The girls who’d escorted Cashel to the village clustered around him again. They were childlike; but not children, very definitely young women. Cashel looked at them, then to the chief, and said, “Look, sir, are they the bath attendants? Because I’d rather—”
“Of course, Lord Cashel,” Twenty-second said. He made what seemed an idle gesture, but at once the girls disappeared into the crowd and the youths who’d guided Tilphosa stood in their place. Two of them took Cashel’s hands.
“Wait,” said Twenty-second. He gestured with both hands, palms up, to Cashel’s ironbound quarterstaff leaning against the hut behind him.
Cashel snatched it, feeling calmer for the touch of the smooth hickory. It was a piece of his past, of his home. Life had been hard when he grew up an orphan in Barca’s Hamlet, but it was a life he knew. Almost nothing Cashel had seen since leaving home had been familiar, and even when it was good it made him uncomfortable inside. It was all confusing, whether people called him Lord Cashel and treated him like a king or when man-sized insects tried to cut him down….
The Helpers walked Cashel straight across the courtyard. Little people who’d been kneeling to eat moments before slipped out of the way without seeming to move. They had a marvelous grace, no matter what they were doing.
Two of the youths entered the hut ahead of Cashel. He squatted, peering inside. The floor had been slightly hollowed out, and the earthen surface was sealed with the same smooth gum as the drink tumblers had been. The door was low, but Cashel could fit on his hands and knees.
“Lord?” said one of the youths.
Cashel leaned his staff beside the hut’s door, then hunched forward and crawled through the doorway. The truth was, even bare-handed he’d be willing to match his lone strength against all the little folk who lived in this village. Besides, Cashel’s conscious mind couldn’t imagine the Helpers being any more hostile than a brood of ducklings.
A tingly, vegetable scent clung to the hut’s interior. Little hands loosened Cashel’s sash and drew first it, then his tunic, away from him.
The Helpers twittered cheerfully as they worked. One youth measured Cashel’s biceps with his fingers, and giggled. “So big, so very strong!”
“Lie down please, Lord Cashel,” said a Helper already inside the hut. Cashel obeyed; the floor was slickly cool, pleasant after the morning of direct sun. His eyes adapted easily. Light filtered in through spaces in the flimsy roof as well as by the open door.
Cashel lay on his stomach, his head toward the door and his left cheek cradled on his crossed arms. More Helpers entered the hut, then one still outside passed in a bowl of sun-warmed water and a number of long gourds.
One youth opened the gourds with what looked like a simple twist of the dried stem. They burst outward into balls that looked more like ripe dandelions than they did the loofas Cashel was familiar with. The vegetable scent puffed out fresh and strong as each gourd opened.
A youth sprinkled water on Cashel’s back and limbs. The rest of them, four or five at least, began rubbing him down with the gourds. The pods’ touch was as warm and soft as raw fleece, but they made Cashel’s skin tingle pleasantly.
A Helper worked his gourd over Cashel’s neck and shoulders. The touch of sunburn he’d gotten sitting in the sun vanished as if he’d been daubed with lanolin.
Cashel thought about spending a few more days in the village. He and Tilphosa had only the general goal of getting back to their separate homes, not a hard deadline, but…
Though Cashel didn’t know of a deadline, there might still be one; this wasn’t the place either he or Tilphosa was meant to be. And despite the Helpers’ generosity, Cashel knew well how slim the difference between eating through the winter and starving could be in a rural village. Tilphosa ate more than any of the Helpers did, and Cashel ate as much as a whole hutful of the little people. It wouldn’t be right to stay even for a few days.
It was nice to think of relaxing for a longer period, though, and the people were so—
Tilphosa shouted.
Cashel lurched to his feet. His head smashed through the hut’s roof. He tried to raise his hands to fling away the frame of dried branches, but his arms didn’t work. They felt cold—all his muscles felt cold.
Cashel’s senses were clear, but he couldn’t seem to move. The youths around him in the hut jabbered excitedly. A score of Helpers had brought down Tilphosa and were trussing her with Cashel’s own sash torn into strips.
He tried to take a step forward. If he could walk, maybe he could work off the effect of the poison and—
He couldn’t walk. He felt himself falling. He couldn’t even put his hands out to take his weight, though the impact didn’t hurt his numbed body either. “Duzi!” he would have cried, but his throat froze about the word.
Helpers gathered around Cashel in a circle. Twenty-second chirped quick orders. Cashel saw many tiny hands reach down to grasp him, though he couldn’t feel their touch. His body swayed upward, lifted on the massed strength of most of the village.
The youths who’d been bathing him walked in front of the procession; their arms dangled loosely at their sides. The poison had been in the gourds, then. He supposed it’d wear off in time.
Cashel met Tilphosa’s eyes as his body left the courtyard on scores of tiny feet. She’d been bound but not gagged. “I’ll pray to the Mistress for you, Cashel,” she called.
Cashel couldn’t speak in reply, but there wasn’t much to say anyway. It wouldn’t have helped to tell Tilphosa to save her prayers for herself, because he figured she was going to need them shortly.
The poison would wear off in time, but Cashel wasn’t going to have much time. The Helpers, the whole village of them together, were carrying him down to the man-eating tree.
He was about to replace Fourteenth as the tree’s meal.
15
“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.”