She nodded, slowly, pleased with his quick intelligence. "Yes, I thought so too, and I was planning on riding beside the food-wagon. In fact, why don't you pick two other men to stay right with the wagon along with us? That way we can have one on each corner." She smiled. "I'm sure the driver will appreciate the extra guards."
"Yes, Mistress Xylina," he said, "I will do so at once." And there was no doubt that he looked faintly disappointed. For a moment, she could not imagine why he would be disappointed. As he went off to choose the other two guards, she realized the reason.
He thought he was going to have her all to himself; she felt embarrassed amusement. He thought he was going to have a chance to attract her attention, and perhaps attract more than just her attention. Ah, well. Perhaps it was better to get that misunderstanding over with quickly! Such attentions as poor Hazard was hoping for would likely cost her more in respect than it would ever gain. She let him go off by himself, and busied herself with rechecking the saddle on her mule. Better to spare him any discomfit; better to let him think she had not guessed what his hopes and motives had been.
When the group formed up, at the opening under the plants that signaled the beginning of the road through them, she took her place at the right front corner of the provision-wagon, and Hazard took the left. To the rear were two of the older men, career guards who had been trained to fight all of their lives. They were good choices for this position; of all of the men, it was the ones who had seen combat before who had been the least shaken by Kyle's death. One of the men Hazard had chosen was a man called Gurt, the other, a bearded fellow, Jan. The driver of the provision-wagon was Horn, the cook, and he seemed very glad to see them all. He was no kind of fighter, and he had seemed very disturbed after Kyle's death.
With Ware in the lead, the expedition crossed the last of the rock-waste, and plunged into the green gloom of the "forest." Faro had been right; the leaves tended to sway over the primitive road, and the road itself wound around them, so that once the entire train was inside the area, she found she could not see either the front or the rear of the cavalcade.
It was, in fact, quite dark under those leaves after the brilliant and unshaded sunlight of the rock-waste. Xylina was not entirely certain what to make of the plants they traveled beneath. She could not imagine how they remained standing. They were nothing more than a cluster of immensely long leaves, each as wide as her mule, but very narrow in proportion to the length, and standing cubits above her head. The clumps of leaves, six or seven to a cluster, were joined only at their bases. Fat roots plunged from that joining straight into the ground. There seemed to be no support for the plants except for a thick central rib, which hardly seemed strong enough to bear the weight of the enormous leaves. The ground underneath was entirely devoid of growth except for a few pale fungi; it was not possible to see the earth, however, for the remains of dead leaves piled up beneath the plants. Xylina would have been surprised to see anything growing here, actually; there wasn't enough light under these plants to grow much of anything. Even a fern would have had a hard time subsisting here. Odd: this place actually looked as if it had been planted and then left to itself.
The road, or at least the remains of one, continued on under and through the plants. That made it a bit easier for the wagons; the plants didn't seem to care for what was left of the roadway, and did not grow up through it. There was plenty of room for the wagons to pass between them so long as they stayed on the road.
Once they had passed a few lengths into the depths of the forest, it was impossible to see the area that they had just left; Xylina looked back once or twice, and could see nothing, not even the hint of sunlight. They could have been in another world entirely. And there was a whole new set of noises under these trees: creaks and chirps, squeaks and chatterings. Xylina took a certain amount of comfort in the fact that none of these sounds was terribly loud. She hoped this meant that whatever produced them was not terribly big.
Though something didn't have to be large to kill; yesterday had proved that. She must not assume that if something was small, it was harmless. She must not assume anything. That thought led to another, and questioning Hazard about his burial rite might be a good place to start a dialogue with him. "Hazard?" she said, prompting the young man to jump just a little in startlement. "If you don't mind answering, how did you come to know what to do for Kyle yesterday? I did not wish to simply leave him-but I had never heard that the-the men had special burial customs." She had almost said, "the slaves" and had stopped herself just in time.
He gave her a very strange look, but replied slowly, "I am not surprised, mistress. Few of the Mazonites pay our customs much heed. It was-something I was trained in by my father. These things are passed from father to son, whenever possible. And when they are not, the man who is trained finds a likely boy in the household and trains him. More than one, if the first boy is taken away from the household. In that way, there is one Rite-Holder in every household, so that the proper rites may be observed."
That answer seemed to imply that there was more to this than just a simple rite or two; it seemed to imply an entire religion. She said nothing, however. It seemed to be almost a secret, and she did not wish to make him think she was trying to force his secrets from him. "What do you generally ask to be reborn as?" she asked impulsively. "I mean, you probably never even heard of the Pacha before you all came on this expedition. So what do you usually ask for at home, as a rebirth?"
It was not Hazard who answered, but the cook, who knew her better than the others. "Simple enough, mistress," Horn said, with a crooked grin. "A girl. Which of us would not rather be reborn as a girl?"
"Ah." She nodded, and the others seemed relieved that she was not offended. "I can understand that."
Jan snorted, just a little. "Oh, there are some pampered pretties who like their soft lives; they generally ask for the same rebirth as what they enjoyed. But not all of us are born with pretty faces and winning ways. And some of us that are-well, Kyle found out the hard way that a pretty face don't always stay pretty forever. Then-" Jan coughed. "Then, well, life don't stay soft."
That was a good opening for a change of subject. "I was very sorry about Kyle, yesterday," she said, and hoped that she sounded as if she meant it. "I never dreamed those purple things were alive. I wish there had been some way to know what was dangerous...."
She let her voice trail off for a moment, then cleared her throat. "This is a very strange place we are entering. Ware says that it is full of wild magic, and that we should expect nothing and be wary of everything. Well, we just had that proved to us, I suppose. But it is hard to be alert all the time."
"What's a demon doin' with us, mistress?" asked the other man behind her, Gurt. "What's a demon doin' outside of the court? Is the Queen's word gonna hold him out here? I've heard they were pretty nasty customers before the Mazonite Queens made 'em behave. What's to stop him from kicking over the traces now?"
Now that was a very good question, and one she hadn't considered. Not that it mattered, because what Ware wanted was something the Queen's word had nothing to do with. He would not endanger them, because he had sworn his word to her that he would protect them, and she knew, somehow, that he was an honorable creature. She didn't care to announce that Ware also wanted to possess Xylina herself, and knew that any dishonor on his part would immediately destroy any chance of that. But still, she could see how the men might be nervous about the demon. She could only imagine the kinds of stories they'd heard about his kind.