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 Matron 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.