The hallways measured roughly three meters across each, and they wound up crossing twenty-one of them before Ravagin called a halt. "We're just past the southern edge of Missia City now—see the lights?" he said, pointing, as he knelt near the window. "That means we should be facing due west now."
"Uh-huh," Danae nodded, staying as close to the center of the hallway as she could. The window had no lip or sill, and had another equally long drop beyond it... Gritting her teeth, she concentrated on her mental map of Shamsheer. "Picking up a sky-plane here is as likely to get us to Ordarl Protectorate as it is to Numant, though, isn't it?"
"Or it could take us to Kelaine City or anything else in the Tweens," he agreed, backing away carefully from the window. "Or even some distance beyond the Tunnel. We aren't going to get a whole lot of choice."
"That wasn't what I meant," she said. "Ordarl was where we were stopped on our way to Karyx, remember?"
"Oh, well, that won't be any problem. They released us, after all, so there aren't going to be any official grudges or anything being kept."
"That still isn't what I meant. Don't you remember?—they stopped us because they were having trouble with black sorcery and equipment malfunctions?"
"Yes—and I told you at the time that black sor—" He broke off abruptly. "Oh, bloody hell," he said, very softly.
She nodded, feeling a shiver go up her back. She'd just made the correlation a few minutes ago herself. "Which means the spirits have been in Shamsheer at least that long. And if their influence is centered in Ordarl..."
"We could wind up back in the hot seat again if we land there," Ravagin said heavily. "Or maybe even if we just fly over the place. Damn it all—we need to know more about what we're up against here."
"Couldn't we try some spirit-detection spells—?" She bit at her lip. "No, of course not—they need a demogorgon around to function."
Ravagin nodded "Right. Which is where the real crunch comes: we're having to fight these spirits without knowing which of the usual rules apply. If any of them."
"All right, then. In the absence of rules, let's try logic." Easing down carefully onto her back on the sharp mesh, Danae stared at the gridwork above her for a minute and then closed her eyes. She was considerably more tired than she'd realized, and it was an effort to try and think. "They were waiting for us the minute we got back to Shamsheer, and they challenged us without even stopping to ask who we were. Which implies—" They're ready for an all-out war? She shivered suddenly.
"Which implies," Ravagin picked up the thread, "that they knew we were coming and had to be stopped. Which means there's some sort of communication between Karyx and Shamsheer. Oh, sure
—the spirit that cried out when we escaped across the telefold. Sound travels perfectly well across the thing; the Shamsheer contingent just has a messenger standing by in the Tunnel—"
"My God—that's it!" Danae interrupted, jerking bolt upright as it suddenly struck her. "That's it, Ravagin—that's how the spirits got here. All you need to do is bring a spirit into the Tunnel, leave him there while you cross the telefold, and then do a standard specific-name invocation. That affects only the called spirit, without the need for any demogorgon influence."
"But an invocation—" Ravagin broke off and swore viciously under his breath. "An invocation brings a spirit from the fourth world to Karyx. Across a world boundary. No wonder they tried to stop us—as soon as you know there's an entirely separate fourth world to Triplet, the rest follows immediately."
Danae swallowed as another thought occurred to her. "It also means that they've got at least one human ally here. The person who brought them across."
Ravagin rubbed thoughtfully at his cheek. "Yeah. Well... at least they're still not able to get across on their own. I guess that's something."
Danae shivered as images of Melentha's face, twisted by hatred and fury, floated up from her memory. To have to face something like that again... "I almost wish it were the other way around," she muttered.
"No, you don't," Ravagin shook his head. "Think about it a minute. The Ordarl soldiers said the malfunctions had been going on for—how long did they say?"
"Several weeks."
"Right. So if the spirits' human dupe were actively participating in a bid to conquer Shamsheer, he surely would have brought over enough of them to take control of every bit of machinery on the planet. Right?"
"Well... okay, I guess so."
"But they haven't done that—if they had, we would never have gotten this far. And several weeks should have given them enough time to make their move." Ravagin paused, forehead wrinkled in thought. "So they haven't got a whole army here. Which means their dupe very likely only brought over a limited number of them, for whatever damnfool reason of his own. In fact, he may not even realize yet that they've gotten out of his control."
It sounded reasonable enough, at least to Danae's increasingly foggy mind. "Okay. So then what?"
Ravagin hissed out a breath. "I don't know," he admitted. "If I were bringing over a spirit to test spells on, I wouldn't use anything more powerful than a sprite... but those trolls sure as hell weren't being controlled by something that limited. We could be dealing with djinns here—maybe even peris or demons. I just don't know."
Danae closed her eyes again. "I don't think I even care at the moment what we're up against. As long as they let us get some sleep."
"Point," he grunted with a tired sigh of his own, easing down onto the mesh beside her. "We've got at least a couple of hours before the sky-plane exodus starts. A little sleep'll do both of us good."
Not quite close enough to touch her... "Ravagin?" she asked tentatively. "If the spirits have gotten into the Tower with us... do you think they could send a sky-plane or a castle-lord's bubble in here to push us out?"
"I doubt it," he answered. "Towers seem to work under their own very specialized rules. If a spirit started monkeying with them, I think it would find itself pretty quickly cut out of whatever circuit it was in."
"Oh."
For another moment the faint background hum of the Tower was the only sound in Danae's ears.
Then, with a rustle of clothing, Ravagin moved right up next to her. His arm slid across her stomach; his several-day growth of beard tickled lightly at her ear. "This what you wanted?" he murmured.
She felt blood rushing to her cheeks... but she'd gone through too much with Ravagin to hold onto false dignity now. "Yes," she admitted. "I'm not feeling all that brave at the moment."
His arm tightened comfortingly. "If it helps," he murmured, "neither am I."
Two hours later, they were again flying beneath the night sky, sharing their sky-plane with an oddly shaped piece of ribbed metal that Ravagin guessed was part of a rainstopper mechanism.
It was crowded aboard the carpet, but with reliable edge barriers between her and the rest of the universe, Danae almost didn't even care how close to the edge she had to sit. For a while she watched the stars overhead, but shortly after they passed over Castle Ordarleal the fatigue tugging at her eyelids again proved too much to handle. Stretching out as best she could, she again fell asleep.
"Danae!"
She snapped awake in an instant at his hiss, heart thudding as the horrible dream images faded reluctantly from before her eyes. "Ravagin?" she hissed back, twisting up into a sitting position and looking wildly around. Dawn was just beginning to break behind them to the east; ahead, Ravagin was kneeling at the sky-plane's front edge, peering at the ground below. Even in the dim light she could see that his body was tensed. "What is it?" she repeated, louder this time.
"We're coming down," he murmured over his shoulder. "Damn it all—we're coming down right inside Castle Numanteal."
"What?" she gasped, crawling over to his side. Sure enough, they were losing altitude... and the sixsided castle wall was directly ahead. "We can't land there. Can we?"