Triplet

Chapter 41

"If you have an explanation," Simrahi said calmly, "I will listen to it now."

Beside Danae, Ravagin slid forward and dropped off the chair onto the floor in front of the castlelord.

"I'd be happy to give you one," he said wearily, turning to offer Danae a hand. She came down beside him, keeping hold of his hand. "But I'm not sure what it would prove," he added, turning back to Simrahi. "As of yesterday you had already made up your mind about us. I doubt the events downstairs have changed that opinion any."

Simrahi simply cocked an eyebrow. "You may be surprised," he said, eyes flicking to the scorpion glove on Ravagin's hand. "Tell me, Ravagin, why did you join my treasonous guard master in his attempt to usurp my rule?"

Ravagin held his hands out, palms upward. "You had virtually condemned us to death, my lord, with no hope offered of reprieve. When one is offered freedom under such circumstances, one has no choice but to take it."

"Indeed. Then why did you turn against him at the end?"

It seemed to Danae that Ravagin stiffened slightly. "That question should need no answer."

"Why not? Neither of you are citizens of Numant Protectorate—you owe me neither loyalty nor love. For that matter, from what little I can learn about you it is unclear that you owe loyalty to anyone on Shamsheer."

"Perhaps one from whom no loyalty is demanded is more able to give it of his own free will,"

Ravagin said quietly.

"Perhaps." Simrahi's eyes flicked to Danae. "And you, Danae? Where does your loyalty lie?"

"With Ravagin, my lord," she said automatically. The words suddenly registered in her fatigued brain

— "That is, in the way Ravagin has already said," she corrected, feeling blood rushing to her cheeks.

A touch of a smile flickered across the castle-lord's face. "I think perhaps you were correct the first time." His gaze returned to Ravagin and he sobered. "You entered my, private tower through sorcerous means, yet did me no harm. You took my bubble unlawfully, yet used it in my defense.

You allied yourself with treason, yet in the end used that alliance to expose and destroy it. Is this a fair summary of events?"

A shiver went up Danae's back as she realized what Simrahi's words and phrasing meant. They were on trial again; an informal trial, but no less real for that.

And it was clear that Ravagin recognized that, as well. "Only that our intentions remain as I stated them at my hearing yesterday, my lord," he said, matching the castle-lord's formal tone. "We wish merely to pass peacefully through Numant Protectorate and continue our journey."

"To where?"

"I am not permitted to say, my lord."

For a long moment Simrahi gazed at them in silence. Then, raising one hand, he tapped the nearest troll on its side. "You will escort Ravagin and Danae to the sky-plane landing area," he ordered it.

"They are to be allowed to leave Castle Numanteal. They are not permitted to return. Ever."

"Acknowledged," the troll said, taking a step forward.

Ravagin bowed his head briefly. "Thank you, my lord. We will not betray your trust."

"No thanks needed," the other said. "And less trust than you may imagine. I need not rely totally on your statements; though you were apparently unaware of it, I have been following the events of this night ever since you entered my sky room and learned to command my bubble."

Ravagin's hand, gripping Danae's, suddenly tightened. "You—? But no trolls came to attack."

"I sent none. Like the trolls, the bubble is mine to take command of at any time." Simrahi's eyes bored into Ravagin's. "I confess that I felt a certain amount of curiosity as to your purposes, as well as your means of entry. And I was not disappointed. There is a great deal more to you than one would first imagine, Ravagin. To both of you," he amended, nodding courteously to Danae.

"Someday I hope to discover just where it is people like you come from."

Danae held her breath... but Ravagin merely shrugged slightly. "It is not in my power to satisfy your curiosity, my lord."

"I thought not." The castle-lord took a deep breath. "At any rate... day will soon be here. If you wish your departure to be at all secretive, you had best take it quickly."

Ravagin again bowed his head. "Again we thank you, my lord." He hesitated a fraction of a second.

"And we leave you with a warning: Habri's treason may not be the last such attempt on your rule.

You had best be on your guard."

Simrahi's expression turned to flint. "I do not need outlanders to tell me how to defend the Numant Protectorate," he bit out. "Depart—now—and do not forget you are barred from ever returning to this castle. Do not forget; for the trolls will certainly not." Turning his back, he strode away from them, all but one of the trolls falling into a loose defensive pattern around him.

"You will go to the sky-plane landing area," the remaining troll said, taking another step forward.

"No argument," Ravagin sighed. Letting go of Danae's hand, he stepped closer to slip his arm around her waist, holding her tightly to him as they headed down the bloodstained stairway.

Fifteen minutes later they were seated on a sky-plane, soaring over the castle wall and heading southwest toward the Tunnel. Ten kilometers as the birdine flew, Danae remembered; perhaps ten or fifteen minutes by sky-plane. We're going to make it, she thought. This time we're realty going to make it.

Five minutes later, Ravagin brought them down in the middle of the Harrian Hills.

"All I know," Danae growled as he sent the carpet away, "is that you'd better have one damn good reason for this."

"I hope I don't, actually," he said, rubbing his forehead tiredly. "I hope like hell I'm being overcautious. But after everything that's happened, I'd rather err that way than the other. Come on—

the Tunnel's this direction. We should be there in an hour or so."

"We'd better be," she said, setting off with a sigh. "In case you haven't noticed, we haven't had a lot of sleep in the past few days. I'm about dead on my feet—and we might get that way permanently if Simrahi catches us out here."

"He only told us not to come back to the castle," Ravagin reminded her.

"I somehow doubt he's going to be worried about the strict letter of the law," she shot back. "And we were getting along so well with him there at the end—why did you have to go out of your way to irritate him, anyway?"

"I didn't 'go out of my way,' " he growled, "and I don't think a little irritation really stacks up against life and death, do you?"

"Life and—?" She broke off. "You mean... the spirits?"

He shrugged uncomfortably. "It's one of the things I had in mind," he said. "What better place for them to take control of than the protectorate containing the Tunnel to Threshold?"

"Oh, God," she murmured. "You think Simrahi will be able to keep them back? He doesn't even know what it is he's up against."

"He can't stop them," he admitted. "Not for long, anyway. It's going to be up to us, Danae—us and whatever the Twenty Worlds can gather together to throw at the problem."

"Great." Something he'd said a minute ago... "Were there any other reasons you gave Simrahi that warning?"

"Yes. One."

"Care to enlighten me?"

"No. Not now, anyway. Suffice it to say that if what I was trying to do works, we'll hopefully never know it." She had to be content with that.

An hour later they carefully topped the last hill and came within view of the Tunnel... to find four trolls standing guard at the entrance.

"Damn, damn, damn," Danae snarled, pressing her chin harder into the rocky ground of the hill as they lay there side by side. "Damn him. I thought he seemed to know too much about us, Ravagin—

the way he called us outlanders and all. And now he's blocked the Tunnel—"

"I'm afraid it's worse than that," Ravagin interrupted her tightly. "Those trolls down there aren't Simrahi's."

"They're not—?" She caught her breath and took another look... and felt her hands curl into fists in front of her. The trolls' color scheme was green/white/violet, not Numant Protectorate's red/silver/

black. Which meant—

Which meant the spirits had found the Tunnel... and after all they'd already been through, there was going to be yet one more battle to fight.

A battle she suddenly knew she couldn't face.

"God," she whispered, closing her eyes against it all. "I can't handle any more, Ravagin—I just can't."

Ravagin reached over to squeeze her hand. "I don't want to, either. But it looks like we won't have to."

"What?" she asked dully.

"Take a look."

Frowning, she opened her eyes and peered off in the direction he was pointing. In the distance, riding through a gap in the hills and clearly making for the Tunnel, were a half dozen men in the red/

silver/black of Castle Numanteal. Accompanied by a half-dozen trolls. "I don't understand," she muttered. "What are they doing here?"

"Searching for trouble near the castle, of course," Ravagin said. Danae glanced at him, taken aback by the grim smile on his lips. "The other part of my reason for dropping veiled threats on Simrahi.

Don't you see?—he's got his soldiers out sweeping the territory for possible trouble."

"And just happening to clear out our path for us in the process." Danae looked back at the interloping trolls and shook her head, almost afraid to believe it. "I just hope this is going to be as one-sided as it looks."

It was even more so. Again, the trolls' complex and heavily layered battle/control/decision circuitry proved more than the spirits within them could handle efficiently under combat conditions. Within minutes of the Numant soldiers' first challenge, all four interlopers were laid out on the ground, frozen into immobility. A few minutes after that four sky-planes arrived and they were loaded aboard, presumably to be taken back to the castle. The sky-planes rose and vanished behind the hills to the east, the patrol continued on its way—

And Ravagin cautiously rose to his feet. "Let's go," he said, head turning back and forth as he made one final scan of the area. "Straight to the Tunnel, but remember not to go in right away. It's possible there might be someone skulking further in where the patrol couldn't see them, and we'll want to check things out carefully."

"If anyone's in there," Danae said grimly, "we'll kill him. Pure and simple."

There was; and they didn't.

He loomed out of the darkness just where the Tunnel began its curve toward the telefold, and for a moment they all stared at each other. "I was starting to think," the other said at last, "that I was going to have to tackle that reception committee out there all by myself."

Danae took a deep breath. "And you would have, wouldn't you. You blithering idiot."

Hart merely smiled. "Part of my job," he said. "Welcome home, Ms. mal ce Taeger."