Sylvan turned to look. “Where?”
“Right up in the top of this tree, running over to that other one…”
“This island is quite sizable,” said Father James, rejoining the group from among the trees “There’s a grassy clearing through these trees. Enough pasture there for the horses to have a good feed.”
Rillibee/Lourai pulled the saddles from Blue Star and Her Majesty and stacked them against the root buttresses of a tree. “The sun is low. It’ll be dark before long. Too dark to ride.”
“How long will Brother Mainoa sleep?”
Lourai shrugged. “As long as he needs to. He’s been up since the middle of the night, on a horse most of that time. I told you, he’s an old man.”
Marjorie nodded. “All right, then. If he rests, we will all rest. Tony?”
The boy pointed upward. “We were just trying to figure out—”
“Figure out whether there’s any firewood, while it’s still light. Sylvan, please help him. We need enough wood to last all night. Father, if you’ll find the clearest water possible and fill this bucket—”
“What about me?” Brother Lourai asked.
“You and I will be chief cooks,” she said, burrowing in the capacious baskets Irish Lass had carried. “When we have eaten we will talk about what we do next.”
Tony and Sylvan wandered toward the nearest thicket, Tony taking out his laser knife. When he used it to cut an armload of dried brush, Sylvan exclaimed, “What’s that?”
Tony gave it to him, explaining.
“Is this something new?” Sylvan asked.
“Of course not. They’ve been around forever.”
“I’ve never seen one before,” Sylvan marveled. “I wonder why.”
“Probably because they wouldn’t let you,” Tony said. “It would make a handy weapon.”
“It would, wouldn’t it?” Sylvan said, turning the device over and over in his hand. He sighed, gave it back to Tony, and turned his attention to carrying wood. Still, he thought of the knife with wonder. Why hadn’t he known about such things?
Brother Mainoa awoke about the time the food was ready, quite willing to interrupt his rest to join them for supper When they had eaten, when the utensils were cleaned and put back in the panniers, they sat around the fire, waiting.
Marjorie said, “Well, Brother Mainoa. So, we are here.”
He nodded.
“Are we any closer to Stella than when we set out?”
“The trail led along the swamp-forest,” he said. “Outside it, unfortunately. We could not have stayed there.”
“Tomorrow?”
“Perhaps If the Hippae have gone. Tonight we would be unable to see anything.”
She sighed.
Tony said, “Mother, it’s just as well. The horses couldn’t have gone much farther.”
Marjorie was still looking at Brother Mainoa “You know something,” she said. “You obviously know much more than you have told us.”
He shrugged. “What I know, or think I know, is not something I can share with you, yet. Perhaps tomorrow.”
“Will you decide?” she asked with a percipient glare.
“No,” he admitted. “No, the decision won’t be mine.”
“What does it — they — want? To look us over?”
He nodded.
Tony asked, “What are the two of you talking about?”
“Yes, Marjorie. What are you — ?” Sylvan asked.
Father James gave Marjorie a percipient glance and said, “Let it alone, Sylvan. Tony. For now. Perhaps Brother Mainoa has already presumed upon his acquaintance with… well, the powers that be.”
Mainoa smiled. “A way of saying it, Father. If you can bear it, Lady Westriding, I would suggest that we rest. Sleep, if possible. We are quite safe here.”
Safety was not what Marjorie wanted, if she had been in danger of her life, at least she would have felt she was doing something. To sleep in safety meant that she was slacking while Stella was in danger, but there was no argument she could make. It was already too dark to find a trail. She rose from her place beside the fire and made her way among the trees to the grassy area where the horses grazed. There she sought the comfort from them which she did not receive from those in her company. It was only when she leaned against Quixote’s side that she realized how desperately tired she was.
Behind her the others made their beds near the fire. Tony put his mother’s bed to one side, screened from the others by low brush, where she would have some privacy. When she returned, he pointed it out to her, and she went to it, grateful for his help. Silence came then, broken by Mainoa’s low, purring snores, the cries of peepers distant upon the prairie, and the cries of other less familiar things in the swamp around them.
Marjorie had thought she would lie sleepless. Instead, sleep came upon her like a black tide, inexorably. She went down into it, dreamless and quiet. Time passed, with her unconscious of it. The hand that was laid upon her arm did not wake her until it shook her slightly.
“Ma’am.” said Rillibee Chime. “I’m hearing something.
She sat up. “What time is it?”
“Midnight, more or less. Listen, Lady. It’s sounds that woke me. People, maybe?”
She held her breath. After a moment she heard it — them — the sounds of voices, wafted to them on a light wind which had come up while she slept. A conversation. No words she could understand, but unmistakably the sound of people talking.
“Where?” she breathed.
He put his hand on her cheek and pushed so that her head turned. As she faced in another direction, she heard them more clearly. “Light,” she whispered.
He already had it in his hand, a torch which shed a dim circle before their feet. He handed her another, and they walked among the trees, through the meadow where the horses grazed with a sound of steady munching, beyond the meadow into the trees once more. Rillibee pointed up. It was true. The sounds came from above them.
She was no longer sure they were people. The sound was too sibilant for human people. And yet…
“Like the sounds in the Arbai village,” she said.
He nodded, peering above him. “I’m going up,” he said.
She caught at him. “You won’t be able to see!”
He shook his head. “I’ll feel, then. Don’t wait for me. Go back to the others.”
“You’ll fall!”
He laughed. “Me? Oh, Lady, at the Friary they call me Willy Climb. I have the fingers of a tree frog and the toes of a lizard. I have stickum on my knees and the hooves of a mountain goat. I can no more fall than an ape can fall when it creeps among the vines. Go back to the others, Lady,” and he was away, his torch slung about his neck, the light dwindling up the great trunk of the tree as he swarmed up it like a monkey.
When the circle of light had dwindled to nothing, she went back the way she had come, certain now that she would not sleep again. Yet when she lay down upon her bed she found sleep waiting for her. She had time only to wonder briefly what Brother Lourai would find among the branches before she was deeply asleep once more.
At the Friary, Elder Brother Fuasoi was sitting late at his desk, angrily turning the pages of a book. Yavi Foosh sat disconsolately on a chair nearby, yawning, trying to keep from nodding off.
“No sign of Mainoa or Lourai, then?” Fuasoi asked for perhaps the tenth time.
“No, Elder Brother.”
“And they didn’t mention to anyone where they were going?”
“There wasn’t anybody there to mention to, Elder Brother. Mainoa and Lourai were all alone at the ruins. The library crew had changed shifts three days ago. Shoethai and me didn’t take the replacement men back until this evening. When we got there, Shoethai and me went to tell Mainoa, but he was gone. Him and Lourai. We looked all through the ruins, Elder Brother.” He sighed, much put upon. He had told the story four times.
“And you found this book where?”
“Shoethai found it, Elder Brother. On Brother Mainoa’s worktable. He thought — since they were gone — there might be something written down somewhere. The book was the only writing Shoethai found. He brought it straight here to you.”