Triplet by Timothy Zahn Read Free Book Online

castle—half the visitors through the Tunnel come by here and want to take a look.”
    â€œI’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?”
    â€œAnd 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, golden-hued 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?”
    â€œSure; 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?”
    â€œNo 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.”
    â€œWhy?” he asked. “You have to remember, Danae, that Shamsheer’s only partly a feudalistic society, and that that part isn’t really like the Earth types you’re probably thinking about. There’s no interprotectorate warfare here, for starters, and correspondingly no regal paranoia.”
    â€œI understand all that,” Danae gritted. The castle was close enough now for her to make out the individual bushes lining the roadway from gate to manor house … and to see that the faces of the troll guards were also lifted in their direction. “I would still like to get out of here. ”
    â€œIf you insist. Sky-plane: stop. Sky-plane: to Kelaine City.”
    The carpet’s descent reversed, and as it rose back into the sky and headed eastward again Danae took a deep breath. Her hands were beginning to tremble with reaction to what she still considered to have been a close call. She turned to glare at Ravagin … and found he was already watching her. Watching her entirely too closely. …
    â€œYou did that on purpose,” she accused him coldly. “Didn’t you? You wanted to see how easily I got rattled.”
    His expression remained calm. “I like to know what sort of person I’m going to be traveling with. The Hidden Worlds can be dangerous at times.”
    â€œIsn’t that your