Tainted Garden Read online

  TAINTED GARDEN

  Jeff Stanley

  BALLANTINE BOOKS • NEW YORK

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Copyright

  This novel is dedicated with praise and appreciation to Wayman Stanley, who taught me to pursue my dreams, regardless of the obstacles.

  Acknowledgments

  This novel would not have been possible without the dedicated assistance of a number of people, among them Bob Allen, Larry Payne, Kyri Freeman, Audra Bruno, Greg Byrne, and many others. A special thanks, as well, to Denise Fitzer, whose insights and red pen have helped shape this into the novel it is today.

  Prologue

  In the warmth of the womb, She floated—wrapped in streaming currents that offered comfort, security, love. Communion. Delicate touches flickered across her body, caressing her arms, legs, throat, face. She sank into the thousand embraces, relishing the contact, yearning for it when it receded, but knowing from experience that it would always return.

  She stretched out her senses, brushing against the immensity that was her God, her creator, her mother and father. And he responded. Sensing her desperate need, her God sent messages of hope, of love, and of comfort. But also a promise that struck like a threat—that She could not endure forever in the womb, that She must soon depart, and take up her destiny along with all of her siblings. She must go outside the womb.

  She squirmed in the warm, fluid embrace, limbs tingling. The barriers of her world provided security. There was . . . something else outside the barrier. Something hard and cold. Something frightening. Something of which She wished no part.

  To be separate, severed from the communion with her God and her world, frightened her. She trembled within the warm cocoon, retreating from the voice of her God.

  Outside the walls of her cocoon, She felt a stirring, a gentle wash of exchanging fluids. Another womb, and within it a sibling. A companion, created for her, and only for her. A comfort-mate. He. A partner and link to the beauty that was the Home. He moved within another linked womb, and sent warm fluids that carried unique scents and impressions into She’s domain. She drank deep of He’s essence, and within the bond something grew.

  “This is your mate,” the God said, his voice soft and soothing. “A part of you, as you are a part of him. Together with your siblings, you will hold dominion over the world I have made for you.”

  She opened up to He and tasted him, wrapped herself around him, sank deeper and deeper into Communion with him. He was hesitant at first, perhaps frightened by the intensity of the promised union. He attempted to draw away, to maintain a separateness that was the antithesis of Communion. Pain wracked She, stabbed deep, wounding. But He, sensing the love that flowed from She, continued to stir. He stretched out, physically, emotionally, spiritually, and tasted of She. Joy flooded their link, an ambrosia that nourished.

  Together they existed as a near-perfect union, a binding of spirits. She’s soul cried out in ecstasy. They clung together, hungry for one another, their bond firming.

  But a tremble swept through She’s cocoon. Warm fluids sloshed and foamed. Ripples disturbed the delicate tranquility. She and He hesitated, drew apart, perceiving.

  The God screamed, an agonizing throb that shook She’s cocoon to its base. The tepid bath grew warmer, until it became painfully hot. She ached to scream but could find no voice. He recoiled, curling up around himself, walling himself away, though She reached again for him, desperate.

  The God screamed again, and She felt a shiver travel through the fluid surrounding her. Waves of pain and fright crashed through the casing, the God in torment. She wanted to cry out, but could only shrivel up and hide, tucked down within the remotest corner of the casing.

  Contagion washed through the God’s body, consuming it, devouring it. Ancient, loving flesh decayed, falling in gobbets to the hard, cold world below. Invading parasites bored into the husk, chewing through muscle, and bone, tendon, and veins. The God’s body trembled.

  “Go, my children,” the God said, voice tight with agony. “Go, while there is time. I will find you. I will bring you back to the Family.”

  She tried to call out to the God, tried to demand answers, to discover the ravaging pain that crawled through the God’s body. The God reached for She with a thought, a whisper, a touch that spoke of love and pain. But a fresh deluge of torture stole black talons into the God’s flesh, and tore it away, away.

  She’s embryonic sack ruptured. Warm, familiar fluids gushed through the tear, and She spilled out into the cold. Concussions of perception hammered into her as dormant senses awakened. She tumbled across the convulsing body of the God, reaching out desperately to cling to writhing tentacles. She awakened, birthing sights and sounds impossible to comprehend.

  He’s embryonic sack teetered, swaying in the clutch of a dangle of tentacles. Within it, She could see him, terrified, his hands drawn into claws as he ripped at the lining of his sack. His mouth opened. His eyes grew wide and round. His gaze found hers, pleading, yearning, desperate.

  Pain stung She, and she turned from He. Things, tiny things, like short tentacles, only separate, gnawed at her lower limb with sharp little ridges of bone. A dozen of the creatures. A hundred. A thousand. She scrambled back across a great artery, climbing toward safety, and the terrible ravenous creatures pursued. Their fat bodies floated in the warm air, and a horrid buzzing sound issued from their mouths.

  Something cracked far, far below, in the God’s body. A massive chunk of the God’s flesh ripped away, carrying a million squirming terrors with it as it fell toward the barren land below. Hundreds of She’s siblings tumbled to their deaths. She ached for them. She heard the God’s wordless scream.

  She heard another scream and turned to watch as He’s embryonic sack tore loose from its moorings. He scrambled within his sack, but could not free himself. The casing fell to the sloping floor of the God, rolled across flesh, and teetered on the ragged edge of a massive tear.

  Below, a canyon yawned, jagged spears of rock looming large and sharp. Stones tore at the God’s body, ripping into it. Blood and fluid spumed, a hot shower. Landskin lay in sparse patches across the barren rocks.

  She heard more screams, hundreds of them. She looked, and high overhead were more embryonic sacks, trapping more of her brothers and sisters. The bloated, wiggl
ing parasites swarmed over the sacks, boring into them, devouring the God’s Children as they writhed in their casings.

  He! She scrambled over a ruptured artery, sliding through the bloated bodies of the invading parasites. She reached out, tangling her hand within the cords that dangled from the top of He’s sack. The God’s body lurched as another spar of rock pierced it and tore away a great chunk of flesh. He’s sack slid toward the opening. He swam to the top of the sack, scraping at the tough interior, unable to pierce it. His mouth opened in a soundless scream.

  The cords slipped through She’s fingers, and He’s sack vanished, swallowed by clouds of dust, debris, and blood that showered down onto the land from the God’s body. She screamed, reaching into the gap, desperate to join He.

  The God’s flesh lurched again, and She flew across the hollow.

  The floor beneath her evaporated, and She fell, tumbling, toward the land far below. She screamed, crying out for He, desperate for him. But only the agonizing death-screams of the God’s flesh answered her.

  Chapter 1

  Rian held an unbroken glow-rod in his left hand, a sporelance in his right, and pressed his middle hand against the bole of a seeping tree to keep balanced. He considered cracking the thin, vegetable skin of the glow-rod and shedding its light on the shadowed gully. But the sun still perched, red and swollen, on the jagged rim of the defile, and the phosphorescent glow within the bulbous head of the rod would not last long. Best to conserve it. He felt the tree’s sap begin to solidify around his wrist and wiggled his fingers to prevent the seep from gluing him to the tree. Through a gap in the dense screen of saw-edged leaves he could see down into the rain-washed gully to the mangled remains of the downed ool, spread for miles over the rough rock and the landskin. Rian took in the steaming heaps of torn, mottled flesh, thick with twitching tentacles, through the remaining pockets of sunlight. The ool’s flesh, the color of decay, swam with boreworms; the buzzing annelids ravenously chewing, gnawing.

  Here the ool had first fallen to earth, dragging its immense body across spears of rock, sloughing away flesh like the skin of a fruit. Mounds of what looked like chewed tissue dripped down the gully walls. Hapless bodies, twisted and torn in death, lay where they had fallen from the sky as the ool’s belly ripped apart. The bodies, whom Rian recognized as Bhajong, lay lifeless in pools of their own blood and the ool’s fluids.

  The bulk of the ool lie beyond the rim of the gully, doubtless spread over miles and miles of terrain. Even now Rian’s comrades would be swarming over the remains of the ool, coldly dispatching the Bhajong parasites that infested its bowels. The sounds of the boreworm swarms that had brought the airborne leviathan down to earth echoed through canyons and battered plinths of naked stone.

  A stranger lay prone on the tumbled rocks. Different than the Bhajong, Rian’s enemies, and seemingly whole. Rian blinked his eyes clear and stared, waiting for the stranger to move. When he did not, after a hundred heartbeats, Rian took a cautious step forward. He pushed aside the thorny branch, careful to keep the cutting leaves from his skin.

  Beyond the leafy bower the hillside had crumbled, leaving only a narrow, twisting path strewn with boulders. Rian crept from boulder to boulder, avoiding writhing clumps of boreworms in their ravenous feast on the ool’s flesh, and edged closer to the stranger. A trio of Bhajong corpses, clumped like fruit on a vine, sprawled in the shade of a pillar of crumbling stone. Others were spread across the hillside, a host of the dead. Rian smiled in satisfaction. These Bhajong would raid no more Gagash settlements, would never again descend through the ool’s feeder tentacles and carry death and destruction to Rian’s people.

  The ool, crawling with boreworms, had loosed its bowels over the gully. The marks of its passage scored the land. And the stench of acid filled the air. The gully must have been directly in the path of its flight from the devouring boreworms released by the Gagash Enclave. Not a single leaf had survived its passage; even dying, the ool consumed the land below them. Raw wounds in the landskin leaked ichor. The boulders and the walls of unskinned rock bore the scars and abrasions of the ool’s tentacle-spurs: long, deep gashes of exposed stone, boulders ripped up from the landskin and tossed, crumbling, against the ravine walls. Crumbling pillars of stone were festooned with the membraneous flesh of the ool’s bladders. The explosion of those bladders when pierced by the stones had spread debris in a wide swath.

  The stranger should not have been there. Could not be there. Not whole, not fleshed. Not at all. Naked, defenseless, the creature could not have lived through an ool-passage. By the Father, it was impossible.

  Rian frowned, his browridge descending to shadow his deep-set eyes. He licked his lips, glancing toward the sky. He sniffed, smelling the corrosive spoor of the ool. But the spoor faded quickly, becoming nothing more than background scent. The twilight sky was unbroken, cerulean blue.

  He drew closer, scuttling on hands and knees, careful not to shower pebbles and raw stone down into the gully. At a distance of no more than fifty feet he paused behind a boulder shaped vaguely like a spear. It thrust into the belly of the sky. He peered around the side of the boulder, staring at the stranger.

  Two arms. Two legs. That alone was not terribly unusual. The creature’s symmetry set him apart from the Gagash. He almost looked Bhajong. But the Bhajong were short and frail, pale of skin and hair. And they wore clothing, of a sort. This creature was tall, much taller than a Bhajong. He had dark red, almost blood-colored, hair. And he was nude.

  Rian remained silent, listening to the sounds of the devastation. He heard only the wind, the flapping of bloodstained garments, and the buzzing hum of the hundreds of boreworm swarms. None of the Bhajong moved. If any of the raiders had survived, they were far from here.

  For another hundred heartbeats Rian watched the stranger for signs of life. He could see the rhythmic rise and fall of the creature’s hairless chest, the telltale twitching of long, tapered fingers on clean hands.

  Firming his grips on his lance and glow-rod, Rian drew his dagger. He made a deliberate noise, sending a small avalanche of pebbles skittering down the landskin and onto the gully floor. He watched. The stranger did not move, made no sign that he had heard.

  The sky continued to darken. He knew he should rendezvous with the others of his salvage party, communicate his discovery. But he cracked the glow-rod against the boulder instead. He shielded his eyes as the bulb on its end flared into brilliance. After a moment it faded to a quiet glow, and Rian looked at the stranger again. Still he did not move.

  Rian rose from his crouch and approached the stranger. Standing over him, he could see other differences, differences that made him neither Gagash nor Bhajong. Differences that made the skin on the back of Rian’s neck prickle, standing the spines on the back of his head on end.

  The creature lay curled up like a newborn in the center of a gelid pool of purplish slime. His limbs flowed long, straight and unknotted. Beyond the thick shock of crimson hair, his body seemed almost waxy-smooth. His eyes beneath a high forehead were closed, long-lashed. He had narrow cheekbones and full lips, and a hairless chin, his white skin, sunned to a slight pink. Odd.

  Rian knelt beside the stranger and reached out his hand. Possessed of a sudden loathing he snatched it back before contact.

  “Blessings of the Father, what are you?” he whispered. He stretched out his hand again, determined.

  The creature’s eyelids snapped open, revealing eyes that mirrored the twilight sky. The pupils contracted, focusing on Rian.

  Rian staggered back, scuttling away from the figure. He dropped the glow-rod onto the pebbled landskin and brought up his lance and dagger. The chemicals in the glow-rod bubbled within the thin vegetable skin, their light flaring in agitation. With his free hand he jerked another dagger from the belt around his thick waist.

  The stranger uncurled and rose with fluid grace to his feet, standing straight, tall. His arms hung, relaxed, at his sides.

  Rian bounced to his fee
t and faced the stranger. He kept the sporelance aimed at the center of the stranger’s chest. A quick squeeze was all it would take to send a gout of spores into that soft body, assuming this creature’s vulnerabilities lay in the same cavities.

  The stranger cocked his head as if listening to an uncertain sound. Ignoring Rian and the poised lance, his gaze shot skyward, panning from side to side, searching. Expressionless, he lowered his eyes and raised one hand, staring at his palm.

  Rian jabbed toward the creature. The stranger seemed oblivious to the action, continuing to stare at his palm. “You! What are you? Are you Bhajong?”

  The stranger took note of the lance at last. He reached out and touched its acid-etched point, though lightly enough that the thin membrane did not burst and shower him with the deadly spores. Rian remained still, watching the creature’s actions. He jerked his hand back from the lancepoint, staring in seeming fascination at the droplets of red that oozed from pierced skin.

  “Hurts, doesn’t it? Answer my questions, or by the Father, it’ll hurt much worse,” Rian said. He demonstrated his threat, jabbing toward the stranger’s midriff. “Who are you? What are you?” He frowned. “Did you come from the ool?”

  “H-hurts,” the man muttered. He held his bloody fingertips toward Rian. “Hurts.”

  “So. You can talk?” Rian relaxed his stance. There was no threat in this man. “Where did you come from? How did you escape the ool? It just passed here. It should have gotten you.”

  The stranger said nothing. His hands dropped to his sides and he stared, expressionless, into the sky.

  He’s daft, thought Rian. Brain-dead. Either that, or moronic. Rian sighed, wondering what to do with the stranger. The most sensible course would be to kill him, here and now, and be done with it. He pulled back the sporelance, preparing for the deadly blow . . . and hesitated.

  The stranger turned and stared into the sky, his eyes tracking the path that the ool had taken in its agonized descent from the skies. The stranger stared at the gobbets of ool-flesh that littered the valley, an almost wistful look on his face.