Of course that was it! If Mazonite conjuration were strong everywhere, the other cultures would not have been able to maintain their independence. Xylina found that reassuring; she was not really weakening. It was part of the problem of far traveling. At least the men understood, now, and so did she.
But it was still her responsibility to protect this group. What could she do, without strong conjuration?
Outside the circle of concerned faces, she caught sight of other curious onlookers. The last sunlight gleamed on the huge emerald eyes of the lemurs, who peered at these invaders of their realm with unblinking gazes. This was the nearest she had ever seen them before. Perhaps the fact that they were all standing quietly had reassured the shy beasts. They had come to the very edge of the tentacle-beasts, and stood just within that charmed circle, watching the naked strangers avidly.
Charmed circle-the lemurs were weaponless, far more helpless than the intruders. Yet they were certainly surviving the night, with no palisades and no weapons. Could the tentacle beasts be protecting them?
"Ware, Faro," Xylina said urgently, as the latter brought her a cup of cool water and the former helped her to stand. "Look at the lemurs! They have no defenses, no weapons, no shells to protect them!They manage to avoid the spiders-could we do the same?"
"By hiding within the tentacle-beasts?" Ware asked, quickly seeing what she meant. "We could, if we could avoid the poison, or whatever it is that the beasts produce to kill with. I can't see any other way that the lemurs could be avoiding those spiders."
"I think their fur must protect them from the poison," she said thoughtfully. "The dog that died had such short hair it could not possibly have protected him; in fact, there was no fur to speak of on his belly or his paws. But look at the lemurs! Look, how thick their fur is, and how it covers every part of them, right up to the eyes, even the palms of their hands and the soles of their feet-"
"Then we should kill them and skin their fur, and wrap ourselves in it-" began Horn. But she shook her head, for that was no answer, and something in her rebelled at killing the gentle-seeming beasts.
"No, no, that won't serve," she told him. "Even if we were to kill the poor things, how would we retrieve the bodies? The bodies would certainly fall well within the reach of the tentacles. And I don't think we have time to kill and skin enough of them to cover us all. No, I have a better idea. Get all the clothing, every bit of it you all have, and armor as well-"
"Ah!" Faro cried, seeing what she was getting at. "You mean us to wrap up in our own clothing, to protect ourselves that way." He led the men and servants to the supply wagons, and shortly every one of them was muffled in every stitch of clothing he owned, turning them into motley bundles, looking like nothing so much as overstuffed dolls, stiff-limbed and awkward. But that would not matter, so long as they were protected.
Xylina surveyed them critically. "Not enough," she declared finally. "But this, I still have strength for."
And she began to conjure, producing length after length of thick, insulating fabric. Fabric was the very first thing she had learned to conjure, when she was small. Fabric took the very least of her own energies to produce.
It was hideous stuff; her weakness did not permit her to produce anything fine or attractive. The dull brown color and coarse "weave" said more about her state of exhaustion than she suspected any of them guessed. Not since her power of conjuration had first come to her had she created anything this crude. Any Mazonite worth her citizenship would laugh at this stuff; it was worse than bad, and the only thing it had to recommend it was the fact that she knew that, like silk, it was an insulator and probably proof against most contact poisons. Wrap a man in enough of this, and it would be as good as the lemurs' thick fur.
Crude it might be. But she could spin it out of the air in quantity, and spin she did. It was almost therapeutic, reverting to this primitive conjuration. Soon there was enough to muffle every man to the eyebrows in a thick cocoon of fabric, and all the animals as well.
The animals had worried her, until Ware came up with a solution. As the stories she had heard had hinted, the demons did have a kind of mesmerizing power. Ware used that one of his abilities on the animals, sending them into a trance in which they were three-quarters asleep and completely without fear.
One of the dogs was their test subject; they wrapped it in its swaddling-cloths of conjured fabric, laid it in one of the wagons, and backed the wagon carefully into the midst of one of the biggest tentacle-beasts.
The tentacles groped softly over the wagon, feeling each cranny and crevice blindly. As Xylina held her breath and the men watched with mingled fear and hope, the tentacles moved over the bundled body of the dog.
The dog slept on, oblivious. The tentacles completed their exploration of this new thing that had invaded, then the beast went back to waving them aimlessly in the air. The beast accepted the dog and wagon as it would a rock-or a lemur.
Hazard shouted with tired joy, and the rest joined him in a weak cheer.
"All right," Faro said, as if this were routine. "Let's get the wagons and the animals into the protection of these bigger beasts. Then get yourselves under cover-no more than three to a beast. We can't be sure how effective they are going to be. Hurry it up, now, the sun is setting! Those spiders are likely to be here any moment. If any of you are afraid, let Ware put you in a trance as well; that way you will not tear loose your protection, or be tempted to flee where the spiders may find you."
The men didn't need much urging. Ware put the rest of the dogs and the mules and his horse under his trances. The dogs he placed in the wagon beside the first. The mules and horse he led in himself, and got them to lie down. Then he layered yet more fabric over them as the tentacles groped him and animal with complete impartiality. He left them sleeping and looking like bundles of discarded laundry.
Then it was the turn of the rest. Walking stiffly in their swathings, each of them picked a tentacle beast and moved carefully into its groping embrace. The only exceptions were the three or four men who confessed to being too terrified of the tentacle beasts to remain awake. Those, Ware led in as he had the horse. He got them sitting and then entranced. He left them lying on their sides and snoring happily, oblivious to the tentacles waving over their heads. Xylina was sweating, and not from the heat of her wrappings, as she inched her way toward her chosen beast. She was afraid, too-but she felt that she could not confess it and retain the respect of the men. This was, perhaps, the hardest thing she had ever done. Not even facing Faro in the arena had taken this much nerve.
She paused, just inside the reach of the beast, and waited for it to kill her. But the tentacles passed over her, touching her with surprising gentleness, and finally leaving her alone. She remained where she was for a moment, gathering her nerve, but every heartbeat that passed with the beast leaving her in peace gave her a little more of her courage back. At length she made her way as far in as she could, finally finding a place where the tentacles seemed to meet. She lowered herself stiffly down on the ground beside the base of the beast, with her legs stuck out in front of her, like a doll. She was weary beyond words, and she knew that the men must be just as exhausted. Now they must wait and see if their guess was correct-that the spiders would avoid these beasts, and so leave the party unmolested.
She found that she could see through thin sections of the fabric. She maneuvered to get the best view.
The sunset was glorious, a kaleidoscope of reds and oranges, with swaths of purple near the zenith. The light, fresh breeze that sprang up as it vanished cooled her under all her coverings. She wondered when the first of the spiders would appear. Perversely, she did not want to wait. She would rather know if they were going to be safe, and know it immediately.