If it did not go through-why would there be a road here? They couldn't completely close themselves off. No, there must be a portal on the other side; this road was made by someone or something. And it went beneath the thorns. So that was where they had to follow. There were other possibilities; that the "road" was no road at all, and that the tunnel was the work of the plants in order to trap prey within. But others must have come here; the bolder of the Pacha must have dared this road. They did not have reports of folk being devoured by the plants, or of vanishing, never to return. She must trust in that.
Finally, she conjured oil and ordered the lanterns brought out and lit. If they must travel under this monstrous thing, at least it need not be in darkness. She sent the lanterns down the line, one to every two men. They seemed glad of her foresight; she was just grateful that conjured oil burned as readily as "real" oil.
A few cubits into the tunnel, and it was as black as a starless night-and quite surprisingly cold. Not cold enough to freeze, but certainly as chilly as the nights hereabouts became. And damp, as welclass="underline" a kind of clamminess that clung to the skin and penetrated her clothing. She had ordered one of the men to walk in front of her with a lantern, and his little circle of light illuminated bare, dark earth, of a dark brown that was nearly black, utterly unlike the soil outside. The light cast upward from his lantern shone on a densely interwoven mat of gray-green branches and thorns, as tightly intertwined as any basket she had ever seen. And still no sign of the marks of pruning. The air, besides being chilly and damp, smelled like the earth in a cellar: dank and redolent with mildew.
The men and even the beasts became strangely silent.
She had no wish to break that oppressive silence with so much as a whisper. She had the uncanny and uneasy feeling that to do so would be to call down unwelcome attentions on all of them. From time to time, she thought perhaps she heard rustlings out there just beyond that mat of thorns, or whisperings from the darkness ahead of them and behind them. But she did not want to halt the column and call for silence. She did not want to know that she heard these things.
There seemed no end to this tunnel, and no way of judging how long they had been inside it. With no light of day to tell, it could have been mere moments, or hours. She kept herself from looking back at the bright circle of light behind her for as long as she could. After all, what was behind her did not matter, really.
When she looked back at last, she could no longer see the end of the tunnel. She fought down panic at that; it occurred to her that it might have grown closed the moment they passed it-
No. No, she couldn't think that. There was no evidence that these plants could grow that quickly. And it wouldn't matter if they could; she could always conjure oil and burn them free, or conjure great slabs of stone to crush the branches at the entrance. There were a hundred things she could do. So long as she did not panic. No, probably they had been curving off to the right or the left, and the end of the tunnel was hidden behind that curve. There was no easy way to tell if the tunnel curved from within it.
The tunnel itself remained the same size, which was reassuring-tall enough for a tall woman to ride a tall horse, carrying a banner, and still have a cubit to spare above the tip of the banner, and wide enough for three horses to walk side-by-side with comfortable space between them and between the sides of the outermost and the walls. There was certainly enough room for her men and wagons to pass along it. And interestingly enough, the horses gave no signs of fear or restiveness.
Perhaps they had no concern about vegetation, which was what this was.
Nothing changed. They rode on and on, and nothing changed; there was only the endless tunnel before them, the same tunnel behind them. Finally, when she was beginning to wonder in despair if there was no land, no people, only an unending thorny growth over the length and breadth of this county, there seemed to be a change in the texture of the darkness just ahead of them.
She narrowed her eyes against the darkness, and leaned forward, trying to see beyond the little circle of light ahead of her. A moment later, and she was certain of the change ahead. And that was when she noticed that the tunnel itself was beginning to widen, opening up like a great funnel.
Finally, after being beneath the hedge long enough that she was chilled to the bone and longing for a bit of sun and warmth, they came to the end: a huge, bark-covered slab, with a round, door-like aperture in it, without visible hinges or any way to swing it forward or back to open it.
Before she could direct her man to knock on that door, it opened, and a single, slender figure stepped through to face them fearlessly.
That figure was as strange as the hedge; it was dressed in a bright blue, form-fitting garment of something shiny and flexible, a fabric that moved with it as easily as a skin. "It," she thought, because she could not put a sex to the person; there was no sign of external genitalia, neither breasts nor penis, and in that garment the existence of either would have been quite obvious. There did not even seem to be nipples on the chest, only flawless skin. The face was as smooth as a prepubescent child's, with no sign of beard or other facial hair, but the hair upon its head, of a white-gold in color, was as long and luxuriant as Xylina's own. Its eyes were a bright, unnatural blue, and its skin was a dark brown, as dark as the earth beneath this hedge. It did not seem to have a weapon, but she did not take that as being evidence that it was weaponless. For one thing, it could very well have formidable, and unknown, magic. And probably did. The very arrogant posture was a challenge, a dare to attack and face the consequences. She did not intend to try and call the creature's bluff.
It looked over Xylina and her expedition with a cool, calculating gaze, and a complete lack of expression. After staring at the slaves for a long moment, its gaze returned to her, and there its attention remained. "Ah," it said after a pause, in a high, fluting voice. "A Mazonite. A Mazonite warrior and her entourage of slaves. And one other. A demon, it would seem."
To Xylina's surprise, it spoke her tongue, with no discernible accent or inflection. She wondered where and how the creature had learned the language.
"Yes," she said simply, deciding in that very breath to keep the real task of their expedition a secret. "We are sent by Queen Adria, and our mission lies beyond your borders. May we pass your land? This is all we ask, that you not hinder our passage."
The creature continued to gaze at her, as she attempted to keep her face as expressionless as the one it showed her. "You passed the Pacha without incident?" it asked, finally. "You spilled no blood, murdered none of the savages?"
"We passed peaceably. The Pacha tribes have declared themselves our brothers," Xylina replied, making no attempt to elaborate on that statement. Perhaps this would be enough. She really didn't want to lie to this creature. It might have ways of detecting such a lie. She could not guess how it might react if it knew that she was lying. But she was also dubious about the impression the truth would make.
The creature burst into peals of bell-like laughter; Xylina fought down her resentment, for it was making no effort to conceal the fact that it was laughing at her. "Fitting!" it crowed at last. "Oh, fitting! One barbarian declares himself to be brother to the next! Pledging eternal peace like a pair of children promising to be best of friends forever!" And it resumed laughing.
Xylina stared at her mule's ears, and told herself that if this creature called the Mazonites "barbarians," it probably had good reason to.She was petitioning to cross its land. There was no point in getting it angry with her. There was even less point in getting angry with it. Nothing she could say or do would change its opinion of her civilization or supposed barbarity.