The War of the Flowers

by Tad Williams

  Maybe the last free creature I'll see. I should have told Applecore to fly away while I could still talk. They say they don't care about her, but once they've done whatever it is to me, they might just kill her for spite. A brief image of her back in the jar, but this time in the long-fingered hands of Anton Hellebore — or worse, the hungry child — pulled up a groan of fear and disgust that died somewhere between his lungs and larynx, unable to overcome Lord Hellebore's order of silence.

  And it will get better still, the Terrible Child silently mocked him. Theo whimpered. He could not force the voice, the presence out of his head: it was like struggling in a nightmare. Pain and terror such as is visited on the waking world only once in an entire epoch. Just wait, O my brother. You will see such sublime things . . . !

  The winding road took them over a rise and they emerged for a moment from the endless colonnade of phantom trees. A great forested valley stretched before them, a thick carpet of treetop foliage that rose unexpectedly from the lowlands and ended in a ring of huge trees at the valley's center that stood more than twice the height of the others. He could see something gleaming at the center of that ring, a dull shine like old silver, but then the coach crested the rise and started back down; within moments they were deep in the blind woods again. The trees around him were taller now, vast cylinders of bark whose lowest branches jutted far above the top of the coach, and it made Theo wonder how big the trees in the ring at the center must be — giants. The light was dim here but in some odd way still seemed too bright, like the sideways glare just before sunset. In fact, even through his own fog of weariness and despair he could not help feeling the strangeness of the place: not just the light, but the way that loud noises like the engines seemed unduly muffled yet quiet sounds like the wind through the trees penetrated even the hardened bubble windows. Even the air he breathed was both thinner and headier than it should have been. It all contributed to a growing sense of dislocation like a bad drug trip, as though reality itself were congealing around him, time slowing, everything increasing in density . . .

  No, it's not getting more dense, that's too scientific or something, it's just getting . . . He had to hunt through his bruised, exhausted mind until he could come up with Applecore's words. Thick. Faerie gets thicker here. There's just . . . more of everything.

  The passengers were all silent as the convoy wound through the foggy, light-streaked woodland, Hellebore and his monstrous stepchild perhaps lost in dreams of what was to come, Tansy distracted and still apparently in pain. Only Applecore had anything to say: she crept close to his ear and whispered, "Be brave, Theo," but there was nothing he could have said to that even if he could speak.

  At last the armored coach slowed and stopped. The world seemed to have dropped away in front of them, and it took Theo a little while to realize that he was not looking at some kind of interdimensional nothingness but the silvery blankness of a still lake shrouded in fog.

  "Get out," said Hellebore. He was a prisoner in his own clumsy body: all he could do was obey. Outside the protective bubble of the coach, the world felt even stranger. He had often heard or read of silences that were tangible, so thick they could be cut with a knife, but this was the first time he had ever truly experienced such a thing. The quiet was stiflingly heavy, as though the entire world had drawn in its breath and held it.

  He wasn't the only one to feel overwhelmed. The ogre guards didn't even waste a glance on him as they got out, but like tourists come to the big city, leaned back and stared up at the immense ring of trees surrounding the lake. Theo found himself doing the same. The trees were as huge as they had looked at a distance, big as office towers, the innermost circle stretching so high that Theo guessed that full daylight only touched the water for a few minutes around noon each day.

  The size of them was arresting enough, but although Theo knew little about trees, it was also hard to ignore the fact that no two of them in the ring were quite the same: the tree beneath which they had parked was a skyscraping pine, but it stood between a massive oak and an improbably vast birch whose pale trunk loomed like a moon rocket. This made the ring of giant trees around the lake seem artificial — odd, when in other ways the place seemed so extremely natural, almost throbbing with primordial grandeur and solitude. Also, each tree was rooted in its own grassy mound of earth, each mound as big as a school playing field, so that if it had not been for the brilliance of the colors, the hundreds of different shades of greenery, the splendid diversity of gray, white, and brown trunks, and the way their terrifyingly distant tops swayed in a breeze unfelt at ground level, the giants might almost have been titanic statues of trees instead of real living things, a sort of arboreal museum for young gods, with each display set on its own plinth overlooking the lake.

  As the last members of the convoy climbed out to stand beside the lake Theo looked out across the expanse of mirror-still water. The fog had grown a little thinner, and he could now see a bump at the center of it all, a low island several hundred yards from the shore, a bizarrely unassuming lump in the midst of so much majesty, its outlines partially hidden by low, drifting mist. The island had no tall trees: it was covered with grass and underbrush which made it hard to see against the forest on the shore behind it, but even through the mist and in this dim, directionless afternoon light Theo could see something sparkling at the island's center like a pile of diamonds.

  Hellebore walked to the edge of the lake and raised his hand, a gesture so imperially casual that any Caesar would have been envious. At first Theo thought that he was summoning one of his bodyguards or his son, but then a long, low boat detached itself from the shadows at the island's waterline and begin to move toward them across the lake, a robed and hooded figure sitting in the stern. It all seemed a little too much, even to Theo's exhausted eye. The legendary Ferryman out of the old myths, coming to take him away? But that had been a river in that story, hadn't it? It was hard to live in the middle of all these old tales, to try to make sense of them. In fact, he felt like he was being eaten by a story . . . a story with teeth . . .

  The boat moved swiftly; within what seemed to Theo only a minute or two — he had so few minutes left, and even in this place of clotted time they were racing by so quickly! — the silent craft was sliding up to the bank. The boatman was small and slender, with a handsome long-nosed face, ears that would make a bat proud, and a shock of graying hair. He was chained to the bench by a shiny ring around his neck, and — if what protruded from beneath his robe was any indication — had woolly legs and goat's feet.

  "Still here, I see," said Hellebore. "By dint of your chain around my neck, my lord," said the goat-legged man with a slight bow. His voice was high-pitched and extremely musical; Theo thought that in another story, one that was going to have a happier ending than this one, it would be interesting to hear him sing. "The iron in it burns at night and keeps me from sleeping. I think of you during all the lonely hours. You haven't by any chance come to drown yourself in a fit of remorse, have you?"

  Hellebore didn't waste the energy on either a smile or frown. "No. We will all cross to the island." The handsome little man nodded his head. "Nidrus Hellebore, it shall be done." Now that he was closer, Theo could see that the shape of the ferryman's face was much less human than he had initially thought.

  Lord Hellebore glanced back at the small crowd from the coaches that had gathered on the grassy bank behind him — eight or ten constables, half a dozen ogre bodyguards, and Hellebore's son and stepchild and fellow fairy lords (although Tansy for one looked as though he would be happy to stay behind, and even Lord Foxglove appeared a bit nervous), as well as the prisoners Cumber and Theo — then looked at the boat, a small barge made of ancient black wood. "How many trips?" asked Hellebore.

  The ferryman smiled. "All will cross together, my lord." Hellebore ordered Theo onto the boat. It pitched gently as he stepped from the lakeside and Applecore held onto his hair tightly, but even in his exhausted and almost helpless state he found
it easy to stay upright. As the constables prodded him toward the stern the rest of Hellebore's little party followed, leaving only the trio of doonie drivers in their buglike riot gear to wait with the battle-coaches. Just as the ferryman had said, there was room for all, although to Theo it seemed no more credible now that it had happened than it had been while everyone was still on the bank: in whichever direction he looked the boat seemed to stretch a little wider than was actually possible.

  When Cumber and the last of the constables were on board the craft turned away from the bank, apparently of its own accord, and began a stately progress back toward the island.

  The ferryman was looking at Theo with interest. His amber eyes slanted upward, glowing like the gaze of a jack-o'-lantern, but the look of intelligence and the deep laughter lines on his brown skin almost made up for it. "You have something of the smell of mortals about you," the ferryman said. "But not quite. What is your name?"

  To his surprise, Theo found he could talk again. "I'm not sure anymore. Theo Vilmos. Septimus Violet. It doesn't seem like it matters much." He could feel the Terrible Child on the edge of his thoughts, although he could not see him, and the cold glow of the child's anticipation for what was to come made it hard to concentrate.

  "Robin is my name." The ferryman looked Theo up and down. "Goodfellow is my other name, if not always my true tale, I must regretfully admit. I see you have an appointment with the wet sisterhood."

  "What?" Theo glanced over at Hellebore, but if the Flower lord had noticed Theo could speak once more, he didn't seem disturbed by it. "He means the nymphs," Applecore said quietly. "Your . . . bracelet." Theo looked down at the knotted band of grass, then at the still water all around them, the surface barely disturbed by the boat's passage. The lake seemed as silent and ancient as the forest; Theo could imagine almost anything living in its depths. "Ah. Yes. Well, they'll have to get in line."

  Robin smiled again, showing surprisingly sharp teeth. "In fact, it is one of the oldest and greatest of the sisterhood who lives here, but never doubt she will take you just as quickly if you fall in as her youngest, hungriest sisters. Perhaps you should not sit so close to the edge."

  Theo shrugged. If it was hard to concentrate with the rising joy of the child pushing at his mind, it was almost harder to care. "I'm not very good at moving right now unless Lord Hellebore allows me to."

  Robin nodded and tapped the ring on his neck. "Our current master is indeed one for bindings and suchlike, isn't he?" He leaned forward and said in a loud, theatrical whisper. "We wonder what sort of games his mama played with him when he was wee, our Nidrus."

  "You are alive because you are a curiosity, pooka." Apparently Hellebore had not been ignoring their conversation entirely. "But curiosity is not a very strong emotion, and thus not much of a guarantee of safety."

  "I take your excellent point, Lord Hellebore." Despite the ring on his neck and the heavy links that chained him to the bench, Robin Goodfellow contrived a graceful little bow. "And what," he said to Theo, "is the purpose of your visit here, if I may ask? Not that I'm complaining — a little company helps the centuries to inch by a bit faster."

  Theo sighed. "I think we're going to destroy the world. Somebody's world, anyway. It used to be my world."

  "Ah," said Robin, "another busy day for the Flower lords," but he seemed depressed by the news and did not speak again.

  The ferry passed through a last swirl of mist and grounded against the island.

  41 THE CATHEDRAL

  The island itself was not very big, but even so, as Theo acted out Hellebore's command and disembarked under the utterly unnecessary guns of the guards he found himself having trouble understanding what it looked like. It was not the dying light that made its shape hard to judge, or the shroud of mist that rose from the water's edge, or even the disorienting shimmer at the top of the low hill, although they all added to his confusion. Instead, it was something in the place itself, some intense anomaly that was part of its very nature, as if the primeval silence of the ring of giant trees became something even more concentrated and yet paradoxically also more cloudy here, a pulse of irreducible strangeness at the still heart of Faerie that confused Theo's senses just as the magnetism of the North Pole deranged compasses.

  Soon, the avid voice whispered in his head, but it was talking to itself now even more than to him, a child's quiet song of impatience and hunger. Soon, soon . . . This was its hour, and Theo could only wonder what horrors had come before this crowning moment, to create something that looked forward so gleefully to madness and destruction being visited on an entire world.

  What he could make out through the disorienting nature of the place and his own hopeless misery was that the island sloped up from the water's edge to the top, a long, low hillock covered with uneven grass and gnarled shrubbery. In a depression at the top, hidden from the base of the island by the curve of the land, lay whatever was creating that blur of inconstant, refracted light which hung over the hilltop as though something up there was trying, with some difficulty, to birth a rainbow.

  They trooped up the hill, Lord Hellebore first, his flawless white suit a beacon in the gloom. The little monster with Theo's features followed right behind, hurrying along on his short legs, excited even in his physical movements, as though he were a normal child being led through the gates of the zoo. Theo and Cumber followed, prodded along by helmeted constables, then Tansy, Anton Hellebore, Foxglove, and Thornapple, and the rest of the guards. The ogre bodyguards brought up the rear, walking silently, very attentive to the surroundings despite the minuscule size of the landscape they were surveying.

  "We're in the real middle of it now," Applecore whispered in a choked voice. "Never . . ." She fell silent for a moment. "I've heard . . ." Again she ran out of words. "It's here, Theo."

  "What?" he whispered back, fighting to stay calm, fighting to concentrate his straggling thoughts. "What is this?" Somehow the conversation with Robin Goodfellow seemed to have released him from Hellebore's silence. A momentary flicker of hope — perhaps the ferryman had other powers and could intervene on his behalf or at least interfere with Hellebore's control over him — died when Theo looked back and saw the black boat slipping out of sight around the edge of the island, gliding into a curtain of mist. Goodfellow again sat hunched in the stern, motionless as a stone garden faun, looking at nothing except perhaps his own cloven hooves.

  "This is where the old mound was — the first mound." Applecore was struggling to keep her voice under control. It was not just caution or confusion making her speak that way — she was struggling against overwhelming panic. "This is where the king and queen lived!"

  "Here?" Theo looked from side to side. Even this small freedom from his lockstepped obedience to Hellebore seemed exhilarating, dangerous. "On this pokey little thing?"

  He must have spoken louder than he intended. Cumber Sedge looked over at them, his face gray, his expression hopeless. Just when he had thought he could not feel worse, Theo had a cold squeeze of guilt: Look what happens to the people who trusted me, who treated me like a friend.

  "There wasn't any water here then," Applecore whispered. "No lake, not like this. Just the mound. Deep into the ground it goes — deeper than the Elder Trees, even. The first place of all the people."

  Theo felt something even chillier grab at his vitals. Was Hellebore planning to lead them down into the earth, into some horrible tomb in the wet ground under the lake? He didn't know why it actually made any difference, but if he had to die he wanted to do it under the open sky . . . Here. The child's voice rang in his head, triumphant, mad. Here. The waiting is ended.

  Theo reached the top of the crest and saw what was making the air shimmer. It was not so much a crater as a depression, the grassy earth of the hilltop dented like a piece of dough into which someone had gently pushed a fist. Within it, mostly scattered in gleaming shards, but with enough broken sections still upright to give a ghostly hint of what had once stood there, lay the rui
ns of some great building that had been made entirely of glass. The ground at the top of the hill seemed to have been badly scorched, and although none of the glass was blackened — Theo wondered if the crystalline stuff might not be glass at all but something else entirely, something burn-proof like diamond — many of the pieces on the ground had been melted into smooth, twisting shapes, and the few sections still standing were veined with cracks, so that in his dizzied, loose-minded way, Theo thought they looked like something fractal, the results of some bubble-chamber experiment lovingly photographed and displayed in Smithsonian Magazine. Even in their destruction the shards had a power and beauty that held his eye until the bending of the light around them made his head ache.

  Here. In short, the hilltop looked like it had been the site of a small but very powerful and very weird explosion. Something of that actual event seemed to remain, a shifting liquid glow in a pit at the center — a bright smear like magma, but only loosely bound by gravity. It was this, bounced and refracted by the shards of glass, which made the twinkling above the crown of the hill.

  Hellebore ordered Theo to walk forward. If his command over his prisoner's speech had grown lax, his command over his body had not. When Theo had marched helplessly to him, Hellebore took him by the arm in a disturbingly familiar way, like an older man about to impart the secrets of life to a younger colleague, then led him along the lip of the depression, a sort of battlefield of broken spikes and blobs of glass. The colors in the shining pit were now vibrating more swiftly and unevenly, as though the hole were a living thing that had sensed their presence. Theo tensed as Hellebore touched his neck, positive he was about to be thrown in, the volcano-virgin of this particular religious ritual, but still unable to resist. Instead, the fairy lord's hand moved with startling swiftness to pluck Applecore out from behind Theo's ear.