The bandit stopped in his tracks, eyes bulging. Ravagin had rather expected him to be taken by surprise; doppelganger invocations weren't especially common. No more than a temporary solution, of course, but it ought to at least buy him the time to try something more effective. With the bandit's spirit protection in place none of the usual frontal assaults would work fast enough to be of any real use... but Ravagin had always preferred more subtle approaches, anyway. "Sa-khe-khe fawkh pieslahe; bring a flood," he intoned... and a second later an instant artesian well appeared between him and the bandit as the nixie he'd invoked forced ground water to the surface in obedience to his command.
The bandit spat a curse as the flow reached him, washing around his ankles and rapidly turning his footing to slippery mud. "You will die painfully, spirithandler," he snarled. Stepping sideways, he moved toward the edge of the small river flowing around him... heading toward the spot where Danae was crouching.
Ravagin gritted his teeth. Almost ready... Now. "Carash-kakh!" he snapped, releasing the nixie. The water flow cut off, the bandit staggering momentarily as the current he'd been fighting against vanished. He glanced at Ravagin, grinning—"Sa-trahist rassh!" Ravagin called, making the placement gesture and then crossing his fingers. With a whoosh of flame a firebrat blazed into existence—
And as the heat hit the water, the hillside abruptly erupted with a dense cloud of steam.
The bandit bellowed with rage, but it was a rage rapidly turning to uneasiness as the steam swallowed up his intended prey. Ravagin didn't wait for him to regain his mental balance; dodging around the blazing firebrat, he dived into the cloud, senses alert. His hand brushed the other's arm and he ducked low, jabbing his sword toward where the bandit's ribcage ought to be. A swish of air over his head showed the other's last reflexive attempt to cut him in half—
His blade jarred against bone and slid past... and it was over.
Ravagin backed away from the body, soaked to the skin with sweat and steam and the splashed mud of the bandit's final landing. "Carash-carsheen," he said with a sigh. The firebrat vanished, and a minute later the worst of the steam had blown away. "It's all over," he called to Danae, who was still in a half crouch a dozen meters away, knife in hand.
She straightened up, eyes still looking confused... "Oh, right," he nodded, glancing at the four doppelgangers still surrounding him. "Carash-meena, carash-meena, carash-meena, carash-meena."
The images vanished. "Cute," Danae said stiffly, jamming her knife back into its sheath as he walked up to her. Her eyes drifted once to the bloody corpse, moved quickly away. "I suppose that's just one of the tricks you pick up after you've been here awhile."
"The doppelgangers or the fire and water?"
"Both." Her lips were pressed tightly together. "The lecture probably comes next; but before you begin, whatever happened with the jinx wasn't my fault. That was the invocation spell I was taught, and if it was wrong—"
"Relax," Ravagin sighed, sheathing his sword. "The spell was fine. It was the application that you fou
—that was wrong."
"What do you mean? A jinx is a spirit of confusion, isn't it?"
"Sure, but it only works if you have two or more opponents there to confuse," Ravagin explained patiently. "It's not so much an internal confusion as an external one—it's supposed to foul up coordination between adversaries, get rid of their numerical advantage over you."
"Oh." Danae grimaced. "Well... I'm sorry. No one ever thought to make that clear to me."
Did you think to ask? Ravagin wondered; but he kept the sarcasm to himself. "Thanks anyway," he said instead. "In the future, though, I'd rather you'd just try to keep out of my way unless I ask for help."
"Yeah. Sure." Danae turned abruptly away from him and started climbing up the nearest mound.
"Well, what are we waiting for?" she snapped back over her shoulder. "If we're going to camp here overnight we'll want to set up a shelter, won't we?"
Ravagin shook his head in tired disgust. It was precisely that kind of unthinking reaction to criticism that could make a Courier's life in Karyx a hell on wheels... and far too often got him killed.
Taking a deep breath, he set off after her, watching the surrounding mounds closely. In case the bandit hadn't been a loner.
Chapter 11
The cool night breeze drifted across Danae's face, and for the third time since nightfall she came awake with a start. For a long minute she lay still, heart pounding, fighting against the feeling of dread that had suddenly seized her. No sounds except those of occasional insects or small animals broke the silence of the night; certainly nothing to suggest there was anyone sneaking up on them. A
meter to her right, Ravagin's breathing was steady in his own sleep—surely he would have come awake himself by now if anything was amiss. Nerves, girl, she chided herself. That's all—just a case of nerves.
That, and sleeping out on a bare hillside without even a blanket between her and the hard ground.
Stifling a groan, she rolled from her side onto her back, easing the ache there. Directly above her, the stars were almost hurting in their brilliance. I wonder if they're muted like the sunlight is, she thought. Though the way they were blazing down it hardly seemed likely.
Lowering her eyes, she gazed at and through the barely visible haze surrounding them. The lar Ravagin had invoked, circling their camp like a soundless, spectral whirlwind. Supposedly a powerful first line of defense against anything that should choose to attack them... Moving as quietly as possible, Danae got to her feet and began walking toward the haze. There was no resistance, no evidence of anything between her and the rest of Karyx but fog or imagination; nothing that could be remotely considered a defense—
Abruptly, the fog thickened in front of her, condensing in on itself like a reversed film of an explosion. She stopped, stomach tightening with sudden nervousness as a three-meter pillar of living smoke formed in her path. For a moment she looked at it, wondering what would happen if she tried to reach out and touch it. The lar was supposed to be on their side, after all... but on the other hand it was Ravagin, not her, who had invoked it. Carefully, she backed up toward her place on the hillside, watching as the lar gradually spread itself into a defensive circle again. By the time she lay back down there was again nothing between her and the rest of Karyx but a hazy fog.
Licking her lips, she closed her eyes. We're perfectly safe here, she told herself. Perfectly safe.
Eventually, she convinced herself enough to fall asleep.
But the vague feeling of dread refused to go completely away, and her dreams were troubled ones.
"We should be able to rent a couple of horses at one of the inns down the road," Ravagin told her as they finished their breakfast. "At that point the trip to Besak will only take a couple of hours."
Danae nodded silently, taking one last mouthful of aromatic meat and tossing the bone aside.
Ravagin had hunted down the small animal sometime before dawn, roasting it over a fire ignited by a firebrat he'd let her invoke. The fact that she'd done the spell flawlessly was a small nugget of satisfaction against the general malaise hanging over her this morning. The bad dreams and poor sleeping conditions of the previous night, she'd decided, perhaps coupled with a lingering remnant of culture shock. Once they reached Besak and she had a halfway-decent bed to sleep in this would all blow over.
"You haven't really told me what you're doing here," Ravagin commented as he got to his feet and wiped his hands on his pant legs. "What your project is, I mean. I can't very well advise you as to location and all if I don't know that."
"There was a complete writeup in my application," she told him, standing up herself and wincing as she followed his example on cleaning the oils from her hands. Fastidious cleanliness wasn't a major characteristic of Karyx's culture, and it wouldn't do to stand out too blatantly from the rest of the population.