Triplet

"Maybe," Danae murmured back. "Does that help or hurt us?"

"I haven't the faintest idea."

"Greetings, travelers," a voice came from behind them, and they turned to find an older man clumping toward them from one of the tents. "What errand brings you over the Ordarl Protectorate?"

"We journey from Kelaine City to the Darcane Forest, sir," Ravagin told him with a courteous nod.

"Is Ordarl Protectorate now forbidding travelers to fly over its land?"

"Ordarl Protectorate objects only to black sorcerers practicing evil within its territory," the other said grimly, eyes boring into Ravagin's. "What are your names and professions?"

"I am called Ravagin; I claim no city or protectorate as my home. My companion is named Danae.

As to business, I do service as bearer of private messages between distant places."

The officer's eyebrows raised. "Indeed? Do your clients distrust the sanctity of the crystal eye?"

Ravagin shrugged. "My clients' thoughts and fears are their own. I merely provide a service to those who wish it."

The other's gaze shifted to Danae. "And you?"

"The lady is—"

"I am traveling to visit relatives in Darcane Forest," Danae interrupted him. "The man Ravagin consented to escort me, as none of my closer kin were interested in making the trip."

"Indeed." The older man's frown deepened slightly, his eyes flicking over her clothing. "Where is your home, noblelady?"

"In the Numant Protectorate, to the west of Castle Numanteal," Ravagin said, taking control of the conversation back from her. "May I ask what form this black sorcery takes?"

The other looked over Ravagin's shoulder. "What do you find?" he asked.

Danae glanced back to their sky-plane, where the two soldiers were examining the devices they'd left there. "Nothing out of the ordinary, O Captain," one said, holding up the scorpion glove. "Our Ravagin is indeed a for traveler; I have not seen one of these weapons in a long time."

The captain pursed his lips and returned his attention to Ravagin. "You do not seem to have the scent of black sorcery about you, I'll admit. Still, I would expect a careful messenger to carry stronger weaponry."

"Precisely what I expect others to think," Ravagin said calmly. "The best defense, I have found, is not to be attacked in the first place."

Surprisingly, a smile twitched at the old man's lips. "A subtle philosophy indeed, Ravagin. I do not believe I would trust it, myself."

Ravagin shrugged. "I am still alive."

"True." The other cocked an eyebrow. "It would be interesting to see how long you remain that way.

But that is of no immediate concern. Tell me, are the magical devices in Numant Protectorate showing signs of sorcerous interference?"

The question seemed to take Ravagin by surprise. "I—am not sure what you mean. What sort of interference do you refer to?"

"Widespread failures, for the most part," the other said. "Devices, too, that appear to have ceased functioning but then are whole again without making the journey to the Dark Tower."

The memory of the automated aerial caravan from Kelaine City the previous night flashed into Danae's mind. Widespread failure? she wondered. Or was that just the normal breakage rate? A

quick mental search of what she'd learned about Shamsheer gave her nothing either way.

Ravagin, too, seemed a bit uncertain and pondered the question for several seconds before answering. "I don't recall hearing word of such unusual failures," he said at last. "But you must understand that by the nature of my profession, I am seldom in any one place for long and do not talk to a great many people."

"But you do speak to people in widely scattered areas," the other pointed out.

"True, though with his crystal eye your castle-lord has an equally good ear for news from afar,"

Ravagin pointed out. "How long has the trouble been happening here?"

"A few weeks, although the worst seems to have passed." The captain seemed to make a decision, and again caught his men's eyes. "These may go. Resume your duties."

Ravagin bowed. "My thanks, sir. If I should come across this problem elsewhere in my travels, would it be of use to your castle-lord for me to inform him?"

"It would be useful," the other nodded. "If you are nearby at the time you may bring word to any of these our castle-lord's outposts; if not, the news may be sent directly to Castle Ordarleal."

Ravagin nodded. "I hope you find this black sorcerer quickly," he said, taking Danae's arm and leading her back aboard their sky-plane. "Good day to you, O Captain. Sky-plane: to the southwest of Darcane Forest."

The carpet rose into the air... and Danae took a deep breath. "What in all Twenty Worlds was that all about?"

Ravagin handed her back her firefly, an oddly intense look on his face. "Probably nothing," he said.

"These mythical black sorcerers tend to get blamed for anything that goes wrong on Shamsheer."

"I didn't mean that part. Do you think something could really be going wrong with the equipment in Ordarl?"

"Again, probably not. Random chance is occasionally lumpy, as the saying goes—these are probably nothing more than a bunch of malfunctions that just happen to have come up at the same time."

The words were confident enough... but there was something in his tone that made Danae slide forward on the carpet to take a good look at his face. "But you're not sure. Are you?"

The lines in his face smoothed slightly as he turned to find her looking at him. "Well, I can't be absolutely sure, of course, can I? But this sort of thing has happened before, and after a certain amount of fussing the probability curve smooths itself out and everyone's happy again."

"Uh-huh," Danae said, scooting back to her place again. Clearly, he wasn't going to confide any thoughts to her that he might feel would be upsetting to a paying client.

And yet...

Abruptly, the awareness of where they were flooded in on her. Flying high above the ground on a flimsy carpet-sized piece of alien machinery... a piece of machinery that could very well have been doing this for four thousand years or more. And good maintenance or no, she'd never yet heard of a machine that could run forever. Could it be that Shamsheer's magical technology was finally starting to unravel?

Come on, Danae, she scoffed silently. After all this time, you really think the whole marvelous machine would just happen to come apart while you were here to watch? Let's not let egocentrism run away with us, okay?

Nevertheless, she found herself keeping well back from the sky-plane's edge for the rest of the flight... and concentrating on the blue sky overhead instead of the ground far below.

Chapter 9

They'd been flying two more hours when Ravagin called her attention to a dark, irregular mass of buildings spreading across the landscape to the southeast. "Missia City," he identified it. "Probably the largest city in this section of Shamsheer, though genuine population records aren't really kept.

Look straight past it and you'll be able to see Forj Tower."

Danae squinted against the sunlight. Beyond the city was a section of open space—desert, she remembered from the maps—and beyond that a clump of something that could have been the dense forest she knew was also there. And rising out of the center of the forest—

"My God," she murmured. "That thing is big."

"Nearly a kilometer high," Ravagin agreed. "And something like seven hundred meters in circumference at the base."

"I've seen the numbers, thank you," Danae told him shortly. "It just looks bigger than that, somehow."

"Optical illusion, probably—most of the comparable buildings you've seen in the Twenty Worlds are surrounded by other buildings of similar height. Here it's just standing out there on its own."