by Tad Williams
"I have found it!" Azador shouted.
They turned. He was making his way up the hill toward them, bent against the steepness of the climb. When he lifted his head, his face was lit in an astonishing smile. "You were right! Come see!"
Sam looked to !Xabbu, who shrugged and nodded. As Jongleur was still raising himself to his feet with chilly if unsteady determination, they followed Azador back down the slope.
In a few minutes they had reached a place where they could look out across the last of the small hills to see the bowl-shaped valley as a whole. Like the ring of hills, it bore more than a passing resemblance to the top of the black mountain, but instead of a huge, pinioned figure, the valley was dominated by a monstrous crater filled with black water and strangely muted lights. A crowd of figures too distant to make out huddled along its rim.
"What . . . what is it?" Sam asked at last.
"It is the Well," said Azador triumphantly. He turned and clapped Jongleur on the shoulder so hard he almost knocked the old man over. "You were right! You are a wise, wise man." He turned and pointed. "Do you see them all down there? All the children of the One have gathered. The Romany will be there, too. My people!"
As if he had exhausted his patience waiting to show them, Azador now went scrambling down the hillside toward the plain, leaving Sam and the others stunned and staring.
CHAPTER 32
Bad House
* * *
NETFEED/ENTERTAINMENT: Jixy Jinxing Jingle?
(visual: excerpt from Mirthday special)
VO: Creators and performers on the popular Uncle Jingle children's interactive are beginning to wonder what's going on. A series of strange happenings on the show have led some people at Obolos Entertainment, the show's producers, to suggest sabotage, with the implied suspect being WeeWin, a children's toy firm with offices in Scotland, but which is primarily owned by a subsidiary of Krittapong Electronics. In recent weeks characters on the Uncle Jingle program have disappeared mid-show, other objects not designed to be part of the environment have appeared, and some character interactions have been interrupted by unexpected noises one participant characterized as "moaning and roaring and even crying."
(visual: company spokesperson Sigurd Fallinger)
FALLINGER: "Could it be sheer coincidence that these attacks began right after we filed a large and completely justified suit for infringement on our intellectual property? We doubt it, let's just say that. We have some very strong reservations about that theory."
* * *
The Ticks were active around the base of the vegetal tower, dozens and dozens of pale shapes swarming in the evening darkness like maggots on putrefying meat. Renie, remembering how just a few of them had torn the rabbit, could not look at them for long without feeling sick.
She stepped back from the window. "We ought to be out of here before it gets light again—if it ever does." She looked over to Ricardo Klement, who still held the strangely deformed thing that Renie had begun to think of as the Blue Baby. "Any ideas? How did you get here in the first place?"
Klement never made much eye contact, so it was hard to tell if he had even heard her. After a long moment, he said, "We walked. I walked. With feet."
"Yeah, with feet." Renie had been angry with herself for crying, but if the alternative was being an emotionless jelly like this, she was proud of her tears. "Why didn't those things get you?"
Klement did not respond. The Blue Baby moved fitfully in his arms, a squirm of malformed limbs. Despite the horror of the thing's appearance, watching how Klement held it, like a stone or a piece of wood, almost made her want to take it from him and give it some kind of human contact. She went and knelt beside the Stone Girl instead.
"Are you okay?"
The little girl shook her head. "Scared."
"Yeah, me too. We'll get out of here, then things will be better." If I can only come up a machine gun or a flamethrower someone has conveniently grown out of twigs and leaves and left for me. The flamethrower idea tugged at her. "I wonder how they actually see," she thought aloud. "I mean, just the same visible spectrum as us? Or maybe they're using the infrared part as well."
The Stone Girl stared sadly at her stubby little fingers. "What's imfer red?"
"Hard to explain right now." Renie reached into her makeshift brassiere and pulled out the Minisolar lighter. "But I wonder if any of this green stuff will burn."
Now the Stone Girl looked up, eyes widening. "You're going to make a fire? That's dangerous!"
Renie laughed despite herself, a pained bark. "Jesus Mercy, child, we're surrounded by those carnivorous creepy-crawlies, waiting for the world to end, and you're worried about me doing something dangerous?" On an impulse, she leaned forward and kissed the Stone Girl on the top of her round, cool head. "Bless you. Come help me see if any of these leaves and branches are even a little bit dry."
As she chivvied the girl along, more to keep the child's mind occupied than anything else—she could certainly have worked faster on her own—it was hard not to think of Stephen. Renie had fought so many battles over the years, dragging the boy unwillingly through even rudimentary housework, doubling or even tripling the time she would have taken by herself, but determined that her brother at least would not grow up into the kind of man who assumed some woman would step into his life and do all the messy jobs.
The kind of man my father is, for instance. But even as she thought it, she remembered the days when she was young and Joseph Sulaweyo had come home from work tired and sore and gleaming with sweat. He did work hard once, she had to admit. Before he gave up.
"Is this dry, Renie?" the Stone Girl asked her.
"Well, it's brown, I think," she said, squinting. The radiance from the nodding flower in the ceiling was fainter than gaslight. "Just rip it off and pile it here."
The surging vitality of More Very Bush cost Renie and her small companion something like an hour as they struggled to locate enough dead leaves to make a knee-high pile, and even so most of what they found were still more green than brown. Ricardo Klement looked over from time to time, incurious as a bundle of laundry. He did not offer to help.
"If this works," Renie pointed out with some resentment, "you're not going to be able to just sit there—not unless you want to be roasted like a potato."
Klement was looking away again. The Blue Baby turned its blind face toward her for a moment, as though trying to make up for the disinterest of its caretaker.
"Give me that big leaf," she told the Stone Girl. "It's okay that it's green—yes, that one. Actually, give me two. I'll build the fire on one, then use the other as a fan." Renie squatted in front of the pile of torn and crumpled leaves. "Now wish me luck."
"Luck," said the Stone Girl seriously.
Renie ignited the lighter and held it against the driest leaf she could find. She was relieved to see the edge of the leaf blacken, then a little smoke curl up. She cupped it with her hand to keep the breeze from the window away until a small flame was actively burning, then she began taking other dry pieces off the pile and pushing them against the tiny fire. After a while she realized that she was getting uncomfortably hot. The original leaf on which she'd built the blaze, a vast ivylike pad almost as large and tough-skinned as an elephant's ear, was beginning to curl and blacken.
"In just a few minutes we're going to have to make a run to the next bridge," she told the Stone Girl.
"The Ticks will get us!"
"Not if this confuses them enough—we should at least get a good head start. But we'll have to run straight for the bridge. You said it wasn't too far."
"We can't go over that bridge."
"What? What are you talking about? I already asked you and you said it would work—that we could cross the river!" The fire, although still somewhat contained, was beginning to lick upward toward the low ceiling. The hanging, orchidlike light was beginning to brown and curl a bit at the edges. "I don't even know if we can put this out now. What do you mean we can't go ov
er that bridge?"
"It goes to Jinnear Bad House."
"I don't care. I'm sure it's dreadful, but if we stay here, eventually those things are going to catch us and kill us."
"I don't want to go to the Bad House."
"No arguing. I can't leave you behind." She rose and found the long fibrous stalk she had put aside. "Now move over beside the window where we came in." Renie turned to Klement. "You too. It's time to get out of here."
Klement looked at her for a long moment, then stood up. Renie returned her attention to the fire. With the stalk, she shoved the blackening leaf against the tower wall opposite the window. Bits of flaming vegetation fell off along the way and died where they landed, insufficient to ignite the dark, moist greenery, but the leaves along the wall began to blacken and shrivel.
"We've got only a few minutes before it's too hot to stay in here," Renie said as she turned, then stopped, staring in amazement. Only the Stone Girl remained in the small green belfry. "Where's Klement?"
"He went down there." She pointed down the opening to the lower level.
"Christ. Christ! He'll get eaten by those things!" Renie took a step toward the bramble-stairs, but a burning leaf fluttered free from the wall and stuck smoldering against her blanket. It took her several seconds to put it out. The wall was beginning to burn in earnest, the heat such that even the living plants were being consumed as though they were straw. Renie hesitated. The Stone Girl was looking at her, eyes huge with fear. Who was Klement after all but a murderer, a monster? Maybe this new version had seemed more acceptable, but did she have the right to risk the child's life in order to save him from his own damaged folly?
A line of flame crackled across the floor, making the decision moot. "Out onto the vines," she told the Stone Girl. "Now."
Renie hoisted herself through the window. When she had found something like stable footing in the tangle of greenery on the wall, she helped the little girl out and onto her shoulders. "I have to climb down a little way," she told the child. "Hold on tight."
By the time Renie had lowered her head beneath the line of the windowsill, the room behind her was burning brightly; flames crackled in the ceiling and the blaze had already eaten several holes in the wall. When Renie felt the first vine beneath her feet, she probed until she found another one of the springy cables a little lower down so she could use the first as a handhold. When her feet were firmly situated she lowered the Stone Girl down beside her, both of them swaying above the darkness and the swarming Ticks.
"In a minute the whole tower will be burning," Renie whispered, "so we'd better get going. If we're lucky, the whole flaming mess will come down on top of the those things and confuse them—kill a few, too, if we're really lucky!"
They were inching along some twenty meters out from the tower, the top of the structure burning like a torch now and spitting great sparking fragments onto the breeze, when the Stone Girl yanked at Renie's blanket. "What's . . . what's going to happen when it falls down?" she asked.
"Ssshhh." Renie tried to steady the alarming sway the girl's tugging had begun. The whole center of the vegetal town was lit with wavering red light, including them, and despite the distraction of the fire, she feared they might be noticed any second. "I told you! It's going to fall down in a big burning, smoking mess, and it's going to distract those monsters and we're going to get away."
"But won't the vines fall down, too?"
Renie paused, still swaying from side to side. "Oh, shit."'
"You said a bad word!"
"I'm going to say more, I'm afraid. Oh, damn me, how stupid can I be?" She began sliding along the vine with increased speed. They had only been spared so far, she realized, because the fire was burning upward much faster than it was burning downward, toward the spot where the vines were rooted into the tower.
She looked at the ground between her feet, wondering where they would fall when the vines gave way, and wished she hadn't. More of the white shapes were beneath them, weaving back and forth atop the brambles like dolphins sporting in the wake of a ship.
"Just hurry," she hissed at the Stone Girl. "If it gets too hard, let me carry you."
Now it was a race against the fire she had set, and Renie wished she had spent more time scouting the vines before committing to this particular pair. They stayed a reasonable distance apart, but not always one above the other: by the time they had slid their feet another dozen meters along one vine, the one they were using as a handrail had sagged down until it was scarcely higher than the first. Renie had to let the Stone Girl climb onto her back again, since she was leaning out almost horizontally and the girl could no longer brace herself against Renie's leg when the distances between the vines became too great.
Something pinged and snapped on the tower end and the lower vine sagged alarmingly. It held, and Renie was able to stand almost upright once more, but the vine suddenly felt very loose. She looked back and saw that the uppermost part of the tower was belching flames dozens of meters into the sky, then a huge fiery piece of it tottered and broke free. Somebody or something may have heard her panicked prayer, because it fell away from the vines on which she and the Stone Girl were trapped, but the collapse set the whole springy structure quivering. The vines leaped like plucked strings and Renie had to wrap both arms around the upper vine and cling just to keep her balance as the Stone Girl teetered atop her and almost fell.
They had seconds now, if they were lucky, and Renie cursed her own earlier decision to pick the longest vines. She had wanted to get as far away from the tower as possible before having to touch the ground, but now she desperately wished there was a roof somewhere close by onto which they could jump. She put her head down to concentrate on her footing, trying to see each coming step in the inconstant, glaring light as she hurried sideways. The Stone Girl clung to her shoulders, crying softly.
She had only an instant's warning: the vine seemed to tighten beneath her hand as though someone had given it a hard tug. Renie made a lightning decision and let go so she could grab at the lower vine with both hands.
"Hold on tight!" she screamed as she wrapped hands and legs around the bottom vine. The weight of the little girl snatched her over backward but Renie kept her desperate grip and so did the Stone Girl. As they dangled upside down, the upper strand parted with a distant crack and a second later the broken end swept past, glowing red, flying away from the collapsing tower like the lash of a bullwhip. Renie felt its rough hide score her fingers as it flew past.
Would have taken my head off, she thought, a dizzy, horrified fragment of thought. The broken vine had whistled going by, a ton of fibrous cable moving at bullet speed. We have to let go, she realized in horror, before the next. . . .
This time she did not even have a chance to warn the little girl. Renie's fingers released just as the second vine snapped with another whipcrack explosion. They tumbled down into the dark even as it hissed through the spot where they had been.
They landed in something like thick bushes, but Renie still felt the air leave her body as though she had been slammed by a giant hand. For long moments she could not get the breath back into her lungs and lay straining, facedown in prickly leaves.
When she was able to stagger to her feet she saw that the flaming tower had collapsed into a wildfire fifty meters wide, with tendrils of flame already marching out into the surrounding greenery. Some Ticks had been caught in the collapse—she could see writhing shapes in the blaze—but far more of them remained in an agitated mass around the perimeter of the fire.
The Stone Girl groaned. "Are you okay?" Renie whispered. "Anything broken?" The little girl seemed able to move, but did not get up. Renie reached down and pulled the child into her arms, then stood. "Which way?" The Stone Girl groaned again and pointed. Renie began to run.
It was terrible country in the dark, so much vegetation that there was little hard ground beneath her feet, brambles and vines and trailing roots everywhere, snatching at her and tripping her up lik
e malicious fingers. After a few hundred meters she was gasping for breath and feeling the bruises of the fall from the vine. She stopped and set the solid weight of the little girl down on springy leaves before looking back. She was relieved to see that the spreading fire was still surrounded by squirming, confused Ticks, and that she could see no others any closer.
"Can you walk? I don't know if I can carry you much farther."
"I . . . maybe I can." The little girl struggled up. "I hurt my legs, I think."
"Just try. If you can't make it, I'll carry you again. Let's hurry. We don't know how long this will distract them."
They quickly stumbled out of the vicinity of the fire. Renie's feet were achingly sore, her legs scratched and cut so many times she had stopped paying attention, but there was nothing to be done. Run or die, she thought. It's been like that since we first got onto this damn network. "Are we almost there?" she asked the little girl. "Are we still going in the right direction? Can you tell?"
The Stone Girl only plodded forward. Renie surrendered to trust.
A quick glance back sent a wave of terror through her: this time she definitely saw pale shapes behind them. She had no idea if the Ticks could follow a trail, or even if these were some of the same creatures who had surrounded the tower, but it wouldn't matter much if they got close enough to see her and the girl. She had no illusion they could outrun the pallid monsters for more than a few steps—she had seen their terrible, darting speed.
Something rose out of the dark shrubbery before them. Renie gasped in alarm and tripped, slamming down onto one knee and dragging the Stone Girl face-first into the undergrowth. She scrabbled desperately for something to use as a weapon—a weapon she already knew would be useless—but the expected attack did not come.
