Empire of Ivory Page 0,87

thicket there was an opening, a fissure in the dirt and limestone rock. The dog went silent; in another moment it came scrambling out of the hole and back up to them, an enormous, an absurdly enormous mushroom in its mouth, so large its third cap was dragging upon the ground between the dog's legs and making it stumble.

It flung the mushroom down, wagging. The opening was near five feet high, and a gentle slope led downwards. The stench was astonishing. Laurence pushed up the clot of vines and moss which hung over the fissure like a curtain, and stepped inside and down, eyes watering from the smoky torch which Ferris had improvised out of rags and a tree-branch. There was surely a draught somewhere at the far end of the cavern; it drew like a chimney. Ferris was looking at him with a half-disbelieving, half-joyful expression, and as his eyes adjusted to the dimness, Laurence made out the strange hillocky appearance of the cavern floor, and knelt to touch: the floor was covered, covered in mushrooms.

"There is not a moment to lose," Laurence said. "If you hurry, the Fiona may not yet have gone; if she has, you must go and recall her - she will not have gone far; she will not have rounded Paternoster Bay."

All the crews were busy, breathless; the grass of the field had been trampled flat, and Temeraire's belly-netting and Lily's was spread out on the ground, every bag and chest emptied out to be filled with mushrooms, heaps and heaps. A small pale cream-colored breed shared the cavern with the great double-and triple-capped monsters, and also a large black fungus which grew in slabs, but the harvesters were making no attempt to discriminate: sorting could wait. Nitidus and Dulcia were already vanishing into the distance, sacks and sacks slung across their backs giving them a curiously lumpy appearance in silhouette against the sky.

Laurence had the map of the coastline dug out of Temeraire's bags, and was showing him the likely course the Fiona would have followed. "Go as quickly as you can, and bring back more men. Messoria and Immortalis, too, if they can manage the flight; and tell Sutton to ask the governor for everyone who can be spared from the castle, all the soldiers, and no damned noise about flying, either."

"He can always get them drunk if need be," Chenery said, without lifting his head; he was sitting by the netting and keeping a tally as the mushrooms were thrown in, his lips moving in the count along with his fingers. "So long as they can stumble back and forth by the time you have got them here, they may be soused to their skulls."

"Oh, and barrels, also," Harcourt added, looking up from the stump where she was sitting, with a cool cloth soaked in water upon her forehead: she had attempted to help with the harvest, but the stink had overwhelmed her, and after a second round of vomiting, painful to all of them to hear, Laurence had at last persuaded her to go and sit outside instead. "That is, if Keynes thinks the mushrooms had better be preserved here; and oil and spirits."

"But I do not like our all leaving you here," Temeraire said a little mulishly. "What if that big feral should come back again, or another one? Or lions: I am sure I hear lions, not very far away." There was not the least sound of anything but monkeys, howling in the tree-tops at a fair distance, and birds clamoring.

"We will be perfectly safe: from dragons, or lions, too," Laurence said. "We have a dozen guns and more, and we need only step into the cave to hold them off forever: that mouth would not let in an elephant, much less a dragon, and they will not be able to fetch us out."

"But Laurence," Temeraire said quietly, putting his head down to speak confidentially; at least, as he fancied. "Lily tells me that Harcourt is carrying an egg; surely at least she ought to come, and I am sure she will not, if you refuse."

"Why, damn you for a back-alley lawyer; I suppose you have cooked this up between the two of you," Laurence said, outraged at the deliberate calculation of this appeal, and Temeraire had the grace to look ashamed of himself, but only a little. Lily did not even do as much, but abandoning subterfuge only said to Harcourt, wheedling, "Pray, pray, do come."

"For Heaven's