‘Iaeouoi!’ Alecto concluded. She tapped her dagger point on the little fireset in the middle of the hexagram she'd scraped in the dirt.

Flame glittered. A line of smoke shot up, then bent at a right angle to drill into the undergrowth beside the two women.

Alecto muttered under her breath and leaned backward. She nodded. ‘There's the path, then,’ she said to Ilna. ‘I wouldn't have known it was there to be found if you hadn't been so sure.’

Ilna looked in the direction the smoke pointed: up a rocky slope, toward a notch some considerable distance above them. Dawn was painting the trees on the upper slopes. It wasn't an impossible journey, even in the absence of a visible path; but it wouldn't be an easy one.

‘Can you walk?’ she said to Alecto. ‘If you can, we should start now.’

The track they'd slept beside wasn't wide enough for wheeled vehicles; nothing passed this way to and from Donelle except pedestrians, pack mules, and herds being driven. That didn't surprise Ilna. Ever since the fall of the Old Kingdom, the only road into Barca's Hamlet had been as slight.

Still, with daylight there was the chance of traffic. The less the two of them were seen, the better their chance of escape.

‘Of course I can walk!’ Alecto said. ‘A little direction spell like that is nothing!’

Ilna didn't know whether her companion was posturing or if the effort of the spell really had been trivial. It didn't matter, of course.

‘Let's go, then,’ she said. She ripped off a chunk of the loaf she'd brought from the inn's kitchen. Alecto had already finished her portion: it was wheat bread, something the wild girl had never seen before they entered the city. She'd devoured it ravenously.

Alecto rose to her feet and stretched. ‘I'll lead,’ she said. She raised an eyebrow, and added, ‘Unless you think you're better at following a trail than I am? Because it's no more than that, a trail that one or two people in a year come down to the city by.’

‘Go on, then,’ Ilna said with a brusk gesture. She ignored the longing expression Alecto gave the bread.

The slope was covered by mountain laurels, with widely spaced hardwoods where the soil was a little deeper. The shrubs weren't thorny, but their branches interwove in a tangle. Alecto picked as good a route as Ilna could imagine, but it was still hard going.

They paused in the notch. Water dripped from between layers of exposed rock, pooling in a hollow beneath before dribbling down the other side of the ridge. Alecto drank. Ilna tore the remainder of the loaf and gave half to her companion before she knelt to drink in turn.

Alecto was looking north when Ilna straightened, wiping her mouth. The direction they'd come from was wild enough, with only the narrow track—hidden from up here—to show the hand of men. On the far side there was even less to be seen. Enormous chestnuts and pines, bigger than anything Ilna had seen in the managed woodlands of the borough, stretched to the horizon.

Alecto swore bitterly and shivered. Ilna looked at her with a frown of surprise.

‘I understand you not liking the city,’ she said. Indeed, Ilna hated cities almost as much as the wild girl did, and for the same reasons: too many people, too much stone. ‘I thought you'd be pleased to be back in the wilderness.’

‘This?’ Alecto said harshly. ‘Trees like this are as bad as buildings! Where's the pastures, where're the farms? This is...’

She didn't have a word to finish the sentence, but her tone dripped with despair. Gently, really trying to help, Ilna said, ‘It's all part of the pattern, Alecto. Here the forest, there the sea… and the farms and villages woven through them, every strand in its place.’

Alecto looked at her with loathing. ‘Your patterns!’ she said. ‘You and those fools in the temple there! You bind people, and they bind the Pack. You're just the same as they are!’

‘Do you think so?’ Ilna said. Her voice was a cold whisper, completely without emotion. She put the remainder of the loaf back in the bosom of her outer tunic. ‘I think we'd better go on now, mistress.’

‘I don't like this place,’ Alecto muttered as she started down the north slope. That was her idea of an apology, Ilna supposed.

She didn't need to apologize. Alecto was part of the pattern, just as Ilna herself was. Ilna could only wonder— she didn't assume, not when it was something good— whether the Weaver of the world's pattern was as skilled as a mortal might wish.

Instead of going down into the valley, Alecto led them to the west along the slope of the hill to their left. Ilna couldn't see any sign of a trail, but the wild girl gave every evidence of knowing what she was doing. Ilna didn't like her companion, but Alecto's skills were as real as Ilna's own.

Dead leaves and pine straw covered the ground so thickly that there was almost no undergrowth except where a mighty tree had fallen. The slope was steep, often a perfect diagonal, and the patches of visible soil were rocky. Despite that, the trees were of a grandeur beyond anything Ilna had seen or imagined.

She smiled faintly. Her brother would love this forest; wood was to Cashel what fabrics were to her. Of course, Cashel would be planning the best way to begin cutting these giants down.

‘They don't come this way often,’ Alecto said, speaking loud enough to be heard without turning her head. ‘Once or twice a year is all. Like peddlers coming through Hartrag's village, but here they were going down to the city, not coming up from it.’

‘Are you following the track with your eyes?’ Ilna asked. ‘Or are you using your art?’

‘It's all one,’ Alecto replied. ‘It's just finding the path, however you do it.’

Ilna scowled, but when she thought about it she decided that Alecto wasn't refusing to give a straight answer. To her, it was all the same. Alecto was no more sure of how she found the path than Ilna would know how she recognized a neighbor at a distance too great for eyes alone to make out features.

It was that talent that had taken Alecto into the dreamworld without a wizard in the waking world to put her there. The skill the Pack used in hunting down their prey must be similar.

Ahead of them was a narrow gap; a slab of rock had split, and the halves had tilted apart. Ilna stopped. When Alecto looked back at her, Ilna pointed, and said, ‘It's on the other side of that. The place we're looking for.’

Alecto scowled. ‘How do you know?’ she asked.

Ilna shrugged. ‘The pattern,’ she said. ‘It all connects here.’

Alecto sniffed. She led the way between the sheer walls of rock. On the other side, straggling across the steep slope, was a village of timber houses and a temple with fluted stone pillars.

 

Sharina lay with her cloak as blanket and ground sheet, looking at the stars. Tenoctris slept soundly on the sand beside her, her breath whistling in an even rhythm. Sharina was too weary to sleep, but the chance to stretch out at full length was a blessing she wouldn't have appreciated even a few days before.

The royal fleet had beached on a ragged circle of coral sand. Much of the nameless atoll would be underwater at high tide, but the vast array of ships and men was only halting here for a few hours. They'd crossed half the Inner Sea; they would cross the remainder before they got a real rest.

Sharina could have slept under a sail spread on spars, but the night was mild, and she saw no need of shelter. The force carried no unnecessary baggage: King Carus alone had a small tent for privacy. The rest of the assembly thought that was because he was their leader; Sharina and Tenoctris knew it was because the king's nights were tortured. Morale might have suffered if the troops learned the truth.

Driftwood fires spluttered at a dozen points around the sand. Most of the oarsmen weren't sailors but rather laborers recruited from Valles and the countryside. Among the thousands were many to whom the warmth and sparkle of a fire was more important than sleep.

The Blood Eagles who guarded the women and Carus in the tent beside them stood quietly, leaning on their spears and watching the night. These men had replaced the detachment who'd been on duty earlier; the strain of shipboard was as great on the Blood Eagles as on anybody else, so even they needed a chance to relax before boarding the vessels for the next stage of the voyage.

Carus shouted inside the leather tent. Sharina heard the sring! of his blade clearing the scabbard. The side panel bulged as the king thrashed against it.

Sharina jumped up. The guards had heard also, whirling with their weapons ready.

‘I'll handle it!’ Sharina said to the officer who stood with his sword drawn, reaching for the tent flap with his left hand. ‘Tenoctris!’

The tent could have slept four if they were good friends, but the roof was too low even at the center pole for Sharina to stand upright. There wasn't much light in the open air— the waxing moon had just risen—and the tent walls were opaque. She opened her mouth to cry, ‘Your highness— ‘ and Carus had her throat in his big left hand.

A speck of wizardlight glittered in the air, then burst. A faint azure haze clung to the struts that supported the corners of the roof; under the present conditions it lighted the interior as well as a lamp would have done.

Carus relaxed his grip and wiped his hand on his tunic. ‘Sorry,’ he said with a wry smile. He shuffled back from the flap. ‘Come in, won't you? Tenoctris—’

The old woman peered into the tent past Sharina's shoulder.

‘—you come too.’

He sheathed his sword with a movement Sharina couldn't follow even though she'd watched him do it. She wondered how the king had been able to draw the weapon in the dark confines of the tent.

The glow was fading to blackness. Sharina saw the half gourd with fire-making tools in the corner beside the oil lamp. With the last of the light she struck the steel against the flint, spraying sparks into dried milkweed fluff twisted on a twig. When the tinder blazed up, she touched it to the lamp wick.

‘Thanks,’ said Carus with a kind of smile. ‘I do better with a flame than with the other kind of light.’

The smile grew broader and real. To Tenoctris he added, ‘Mind, I was glad of anything at all right then, mistress. And I'd guess Sharina was even more pleased to have it’

‘Very glad,’ Sharina said as she hooked the lamp onto the wire hanger attached to a roof strut. She managed to grin so that her face wouldn't give away the fact that she'd thought in the moment Carus seized her that she was about to die.

‘More dreams, your highness?’ Tenoctris asked. She rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand, looking worn. The wizard had saved Sharina's life—perhaps—by lighting the tent's interior when she did, but the effort required to do that out of a sound sleep had been considerable.

‘The same dream,’ Carus said, quietly but with a murderous scowl. ‘I thought it was as bad as it could be when it started, but it wasn't.’

His smile was real while it lasted, but it slumped after a moment into a blank expression that was without hope or any other emotion.

‘There isn't as much of me left as there was before the dreams started, I'm afraid. And the moon's still waxing.’

Tenoctris drew a square in the tent's sand floor with her index ringer. Sharina couldn't read the words the old woman wrote around the four sides—the white coral sand filled in the marks as she drew them—but the crescent moon in the center of the figure was unmistakable.

She looked up at Carus apologetically. ‘Your highness?’ she said. ‘Would you rather I go out—’

The king swept the offer away with his left hand. ‘Do what you need to do here,’ he said. ‘It'll take more than a friend's spells to bother me tonight.’

Tenoctris looked around her, realizing that her satchel of paraphernalia was outside the tent. Sharina understood her need and offered the spill she'd used to light the lamp. Tenoctris nodded gratefully. Using the burnt twig as her wand, she tapped the four directions, chanting as she did so, ‘Nerxiarxin morotho thoepanam iothath....’

Stabbing the wand down into the crescent she concluded, ‘Loulonel!’

Nothing happened.

Carus frowned. ‘Did something go wrong?’ he asked. He spoke calmly, but Sharina had seen the muscles of his throat and cheeks draw up as Tenoctris intoned her spell.

Tenoctris smiled wearily. ‘Not at all,’ she said. ‘You can go to sleep again, your highness. Nothing more will trouble you tonight.’

‘Can I?’ Carus said. He chuckled. ‘I think I'll leave the lamp lit, though. Till this is over, I'd better sleep with the lamp lit.’

He looked at the two women. His expression was drawn and very tired.

‘I wouldn't run if I could, you know,’ Carus said. ‘I never did. When somebody made himself my enemy, it was always going to be him or me. I never tried to talk things out, I just went for his throat. And in the end, of course, I met somebody who was better at that game than I was... and I drowned, and the kingdom died.’

Sharina touched the back of the king's left hand. ‘You're not going to lose this time, your highness,’ she whispered.

‘No, I'm not,’ said the ancient king. ‘Because if I lose this time, dears, I'll spend all eternity in the hands of those gray things in my nightmare. I don't know that I could stand that.’

Carus laughed loudly, as though he'd made a joke. To her horror, Sharina found herself laughing also. It was funny, if you were the sort of person who found it so.

 

The millipede's motion was remarkably soothing. The relatively tiny legs weren't visible from the creature's back. They worked so smoothly that Garric couldn't guess what the two pairs supporting the segment he stood on were doing at any given moment.

The long body curved around obstacles, but its general course was as straight as that of a ship on the open sea. An Archa seated between the compound eyes guided the beast by touching a golden rod to the joint between the head and the first body segment. One end of the rod was spiked, while the other was a stiff fan.

Metron and Thalemos were immediately behind the driver. The wizard sat cross-legged; he'd chalked a pattern on the millipede's calcified armor, but at the moment he was reading in a palm-sized codex instead of working an incantation. Thalemos viewed the moving landscape in silence and with a noble unconcern, but even at this distance Garric could see that the boy was tense.

Vascay was with the remainder of the band several segments up the body from Garric, checking Hame's wound. Finishing there, the chieftain walked carefully back. His peg didn't have as good a grip on the smooth, sloping surface as the bare feet of his Brethren.

The score or more of Archai riding the millipede had strung a lacework of gold chains across the creature's back, pegging it at intervals to the body armor. A man could grab the chains if he started to slide, but that would be undignified. Vascay couldn't expect to lose his dignity and still retain his position as chief.

The forest wove its patterns above them. The sky was almost never visible, but the giant grasses filtered down much of the light which the leaves and needle-thick limbs of normal trees would have absorbed. Occasionally Garric saw the waggling antennae of an insect on a high stem; and once there was a spider, built on the same scale as the millipede, which watched motionless as they wound their way past.

‘So,’ said Vascay in a normal speaking voice. He and Garric were the only humans on this body segment, though a trio of Archai worked with some golden apparatus of uncertain purpose beside them. ‘What do you think, lad? Of where we are and what we're doing?’

Garric grinned. ‘What we're doing,’ he said, ‘is waiting for Master Metron to tell us what the next stage is. I can't say I find that a comfortable business, but neither do I see an alternative. And as for where we are—’

He looked around. A beetle bigger than any ox in the borough stared at them through the myriad facets of its eyes.

‘—I'd rather it were elsewhere. Though as you said when we arrived here, it's healthier for us than Durassa with a regiment of Protectors trying to lift our heads.’

Vascay chuckled. He turned to look toward Metron at the front of the millipede. With a smile as cheerful as if he were sharing a further joke, the chief said, ‘I've been wondering what we'd learn if we staked out our wizard friend and started touching him up with a hot iron. Eh?’

‘We wouldn't learn anything I'd be willing to trust,’ Garric said. He didn't allow his distaste for the thought of torture to creep into his tone. ‘And I'm pretty sure we wouldn't learn how to get out of where we are now.’

The millipede was crossing low ground; standing water reflected the creature's pale belly plates and the blur of its legs. The color of the forest had become the darker green of sedges. Though the millipede was so steady that it scarcely seemed to be moving, it covered the ground quickly.

‘Aye, that's probably so,’ Vascay agreed. ‘And of course there's our hard-shelled companions to consider as well—’

He turned his bland smile on the Archai sharing the segment with him and Garric. They'd erected a machine on spiderlike golden legs. One of the creatures turned a lever with its middle pair of arms; the other two watched intently as gears whirred in apparent pointlessness.

‘—but if it were no more than that, I'd be willing to take the risk.’

‘What's that sound?’ Ademos called. He was among the dozen or so bandits standing on the third segment forward of Garric and Vascay. Some men were looking around in obvious concern; others just seemed puzzled.

‘I don't hear anything,’ Vascay said to Garric in a low voice.

‘I do,’ said Garric. ‘It's very high, a squeal or… It's like metal rubbing.’

Or worse. The instrument the Archai used to announce themselves had grated on Garric's nerves, but this felt like someone drilling behind his eyeballs.

The Archai heard it also. The one cranking the machine worked faster while a companion cluttered at him. The third Archa ran toward the rear of the millipede with stiff, jerky strides as though his legs were stilts. He disappeared at last, hidden by the creature's slow curves.

Metron and three Archai at the millipede's head began to argue in the insects' high-pitched form of speech. One of them was the driver, his triangular head rotated to face back over his narrow shoulders.

‘Ready your weapons, boys!’ Vascay called. ‘It looks like we're going to have some excitement.’

He stepped closer to Garric and gestured toward the millipede's tail with his javelin. ‘Any more Brethren down that way, lad?’ he asked.

‘No,’ said Garric. He drew his sword, wishing he had a whetstone to touch up the blade. Carus—and therefore Garric—had always carried a small stone beside the dagger on the other side of his belt from the sword scabbard, but Ceto hadn't been as careful of his tools.

‘Right,’ said Vascay quietly. ‘Then let's join the others. I think we'll do better to stay close for the next while.’

They stepped forward. Vascay walked easily now, no longer concerned about his footing. He twirled his remaining javelin like a baton between the fingers of one hand, then those of the other.

Two of the Archai stopped arguing with Metron and rushed toward the millipede's hindquarters. The driver faced frontward again; Metron began drawing words around the heptagram he'd already sketched on the creature's glossy black armor.

Thalemos spoke. The wizard ignored him. Thalemos tried again, then straightened stiffly and marched back to join the bandits just as Garric and Vascay arrived. Several of the men eyed him with hostility.

‘Lord Thalemos, do you have any idea of what's going on?’ Garric asked, speaking in part to make the youth ‘one of us’ in the minds of the Brethren.

‘I'm sorry, I don't know any more about this than you do,’ Thalemos said. ‘Metron has been too busy to keep me informed.’

His voice sounded thin. The young nobleman was irritated at being treated disrespectfully, Garric guessed; but he was too well bred to admit the fact, especially since Metron probably was busy trying to save them. To save Metron's own life, anyway, but the rest of them might benefit.

Something was running beside them in the forest. It stayed parallel to the millipede's course and about a bowshot distant, a repeated flicker of movement glimpsed through the great grass stems.

‘Look there,’ Garric said, pointing with his left hand.

‘They're on the this side too,’ said Halophus, his voice rising. ‘They're closing in!’

The shriek at the bounds of audibility sounded again. It seemed closer this time, but Garric couldn't tell which direction it came from. The figure he'd spotted in the near distance finally came into full view.

It looked like a corpse wrapped in its winding sheet; it had neither legs nor arms, but it coursed effortlessly over the broken ground at a pace no man could have matched for long. Two similar figures came out of the forest behind the first, all closing on the millipede.

There was a jangle of gold: an Archa had tossed a boarding ladder over the millipede's side. The links jounced against one another and the creature's armor. The Archa climbed down though the ladder was swinging wildly as the millipede strode forward.

The Archa leaped when it neared the ground, meeting the trio of shrouded attackers with a flurry of its saw-edged forelimbs. The sharp chitin ripped through the skin of the first of the strange creatures, letting out pale ichor and coils of violet intestine.

A fog of light spread from the other pursuers to bathe the Archa, searing the warrior black where it touched. The Archa shrilled in agony, but its forelegs were still chopping into a second shrouded figure when the millipede carried Garric out of sight of the battle.

‘There's more of 'em coming,’ said Toster, rubbing the flat of his axe on his tunic sleeve as he looked into the forest.

Despairing cries from the other side drew the humans' heads around. Riding the millipede was like being on shipboard: if you were on one railing, you couldn't tell what was happening near the opposite side of the hull. Another of the Archa warriors was gone, presumably over the side to sacrifice itself against their attackers.

‘I don't like the bugs,’ Toster said quietly. ‘Those things like slime molds're worse, though.’

The attackers did look a little like slime molds, Garric realized. The disemboweled one had seemed to be an animal, but there was nothing in this place Garric would've wanted to swear to.

He smiled with the dark humor he'd picked up when King Carus shared his mind. Silently he added, Least of all that I'm going to leave it alive.

A dozen shrouded creatures were approaching from the right side. Across the millipede's back Halophus cried, ‘Ten! Thirteen! Oh may the Shepherd guard me, the woods're full of them!’

The Archa pumping the levers of the strange machine redoubled its efforts. His fellow rotated his head from one side to the other, then sprang to the left and disappeared over the millipede's side. From the suddenness of the Archa's decision, it was probably committing suicide rather than making a real attempt to solve a hopeless problem.

‘I could take one down,’ Vascay mused, tapping the javelin gently into the palm of his hand. ‘But I think I'll wait, eh? For a better target.’

‘Better, sir?’ asked Thalemos.

The chieftain smiled. ‘For a target that might make a difference,’ he said. ‘Cheer up, lad. We haven't been hung yet.’

Metron shouted, ‘Sieche!’ and held the sapphire above the figure he'd drawn. Blue wizardlight flared in sheets, tearing out of the sky and through the waving grass.

The Archa at the machine shrieked. Crackles of azure light enveloped the gold, shrivelling the Archa like an ant dropped on live coals. The gears began to whir at a speed that concealed all but shimmers.

Garric felt the hairs rise on the back of his neck and arms. He wasn't sure whether that was a natural response to what he was watching or if a thunderbolt was gathering to strike.

The millipede continued to pace onward as before, but the surrounding forest shifted. The light went from a wan mixture of browns and greens to a red almost too deep to register on Garric's eyes. The trunks seemed to grow broader, then went gray; the landscape vanished into a moving blur like the flow of a spillway. Bandits cried out, and Garric heard the moaning call of Halophus' horn.

Metron slumped, his right arm under his body and his left with the ring stretched out toward the millipede's head. The forest began to come back into focus; daylight regained its normal hue.

Garric staggered but caught himself. His eyes'd been tricked by the appearance of the landscape slowing down, but his body didn't feel the change in motion. Beside him Hame fell to his knees and cursed.

Vascay touched Garric's arm and nodded toward Metron. The wizard had slipped slightly. His left hand twitched, trying to grip the gold net but unable to close properly.

Garric sheathed his sword and started forward. Thalemos tried to follow him but swayed dangerously. Vascay grabbed the youth's arm and held him despite his attempts to jerk free.

Garric didn't like or trust Metron, but they needed him: he caught the wizard by the shoulders and lifted him upright. Metron's face was blank. His eyes focused on Garric, but there was no understanding behind them.

The driver rotated its head back to stare at the humans for a moment, then faced front again, Garric stayed where he was, feeling the wizard's pulse steady and his breathing slow. Only when Garric was sure Metron had recovered from the ordeal of the incantation did he stand again and look around him.

The landscape through which the millipede strode was much the same as that they'd seen ever since they entered this world. There was no sign of the shrouded monsters who'd attacked earlier.

The Archai machine had slumped into a gleaming mass; its gears had melted together. The only sign of the operator was a smudge against the gold. The creature's arm was fused to the lever it'd been working. That, and the driver, were all that remained of the Archai.

Something called in the distance. The forest stretched on, and the millipede paced forward.

 

Either the Helpers chanted nonsense syllables just to keep time, or they were singing in a language Cashel didn't understand. They seemed very cheerful, even the youths leading the procession who stumbled occasionally from the effects of the poison they'd rubbed into Cashel's body.

For Cashel it was like floating on his back in a gentle stream. He couldn't move his head, but the tree they carried him toward was generally in his field of view. Its foliage shivered in anticipation, and a branch lowered with the lazy grace of a vulture's wing adjusting to the wind. At its tip, a huge leaf unfolded.

Cashel wondered what the little people would do with Tilphosa. Perhaps they'd let her go; he was the one who'd hurt the tree they—what? Tended? Worshipped?

Perhaps; but he didn't believe it. If the tree required human flesh, then the Helpers'd be glad for the girl's presence as soon as Cashel had been digested. Though a slight thing, Tilphosa would make two of the tiny natives.

Except for touch, Cashel's senses were even clearer than usual. He could see and hear perfectly, and he smelled the tree's unfamiliar perfume as they neared it.

Twenty-second called a sharp order, bringing the Helpers to a halt two double paces out from the trunk. Cashel heard a rustling as the great leaf slithered across the soil toward him. He couldn't feel the little people change their grip, but they slanted his feet to the ground and tilted his torso upright. The poison turned him not only numb but stiff as a board.

The Helpers had rotated Cashel's body when they pushed him into position, so he was now looking back the way he'd come. At first he thought the trail of smoke rising from the village was a hallucination from the poison. Then the smoke thinned and bright flames shot up; it was a real fire.

The leaf began to fold about Cashel, starting at his feet. He felt a tinge, the first feeling of any sort that he'd had since the youths had bathed him. The leaf's touch didn't hurt but it tickled, and his frozen throat wouldn't let him laugh.

There was a shower of sparks in the air above the village; a moment later came the crackling roar of flames rising from whatever it was that had fallen. One of the Helpers heard it also. She looked over her shoulder, then began to scream like a leg-snared rabbit. The whole village turned, moving together the way pigeons wheel as a flock.

Tilphosa came out of the blazing village, staggering slightly. She held a torch in her right hand and with the other dragged Cashel's heavy quarterstaff.

Twenty-second pointed to her, trying to force a command through dry lips. Tilphosa slashed her brand through a figure eight. The Helpers screamed and scattered in all directions. The vegetation nearby couldn't hide a vole— but it hid them.

The leaf continued to fold over Cashel, as slowly as the light fails on an autumn evening. It had covered his legs and torso now, and it was beginning to blinker his face. His bare arms tingled, and the darkness coming over his eyes may have been more than just the leaf's steady progress around them from both sides.

Tilphosa stood in front of him and dropped the quarterstaff on the ground. The fire had left smuts all over her head and body, and her wrists were badly burned.

‘I'm not strong enough to do what Cashel did to you, tree!’ she shouted. ‘I'll use this instead.’

She raised her torch, the ridgepole of one of the huts. The flaming tip was out of Cashel's range of vision. He heard the sizzle of sap bubbling from the bark above him.

The tree made a sound like canvas tearing. The leaf holding Cashel started to unravel from the top down. He tilted forward and tried to stick his hands out in front of him.

‘Burn!’ Tilphosa screamed. She caught Cashel's arm with her left hand and used him as a brace to jump higher, slashing her torch. ‘Let him loose or die!’

The leaf crumbled. Cashel toppled outward. He couldn't move his arms quickly enough to get them under him, but he took the shock on his left shoulder. It wouldn't have hurt much even if he hadn't still been half-numb.

Tilphosa grabbed Cashel by the wrist with one hand and tried to pull him away. Her right arm held the torch up, threatening the tree if it tried to snatch them again.

Even with both hands and putting her whole body into the effort, the girl couldn't have lifted Cashel by herself, but he managed to move his own arms enough to crawl forward. His legs were a dead weight dragging furrows in the dirt, though feeling was starting to come back.

When Tilphosa saw that Cashel was moving by himself, she let go of his arm and picked up the quarterstaff. Cashel found that, as he crawled, he gained more control over the muscles. He was properly up on all fours by the time he and the girl'd gotten beyond the circle of the tree's limbs.

‘How did you do it?’ Cashel wheezed. He could form words again, though his lips didn't bend properly to close some of the syllables. ‘How did you get loose?’

‘I used this,’ Tilphosa said. She dropped the staff and held up her crystal pendant. The sun glittered dazzlingly on its polished surface. Steadying the disk, she concentrated a white-hot pinpoint of light on a scrap of the leaf Cashel had ripped from the body of Fourteenth when they first saw the tree. Smoke rose, then cleared into a flame that drew the rest of the leaf curling toward it.

Cashel drew a deep breath, then rocked his torso backward so that he was kneeling upright. ‘Would you give me my staff, please, mistress?’ he said politely, pausing to suck breaths deep into his lungs. ‘I'd feel better to have it.’

Tilphosa dragged it to him, apparently unable to lift the iron-shod hickory with her one free hand. Her face looked gray beneath the tan, and her wrists were badly blistered.

Cashel took the staff, feeling strength flood back with the touch of the smooth wood. ‘The jewel burned through the ties?’ he asked. His voice was stronger, too.

‘No,’ said Tilphosa. She managed a smile. ‘I couldn't point the lens there because of the way I was tied. I lit the hut beside me and used that fire to free my wrists.’

Cashel looked at her. She meant she'd held her wrists in the flame till the wool straps burned off her skin.

Cashel planted the staff on the ground before him, then lifted himself to his feet with his shoulder muscles. For a moment he swayed. Cautiously, he lifted the staff, then took a step forward. He lurched like an old man, but he didn't lose his balance. The second step was easier.

He looked around. The Helpers had disappeared like dew in the sun. The tree's branches were drawn up close to the trunk the way a terrified old lady covers her face.

‘I wonder what happened to the one I saved?’ Cashel said. ‘Fourteenth.’

‘I don't care,’ said Tilphosa venomously. ‘They all deserve to die. I hope they do!’

Cashel shrugged. ‘I wish I had some sheep oil to wash your wrists in, mistress,’ he said. ‘I guess for now we'll pack them in mud and hope to find better before long.’

He turned and looked at the tree again. It was motionless except for a drop of sap falling from the flame-swollen bark.

‘Are we going away now, Cashel?’ Tilphosa asked.

‘Soon,’ he said. ‘Tilphosa, did all the houses burn in the village?’

Tilphosa frowned. ‘No,’ she said, ‘I don't think so. The breeze was out of the east, so the eastern half should be still all right.’

‘Good,’ said Cashel. ‘I'm going to bring a couple of them down here.’

He made a pass with his quarterstaff, just to be sure everything was working right again. The heavy staff slid through his fingers with greasy ease.

He eyed the tree again. His face was still, but there was a smile of satisfaction in his voice as he added, ‘I'm going to pile them around the trunk of that thing, mistress. And then you can light them off with your torch.’

‘Oh,’ said Tilphosa. Her lips spread into a cheery smile. ‘Oh, what a good idea!’

Her laughter was so infectious that Cashel started chuckling too as they walked the short distance back to the village.