All right, she told herself fiercely. So that's exactly what you don't want. So figure out a way to take advantage of it.
Her eyes fell on the tray beside her... on the blankets lying rumpled next to it. Would he invoke a dazzler or a firebrat? Dazzler, most likely; there shouldn't be any need for him to burn down the inn.
And if he weren't a complete idiot, he would invoke it somewhere behind him where the light wouldn't get in his own eyes. But not too far behind him, or he would have to come a few steps into the room on his own before the spirit made it in, too. So just behind him. Practically right there on his shoulder... Slowly, an idea came to her. Undoubtedly the stupidest idea she'd ever heard in her life... but for now it was all she had.
Getting the necessary splinters from the window shutter was the hardest part, especially with nothing but the edge of the fireplate to pry them out with. But eventually she had enough. The blankets were single-thread woven; working with one of the splinters at the edge, she managed to unravel several meters of the yarn. Gathering it up with the other blanket and the splinters, she got to work.
It took her nearly half an hour, but at last she was finished. Then, picking up the heavy chair by its arms, she moved it a couple of meters back from the door and sat down nervously to wait.
She waited a long time, through many false alarms as the inn's other guests began to leave the common room below and tromp down the hallway in search of their beds. Once, she thought she heard the hissing of a spirit again, but if that was indeed what it was, it didn't enter her room.
The minutes dragged by, and as her adrenaline-fueled alertness began to yield to fatigue, she began to wonder if she'd been perhaps a bit premature in this... and to wonder what Ravagin would say if he walked into her trap first...
And abruptly her back stiffened. From out in the hall came the spirit-hiss again... but this time it was accompanied by a set of unnaturally quiet footsteps. Accompanied by, and coming nearer at the same pace as the footsteps...
She was out of the chair in an instant, stepping around behind it and grabbing for its arms. Lifting it up, holding it like a shield in front of her, she held her breath... and then the door was flung open to slam against the wall, and everything happened at once.
"Sa-trahist rassh!" the man bellowed as he leaped into the room. Danae moved at the same time, ramming forward toward the silhouetted intruder with the chair. Through her narrowed eyes she caught just a glimpse of the sword in his hand—and of the ceiling falling in on him—and then the chair caught him squarely in the chest to jerk him backwards—
Directly into the firebrat that erupted into existence behind him.
His scream of rage and pain seemed to explode inside Danae's skull as she dropped the chair and fell back into the room, arms and hands trying to protect both her ears and eyes from the agonizing assaults on them.
"Danae!"
The voice was Ravagin's, coinciding with the sprinting footsteps coming down the hallway toward the room. Dimly, through the screams, she could hear the fury and fear in the voice—
"I'm all right!" she shouted back, knowing in that instant that if her attacker was not in fact incapacitated the sound of her voice would bring him instantly down on her. But the other's screams had turned from rage to terror... and even as Ravagin's footsteps arrived she could hear a new sound adding to the mixture. The sound of burning cloth...
"Danae!"
"Over here, Ravagin," she called. A horrible smell was beginning to flood into her nose... "Help me!"
A strong hand closed around her free arm, and she caught a suddenly strong whiff of scorched hair,
"The door's blocked—we'll have to use the window," he panted. "Come on—"
She stumbled along behind him. The screams from the doorway had faded to silence now, but the nauseating smell of burning meat was getting stronger. As were the light and heat...
From ahead of her came the sound of a window being flung open, followed by that of stressed wood as he slammed open the shutters. "Come on—I'll give you a hand—"
"Wait a second," she protested as he pulled her toward the sudden breeze. "Shouldn't we do something about that firebrat?"
"Like what?—the guy who invoked it is already dead or on his way there."
"But the inn will burn do—"
"Oh, all right. Sa-khe-khe fawkh; simar-kaia! Now come on!"
She had just enough time to identify the new sound as that of water gushing across the burning floor; and then she was being pushed to a sitting position on the sill, Ravagin was squeezing through beside her and jumping to the ground below—
"Okay—jump!" he called up.
Gritting her teeth, she pushed off the sill, and a heart-stopping second later landed in his arms.
"Okay," he said, the frantic tension in his voice fading into a trembling relief. "It's okay. We're safe now."
And for the first time in minutes Danae found she was able to breathe again. And able to cry.
Chapter 30
"I didn't mean to kill him," Danae sniffed from Ravagin's arms when she was able to talk again. "Not that way. I thought he would invoke a dazzler, not a firebrat. I really did."
Ravagin nodded silently, wincing a bit as the movement rubbed his singed cheek against Danae's hair. They'd been sitting here together by this shed near the stable for nearly a quarter hour now, and if there were any words that would help her work through the horror and guilt she was feeling, he'd about given up finding them. At least she never actually had to see him burning to death, he thought.
Unfortunately, he had, and the memory made him shudder.
"Ravagin?" Danae asked, holding him a bit closer. "You okay? You shivered."
"I'm fine. Look, Danae... it wasn't your fault. It really wasn't. You had no way of knowing I was only half a hallway behind him and that he would put that firebrat in the doorway to try and block my approach."
She inhaled suddenly. "You—it was right in the doorway? You didn't tell me that before."
"It's okay," he hastened to assure her. "I only got a little scorched. Probably got off a lot easier than I would have in a straight fight with him. Try remembering that, if it helps—he didn't just come in for a friendly chat. He was there to kill us."
"I know, and I'll be all right in a minute. It's just that... I've never had a hand in killing anyone before."
He nodded understanding. "Just keep remembering that everything you did was in self-defense.
You're damned lucky he didn't skewer you when you threw that blanket over his head."
"I didn't throw it." She sniffed again, but her trembling had eased and it was clear she was starting to regain control of herself. "I wedged its corners into cracks in the ceiling with splinters from the window shutters, with threads from the other blanket set to pull it down when the door opened. Sort of like a homeowner's security tangler net, you know? I thought he'd invoke a dazzler behind him, and that when I pushed him back with the chair he'd wind up with it under the blanket and right in his eyes and then he'd be as blind as I was—" She broke off, took a deep breath. "We've been through all this, haven't we? Sorry. What's happening out there? It sounds like the crowd's breaking up."
Ravagin leaned forward to look around the shed at the inn's main door. "You're right. Looks like some of the guests have already gone back inside. The—oops, there's the innkeeper... I think he's telling the rest it's safe enough to go back inside. Must have gotten a fireplate under the firebrat."
"And gotten the water shut off? What was that extra phrase you added to the nixie invocation, anyway?"
"A time limit. If I'd done a normal invocation I'd either have had to go in and personally release it or it would have stayed there pumping water into the room for the next five hours. With the ten-minute limit I gave it—well, it's already long gone."