Which meant Habri's rebellion wasn't nearly as widespread as he'd tried to imply that afternoon. For a second Ravagin toyed with the idea of flattening the traitor as he left the cell, decided against it. A
good thing too; as he stepped past Habri and on into the corridor, he saw the other had brought three heavily armed men with him.
The guards fell into step behind him and Danae as Habri took the lead. Ravagin could feel the tension in Danae's hand as they walked, and he glanced over once to give her a reassuring smile.
Whatever the deficiencies of Habri's organization, it was surely good enough to at least spring a couple of prisoners from the castle-lord's cells.
And it was. A minute later they emerged through a thick door into a hallway of the main manor house. A few turns later they reached what appeared to be the kitchen area; another heavy door took them into one of the four entrance hallways that led to the outside from the relatively narrow base of the manor house. A minute after that, they were out in the night air.
"Don't relax yet," Ravagin murmured as Danae gave a quiet sigh of relief. "We're still inside the castle walls, you know, and there are a lot of guards and trolls between us and the rest of Shamsheer."
"So let's use that fact," she whispered back. "Call the trolls down on us, expose Habri as a traitor—"
"His word against ours?"
"—and... oh. But—"
She broke off, and Ravagin looked around to see Habri step up to them. There was a glint in the other's eye that Ravagin didn't at all care for. "Well, sorcerer," Habri said, proffering Ravagin his scorpion glove. "The time is now. My men are prepared; all that is lacking is a path into the castlelord's chambers. So. Are you ready to open that path?"
"More or less," Ravagin nodded, taking the glove and slipping it on. The familiar tingle told him the weapon was ready... and for the first time in hours he felt somewhat less than naked. With a weapon again in his hand—
I could get both of us killed, he reminded himself sternly, forcing down the adrenaline rush. The only way they were going to get out of this was to play out the scheme he'd come up with in the hours since accepting Habri's offer. "I'll need some other devices first," he told the other. "A watchblade, prayer stick, firefly, and the sky-plane we arrived on."
Habri raised his eyebrows slightly. "You made no mention of any of this earlier," he pointed out.
"I didn't know earlier that I'd be needing it," Ravagin said tartly. "You want into Simrahi's chambers, or you want to stand here and argue?"
Habri pursed his lips, then nodded. "Wait here," he instructed, and turned away.
Ravagin took a step backward, letting his eyes drift casually around the area. The windows in the lower parts of the manor house still showed some lights, indicating that despite the late hour the day still hadn't ended for many of the castle-lord's servants. Above the overhang, where the slender tower of Simrahi's private section rose from the flat roof of the lower manor house like the stem from an inverted mushroom, all was dark. "What in the world do you want with that sky-plane?" Danae murmured at his side.
"I don't care about the sky-plane," he answered back. "What I want is the spirit inhabiting it."
A moment of silence. "I thought you said the spirit left it while we were flying around the dining room."
"I was wrong. I was concentrating so hard on the fact that the sky-plane had started avoiding walls again that I completely missed the fact that it was even flying at all."
"Aren't sky-planes supposed to work inside buildings—?" She broke off with a snort. "No, of course they're not. Damn—I missed it too."
"There wasn't all that much time for analytic thought," he reminded her. "You see the implication, though, don't you? If the spirit didn't leave the sky-plane at that point, maybe it wasn't able to leave at all."
He sensed Danae shake her head. "That doesn't necessarily follow," she said. "Besides, it clearly got in somehow. Shouldn't it be able to get out the same way?"
"Maybe; maybe not. Getting in or out could be a tedious process, and it's possible that once we were captured the spirit decided to stick around and make sure we were properly arrested and executed."
"All right, all right—suppose the thing is still there. Then what?"
Ravagin took a deep breath. With the danger of eavesdroppers hanging around their cell he hadn't dared discuss any of this with Danae earlier, and he was suddenly afraid that she would find a completely obvious flaw in the scheme that would leave it torn to shreds. Putting their chances for escape in roughly the same shape. "If the spirit is there, I think there's a chance I can take control of it," he told her. "There are special geas spells that allow control by people other than the one who invoked the spirit in the first place—"
"You mean the manifold geas?" Danae snorted. "I tried it at least twice back on Karyx without it doing me an atom of good."
"That's because the manifold geas requires the person who invoked the spirit to add a special addendum phrase at the time of the invocation. There's another one you can sometimes use for a short time whether the spirit's had any prior preparation or not."
"Oh, is there now? I wish someone had thought to teach that one to me."
"Actually, there were a couple of very good reasons no one did," he said. "One of them being that none of the Couriers want inexperienced clients taking over spirits and messing around with them."
The other reason being considerably nastier... but it was still possible he wouldn't have to use it.
With a little luck—and a little carelessness on Habri's part—they might still be able to fly out of here from under the would-be usurper's nose. "Anyway, if I can control the spirit, I may be able to get it to leave the sky-plane and enter the watchblade Habri's bringing me. I can then give it a transference order and throw the watchblade at one of the trolls guarding the entrance to Simrahi's private tower."
He spread his hands. "Presto, if I'm lucky: instant amok troll."
"And in the confusion Habri goes in and takes over?"
"In the confusion, you and I get the hell out of here on the freshly exorcised sky-plane," Ravagin corrected. "One troll out of however many Simrahi's got on his door isn't doing to do Habri a damn bit of good."
"What about the trolls and guards on the outer wall?"
"The trolls shouldn't stop an outgoing sky-plane, middle of the night or not. The other guards—"
Ravagin shrugged helplessly. "We'll just have to risk it. The last thing I want is for us to be around here when Habri and Simrahi start at it in earnest."
A movement off to the side caught Ravagin's attention: four men lugging a limp sky-plane between them. "Looks like our transportation's arrived," he murmured to Danae. "Stick close to me and be ready to jump when I do."
Approaching from another direction, Habri arrived just as his men eased the sky-plane to the ground in front of Ravagin. "Ah—the sky-plane has arrived," he said with a nod. "Good. Here are the other items you requested."
Ravagin frowned at the firefly, prayer stick, and ordinary knife in the other's hand. "What about the watchblade?"
Habri smiled thinly. "I trust, Ravagin, that you don't consider me a fool. To give you a blade that will always find its mark when I'm not even certain you're fully on my side?" He shook his head. "No, my good sorcerer. If you have the black arts you claim, you can surely succeed without any such assistance. Just as you can surely succeed without the aid of your companion."
With a shock, Ravagin suddenly noticed that four large men had silently gathered around them while he and Habri had been talking. "What do you mean by that?" he asked carefully. "If you think I can do this without Danae's aid—"
"That is exactly what I mean," Habri said. He glanced over Ravagin's shoulder, and abruptly there was a white shimmering hovering between his head and Danae's. A spark-sword blade...