Triplet

Chapter 44

Omaranjo Saban's way house was larger and more elegant than most Ravagin had seen on Shamsheer, its dimensions all the more pronounced when the modest size of the town of Horma over which it towered was taken into account. Horma, its outer buildings edging precariously close to the westernmost fringes of Darcane Forest in south-central Feymar Protectorate, was barely a tenth of the size of Kelaine City; yet Saban's way house was at least twice the size of the one Pornish Essen presided over there. But it wasn't just the size of the place that set Ravagin's teeth on edge. A sense of arrogant power seemed to permeate the house, from the harsh decor of the conversation area to the strained expression of the local servant girl who went to summon Saban. It evoked unpleasant comparisons with Melentha's mansion in Karyx, and Ravagin found his right hand curling his scorpion glove into a hard fist as he stood at the window and waited for Saban to appear.

"Yes?" a sharp voice came from behind Ravagin. "You wished to see me?"

Ravagin turned to face him... and in that first instant he knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that this man was indeed the one.

Not just because Saban's face, with its thinly tight mouth and hollow eyes fairly oozing hatred and impatience, reminded him so much of the demon face in Melentha's post line archway. Not even because of the hand twitching nervously at the hilt of the watchblade belted at his waist, a hand that, for all the arrogance of the man's voice and expression, proclaimed him to be deep in the grips of a full-bodied paranoia.

It was because of the way Ravagin's face seemed to register in those hate-filled eyes... and the way the man reacted. "Ravagin!" he whispered hoarsely. "But you were the one—he said you were gone

—"

He broke off abruptly. "Sorry—talking to myself. Name's Ravagin, isn't it? I think we met once—"

"Too late, Saban," Ravagin shook his head. "Much too late. There's only one reason you could possibly have reacted to me the way you just did—you know it and I know it, so let's skip the wideeyed innocence. Let's get down to the basics here; and you can start by telling me how many of them you brought over."

The hand by the knife hilt twitched a bit closer. "Who are you talking about?" Saban asked, clearly still struggling to regain his mental footing. "Listen, whatever you think you're doing here—"

"I know what I'm doing," Ravagin said softly. "The question is what the hell you think you're doing."

The shock was beginning to pass from Saban's face now... and in its place the hatred reappeared with renewed force. "What I'm doing is my business," he hissed. "And whether you hope to destroy it or to take it from me, you won't succeed. You hear? Because I'm the only one the demon obeys—the only one."

"Are you, now?" Ravagin said, keeping his voice as calm as possible. Demon, singular—

confirmation at last that their guess about the number and type of spirits in Shamsheer had been correct. The best possible scenario... and yet hardly a reason for optimism. All around him, an almost-felt whisper was beginning to breathe around the edges of his being: the demon and his parasite spirits, gathering their strength for battle. "Are you really in control of this demon of yours, or is it the other way around?" he asked Saban. "You really think that just because he tells you I'm a threat to your plans and humbly asks your permission to destroy me—you think that makes you the one in charge? Face reality, Saban. Without the demogorgon-based spells of Karyx to draw on, any hold you think you have over him is nothing but a wad of wrapping paper."

"Reality, is it? That's what you want, Ravagin; reality?" Saban strode across the room to a desk and yanked open a drawer. "Then take a look. This is reality—and after a century of trying and failing, I'm the one who found the key." He reached into the drawer and pulled out a sheaf of papers. "Feast your eyes, Ravagin, and let your gut devour itself with envy."

The papers were too far away for Ravagin to make out any real details, but he already know what was there. Circuit diagrams. Mechanical layouts. Logic circuits, electrofluid control/decision algorithms, structural data—the secret technological magic of Shamsheer, ready to be memorized and taken across the telefold to the Twenty Worlds. "Impressive," he murmured.

" 'Impressive'; that's all you can say?" Saban gloated. "The complete—complete—circuit diagrams for a Dreya's Womb and a sky-plane, and 'impressive' is the best you can come up with? No mention of the sheer possibilities these papers contain?—nothing about the wealth, the fame and power?

Your sour grapes are showing, Ravagin. Shamsheer is forever open to us now. Or, rather, open to me now."

He ended on a screech of triumph. "Oh, you found a key, all right," Ravagin bit out. "And I suppose Faust thought he was pretty clever, too, after he'd made his bargain with the devil. Did it ever occur to you that in having your pet demon trace out all this circuitry that he would pick up a hell of a lot of knowledge along the way as to how the stuff worked? And how he could bend it to his own ends?"

"His ends are defined for him by me—"

"No!" Ravagin snapped, patience breaking at last. "You're nothing but one of his tools, Saban—a damn stupid fool who let petty greed get the better of you. Just look at yourself—he's halfway to controlling you already. All right, fine; you've got your precious diagrams, and you're a big hero. So quit while you're ahead and help me get rid of him before it's too late."

"With so much of Shamsheer's magic left to uncover?" Saban snorted his contempt. "What sort of fool do you take me for?"

Ravagin sighed. "One who's going to get nothing but a footnote as the man who nearly brought destruction to Shamsheer before he was stopped."

Saban started to speak... and suddenly closed his mouth as the words seemed to register. "What do you mean, stopped?" he bit out coldly. "You can't stop us, not if you had five lives to do it in."

Ravagin stared at the man, an icy chill running up his back. We—the same word with the same inflection to it that Melentha had used... and like Melentha, it sealed away forever the last chance that Saban really was a relatively innocent dupe in schemes that had gone beyond him. Between occupational frustration with Shamsheer's elusive technology and the demon's steady emotional erosion, Saban was lost. Ravagin had hoped against hope that he could yet bring the other back, could turn him into an ally.

Now, instead, he would have to kill him.

"I won't need five lives to stop you," he told Saban, an almost infinite sadness welling up deep in his soul. "All I need to do that little chore is already on its way here. From Karyx."

Saban froze. "From...? What do you mean?"

"Just what I said. Since I'm not sure how to deal with your demon, I'm bringing someone here who will. His name is Gartanis; I'd imagine your demon has heard of him."

The whisper at the edges of Ravagin's mind abruptly seemed to increase in intensity. "Yes, I see that he has," he said. "Good. Then perhaps you'll be able to persuade him that he might as well give up now and return peacefully to Karyx. And from there to the fourth world."

Saban inhaled; a shuddering, rasping sound. "You're bluffing," he all but whispered. "You're here—

Gartanis is on Karyx—and between you and him are a thousand spirits to call on."

"Karyx spirits? Certainly... but I don't need to go to Karyx. Gartanis is already on his way here."

"Impossible. Across the telefold—" Saban bit at his lip.

"Across the telefold you can only communicate verbally?" Ravagin offered. "Don't worry, you're not giving away any state secrets; I know how you did it. A simple personalized invocation spell, with the name of your new spiritual master inserted into the proper place in the middle—"

"Astaroth is not my master—!" Abruptly, Saban gasped and doubled over, clutching at his stomach...

and when he straightened up again he no longer looked human.

Ravagin felt his mouth go dry. The last bit of information he'd needed, tricked out of Saban as he'd hoped to do. But the price for that name was looking like it might be high indeed. "So; Astaroth, is it? You ready to give up and go back to Karyx now, Astaroth?"

"You cannot escape."

Within him, Ravagin's stomach tightened into a knot. Saban's mouth had moved... but the words had seemed to come from all around Ravagin. The memory of his battle with the parasite spirit flashed back, and for a brief, horrible moment he wondered if this sudden burst of unreality meant the demon had somehow taken control of his mind. Then the true explanation caught up with him and he began to breathe again. "Nice trick, Astaroth," he said as conversationally as he could manage. "So you've learned how to work a house's voice synthesizer, have you?"

"I will destroy you," the voice continued as if Ravagin hadn't spoken. "You and the female human will both die."

"I don't think so," Ravagin shook his head. "For starters, Danae—the female human, as you call her

—is already out of your reach. Or hadn't I mentioned that she's the one who went into Karyx to bring Gartanis here? I doubt she'll have any trouble persuading him to come for such a—"

And without warning Saban snatched his watchblade from its hilt. "The human Ravagin!" the demon screamed the knife's target to it in a voice that no human vocal cords could possibly have produced.

Saban's arm cocked backward over his shoulder to throw—

And as his backswing reached its furthest point the scorpion glove whip lashed out to strike him squarely on the wrist. There was the sharp crack of breaking bone and the knife clattered to the floor behind him. The walls screamed again in fury; without uttering a sound of his own, Saban lowered his head and charged.

As, simultaneously, the walls abruptly burst into flame.

Ravagin snarled a curse, sidestepping and throwing a kick into Saban's torso. In a single heartbeat whatever control he'd had in the situation had been snatched from him... and if he died now he would have no one to blame but himself. Saban had to be killed—Ravagin had suspected that for weeks, known it for minutes—and yet he'd hesitated, unable to strike the man down in cold blood. And now his scruples were going to cost him dearly.

Him, and possibly Danae, too. If he died here, she would soon be following.

And with that thought the last shreds of hesitation vanished. Saban, chillingly oblivious to the flames threatening to bring his house down around him, had halted his mad rush, turning back to the attack with hands curled into talons aimed at Ravagin's face... and the scorpion glove lashed out one more time to wrap itself around the other's neck.

A single convulsive jerk, and it was over.

The demon couldn't cry out his fury through Saban, of course, with the man's neck broken; perhaps because the necessary circuitry was already ablaze he couldn't use the house's voice synthesizer, either. Whatever the reason, there was no sound as Saban collapsed to the floor except the increasing roar of the flames, and for Ravagin the silence was more unnerving than any further screams of hatred could possibly have been. Pausing only long enough to snatch the watchblade from the smoldering carpet and jam it into his belt, he scrambled back to the window, snatching up a chair and hurling it ahead of him in a single motion. The glass shattered; taking a long step, he dived headfirst through the gap into the blessed coolness outside.

Only just in time. Even as he hit the ground and rolled, the second floor of the house caved in behind him.

"Give him aid!" someone shouted, and suddenly there were a half-dozen hands on Ravagin, pulling him to his feet and brushing bits of window glass from his tunic and palms. "What happened?" one of them shouted over the roar.

"No idea," he shouted back, looking around him. Surrounding the house at a safe distance, a crowd of onlookers had gathered, watching with horror and disbelief as the house collapsed inward on itself, sending a cloud of sparks into the pillar of smoke billowing upwards. "I was just standing there talking with Saban when the fire started."

"Impossible," someone insisted. "No house could simply catch on fire by itself—not like that, not all at once."

"What were you really doing in there?" another, more hostile voice demanded. "Was it some deadly spell of black sorcery?"

"Are you in league with Saban?" someone else added.

Ravagin gritted his teeth. So Saban's demon experiments hadn't gone unnoticed by his neighbors; and if they didn't know what exactly had been going on in the way house, they knew enough of the basics. And if they jumped to the conclusion that he was a part of it... "I know nothing about any black sorcery," he told his questioners. "I went to Saban in search of lodging, and as we were discussing terms the walls suddenly began to burn."

"Then what were the screams we heard?" the hostile voice demanded. "You trap yourself in lies, traveler."

Ravagin opened his mouth, thoughts spinning furiously... but before he could come up with anything to say his time suddenly ran out.

From the north, barely visible through the plume of smoke, a sky-plane could be seen flying rapidly toward them. A sky-plane, with a lone figure aboard it... and there was little doubt as to what that figure was.

"There is your black sorcery," he shouted, raising his right hand to point at the approaching skyplane.

The gesture brought his scorpion glove out from the confining press of bodies around him. "A

troll, under the power of Saban's spell gone awry, coming here to complete the destruction he planned for you."

Someone in the crowd gasped an oath, and almost unconsciously the press around Ravagin eased as people began to draw back—

And, spinning around to face away from the fire, Ravagin sent the scorpion glove whip snapping out and down. The half dozen people in line with it jumped as if scalded at its touch, and for a handful of seconds the way through the crowd was clear.

Ravagin ran.

One of the men along the way tried to stop him, but a second crack of the whip was more than enough discouragement. All the rest, whether in fear or simply the normal paralysis of shock, stood by like statues as he sprinted through the corridor and out of the crowd. His horse was tethered nearly fifty meters away, a cautious distance that had successfully put it out of direct danger from the demon but which now could wind up costing him precious time. If the sky-plane caught up with him before he could get deeply enough into the forest at the town's edge—

"Stop him!" someone shouted from the crowd; and even as he glanced back over his shoulder, the mob surged forward.

Ravagin mouthed a curse and redoubled his speed. The horse was ten meters away now... six, five, four—the scorpion glove whip snapped out to slash the line tethering the animal to the post, saving him a few seconds—

And then he was there and in the saddle, grabbing up the reins as he kicked the horse into action.

The leading edge of the crowd was angling toward his course in a clear attempt to cut him off; he sent the runners a warning crack from the scorpion glove and they veered off. A second later he was galloping down one of Horma's narrow and twisting streets, swerving back and forth as he tried to avoid running down any of the people hurrying toward the fire.

From far behind came a blood-chilling scream of rage: Astaroth and some of his parasite spirits, probably possessing both the sky-plane and the troll aboard it. Clamping his jaw tightly, Ravagin resisted the urge to look over his shoulder to see how close the carpet was getting, his full attention on controlling his horse. As long as the sky-plane was airborne, its edge barrier would keep the troll from using its crossbow, and once Ravagin got through the village there would be only about half a kilometer of grassland to cover before he reached the relative safety of the forest.

A block ahead, a carriage trundled out of a side street and stopped directly in his path.

"Hey!—you ahead!" Ravagin shouted, waving his arm toward the vehicle. "Get out of my way!"

The carriage didn't move. Cursing under his breath, Ravagin made a quick estimate and turned his horse's head to the right. Between the carriage and the nearest building on that side would be a tight squeeze, but he ought to make it—

And the carriage rolled a meter backward, sealing off the gap.

"Damn!" Ravagin snarled, yanking hard on the reins to slow his horse. "Damn you, get out of my way!" Rising up in his stirrups, he peered into the carriage, trying to catch the occupant's eye.

There wasn't any occupant.

A cold shiver went through the sweat on his back. Twisting the reins violently to the left, he swung the horse toward the front of the carriage, where a new gap had appeared. Again the vehicle moved to block him; waiting until the last second, Ravagin turned back to the right and kicked his horse back into a full gallop.

They barely made it through the gap, the ghost carriage's rear stand panel brushing the horse's flank as the vehicle moved backwards just a hair too slowly to cut them off. The horse whinnied at the touch, and it cost Ravagin a precious second to get the animal back under firm control. A scraping of wheels on stones came from behind, and he threw a quick glance over his shoulder.

The carriage had swung around and was pursuing him.

Ravagin turned back to face forward, cursing under his breath. The grassland lying between village and forest was visible now, two or three streets ahead. If he could hang onto his lead long enough, the carriage's wheels would be at a disadvantage out in the grass—

A whoosh from his right was his only warning; and as he reflexively ducked something large shot past his head.

For a single, horrible second he thought he'd misjudged distance and speed and that the demonpossessed troll was upon him. But it wasn't a sky-plane that smashed with shattering force into the buildings across the street, but a heavy-looking metal ball with large protruding spikes. Throwing a glance to his right, Ravagin was just in time to see the catapult rolling down the side street toward him fire a second missile.

He ducked again as this ball struck the corner of a building and ricocheted back toward the ghost carriage behind. Damn bastard demon, he thought viciously, throat tight with the sinking realization that Astaroth had been smarter than he'd ever expected the demon to be. Belatedly, Ravagin remembered now the ease with which the Forge Beast at the Darcane Forest way house had been taken over to made a driving fan for the fire he'd started. It was now painfully obvious that Astaroth had learned far more about Shamsheer's "magic" than Ravagin had realized... and had prepared his own special version of that magic to defend his position here.

Behind Ravagin, the rumble of the carriage was growing louder. Digging his heels into his horse's flanks, Ravagin urged it into an extra burst of speed. One more cross street to pass...

And as he galloped toward it, a dozen alien machines rolled in from both directions.

Automated tumbleweeds, was Ravagin's immediate impression of the things. Roughly spherical in shape, perhaps a meter in diameter, they looked like they'd been constructed entirely of tangled wires and twisted tubes. Like a waste dealer's castoffs—which was, he thought grimly, probably exactly what the demon had intended them to look like. Harmless junk, not worth a second look by anyone...

It took the tumbleweeds bare seconds to get into final position, lined up in a solid row completely blocking the street, and as Ravagin galloped toward them he saw that each machine had three to five gently waving tendrils rising out from somewhere in its interior. Like faint echoes of the prehensile grabbing action of Darcane Forest's Berands fronds.

Or perhaps of scorpion glove whips...

Ravagin gritted his teeth. He had no choice at all: it was either make it over that barrier or else face the ghost carriage behind him and the even deadlier troll still on its way. And the only way to get his horse's legs past those waving tendrils would be to let them grab something else.

Jamming the reins into the crook of his left elbow, he reached over to his right wrist. The timing on this was going to be tight, with no margin for error. Eyes on the tumbleweeds, he made a quick calculation of the distance, adjusted his horse's stride for the jump. The barrier was seven meters ahead now; six; four—

And the scorpion glove whip lashed out and down, grazing the tops of the two tumbleweeds directly ahead.

The tendrils were fast, all right. Before Ravagin had even a chance to withdraw it, they had the whip thoroughly entangled. The end vanished into the center of one of the tumbleweeds, and abruptly the slack in the whip disappeared as something in the tumbleweed's center began reeling it in. Clenching his jaw, Ravagin fought for balance against the pull. The horse reached its take-off point, Ravagin kicked him into the jump—

And as they sailed unhindered over the barrier Ravagin tore open the wrist band holding the scorpion glove onto his right hand. With one final tug that threatened to pull him bodily off his mount, the glove was yanked off.

From behind came another scream of rage... of rage, but with an underlying coloring of frustration.

Licking his lips, Ravagin took a ragged breath and permitted himself a grim smile. The edge of Horma flashed by, and a second later he was driving hard across open grass toward the forest beyond. From the sound of that scream the troll and sky-plane were still too far behind him to catch up before he reached the forest. He was going to make it...

Unless it occurred to Astaroth to put the sky-plane down within crossbow range of Ravagin's back.

The smile vanished from Ravagin's lips, and he hunched down over the horse's neck, feeling the skin tightening between his shoulderblades.

But for once, the demon missed a bet. The sky-plane chased Ravagin right up to the edge of the forest, even attempting to force its way through the branches until its increasingly reduced speed seemed to finally persuade Astaroth that that approach wasn't going to work. The noise of it backing out through that same tangle of branches came as Ravagin, fighting hard to keep up his speed without running into a tree, shot on ahead. There was another scream—

And then there was silence.

Licking his lips, Ravagin fought the shaking in his hands and settled down for the long ride ahead.

The die was cast; and in many ways what happened now was totally out of his hands. Riding as fast as a troll could hope to chase him on foot, with the forest's canopy sealing him off from any kind of aerial attack or landing, he was virtually assured of reaching the Tunnel some eighty-five kilometers away. The only question remaining was whether or not Astaroth would realize that his only hope of stopping Ravagin was to fly on ahead and wait for him at the Tunnel.

It was almost certain that he would.