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"But—oh, all right." Shaking her head in disbelief, she rose up in her stirrups and looked down at the horses. "Ishnaki, Giaur: carash-natasta, carash-natasta."

Danae inhaled sharply as, for just a second, both animals were abruptly sheathed in green auras. One of the horses whinnied as the auras coalesced above them into drifting humanoid figures, vanishing before they were fully formed. But from what had been visible of their faces... Danae shivered violently. "Ravagin—were those demons?" she whispered.

Ravagin's eyes were on Melentha, his expression stony. "They were indeed," he growled. "I don't suppose it's occurred to you that using a demon for trivial jobs like animal control is a damn fool thing to do."

Melentha cocked her head, making a snatch at the horses' reins as the animals, freed from their possession, began to paw the ground restlessly. "I consider it a rather smart idea, actually," she told Ravagin coolly. "It's pretty obvious you haven't tried this stunt with nothing but reins or ropes to keep the extra horses under control."

"As it happens, I have," he countered, stepping forward to take one of the ropes from her. "I also know that you can get by perfectly well with a djinn or sometimes even a sprite to keep them with you. Using a demon where it's not absolutely necessary is just plain stupid."

"I'm sorry you disapprove," Melentha said stiffly. "Try to bear in mind, though, that I don't have to answer to you or anyone else for how I run my life and way house." She looked at Danae, jerked her head toward the other horse. "Well, come on, Danae—get mounted and let's get out of here. They did give you some idea of how to ride, didn't they?"

"I know enough." Reaching up, Danae pulled herself smoothly into the saddle and took up the reins in the expert's grip she'd been taught in childhood back at the family estate. "Lead on—I'm anxious to get to work."

She had the satisfaction of seeing momentary surprise in each of the others' faces at her obvious equestrian experience. Then, with a slight shrug, Melentha turned her horse around and headed back south along the road. "Well, let's go, then," she called over her shoulder.

Danae swung her own mount around and followed, settling herself easily into the horse's rhythm.

Ravagin pulled up alongside, and she glanced over to see him checking her technique. "Adequate?" she asked tartly.

"Oh, quite," he nodded, and dropped back behind her again into what was probably a standard rearguard position.

But before he did so she caught just the hint of a smile as it crossed his face. Great, she thought darkly. Just great. He and Melentha have some sort of feud going, and I've just bought him a couple of points. Well, that sort of nonsense was going to stop damn quick—she'd just escaped from her father's chess game and had no intention whatsoever in joining someone else's.

And yet...

It was the first time Ravagin had showed even a hint of approval toward her... and for some unknown reason it made her feel rather good.

Which in its way was more irritating even than Melentha's condescending attitude toward her. I am not here to gain Ravagin's approval, she told herself sternly; and repeated it several times until it was firmly set in her mind.

In a silence broken only by necessary conversation, the trio made their way down the road toward Besak.

Chapter 12

The village of Besak, or at least the part Danae saw as they rode toward the way house, was exactly as the Triplet information packet had painted it... which was, in Danae's opinion, a bad sign.

Her overwhelming first impression of the place was that it was filthy. The narrow streets that wound between the cottages were lined with piles of garbage, through which small half-seen animals burrowed. Some of the larger and fancier buildings had outhouses out back—or front—for their occupants' sanitary needs; how those in the smaller cottages managed she tried not to think about.

Above it, a variety of odors rose and mingled to become a truly memorable stench.

The info packet had been right about the filth. It had also said Besak's inhabitants were rough, conniving, superstitious even by Karyx standards, and occasionally extremely violent.

For the moment, though, those more dangerous aspects of village life seemed to be dormant. All around them the main activity seemed to be the bustle of commerce, with no more violence in sight than occasional overloud haggling. Children ran and played in the streets, much as children anywhere in small towns in the Twenty Worlds would, their game shifting to a race around the newcomers' horses as Melentha led them along at a brisk walk. Adults, passing by them on various unknown errands, paused to bow their heads to Melentha, their eyes flicking briefly over Ravagin and Danae with obvious curiosity but no apparent hostility. No one seemed particularly clean... but as Danae got used to the grime, she noticed that no one seemed particularly unwell, either. All the sick people are indoors, maybe? But that was unlikely—people in primitive cultures could seldom afford to stay away from their work for the complete duration of an illness. Spirit healing, then, she concluded, the thought sending a shiver up her back. It was one thing to lie in a diagnostic chair in a spotless room with tailored biochips circulating through your body; it was something else entirely to have a living entity doing the probing.

She started abruptly as something hazily bright flashed past her face. "What—?"

"Just a sprite," Ravagin reassured her, bringing his horse up alongside hers.

She licked her lips and exhaled a ragged breath. "Good thing I wasn't galloping," she growled.

"Running practically into my face like that—I could have fallen and broken my neck."

He eyed her oddly. "Yeah. Well... like I said, the spirits don't especially like us—"

"Nonsense," Melentha said, half turning. "There was no malace there—sprites just aren't smart enough to realize when they're doing something dangerous, that's all."

Danae looked back at Ravagin, saw the other's brief grimace, and decided to change the subject.

"Strange how all these houses are built so close to each other," she commented, waving a hand toward them. "I'd think that with all the open space around for expansion they'd spread out a little more."

"You'll find most villages on Karyx are this tightly packed," he grunted. "There's a limit on how much area a single lar can protect."

"I know that, but what stops them from using more than one lar?"

"I really don't know," he frowned. "Tradition would be my first guess. Melentha, you have any ideas?"

"No," the dark-haired woman said. "But then, I haven't had all that much direct experience with lares on a village-sized scale. I know that some of the other classes of spirits don't get along well with each other—peris, especially, don't work well with other peris. Maybe that's part of it."

They passed by the edge of the village center a minute later, Melentha veering them west then onto the road that would eventually end at the riverport village of Findral some thirty kilometers away.

Danae got only a brief look at Besak's central marketplace as they passed along its perimeter, but it seemed remarkably well stocked with everything from spirit-enhanced tools and weapons to the more mundane items of everyday life. Except that spirit-enhanced items are part of everyday life here, she had to remind herself. Though come to think of it—"Why is there a market here for boundspirit items?" she called ahead to Melentha. "Can't the villagers do the binding part themselves and save the expense?"

"Binding any but the simplest spirits isn't as easy as your teachers probably implied," Melentha answered tartly. "Really binding one, I mean. Anyone can do a temporary lock, but that hardly counts."

"Actually, you'll see a lot more enhanced tools here than in most villages," Ravagin added. "There's a settlement about forty-five kilometers from here in the Morax Forest that specializes in them."