Deliamber said, 'The usual. Natural disasters, breakdown of the wagon, local disturbances, criminal interferences. Things are not as orderly in mid-continent as they are on the coasts. There are risks involved in traveling in those parts.'
'You bet there are!' boomed a familiar voice. 'Protection is what you need!'
The formidable presence of Lisamon Hultin suddenly was among them.
She looked rested and relaxed, not at all as though she had ridden all night, nor was her mount particularly spent. In a puzzled voice Zalzan Kavol said, 'How did you get here so quickly?'
'Forest trails. I’m big, but not so big as your wagon, and I can take back ways. Going to Ilirivoyne, are you?'
'Yes,' said the Skandar.
'Good. I knew you would. And I’ve come after you to offer my services. I’m out of work, you’re going into dangerous parts — it’s a logical partnership. I’ll escort you safely to Ilirivoyne, that I guarantee!'
'Your wages are too high for us.'
She grinned. 'You think I always get five royals for a little job like that? I charged so much because you made me angry, tromping in on me while I was trying to have a private feed. I’ll get you to Ilirivoyne for another five, no matter how long it takes.'
'Three,' said Zalzan Kavol sternly.
'You never learn, do you?' The giantess spat almost at the Skandar’s feet. 'I don’t haggle. Get yourselves to Ilirivoyne without me, and good fortune attend you. Though I doubt it will.' She winked at Valentine. 'Where are the other two?'
'Sleet refused to go to Ilirivoyne. He went roaring out of here ten minutes ago.'
'I don’t blame him. And the woman?'
'She went after him, to talk him into returning. Up there.' Valentine pointed to the path winding up into the hills.
'Between that hill and that.'
'Into the mouthplant grove?' There was disbelief in Lisamon Hultin’s voice.
'What is that?' Valentine asked.
Deliamber, at the same moment, said, 'Mouthplants? Here?'
'The park is dedicated to them,' the giantess declared. 'But there are warning signs at the foot of the hills. They went up that trail? On foot? The Divine protect them!'
Exasperated, Zalzan Kavol said, 'They can eat him twice, for all I care. But I need her!'
'As do I,' said Valentine. To the warrior-woman he said, 'Possibly if we rode up there now, we could find them before they enter the mouthplant grove.'
'Your master feels he can’t afford my services.'
'Five royals?' Zalzan Kavol said. 'From here to Ilirivoyne?'
'Six,' she said coolly.
'Six, then. But get them back! Get her, at least!'
'Yes,' said Lisamon Hultin in disgust. 'You people have no sense, but I have no work, so we deserve each other, perhaps. Take one of those mounts,' she said to Valentine, 'and follow me.'
'You want him to go?' Zalzan Kavol wailed. 'I’ll have no humans at all in my troupe!'
'I’ll bring him back,' the giantess said. 'And, with luck, the other two also.' She clambered onto her mount. 'Come,' she said.
—7—
THE PATH INTO THE HILLS was gently sloping, and the blue-gray grass looked soft as velvet. It was hard to believe that anything menacing dwelled in this lovely park. But as they reached the place where the path began to rise at a sharper angle, Lisamon Hultin grunted and indicated a bare wooden stake set in the ground. Beside it, half hidden by grass, was a fallen sign. Valentine saw only the words
in large red letters. Sleet, in his rage, had not noticed; Carabella, perhaps in her urgent haste, had failed to see the sign also, or else had ignored it.
Quickly now the path climbed, and just as quickly it leveled off on the far side of the hills, in a place that was no longer grassy but densely wooded. Lisamon Hultin, riding just ahead of Valentine, slowed her mount to a walk as they entered a moist and mysterious copse where trees with slender, strong-ribbed trunks grew at wide intervals, shooting up like beanstalks to create a thickly interlaced canopy far overhead.
'See, there, the first mouthplants,' the giantess said. 'Filthy things! If I had the keeping of this planet, I’d put the torch to all of them, but our Coronals tend to be nature-lovers, so it seems, and preserve them in royal parks. Pray that your friends have had the wisdom to stay clear of them!'
On the bare forest floor, in the open spaces between the trees, grew stemless plants of colossal size. Their leaves, four or five inches broad and eight or nine feet in length, sharp-toothed along their sides and metallic of texture, were arranged in loose rosettes. At the center of each gaped a deep cup a foot in diameter, half filled with a noxious-looking greenish fluid, out of which a complex array of stubby organs projected. It seemed to Valentine that there were things like knife-blades in there, and paired grinders that could come together nastily, and still other things that might have been delicate flowers partly submerged.
'These are flesh-eating plants,' Lisamon Hultin said. 'The forest floor is underlain by their hunting tendrils, which sense the presence of small animals, capture them, and carry them to the mouth. Observe.'
She guided her mount toward the closest of the mouth-plants. When the animal was still at least twenty feet from it, something like a live whip suddenly began to writhe in the decaying forest duff. It broke free of the ground to coil itself with a terrifying snapping sound around the animal’s pastern just above the hoof. The mount, placid as usual, sniffed in puzzlement as the tendril began to exert pressure, trying to pull it toward the gaping mouth in the plant’s central cup.
The warrior-woman, drawing her vibration-sword, leaned down and sliced quickly through the tendril. It snapped back as the tension was released, almost to the cup itself, and at the same time a dozen other tendrils rose from the ground, flailing the air furiously on all sides of the plant.
She said, 'The mouthplant lacks the strength to tug anything as big as a mount into its maw. But the mount wouldn’t be able to break free. In time it would weaken and die, and then it might be pulled in. One of these plants would live for a year on that much meat.'
Valentine shuddered. Carabella, lost in a forest of such things? Her lovely voice stilled forever by some ghastly plant? Her quick hands, her sparkling eyes — no. No. The thought chilled him.
'How can we find them?' he asked. 'It might already be too late.'
'How are they called?' the giantess asked. 'Shout their names. They must be near.'
A moment later he heard a faint answering shout; but Lisamon Hultin had heard it first, and was already going forward. Valentine saw Sleet ahead, down on one knee on the forest floor, and that knee dug in deep to keep him from being dragged into a mouthplant by the tendril that encircled his other ankle. Crouching behind him was Carabella, her arms thrust through his and hooked tight around his chest in a desperate attempt to hold him back. All about them excited tendrils belonging to neighboring plants snapped and coiled in frustration. Sleet held a knife, with which he sawed uselessly at the powerful cable that held him; and there was a trail of skid-marks in the duff, showing that he had already been drawn four or five feet toward the waiting mouth. Inch by inch he was losing the struggle for his life.
'Help us!' Carabella called.
With a stroke of her sword Lisamon Hultin severed the tendril grasping Sleet. He recoiled sharply as he was freed, toppling backward and coming within an eye-blink of being seized around the throat by the tendril of another plant; but with an acrobat’s easy grace he rolled over, avoiding the groping filament, and sprang to his feet. The warrior-woman caught him about the chest and lifted him quickly to a place behind her on her mount. Valentine now approached Carabella, who stood shaken and trembling in a safe place between two sets of thrashing tendrils, and did the same for her.
She clung to him so tightly that his ribs ached. He twisted himself around and embraced her, stroking her gently, nuzzling her ear with his lips. His relief was overwhelming and startling: he had not realized how much she had come to mean to him, nor how little he had cared about anything just now except that she was all right. Gradually her terror subsided, but he could feel her still quivering at the horror of the scene. 'Another minute,' she whispered. 'Sleet was starting to lose his foothold — I could feel him slipping toward that plant—' Carabella winced. 'Where did she come from?'
'She took some shortcut through the forest. Zalzan Kavol has hired her to protect us on the way to Ilirivoyne.'
'She’s already earned her fee,' Carabella said.
'Follow me,' Lisamon Hultin ordered.
She chose a careful route out of the mouthplant grove, but for all her care her mount was seized twice by the leg, and Valentine’s once. Each time, the giantess cut the tendril away, and in moments they were out into the clearing and riding back down the path toward the wagon. A cheer went up from the Skandars as they reappeared.
Zalzan Kavol regarded Sleet coldly. 'You chose an unwise route for your departure,' he observed.
'Not nearly so unwise as the one you’ve picked,' said Sleet. 'I beg you excuse me. I will go on toward Mazadone by foot, and seek some sort of employment there.'
'Wait,' Valentine said.
Sleet looked at him inquiringly.
'Let’s talk. Come walk with me.' Valentine laid his arm over the smaller man’s shoulders and drew him aside, off into a grassy glade, before Zalzan Kavol could provoke some new wrath in him.
Sleet was tense, wary, guarded. 'What is it, Valentine?'
