"Remember my warnings. Touch nothing. Drink from no stream. We will head east, but must find shelter before nightfall."
"Why is that?" someone called.
"Because things come out at night," Daylan answered.
And he was off, striding across the glade. A trail ran through it, a winding trail like a rabbit run.
Daylan walked along it carefully, as if treading across a fallen log.
"Stay on the trail," he called. "We walk single-file."
The folks began forming a line, and soon they were winding down the hill, looking like a great serpent slowly slithering through the grass.
Talon strode along behind the emir. They gave up on their language lessons, and walked silently. No one talked. As well as they could, the forty thousand complied with Daylan s wishes. Babes cried, and occasionally someone yelped as they tripped, but overall, the journey was a remarkably sober one.
They had not gone for half an hour before a child screamed, not a dozen paces ahead of Talon. She peered around the emir and saw a girl, perhaps six or seven, drop a huge posy, its pink flower falling to the ground.
She screamed and held up her hand. "Help!" she cried. "A bee stung me!"
"Help yourself," her mother whispered impatiently. "You ve been stung by bees before. Pull the stinger out-or let me do it."
But the child held her hand up and studied it in shock, then let out a bloodcurdling cry. "I m on fire! Help. I m burning!"
To Talon it did indeed seem that the child was burning. Her hand was turning a vivid red, a color that Talon had never seen in a human limb, and near the sting it had begun to swell terribly. The girl screamed and fell to the ground, writhing in pain.
Suddenly Talon could hear the angry sound of bees swarming, and she looked up to see a cloud of them, rising from the glen in every direction, hurtling toward the girl.
Folks shouted in warning, and some stepped away from the child, frightened by the massive swarm that had begun to form.
"Stay on the trail!" Daylan Hammer cried out up ahead, but folks shouted for help. In moments Daylan was racing back down the line, until he reached the fallen child.
The bees had formed an angry golden-gray mass, and merely hovered in the air above the wounded girl, like sentries waiting to do battle.
Daylan cried out in warning, speaking in a tongue that Talon had never heard before. Yet Daylan s words smote her like a mallet. They seemed to pierce Talon, to speak to her very bones.
"Hold!" Daylan called to the bees. "The child meant no harm. Spare her. She is still ignorant of the law."
The bees buzzed angrily, their pitch rising and falling, and Talon suspected that they were speaking to Daylan in return, answering in their own tongue.
Daylan reached the fallen child and stood between her and the bees, using his body as a shield.
The girl wept furiously, and soon began to wheeze.
"It s nothing," the girl s mother said as if to reassure Daylan. "It s only a bee sting. She s had plenty before."
"On this world," Daylan said, "a single honeybee has more than enough venom to kill a man. Let us hope that she was not stung too deeply."
He stood between the girl and the swarm, and called out again. "Please, she did not know that these were your fields," Daylan apologized. "She meant only to enjoy a flower. She did not mean to steal pollen from your hive."
He spoke slowly, as if hoping somehow to break through to the dumb insects.
For a long tense moment the swarm buzzed angrily, and the bees began to circle Daylan, creating a vortex, so that he seemed to be at the center of an angry tornado. He turned to follow their leaders with his eyes, keeping himself between them and the girl.
For her part, the wounded child stopped whimpering, and lay now only wheezing. Talon caught a good glimpse of her-pale blue eyes staring emptily into the air as she struggled. Her face was blanched, and her whole body trembled.
The swarm stayed at bay, and their buzzing eased.
At last Daylan reached out his palm toward the swarm. "Show me the way to your hive," he begged. "Let me speak to your queen. I have not violated the law. You cannot deny me."
After a thoughtful moment, a single bee flew out of the mass and landed upon Daylan. It walked around in circles on his palm, stopping to waggle from time to time.
"That way!" Daylan said, pointing to the southwest. "About a league."
He called out to the Wizard Sisel. "Come here." To the crowd he warned, "The rest of you, stay where you are."
He glanced down at the failing child. Her breathing was slowing from moment to moment. Daylan told the wizard, "Cut open the sting. Suck the poison out. Keep her alive, if you can." He gave the company a warning look. "And don t move. Don t take so much as a step from the trail or touch a flower, lest the bees attack. There are enough of them to wipe out our whole company!"
Then Daylan was off, racing through the grass.
The Wizard Sisel hunched over the girl and did as Daylan had said, sucking out the poison. He was a master at healing, and Talon had great confidence in his abilities. But Sisel fretted as he muttered incantations and gently rubbed a balm into the child s fist. "So hot. I ve never felt a sting so hot."
Talon peered around at the folks nearby. Most of them had been born serfs, and so were dressed in drab attire. They had never had an education, and did not know much about the world at large. But even the dullest of them knew that this was all wrong. One did not negotiate with honeybees, or make truces with them. One did not die for picking flowers.
Talon felt foolish and vulnerable. The netherworld held dangers that she could not have anticipated.
The emir stayed where he was supposed to, until he could endure no more. Slowly he edged to the child, and at last stood above the Wizard Sisel. "Is there anything I can do to help?"
The wizard shook his head no.
The emir sat down in the grass and held the girl s head in his lap, then smoothed back the child s tawny hair and stroked her cheek, making soothing noises.
The child s mother stood nearby, watching. Perhaps she would have comforted the child, but she was cradling one toddler in her arms while she clung to a bag that held everything that the family owned.
"Don t be afraid," the emir whispered.
Talon felt curiously jealous of the emir s touch. She longed for him to stroke her that way.
The emir bent over the girl and brushed her forehead with a kiss. The girl kept wheezing, but closed her eyes, relishing the attention.
The cloud of bees continued to hover over the spot unnaturally, like an army at war.
It made Talon nervous. She had to pee, but dared not step off of the trail, lest the bees attack. So she held it in, and just stood, her heart pounding in fear.
"Wonder what happens if you run into wasps," one of the folks down the line said nervously, then broke out laughing at his own inanity.
The little girl appeared to be sleeping peacefully now, and the emir just sat in the grass, singing softly to her for a long time.
It was almost an hour before Daylan returned, a few bees following at his back. The bees entered the angry swarm, and in moments it dispersed, with honeybees scattering in every direction, flying back into the clover and honeysuckle.
"Good news!" Daylan shouted as he drew near. "All is forgiven. Just keep to the trail. Move along!"
Up ahead, the group began to walk again, and as he drew near, Daylan knelt next to the emir.
"Is the child sleeping well?" he asked.
The little girl appeared to be sleeping peacefully now. The emir had kept up his singing the whole time.
"Sleeping?" he asked. "No. She died not half an hour ago."
The girl s mother cried out, and Talon choked back a sob. Some angry farmer demanded of Daylan, "Why didn t you warn us about the bees?"
Daylan looked up at him, his thoughts seemingly far away. "Warn you? I did not think to warn you. I guess that I have known of bees all my long life. And of all the dangers here, this one seemed so small as to be almost insignificant."