Triplet

Chapter 40

For a long moment he just stared at the open window, mind whirring with possibilities while at the same time half afraid it would all turn into a false alarm and evaporate before his eyes. The window hadn't simply been flung wide open, he could see now: there was a clearly visible gap between the two pieces of glass, but the gap was narrow and there was no guarantee that he could force them any further open. If they opened outward, in fact, as they almost certainly did, nudging the sky-plane up against the window would do nothing but push it shut. And if there were any alarms—or if whoever was nearest that window were even a light sleeper...

But all the caveats didn't really mean anything. If he didn't do something, Danae was dead. Pure and simple.

Carefully, he reached out to the side until he found the familiar wall of the sky-plane's edge barrier.

"All right, spirit," he said, gritting his teeth unconsciously. "Remove the edge barrier."

Again he felt the sensation of the spirit shifting within the sky-plane... but this time nothing happened in response to that activity. "Remove the edge barrier," he repeated, sharpening his voice and mind against the spirit's unwillingness. Nothing. Apparently, even with a spirit in control, it really was impossible for a sky-plane to fly without an operating edge barrier. Ravagin thought back to all the cases of spirit animal control he'd seen on Karyx—So they're not just weaker in their contacts with humans, he thought. Something to be grateful for, in general; in this particular case it was going to be damned awkward.

But there might be a way around it. Maybe. "All right. Sky-plane: land on the roof there, next to the central tower."

The carpet came smoothly to rest as ordered. Steeling himself against whatever the hell reaction this might cause, Ravagin let his scorpion glove whip uncoil until it extended beyond the sky-plane's fringe. "Sky-plane: go straight up," he said.

And without any fuss or argument the carpet rose into the air alongside the tower. Leaving the scorpion glove whip free outside the edge barrier.

They were at the open window a moment later; and as Ravagin had suspected, the two panes of glass did indeed open outward. The scorpion glove, he quickly discovered, had a markedly slower response time when operated through the edge barrier; but by forcing himself to take things slowly, he managed to swing both panes fully open without causing any noise.

Fully open, the window was about half the width of the sky-plane.

Ravagin swore viciously under his breath. Sky-planes on the ground could be rolled up just like ordinary carpets; once in the air, they were absolutely rigid. They also flew level to the combined gravitational and centrifugal vectors, which meant he couldn't bring up one side of the thing and slide in at an angle. For a minute he tried to come up with a way to make a tight banking curve that might do the trick... but even if he didn't smash both himself and the sky-plane flat against the room's far wall once he was inside, the kind of maneuver he'd need to accomplish it would almost certainly alert every guard and troll in the castle. And with the sky-plane's edge barrier in place, there was no way for Ravagin to simply climb in the window himself.

With the edge barrier in place...

Ravagin gritted his teeth. The scorpion glove whip was still hanging limply inside the open window; carefully, he wrapped it as tightly as possible around one of the small pillars supporting the edges of the window. To the best of his knowledge, scorpion gloves hadn't been designed to handle the kind of stress he'd been putting this one through for the past couple of days, and it occurred to him that eventually he was going to push it too far. But he'd pretty well run out of options. Looping the whip slightly to get a solid grip on it with his gloved right hand, he drew the knife Habri had given him with his left—

And with a convulsive motion jabbed it deeply into the carpet material at his knees.

The sky-plane dropped like a lasered bird. For an instant Ravagin fell with it; then the whip caught, and he found himself dangling along the wall with a twenty-meter drop beneath his feet.

There was no time to waste, and he wasted precious little of it. Even before the muffled thud of the sky-plane's crash reached his ears he'd jammed the knife back into its sheath and was holding on with both hands as the scorpion glove labored to pull him up. With what little of his concentration he could spare from the operation he listened tensely for signs that the movement or noise had attracted someone's attention. But there were no hooting alarms—no shouts or sudden lights—and a minute later he was sprawled on the floor inside the window.

He lay there quietly for a minute, waiting until the worst of the adrenaline reaction had passed and his arms were merely trembling instead of shaking. Then, licking his lips, he eased cautiously to his feet and looked around him. With the faint starlight filtering in from outside he could see that he was in a large bedroom... and as his eyes adjusted he discovered, to his complete lack of surprise, whose bedroom it was.

Fortunately, Simrahi and the woman in bed with him did not seem to be light sleepers. Both lay motionless beneath the blankets, their breathing steady and slow, neither giving the slightest impression that they'd been disturbed by Ravagin's unorthodox entrance to their room. Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown, Ravagin quoted to himself; but of course that hadn't been written about Shamsheer castle-lords with trolls guarding their bedrooms.

Trolls.

Ravagin gritted his teeth. He'd worked so damn hard getting into the tower he'd almost forgotten that getting behind the trolls downstairs was only the first step. A sneak attack at the back of a single troll might give him enough surprise advantage to beat out the machine's electronic reflexes... but with four of them down there that approach was an invitation to suicide. What he needed was a way to simultaneously take out all the trolls; to set a bomb off at the foot of the staircase, perhaps? But if there were any real explosives on Shamsheer, he'd never heard of them. What he needed was something heavy to push down the stairs...

What he needed was his sky-plane.

Carefully, with an eye on the sleepers in the bed, he moved back to the window and looked down.

Below, the sky-plane was a slightly darker rectangle against the roof. Spirit, I order you to rise, he sent the mental command, trying to project the thought to the sky-plane. He hadn't felt the spirit's presence since knifing the carpet, and had no idea whether it could even hear him, let alone whether it was still obliged to follow his orders. Spirit, I order you to rise, he repeated. Nothing. Either the spirit was ignoring him, couldn't hear him, or simply couldn't move the damaged sky-plane. For Ravagin, it didn't much matter which.

Damn, he thought, turning back into the room as fresh sweat began to form on his forehead. Even in the dead of night, Habri's motley army couldn't hang around the stairs down there forever without being discovered. Think, Ravagin, think. Here you are, right in the middle of a castle-lord's private chambers, with all the best of Shamsheer's magic machinery to draw on. There must be something you can use to take out a few trolls.

Beneath the blanket, Simrahi moved in his sleep... and Ravagin smiled tightly.

There was something he could use.

He half expected to find a pair of trolls standing guard outside the royal bedroom, but apparently even Simrahi's suspicions hadn't pushed him that far. The hallway outside was deserted; quickly, Ravagin moved along it, searching for the stairway up. He found it, and began climbing, and a few minutes later reached the dome at the top of the tower. The sky room, it was called... and even after sixteen years of travel in the Hidden Worlds it was like a punch in the gut to discover there was still something on Shamsheer that could take his breath away.

Through the crystal dome arching over his head the stars blazed down.

Not the stars as seen from the middle of a Shamsheer castle surrounded by villages and lights; not even the stars as seen from a lonely field somewhere out in the Tweens. These stars were incredibly brilliant, shining with an intensity that seemed unnatural... and Ravagin stared in awe at them for several heartbeats before he finally realized why.

Around the edges of the dome, the top of the castle wall could be seen, as well as the tall hilt-shape of the Giantsword within it and the rolling Harrian Hills far beyond it to the west... but each of the shapes was a black shadow, lit only by the glow from the starlight above. None of the lights that had been shining anywhere outside were visible. On sudden impulse, he took a careful scan across the sky. The scattered clouds had apparently been filtered out, too.

He licked his lips and took a deep breath. The sheer technological ability the sky room implied... and yet, for those first few seconds, he was aware only of what the room said about its creators' souls. To have built something this sophisticated with no purpose except the enjoyment of beauty... For the first time in his life, Ravagin felt a flicker of true kinship with the Builders. Perhaps, for all their incredible power, they hadn't been all that different from human beings after all.

The moment faded, and the real world crowded back into Ravagin's mind, and he lowered his eyes and thoughts from the glorious display. The sky room was sparsely furnished—some comfortable chairs, a desk, a large bed in the room's center—and it took only a minute to find the crystalline throne he was seeking. The throne, he realized now, that Simrahi had been seated on during Ravagin's brief hearing.

The castle-lord's bubble.

The chair was large, clearly designed to accommodate heftier men than Ravagin. As solid-looking as glass, it nevertheless yielded like a soft cushion as he sank gingerly down into it. There was no reaction—no audible alarm, no attempt by the chair to throw him out—and Ravagin let out the breath he'd been holding. So far, so good. Now came the tricky part. He had no idea at all how the bubble worked, or even whether someone who wasn't a castle-lord could operate it, and there was no way to find out except the hard way. Taking a deep breath, he ran through the most obvious possibilities and chose one. "Bubble: rise," he said.

No response. "Bubble: ascend," he tried. "Bubble: activate. Bubble: be raised. Chair: rise. Chair: ascend. Throne: rise—"

The chair rose smoothly toward the dome above, Ravagin almost falling off the thing in surprise.

"Throne: stop and hover," he managed, gripping the arms tightly.

The chair did so. Carefully, he reached out a hand, following it a minute later by the scorpion glove's whip... but both confirmed what his eyes had already told him: the bubble's spherical force-field was still off.

All right, don't panic, Ravagin ordered himself sternly. Let's try thinking, instead.

For starters, unlike the more proletarian sky-plane, the bubble had clearly been designed to be functionable indoors. A quick experiment showed it had none of the sky-plane's aversion to walls, either, which meant Ravagin should have no trouble getting it downstairs. But ramming doors and trolls without the force-field going wasn't exactly what he'd had in mind when he'd come up here.

"Forcefield on," he said. Nothing. "Bubble on. Bubble activate. Be bubbled. Uh... shield on. Simrahi: bubble on. Damn it all—" He broke off, thinking furiously. All right: try changing perspective. How would a castle-lord refer to the force-field? As a shield? An aura? "Aura on." Or might the command be keyed to the more visible aspects of the field? "Haze on. Sphere on. Golden on.

Goldlight on."

And abruptly the room around him was filled with orange haze.

"I have the very bad feeling," Habri said tightly, "that your sorcerer friend has run out on us."

"He's not my friend," Danae said dully, keeping her eyes on Habri's feet. Habri's feet, and the feet of the two huge men sitting on the step on either side of her. There wasn't much to look at down there, but people who knew they were defeated seldom maintained eye contact with their conquerors. "He's just an acquaintance—and not even much of that, it seems," she added, letting a touch of bitterness seep into her voice.

Habri was silent a moment. All around them, she could sense that the growing nervousness in the men sitting on the stairway was dangerously close to the breaking point. How long would it be, she wondered, until Habri decided that Ravagin had indeed failed? And when that happened, what would they do?

They would retreat, of course, hoping to postpone their revolt to a more auspicious time. Retreat, taking her with them for Habri to vent his frustration and anger on.

And whatever had happened to Ravagin—whether he was dead or a prisoner—she couldn't count on him to get her out of this one. Swallowing hard, she licked her lips and let her shoulders slump a bit more where she sat. Only by being a weak, helpless female could she have any hope of survival.

"Apparently he valued his own skin more than he did yours," Habri said abruptly. "But I made a bargain—your help for your freedom—and if he has taken the freedom, you are still here to provide the help I want. Torlis, Carmum—bring her. Masmar, hold the men here until I give the signal."

And before she knew what was happening, Danae found herself yanked to her feet and half led, half dragged up the stairs. "Are you crazy?" she hissed at Habri. "You'll alert the trolls—"

"That is precisely what I intend to do," the other said grimly. He had his sword in his hand now; beside Danae, the guard he'd called Carmum had released her arm and similarly drawn his blade.

"And I, not you, will do all the talking," Habri added, waving the tip of his sword near her throat. "Is that understood? Not a word, or Carmum and Torlis will vie for the privilege of killing you."

She managed to nod. He's gone totally insane, she thought desperately, heart pounding in her throat.

Good God, what do I do?

Habri topped the stairs and headed straight across the room toward the trolls, Danae and Torlis close behind him as Carmum dropped back a pace. Habri made no attempt to be silent, and Danae saw with a sinking feeling that all four trolls had their crossbow pistols pointed before the intruders had taken their third step. "Ho, trolls of the Castle-lord Simrahi," Habri called across. "I bring news to the castle-lord that cannot wait until morning." He half gestured back to Danae and Torlis. "I have uncovered a traitorous plot to usurp the castle-lord's throne, with this sorcerous woman and this guard at the head."

Danae gasped in shock, shock that quickly turned to pain as Torlis squeezed her arm warningly.

"The castle-lord is not to be disturbed until morning," one of the trolls called back, its flat voice sending a violent shiver up Danae's spine. Flashback to the confrontation outside the Tunnel... except that this time the trolls' electromechanical reflexes wouldn't be hampered by spirit meddling. Habri would get them to open the door—would attempt to gain entry to Simrahi's chambers—and the trolls would fight back.

And they would all die.

She clenched her teeth, then forced herself to relax them. With only one option left, the agony of decision making was gone, leaving an almost morbid peace in its place. It's now or never, girl, she told herself. At least this way they won't get the door open. Who knows?—if you're fast enough, the trolls might even let whatever's left of you surrender to them. Taking a deep breath, she eyed Torlis, choosing the best spot to hit him—

And behind the trolls, the doors exploded outward in an explosion of golden light.

The thunderous clamor as the heavy wood slammed the trolls to the floor almost but not quite drowned out Habri's startled expletive. But the traitor recovered fast. Danae's mind had barely had time to register the fact that the orange explosion was actually a chair and human figure encased in a glowing sphere when Habri gave a loud shout and charged toward the stairway now laid wide open before him. The grip on Danae's arm tightened as Torlis broke into a run behind his leader, forcing her to do likewise. Behind her, Carmum came past them on her other side, while a quick glance showed the rest of Habri's army streaming up into the room with swords drawn. Ahead, the orange sphere was slowing from its high-speed impact; the trolls were still struggling to get out from under the rubble of the shattered doors—

And planting one foot, Danae pulled sharply on her arm, yanking Torlis off balance, and drove her free fist hard into his armpit.

The other bellowed, letting go of her arm as if he'd been scalded. He spun around, his expression a mixture of pain and utter astonishment. That's right, you scum, Danae thought toward him with grim satisfaction. The weak, helpless female is gone. As a matter of fact, she was never really here.

His astonishment lasted only a second before he bellowed again and swung his sword in a vicious horizontal arc... but that one second was all she needed. Even as the sword slashed toward her side, she dropped to her left forearm and hip and kicked out with both feet directly at his knees.

The double crack was audible even over the war cries from behind and the troll alarms from ahead.

Torlis toppled over backwards, screaming in agony, and Danae was free. Tucking her legs back under her, she rolled back to her feet—

Just in time to duck as a second sword whistled past her nose. Carmum, come back to help his comrade.

He'd caught her off guard, but the sword was already past her, and until he could stop its motion and bring it back around she would have the advantage. Giving a gut-tightening shriek, as Hart and her combat instructors had long ago taught her to do, she swung her empty hand up as if to throw something in Carmum's eyes. Empty or not, the other's blink reflex still cut in, and for a split second he was blind. Leaping toward him, Danae lowered one hand to block any backswing of the sword and swung the edge of the other toward his throat—

And dropped to the floor as, out of nowhere, the orange sphere rammed full into her opponent.

"Damn," she breathed, scrambling to her feet. The sphere came tightly around and abruptly the orange glow vanished. She took a long step, leaped upward to grab Ravagin's outstretched hand, and a second later was wedged beside him in the crystalline throne.

"Goldlight on" he snapped. The orange sphere reappeared, and suddenly his arms were around her, holding her tightly to him.

She hugged back with equal strength, feeling her arms beginning to tremble with reaction. "You okay?" he asked anxiously into her ear.

"I'm fine," she gasped back. "I was afraid you'd been captured. Where did you get this—my God, is this a bubble?"

"Sure is." Ravagin twisted partly away from her, freeing one hand while leaving the other still around her. "Throne: follow my mark; mark."

Danae turned her head to find they were moving toward the doorway Ravagin had just shattered.

Beyond the golden glow, she could see some of Habri's men were already on the stairs and heading up. "Ravagin! Habri's past the trolls—"

"I know," he said grimly. "Throne: more speed; continual mark. Goldlight off."

And before she realized just what he was doing, the chair abruptly darted forward to follow his pointing hand through the doorway and up the stairs.

She inhaled sharply, stomach twisting with the sudden upward movement even as a spasm of claustrophobia tried to tie knots into it. "Ravagin!—the bubble—"

"Not enough room in here to use it," he barked. He was right on that count; between walls, ceiling, and running people, there wasn't a hell of a lot of room in the stairway. "I don't want to run anybody down."

"You don't want to run down traitors?"

"Nope—I want to save them for Simrahi."

They shot past the last of the climbers—Habri himself—reached the top of the stairs—

"Goldlight, on; throne, stop," Ravagin snapped; and with a hard deceleration that nearly threw Danae off the chair the orange glow reappeared and the throne came to a dead halt.

Neatly blocking the stairs.

Ravagin took a shuddering breath. "I'll be damned," he said, something midway between awe and disbelief in his voice. "It actually worked. Well... Throne: rotate one-half turn." Smoothly, the chair turned to face back down the stairs.

"You carhrat!" Habri spat at them, waving his sword impotently at the golden haze. "You spineless, lying bastard of a carhrat! I offered you your freedom and you repay me with treachery—"

Danae glanced at Ravagin, half expecting him to respond with invective of his own. But he just sat there, listening coolly as Habri continued to rave. A motion from the bottom of the stairs caught Danae's eye...

She barely had time to clamp her teeth before the troll fired its crossbow, and Habri's tirade was cut off in mid-word.

Closing her eyes, she let a shiver run up through her body. "Is it over now?" she asked, a sudden weariness washing over her. "Can we please get out of here now?"

"Not quite yet," a calm voice from behind them answered before Ravagin could speak. "Goldlight: off."

The golden glow vanished... and Danae turned to see Castle-lord Simrahi standing by the archway.

Flanked by six armed trolls.