The War of the Flowers

by Tad Williams

  "Where did the grims come from?" Foxglove demanded again. "How could all those cursed hill-country vermin have got into the City?" Thornapple had one hand on his ear as though he were listening to a headphone, although of course there was no headphone. "It is not just Strawflower Square," he said. "I have reports that they are all over the City. Larkspur's secretary says that they have surrounded his family tower in Longshadow, that wild goblins have destroyed the guardhouse and set the grounds on fire."

  "It can't be!" said Foxglove. Hellebore did not waste his time protesting the obvious. He walked to his desk and touched the side of it. "I want to speak to Snakeroot at the caves," he said. "Tell him this is a Class Four alert. I need all the available animals."

  "Black iron," said Thornapple, surprised, "are you really going to use them again?"

  "Yes," said Hellebore. "Would you like me to send them to Thornapple House, too? No? Then be silent." Theo barely listened, staring at the screen with a muted joy. It would be no help to him or his friends, he knew, but it was good to see somebody striking back at Hellebore and his crew, to see them alarmed and forced to scramble. It was Button's work, it had to be. Somehow he had managed to smuggle wild grims into the city . . . wild grims and their unicorns, too . . .

  "Oh my God," he said quietly. "It was us!"

  "What?" Applecore leaned in close. "Nothing. I'll tell you later . . . if there is a later." He didn't want to miss any of what was going on, but he felt sure that, with the help of Streedy Nettle's strange gift, the entrance permit to the City he and Sedge had obtained for one individual and one livestock animal had become multiplied. My God! Button must have had them coming into the City through every single checkpoint, a dozen here, a dozen there . . . He felt a quiet glow of pride that he had helped throw this particular monkey wrench into Hellebore's smooth-running machinery.

  Indeed, it was turning out to be a fairly good-sized wrench. It was now almost impossible to make complete sense of what was happening on the ring of mirror-screens: several small blazes had sprung up around the edges of New Mound House, a few even on the roof. Theo had no idea how anyone had managed to get fire up there until he saw one of the wild goblins lean back in his saddle and put a flaming arrow through one of the parliament building's upstairs windows. The protestors and the mounted grims seemed to have control of the field with all the parliamentary constables killed, lying wounded, or in retreat. The grims were forming up to ride again, leaving the protestors in a spasm of joyful destruction, uprooting benches and starting to smash in the front doors of New Mound House. A cascade of golden bugs sluiced out of the broken doorframe and skittered away across the steps, following each other in blind compulsion right into a pile of flaming trash. Pale, anxious faces peered down from the upstairs windows. Theo thought he should feel sorry for them — many of them were probably nothing but functionaries, trapped now between fires and an angry mob — but at the moment he had problems of his own.

  A word, a horrifying word, yanked his attention back to his captors. "But if you bring in the dragons," said Thornapple, "the destruction may keep us pinned here for days."

  Theo flinched as though he had been punched in the stomach. That big black snake squirming across the sky . . .

  "We cannot wait that long, Nidrus, you know that," Thornapple continued. "You said yourself there is only a brief time when the invocation will work. Let Monkshood and his constables handle this. Revenge must wait, I insist."

  Hellebore looked at the First Councillor of Faerie with a face so hard and expressionless that Theo saw for the first time how too much rationality could be a form of madness. "I do not think you can insist, Aulus. You are right that the destruction will interfere with our plans, but that does not mean we will refrain from teaching these skin-eaters a lesson. It merely means we must move up our schedule." He touched his desk again. "Ready three battle-coaches. We are leaving now." He smiled at his coconspirator, who did not smile back. It was one of the creepiest things Theo had ever seen. If he were Thornapple, Theo thought, he'd be planning to find himself another world to live in as soon as possible, because there was clearly only going to be one big dog in this particular kennel before much longer. "We will proceed to the Cathedral. In fact, if we are lucky, we will not only accomplish our main task, but also pass one or two very fine vantage points along the way where we can pause to watch the punishment being administered to that ungrateful rabble."

  A moment later half a dozen armed constables and a pair of ogre guards entered, their appearance so sudden that even Thornapple and Foxglove were visibly startled. Hellebore was still issuing orders to the air.

  "And prepare the child. Yes, now. We will be there in moments." He turned and walked toward the door. All the others, even the Flower lords, fell in behind him without protest.

  Two constables dragged Cumber toward the door. Two more moved to take Theo's arms, but there was no need: he was already following Lord Hellebore like a dog on an invisible leash. One of the constables swatted half-heartedly at Applecore where she sat on Theo's shoulder, but she pulled herself into the tangle of his hair at the side of his neck. Theo wanted to say something brave and reassuring to her but he couldn't. Even though it appeared they were actually going to leave Hellebore House, something he hadn't believed would happen, it was all still too hopeless. Nidrus Hellebore's spell of control lay on top of him like a lead blanket — something he could carry as he walked, but just barely.

  ————— Theo quickly lost track of the twists and turns of the hallways, the doors that appeared from nowhere in empty halls, but although the air had grown notably warmer they had been walking for only a few minutes when a figure in a white cloak appeared in the hallway before them. For a fairy, he was displaying a great deal of emotion, most of it nervousness. "My lord! I did not expect . . . That is, I thought we had until tomorrow at least — the portents were all taken for tomorrow, the scrying, the oneiromantic metering . . ."

  Hellebore barely looked at him. "Is he ready?"

  "In a moment. He is being dressed to go outside. He was just finishing his meal — we were caught by surprise . . ."

  "Then that is all I need from you, weft-Iris. You may return to your other work." The fairy in white still seemed agitated. "But . . . but my lord, if it is to be today, do you not wish me to accompany you? To accompany the child, that is? There is so much about him . . . that is, I have worked so long and hard . . ."

  "If we succeed you will be rewarded. Go now." Weft-Iris stared for a moment, then ran his hands through his hair, bowed, and stepped away through a door. Nidrus Hellebore stood waiting, patient as a statue, but Foxglove and Thornapple looked a little uncomfortable. Cumber Sedge gave out a quiet whimper of pain and despair.

  Theo felt something hovering over his thoughts like a storm cloud, moving nearer each moment. Every cell of his body seemed to contract in fear. Only the guards' firm grip on his arms kept him from dropping bonelessly to the floor. It's coming. It was very close now. He felt sick, hopeless. The thing that's been waiting for me. The thing in my dreams . . .

  The door opened and two fairy women led out a surprisingly small figure in a thick hooded cloak and equally heavy pants and shoes — something that looked for all the world like a child setting out on the fairyland equivalent of an arctic trek. The women's skin gleamed with moisture; their movements were sluggish and their eyes heavy, as though they had been drugged, but as they adjusted the cloak and hood they still seemed to go out of their way to avoid touching the little figure. Theo knew just how they felt — at this moment he wanted nothing more than to put distance between himself and this small, silent thing.

  "Is there anything else he needs?" Hellebore asked, betraying impatience. "It is time." The hood fell back, revealing a pink, childish face and curly brown hair. Despite the enormity of his fear Theo's attention snagged for a moment on a detail, a little spot of blood on the boy's lower lip and the tiny arm and wingtip that protruded from his mouth. The child sucked it in,
chewed, swallowed, and then smiled a dreadful, satisfied smile.

  "I am ready, Stepfather." The brown eyes turned from Hellebore to Theo. "And here you are at last, my . . . half brother. We meet face to face." For a dizzying, nauseating moment Theo felt certain the child-creature was in his head again, that he was seeing through two sets of eyes simultaneously, both the child looking at Theo and Theo looking at the child, like two mirrors facing each other. Then he realized he was seeing his own features, his family's features, in the face of this little monstrosity, as if it were all the punchline of some dreadful joke. It was like staring at one of his own elementary school pictures on a hit of bad acid, the obscenity of his own nose — his mother's thin nose — with what was still a childish upturn, his father's stolid jaw gleaming beneath the oiled pink skin. But the eyes . . . except for the color, they were nothing to do with his family, or with anything human. They were as dead as something in a mortuary jar.

  "Oh, save the Elder Trees . . ." Applecore said in a shocked whisper. The last piece of Dowd's story suddenly fell into place. He's the changeling. No, I'm the changeling — he's my parents' . . . he's the real child, the lost child . . . Theo suddenly jackknifed at the waist and threw up what little there was in his stomach.

  "Not such a happy reunion, I fear," said the boy. "I hoped for more, since we shared so many interesting dreams. We are almost twins, after all." Hellebore made a noise of disgust. "Clean that up," he told the two dazed women. "We are taking the boy with us now." He looked at the Terrible Child for a moment. "Shared dreams?" He barked an angry laugh. "It seems you two have a deeper bond than I have been told."

  "I am often bored, Stepfather. It was a small private pleasure."

  Hellebore shook his head. "I do not like surprises. This . . . connection makes for uncertainty at a time we cannot afford any."

  "He is weak, Stepfather, and I grow stronger by the hour." "Still." He frowned. "The Remover might have been able to answer some questions about the exact nature of the relationship, but thanks to my eldest son, we have lost that resource."

  "But Father!" Anton Hellebore protested, "I did it for you! I did it because . . ." "Close your mouth — I am tired of your whining. Everyone into the coaches. We have urgent business. Tansy, you will travel with me and our long-lost Violet . . . and the child, of course. I have questions about what happened at the Remover's house on the waterfront."

  "I can tell you everything you need to know, Father," protested Anton, but was ignored.

  "Things have changed, apparently," said the child. "We are leaving early." "There is resistance." Hellebore turned to the others. "Come, we are wasting time. I am about to make an example of some malcontents." The group began to move rapidly down the corridor. Theo, still staggering, had to be all but carried by his guards. The little obscenity reached up and wrapped his hot, wet hand around Theo's, who was too weak to pull free of the surprisingly firm grip.

  "I have finally met my true brother." The Terrible Child again showed his perfect teeth, which only made the spot of blood on his mouth harder to ignore. "It is too bad we will be separated again so soon."

  40 STRAWFLOWER SQUARE

  Even after all the oddities he had seen in Faerie, the creatures standing at attention outside the three huge battle-coaches in the garage caught Theo by surprise: with long, gleaming snouts and bulbous, insectoid eyes they looked like Hollywood extraterrestrials. They were doonie drivers, he realized, dressed in some kind of battle-rig, with helmets over their long equine heads. The vehicles themselves were even bulkier than the utility coaches that had brought them into Hellebore House, with heavy leaftextured armor around the sides and front and rear bumpers, but with tops that seemed to be a single dome of black glass.

  His guardian constables thrust him into a seat in the middle coach, shoving him so hard that he feared for Applecore, who was still clinging to his neck. Lord Hellebore and Tansy and a pair of ogre bodyguards climbed in after them, the ogres even bulkier than was usual with their massive kind because they were wearing some kind of flak jackets. The Terrible Child entered last.

  "You will stay where you are until I tell you otherwise," Hellebore instructed Theo, who found that to be quite true: he could move his head, even adjust his position in small ways, but he sure as hell wasn't going to be getting up and going anywhere.

  At first he couldn't make out anything through the dome that surrounded them except the dim, marsh-gas glow of the lights in the garage ceiling, but as they came up the ramp and out into the filtered sunlight he could see all around with complete clarity, as though they rode in an open-top car and nothing stood between him and the world except a pair of polarized sunglasses. Nothing seemed unusual inside the compound as the lines of Hellebore guards moved quickly and efficiently to the side of the road to let them pass, but when they rode out between the blocky gatehouses Theo could see how things had changed even just during the time they had been indoors. The streets of the Moonlight district were crowded too, now, and the mixture of goblins and other fairy-folk from the lower end of the social ladder looked angry.

  Although a little surprised by the appearance of the Hellebore coaches, some of the mob scrambled out into the road to block the way. The battlecoaches simply drove on; Theo saw at least one goat-horned fairy fall and disappear beneath the wheels of the front vehicle. Rather than frightening off the rest of the throng, it made them angry, and brought many more of them surging out from the sidewalks. The lead battle-coach struck a halfdozen more people before it had to stop. The rioters began to press in tightly on all sides, surrounding Theo's coach as well. Faces flattened against the dome, an array as bizarre as a Bosch painting. Fists thumped on the doors. A few bolder members of the crowd were climbing onto the hood.

  "There are too many, my lord," the driver announced from the front compartment.

  "Drive over them," said Hellebore. "There are too many," another voice said, stubborn despite obvious fear at contradicting his master. "This is Coach One. We already have bodies jammed in the wheel wells. A few more and it will slow us down so much we will be undergoing unacceptable risk — they're dragging paving stones out down the street to block the way. We can survive a few firebombs, my lord, but if we're stuck in one place, eventually the heat-dispersal charms will lose their effectiveness . . ."

  "Use the guns."

  "But there are hundreds of bystanders trapped in this street, not just the ones blocking our way . . ." "Use the guns or I will have you thrown to the mob." Hellebore sat back in his seat. "Now, Tansy, tell me what happened at the Remover's. I have not had time to review the transcripts very thoroughly."

  A loud noise like a bandsaw penetrated the bubble of Theo's vehicle as something sprayed from the sides and front of the lead car, turning the closest rioters into little more than a mist of red, knocking down scores of others for what seemed like hundred of yards in each direction. People were fighting to get away now, sliding off the hood of Theo's coach, knocking over the slower wounded in their hurry to escape and stepping on those who had fallen, dozens of fleeing fairies skidding and stumbling on the blood-spattered road. The lead car lurched forward but there were still too many upright bodies in the way and the industrial whine rose again. Something ticked onto the hood of Theo's coach, rolled halfway up the window, then slid down again. It was not just a bullet, he saw in a brief glimpse, but more like a tiny, rigid lamprey, its toothy, circular jaw irising open and closed even as it fell away into the road. Theo's stomach convulsed and hot bile rose into his throat, but he had nothing left in his stomach to vomit. Within moments the convoy was bumping along once more, driving over still-twitching bodies while the crowd ran screaming in front of them. People on the roofs or in upper windows flung down stones that thumped on the coach's hardened dome like a drunk percussionist.

  Theo could actually feel the pleasure emanating from the small figure beside him at all this destructive upheaval, waves of glee pushing against his thoughts like buffeting winds.

&n
bsp; Hellebore seemed hardly to notice any of it, but Tansy was clearly finding it difficult to talk. The Daisy-lord still had the look of a porcelain doll whose face had been repaired with faulty glue, and it seemed to be giving him pain. His stare flicked from side to side, drawn to the carnage all around. "My lord, please, I . . . I thought your son acted with your express orders . . ."

  "He did, up to a point. It is the point where he diverged that I wish to ascertain." "We . . . we listened with the spider for a while. The Remover said . . . he said . . ." Tansy's voice dropped into a conspiratorial whisper and Theo could no longer hear what he was saying.

  Here, Theo. The pull was as strong as Hellebore's spell of command but more subtle, like the compulsion to stare at a terrible accident. Look here. Theo turned toward the child.

  "Do you know what they call me?" the boy asked out loud. He had pulled his thick cloak around him as though the car were a sled racing across the Russian steppes, only his small round face and the tips of his stubby fingers visible. The eyes held Theo's gaze; his helplessness terrified him. "They call me the Terrible Child. It's a title, really, not a name. Because of course I have a name, even though no one uses it. You know what it is, don't you?"

  Theo tried to answer but a nightmare weight was pressing on his chest and he could not breathe deeply enough. "It's Theo Vilmos." The child laughed, showing the tip of his tongue between his small, shiny teeth. "My name is Theodore Patrick Vilmos. You were given my name and my parents, but they were never truly yours. You are just another Violet child, the last and least of a dead family. You know, I see my parents sometimes in your dreams — Anna and Peter. I make them rise up from your memories just so I can see what they looked like, so I can laugh as I watch you struggling to apologize to them even while you hate them for your own shortcomings."

  Sickened to hear their names out of that mouth, Theo finally found the air to make his voice work. "They . . . weren't . . . your parents. You might have been their child to begin with, but . . . but you're not anybody's anything now. You're . . . a freak. A messed-up, inhuman freak."