Triplet

"Part of the roof caving in, probably," Ravagin said.

She glared at him. "How can you be so damned calm about it?" she growled.

"Only because anger and panic won't gain us anything," he told her. "Like it or not, Danae, we've gotten ourselves tangled up in another battle of wits with spirits; and just like it was on Karyx, we're not going to be able to outfight them. So we're just going to have to outthink them."

Danae took a deep breath, fighting for some calm herself. She was only partially successful. "All right. So how do we outthink ourselves away from here without them catching on?"

"I've got an idea." Pulling the prayer stick from his belt, he raised it to his lips. "I pray thee, deliver unto me a sky-plane."

"You think that's wise?" she asked as he returned the stick to its place. "The way this whole prayer stick network works implies there's a central dispatch somewhere. If they've gotten into that—"

"Actually, I think that network probably was the way they traced us here before," he admitted. "But our only other choice is to walk out, and with night coming on in a few hours I'd personally rather take my chances with the spirits. Besides, I've got an idea that might shake them off our trail, at least temporarily. Meanwhile—" he glanced over to the house, where flames were starting to flicker on the roof—"I tossed your crossbow and other stuff out the window earlier. I suggest we collect them and move a little further into the forest."

The sky-plane was nearly an hour in arriving, which Ravagin took to be a good sign. "It means the spirits didn't have a gimmicked one standing by near here," he explained, "which implies this one is clean."

To Danae it didn't imply nearly that much. "Suppose they just held it over behind the trees somewhere for fifty minutes and then let it come?"

"Because any sky-plane that sat on the ground in response to a send-order would automatically be classified as damaged and power to it cut off until it was time for it to go to a Dark Tower for repair," he told her. "Sky-planes are notorious for being grounded when anything seems out of order."

She eyed the fringed carpet dubiously. "Well... maybe. It still doesn't get us out of here without the spirits knowing where we've gone."

"No," Ravagin agreed. "But this might." Stepping over to the sky-plane, he drew his sword and drove it straight down into the carpet's center.

"Ravagin!" Danae yelped. "What—?"

And suddenly she understood. "You've damaged it," she breathed. "That means... it'll have to go to the Dark Tower."

He took a deep breath and nodded. "And it'll go there without a prayer-stick call or anything else from us that can be traced. I hope."

Danae looked down at the carpet. "I guess we'll find out."

Chapter 35

A second sky-plane arrived shortly after sundown and proceeded to work its way underneath the one Ravagin had damaged. It was, Danae would have thought, a rather tricky maneuver, but the skyplanes carried it out deftly and with an almost miserly efficiency of movement. Barely a minute after the second sky-plane's arrival the piggybacked carpets rose into the sky, apparently oblivious to their two unscheduled passengers, and headed southwest toward Forj Tower. Slowly, the ground vanished into the deepening darkness beneath them; and as stars and distant village lights came out together, Danae found herself lapsing into the hazy illusion that they were traveling out in deep space, far from unpredictable spirits and magical technology. Far from danger and trouble and decisions...

"That's the Tower ahead," Ravagin murmured.

She started, the warm sense of almost-security vanishing. Ahead, visible only as it blocked stars and distant lights, the Tower was a brooding shadow looming in their path. "That's it, all right," she agreed, feeling the tension begin to rise again within her. Ravagin had said once that there were trolls guarding the Dark Towers.... "We going to just ride it on in?"

"We don't have any choice," he said. "Sky-planes bringing in repair work are pre-programmed by our hypothetical central dispatch."

"I wish there was at least some way to knock first," she sighed. "Sneaking in like this makes me nervous."

"Yeah. Well... if it makes you feel any better, we've collected six or seven stories of people who got inside one or the other of the Towers, and none of them end with the person being killed."

She pursed her lips. "Though if someone just disappeared inside, you aren't nearly that likely to have heard about it."

"Point," he admitted. "Still, all the stories we do have agree that as long as we don't interfere with the Tower's work we should be okay."

The dark mass ahead of them rapidly grew larger, and within a few minutes they were close enough for Danae to pick out some of its details in the starlight. The secondary spires were well below them, the sky-plane clearly aiming for the windows near the structure's top. "A shame we can't take this tour in the daytime," she commented, striving for a light tone amid the tight silence. "I'd like to see the relief stone patterns further down."

"Maybe some day we can come back," Ravagin said. "Though if you want to see the patterns you'll do about as well to just stand at the bottom and look up. The internal programming that keeps skyplanes ten meters away from buildings also applies to the Towers. In fact, as far as I know these repair flights are the only exceptions to that rule."

The Tower filled the entire sky ahead of them now, and for the first time Danae could see the rows of windows as slightly lighter chunks of gray against the black background. She held her breath as one of the windows in the bottom row loomed straight ahead... instinctively ducked her head... and without any pause or hesitation the sky-plane slid neatly in through its center.

"Be light," Ravagin murmured, and the firefly ring on his hand began giving off its gentle glow.

Danae had just enough time to notice that they were passing through what looked like a short hallway with gridded mesh for walls, ceiling, and floor when Ravagin suddenly grabbed her arm.

"Come on!" he snapped, and half dragging her, rolled off the carpet.

He landed on his feet, throwing his free hand to the mesh wall on one side for balance. Danae wasn't nearly so graceful, losing her balance despite his steadying hand on her arm and dropping onto one knee. The mesh jammed painfully into her kneecap and she bit back an exclamation. "What is it?" she whispered tensely.

"Get a good grip on yourself," he said. "Be more lighted."

The firefly's glow brightened. Danae saw that they were barely two meters from the end of the mesh hallway... and beyond it—

Was nothing.

She gasped, clamping her teeth tightly together as the acrophobia from her first sky-plane ride suddenly flooded into her. Nothing—just black, empty space—as far as the light from the firefly could penetrate.

Dimly, she noticed that Ravagin, his hand still gripping her arm, was peering closely at her face. "I'm okay," she said with an effort.

"You sure?" he asked.

"Yeah," she breathed. "It just took me by surprise, that's all."

"Good. I'm going to go to the edge and see what we've got to work with here. You stay put, okay?"

She managed a nod. Releasing her arm, he straightened up and took a careful step toward the edge of the abyss. "Be full lighted," he ordered the firefly... and as its glow became searchlight-bright, she forced herself to look.

It wasn't as bad as she'd feared. In the brighter light the far side of the Tower was visible, perhaps fifty meters away, and she could see that it, too, had the same sort of short mesh corridors extending out from each window. Just beneath the meshwork, and continuing down the Tower as for as the light could show, were a series of hexagonal boxes that reminded her instantly of a giant honeycomb made up of private rooms. One of the hexes caught her eye as its door slid open, and she looked over in time to see their piggybacked sky-planes vanish inside. Once, Ravagin shined the light directly down; steeling herself, Danae looked through the mesh beneath her. To her vast relief the pattern of boxes across the way apparently repeated itself on this side of the Tower, too, and she could see the top of the nearest barely three meters away.