he had to be careful and get the blessing of night the dark mushrooms had some kind of spiny thorns on their undersides , kitai had said , which had pierced her hand once and left welts that lasted for months he glanced up and around him , but saw no keepers that could be an illusion , he knew there could be a dozen within arm 's reach but no matter how afraid he was , tavi had to press on that was the history of his people , after all the alerans had never let fear or the odds of failure deter them from overcoming , prospering their oldest histories , his uncle had once told him , reached so far back into time that the hide and vellum and stone they had been scribed upon had worn away they had come to carna from , another -place , a small hand of only a few thousand , and had found themselves pitched against an entire -world .