“Guides?”
“Do not speak of it. Perhaps we will, in time, but now is not the time. We do not want to think cheese with hunger all around us.”
Sylvan went back to massaging his throat and staring incredulously about himself .Only after they had gone some miles through the grasses did he settle down, though he still managed to disconcert Marjorie from time to time by standing upright on Irish Lass’s back. “I have to get up here to see,” he explained, waving toward a distance the others could not perceive. “There, off there, is the ridge that leads to the copse.”
They turned in the indicated direction and moved on, gaining a lower limb of the ridge and following it as it wound its lengthy way onto the height. From there they could look down into a valley dotted with copses. Sylvan pointed to the largest of them “Darenfeld’s,” he said.
“Why Darenfeld?” asked Rillibee/Lourai. “There are no bons by that name.”
“There were,” Sylvan replied. “There were eleven families originally. The Darenfeld estancia and all the family perished in a grass fire several generations ago. Others had been burned out before,”
“A grass fire?” Marjorie wondered. “We’ve seen no fires since we’ve been here.”
“You haven’t been here in summer.” He gazed out toward the horizon. “There is almost no rain in the summer, but there is lightning. The fires come like great waves, eating the grass, sending smoke boiling up into the clouds. Sometimes there are fires in the spring, but they are small ones because the grass is still fresh and full of moisture—“
“And a summer fire burned the Darenfeld estancia?”
“It was before they had grass gardens,” Brother Mainoa remarked. “We at the Friary have designed the gardens to stop the flames. There are areas and aisles of low turfs which smolder but do not burn. They break the fire so that it goes around rather than through. We have done the same thing at the Friary, to protect it, and at Opal Hill and the other estancias. The great gardens of Klive were not planted merely for their beauty.”
“True.” Sylvan nodded. “None of the bons would have gone to the trouble merely for beauty.”
Marjorie urged Don Quixote toward the copse below them. It loomed dark and mysterious among the soft-hued grasses, the more so the closer they came. Small pools sucked at the horses’ feet. Great trunks went up into gloomy shade, gnarled roots kneed up to brace their monstrous bulk, their lower branches as huge as ordinary trees. Rillibee leaned toward the copse as though toward a lover.
“Now what?” asked Tony. “The hunt came here and left here. We should find a path trampled into the grasses where many Hippae went. Then we should find another, where one Hippae went.”
“If it went,” said Brother Mainoa. “Though this is called a copse, it is in fact a small forest. What would you say, Sylvan? Half a mile or more through?”
Sylvan shook his head. “Estimating distances is not something we do much of, I’m afraid. On the Hunt, it doesn’t matter. We measure Hunts in hours, not in miles or kilometers or stadia, as they do on Repentance.”
“From the ridge it looked to be half a mile,” Father James agreed. “Enough territory in here to hide any number of Hippae.”
“If we do not find a trail leading out,” said Marjorie wildly, “then we will search within, among the trees.” She appealed to each of them in turn, seeking agreement. Brother Mainoa sat very still upon his horse. His expression was alert, as though he heard something she could not hear. “Brother Mainoa?” she asked. “Brother?”
His eyebrows went up, and he smiled at her. “Of course. Of course. Let us first look for a trail,”
The way the Hunt had come was easy to find. The way the Hunt had gone was equally easy. Crushed grasses testified to the fact that more than one Hunt had come this way recently. Some stems were completely dried, others were newly broken and still leaking moisture. Brother Mainoa rode down this broad trail and then pulled Blue Star to a halt as he pointed off to the left. All of them could see the narrow trail which wound into the grass. Father James picked a stem of broken grass and handed it to Marjorie. It was still moist. “So,” she said. “So.”