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"I'm sure there was, but no one showed it to me," he told her shortly as he led the way through the last line of mounds toward the road below. "Maybe you'd be good enough to give me a brief summary?"

She pursed her lips... but there really wasn't any reason he couldn't know most of it. "I want to study the psychology of the people here, both Karyx natives and those from the Twenty Worlds manning the way houses. Try and determine the effect such easy access to spirits has had on them."

"Sounds really interesting," he said with a distinct lack of enthusiasm "I presume you don't care that it's been done before?"

"As you were so careful to point out before, there aren't a whole lot of ways studies of Karyx can be related to the Twenty Worlds," she said tartly, annoyed despite the fact she'd half expected that reaction. "One of the few is to measure how this system of basically free wishes has affected the human psyche here. Assuming, of course, that the people here are true humans."

He threw her a sidelong glance. "Not going to let that one go, are you? So tell me how this is supposed to relate to the Twenty Worlds—or are you going to suggest that Karyx adult development has been arrested at the adolescent level because they can get everything done for them by spirits?"

"I'm not starting with any preconceptions," she said. "Though I have heard that theory."

"It's total nonsense," he said flatly. They'd reached the road now, and he paused to gaze both directions before turning them south. "There's a lot more raw wish fulfillment on Shamsheer—a lot more, for that matter, on the Twenty Worlds—than there is here. The spirits don't like us, Danae—if you always remember one thing about Karyx remember that. The spirits don't like us, they don't especially like running errands for us, and they hate like hell when one of us traps them into a sword or mill wheel or something. When you invoke a spirit you're almost literally taking the same chance as fiddling with an appliance without throwing the breaker first: the possibility you're going to get kicked across the room. Or worse."

She walked in silence for a few steps, digesting that. It sounded paranoid in the extreme... but after last night she wasn't inclined to dismiss such feelings out of hand. "You think the spirits are... well, out to get us somehow?"

"How could they?" he countered with a shrug. "The spells we've got have been used for centuries—if they weren't adequate, don't you think the spirits would have made some countermove long ago? The demons certainly would have done something—I think they hate us more than all the other types of spirits put together."

How do you know they haven't taken over? she thought, but resisted the urge to throw the question at him. Her penchant for argument had always been one of her weak points, and now that they were in Karyx she had to be more careful about not antagonizing people unnecessarily. "Well... how exactly would they go about fighting back, assuming they wanted to? Can they affect the physical universe, for example, on their own volition and without a direct human order to do so?"

Ravagin pondered for a moment. "I don't know," he admitted at last. "I've never seen one do so, but that doesn't mean a lot. I suppose if you forgot to release a spirit after you were done with him he might be able to fiddle around on his own for awhile, but why he'd want to is another question entirely. Our physical universe isn't really their environment, and rumor has it they aren't very comfortable here. They don't see things the same way we do, for one thing—they mostly just sense the presence of life. The only possible reason they could have for messing around here would be to keep us from ordering them around—and the only way to do that would be to keep us from voicing commands."

"Which we'd see as a rash of speech impairments," Danae nodded, picking up on his logic. "I understand."

Ravagin nodded. "Or unnatural deaths. Depending on how permanent they wanted to shut us up."

Danae shivered. The lar last night... "How effective is that spirit-protection spell that bandit used yesterday?"

"Reasonably so, but there are better ones. I could—" He stopped abruptly, frowning off toward the road ahead of them.

Danae held her breath, feeling her teeth clench as she heard the faint sounds of approaching hooves.

"Trouble?" she whispered.

"Probably not," he murmured, reaching down to loosen his sword in its sheath. "You get a little paranoid after you've traveled on Karyx enough. If any trouble starts, though, you're to get to the side of the road and invoke a lar around yourself—you remember the spell?"

She nodded. The dust of the approaching horses was visible now, obscuring any details of riders.

"Should we do something like that before they get here? Just in case?"

He smiled tightly. "It's a fine point of Karyx etiquette that you don't want to be the first one to invoke a spirit, especially a defensive one like a lar. It would either be construed as an insult—that we don't trust them—or, worse, that we have something devious in mind ourselves. Just stay sharp and there'll be no problem."

Danae swallowed hard. There were three horses approaching—that much could be seen now. Of riders, only the one on the center horse was visible. Danae caught glimpses of dark hair and a blue cloak through the dust...

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?"