Triplet (48 page)

And as his backswing reached its furthest point the scorpion glove whip lashed out to strike him squarely on the wrist. There was the sharp
crack
of breaking bone and the knife clattered to the floor behind him. The walls screamed again in fury; without uttering a sound of his own, Saban lowered his head and charged.

As, simultaneously, the walls abruptly burst into flame.

Ravagin snarled a curse, sidestepping and throwing a kick into Saban's torso. In a single heartbeat whatever control he'd had in the situation had been snatched from him … and if he died now he would have no one to blame but himself. Saban
had
to be killed—Ravagin had suspected that for weeks, known it for minutes—and yet he'd hesitated, unable to strike the man down in cold blood. And now his scruples were going to cost him dearly.

Him, and possibly Danae, too. If he died here, she would soon be following.

And with that thought the last shreds of hesitation vanished. Saban, chillingly oblivious to the flames threatening to bring his house down around him, had halted his mad rush, turning back to the attack with hands curled into talons aimed at Ravagin's face … and the scorpion glove lashed out one more time to wrap itself around the other's neck.

A single convulsive jerk, and it was over.

The demon couldn't cry out his fury through Saban, of course, with the man's neck broken; perhaps because the necessary circuitry was already ablaze he couldn't use the house's voice synthesizer, either. Whatever the reason, there was no sound as Saban collapsed to the floor except the increasing roar of the flames, and for Ravagin the silence was more unnerving than any further screams of hatred could possibly have been. Pausing only long enough to snatch the watchblade from the smoldering carpet and jam it into his belt, he scrambled back to the window, snatching up a chair and hurling it ahead of him in a single motion. The glass shattered; taking a long step, he dived head-first through the gap into the blessed coolness outside.

Only just in time. Even as he hit the ground and rolled, the second floor of the house caved in behind him.

“Give him aid!” someone shouted, and suddenly there were a half-dozen hands on Ravagin, pulling him to his feet and brushing bits of window glass from his tunic and palms. “What happened?” one of them shouted over the roar.

“No idea,” he shouted back, looking around him. Surrounding the house at a safe distance, a crowd of onlookers had gathered, watching with horror and disbelief as the house collapsed inward on itself, sending a cloud of sparks into the pillar of smoke billowing upwards. “I was just standing there talking with Saban when the fire started.”

“Impossible,” someone insisted. “No house could simply catch on fire by itself—not like that, not all at once.”

“What were you
really
doing in there?” another, more hostile voice demanded. “Was it some deadly spell of black sorcery?”

“Are you in league with Saban?” someone else added.

Ravagin gritted his teeth. So Saban's demon experiments hadn't gone unnoticed by his neighbors; and if they didn't know what exactly had been going on in the way house, they knew enough of the basics. And if they jumped to the conclusion that he was a part of it … “I know nothing about any black sorcery,” he told his questioners. “I went to Saban in search of lodging, and as we were discussing terms the walls suddenly began to burn.”

“Then what were the screams we heard?” the hostile voice demanded. “You trap yourself in lies, traveler.”

Ravagin opened his mouth, thoughts spinning furiously … but before he could come up with anything to say his time suddenly ran out.

From the north, barely visible through the plume of smoke, a sky-plane could be seen flying rapidly toward them. A sky-plane, with a lone figure aboard it … and there was little doubt as to what that figure was.

“There is your black sorcery,” he shouted, raising his right hand to point at the approaching sky-plane. The gesture brought his scorpion glove out from the confining press of bodies around him. “A troll, under the power of Saban's spell gone awry, coming here to complete the destruction he planned for you.”

Someone in the crowd gasped an oath, and almost unconsciously the press around Ravagin eased as people began to draw back—

And, spinning around to face away from the fire, Ravagin sent the scorpion glove whip snapping out and down. The half dozen people in line with it jumped as if scalded at its touch, and for a handful of seconds the way through the crowd was clear.

Ravagin ran.

One of the men along the way tried to stop him, but a second crack of the whip was more than enough discouragement. All the rest, whether in fear or simply the normal paralysis of shock, stood by like statues as he sprinted through the corridor and out of the crowd. His horse was tethered nearly fifty meters away, a cautious distance that had successfully put it out of direct danger from the demon but which now could wind up costing him precious time. If the sky-plane caught up with him before he could get deeply enough into the forest at the town's edge—

“Stop him!” someone shouted from the crowd; and even as he glanced back over his shoulder, the mob surged forward.

Ravagin mouthed a curse and redoubled his speed. The horse was ten meters away now … six, five, four—the scorpion glove whip snapped out to slash the line tethering the animal to the post, saving him a few seconds—

And then he was there and in the saddle, grabbing up the reins as he kicked the horse into action. The leading edge of the crowd was angling toward his course in a clear attempt to cut him off; he sent the runners a warning crack from the scorpion glove and they veered off. A second later he was galloping down one of Horma's narrow and twisting streets, swerving back and forth as he tried to avoid running down any of the people hurrying toward the fire.

From far behind came a blood-chilling scream of rage: Astaroth and some of his parasite spirits, probably possessing both the sky-plane and the troll aboard it. Clamping his jaw tightly, Ravagin resisted the urge to look over his shoulder to see how close the carpet was getting, his full attention on controlling his horse. As long as the sky-plane was airborne, its edge barrier would keep the troll from using its crossbow, and once Ravagin got through the village there would be only about half a kilometer of grassland to cover before he reached the relative safety of the forest.

A block ahead, a carriage trundled out of a side street and stopped directly in his path.

“Hey!—you ahead!” Ravagin shouted, waving his arm toward the vehicle. “Get out of my way!”

The carriage didn't move. Cursing under his breath, Ravagin made a quick estimate and turned his horse's head to the right. Between the carriage and the nearest building on that side would be a tight squeeze, but he ought to make it—

And the carriage rolled a meter backward, sealing off the gap.

“Damn!” Ravagin snarled, yanking hard on the reins to slow his horse. “Damn you, get out of my way!” Rising up in his stirrups, he peered into the carriage, trying to catch the occupant's eye.

There wasn't any occupant.

A cold shiver went through the sweat on his back. Twisting the reins violently to the left, he swung the horse toward the front of the carriage, where a new gap had appeared. Again the vehicle moved to block him; waiting until the last second, Ravagin turned back to the right and kicked his horse back into a full gallop.

They barely made it through the gap, the ghost carriage's rear stand panel brushing the horse's flank as the vehicle moved backwards just a hair too slowly to cut them off. The horse whinnied at the touch, and it cost Ravagin a precious second to get the animal back under firm control. A scraping of wheels on stones came from behind, and he threw a quick glance over his shoulder.

The carriage had swung around and was pursuing him.

Ravagin turned back to face forward, cursing under his breath. The grassland lying between village and forest was visible now, two or three streets ahead. If he could hang onto his lead long enough, the carriage's wheels would be at a disadvantage out in the grass—

A
whoosh
from his right was his only warning; and as he reflexively ducked something large shot past his head.

For a single, horrible second he thought he'd misjudged distance and speed and that the demon-possessed troll was upon him. But it wasn't a sky-plane that smashed with shattering force into the buildings across the street, but a heavy-looking metal ball with large protruding spikes. Throwing a glance to his right, Ravagin was just in time to see the catapult rolling down the side street toward him fire a second missile.

He ducked again as this ball struck the corner of a building and ricocheted back toward the ghost carriage behind.
Damn bastard demon,
he thought viciously, throat tight with the sinking realization that Astaroth had been smarter than he'd ever expected the demon to be. Belatedly, Ravagin remembered now the ease with which the Forge Beast at the Darcane Forest way house had been taken over to make a driving fan for the fire he'd started. It was now painfully obvious that Astaroth had learned far more about Shamsheer's “magic” than Ravagin had realized … and had prepared his own special version of that magic to defend his position here.

Behind Ravagin, the rumble of the carriage was growing louder. Digging his heels into his horse's flanks, Ravagin urged it into an extra burst of speed. One more cross street to pass …

And as he galloped toward it, a dozen alien machines rolled in from both directions.

Automated tumbleweeds,
was Ravagin's immediate impression of the things. Roughly spherical in shape, perhaps a meter in diameter, they looked like they'd been constructed entirely of tangled wires and twisted tubes. Like a waste dealer's castofoffs—which was, he thought grimly, probably exactly what the demon had intended them to look like. Harmless junk, not worth a second look by anyone …

It took the tumbleweeds bare seconds to get into final position, lined up in a solid row completely blocking the street, and as Ravagin galloped toward them he saw that each machine had three to five gently waving tendrils rising out from somewhere in its interior. Like faint echoes of the prehensile grabbing action of Darcane Forest's Berands fronds.

Or perhaps of scorpion glove whips …

Ravagin gritted his teeth. He had no choice at all: it was either make it over that barrier or else face the ghost carriage behind him and the even deadlier troll still on its way. And the only way to get his horse's legs past those waving tendrils would be to let them grab something else.

Jamming the reins into the crook of his left elbow, he reached over to his right wrist. The timing on this was going to be tight, with no margin for error. Eyes on the tumbleweeds, he made a quick calculation of the distance, adjusted his horse's stride for the jump. The barrier was seven meters ahead now; six; four—

And the scorpion glove whip lashed out and down, grazing the tops of the two tumbleweeds directly ahead.

The tendrils were fast, all right. Before Ravagin had even a chance to withdraw it, they had the whip thoroughly entangled. The end vanished into the center of one of the tumbleweeds, and abruptly the slack in the whip disappeared as something in the tumbleweed's center began reeling it in. Clenching his jaw, Ravagin fought for balance against the pull. The horse reached its take-off point, Ravagin kicked him into the jump—

And as they sailed unhindered over the barrier Ravagin tore open the wrist band holding the scorpion glove onto his right hand. With one final tug that threatened to pull him bodily off his mount, the glove was yanked off.

From behind came another scream of rage … of rage, but with an underlying coloring of frustration. Licking his lips, Ravagin took a ragged breath and permitted himself a grim smile. The edge of Horma flashed by, and a second later he was driving hard across open grass toward the forest beyond. From the sound of that scream the troll and sky-plane were still too far behind him to catch up before he reached the forest. He was going to make it …

Unless it occurred to Astaroth to put the sky-plane down within crossbow range of Ravagin's back. The smile vanished from Ravagin's lips, and he hunched down over the horse's neck, feeling the skin tightening between his shoulderblades.

But for once, the demon missed a bet. The sky-plane chased Ravagin right up to the edge of the forest, even attempting to force its way through the branches until its increasingly reduced speed seemed to finally persuade Astaroth that that approach wasn't going to work. The noise of it backing out through that same tangle of branches came as Ravagin, fighting hard to keep up his speed without running into a tree, shot on ahead. There was another scream—

And then there was silence.

Licking his lips, Ravagin fought the shaking in his hands and settled down for the long ride ahead. The die was cast; and in many ways what happened now was totally out of his hands. Riding as fast as a troll could hope to chase him on foot, with the forest's canopy sealing him off from any kind of aerial attack or landing, he was virtually assured of reaching the Tunnel some eighty-five kilometers away. The only question remaining was whether or not Astaroth would realize that his only hope of stopping Ravagin was to fly on ahead and wait for him at the Tunnel.

It was almost certain that he would.

I
T WAS NEARLY SUNDOWN
when Ravagin finally reached the clearing surrounding the Tunnel … to find the demon/troll waiting there for him.

“You have come,” the mechanical voice boomed out as Ravagin cautiously approached the last line of trees on foot. “I have grown weary waiting for you.”

“Translation: you hoped the forest animals would take care of me for you?” Ravagin called. The demon/troll was standing directly in front of the Tunnel's entrance, its feet half buried in an unusually thick leaf cover that seemed to have filled much of that part of the clearing. Cautiously, Ravagin eased around one tree, made for a second—