Timothy Zahn - Triplet

Ravagin watched him go and then returned his attention to the clearing. "I'm surprised you bother with blindness spells with guards like that peri all around you," he said.

"We like to be careful. Did you want to try lifting the blindness spell yourself?"

For a long moment Ravagin was tempted. He hadn't the faintest idea how to handle a blindness spell, of course... but with the man essentially offering him the chance to get one free spell out without being stopped...

He resisted the temptation. The man couldn't be that naive, and if this was a test of some kind he'd do better in the long run to establish himself as being as harmless as possible. "I don't know much about spells," he said instead. "Just enough to protect us on the road against bandits, really."

"I see. Well, no matter." The man took a deep breath. "Myorlaineoul-meeklorestra!" he shouted.

And with the barest flicker of light the clearing was suddenly no longer empty.

Ravagin clamped down hard on the expletive that tried to come out. Knowing what to expect hadn't entirely prepared him for the gut impact of the blindness spell's removal, but he was damned if he was going to ooh and aah for his captor's amusement. "Impressive," he said instead. "Redundant, as I said, but still impressive."

"We like it," the other shrugged. "This way."

They passed between several rows of buildings—houses, Ravagin decided, for the most part, though there were more than a normal village's share of craft shops intermixed as well. A few people were visible near the center of town, near a larger and more elaborate structure. "Town hall?" he hazarded.

"Or is it a temple?"

"Neither," his guide told him. "Or both, depending on your point of view."

"Ah." Must have learned his conversational technique from peris and demons, Ravagin thought sardonically. None of them can give straight answers, either.

The passersby had all disappeared by the time he and the other man reached the building a few minutes later. Up close, Ravagin decided, the temple part of the design definitely won out. The high and elaborate multi-wood main doors alone put the place beyond the village hall classification, and the matching window frames meant someone had gone to a great deal more effort than was usual in such cases.

Which probably meant that some very high-ranking spirits were routinely being invoked in the place.

Elementals, perhaps? Or even the highest of the spirit hierarchy, a demogorgon? The thought made him shiver.

"Come," the other man said, gesturing toward the doors. "The others will be waiting."

"Right." No one else was in sight near them... but across the way near the far edge of town more of the familiar robes could be seen going about their business. Grimacing, Ravagin squared his shoulders and pulled open the doors.

It wasn't painful or even particularly uncomfortable, Danae found, to be standing frozen half in and half out of her room. The overwhelming sensation, in fact, during those first few seconds was that of utter humiliation.

Damn it all, she thought viciously, the last remnants of her spirit-induced sleep burning away like fog before hot sunlight. I should have done a protection spell before I opened the door... or had a sprite check things out... or even done a spirit-detection, for God's sake. Damn, but I'm stupid.

Carefully, putting all her strength into it, she managed to turn her head enough to get a clear look at the far end of the hallway. No one was visible; straining her ears, she couldn't hear any sounds of life. Your standard mixed blessing, she thought, anger fading as she realized she might have a second shot at this. If she'd called out a protection spell someone might very well have come running fast enough to intercept her. But now, if she had even a few minutes alone, she might just be able to figure out how to break this spell.

All right, Danae, think. There has to be a way out. What sort of clues have we got as to what this flypaper is?

It wasn't a sleep spell or fractional-possession spell of the type used to bring her here in the first place; of that much she was certain. It didn't seem to involve neural paralysis or synapse interruption, either. She'd had an experience once with an icegun as a little girl, and there was nothing of that sensation in this. On the other hand, there did seem to be a faint haze interfering with her vision. A

haze that reminded her of something...

Aha! She smiled grimly. So that was all it was: a lar, set into a defensive circle barely big enough for her to stand in. Back on her first night on Karyx she'd wondered what would happen if she tried to push her way past a lar; now apparently, she had her answer.

Okay. So now what? She knew the release for a lar, of course, but release spells usually didn't work unless the user had invoked the spirit in the first place.

Or unless whoever had invoked this particular lar had added a manifold-geas to the spell so that others in Coven could also give it orders.

She bit at her lip, running through her mind the three manifold-geas spells she'd been taught.

Unfortunately, only the most general of them gave total strangers like her any control whatsoever, and it was pretty unlikely that Coven would be using anything like that. Still, it couldn't hurt to try the appropriate release. "Harkhonistrasmylikiheen," she muttered. "Carash-melanasta."

Nothing happened. Nice try, anyway, she told herself, fighting down a surge of disappointment. Now what?

Well, when all else fails, try logic. The spirit protection spell was theorized to form a short-range barrier around a person which spirits couldn't penetrate; if it was coupled with a release spell, the combination might at least push the lar far enough back for her to slip past it.

Or else she'd get the same result as she'd just gotten with the geas-release combination: namely, nothing. But giving up now was to lose by default. Mentally crossing her fingers, she took as deep a breath as she could manage with the lar pressing in on her. "Man-sy-hae orolontis; carash-melanasta

—"

And lost the rest of her breath in a strangled whuff as the intangible cocoon abruptly tightened, squeezing in on her like a padded vise.

There was no time to try anything else, even if she'd had anything else to try. She couldn't breathe...

and as the feint haze before her eyes became mottled, she knew the lar was doing its best to squeeze the life out of her...

She awoke back in the room to find three figures standing over her: a man and a woman in the increasingly familiar Coven robes, and a second man—

"Ravagin!" she managed.

"You all right?" he asked, his wooden expression not giving way any hint of what he was thinking.

Which could be any of a dozen unpleasant things. Danae felt her face flush with embarrassment and shame. "Sure, I'm fine," she muttered. "I guess I got the spell wrong."

Ravagin looked at the Coven man. "I may have mentioned that we're not particularly good spirithandlers," he said. "Really, we're nothing more than craftsmen. I don't think we can be of much service to Coven."

The man shook his head. "You misunderstand both our purposes and our needs. Spirithandling isn't the problem—we have all that sort of knowledge we need. But your—what was it, some new style of bow? Yes—your bow shows you're exactly the sort people we're always in search of."

Ravagin's eyes flicked to Danae and back again. "So it's creative talent you're looking for, is it? And you pass out those enchanted robes to help in the hunt?"

The man smiled. "Exactly. Each has a spirit trapped—well, not in it, exactly; that would be too easy to detect. But the spirit is associated with it in a rather complicated manner."

"How do you make sure the robes get to the proper people?" Danae asked.