"I'm following a friend." Ravagin told him, wishing he knew just who—or what—he was facing here. It could be a human, a doppelganger, or even a major spirit like a demon or peri. "She was brought into the forest against her will."
"What will you do when you find her?"
Ravagin licked his lips. "That depends partly on why she was brought here," he said cautiously. "Are you one who knows what that purpose is?"
"What will you do when you find her?" the figure repeated.
There was no way out of it. Not knowing which side—if any—the other was on, Ravagin couldn't guess what sort of answer would be safe and what sort would mean trouble. "I need to make sure she's safe," he said, trying to stay as neutral as possible. "She's my companion and partner—I can't just abandon her to whatever purpose she's been brought here for."
The floppy hat tilted slightly in the moonlight. "Her partner?" the figure asked. "Explain what you mean by that."
A response at last. "We travel together, she and I," Ravagin said carefully. "Uh... we work side by side—"
"You work with her? You aid in the creation of her goods?"
Did he know Danae had been showing her composite bow around Besak? A faint suspicion began to glimmer at the edge of Ravagin's mind. "We create our stock in trade together, yes. Why?—is Coven interested in buying our bow-making technique?"
The figure stood in silence a long moment... and then suddenly the hat and cloak were gone, and in the moonlight Ravagin saw the hazy figure of an impossibly perfect man. "The masters of Coven will wish to speak with you," he said, striding forward. His feet, Ravagin noted without surprise, made no noise against the fallen leaves beneath them. "You will accompany me to the village."
Ravagin swallowed. "The woman and I really wouldn't be very useful to you," he said. The glowing sword in his hand twitched around to track the peri's approach...
The peri smiled. "Ahlahspereojihezrahilkma beriosparath—"
The rest of the spell was cut off by Ravagin's gasp as a blaze of light erupted directly in front of his eyes.
Instinctively, he threw himself to the side, dimly aware that the light moved with him and that the sword in his hand had suddenly become icy cold. Twisting aside again, he hurled the weapon toward where he remembered the peri standing—
The light cut off abruptly, leaving not a trace of afterimage on his retinas to obscure his sight. The peri hadn't moved; the sword, its now dulled blade broken in two, lay at the spirit's feet. Both pieces were already thickly covered with frost, and a fog of cold air was swirling lazily around them.
For a long moment the clearing was silent. Then the peri turned and started off in the direction Ravagin had originally been going. "Come," it called back over its shoulder. "The masters of Coven will be anxious to see you."
"Yeah," Ravagin muttered under his breath. Fighting shaky knees, he climbed back onto his horse and twitched the reins to follow.
"Awaken," a disembodied voice said; and at its command, Danae did so.
Her first thought was that it was Melentha leaning over her bed; Melentha, wearing the Coven robe.
An instant later her brain came more fully on track and she realized that this woman was someone else entirely, someone she'd never seen before. But the robe still looked like the one from—
Her stomach knotted in abrupt horror. Sitting bolt upright in bed, she sent her eyes flicking around the sunlit room.
Carved wood... textured glass in the windows... cured animal skin quilt-rug on the floor... she herself dressed in a copy of the other woman's Coven robe... Biting down hard on her lip, Danae looked again at the woman seated beside her bed. "So," she croaked. "I'm in Coven. Aren't I?"
The other nodded, a flicker of mild surprise crossing her face. "You're quick," she said, getting to her feet. "That's good. The others will be here soon to talk to you." Turning, she walked toward the door.
"Wait!" Danae called after her. "What do they want me for—?"
The firm closing of the door cut her off. "Well, damn it, then," Danae muttered to herself. Swinging her legs off the bed, she stood up, pausing as the abrupt change in position made her momentarily dizzy. Stepping to the window, she peered out.
Coven, without a doubt. A score or so of buildings in neat rows could be seen from her angle, most of them single-story houses of the Besak type but a few larger structures visible as well. Beyond the buildings she could see a solid wall of forest pushing in on the clearing in which the town was built.
Pressing her face against the glass, she could see more of the town to either side, with the same wall of trees at the edge. The area immediately around her was deserted, but around the buildings near the edge of the clearing she could see a dozen identically robed people milling about.
Easing back from the view, she gnawed at her lip some more and tried to get her brain working. The last thing she remembered was going to bed after Melentha's failed attempts to find evidence of spirits in this robe she was wearing; right after that awkward scene with Ravagin...
Her stomach twisted with the memory of that argument. Ravagin had been furious with her... and looking at it from his point of view, she could hardly blame him. The big question now was whether he was so mad he wouldn't even bother to come after her once he found out she was missing.
No. The real question was whether he would be able to figure out where to start looking in the first place.
Easy, Danae, take it easy, she forced down the sudden burst of panic. Ravagin was smart—surely he and Melentha together would be able to piece two and two together and come to the logical conclusion. She was wearing the Coven robe, so they'd have the missing robe as a clue to her disappearance. So if they could just make it through Morax Forest, find Coven, and get her out from under the villagers' noses...
She took a deep, shuddering breath, trying without much success to force calm into her mind. For all intents and purposes, she could consider herself to be on her own.
Daddy Dear, if you could see me now, she thought sardonically. Where are you, Hart, when I really need you?
Stepping back from the window, she made a quick scan of the room and then walked over to the door. The first job in getting out of Coven, clearly, would be to get out of this room.
She'd expected to have to do a careful search of the room in hopes of finding some way out... and it was therefore something of an anticlimax to discover the door wasn't locked. Gritting her teeth, she opened it and peeked out. No one was in sight. There has to be a catch to this, the thought occurred to her; but there was no point standing around wondering what that catch might be. Taking a deep breath, she stepped out into the hallway— And froze.
Insofar as sheer power was concerned, peris were generally placed above lares and one step below demons; and for that reason Ravagin made it a practice to have as little to do with them as possible.
For every person like Melentha who professed perfect and casual command over the higher spirits, he'd heard a flipside story of someone who'd tried it and lost control. For him the odds weren't worth playing with.
He'd had enough interaction, though, to confirm the common belief that peris were as knowledgeable as they were powerful—knowledgable about both the spirit and the physical worlds—and it was therefore something of a disappointment to discover how dull a traveling companion this particular peri was.
Presumably on purpose, of course. Whoever in Coven had set the peri up as a forest watchdog had clearly added a geas against talking too much. Ravagin's gentle probings about Coven and the Morax Forest in general were totally ignored, and eventually he gave up and concentrated instead on getting through the densely packed trees with a minimum of scratches.