She did not ask what his reasoning was, but the idea that the placid-seeming Sylvans frightened a being as powerful as a demon was disturbing in itself. She did not understand what he meant about fanatics, but she tucked the words away to think about later, in the darkness of the night. Instead of allowing her blank mind to fill with fantasies of a demon lover, perhaps.
"Your people have far more in common with my kind than we whom you call 'demons' do with these Sylvans," he continued. "Never mind that the ancestors of the Sylvans were humans like you. Believe me, my dear, we are far more like you than we are like them."
In that, she had to agree with him. When Ware had first revealed his identity, all she had noticed was how strange, how alien he was. She had not been able to read his emotions; she was not even certain that he possessed anything she would recognize as an emotion. But now-now she could read him as easily as Faro, and now she trusted him. And he was far more "human," if such a word could apply to him, than these Sylvans were. That bothered her, oddly. The "door" irised shut behind the last of her men. "I am glad to be gone from this place," Ware said, from just behind her, echoing her thoughts.
"I hope we can find some other way through, or around," Xylina sighed. "I do not like those Sylvans, and I would not willingly put myself in their hands again. Not unless I commanded the kind of power that would make their numbers trivial. If I meet them again, I would wish it to be with them as my petitioners, and not the other way around."
She moved to the head of the cavalcade, as the men waited for her to assume her position in the lead. It felt right and good to be there, and without all the critical eyes of the Sylvans upon her, she felt more confident than she had in several days. Confident enough to face whatever unknown dangers lay outside this passage.
The Sylvans, though for the most part professing ignorance of the lands that lay on this side of their country, had told Ware that this region was one full of wild magic. It was hazardous to cross, so they said, and Ware's memories of the last time he was here agreed with that.
As if in answer to her thought of him, Ware rode up to take his place at her side. Since their first night in Sylva, Faro had begun to ride at the back of the cavalcade, telling Xylina that he trusted in the demon's honor enough to believe that Ware would not deliberately bring them into danger. In fact, he and Ware were getting along much better than she would have believed; something about Ware's dry sense of humor appealed to Faro's own. Now Faro took his mule to the rear, behind the wagons, and Ware held his stallion to a pace that matched Xylina's mule.
"What are we likely to meet with?" she asked, as the lantern-bearer walking in the front of the column illuminated the way ahead. "Can we expect trouble the moment we break out of the tunnel-or even before?"
"I wish I could tell you, Xylina," Ware said, his face fixed in that calm mask that she now knew meant that he was thinking furiously. "This region changes from year to year, and it has been a long time since any of my people were here. I can tell you only generalities. That the place is dangerous and treacherous. There are illusions here which cover the reality of the land. You may see a terrible beast which proves to be only an illusion-you may see it a moment later, may even believe that it is the same beast as before and you find that it is not an illusion, but a beast which will kill half your men. Illusions of water can conceal desert, and illusions of solid ground can conceal chasms. There are monstrous creatures here, and sometimes the very fabric of nature seems to have been warped and changed beyond recognition."
"You don't sound very comforting," Xylina said, wryly. She might have taken some alarm at his words-except that Ware had known all along that they would be coming to this region, and he had said all along that with his help, Xylina could survive this. She and her men had learned to work together; the men had learned to work with Ware instead of staring at him and expecting him to transform into something hellish for no particular reason.
"I suppose I don't sound comforting." Ware actually smiled a little-a warm smile, and the most genuine that Xylina had ever seen on his face. She smiled back, feeling a pleasant rush of corresponding warmth as she did so. "I am trying to err on the side of caution; where we are about to step, nothing can be taken for granted, and there is no such thing as taking too much care."
He had changed, she decided. He was no longer stalking her. He was-a friend. Maybe he had finally given up the notion of possessing her, and was going to settle for friendship instead. But strangely enough, that idea didn't seem to comfort her as much as it should have.
Ware continued, interrupting her thoughts. "The one thing that you can always be sure of is that the illusions always fade for at least a little, and that the cycles of change are no more and no less than one day and night in length. That, or so I was told, is due entirely to the effect of the crystal shard in the heart of the land; the cycle is a limit it imposes on the chaos of the wild magic here. So if we study the hazards carefully, we should be able to weave our way through them."
"If they give us time to study them," she pointed out. "Does anyone actually live out there?"
"Oh yes," he told her. "Yes, humans and other things. There are even likely to be some that will be friendly to us."
"And just as likely to want to kill us." She nodded, actually with a little satisfaction.This was something a Mazonite could understand: foes that fenced with weapons, not words, and situations where it was simply "kill or be killed." The sophistry of the Sylvans had confused her; right at the moment, she would prefer a raging beast that charged straight at her.
But she was careful not to say that aloud. Something warned her that to do so might be calling down misfortune on herself and her party. An old saying was, "be careful what you ask for, because you might get it." That was the last thing she wanted. Thus far, care and thought had kept her little band intact. She would like it if she could continue to do so. She had killed, herself, and had seen many dead men since she attained her citizenship-but never ones that she knew personally. There was a difference; she had learned that over the course of this journey, too.
Ware was right: a little precaution wasn't going to hurt anything-and whatever lay ahead of them, it might not be as reticent about entering the Thorn-Wall tunnel as the Pacha had been. It would be best to prepare for trouble coming to meet them.
"Keep your weapons at hand, men," she warned, speaking over her shoulder. "We don't know what is ahead of us. The Sylvans wouldn't say, and whatever it is, it just might think that this tunnel makes a perfect site for a nest."
There was a rustling and a clatter that told her that weapons were being loosened in their sheaths, and quivers were being uncovered.
Good. She stared ahead into the darkness beyond the moving spot of light, and called the lantern-bearer in until he was walking just in front of her mule's nose. She noticed that he was now walking with his sword in the hand not burdened with the lantern. "If you see something charging you, throw the lantern at it and get behind me," she told him. "You should be safer behind us. Ware's stallion is battle-trained, and my mule is at least accustomed to reacting to defend himself."