Beside her, Ravagin abruptly exhaled in relief. "Well," he said. "You see?—there are occasionally nice surprises on Karyx."
"What?" Danae frowned, glancing at him and back at the rider, who she could now see was indeed alone... and was a woman.
A woman? "Ravagin...?"
"Don't worry," he told her. "It's a friend. Melentha, from the way house in Besak, here to give us a lift."
"Oh." Danae licked her lips. It certainly would beat walking... but as the party approached she couldn't help noticing that there was something odd about the two riderless horses flanking Melentha's. An unnatural intelligence or alertness about them, perhaps, beyond anything she could ever remember seeing in an animal. Bio-enhanced? she wondered fleetingly before remembering where she was. Animals, bio-enhanced or ordinary, were incapable of passing the Tunnels' telefolds.
But then...?
"Well met, Ravagin," Melentha called as she reined to a halt a few meters before them. The other two animals likewise stopped, without any obvious command from the woman. "I didn't expect to have to come this far to find you. Did you have some trouble?"
"A little—ran into a bandit," Ravagin grunted, striding forward. "Melentha, this is Danae—she'll be here for a month or two doing some studies."
"Danae," Melentha nodded, eying Danae with cool politeness. "Are you a professor?"
"A student," Danae corrected evenly. Melentha was surely not trying to be condescending, after all.
"I'm here for a field assignment—it's a psychological study—"
"That's nice." Melentha looked back at Ravagin. "Whenever you're ready. I'm sure you have better things to do than loiter along the Besak-Torralane road; I know I do."
"That's what everyone likes about you, Melentha—your devotion to duty and hearth," Ravagin said dryly. "We're ready any time... as soon as you turn the horses over to us."
"What?" Melentha glanced at the animals standing unnaturally still beside her. "Oh, come on, Ravagin—don't tell me you're getting squeamish in your old age."
Ravagin's face seemed to darken slightly. "Just humor me and do it, okay?"
"But—oh, all right." Shaking her head in disbelief, she rose up in her stirrups and looked down at the horses. "Ishnaki, Giaur: carash-natasta, carash-natasta."
Danae inhaled sharply as, for just a second, both animals were abruptly sheathed in green auras. One of the horses whinnied as the auras coalesced above them into drifting humanoid figures, vanishing before they were fully formed. But from what had been visible of their faces... Danae shivered violently. "Ravagin—were those demons?" she whispered.
Ravagin's eyes were on Melentha, his expression stony. "They were indeed," he growled. "I don't suppose it's occurred to you that using a demon for trivial jobs like animal control is a damn fool thing to do."
Melentha cocked her head, making a snatch at the horses' reins as the animals, freed from their possession, began to paw the ground restlessly. "I consider it a rather smart idea, actually," she told Ravagin coolly. "It's pretty obvious you haven't tried this stunt with nothing but reins or ropes to keep the extra horses under control."
"As it happens, I have," he countered, stepping forward to take one of the ropes from her. "I also know that you can get by perfectly well with a djinn or sometimes even a sprite to keep them with you. Using a demon where it's not absolutely necessary is just plain stupid."
"I'm sorry you disapprove," Melentha said stiffly. "Try to bear in mind, though, that I don't have to answer to you or anyone else for how I run my life and way house." She looked at Danae, jerked her head toward the other horse. "Well, come on, Danae—get mounted and let's get out of here. They did give you some idea of how to ride, didn't they?"
"I know enough." Reaching up, Danae pulled herself smoothly into the saddle and took up the reins in the expert's grip she'd been taught in childhood back at the family estate. "Lead on—I'm anxious to get to work."
She had the satisfaction of seeing momentary surprise in each of the others' faces at her obvious equestrian experience. Then, with a slight shrug, Melentha turned her horse around and headed back south along the road. "Well, let's go, then," she called over her shoulder.
Danae swung her own mount around and followed, settling herself easily into the horse's rhythm.
Ravagin pulled up alongside, and she glanced over to see him checking her technique. "Adequate?" she asked tartly.
"Oh, quite," he nodded, and dropped back behind her again into what was probably a standard rearguard position.
But before he did so she caught just the hint of a smile as it crossed his face. Great, she thought darkly. Just great. He and Melentha have some sort of feud going, and I've just bought him a couple of points. Well, that sort of nonsense was going to stop damn quick—she'd just escaped from her father's chess game and had no intention whatsoever in joining someone else's.
And yet...
It was the first time Ravagin had showed even a hint of approval toward her... and for some unknown reason it made her feel rather good.
Which in its way was more irritating even than Melentha's condescending attitude toward her. I am not here to gain Ravagin's approval, she told herself sternly; and repeated it several times until it was firmly set in her mind.
In a silence broken only by necessary conversation, the trio made their way down the road toward Besak.
Chapter 12
The village of Besak, or at least the part Danae saw as they rode toward the way house, was exactly as the Triplet information packet had painted it... which was, in Danae's opinion, a bad sign.
Her overwhelming first impression of the place was that it was filthy. The narrow streets that wound between the cottages were lined with piles of garbage, through which small half-seen animals burrowed. Some of the larger and fancier buildings had outhouses out back—or front—for their occupants' sanitary needs; how those in the smaller cottages managed she tried not to think about.
Above it, a variety of odors rose and mingled to become a truly memorable stench.
The info packet had been right about the filth. It had also said Besak's inhabitants were rough, conniving, superstitious even by Karyx standards, and occasionally extremely violent.
For the moment, though, those more dangerous aspects of village life seemed to be dormant. All around them the main activity seemed to be the bustle of commerce, with no more violence in sight than occasional overloud haggling. Children ran and played in the streets, much as children anywhere in small towns in the Twenty Worlds would, their game shifting to a race around the newcomers' horses as Melentha led them along at a brisk walk. Adults, passing by them on various unknown errands, paused to bow their heads to Melentha, their eyes flicking briefly over Ravagin and Danae with obvious curiosity but no apparent hostility. No one seemed particularly clean... but as Danae got used to the grime, she noticed that no one seemed particularly unwell, either. All the sick people are indoors, maybe? But that was unlikely—people in primitive cultures could seldom afford to stay away from their work for the complete duration of an illness. Spirit healing, then, she concluded, the thought sending a shiver up her back. It was one thing to lie in a diagnostic chair in a spotless room with tailored biochips circulating through your body; it was something else entirely to have a living entity doing the probing.
She started abruptly as something hazily bright flashed past her face. "What—?"
"Just a sprite," Ravagin reassured her, bringing his horse up alongside hers.
She licked her lips and exhaled a ragged breath. "Good thing I wasn't galloping," she growled.
"Running practically into my face like that—I could have fallen and broken my neck."
He eyed her oddly. "Yeah. Well... like I said, the spirits don't especially like us—"