She jumped at the other's sudden shout. "What—?"
"Be silent," he rumbled. "... no. No, I was wrong—there are no spirits about you. But there is something else..."
He trailed off, and Danae swallowed painfully. She'd taken off the Coven robe as soon as they'd arrived back at Melentha's mansion and she hadn't come near the thing since... but there was no guarantee that something else hadn't been done to her. "Is it something bad?" she half whispered, afraid of breaking his concentration.
"I don't know for certain," he said slowly. "But... ah; that's it. Coven. You've been to Coven."
Her heart seemed to skip a beat. "How can you tell?" she managed to ask.
"Eh? Oh, I heard it from one of my sprites, of course. That spirithandler you've been staying with—
Melentha—sent out the word early this morning."
Danae got her breathing going again. "Oh."
The old man's eyebrows seemed to twitch. "You seem troubled by something. Something about Coven?"
"It... has to do with Coven, yes," she said cautiously. "It's really what I came to see you for in the first place. I'd like to buy a spell for invoking a demogorgon."
There was no reaction beyond a tightening of the wrinkled skin around Gartanis's eyes... but when he finally spoke his voice was oddly hollow. "A demogorgon. You wish to invoke a demogorgon."
"Yes," Danae nodded, forcing her voice to remain calm as her heart began speeding up again. "Is there a problem? I was under the impression all spirits could be invoked."
The old man's eyes seemed to come back from somewhere else. "Oh, surely, traderess," he snorted.
"All spirits can be invoked. And all animals can be captured, too. Tell that to the foolish hunter stalking a maddened cintah."
Cintahs had been mentioned in the original Triplet orientation sessions. Usually in conjunction with emergency defensive spells. "Are demogorgons that dangerous?"
"Dangerous? Not necessarily. Not even always." Gartanis's eyes bored into hers. "But they are unpredictable."
Danae licked her lips. "For instance?"
He was silent a long while. "How old do you think me?" he asked at last.
She considered, remembering to judge by Karyx standards. "Seventy years. Perhaps seventy-five."
He shook his head. "A hundred forty-seven."
"What?" she whispered, feeling her stomach tighten within her. Average life expectancy on Karyx was supposed to be only about fifty-eight...
"A hundred forty-seven," he repeated. "I was fifty when in my pride I traveled to the Illid ruins and invoked a demogorgon. This was the result."
"But to have gained nearly a hundred years of life—"
"Life?" he snapped. "You—in the prime of your youth—you would consider this life?"
She frowned. "But surely you weren't always like—" She caught her breath. "You were like... like you are now?"
Gartanis's eyes focused elsewhere again. "Yes. A high price for my arrogance."
Silence descended on the room. Danae felt her hands trembling in her lap, found her eyes tracing the deep valleys cutting through his cheeks. To be so old for so long... it sent chills up her back. "What...
what else happened? Were you able to talk to the demogorgon?"
"What does it matter?" he murmured. "Whatever I may have learned wasn't worth the price."
"No. I don't suppose it was." She took a deep breath. "Well... would it be safer to try and contact an elemental?"
He looked at her sharply. "Explain to me this brash desire to commune with the great powers, traderess Danae. Is your pride then so terribly swollen?"
She sighed. "I was hoping to get some information. Something happened to me in Coven, something that made no sense. I want to understand it, and I can't think of any other way to get the answers."
"Perhaps a peri or demon could help. Their invocations are certainly safer."
"The peris and demons are already in it up to their necks," she shook her head, feeling her resolve draining away. "I don't think I could trust anything they would have to say on the subject. But I suppose it doesn't matter all that much." Just like a child, she thought bitterly. Quitting when the cost gets too high. But he was right. Whatever was happening in Coven wasn't worth risking this kind of twilight life over. "Thank you for your time, Master Gartanis," she continued, getting to her feet. "If you'll tell me what I owe you—"
She broke off at the expression on his face. "Demons and peris involved on their own?" he asked.
"Not simply obeying orders from a human spirithandler?"
"It seemed that way, yes," she said cautiously. "Unless there was someone far in the background controlling things. I don't think the demon-possessed people we met had any real say as to what happened."
"The demons made decisions on their own?" Gartanis persisted. "They didn't simply go off somewhere and return with new orders?"
"Again, I think so. Why?—is it significant?"
Gartanis took a deep breath, his eyes glazed over. "When I was in communion with the demogorgon a hundred years ago... I remember some of it. A vision of—never mind. A corruption of the present, I thought at the time... but perhaps it was instead a vision of the future. Of now." Abruptly, his eyes came back; and gripping his stick, he worked himself out of his chair. "Come into the back room with me," he wheezed. "I'll get you the materials you'll need to invoke the demogorgon."
"Wait a second," Danae said, taking an automatic step backwards. "What's this vision thing you're talking about? And anyway, I'm not sure any more I want to know how to invoke a demogorgon."
Gartanis looked up at her, his eyes burning. "You will," he said softly. "You must."
"Why?" Danae persisted.
"Because you already know something of the danger. And because if you do not, all of Karyx will pay a heavy price... and you along with it."
But I won't even be on Karyx much longer. She left the thought unsaid, and for a long moment she and Gartanis stood facing each other. Then, carefully, the old man turned and hobbled back toward the rear of the house. "Follow me," he said.
Swallowing, she obeyed.
The knock on his door snapped Ravagin awake. "Come in," he growled, glancing through slitted eyelids at the curtains pulled across the windows. There was still light coming through the material, which meant it was probably late afternoon. He'd had several hours of sleep, though it sure didn't feel like it.
The door opened; but it was Melentha, not Danae, who came into the room. "Have you seen Danae?" she asked without preamble.
"Where, in my dreams?" he growled. "I've been asleep, in case you hadn't noticed. What do you want her for?"
"I don't want her for anything," Melentha snapped. "She and a horse are missing, and I want to know where she's gone."
"Damn her." Ravagin hissed an angry breath through his teeth. "Ten'll get you twenty she's gone off to Besak again." He sat up, started to swing his legs out of bed, and froze as a sudden thought struck him. "The Coven robe—where is it?"
"Still here," Melentha assured him. "Don't worry, even Danae's not dumb enough to get near that thing again. No, she's off somewhere on her own, getting into who knows what kind of trouble."
"Yeah." Ravagin got his legs out of bed, snared his tunic from the sidetable. "Can you get some sprites out looking for her?"
"Already done that. No results yet."
"Figures." Sprites were great for carrying out specific orders, but something open-ended like a general search was largely beyond their limited intelligence. "We might as well start with Besak.