"I will destroy you," the voice continued as if Ravagin hadn't spoken. "You and the female human will both die."
"I don't think so," Ravagin shook his head. "For starters, Danae—the female human, as you call her
—is already out of your reach. Or hadn't I mentioned that she's the one who went into Karyx to bring Gartanis here? I doubt she'll have any trouble persuading him to come for such a—"
And without warning Saban snatched his watchblade from its hilt. "The human Ravagin!" the demon screamed the knife's target to it in a voice that no human vocal cords could possibly have produced.
Saban's arm cocked backward over his shoulder to throw—
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 headfirst 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 skyplane.
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—