Triplet

Chapter 39

He gasped... or, rather, sensed dimly that his body had gasped. Just as he sensed dimly that he was no longer attached to that same body.

He'd heard stories from others who'd done this, but none of them had prepared him for the sensations now flooding his mind. Or rather, for the lack of sensations. Being buried alive in cotton with a flaming torch in your face... drowning in spices, unable to breathe and yet with sharp odors jabbing into nose and brain... drifting on an intangible sky-plane with a drastically ingrown edge barrier locking all muscles in place—he'd heard all of those metaphors and others over the years. None of them even came close. All of mankind's most basic fears—falling, drowning, blindness—seemed to explode on him at once... and even as he fought to gain balance, to be able to think clearly amid the sudden panic, a flame seemed to burst beneath his unfelt feet, sweeping over him, burning his skin to a crisp blackness as the parasite spirit attacked and burned and fought to either control or destroy him

—

Wait a second. I'm not even attached to my body at the moment—how can I feel like I'm on fire?

And with that single rational thought, the whole thing unraveled.

Ravagin took a shuddering breath—and then another, savoring the sense of being whole again.

Illusion—the whole thing was illusion. Wasn't it, my little companion?

The parasite spirit didn't answer. Ravagin wasn't sure a parasite spirit even had enough intelligence to communicate... but whatever it lacked in intellectual capacity it more than made up in raw emotion. He could feel the hatred and rage of the creature as it swirled like a ghostly and impotent tornado through his mind—rage at being defeated and under Ravagin's control, hatred at some more basic and permanent level. It was the first time Ravagin had ever touched a spirit this deeply... the first time he'd ever realized how truly alien the spirit world was. A trickle of sweat ran down between his shoulderblades, and he was dimly aware that he was shivering violently. And not just because of the chilly night air.

Presently, the dark introspection faded, and the world around him began to reappear before his eyes.

He was still kneeling on the sky-plane, his hands curled into fists pressed tightly against his abdomen. His shirt was soaked with sweat, his head ached fiercely, and there was oozing blood where his fingernails had dug into his palms; but all in all, it hadn't been as bad as he'd expected, even from something as relatively simple as a parasite spirit. Lesson number one: spirits aren't nearly as strong on Shamsheer as they are on Karyx. A damn good thing, too...

"Sky-plane—" He broke off, worked moisture into his mouth, and tried again. "Sky-plane: rise one varn and follow my mark: mark."

He could feel the spirit resist... but for the moment, at least, it had no choice but to obey him. The sky-plane rose a meter and floated gently toward the entrance hallway Ravagin was pointing to.

"I was starting to think you had fallen asleep," a soft voice came from behind him.

Ravagin jerked as Habri stepped up to pace the sky-plane. "No one ever tell you not to sneak up behind people?" he growled.

Habri shrugged casually... but as Ravagin's sky-plane hesitated only a moment before crossing the ten-meter limit a touch of awe added brittleness to his features. "You were a long time casting your spell," he said after a brief pause. "But I can see that the results were worth the wait. If your other sorcerous powers are as potent—"

"What do you mean, a long time?" Ravagin interrupted him. "What was it, five minutes? Ten?"

Habri threw him an odd look. "Half an hour at the least. Perhaps a few minutes more."

Ravagin felt a new chill run up his sweat-soaked back as, for the first time, he noticed that the manor house was almost entirely dark now. The servants had finished their chores and retired for the night... and he'd lost thirty minutes of his life during that battle. "It took longer than I expected," he said to Habri through dry lips. Even to him the excuse sounded lame.

"Your companion seemed to think so, too," Habri said. "I think that fact was more worrisome to my men than the delay itself."

"She's never actually watched me do this spell before," he improvised. So Danae was being held nearby, somewhere where she could see the courtyard. He tucked the fact away for possible future reference.

Two of Habri's men were holding the doors to the entrance hallway by the time Ravagin reached them. Though not designed for sky-plane usage, the doorway was fortunately wide enough for the carpet to pass through without trouble. Behind him, Ravagin could hear soft noises as the rest of Habri's force fell in behind them. It was probably a good thing, he thought once as the parade trooped along the darkened corridors, that subduing the parasite spirit had taken as long as it had.

The image of Habri trying to push his way past cleaning crews and the occasional butcher's assistant brought an unexpected giggle welling up from his throat.

He choked the laughter down. Did direct spirit contact always leave a person this giddy? Like a narcotic drug, he thought, fighting against the oddly euphoric feeling. I wonder if that's why some people seem to like doing this kind of thing.

I wonder if that's how Melentha got started.

It took them only a few minutes to reach the top floor of the lower manor house and the great chamber into which the stairs from below led... and it took Ravagin even less time than that to realize his plan was going to need drastic revision.

It was the same place where he'd had his all too brief hearing before the castle-lord a few hours earlier, though having been brought up from the cells by a different route he hadn't realized exactly where he was. As he'd noted then, it was a huge room... and the only ways into it were far from the fat pillar and ornate doors where four trolls stood motionless guard. Lying flat on the hovering skyplane, his eyes barely above floor level, he tried to ignore the impatient rumblings from the men strung out down the stairs beneath him and made a quick estimate of both the horizontal distance and the height of the relatively low ceiling. The ballistic calculation was simple enough for him to do in his head... and there was absolutely no way he was going to reach any of the trolls with a thrown knife.

"Is that the way into the castle-lord's tower?" he whispered to Habri.

Crouched on the stairs beside the sky-plane, the other nodded. "That pillar contains the staircase up.

The doors open directly onto it—allows for very commanding entrances." He shot Ravagin a frown.

"You didn't know? I was under the impression all manor houses were exactly alike."

"Just checking," Ravagin said, eyes searching for some way to get closer to the trolls. But between their stairway and the pillar the room was completely open, without anything that would serve for cover. "Anyway, I needed to see what the guard situation was like here," he improvised. "So. Four trolls."

"I could have told you the castle-lord had four trolls on guard," Habri snorted. "The question now is how you intend to dispose of them."

A damn good question it was, too. Ravagin gnawed at his lip for a second without coming up with any good answers to it. "You and your men stay here," he told Habri at last. "I need to go back outside."

"You'll be back here for the attack, though, I presume?"

"If I'm not, you'll know when to move," Ravagin assured him.

For a long moment Habri's dark eyes bored into his. "Very well," he said at last. "I trust you aren't pla