Xylina stared at the tentacle-beasts, and tried to measure their proximity to the road by eye. One or two of them were too close for her comfort. The tentacles moved too much; some of them would reach near enough to the road that they could have touched the men or the animals.
"Mistress, I don't think those creatures can actually see anything," Hazard ventured after a moment. "They seem to be as blind as the spiny-beasts. I think that you would probably have to touch one of their limbs before they knew you were there; that would be when they knew to attack."
Faro had urged his mount up beside hers while the young fighter was talking, and he grunted agreement. "That's exactly what I was going to say," he told them both. "They can't see us, and they can't move. So as long as we don't touch those things-"
"Look!" cried Hazard. He pointed at another of the tentacle-beasts. "There is someone in there!"
Xylina blinked, and rubbed her eyes to clear them, then looked again. There was something hiding shyly in the tentacles of the beast; her eyes were not deceiving her, nor were Hazard's. "It's not someone," she said, "It's something."
It was something about the size of a child, bipedal and upright, and peering out at them with huge green eyes, and covered with golden fur. It hid well within the tentacles, and did not seem to be taking any harm from them. The closest thing she could compare it to was a lemur, for it had very long arms, but that did not seem to keep it from walking erect. It was surely not human, for it wore no clothing and carried no weapons, and it had a sharply pointed muzzle like a fox.
"Should we try to capture it, mistress?" one called Barad asked eagerly. "We could keep it with the dogs! It would make a fine beast for the Queen's menagerie!"
But Xylina noticed that he looked from the lemur to Ware and back again, and she suspected that he had other things in mind than catching it for the menagerie. She had a vague notion of what he might be thinking of-that this two-legged beast might be worth considerable as a freak in a black-market show. Certainly it would be different.
The notion made her uneasy. This creature-it was a wild thing, and she could imagine how frightened it would be. Perhaps it was intelligent. That would be worse.
Xylina shook her head. "No," she replied slowly. "No, let it be. If we disturb the tentacle-beast, it will probably sting us. How would we capture the lemur without coming to harm ourselves? The lemur is doing us no harm, and there is no point in risking ourselves to catch it. We should let it alone. We don't know how to care for it, even if we could capture it, and it would probably die if we took it away from here." Out of the corner of her eye she noticed Ware nodding in approval.
"Let us simply pass these creatures as quietly as we can," she continued. "I think if we are very careful, we can get by them without mishap." She looked down the road, and frowned a little. "It will be night soon. I would prefer not to make a camp anywhere near them-and I would like to find a place to camp with some running water nearby."
The wagons edged past the tentacle-beasts carefully; the mules sweated with fear, but fortunately did not balk, though they must have sensed their danger. It did not help that the tentacles groped constantly; the sightless movement was unnerving at best, and brought danger a mere finger-length away at worst. It was horrible to remember that the tentacles could stretch, and that if the beast knew a man or a wagon was there, they would stretch out to give him one of those deadly caresses. And the wagons could not be driven off the roadway; they would sink into the soft ground at the side of the road.
One of the dogs could not bear the waving tentacles, and finally broke the leash holding it in the wagon, fleeing and howling with fear. Unfortunately, its mindless panic sent it blundering right into another of the tentacle beasts, and if there had been any doubt in the mens' minds about whether those tentacles would be effective on them, the dog's instant demise cleared that doubt immediately.
The poor beast let out a terrified shriek as the first tentacle brushed it; the dog howled in pain as more tentacles joined the first. Then it gurgled as it thrashed convulsively as the tentacles continued to hold it in that deadly embrace. It died quickly after the last convulsion ended; it was carried into the middle of the tentacle-creature, and vanished like the monster had, into an unseen maw.
None of the men wished to go lemur-hunting after that.
As nightfall approached, they finally came upon a clear spring welling up from a rocky outcropping in a relatively clear spot. The plants had thinned to the point that sunlight reached the ground, and the resultant light allowed other things to flourish among them, things that looked more like the plants and bushes Xylina knew from Mazonia. Some of them bore what looked to be fruits and berries, but in colors and shapes that none of them recognized. Although fresh fruit would have been very welcome, there was nothing that Xylina recognized as edible, and she really did not want to experiment with her men's lives. So instead, she directed them to empty and refill all the water containers, set up her palisade of stones, and ordered Horn to prepare a meal with the dried and preserved provisions, and the conjured stuffs she provided for the purpose of flavorings. It seemed cruel to subject them to bland provender in the sight of what might have been fresh food, when simple conjuration could add to the flavor of their meal.
Their defenses seemed secure, as secure as she could make them. They had held until now. But she was not easy in her mind. They had already seen that some creatures about here could fly-and how could anyone predict what would appear at night? A stone palisade would prove little defense against monsters capable of dropping down out of the air.
For that matter, there was no telling if something capable of climbing the palisade was not out there.
She wondered, as the men set up camp, if she should keep her fears to herself. Perhaps she was being too cautious. It would do no good to agitate the men with her imagined beasts. But on the other hand, it would be stupid not to alert them to the possibilities of attack from above. Not just stupid-insanely suicidal. She had no right to risk their lives because she was afraid she might sound foolish.
So as they gathered to share supper, she also shared her fears for the night. She opened up the possibility of floating and flying carnivores, or creatures large enough to climb over their defenses. She reminded them of the sand-burrower. It did not make for a cheerful meal.
"If any of you have any ideas of how we can defend ourselves from attack from above or below, I would like to hear them," she said when she had finished. "I had thought of creating a metal mesh across the top of the palisade, but the problem with that is that it would be too large to support itself. The only other mesh I made like that needed to cover a much smaller area, and was supported quite evenly on all sides. Besides, some of these beasts have tentacles long and thin enough to reach through such a mesh, unless I made the holes between it very fine, and that would make it even heavier. A metal plate with holes in it might serve, but these monsters might be able to lift it, for I have no way of anchoring it to the stones. And in any case, that much metal would surely attract lightning if we were to have a storm tonight."
Hazard stroked his beardless chin in thought. "If such a construction were to fall, it would surely crush us," he pointed out. "I am not certain that I would like a conjuration of that nature suspended over my head all night long."
"And I am not certain I would, either," Xylina agreed. "That is the problem with such things; I can't fasten them to the rock walls that I have created, and if there is a monster out there large enough to shift it, it will fall on top of us all. If I create pillars in here to help support it, there will be very little room for us to move."