"I said nothing of love!" Scandal countered. "I was talking about lust, pure and wholesome."

"You spoke of devotion, and devotion is purer than love!"

Scandal scratched his head. "Oh, that. You can't blame a man for trying."

"I can," Tirilee said. "I want devotion from the man I give myself to."

"A lifetime of devotion for a single night of pleasure?" Scandal asked. "Only a thief would demand so much! Yet you'd take it, wouldn't you? You'll demand it and then devote your own time to your trees. It's in your nature."

"I can fight my nature," Tirilee said weakly, as if the conversation had worn her. She turned away, pulled her blanket tight against her pale white throat.

Wisteria thought long on it. Over the past days she had felt tenderness for Tull, a warming, and she had been playing house—treating him as if they were both newlyweds in love. But it would be a big mistake to believe I'm really in love, she thought. I too must fight my nature. I must remember my hatred, nurse it.

Pushing the wagon through the mountains was harder than the men expected, yet they moved more swiftly than they had imagined. Poor old Snail Follower had taken them to the summit of the mountains on only the second day of the journey, and from there they had seen the golden fields of the Mammoth Run Plateau, but that inviting open country was still far from the deep redwood forest. Shoving the wagon along for a week took its toll in sore shoulders, knotted calves, and blistered feet.

Added to the labors of the journey, Phylomon insisted on weapons practice at first light and again in the evening.

As Tull's muscles tightened, the blue man eventually gave up trying to spar with him. "You have great strength in those arms of yours," Phylomon told him. "No human can match it. With your kutow, you can bash through my best parries, and you're fast enough that I think you'll get the first swing on most men. If you keep working on it, in a few weeks you could develop your skill to the point that only the strongest Neanderthal could hope to parry your blows."

From then on, only Ayuvah dared spar with Tull. Ayuvah made an excellent sparring partner. With his long spear and his lunging style, Ayuvah could stand back, balanced on his heels, and dodge Tull's blows while waiting for an opening.

Thus, Tull was forced to match Ayuvah's speed, to dodge his lightning thrusts. Decisiveness, reaction time— these were the traits that Tull was forced to learn, and Ayuvah was the perfect sparring partner until he stepped on an old spearhead, and his foot became so badly infected that he took to the wagon. Phylomon guided them to some hot springs, and Ayuvah soaked his feet while sitting on the white alkali that rose from the deep green pools.

Tirilee stayed in the wagon for the first two days, but walked alongside from then on. Crossing the small creeks where the wagon would get mired in mud was the hardest part of the trip, and after a long day the men threw themselves to the ground and often slept for hours before they roused for dinner. Wisteria fixed dinner for the company only once, then Scandal silently insisted that he take over the job. In spite of all his hard work, his belly did not seem to shrink. He remained, as ever, the fat man.

One evening, Wisteria helped wash and dress Tirilee. Wisteria found the girl to be strange and beautiful, with her long silver hair and deep green eyes, and she washed the girl's emerald dress and put her in some of her own clothes, then decided to brush her hair. Yet when she took her brush to the girl, she realized that the Dryad didn't need it. The girl's hair felt extraordinarily clean and smooth, and not a strand was tangled, and Wisteria thought it strange, for she had not seen the child brush her hair.

"When was the last time you brushed your hair?" Wisteria asked.

"I don't brush my hair," the Dryad answered.

"Never?" Wisteria asked.

"We Dryads are not like humans," Tirilee answered.

Wisteria ran her fingers through the girl's hair, stroked her cheek. The Dryad tilted her face up, inviting her to continue the petting, and Wisteria laughed. The girl's face was smooth and unblemished, yet when Wisteria touched Tirilee's shoulders, her muscles were unbelievably firm.

"Tull," Wisteria said, "Come here."

Tull had been mending his moccasins, and he sauntered over, stood looking down at the Dryad. Wisteria took his hand quickly. "Feel this," she said, touching his hand to the Dryad's hair.

He jerked his hand away.

"Don't be afraid," Wisteria laughed. "She won't bite." She took Tull's hand and ran it over the Dryad's hair. "Feel how smooth it is, and she never has to brush it. And feel this," she said, brushing the backs of his fingers across the Dryad's cheek. "Have you ever felt anything so soft?"

Tull held his hand on Tirilee's cheek and looked down at her. The Dryad reached up with her own small hands and held his mitt against her face a moment, caressing it. Then her face seemed to blank, and she kissed the back of his hand.

"Ah!" Tull said, pulling his hand from her grasp.

"What happened?" Wisteria asked.

"She—burned me," Tull said, holding up his hand. It had no mark on it.

Wisteria gaped for a moment, and worried. Perhaps the girl's Time of Devotion was coming sooner than Wisteria had imagined.

On the tenth day of the journey, at dawn the band made an easy journey down out of the mountains into a small valley between rolling hills. The path was easy, nearly all downhill, with few windfalls to block the way.

The redwoods thinned and gave way to smaller deciduous trees—alders, maples, and hawthorn, yet the red women followed, always remaining in the shadows. Several times that morning, Tull would walk beneath a tree and recognize the lingering scent of cheese.

In the early morning, the party forded a clear shallow river thick with crayfish, and smelled the sweet scent of dry grasslands. Heavy brush filled the bank, and the ground along the river was scored with huge claw marks from giant sloths, and prints from woolly rhinos.

In another half mile the redwood forest ended suddenly, as if an invisible finger had drawn a line in the dirt, decreeing that the trees should spread no farther.

Golden grasslands yawned ahead, with a few enormous rhinos out grazing in the dew-wet dawn. Tull and the others pushed the wagon to the shadows bordering the grass, and like mice watching for a hawk, they surveyed the clear summer skies and studied two great-horned dragons wheeling on the horizon, vast wings stretched.

"At last we're out of the woods," Ayuvah said.

Scandal shook his head glumly, watching the dragons. "Only sixty-five miles in ten days. We must do better."

"We'll do better now that we've got clear ground," Phylomon said.

A twig snapped behind them, and when they turned, forty naked red women stood blocking their path back to the forest.

The party took one look at them, pushed the wagon into the open air, and set up evening camp. Ayuvah was feverish and in great pain from the cut to his foot, and Phylomon boiled some water and soaked Ayuvah's foot in a poultice made of leaves and sugar.

Tull sat up that night and watched Ayuvah's leg swell. Tull became angry that he might lose his guide and best fighter to something as insignificant as a spearhead in the dirt.

Tull kept the water boiling, wrapping Ayuvah's foot time and again, letting the cooling cloth act as a poultice. The day's journey had been hard on Tull's trick ankle, and he was limping. For the first time in years, he wrapped it, too. The others slept in the grass.

Out above the fields, a screech owl cried.

The night was warmer down here in the grasslands, and though only the small moon Woden had risen, its "white eye" was enough to silver the plains.

"Do you think you'll be able to make it to Denai?" Tull asked Ayuvah, his voice laced with worry. "Or should we leave you at Frowning Idols?"

Ayuvah laughed. "If we must, we can limp together!"

Tull asked, "What more can I do?"

"You've done all you can for me tonight," Ayuvah said. "I will not ask for anything more. Go to bed with your wife."

Tull looked out over the camp. Wisteria slept beneath a big bear hide that protected her from mosquitoes. "I do not know if she wants me in bed with her," Tull said. "Sometimes she acts as if she does, but then she pushes me away. I . . . I watched you and Little Chaa, the way you would curl up with him at night, the way you cleared rocks away from his bed."

"Of course," Ayuvah said. "How could I fail to do that for someone I loved?"

Tull could see the pain in Ayuvah's face. The grief he felt for the child was still strong. "I've been trying to follow your example," Tull said. "But I don't know how to love a woman. I'm trying to learn, but she does not want those things from me."

"Give her time," Ayuvah counseled, yet he frowned as if worried. "Even a bobcat is tamed by tenderness over time. She knows you love her. Be patient."