He rose to his feet, the signal that the hearing was over. The guards on either side of him took Ravagin's arms—"My lord!" he called over the buzz of conversation that had begun. "What about my companion? Surely she is blameless and can be released—"
"Your companion will remain in the cells with you," Simrahi said. "She who has shared in your activities will surely share in their consequences."
"But—"
"For that matter, I have not yet determined which of you is the actual wielder of the black sorcery."
Simrahi shifted his eyes to Ravagin's guards. "Remove him."
They did so, none too gently. Apparently, Ravagin realized dimly as the blows began to fall about his face, speaking to a castle-lord out of turn was frowned upon.
Chapter 37
"There," Danae said, wringing out her cloth one final time into the cell's small washbasin. "How does that feel?"
"Probably about like it looks," Ravagin grunted, giving his fingertips a gingerly tour of his face. The largest cuts were still oozing blood; the bruises felt like they would like to.
"That bad, huh?" An attempt at a smile played briefly around Danae's lips as she came over and knelt down in front of the cot where he was half lying, half slouching. But even a show of humor was clearly too much of an effort, and the smile vanished quickly into the fear and tension lines that had been there since his unceremonious arrival back at the cell. "You don't look very good," she admitted. "I wish there was some way we could get you into the House of Healing and let a Dreya's Womb check you over."
"Fat chance," Ravagin said, peering at the traces of blood on his fingers before wiping them on his pants. "Unless you can convince someone that I'm going to die of infection before they get the chance to execute me."
"I wish you wouldn't talk like that," she said, her voice trembling. "It scares me."
He sighed; but she was right. There was no point in tearing down what little morale they had left.
"Sorry," he apologized. "Look, my natural pessimism notwithstanding, there really is a chance that Simrahi will eventually let us go. Provided I can prove we are not involved either in black sorcery or any conspiracy his fevered mind has cooked up."
Danae licked her lips, her eyes flicking toward the massive door. "Perhaps you shouldn't, uh..."
"Insult the castle-lord in the hearing of his faithful cell-wardens?" Ravagin snorted. She was right, of course—the only reason for them to have been put into a common cell was in hopes that hidden listeners would glean something useful from their conversation. But for the moment he didn't give a damn about what anyone heard—or even what they made of it. Keeping Danae where he could watch over her was the all-important consideration now, and as long as they kept talking chances were fair that the cell-wardens would leave them together. "I don't care what they think, frankly. If he really believes someone's out to overthrow him he ought to be locked up in a Dreya's Womb under heavy sedation. Period."
"Why is it so hard to believe?" Danae demanded, eyes glinting with a spark of her old fire. "Palace revolutions are a great human tradition."
"Sure, but seldom work unless you can subvert or outfight the castle-lord's personal bodyguard. In this case, you can't."
"Why—? Oh. Trolls?"
"You got it. A special cadre of them, programmed directly to the castle-lord's personal defense."
"Yes, but... there has to be a way to reprogram them. When the old castle-lord turns over control to his successor, for instance."
Ravagin shrugged, wincing as the movement sent a flash of pain up his side where one of the guards had kicked him. "I'm sure there is," he said, rubbing the spot carefully. "But I can practically guarantee that however it works you have to either be the outgoing castle-lord or else have free access to the castle-lord's private rooms to do it. There would be a whole layer cake of safeguards built in to keep anyone else from doing it."
"Like the safeguards built into sky-planes that keep them out of buildings?" Danae asked pointedly.
Ravagin gritted his teeth. "Damn. Yeah, just about exactly like that."
For a long moment there was silence. Then Danae stirred, looking down at the wet cloth still in her hand as if seeing it for the first time. Standing up again, she laid the cloth carefully over the edge of the sink. "Do you suppose," she said slowly, "that that's how they're planning to go about it? To cause or help with revolutions?"
Ravagin pursed his lips. "No, I don't think so. It would require them to work through people again—
conspirators or whoever. Aside from the obvious difficulties they'd have in recruiting such a group, I doubt they really want to bother with people more than they absolutely have to. No, I think they came up with this sky-plane trick solely to get us in trouble with a castle-lord and just happened to find one who was certifiably paranoid already. An extra bonus." He shook his head. "The really frightening thing is how fast they're learning how to do combat on this side of the Tunnel. The headon approach—with the bewitched trolls—didn't work, and they immediately switched to using the technology in a more indirect way, to try to burn us to death. When that one sank, too, they did an almost complete about-face and decided that the best ones to deal with humans were other humans.
Ergo, they drop us in Castle Numanteal in a way guaranteed to scare the bejabbers out of the locals."
"You can call it intelligence if you want; I call it dumb luck," Danae said. Turning away from the basin, she stepped back over to him. Her eyes met his for a second, and with just the barest hesitation she lay down on the cot beside him, facing into his chest and pillowing her head on his left upper arm. "It seems to me that they're just flailing around and happened to get lucky."
Ravagin eased his left arm around her shoulder, pulling her comfortably against him. "Why do you say that?" he asked. Keep her talking, a small voice whispered inside his brain. Keep her arguing; it'll help distract her from the mess you're in....
"Because they continue to do stupid things. Look at the trolls—they lost control of the things in a simple fight and couldn't figure out how to get it back. And at the way house they never even got around to shutting off the water to the shower."
Ravagin frowned. Now that she mentioned it, that did seem rather odd. The climate control electronics the spirits had overloaded were supposed to handle the water system, too. "You're sure that wasn't just so you would stay in the shower until the fire got going?"
"Positive. Remember?—you had me block the drain so that the water would go out into the hallway?
And then when the sky-plane got us into the manor house, why didn't the spirits land it instead of just leaving the thing like it did? We were pretty invulnerable up there, with the edge barrier operating—wouldn't it have been to the spirit's advantage to get us killed or at least wounded in a kitchen riot instead of giving us the chance to surrender peacefully?"
"You're right," Ravagin admitted. "Letting us try and reason with the castle-lord was probably a mistake on its part." He bit gently at his lip. "Very interesting indeed. You see where this leads us, don't you?"
"Not really."
"Well, think about it a second. What kind of spirit could behave as if it's taking turns being brilliant and stupid? Or, I should say, what group of spirits?"
She twisted suddenly to look up at him. "A demon!" she gasped. "A demon and his parasite spirits."