The War of the Flowers

by Tad Williams

  "Enough, Tansy. If you try to tell me what to do here, you will burn with it." Hellebore's sullenness sounded almost teenaged, but with an edge of something else as well, something truly terrifying. "I don't like this place and I don't believe it. I am a great scientist — greater than my father, even. I know what's important. I know why my experiments scream, what they are seeing, what they are feeling. Anything else is wrong. This Dowd person was wrong. I want it all to go away."

  In fact, fires were already springing up wherever the salamander-demons had hidden themselves, burning as silvery-hot as magnesium flares. Great billows of flame began to climb the walls and lick at the ceiling. In other spots the fires had taken something of the character of their fuel — weird colors filtered through the blaze and an even more disturbing set of harsh chemical smells began to fill the air.

  Tansy scuttled toward the exit, too frightened to argue any more. Anton Hellebore walked backward out of the room so he could watch the growing blaze, his long arms held out as though he were conducting the fire like music. "Old and rotten and wrong," he said, almost to himself. He turned to look at Theo, flashing that humorless, rictus grin. "This place will burn for days. They'll be able to see it at night from the mountains of Alder."

  My God, he really is crazy. Psychotic. Theo had little left but despair — the thing he had most feared had now happened. He managed to get the fingers of one of his cuffed hands into his pocket and pulled out the phone that Poppy had given him. While his guards turned to pull him through the door he dropped it on the floor and kicked it into the nearest smoldering pile of bric-a-brac, and felt the only kind of relief he was likely to feel until at some indeterminate point in the future he escaped these people into death. At least they weren't going to find a phone on him that would lead them straight to Poppy. That was something, anyway.

  ————— Although the lighting was still inconstant, the hallway seemed much more normal on the way out than it had on the way in. A short, squat figure, a brownie with frizzled hair and an eyepatch, was sitting with a mirrorcase open on his lap just inside the front door. He looked up at their approach. "Something's gone wrong, master," he said. "The scientific envelope has gone all pear-shaped. The defenses are still smothered, but I don't know how much longer I can . . ."

  "I'm burning the place down, Squelch," said Anton Hellebore. "So forget about it. Do you want to stay and see what happens when some of the old pockets under the floors and between the walls take fire?"

  The brownie paled and scrambled to his feet. One of his legs was shorter than the other and he wore a huge corrective boot. "By the Well, there are reserves of pure pyromantic vitality in there! It's going to burn like the sun!"

  The young Hellebore nodded. "Until it all falls smoking into Ys." He waited as the guards opened the front door of the Remover's storehouse and peered out, then exited in swift military fashion, dragging Theo and Cumber as though they were suitcases. Theo wanted to shriek at the pain in his arms, but he was able to sink down and find a deeper part of himself, numb and distant enough that the pain could touch him but not overcome him.

  A pair of huge matte-black utility coaches waited in the alley, motors vibrating silently but so deeply that Theo could feel it in his bones. They were shaped like armored personnel carriers but were streamlined and shiny as limousines, the bubble-windows opaque blind eyes. A group of people had gathered around the coaches, mostly women and children whose faint blue skin made them look more like drowning victims than living folks, but as the guards came out the bystanders retreated back down the pier's main road and out of sight, leaving nothing behind but a few webbed handprints on the coaches' polished exteriors.

  "Wretched nixies," said Hellebore. "Touching things that aren't theirs. Wait until this whole nasty neighborhood goes up in smoke and lavablisters." Cumber and Theo were thrown onto the floor of the coach; Hellebore climbed in after them. The interior was rigged for half a dozen people to sit in comfort, with racks overhead to hold luggage — or, presumably, automatic weapons. Tansy, the brownie, and two of the guards got in with the Hellebore heir and ranged themselves in the seats. The coach's back door was open, and for an instant Theo saw the rest of the constables clambering into the other vehicle, helping one of their number who seemed to have been overcome by the growing fumes, then someone slammed the door closed.

  Anton Hellebore flicked his fingers to signal the driver, invisible on the other side of one of the compartment's black front windows, and the coach started to move. The exterior windows were big enough that Theo could see a little something of what was behind them and on either side, although from his position on the floor that didn't amount to much more than gray sky and rooftops. He rolled over to check Cumber's breathing, then slowly began to push himself toward the compartment's rear door. No one seemed to be the slightest bit worried that he might somehow get the door open and escape. Theo couldn't help seeing this as a bad sign, but tried not to let it discourage him. Ignoring the pain of his bound hands, he sat up straighter and tried to reach behind his back, searching for the edge of the door. Perhaps he could pop the handle with his head and fall out when it came open. If he hooked a foot through Cumber's handcuffs, he could take the ferisher with him. Roll, get up and run. Scream. He couldn't carry Cumber, not cuffed like this, but maybe the niskies or someone else would help. Not too goddamn likely, though, is it? Not against armed Flower guards. Still, he kept feeling for the door. First things first . . .

  Something bit into his wrists, hard — a thousand hot needles through the skin. He screamed. A couple of the guards jumped, but Anton Hellebore only looked up lazily. The dead smile appeared again, no more cheering than a crease in a jellyfish. "You really shouldn't move if you can avoid it, Violet. You'll upset the annis. It's a kind of sea-sprite, no brain, all teeth and reflexes — and very amusing reflexes, they are. I bred it into a shape where it could be used as a restraint."

  It felt like there was poison burning upward along the veins in Theo's arms; it took all his restraint not to try to smash the things, to scrape them off, but every time he moved the needles closed on his flesh again. He lay as still as he could until the pain began to subside.

  The coach was moving slowly; at first Theo thought they must be maneuvering through some of the smaller back streets around the Remover's dockside building, but when he lifted his head high enough he could see through the windows that the streets were unusually crowded, with masses of fairy-folk on the sidewalks and in the intersections, tall and small, winged and unwinged, although an unusually large proportion were long-nosed and hairy.

  Theo was not the only one to notice. When the coach rocked to a sudden stop, the young Hellebore made a hissing noise of irritation. "What is going on?"

  The driver's voice filled the compartment. "There are a lot of folk around, master. I can't go very fast."

  "What is it?" Anton Hellebore peered through the thick windows. "Goblins? It looks like lots of goblins. Troublemakers."

  "Not just goblins, master."

  "Drive over them if you have to." The chauffeur did not seem in any hurry to do that, but he kept the coach moving forward. Theo heard people shouting outside and some of them thumped on the coach's fenders or doors, but he never heard anyone screaming or sounding really upset. It was strange: they all seemed to be out in the streets without really knowing why they were there — like Mardi Gras, he thought, but a little less cheerful. But as faces pressed in on the windows, trying and failing to see in through the one-way glass, Theo sensed a menacing undertone. It was hard to worry about it too much, and in fact he was half-hoping the chauffeur would crush someone, that the crowd would turn seriously ugly, tip the coach over and drag Hellebore and Tansy out, and — most importantly — that someone would notice Theo was a handcuffed prisoner before the crowd got down to tearing the rest of the vehicle's occupants to shreds.

  "Why are they all here?" said Tansy. His control over his rebuilt face seemed to be growing worse. It wobbled and
even seemed to slip a little, although Theo guessed that might be a trick of the light bouncing off something that was not quite real. It was disturbing to see both Tansy's ordinary, coldly handsome features and glimpses of a raw, tattered something else underneath, but even if his entire face slid off and onto the carpeted floor of the utility coach Theo knew it wouldn't help his own cause much.

  "Why did you do it?" Theo asked him suddenly. "You didn't just betray me, you helped betray a lot of others, too — the Daffodil folk, the Hollyhocks, all of them. Why?"

  Tansy's unstable features turned pale and angry but he wouldn't meet Theo's eye. "Shut your mouth, mortal."

  "Count Tansy has a lot of debts." It was clear that Anton Hellebore was mocking Tansy, not really talking to Theo at all. "And very few loyalties." The driver's voice came again. "Um, pardon me, master, but . . . well, I think you should see this. It's on every tributary. I'll open the mirror back there."

  What Theo had thought was only a dark window between their compartment and the driver sparkled alight, displaying a street scene not that different from what was outside. A voice was speaking calmly but with a certain breathlessness.

  ". . . Made the unexpected and so far inexplicable announcement an hour ago. The criminals and their leader managed to insert the bizarre message into every mirror-stream and tributary, disguised as an emergency bulletin from First Councillor Thornapple. Much unrest has followed, although so far there has been no violence. Spokesmen for the leading houses assure the public that there is no real danger, but all citizens are commanded to return to their homes as quickly as possible. Parliament is meeting in emergency session later today to consider an earlier curfew and perhaps even the re-imposition of military law. In a moment we will go to the reception room in the Parliament of Blooms, but first, here is that . . . announcement . . . again . . ."

  The picture shifted, the crowd scene vanishing to be replaced by an extremely familiar face. "I speak to my people, and to all good folk." Button was dressed, as always, in a nondescript robe of rough cloth, sitting cross-legged in front of a wall that Theo recognized after a moment as the piled stones of the Fayfort Bridge. "My name is Mud Bug Button. I am a goblin. Any thinking creature who values freedom and justice is part of my tribe. Any who tries to take those precious things from others is my enemy.

  "People of Faerie, your masters are murderers. Many of you know that, although you are afraid to acknowledge it. But did you know this, also? They have failed. All their repression, all their theft, all their cruelty, and still they have failed to provide the only thing that might overshadow their crimes — a safe, secure life for all Faerie. Their time is over now. Those of you who hear me, you know I speak the truth." He nodded his head as though he had just answered a difficult question. "To my own goblin people I have something else to say. Long we have let ourselves be mistreated, in large part because our sacred word was given in contract, those long, long centuries ago, by our venerated elders. Had they seen into the future, seen what the Flower lords would do, they would not have given those words, of course. But they did, and we have lived with their promise at terrible cost."

  Slowly, and with unhurried, ritualistic care, Button produced a dull black bundle and began to unfold it. "What is the little skin-eater doing?" Anton Hellebore actually sounded frightened. "Why doesn't someone arrest him, kill him? How did he get control over the mirror-system . . . ?"

  Button lifted the decorated stick and held it up to the thousands upon thousands who must have been watching him. When Primrose had first brought it out Theo had been close enough to touch it, this object that almost everyone in Faerie must now be watching. He had wondered then if such an ordinary-looking thing might be a weapon. He had wondered why it had been worth the bother.

  "Here is our word," said Button. "Here is the record, the embodiment of our ancient pledge." His face, already sober, became even more unreadable. His eyes closed. "Knowing full well what I do, and doing it willingly — joyfully! — I set my people free of this bargain with their oppressors." His clawed hands held out the stick. He snapped it in half and dropped the pieces onto the stones in front of him.

  "Today our ancestors are smiling." Mud Bug Button opened his yellow eyes again. "Today you are free. Hem. Today every one of you is free, no matter who you are, no matter what you have been told. Make of that freedom what you will."

  Then he was gone, replaced once more by scenes of the city's streets filled with uneasy people, goblins and many other sorts of fairies, while commentators rushed back to fill the mirror-void with excited analysis.

  "A lot of people are going to be tasting iron before this day's over," was all Anton Hellebore said, but he looked surprisingly shaken. He ordered the driver to pick up speed. They moved onto smaller streets so they could avoid the restless crowds that now seemed to be at every major intersection.

  ————— Button's strange publicity coup had lifted Theo's spirits a little but the effects were short-lived. The miserable facts remained: Button had admitted earlier that he did not have enough would-be revolutionaries at the bridge to overcome even one of the ruling houses' security forces. If he thought he could inspire others in the City to rise up and join them, then he was reckoning without the terror that just one of Hellebore's tame dragons would bring. How could anyone stand up to something like that, how could they fight it with rocks and sticks and shovels? Hundreds, even thousands would be carbonized on the spot and the uprising would be over.

  Still, the streets were unquestionably filling — more with people wanting reassurance and answers than with hot-eyed revolutionaries determined to follow some strange little goblin to an honorable death, Theo felt sure, but it certainly seemed to have the ruling houses worried. The mirror-talkers were reporting anxiously about riots that had broken out in the Barrows district on the outskirts of the City and a workers' action of some kind at the Eastwater docks. Even the fire in Dowd's waterfront storehouse was interpreted as another attack on established order — not surprising because it was burning so fiercely now. The images showed the flames billowing a hundred feet high and a nixie man from the local fire department saying it was so hot his men couldn't approach it, that it was all they could do to keep it from spreading farther and that he couldn't imagine them getting it under control for days.

  Anton Hellebore laughed a little at that, but in general he did not seem very happy. His own brief moment of hope now dissipated, Theo slid back into despair. He saw Hellebore House getting larger and larger before them, jutting against the harsh gray light of the smoky sky, and felt as though he were observing something happening to someone else, an old movie or something on the television news back home, half-seen while walking from room to room. He knew that it was his own death he was approaching, but even so he could only watch the building grow larger and wonder dully how long he would have to wait until all the horror was over.

  Dowd helped them kill Cat's baby. Our baby. Whatever they want from me, they'll get it. Button and the rest will be burned into black cornflakes and blow away on the wind.

  Something pushed at his thoughts like a memory trying to assert itself, but it was no memory, just a blank shove against his mind, a pinching ghost. He twitched and the annis nipped him gently, almost playfully. Fire danced again in his veins.

  However unlikely the success of Button's revolution might be, Hellebore House was clearly not taking anything lightly. As they drove down the long street in front of the building — little more than a vast driveway, really — Theo could see that the concrete apron around the skyscraper was lined with vehicles like theirs and open coaches full of armed and armored men. Strange shapes like concave butterfly wings dangled from wires strung high overhead, some kind of communication array, perhaps. A grim purposefulness seemed to have hardened the faces of all the constables and other fairies they passed.

  Wartime, Theo thought. Going to the mattresses. Button would need a division of tanks to get anywhere near here. A spasm of unreality sudden
ly gripped him so hard as the vehicle stopped that Theo thought the annis had bitten him again. For a moment he was both inside his body looking at the tusk-shaped skyscraper and looking down on the utility coach from above. That dreadfully familiar, intrusive presence was back inside his head — but he wasn't dreaming now. He was all too terribly awake, and something was rubbing up against his mind, clearly enjoying the way it made his thoughts squirm.

  Soon. He felt it rather than heard it, not a word but a communication — a cold, amused promise. Soon. Then the presence was gone and he was alone in his own head again, weak and shaking.

  Tansy finished talking on his shell. "The guards are holding the third lift for us."

  "I didn't need you to tell me that." Hellebore stretched out his long legs. For a fairy, he was quite ungainly. He flicked an uninterested glance at Theo, then down at sleeping Cumber Sedge. "If you want to make yourself useful, Tansy, take that thing off the ferisher. If Father wants to talk to him, he'll need to be awake first. Father doesn't like waiting."

  As Tansy began to remove the gluey, clinging mask from Cumber's face, the coach slowed. Theo felt certain that if he went into Hellebore House he would never come out again, that the malign presence he had sensed was waiting there for him, that the tower standing like a stump of broken legbone would be the last place he ever saw. It would swallow him like the sea monster swallowed Jonah — but Theo did not believe that any god would deliver him up again.

  He straightened. If there was ever a time to try something, one last chance . . . But somehow either the mere thought or perhaps the minute tensing of his muscles upset the annis. It clamped its wet, needle-toothed mouth on his wrist again and dropped him screaming to the floor, muscles in spasm.

  He was barely conscious when they pulled him out of the back of the van and dragged him across the lobby of Hellebore House into the elevator, aware of little except that he was lost beyond all hope.