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  The images vanished. “Cute,” Danae said stiffly, jamming her knife back into its sheath as he walked up to her. Her eyes drifted once to the bloody corpse, moved quickly away. “I suppose that’s just one of the tricks you pick up after you’ve been here awhile.”

  “The doppelgangers or the fire and water?”

  “Both.” Her lips were pressed tightly together. “The lecture probably comes next; but before you begin, whatever happened with the jinx wasn’t my fault. That was the invocation spell I was taught, and if it was wrong—”

  “Relax,” Ravagin sighed, sheathing his sword. “The spell was fine. It was the application that you fou—that was wrong.”

  “What do you mean? A jinx is a spirit of confusion, isn’t it?”

  “Sure, but it only works if you have two or more opponents there to confuse,” Ravagin explained patiently. “It’s not so much an internal confusion as an external one—it’s supposed to foul up coordination between adversaries, get rid of their numerical advantage over you.”

  “Oh.” Danae grimaced. “Well … I’m sorry. No one ever thought to make that clear to me.”

  Did you think to ask? Ravagin wondered; but he kept the sarcasm to himself. “Thanks anyway,” he said instead. “In the future, though, I’d rather you’d just try to keep out of my way unless I ask for help.”

  “Yeah. Sure.” Danae turned abruptly away from him and started climbing up the nearest mound. “Well, what are we waiting for?” she snapped back over her shoulder. “If we’re going to camp here overnight we’ll want to set up a shelter, won’t we?”

  Ravagin shook his head in tired disgust. It was precisely that kind of unthinking reaction to criticism that could make a Courier’s life in Karyx a hell on wheels … and far too often got him killed.

  Taking a deep breath, he set off after her, watching the surrounding mounds closely. In case the bandit hadn’t been a loner.

  Chapter 11

  THE COOL NIGHT BREEZE drifted across Danae’s face, and for the third time since nightfall she came awake with a start. For a long minute she lay still, heart pounding, fighting against the feeling of dread that had suddenly seized her. No sounds except those of occasional insects or small animals broke the silence of the night; certainly nothing to suggest there was anyone sneaking up on them. A meter to her right, Ravagin’s breathing was steady in his own sleep—surely he would have come awake himself by now if anything was amiss. Nerves, girl, she chided herself. That’s all—just a case of nerves.

  That, and sleeping out on a bare hillside without even a blanket between her and the hard ground. Stifling a groan, she rolled from her side onto her back, easing the ache there. Directly above her, the stars were almost hurting in their brilliance. I wonder if they’re muted like the sunlight is, she thought. Though the way they were blazing down it hardly seemed likely.

  Lowering her eyes, she gazed at and through the barely visible haze surrounding them. The lar Ravagin had invoked, circling their camp like a soundless, spectral whirlwind. Supposedly a powerful first line of defense against anything that should choose to attack them … Moving as quietly as possible, Danae got to her feet and began walking toward the haze. There was no resistance, no evidence of anything between her and the rest of Karyx but fog or imagination; nothing that could be remotely considered a defense—

  Abruptly, the fog thickened in front of her, condensing in on itself like a reversed film of an explosion. She stopped, stomach tightening with sudden nervousness as a three-meter piller of living smoke formed in her path. For a moment she looked at it, wondering what would happen if she tried to reach out and touch it. The lar was supposed to be on their side, after all … but on the other hand it was Ravagin, not her, who had invoked it. Carefully, she backed up toward her place on the hillside, watching as the lar gradually spread itself into a defensive circle again. By the time she lay back down there was again nothing between her and the rest of Karyx but a hazy fog.

  Licking her lips, she closed her eyes. We’re perfectly safe here, she told herself. Perfectly safe. Eventually, she convinced herself enough to fall asleep.

  But the vague feeling of dread refused to go completely away, and her dreams were troubled ones.

  “We should be able to rent a couple of horses at one of the inns down the road,” Ravagin told her as they finished their breakfast. “At that point the trip to Besak will only take a couple of hours.”

  Danae nodded silently, taking one last mouthful of aromatic meat and tossing the bone aside. Ravagin had hunted down the small animal sometime before dawn, roasting it over a fire ignited by a firebrat he’d let her invoke. The fact that she’d done the spell flawlessly was a small nugget of satisfaction against the general malaise hanging over her this morning. The bad dreams and poor sleeping conditions of the previous night, she’d decided, perhaps coupled with a lingering remnant of culture shock. Once they reached Besak and she had a halfway-decent bed to sleep in this would all blow over.

  “You haven’t really told me what you’re doing here,” Ravagin commented as he got to his feet and wiped his hands on his pant legs. “What your project is, I mean. I can’t very well advise you as to location and all if I don’t know that.”

  “There was a complete writeup in my application,” she told him, standing up herself and wincing as she followed his example on cleaning the oils from her hands. Fastidious cleanliness wasn’t a major characteristic of Karyx’s culture, and it wouldn’t do to stand out too blatantly from the rest of the population.

  “I’m sure there was, but no one showed it to me,” he told her shortly as he led the way through the last line of mounds toward the road below. “Maybe you’d be good enough to give me a brief summary?”

  She pursed her lips … but there really wasn’t any reason he couldn’t know most of it. “I want to study the psychology of the people here, both Karyx natives and those from the Twenty Worlds manning the way houses. Try and determine the effect such easy access to spirits has had on them.”

  “Sounds really interesting,” he said with a distinct lack of enthusiasm “I presume you don’t care that it’s been done before?”

  “As you were so careful to point out before, there aren’t a whole lot of ways studies of Karyx can be related to the Twenty Worlds,” she said tartly, annoyed despite the fact she’d half expected that reaction. “One of the few is to measure how this system of basically free wishes has affected the human psyche here. Assuming, of course, that the people here are true humans.”

  He threw her a sidelong glance. “Not going to let that one go, are you? So tell me how this is supposed to relate to the Twenty Worlds—or are you going to suggest that Karyx adult development has been arrested at the adolescent level because they can get everything done for them by spirits?”

  “I’m not starting with any preconceptions,” she said. “Though I have heard that theory.”

  “It’s total nonsense,” he said flatly. They’d reached the road now, and he paused to gaze both directions before turning them south. “There’s a lot more raw wish fulfillment on Shamsheer—a lot more, for that matter, on the Twenty Worlds—than there is here. The spirits don’t like us, Danae—if you always remember one thing about Karyx remember that. The spirits don’t like us, they don’t especially like running errands for us, and they hate like hell when one of us traps them into a sword or mill wheel or something. When you invoke a spirit you’re almost literally taking the same chance as fiddling with an appliance without throwing the breaker first: the possibility you’re going to get kicked across the room. Or worse.”

  She walked in silence for a few steps, digesting that. It sounded paranoid in the extreme … but after last night she wasn’t inclined to dismiss such feelings out of hand. “You think the spirits are … well, out to get us somehow?”

  “How could they?” he countered with a shrug. “The spells we’ve got have been used for centuries—if they weren’t adequate, don’t you think the spirits would have m
ade some countermove long ago? The demons certainly would have done something—I think they hate us more than all the other types of spirits put together.”

  How do you know they haven’t taken over? she thought, but resisted the urge to throw the question at him. Her penchant for argument had always been one of her weak points, and now that they were in Karyx she had to be more careful about not antagonizing people unnecessarily. “Well … how exactly would they go about fighting back, assuming they wanted to? Can they affect the physical universe, for example, on their own volition and without a direct human order to do so?”

  Ravagin pondered for a moment. “I don’t know,” he admitted at last. “I’ve never seen one do so, but that doesn’t mean a lot. I suppose if you forgot to release a spirit after you were done with him he might be able to fiddle around on his own for awhile, but why he’d want to is another question entirely. Our physical universe isn’t really their environment, and rumor has it they aren’t very comfortable here. They don’t see things the same way we do, for one thing—they mostly just sense the presence of life. The only possible reason they could have for messing around here would be to keep us from ordering them around—and the only way to do that would be to keep us from voicing commands.”

  “Which we’d see as a rash of speech impairments,” Danae nodded, picking up on his logic. “I understand.”

  Ravagin nodded. “Or unnatural deaths. Depending on how permanent they wanted to shut us up.”

  Danae shivered. The lar last night … “How effective is that spirit-protection spell that bandit used yesterday?”

  “Reasonably so, but there are better ones. I could—” He stopped abruptly, frowning off toward the road ahead of them.

  Danae held her breath, feeling her teeth clench as she heard the faint sounds of approaching hooves. “Trouble?” she whispered.

  “Probably not,” he murmured, reaching down to loosen his sword in its sheath. “You get a little paranoid after you’ve traveled on Karyx enough. If any trouble starts, though, you’re to get to the side of the road and invoke a lar around yourself—you remember the spell?”

  She nodded. The dust of the approaching horses was visible now, obscuring any details of riders. “Should we do something like that before they get here? Just in case?”

  He smiled tightly. “It’s a fine point of Karyx etiquette that you don’t want to be the first one to invoke a spirit, especially a defensive one like a lar. It would either be construed as an insult—that we don’t trust them—or, worse, that we have something devious in mind ourselves. Just stay sharp and there’ll be no problem.”

  Danae swallowed hard. There were three horses approaching—that much could be seen now. Of riders, only the one on the center horse was visible. Danae caught glimpses of dark hair and a blue cloak through the dust …

  Beside her, Ravagin abruptly exhaled in relief. “Well,” he said. “You see?—there are occasionally nice surprises on Karyx.”

  “What?” Danae frowned, glancing at him and back at the rider, who she could now see was indeed alone … and was a woman.

  A woman? “Ravagin …?”

  “Don’t worry,” he told her. “It’s a friend. Melentha, from the way house in Besak, here to give us a lift.”

  “Oh.” Danae licked her lips. It certainly would beat walking … but as the party approached she couldn’t help noticing that there was something odd about the two riderless horses flanking Melentha’s. An unnatural intelligence or alertness about them, perhaps, beyond anything she could ever remember seeing in an animal. Bioenhanced? she wondered fleetingly before remembering where she was. Animals, bio-enhanced or ordinary, were incapable of passing the Tunnels’ telefolds. But then …?

  “Well met, Ravagin,” Melentha called as she reined to a halt a few meters before them. The other two animals likewise stopped, without any obvious command from the woman. “I didn’t expect to have to come this far to find you. Did you have some trouble?”

  “A little—ran into a bandit,” Ravagin grunted, striding forward. “Melentha, this is Danae—she’ll be here for a month or two doing some studies.”

  “Danae,” Melentha nodded, eying Danae with cool politeness. “Are you a professor?”

  “A student,” Danae corrected evenly. Melentha was surely not trying to be condescending, after all. “I’m here for a field assignment—it’s a psychological study—”

  “That’s nice.” Melentha looked back at Ravagin. “Whenever you’re ready. I’m sure you have better things to do than loiter along the Besak-Torralane road; I know I do.”

  “That’s what everyone likes about you, Melentha—your devotion to duty and hearth,” Ravagin said dryly. “We’re ready any time … as soon as you turn the horses over to us.”

  “What?” Melentha glanced at the animals standing unnaturally still beside her. “Oh, come on, Ravagin—don’t tell me you’re getting squeamish in your old age.”

  Ravagin’s face seemed to darken slightly. “Just humor me and do it, okay?”

  “But—oh, all right.” Shaking her head in disbelief, she rose up in her stirrups and looked down at the horses. “Ishnaki, Giaur: carash-natasta, carash-natasta.”

  Danae inhaled sharply as, for just a second, both animals were abruptly sheathed in green auras. One of the horses whinnied as the auras coalesced above them into drifting humanoid figures, vanishing before they were fully formed. But from what had been visible of their faces … Danae shivered violently. “Ravagin—were those demons?” she whispered.

  Ravagin’s eyes were on Melentha, his expression stony. “They were indeed,” he growled. “I don’t suppose it’s occurred to you that using a demon for trivial jobs like animal control is a damn fool thing to do.”

  Melentha cocked her head, making a snatch at the horses’ reins as the animals, freed from their possession, began to paw the ground restlessly. “I consider it a rather smart idea, actually,” she told Ravagin coolly. “It’s pretty obvious you haven’t tried this stunt with nothing but reins or ropes to keep the extra horses under control.”

  “As it happens, I have,” he countered, stepping forward to take one of the ropes from her. “I also know that you can get by perfectly well with a djinn or sometimes even a sprite to keep them with you. Using a demon where it’s not absolutely necessary is just plain stupid.”

  “I’m sorry you disapprove,” Melentha said stiffly. “Try to bear in mind, though, that I don’t have to answer to you or anyone else for how I run my life and way house.” She looked at Danae, jerked her head toward the other horse. “Well, come on, Danae—get mounted and let’s get out of here. They did give you some idea of how to ride, didn’t they?”

  “I know enough.” Reaching up, Danae pulled herself smoothly into the saddle and took up the reins in the expert’s grip she’d been taught in childhood back at the family estate. “Lead on—I’m anxious to get to work.”

  She had the satisfaction of seeing momentary surprise in each of the others’ faces at her obvious equestrian experience. Then, with a slight shrug, Melentha turned her horse around and headed back south along the road. “Well, let’s go, then,” she called over her shoulder.

  Danae swung her own mount around and followed, settling herself easily into the horse’s rhythm. Ravagin pulled up alongside, and she glanced over to see him checking her technique. “Adequate?” she asked tartly.

  “Oh, quite,” he nodded, and dropped back behind her again into what was probably a standard rearguard position.

  But before he did so she caught just the hint of a smile as it crossed his face. Great, she thought darkly. Just great. He and Melentha have some sort of feud going, and I’ve just bought him a couple of points. Well, that sort of nonsense was going to stop damn quick—she’d just escaped from her father’s chess game and had no intention whatsoever in joining someone else’s.

  And yet …

  It was the first time Ravagin had showed even a hint of approval toward her … and for some unknown
reason it made her feel rather good.

  Which in its way was more irritating even than Melentha’s condescending attitude toward her. I am not here to gain Ravagin’s approval, she told herself sternly; and repeated it several times until it was firmly set in her mind.

  In a silence broken only by necessary conversation, the trio made their way down the road toward Besak.

  Chapter 12

  THE VILLAGE OF BESAK, or at least the part Danae saw as they rode toward the way house, was exactly as the Triplet information packet had painted it … which was, in Danae’s opinion, a bad sign.

  Her overwhelming first impression of the place was that it was filthy. The narrow streets that wound between the cottages were lined with piles of garbage, through which small half-seen animals burrowed. Some of the larger and fancier buildings had outhouses out back—or front—for their occupants’ sanitary needs; how those in the smaller cottages managed she tried not to think about. Above it, a variety of odors rose and mingled to become a truly memorable stench.

  The info packet had been right about the filth. It had also said Besak’s inhabitants were rough, conniving, superstitious even by Karyx standards, and occasionally extremely violent.

  For the moment, though, those more dangerous aspects of village life seemed to be dormant. All around them the main activity seemed to be the bustle of commerce, with no more violence in sight than occasional overloud haggling. Children ran and played in the streets, much as children anywhere in small towns in the Twenty Worlds would, their game shifting to a race around the newcomers’ horses as Melentha led them along at a brisk walk. Adults, passing by them on various unknown errands, paused to bow their heads to Melentha, their eyes flicking briefly over Ravagin and Danae with obvious curiosity but no apparent hostility. No one seemed particularly clean … but as Danae got used to the grime, she noticed that no one seemed particularly unwell, either. All the sick people are indoors, maybe? But that was unlikely—people in primitive cultures could seldom afford to stay away from their work for the complete duration of an illness. Spirit healing, then, she concluded, the thought sending a shiver up her back. It was one thing to lie in a diagnostic chair in a spotless room with tailored biochips circulating through your body; it was something else entirely to have a living entity doing the probing.