They were in a forest with no sign of the temple or the Archai who’d surrounded it, and the many sorts of trees were different from any Cashel had seen before. None of them were as tall as a crab apple. The trunks were straight, some as thick as Cashel’s own body. Large leaves sprayed from the ends of branches that mostly kinked instead of curving. Some limbs carried balls that might be fruit, hanging just above easy reach.
He looked up. The sky was as bright as if the moon was full. The heavens were featureless—a gray-glazed bowl with neither moon, stars, nor the streaking of clouds to give them character.
Hook came over to Cashel; the carpenter’s eyes held a new respect. “Did you bring us here?” he asked, glancing around with the nervous quickness of a woodchuck foraging when hawks are about. “Are you a wizard too, Master Cashel?”
“All I did was break a hole in the wall,” Cashel said, maybe a bit more harshly than he’d meant to. Tilphosa stood to his side and a little behind, her place and posture showing that she was with him and against the part of the world that included the sailors. “Well, I broke a hole in the light that Metra raised. I don’t see any opening from this side, do you?”
“I watched you grow out of the empty air,” Tilphosa said quietly. “First you were a shadow, then it was you all whole, and you fell to the ground. And I thanked the Mistress that She’d returned my champion to me.”
Cashel glanced at her in surprise. “I don’t know…” he said; but the truth was, he didn’t know much about the Mistress, so there wasn’t any point in him talking about Her.
“There’s nothing there,” Mounix said. He and Ousseau, the latter clutching the torn skin over his right biceps with his left hand, had joined Hook. “I hope to the Lady that means the wizard and her monsters can’t come after us.”
“I sure don’t want to go back there!” Hook said, and even Cashel nodded agreement with that thought.
They were all looking at him. Cashel didn’t think he was much of a leader, but the sailors had proved they were no good at trying to think for themselves. As for Tilphosa—well, Tilphosa hadn’t any reason to complain about sticking with him.
Cashel cleared his throat. Mounix still held his sword. The blade was twisted sideways, so he probably couldn’t have sheathed it if he tried. “Straighten your sword out,” he said. “It won’t be much good like it is. And we better do something about that cut of yours, Ousseau. Maybe—”
“I’ve been taught some healing in the temple,” Tilphosa said. She dropped her stone and brushed her hands on her tunic. “I wonder if the light’s better over…”
The sailors turned their attention to the girl. Ousseau allowed her to guide him toward a tall tree whose spindly, needlelike foliage blocked less of the sky’s faint illumination.
“Hook?” Cashel said. He didn’t raise his voice much, but he spoke loud enough all the sailors had to hear him. “You weren’t respectful to Lady Tilphosa back at the other place, on Laut, but I let you live.”
“Yes, Master Cashel, we know we were wrong,” Captain Mounix said before Hook decided what or whether to reply. “We—”
Cashel shifted the quarterstaff in his hands very slightly. Mounix’s mouth shut in mid-babble; Hook said nothing but spread his hands to show, perhaps unconsciously, that they were weaponless.
“That’s good,” Cashel said. “Because I wouldn’t leave you alive a second time.”
He turned his back, mostly because he didn’t want to look at the sailors for a while, but it was also a good way to end a conversation that had gone as far as he figured it needed to. He was pretty sure there was light ahead through the forest. It wasn’t as sharp-edged as a lamp in an open window, just a glow that couldn’t be the sky even though it was about the same texture and brightness.
A will-o’-the-wisp, maybe? Cashel worked his big toe into the ground to test it. The soil had a spongy lightness, but in his experience it wasn’t wet enough to breed that sort of ghost light.
He didn’t know how he felt about the sailors deciding he was a wizard. Ilna always said that what other people thought was their own business; but she really meant “so long as they kept their thoughts to themselves,” because she’d always had a short way with anybody she thought was lying about her or Cashel.
Cashel’s own concern was a little different: he didn’t want it to seem he was claiming credit he didn’t deserve, and he knew that he wasn’t a wizard the way Hook and the others meant it. He scowled into the forest, trying to grapple with the problem.
There’d be less trouble for Tilphosa if the sailors thought Cashel could turn them into monkeys. He didn’t want to kill the trio, which he’d surely have to do if they did try something with the girl again. He guessed he’d let them think what they pleased; but he’d be really glad when he saw the last of them.
“I’ve done what I can for the wound, Cashel,” Tilphosa said from close behind him. “I don’t recognize any of the leaves, and I didn’t find any spiderwebs to pack the wound, but I made do.”
She paused, then added, “What…what do you suppose we ought to do now?”
Cashel shook his head slowly, mostly as a way of settling his thoughts. “The woods seem pretty open,” he said. “Even though it’s night, I thought we’d head toward the light there.”
He nodded, suddenly wondering if what he saw was more than imagination.
“Anyway, I think it’s a light,” he went on. “Maybe we’ll find a better place to bed down than here. And I don’t feel much like sleeping.”
He looked at the sailors. “That all right with you?” he asked.
“Let’s go, Cashel,” Tilphosa said, touching his elbow. She turned to Mounix again, and in a cold voice said, “Captain, you were told to straighten your sword; do so at once!”
Cashel blinked. He’d started off when Tilphosa told him to, then stopped again when he heard her tell Mounix to fix his sword. Put it on a fallen log and hammer it with the heel of his boot, Cashel wondered? Because there wasn’t a proper forge anywhere about, and no flat stones on the ground here either.
“Let’s go,” Tilphosa repeated, this time murmuring close to Cashel’s ear. She gave his biceps a light pressure in the direction of the light.
Cashel stepped off on his right foot, smiling faintly. Now he understood. He’d warned the sailors in his fashion, but Tilphosa—Lady Tilphosa—was repeating the message by training them to jump when she whistled. Mounix was hopping around, trying to fix his sword and follow the others at the same time.
It wasn’t the way Tilphosa preferred to be, not judging from the way she’d handled herself around Cashel. He’d seen before—when she hauled up Metra—that she could put on the Great Lady when it suited her, though. Of course…
In a quiet, apologetic voice, Cashel said, “The thing about reminding people who’s boss is, well…Metra came back with her own ideas, you know.”
“Yes,” said Tilphosa cheerfully. “I was glad that you and your staff were there to protect me, Cashel.”
She stroked the hickory with the tips of two fingers.
“I’m even more glad that you’re still with me,” she added.
Cashel cleared his throat but didn’t say anything. When he thought about it, there wasn’t anything to say.
There were various kinds of trees. Every one of them was a different sort, it seemed to Cashel, but that wasn’t something he’d have wanted to swear to till he saw them by daylight.
“How long do you suppose it is before sunrise, Cashel?” Tilphosa asked in a falsely bright voice. In those words he could hear the question she really meant but was afraid to speak: “Do you think the sun ever rises here?”