Shiara came over just as I finished. She looked at me for a minute, then handed me the sword. "Here." I took it, and she sat down and started trying to drink out of her cupped hands. Most of the water ran out, but she kept trying.
I stood holding the sword and wondering what I was going to do with it.
I mean, walking through the Enchanted Forest with a sword in your hand is just looking for trouble. On the other hand, I couldn't put it away until the sheath dried out, and that would probably take hours.
Shiara finished drinking and sat up. "Now, what are we going to do about that wizard's staff?"
Neither one of us wanted to take it with us. Shiara suggested hiding the pieces before we left, and finally I agreed. We walked back over to the tree. I started to put my sword down, then changed my mind.
One of the easiest ways of losing important things in the Enchanted Forest is to put them down while you do something else. Then you have to go to all the bother of finding whoever took your things before you can get on with whatever you really want to do. I shifted the sword into my left hand and looked around for the nearest piece of staff.
"Daystar! Come see!" Shiara was waving a piece of the staff to attract my attention.
"You really shouldn't do that," I said as I walked over. "You might set off a spell or something. This used to be a wizard's staff, remember? We ought to at least try to be careful."
"Yes, but look what it did," Shiara said, pointing. I looked down.
There was a brown patch in the moss, just the size and shape of the stick Shiara was holding. I bent over and looked more closely. The moss was so dry and brittle that it turned to powder when I touched it.
"But this is the Enchanted Forest," I said to no one in particular.
"You aren't supposed to be able to do things like this."
"Well, this wizard's staff did," Shiara said. "I bet it'll do it again, too."
Before I could stop her, she laid the stick down on the moss. She picked it up almost immediately. The moss underneath it was brown and dead.
I stared. "I don't like this," I said. There aren't very many things you can be sure of in the Enchanted Forest, but I'd never seen a dead plant there, not even in the Outer Forest. The whole place felt too alive to put up with that sort of thing. "I wonder if all wizards' staffs do that."
"I don't know about other staffs, but we can check the other pieces of this one," Shiara said. She walked toward one of the other two sticks.
I sighed and started for the last one.
"This one's the same," Shiara reported after a minute. "What about yours?"
"Just a minute," I said. I bent over and picked it up in my right hand ....
When I woke up, Shiara was dripping water on my face. "You can stop now," I said. "I'm wet enough already."
Shiara shook her head. "Are you all right? I mean, you're not enchanted or anything, are you?"
I thought about it for a moment. "I don't think so, but if I am, we'll find out pretty soon." I sat up and realized I'd been lying on the moss at the foot of the tree. "What happened?"
"How should I know? One minute you were standing there with that sword, and then there was some kind of explosion and when I turned around you were lying here and that piece of the wizard's staff was over there, burning. I don't think anyone's going to put that staff back together again. It was the middle piece." Shiara scowled. "But I think you were right about that elf."
"Where's my sword?" I asked. All of a sudden I was sure someone had taken it while Shiara and I weren't paying attention.
"In your hand," Shiara said. She sounded a little exasperated. "You wouldn't let go of it."
I looked down. My left hand was still clenched around the hilt. When I relaxed my hand, the fingers started to tingle. I'd been holding on so tightly that my hand had fallen asleep.
Well, at least I hadn't lost it. I started to shift the sword back to my right hand, then stopped and swallowed hard. The hand was burned black.
I couldn't even feel it. I looked away, feeling sick. Shiara was staring, too.
"Daystar, I didn't notice, I was so worried about waking you up I didn't even see-" She stopped. She tilted her head back until she was looking up the tree trunk, and her eyes flashed. "I'm going to find somebody who can fix this," she said grimly. "And then I'm going to find that stupid elf and make him sorry he ever mentioned that wizard's staff." The way she said it made me very, very glad I wasn't an elf, particularly the elf she'd be looking for.
"It doesn't really hurt or anything," I offered. As soon as I said it, my arm started to throb. Not the hand; it was my wrist and arm that hurt. As far as I was concerned, that was more than enough.
"That's bad," Shiara said. She looked worried. "I know a little about burns, from the times when I… Are you sure you can't feel anything?"
"Not in my hand," I said. "And I'd really rather not talk about it.
It might help me not notice the way my arm feels."
"Well, let me look at it, then, and I won't have to ask questions," Shiara said.
I stuck my right hand out in her direction and stared at my sword for a couple of minutes. I didn't succeed in ignoring the sensations that were coming from my arm, but I tried awfully hard. Finally Shiara said, "You can put it down now." I looked back in her direction.
"It's bad," she said. "I don't know what to do for it, either. We have to find help, and pretty soon, too. There has to be someone in this forest who knows something about healing. Can you walk?"
"My legs are all right," I said. I started to stand up and discovered I was very dizzy. I made it on the second try, but only by using the sword as a prop.
Shiara picked a direction and we started walking. After about twenty steps I stopped worrying about which way we were going and concentrated on walking and hanging on to the sword. It was hard; I really had to work at it. I was still dizzy, and I was beginning to feel cold, too-all but my arm, which felt as though it were on fire, and I wondered whether the wizard's staff had done more than just burn my hand.
I don't know how far we went before we stopped. By that time, Shiara was holding my good arm, trying to help me walk. She couldn't help as much as she might have, because she had to keep out of the way of the sword. As soon as we quit walking, I sat down.
"Daystar, are you sure you can't put that sword away yet?" Shiara asked. "It gets in the way a lot."
"The sheath is still wet," I said hazily.
"Well, can we at least put the sheath in the sun so it'll dry faster?"
I looked around, feeling sort of light-headed as well as dizzy. On top of everything I was getting thirsty. "We can't do that," I said. "The cat has the only patch of sun around here."
"What cat?"
"That one." I pointed at the large, dignified, black-and-white cat that was cleaning its face in the middle of a puddle of sunlight. It didn't even strike me as odd that I hadn't noticed it until I started talking about it.
Shiara turned her head. As soon as she looked at it, the cat stopped washing itself. It stared at her for a minute, then stood up. The tip of its tail twitched three times, and it turned around and started walking away. After a minute, it stopped and looked back over its shoulder. It was obviously waiting.
Shiara jumped up. "Come on, Daystar. We're going to follow the cat.
I think somebody sent it."
"That doesn't make sense," I said, but I wasn't in very good shape to argue. Eventually, Shiara got me back on my feet. The cat was still waiting for us, but as soon as we moved in its direction it started walking again. I decided Shiara was right and concentrated on walking.