• Chapter 11
The numbers of Pacha never increased to the point beyond Xylina's ability to conjure, but she often went to her rest feeling strained to her limits. She had little time to get to know the men she commanded, and less time to learn anything about Ware. The strategy of feasting and entertaining the barbarian horse-folk never failed to work, however; not once during their crossing of the Pacha lands did the nomads ever seem the least unfriendly. Rather, each new tribe greeted them with the same enthusiasm as the last. It occurred to her that waking up alone and without hangovers after a night of feasting was as convenient for them as it was for the Mazonite party, because they did not have to make any exchange gifts.
Faro still slept near her, and she was glad of that. But she was feeling increasingly alone. She caught herself wondering what it would be like to spend the night with a man. To wake and find him beside her. To be the object of his passion. Even a demon. She knew that if she asked Ware to join her, he would gladly do so.
No! She had sworn to pay him in silver if not in gold, and she intended to hold true to that. This mission was really a third way to pay him, doing a service for the Queen. Once that service was done, Xylina would be free not only of her monetary debt, but of the dread harassment that had ruined her family. She knew her proper course.
Still, she almost wished she could put on paw-mittens and pretend to be from the Animal Kingdom, just for one hour. Just to see what it was like. Just in case she was missing anything. But of course that was impossible.
Ware, however, was possible.
She banished that thought and focused on sleep. Faro was right: she had more important concerns than such foolishness.
A new challenge was waiting for them on the other side of the great red-earth wilderness. Ware confessed that he was not familiar with the peoples beyond Pacha lands, although he thought he would probably know their tongue, since he was a student of languages. The Pacha themselves were no more help than the demon. At first, when asked about those who dwelled on their border, they could only shrug and say, "we do not know these people." Then, as the expedition drew nearer to the border, the tribes would say, "they close themselves behind their thorn-wall, they do not travel, they do not trade, we do not go there. We call them the Hates-All-People."
Not a lot of information, and it was difficult to tell if the Pacha had ever really tried to make contact with this new nation. Nor was it certain what some of their primitive descriptions of the "Hates-All-People" meant. Xylina had been certain from the moment that she heard those words that the reference to a "thorn-wall" was the barbarians' attempt to describe the kind of fortified border she had expected on the Mazonite side of the Pacha lands. Certainly a border-wall with spikes to prevent climbing would answer the description of a "thorn-wall." But when at last they approached this "thorn-wall," she saw for herself that the Pacha had not been descriptive, but literal.
The Thorn-Wall began as a shadow on the horizon, a gray mist that neither she nor those with her could see over or past. Xylina stared at it in puzzlement as they continued their journey, for it would not resolve itself into anything more substantial, even though they drew nearer to it with every footfall. It was something like a dark gray fog-bank looming up ahead of them, yet it could not be fog, for it did not move or dissipate despite the heat of the sun or the movement of the wind. It did, however, seem to grow taller; she had first judged it to be about twenty or thirty cubits in height, but the nearer they approached it, the taller it seemed. She felt a stirring of cold fear in her throat as she took in how large it was-how could anyone build something so very tall? It must have taken hundreds of years to complete it!
Then, finally, as her eyes were struggling to make sense of this senseless, formless structure, Faro cursed. "By the gods! Those red savages were right! It is a wall of thorns! Who are these people, to use plants to guard their borders for them?"
She blinked, and suddenly what had been making no sense to her eyes became clear. The "structure" was no structure at all, but a massive hedge of thorny branches, so tightly interwoven that it must be pitch-black a few paces deep within. What her puzzled eyes had taken for tendrils of mist were in reality twining branches.
The road led up to a hole in this hedge, and there seemed to be no viable alternate routes. If they were to pass into the next realm, it must be via this passageway or none at all. There was no other way through, not that she could see, and to leave the road was to court death from lack of water. The Thorn-Wall stretched from horizon to horizon; it was either go on, or go back-or, she suddenly realized, try to make a home among the Pacha.
That might not be too terrible, really. She could certainly keep them happy with nightly drinking-bouts and occasional feasts of magic meat! But she knew, really, that such a thing was not possible-not without losing whatever small honor she still possessed. She must go on; the Pacha had not said that these people were hostile, only that they avoided contact. They could be friendly; they could simply be frightened of the Pacha. People who hid behind a wall of thorns could be gentle and unwarlike.
She tried not to show her trepidation as the column approached the Thorn-Wall; she could well imagine why the Pacha had never bothered to attempt to traverse the tunnel leading into the heart of the wall. To them, worshipers of the sun as she had learned them to be, it would have been a descent into a nightmare-hell of their worst fears, to dive down into this dark hole with only the hope of light on the other side. Their tales of the afterlife for evil-doers depicted a dark and unending void. Surely this tunnel must seem a tunnel to that terrible afterlife to them.
She halted the men just outside of the passageway, and considered it, and the wall. The Wall itself seemed to be composed of millions of plants rather than just one; each one reaching upward to the sun, tangled with its neighbors until there was no saying where one began and the next ended. The branches ranged from limbs the thickness of a man to twigs slimmer than her little finger; the thorns from fearsome projections as long as a horse to mere threads. All ended in points that were probably as sharp as they looked; she did not care to test them herself. They could be envenomed; she had no way of knowing. The branches were covered with tiny round leaves, a dusty gray-green in color, thick and waxy, and about as large as her thumb. That was what had given the mist-like quality to the Wall when they were still some distance from it.
She stared upwards at the Thorn-Wall, deep in thought, trying to imagine who or what had grown this prodigy. For surely nothing like this could have occurred without a controlling mind behind it! It was too deliberate, too regular, and too purposeful to have simply sprung into being accidentally. She saw no signs of pruning or other shaping within the tunnel, and yet it was as regular as if it had been cut by an exacting hand. Someone must have control over these plants. And besides, the Pacha had spoken of people on the other side of the Wall.
She peered into the darkness of the tunnel, shading her eyes with her hand, but saw nothing. No sign of the other end at all. They probably have some kind of gate or guard on the other side, she thought, considering how impossible it would be to climb to the top of the thing, much less climb over it. There was no sign of light, as though the tunnel came to a dead-end, but a gate closed across the other end would account for that. She did not want to consider the idea that it did not go all the way through.
And yet she must.