Danae made a sort of strangled gasp as hard hands gripped Ravagin's arm and pulled his hand away from hers. "You will open the path for us," Habri said flatly, his eyes on Ravagin's face as other hands took Danae's arms and moved her toward the shadows by the entrance hallway behind him.
"Knowing your companion is back amid the attackers should strengthen your resolve, should it not?"
Ravagin took a deep breath. The temptation to use the scorpion glove, to wrap its whip around and around that face... "All right," he said through clenched teeth. "I'll try it alone. But the minute you have access to Simrahi's tower I want her released. You understand? Released, unharmed, and out here in the courtyard."
"So you can make your escape?" Habri shrugged. "Yes, I rather expected that was your chief goal in agreeing to help me. Well, no matter. As soon as I'm in the castle-lord's chambers I'll have no further need of you."
"The feeling is mutual." Ravagin looked down at the sky-plane lying at his feet. Now he had no choice; he had to get the traitors into Simrahi's tower. And that meant using the spell... "Get all your men back," he ordered Habri. "But keep them ready. When I open the way, you'll need to be ready."
The other nodded silently and stepped back... and Ravagin stepped forward onto the sky-plane.
The carpet didn't move as Ravagin walked to its center; didn't so much as quiver as he got down on his knees and gazed down into its decorated surface; didn't in any way indicate it might be anything more than just a normal part of Shamsheer's miracle technology. For a long moment Ravagin wondered if perhaps it was nothing more, wondered if the spirit that had betrayed them had perhaps already departed as Danae had suggested it might.
He could almost hope it had. If the spirit was gone he wouldn't have to do this thing he'd sworn never to do...
Licking his lips, he took a deep breath. There was nothing to be gained by hesitating now. If the spirit was there, he was already as prepared as he was going to be for what was ahead. Leaning forward, he brought his hands down onto the surface of the sky-plane. "Mish-trasin-brikai," he said softly. "Ormahi-insafay-biswer. Harkhonis-mirraim-suspakro."
And with a surge like a mild electric shock, Ravagin felt the spirit rise up through his hands.
And flood into him.
Chapter 39
He gasped... or, rather, sensed dimly that his body had gasped. Just as he sensed dimly that he was no longer attached to that same body.
He'd heard stories from others who'd done this, but none of them had prepared him for the sensations now flooding his mind. Or rather, for the lack of sensations. Being buried alive in cotton with a flaming torch in your face... drowning in spices, unable to breathe and yet with sharp odors jabbing into nose and brain... drifting on an intangible sky-plane with a drastically ingrown edge barrier locking all muscles in place—he'd heard all of those metaphors and others over the years. None of them even came close. All of mankind's most basic fears—falling, drowning, blindness—seemed to explode on him at once... and even as he fought to gain balance, to be able to think clearly amid the sudden panic, a flame seemed to burst beneath his unfelt feet, sweeping over him, burning his skin to a crisp blackness as the parasite spirit attacked and burned and fought to either control or destroy him
—
Wait a second. I'm not even attached to my body at the moment—how can I feel like I'm on fire?
And with that single rational thought, the whole thing unraveled.
Ravagin took a shuddering breath—and then another, savoring the sense of being whole again.
Illusion—the whole thing was illusion. Wasn't it, my little companion?
The parasite spirit didn't answer. Ravagin wasn't sure a parasite spirit even had enough intelligence to communicate... but whatever it lacked in intellectual capacity it more than made up in raw emotion. He could feel the hatred and rage of the creature as it swirled like a ghostly and impotent tornado through his mind—rage at being defeated and under Ravagin's control, hatred at some more basic and permanent level. It was the first time Ravagin had ever touched a spirit this deeply... the first time he'd ever realized how truly alien the spirit world was. A trickle of sweat ran down between his shoulderblades, and he was dimly aware that he was shivering violently. And not just because of the chilly night air.
Presently, the dark introspection faded, and the world around him began to reappear before his eyes.
He was still kneeling on the sky-plane, his hands curled into fists pressed tightly against his abdomen. His shirt was soaked with sweat, his head ached fiercely, and there was oozing blood where his fingernails had dug into his palms; but all in all, it hadn't been as bad as he'd expected, even from something as relatively simple as a parasite spirit. Lesson number one: spirits aren't nearly as strong on Shamsheer as they are on Karyx. A damn good thing, too...
"Sky-plane—" He broke off, worked moisture into his mouth, and tried again. "Sky-plane: rise one varn and follow my mark: mark."
He could feel the spirit resist... but for the moment, at least, it had no choice but to obey him. The sky-plane rose a meter and floated gently toward the entrance hallway Ravagin was pointing to.
"I was starting to think you had fallen asleep," a soft voice came from behind him.
Ravagin jerked as Habri stepped up to pace the sky-plane. "No one ever tell you not to sneak up behind people?" he growled.
Habri shrugged casually... but as Ravagin's sky-plane hesitated only a moment before crossing the ten-meter limit a touch of awe added brittleness to his features. "You were a long time casting your spell," he said after a brief pause. "But I can see that the results were worth the wait. If your other sorcerous powers are as potent—"
"What do you mean, a long time?" Ravagin interrupted him. "What was it, five minutes? Ten?"
Habri threw him an odd look. "Half an hour at the least. Perhaps a few minutes more."
Ravagin felt a new chill run up his sweat-soaked back as, for the first time, he noticed that the manor house was almost entirely dark now. The servants had finished their chores and retired for the night... and he'd lost thirty minutes of his life during that battle. "It took longer than I expected," he said to Habri through dry lips. Even to him the excuse sounded lame.
"Your companion seemed to think so, too," Habri said. "I think that fact was more worrisome to my men than the delay itself."
"She's never actually watched me do this spell before," he improvised. So Danae was being held nearby, somewhere where she could see the courtyard. He tucked the fact away for possible future reference.
Two of Habri's men were holding the doors to the entrance hallway by the time Ravagin reached them. Though not designed for sky-plane usage, the doorway was fortunately wide enough for the carpet to pass through without trouble. Behind him, Ravagin could hear soft noises as the rest of Habri's force fell in behind them. It was probably a good thing, he thought once as the parade trooped along the darkened corridors, that subduing the parasite spirit had taken as long as it had.
The image of Habri trying to push his way past cleaning crews and the occasional butcher's assistant brought an unexpected giggle welling up from his throat.
He choked the laughter down. Did direct spirit contact always leave a person this giddy? Like a narcotic drug, he thought, fighting against the oddly euphoric feeling. I wonder if that's why some people seem to like doing this kind of thing.
I wonder if that's how Melentha got started.
It took them only a few minutes to reach the top floor of the lower manor house and the great chamber into which the stairs from below led... and it took Ravagin even less time than that to realize his plan was going to need drastic revision.
It was the same place where he'd had his all too brief hearing before the castle-lord a few hours earlier, though having been brought up from the cells by a different route he hadn't realized exactly where he was. As he'd noted then, it was a huge room... and the only ways into it were far from the fat pillar and ornate doors where four trolls stood motionless guard. Lying flat on the hovering skyplane, his eyes barely above floor level, he tried to ignore the impatient rumblings from the men strung out down the stairs beneath him and made a quick estimate of both the horizontal distance and the height of the relatively low ceiling. The ballistic calculation was simple enough for him to do in his head... and there was absolutely no way he was going to reach any of the trolls with a thrown knife.