Triplet

"Understood," Ravagin said tightly. "You just make damn sure she's still in good shape when I deliver Simrahi's chambers to you. Or you will be the second one to die."

Habri nodded silently. Looking back down the stairs, he nodded to the man bringing up the rear.

"You may go," he told Ravagin. "Whatever you have pla

Ravagin licked his lips. "Sky-plane: follow my mark. Mark."

He reached the cool darkness of the castle courtyard a few minutes later without the slightest idea of what he was going to do there. "Sky-plane: rise slowly," he whispered. Perhaps as he looked over the castle grounds he would come up with some way to get rid of the trolls.

A spark of the parasite spirit's natural maliciousness leaked through, and Ravagin found himself drifting upwards so slowly that if the side of the manor house hadn't been right beside him to compare to, he would have sworn he was motionless. He felt a flash of a

For the moment, anyway, speed was totally irrelevant.

What could he do? Off to his left, just inside the wall, the light from the castle Giantsword bathed the sky-plane landing area and the half dozen spare carpets scattered around it. Nothing there he could use. Over the top of the long entrance hallway extending out from the manor house the Shrine of Knowledge was coming into view; beyond that, the glowing knob at the top of the Giantsword itself was already visible. Send a message for help via the crystal eye in the Shrine? Or sabotage the Giantsword somehow to cut off the power broadcast? That would certainly incapacitate the trolls, if he could manage it, as well as knocking out the lights and every other bit of apparatus in the entire castle. On the other hand, he had no idea how to do such a thing... and there were probably few actions more guaranteed to bring trolls down on him than poking around the protectorate's power source.

Something above him caught his eye: the outward-curving manor house wall was coming down like a frozen wave toward him as he continued to rise. "Sky-plane: move ten varna away from the building and continue upward," he murmured. A slight hesitation as he sensed the parasite spirit repositioning itself amid the sky-plane's picocircuitry. Then it caught, and his slow vertical drift acquired an equally slow horizontal component. He watched for a moment to confirm he would miss the overhang, then turned his attention back to the problem at hand.

The House of Healing, directly behind the manor house, would be of no more use than the sky-plane landing area, though the thought of it made his bruises and cuts throb with new pain. The trolls had no need of the Dreya's Womb and other medical equipment there. Could he somehow persuade the guards that Castle-lord Simrahi was ill and had to be taken down? If they at least had to send someone in to check on Simrahi's condition, it would mean opening the door... but Habri wouldn't be stupid enough to consider that a practical opening for his attack.

And he wouldn't wait on that stairway forever.

Ravagin felt his stomach muscles tighten with the fresh reminder that he was on a dangerously tight schedule here. Danae was still Habri's prisoner... and whether the usurper really meant to release her after all this was over, it was a cinch that if Ravagin didn't come through he would kill her without a second thought.

The sky-plane reached the level of the lower manor house roof now, and the frozen breaker beside him gave abrupt way to a circular flatness. Ravagin's eyes moved to the darkened tower rising out of the center of the roof, and even preoccupied as he was he felt a surge of awe at the sight. He'd never seen a castle-lord's private section this close up, and he was struck by its resemblance to the Dark Tower he and Danae had spent the previous night in. Got to hand it to the Builders, he thought distantly as he took in the sight. They sure knew how to keep thematic unity in this world of theirs.

The basic shape of the Dark Tower was there; so were the relief patterns climbing its lower part and the windows not limited to but concentrated in the upper third. Only the dome of the sky room at the very top made it more than just a miniature version of the Dark Tower—

He froze, sending his eyes searching frantically for what he thought he'd just seen. Imagination?

Trick of lighting?

No. It was there. Almost exactly halfway up the tower.

An open window.

Chapter 40

For a long moment he just stared at the open window, mind whirring with possibilities while at the same time half afraid it would all turn into a false alarm and evaporate before his eyes. The window hadn't simply been flung wide open, he could see now: there was a clearly visible gap between the two pieces of glass, but the gap was narrow and there was no guarantee that he could force them any further open. If they opened outward, in fact, as they almost certainly did, nudging the sky-plane up against the window would do nothing but push it shut. And if there were any alarms—or if whoever was nearest that window were even a light sleeper...

But all the caveats didn't really mean anything. If he didn't do something, Danae was dead. Pure and simple.

Carefully, he reached out to the side until he found the familiar wall of the sky-plane's edge barrier.

"All right, spirit," he said, gritting his teeth unconsciously. "Remove the edge barrier."

Again he felt the sensation of the spirit shifting within the sky-plane... but this time nothing happened in response to that activity. "Remove the edge barrier," he repeated, sharpening his voice and mind against the spirit's unwillingness. Nothing. Apparently, even with a spirit in control, it really was impossible for a sky-plane to fly without an operating edge barrier. Ravagin thought back to all the cases of spirit animal control he'd seen on Karyx—So they're not just weaker in their contacts with humans, he thought. Something to be grateful for, in general; in this particular case it was going to be damned awkward.

But there might be a way around it. Maybe. "All right. Sky-plane: land on the roof there, next to the central tower."

The carpet came smoothly to rest as ordered. Steeling himself against whatever the hell reaction this might cause, Ravagin let his scorpion glove whip uncoil until it extended beyond the sky-plane's fringe. "Sky-plane: go straight up," he said.

And without any fuss or argument the carpet rose into the air alongside the tower. Leaving the scorpion glove whip free outside the edge barrier.

They were at the open window a moment later; and as Ravagin had suspected, the two panes of glass did indeed open outward. The scorpion glove, he quickly discovered, had a markedly slower response time when operated through the edge barrier; but by forcing himself to take things slowly, he managed to swing both panes fully open without causing any noise.

Fully open, the window was about half the width of the sky-plane.

Ravagin swore viciously under his breath. Sky-planes on the ground could be rolled up just like ordinary carpets; once in the air, they were absolutely rigid. They also flew level to the combined gravitational and centrifugal vectors, which meant he couldn't bring up one side of the thing and slide in at an angle. For a minute he tried to come up with a way to make a tight banking curve that might do the trick... but even if he didn't smash both himself and the sky-plane flat against the room's far wall once he was inside, the kind of maneuver he'd need to accomplish it would almost certainly alert every guard and troll in the castle. And with the sky-plane's edge barrier in place, there was no way for Ravagin to simply climb in the window himself.