Timothy Zahn - Triplet

He left; and Danae let her lip twist into a grimace. Don't go into the street, Danae. Don't make up stories, Danae. "What's it going to be next?" she snarled into the empty room. " 'Play nice and don't get dirty, Danae?' "

Slapping the floor beside her cushion, she got up and strode to the window. A spotting of cumulus clouds had formed in the sky since their arrival back at Melentha's mansion, and occasional shadows could be seen skating across the lawn and post line toward Besak to the west. And beyond the village

—

"It was not a dream," she said aloud. "It was real. Real. I know it was."

Then why are you so vehement about it? a small voice seemed to whisper in the back of her mind.

Because she really wasn't sure.

For a long minute she stood there, watching the clouds occult the unnaturally dim sunlight and thinking about what Melentha and Ravagin had said about Karyx's brand of illusion. Of short duration, incapable of reacting well to the bombshell that she and Ravagin were from another world, playing to a limited audience—the Coven experience fit the pattern they'd described all too well.

And if Ravagin was right, she wouldn't know for a long time whether it had been real or not. If she ever found out at all.

"I do not accept that," she called out toward the post line. "You demons can be as clever as you want; you're not going to screw around with my head like that. You understand?"

There was no answer. All right, Danae; enough of the tantrum, already. Think it out. She had Melentha's statement that her own internal evidence was no good. An independent observer? But Ravagin had been the only one there, and he'd already disqualified himself as a judge. That left only the demon-possessed people of Coven themselves... and there was no way she would travel that road again, even if she were given a guarantee that she would again be allowed to leave. And that was it.

All who'd been present accounted for.

Or was it?

Danae caught her breath as a new possibility suddenly hit her. Crazy... but it might just give her the answer.

At an unknown but possibly extreme risk to herself. She sobered at the thought, knowing what Ravagin would say if he knew what she was considering. And what Melentha would say.

That she was being childish.

Danae's teeth clamped tightly together. Well, then, she was perfectly capable of doing all this without them. Of showing them both how the "child" could manage on her own.

Moving quietly, she walked to the door and eased it open. Melentha should still be busy with her spirit work; Ravagin would almost surely be asleep by now. With luck, she would be back before either of them missed her.

And then they'd really see something.

The man's name was Gartanis, and he was ancient.

Not just old. Old people weren't all that common in Besak, but Danae had seen enough during her visits to know what old age looked like on Karyx. Without the blunting of reconstructive surgery or biochip internal work, of course, the effects of aging were much more pronounced here than in the Twenty Worlds; but even given that, Gartanis was an oddity. Wrinkled, his vanishing hair gone snowy white, his vision and strength fading, he looked to Danae to be almost literally on his last legs.

All in all, not what she'd expected of the man alleged to be the most knowledgeable spirithandler in Besak.

"So," he wheezed as he waved his gnarled stick toward a chair across the pentagram-inscribed table from him. "What can I do for you, my young lady?"

"My name is Danae," she told him. "I've been in the area for several days now, talking to various of the tradesmen in Besak about a new kind of bow I would like to market—"

"Ah," Gartanis's eyes seemed to light up briefly. "You're the one. I've heard tales of you from others in the village."

"Yes," Danae nodded, obscurely surprised that he kept up that much with current events. "As I said, I've been marketing a bow that can be used as is or with trapped-spirit enhancement, and it occurred to me that you might have spells for sale that I might be able to use in my work."

For a long minute he sat motionless in his seat, eying her in a way she was not at all certain she liked. "I was informed that you sold spirithandling spells here," she said as the silence lengthened.

"If I was informed wrong—"

"Olratohin kailistahk!"

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?"