She frowned, realizing for the first time that the air around them was indeed perfectly still. "I... yes, I guess I should have noticed that. I'm sorry."
He waved a hand in dismissal. "Like I said, it happens a lot. Most visitors seem to have trouble believing in something they can't see. Which can be a real problem when they get to Karyx."
"It's not just that," Danae told him, feeling an obscure need to explain her reaction. "I did remember that sky-planes were supposed to have an edge barrier, but all the force-fields I've ever seen have been milky white or totally opaque. I guess I just made the assumption that this one was out of order."
"Sky-planes don't fly when something's out of order," he shook his head. "They go to one of the Dark Towers for repair, either under their own power or another sky-plane's."
Danae grimaced. She was already feeling like a fool over the irrational fear that was only slowly ebbing, and Ravagin's condescending attitude toward her was doing nothing to help. "I'm sorry I'm not perfect," she snapped with more vehemence than she'd intended. "If you people would put together better information packets—or if you bothered to include some real photos—"
His eyebrows went up, and she clamped down her jaw in utter disgust at herself. "Damn. What am I saying?"
Ravagin sighed. "Hey, look, just try to relax, okay? You're right—the Hidden Worlds are a big shock and the packets don't really prepare newcomers for them. So just settle back and learn. And don't be afraid to ask questions."
She turned her head away from him, forcing her eyes to shift downward over the sky-plane's edge.
Passing a ways off to the right was a hexagonal wall surrounded by several large clumps of houses.
"Is that Castle Numanteal down there?" she asked grudgingly.
"Right," he nodded. "Would you like a closer look?" Without waiting for an answer he turned back toward the front edge of the sky-plane. "Sky-plane: stop."
Obediently, the carpet glided to a halt and sat hovering in midair. "Sky-plane: to Castle Numanteal,"
Ravagin said, and they turned and headed downward.
"We're going to land in the castle?" Danae asked uneasily, the descriptions of Shamsheer's guardian trolls flashing through her mind.
"No, I'll cancel the course again before we get there," he assured her. "This is the best way to see the place, though."
She pursed her lips, acrophobia evaporating as she studied the stronghold they were approaching.
"Are all those houses clustered around the wall inside the troll perimeter?" she asked.
"The inner perimeter, yes. You can see that they form a rough hexagon, too, like the castle wall and the outer protectorate boundary."
Danae nodded again. "The info packet seemed to talk a lot about hexagons when describing the Shamsheer landscape."
"Oh, the obsession is definitely there. The Dark Towers are also six-sided, as are the forest and desert areas surrounding them. No one knows why."
"Sounds like a giant game board," Danae said, only half jokingly.
"Don't laugh—there are people who take that theory seriously," Ravagin said, an oddly grim note to his voice. "Someone built the Tunnels, after all—why couldn't they have built both of the Hidden Worlds, too? And made Shamsheer into a giant game?"
Danae shivered. "I don't like that idea at all. Two complete worlds, just for a game?"
"I don't buy it myself," Ravagin shrugged. "Where's the gamemaster, for instance, if that's what's happening? And if Shamsheer's a game, what's Karyx supposed to be? There are other theories that make more sense." He leaned over toward the sky-plane's side. "We're coming up on the castle."
Danae followed his gaze. They were no more than half a kilometer from the outer wall now and perhaps two hundred meters above it. A half-dozen buildings were visible inside the wall, and she tried to match them up with the sketches she'd seen. The manor house itself was easy—looking vaguely like a huge inverted mushroom with four rocket fin-shaped entrance halls anchoring it to the ground, it dominated the space near the center of the enclosure. In one corner of the hexagon was a smaller hex-shaped building that was probably the local House of Healing; in another corner was the Giantsword power generator/broadcaster. Near the manor house, in the exact center of the enclosure, was a small geodesic dome. "The Shrine of Knowledge?" she asked, pointing to it.
"Right," Ravagin nodded. "It'll be where the castle-lord's crystal eye is kept."
"I'd think he'd put it inside the house where he could get at it more easily."
He shrugged. "The villagers can petition the castle-lord to use the eye for information on what's happening elsewhere on Shamsheer, and this way he doesn't have to let them into the manor house itself. And you have to remember that none of these people understand these gadgets, not even the ones they use every day. Once tradition has the crystal eye in a shrine of knowledge, who's going to risk moving it into the manor house?"
Danae grimaced. "No one, I suppose." They were starting to come around in a wide circle now, and she could see another building and a flat area set against the closer parts of the castle walclass="underline" the horse/
vehicle stable and the sky-plane landing area, respectively.
And they were aiming directly toward the latter. "Shouldn't we be getting out of here?" she asked, starting to feel a bit nervous. Trying to explain an unauthorized landing inside a castle enclosure wasn't the way she really wanted to start her trip.
"In a minute," Ravagin said calmly. "Castle-lord Simrahi's used to people buzzing his castle—half the visitors through the Tunnel come by here and want to take a look."
"I'm sure he loves the attention," Danae retorted. "Don't you think it's possible he might get tired of it one of these days?"
"And do what? As long as we're not actually bothering anyone he's not going to have his soldiers or trolls try and shoot us down." He pointed ahead and upward. "Besides, it doesn't look like he's even home at the moment."
Danae followed his finger. Moving against a mottling of high cirrus clouds she could see a tiny golden ball. "A bubble?" she hazarded, though there wasn't much else it could be.
Ravagin nodded anyway. "Sure is. Take a good look—you probably won't see one of these things again. Most of the visitors I've brought in here never even get this close."
Danae reached a hand up to shade her eyes. A crystal throne surrounded by a translucent, goldenhued force-field sphere was the way the Triplet information packet had described the thing. It had further added that, seen close up, bubbles were possibly the most dramatic piece of technology on Shamsheer. "How do you know it's Simrahi's bubble, though?" she asked. "I mean, it could be any castle-lord up there, couldn't it?"
"Sure; but after all we are right in the center of the Numant Protectorate. For all the pomp and relative plushness bubbles allow them, castle-lords really don't travel all that much outside their own territories."
The bubble disappeared behind the clouds, and Danae returned her attention to the castle enclosure, her eyes flicking to the tower rising from the wide circular roof of the lower manor house. At the tower's top a crystalline dome glittered in the sunlight... "How does the bubble get out of the sky room?" she asked. "Does the dome split or what?"
"No idea," Ravagin said. "I've never been invited aboard one for a ride. Ah, look—there's someone wearing the livery of the castle-lord's guard: red, silver, and black."
And the man in question was looking directly up at them. Danae's mouth went dry; in her interest over the bubble she'd almost forgotten they were still headed straight for a castle landing. "Hadn't we better be changing course?" she asked, as calmly as possible. "Even if the castle-lord's gone, there are still a lot of people down there who might take exception to our flying over them."