'm not exactly sure yet," he admitted. "But I've got some ideas. You see, they may have all the numbers on their side; but we've got the one thing you can take between the worlds of Triplet."

"And that is...?"

"Knowledge. Come on; let's move back a couple of mounds and see what resources we've got here to play with."