These flowers were of a different sort; there was no hum of insects audible in the underworld. Their dutiful pollinators were presumably human: monks, who were content to gather their reward instead of consuming it, so that they could transmit its currency and its luxury to the world outside. There, it became an object of trade like any other—or, perhaps, quite unlike any other.
The monk who had brought them down the spiral stair and along the tunnel took a step backwards, as if he assumed that his task was done.
“Wait,” said Vaedecker, quietly but sharply. “We need to know which way they took the girl’s body. Which path?”
“I have shown you too much,” the monk replied, his face as white as chalk in the unnatural light. Now that he was in the presence of the giant flowers he seemed more frightened of them than he was of Vaedecker’s blade, no matter that the blood was still seeping sluggishly from the cut in his throat. Even so, he raised his arm to point to the middle path.
Vaedecker’s eyes narrowed as he made a calculation, and then he lifted his sword above his head. The terrified monk ducked away from the blade, but when the soldier brought it down he made sure that it was the flat of the blade that landed on the monk’s tonsured pate. The first blow only knocked the man to his knees, but a second strike rendered him unconsciousness.
Reinmar made as if to kneel in order to check that the man was still alive, but the sergeant grabbed his sleeve and dragged him away.
“We must hurry,” he said. He was still speaking in a low voice, anxious that his words did not echo from the walls in case there were monks abroad in the underworld, hidden from view by the flowers. “If he lied, we’ll find out soon enough.”
The soldier moved off between the gargantuan plants, passing beneath a rough arch formed by two of the flower-heads, and Reinmar followed. He was anxious to see more of their structure, so he threw back the capacious hood that had concealed his face while he and Vaedecker had descended the stair. This allowed him the freedom to look up into the bell-like corollas to see what was inside.
He was not overly surprised to discover that each of them had a single pendulous style, which seemed to be hanging limply in the manner of the thickly-woven rope which hung from the dome of the temple. Shadowed as they were by the flowers it was difficult to tell what colours the styles might be, but most were pale. He could not see the nectar-glands that were presumably clustered about the base of each style, because the more distant parts of the interior of each flower-head were hidden even from reflected light.
Having looked up, he looked down again, to study the tangled structures at the bases of the stems. These holdfasts were highly irregular in shape, but as soon as Reinmar began to inspect them more closely he detected shapes within each mass that reminded him somewhat of human bodies laid supine and mysteriously bloated. A fifth “limb” which sometimes appeared to be present seemed, in accordance with this fancy, to be the head of the recumbent form, which had become so molten and misshapen as to seem part of the bedrock.
Although he cursed himself for his stupidity when he finally realised the appalling truth, it took time for Reinmar to accept that this impression was more than mere macabre fancy. He might have realised it sooner had it not been for the fact that some of the forms seemed very far from human—but that, he eventually realised, was because they had only been half-human to begin with. The tangled “roots” which bound the gargantuan plants to the cavern floor really were bodies bloated and transmogrified by alien flesh. Some had been human, but some had been beastmen whose limbs had extended into claws instead of hands and feet and whose misshapen heads had been horned.
“Do you see—?” he asked of Vaedecker—but the sergeant did not let him finish.
“Be quiet,” he retorted, hoarsely. “I see what you see. Keep looking—and be on guard!”
The advice was good, for it had hardly been voiced when Reinmar caught sight of robed figures ahead of them. Vaedecker immediately reached up to take his hood and flip it over his head again, before moving sideways to take cover behind one of the massive stems. Reinmar copied him, taking cover behind a stem some eight or ten paces to his right.
Peering around the stem, Reinmar saw that half a dozen monks were gathered together, all but one facing away from him. There was a slight susurrus of voices, but the monks were standing quite still. It seemed that they were waiting for something significant to happen. Reinmar could not see the face of the one monk who was facing them—for which he was duly grateful, since it implied that the man in question could not see him—but he could see that the man was holding aloft a staff decorated at the head with the effigy of a black flower, whose “petals” were fashioned from ravens’ wings.
It was not until a momentary gap appeared in the rank of six that Reinmar was able to see more—but when it did, he had to suppress a gasp of horror and alarm.
In the space between the line of six and the man with the staff the naked body of the gypsy girl had been carefully laid out, supine, within a shallow depression in the cavern’s floor that extended away to the left of the path that they had followed, close to a junction at which it crossed another.
It was almost as if the polished rock were getting ready to hug her, and welcome her to its adamantine bosom.
Reinmar understood, now that he had seen what he had seen, that some of the holdfasts which supported the stems of these astonishing plants had indeed once been the bodies of human beings—those who had “heard a call” that summoned them here. He understood, too, that although they had undergone some monstrous mutation and transfiguration which had made them part stone and part alien flesh, they still retained faint echoes of their previous identity.
He became suddenly and horribly certain that these luckless persons had never died and were not dead even now: that their human souls were within them still, eternally imprisoned in strangeness. The beastmen, he presumed, were in a similar state—but he could not bring himself to care overmuch about that. Marcilla was a different matter.
“If this is not your doing, Morr,” he murmured, not loud enough for Vaedecker to hear but not quite silently, “then I beg you to send down your most fervent wrath upon these people without delay, whatever consequence it may have for me.”
But the God of Death and Dreams, after the invariable habit of all the gods to whom men pray, gave no evidence of having heard this prayer, nor any evidence at all of his concern.
The monk who had held the staff aloft above Marcilla’s naked body lowered it again, looking down at the motionless form that lay exposed before him. Then he pushed back the cowl which had covered his head—and Reinmar could not help but start with shock, because he could see the exposed face between the heads of two of the six, and saw how it caught the white light which flooded from above.
The monk’s features seemed to catch fire with a similar glow of their own, as if the light were taking on substance as it gathered about the man, caressing his cheeks and forehead lovingly. His eyes, in particular, seemed fiercely ablaze, and Reinmar realised that the uncanny brightness which he had perceived in the eyes of Brother Noel and Brother Almeric when he first saw them was a feeble presentiment of what it one day might become. The monk’s skull was quite hairless, and his features seemed abnormally rounded—his nose snubbed and his chin like a tide-worn pebble—but his flesh had a curious glossy polish, as if it had the texture as well as the colour of a tarnished tooth.
The celebrant extended his arm, and with the foot of his staff he began to make a series of passes over Marcilla’s naked body. While he did so he crooned a long sequence of liquid syllables in some arcane language whose like Reinmar had never heard. When this part of the ritual was complete the monk changed his grip upon the staff, so that he held it near the foot, and extended its ornamented head towards the bell of a black flower which loomed above him.
The model fashioned from ravens’ wings that surmounted the staff was but a hundredth the size of the huge entity above it, but as the sy
mbol extended, so the thing which it symbolised began to move towards it, lowered very gently by the gradual relaxation of its massive stem.
Again the celebrant began to make a complex series of passes in the air, still chanting all the while. From time to time the remainder of the company joined in to add their voices to a periodic chorus, or to answer some particular syllable—but positioned as they were, there was little danger that anyone would notice either of the uninvited guests.
As the rite drew towards its close, Reinmar saw that the pendulous style within the bell of the flower had extended itself, so that its tip now extended beyond the rim of the corolla. It had not done so by any process of engorgement or uncoiling, but rather by stretching itself in an elastic manner. Its basic colour was not amber, as he had at first imagined, but a creamy near-white hue similar to that of the leaves which spread from the stalk in fanlike fashion. It was darker because the white was faintly streaked with pink.
The style writhed very slowly, in a manner which reminded Reinmar of the head of a luckless and bewildered earthworm come unexpectedly to the surface of the soil. Marcilla lay quite still beneath the enormous dome of the flower: unseeing, unfeeling, unbreathing.
The officiating priest began to lower his ornamented staff, and the tip of the style dipped down more urgently, as though trying to pursue it. But then the celebrant stepped aside and moved unhurriedly away, to allow the flower-head to continue its slow descent.
It seemed to Reinmar that the flower was now aware of Marcilla’s cold presence, and he choked back an exclamation of horror. The tip of the style had extended at least half a yard beyond the rim of the corolla now, and its writhing had become more excited. Down and down it came, while Reinmar held his breath in terrified anticipation.
The moment the lascivious style touched Marcilla’s pale flesh, she moved. It seemed to Reinmar that she was trying to squirm away, and would have moved more urgently had her limbs not been deadened by the drug she had been given. It was as if she were stirring in her sleep, trying to awaken from a bad dream in which her entire body had become mysteriously immovable.
The style touched her again, drawing its tip along the length of her arm, as slow and gentle as the caress of a lover’s finger. Again she moved, restlessly but impotently. It was as if she were trying with all her might to awake, but could not. Her body was cold and stiff, her flesh as white as marble in the unnatural light, and the power of intention was insufficient to move her reluctant limbs.
But she certainly was not dead.
She was not dead.
Reinmar clenched his jaw very tightly, but he gripped his stolen staff more tightly in his right hand and adjusted the position of his feet so that he was set to leap forward. He did not know how far this ritual would go, but he wanted to be ready to act as soon as the moment seemed ripe. With his left hand he fumbled at the cord holding his sword in its scabbard, but the shock of what he had seen made his fingers clumsy and the knot would not come undone.
The tip of the vermiform style stroked Marcilla’s naked arm, then moved down her torso and along her thigh towards the knee. When it reached the calf it reversed its motion, making a long and languorous pass as it moved over the contours of her abdomen and breast, very gently and very delicately. Every touch, it seemed, brought her a little closer to life and consciousness. She began to make sounds—not cries of alarm but deep, slow moans.
Reinmar saw that Marcilla was now able to move her limbs a little. It seemed that the touch of the writhing thing within the black bell was restoring warmth to her muscles. Reinmar had no doubt that her heart was beating again, but he had no idea how strong and fast that pulse might be.
At some stage, Reinmar presumed, this monstrous creature would have to transmit its seeds into the gypsy girl’s body. He knew only too well what her destiny was supposed to be—the seeds would take root in her living flesh, ready to begin the patient work of transforming her substance—but he could only guess what intermediate stages there might be. Would she be allowed to wake, to see what fate awaited her? Or would she remain locked in her dream as the blood coursed through her veins and her fever grew?
He could not believe that she would be allowed to know what was really happening. He clung to the hope that the dream in which she was lost—itself a product of the wine of dreams—would be a dream of paradise, and that no matter what became of her as she lay in the crack in the cavern floor she would know nothing but happiness. In time, no doubt, she too would live as a plant, producing a glorious flower-head of her own, and any consciousness that remained in her bloated and petrified head would be the awareness of bright and eternal light.
Was that, he wondered, how every plant and flower in the world imagined the heavens?
All the while, the priests continued their incantation, murmuring liquid syllables in a language that Reinmar did not recognise. All the while, too, he tried to free his blade with his left hand, but the unpractised fingers still could not undo the knot and he did not dare release his ready grip on the staff.
Marcilla seemed to be coming closer to consciousness all the while, although she had not yet reached the brink—but as she recovered more power of movement, the nature of her movements changed. As the pendulous style continued to caress her, she ceased her futile attempts to wriggle away and moved more responsively, as though the tickling touch no longer irritated her.
But she was coming back towards the very brink of wakefulness. Reinmar was certain that there would come a point when it would need no more than a rival touch to bring her out of her dream. If she could only be snatched back from the edge of disaster at that propitious moment, she might still be saved. She would be fully alive again, and her dream could be broken. If he acted at exactly the right time, he might still save her. If not, she would lie in that shallow pit, uncoffined and unburied, until her transformation was complete. She would melt into the welcoming rock while the first ivory-white shoot sprang up from her navel, extending its tender leaves to bask in the white fire which poured from the pitted ceiling of this world-in-miniature.
He could not let it happen.
Reinmar let go of the knot securing his sword and struggled to control himself, knowing how difficult it would be to complete the course of action he intended. His most urgent need was that Marcilla would be able to flee with him when he ran, so that they might make their reckless break for freedom together. They would have to climb the spiral stair together and quit the grounds of the gloomy temple which stood sullenly above them, without any delay. There were six men to be felled here, but there might be as many as fifty or sixty more who would join the chase as soon as the alarm was raised. It would not be easy to outrun them in the forest—and even if they managed to reach the wagon, and Godrich and Sigurd had contrived to mend the wheel…
Reinmar looked across at Matthias Vaedecker, and the sergeant immediately glanced sideways to catch his eyes—but the signal Vaedecker sent with a quick gesture of his hand was a command to be still: watch and wait.
For the moment, Reinmar obeyed—but he knew that he would not be able to maintain his obedience for long.
Chapter Nineteen
Reinmar wanted nothing more than to rush forward, swinging his staff with deadly force, but he forced himself to be still for a few moments longer. He knew that Vaedecker was right, and that he had to wait until the caresses of the loathsome flower had brought Marcilla all the way back to life—but he also knew that he must not wait an instant too long, lest everything be lost. He had to discover that precious moment when she would be best capable of conscious thought and movement, but had not yet suffered the final act of pollution which would lead inexorably to her destruction. He waited, tense and taut with the agony of uncertainty as to how long he could safely delay.
In the meantime, the worm in the flower’s mouth, which seemed to grow pinker with every moment that went by, continued its measured dance upon the floor of Marcilla’s tender flesh, exploring her contours and teasing
her with the revivifying effects of its touch.
She was now able to reach out towards it, as if she were trying to catch it as it passed, but she was still sightless and slow, while the worm-thing was quick and clever. It evaded her groping fingers.
Reinmar watched and waited, although the tension in his heart and limbs was becoming unbearable.
Marcilla began to writhe more urgently, and there was no question that her limbs had regained the greater part of their strength—but still she could not open her eyes. She was lost in her dream, without the least inkling of where she was or what was happening to her. Perhaps, Reinmar thought, she imagined herself still safe on the hearth of the farmhouse, slyly pleasured by the hallucinatory power of the sweet wine that she had quaffed before sleeping.
Then, just for an instant, the style paused in its writhing and drew back a little. The tip parted, to expose a deeper structure within: the stigma, which presumably bore the spores of destruction. The stigma was golden yellow in colour, like the summer sun of the world above, and it glistened with mucus.
The tissues of the style parted, like eyelids at the moment of awakening.
Marcilla parted her own eyelids at long last, and looked up into the great black hood of the flower which hovered over her, and into the sightless daemonic eye which threatened her. She opened her mouth uncertainly, as if she did not know whether to scream or to cry with glad delight—but no sound came from her trembling lips.
Reinmar, as certain as any man could be that it must be now or never, did not bother to look to Matthias Vaedecker for permission. He let out a howl of fiendish glee as he bounded forward, with the raven-headed staff raised up high, to snatch his beloved away from the cruel attentions of his dreadful rival.
The five monks who still had their backs to him began to turn in alarm as soon as they heard his war-cry, but in their confusion they bumped into one another, their limbs becoming entangled as they raised their arms to defend themselves. The only one exempt from this confusion was the sorcerer-in-chief, who had been officiating at the rite.
The Wine of Dreams Page 17
