Triplet

Her stomach knotted in abrupt horror. Sitting bolt upright in bed, she sent her eyes flicking around the sunlit room.

Carved wood... textured glass in the windows... cured animal skin quilt-rug on the floor... she herself dressed in a copy of the other woman's Coven robe... Biting down hard on her lip, Danae looked again at the woman seated beside her bed. "So," she croaked. "I'm in Coven. Aren't I?"

The other nodded, a flicker of mild surprise crossing her face. "You're quick," she said, getting to her feet. "That's good. The others will be here soon to talk to you." Turning, she walked toward the door.

"Wait!" Danae called after her. "What do they want me for—?"

The firm closing of the door cut her off. "Well, damn it, then," Danae muttered to herself. Swinging her legs off the bed, she stood up, pausing as the abrupt change in position made her momentarily dizzy. Stepping to the window, she peered out.

Coven, without a doubt. A score or so of buildings in neat rows could be seen from her angle, most of them single-story houses of the Besak type but a few larger structures visible as well. Beyond the buildings she could see a solid wall of forest pushing in on the clearing in which the town was built.

Pressing her face against the glass, she could see more of the town to either side, with the same wall of trees at the edge. The area immediately around her was deserted, but around the buildings near the edge of the clearing she could see a dozen identically robed people milling about.

Easing back from the view, she gnawed at her lip some more and tried to get her brain working. The last thing she remembered was going to bed after Melentha's failed attempts to find evidence of spirits in this robe she was wearing; right after that awkward scene with Ravagin...

Her stomach twisted with the memory of that argument. Ravagin had been furious with her... and looking at it from his point of view, she could hardly blame him. The big question now was whether he was so mad he wouldn't even bother to come after her once he found out she was missing.

No. The real question was whether he would be able to figure out where to start looking in the first place.

Easy, Danae, take it easy, she forced down the sudden burst of panic. Ravagin was smart—surely he and Melentha together would be able to piece two and two together and come to the logical conclusion. She was wearing the Coven robe, so they'd have the missing robe as a clue to her disappearance. So if they could just make it through Morax Forest, find Coven, and get her out from under the villagers' noses...

She took a deep, shuddering breath, trying without much success to force calm into her mind. For all intents and purposes, she could consider herself to be on her own.

Daddy Dear, if you could see me now, she thought sardonically. Where are you, Hart, when I really need you?

Stepping back from the window, she made a quick scan of the room and then walked over to the door. The first job in getting out of Coven, clearly, would be to get out of this room.

She'd expected to have to do a careful search of the room in hopes of finding some way out... and it was therefore something of an anticlimax to discover the door wasn't locked. Gritting her teeth, she opened it and peeked out. No one was in sight. There has to be a catch to this, the thought occurred to her; but there was no point standing around wondering what that catch might be. Taking a deep breath, she stepped out into the hallway— And froze.

Insofar as sheer power was concerned, peris were generally placed above lares and one step below demons; and for that reason Ravagin made it a practice to have as little to do with them as possible.

For every person like Melentha who professed perfect and casual command over the higher spirits, he'd heard a flipside story of someone who'd tried it and lost control. For him the odds weren't worth playing with.

He'd had enough interaction, though, to confirm the common belief that peris were as knowledgeable as they were powerful—knowledgable about both the spirit and the physical worlds—and it was therefore something of a disappointment to discover how dull a traveling companion this particular peri was.

Presumably on purpose, of course. Whoever in Coven had set the peri up as a forest watchdog had clearly added a geas against talking too much. Ravagin's gentle probings about Coven and the Morax Forest in general were totally ignored, and eventually he gave up and concentrated instead on getting through the densely packed trees with a minimum of scratches.

They rode through the remainder of the night, and the early morning sunlight was filtering through the trees as they reached a huge clearing in the forest. "You may dismount," the peri a

Frowning, Ravagin reined in just past the last line of trees and looked around. A perfectly empty clearing, from the looks of it, with not even a stream or hillock to break up the flat-grass matting.

"This is it?" he asked. "Coven? Where is it, underground?"

The peri turned to look at him, and for an instant Ravagin thought he could see surprise in the spirit's eyes. "Only soil and the dead are underground," the peri said. "Coven is here... but not yet for your eyes to perceive."

"Ah," Ravagin nodded. "We have a little blindness spell operating here, do we? Are your masters going to lift it, or do they expect me to find the buildings by walking into them?"

"Why not try lifting it yourself?" a voice came from Ravagin's right.

Ravagin started, spi

Certainly the figure was no peri—that much was evident from his pockmarked skin and slightly bent nose. "I greet you, sir," Ravagin said, bowing from his seat. "Do you represent the masters of Coven?"

"I am one of many," the other said with a shrug. "And you are...?"

"I'm called Ravagin. Friend and co-worker of a woman named Danae, whom one of your enchanted robes brought here last night."

"Oh?" The man glanced at the silent peri. "I didn't realize we had newcomers. Well. Come with me, then. Your friend will have been taken to the center of Coven; let us go and see just what skills you possess that you have been chosen to join our community."

Ravagin paused halfway through the act of dismounting. "To... join you?"

"Of course. Why else do you think you've been brought here?"

Slowly, Ravagin finished his dismount. It wasn't exactly an unexpected development, but he'd rather hoped the man would at least be a bit more circumspect about it. Such an open and casual admission that he and Danae were prisoners was the sign of a great deal of power. "I don't suppose we get a choice in this?" he asked.

"Not really." The man looked at the peri. "He and the woman were the only ones?"

"I was told another human arrived with this one but left without entering the forest," the spirit replied. "I leave him in your charge, now, and will return." Without waiting for a reply, it turned and glided away, disappearing among the trees.

Ravagin watched him go and then returned his attention to the clearing. "I'm surprised you bother with blindness spells with guards like that peri all around you," he said.

"We like to be careful. Did you want to try lifting the blindness spell yourself?"

For a long moment Ravagin was tempted. He hadn't the faintest idea how to handle a blindness spell, of course... but with the man essentially offering him the chance to get one free spell out without being stopped...

He resisted the temptation. The man couldn't be that naive, and if this was a test of some kind he'd do better in the long run to establish himself as being as harmless as possible. "I don't know much about spells," he said instead. "Just enough to protect us on the road against bandits, really."