Timothy Zahn - Triplet

Danae pried her eyes open. "I thought you didn't want to use sky-planes."

"I don't," he admitted. "But it looks like we either risk it or we lie down and die here."

Danae nodded and closed her eyes again. No argument on that one, either, Ravagin thought, looking down at her. She must really be tired. Laying his sword down, he ground his knuckles into his eyes.

One of them ought to stay awake until the transport came...

The swish of dead leaves and undergrowth as the sky-plane came to a soft landing in front of them startled him out of his light doze. Shaking his head to clear his eyes, he snatched up his sword and looked quickly around. No trolls, no predators. They'd been lucky. "Come on, Danae," he grunted, shaking her arm. "Time to go."

"Wha—? Oh. Already?"

"Yeah. Come on—a little effort now and you can be in a real bed in ten minutes."

"Sold," she murmured, getting to her feet with a sigh.

The trip to the forest way house took about five minutes, and Ravagin spent the entire time with his stomach tied in a tight knot. But the sky-plane performed with normal Shamsheer perfection, taking them exactly where he'd indicated and settling them down in front of the way house door without even a bump.

Danae had fallen asleep again during the trip, but she woke up enough to do most of her own walking as Ravagin guided her inside and to one of the bedrooms. "Where is everybody?" she mumbled once as he steered her past the kitchen/dining area and toward the bedroom wing.

"Probably no one else is here," he told her. "The place isn't manned full-time, like the way houses in the cities are."

"Mmm."

He took her to the first bedroom they reached and helped her make it to the bed. She flopped down across it, and was instantly asleep.

He took a deep breath, feeling his own fatigue washing up against the edges of his mind as he gazed down at her. It was a large enough bed... for a long moment he was tempted to simply collapse there beside her and not bother finding a room of his own. But there were things he really ought to do before he could sleep, and with a sigh he went out, closing the door behind him.

A tour of the entire house came first, to make sure he and Danae were in fact alone. He took his time, trying to watch for anything that might look out of place. But the house was empty, and as nearly as he could tell everything was where it was supposed to be. You're getting paranoid, he chided himself as he headed for the kitchen. You get a couple of renegade trolls, and you think the whole planet's out to get you.

Though that was basically what had happened on Karyx...

He took a couple of minutes more to make sure the house's climate control was set at a good sleeping level, then used his prayer stick to have the kitchen prepare dinner for them in eight hours. Then, feet dragging noticeably, he headed back to the bedroom wing. Bypassing Danae's room, he opened the door next to it...

Renegade trolls.

He thought about it for a long minute. Then, sighing, he closed the door and retraced his steps back to Danae's room. She hadn't moved noticeably since he'd left her. Slipping the sword and scorpion glove from his belt, he laid them on the floor within easy reach from the bed and lay down next to her. Setting his mental alarm for eight hours, he dropped off to sleep.

Danae awoke with a gasp, the vivid dream of green-glowing trolls fading only slowly from in front of her eyes. For a long minute she just lay there on the bed, staring at the ceiling as she listened to her heart pounding and tried to break through her disorientation and remember where she was.

Something moved next to her—

She jumped violently, twisting her head in sudden fright, only to find that it was Ravagin moving in his sleep beside her. Taking a deep breath, she expelled it, and for another moment lay still, wondering if she should try and go back to sleep. But between the dream and the shock she'd just had, she was wide awake. Moving carefully, she eased her legs over the edge of the bed and sat up.

Her scalp itched furiously, and as she scratched vigorously at it she realized her whole body felt more or less the same way. Small wonder—it'd been days since her last shower. Standing up, she made her way to the door and out into the hall.

The bathroom was a couple of doors further along down the wing. She spent the first minute taking care of her bladder; then, stripping down, she got into the shower, a good-sized booth designed to look like the area beneath a small waterfall. The water, coming over the top of a rock-like overhang in a wide sheet, completed the illusion, splashing into mist from the floor. It was also waterfallchilly, though not as cold as she'd feared it might be—Ravagin must have neglected to get the heater started before coming to bed. Still, any clean water was welcome, and the chill helped drive the last bits of sleepiness from her brain. It was, she thought as the water cascaded down around her head and shoulders, almost impossible to feel demoralized as long as you were clean.

She'd finished scrubbing herself to a high gloss, and was standing beneath the radiant drier, when she first noticed the odor.

She sniffed cautiously, then more deeply, the cozy sense of well-being evaporating with the rest of the droplets on her skin. Even given all she didn't know about Shamsheer's smells, there was something wrong with this one. Something ominous... and it was getting stronger. Scooping up her clothes, she opened the bathroom door and stepped out into the hallway—

And straight into an inferno of smoke and fire.

"Ravagin!" she screamed, ducking halfway back into the bathroom and throwing a look down the hall. The flames running up the walls and flickering through patches of the floor, she saw with sudden horror, were heaviest directly outside the bedroom where Ravagin was still sleeping. Oh, God, no, she thought wildly. "Ravagin!" she shouted again.

"Danae!" his answering call came, almost inaudible through the crackle of the flames. "Hang on—I'll be right there—"

"No!" she shouted back. "The hall's on fire."

Through the smoke she saw the door down the hall crack open. "Where are you?" he called.

"Over here, in the bathroom. There aren't any windows in here!"

"I know. Let me think."

For a few heartbeats there was no sound but the roar of flames, and for the first time Danae noticed an oddly strong wind blowing down the hallway toward Ravagin's room. Must be an opening down that direction for the air to be coming in from, she realized. "Ravagin? What's down the other direction?"

"More bedrooms and storage," he called. "Okay. Go back to the shower and turn it on as high as it'll go. Have you got anything that you can use to stuff into the drain?"

"Just my clothes."

"Use your bodice—you can afford to lose that. Soak the rest of your clothes and put them on. Keep the door closed while you do it."

"Right."

The operation seemed to take an eternity, but it was probably only a couple of minutes before she was dressed in the dripping clothes and easing the door open again. The water that had collected inside flowed gently out, adding steam to the smoke already there. It also snuffed the flames directly by her feet, and for a moment she dared to hope it would be enough to cut her a path back to the bedroom. But a quick look crumbled that hope completely. The entire ceiling and floor seemed to be ablaze now, creating a solid wall of flames in both directions.

And she was now thoroughly trapped.

"Ravagin?" she shouted, fighting to keep her rising panic out of her voice. There was no answer, and for a horrible second she wondered if he'd gone out the window. Deserted her... "Ravagin!"

"I'm right here," his voice came reassuringly through the roar—but from the wrong direction.