Tainted Garden Read online

  “I can’t go any further, or I’ll get stuck,” Lhedri said, closer now.

  She tried to turn and look behind, but the vessel walls clung close to her skin. Her shoulders had wedged tight. She could not move, could not crawl forward, nor retreat. She wiggled, threw her slight weight from side to side. She dug her fingers deep into the spongy flesh, clawing out chunks of dripping tissue. She tried to draw up her legs, create a bulge, a space, within the vessel. But the thick flesh absorbed her most powerful efforts without effect.

  She squeezed her eyes tight against the tears that threatened to spill.

  “Lady Dersi?” Lhedri called. “Is that you?”

  “What do you see?” the other asked.

  “Something’s in here. I can’t tell what. It’s too dark, and there’s a curve in the vessel. But it’s something foreign.”

  “Is it her?”

  “Lady Dersi! If it’s you, please answer me. Are you hurt?” She could hear the panic in his voice, the concern. She almost answered him. She could trust him, certainly. But not to defy the will of the Veil Lords.

  Vibrations, miniscule twitches of the ool’s nervous system, shook the capillary. Fluid welled up in the gouges Dersi had torn in the floor of the vessel. It began to congeal, sucking at her fingers. The gaping holes overflowed. Ichor pooled beneath Dersi’s chin. She felt the numbing, cool constriction of hardening liquid. She gasped air and she dug at the walls of the capillary.

  “It must not be her. Whatever it is, it’s lodged tight,” Lhedri said after a moment.

  “Come on. If it’s not her the ool will take care of it sooner or later.”

  “Yes, you’re right. The others have probably found her by now anyway. No doubt she was just wandering, too excited to sleep.”

  “Meloni didn’t seem to think so.”

  “I wouldn’t call what Meloni does thinking,” Lhedri said, his voice thick and acidic.

  The other man chuckled. “Talk like that’ll get you rendered.”

  “Only if one of the Lordlings overhears.”

  Dersi heard the shuffling sounds of their slow withdrawal. They grunted and slid through the tight capillary, reversing themselves.

  “No,” she whispered. The ichor pool around her chin deepened. Trickles of liquid seeped into her mouth, flooded beneath her tongue. She could not move her hands, could not shake free her head. Hardening ichor crawled up her cheeks. She felt its numbing cold seeping around her shoulders, her torso, her legs. She could not feel her feet.

  “Did you hear something?” Lhedri asked.

  “No. Did you?”

  “H-help,” Dersi coughed. She spit gelatinous ichor from her mouth. Long, trailing strands of fluid dripped down from the roof of the vessel, spilling onto her face. It covered one eye, locking it shut. She blinked the other rapidly to keep it clear.

  “Help me!” she screamed. Drool filled with chunks of congealed ool tissue spilled from her mouth, running down her chin.

  “Lady Dersi!” Lhedri said.

  “It is her!”

  “Lady Dersi, are you injured?”

  She heard them creeping toward her through the vessel once more. And then ooze flowed over her ears and she heard only the pounding of the blood in her head, screaming her panic.

  Veil Lord Huldru opened himself to his expanded senses. Perceptions flowed inward, pulled from a thousand different receptors. He felt the tread of Bhajong feet on his skin, felt the whispery touches of their feeble hands on countless cilia. He heard their conversations, their moans of pleasure or pain. They cried out in the rendering vats as digestion ate away at their flesh. They crooned as he and those linked in communion sent them sweet, passionate, clouded dreams. He smelled them, smelled the putrid stink of their sweat as it dripped to his flesh. He scented their waste as it fouled his skin. He watched them copulate, spawning more parasites to continue the infestation. He watched them laugh and love and work, culling rot from his body. He tasted them with a thousand, million tongues.

  And he experienced them in a hundred other ways, drank them with senses undreamed of by paltry human minds.

  Other Veil Lords drank of his perceptions and fed him theirs. The communion was complete. He knew what they knew. They thought as he thought. He was aware of everything.

  He experienced Meloni as the lordling approached, knew his fear, his lusts, his supple pleasures. His failure.

  He opened his maw and allowed Meloni entrance. He raised lubricated lids in his trunk, watching the human walk with caution across Huldru’s brittle skin. Meloni stepped over pumping arteries and knelt before Huldru, head bowed, awed by the majesty of the Veil Lord.

  “Where is she?”

  Meloni shook his head. “We’ve not yet found her, Veil Lord. She was not in her chambers. I’ve taken her maid for winnowing. I’ll find her. She cannot have gone far. She’s likely wandering the corridors, anxious.”

  Huldru rattled his sensory tentacles in agitation. He focused on the communion. Can any of you sense her?

  A hundred voices answered immediately. No. She is not sensed.

  She came to see me. Merisi. I consoled her. We shared.

  Yes. As did I. She hesitated, replied Huldru.

  “She has fled, Meloni. You will find her. Find her, or your own veiling will be refused.”

  Meloni shuddered, and Huldru felt the Bhajong’s flaring panic.

  “I will find her, Veil Lord. She can’t stay hidden for long.”

  Intensity arose within the communion. A million sensory tentacles rattled and shook. A hundred Veil Lords communed at once.

  What is it? Huldru communed once more, drinking perception.

  The ool. It moves against our wishes. Dozens of Veil Lords echoed the statement.

  Impossible!

  It does! It does! I cannot control it!

  I sense agitation, alarm. Long pause. Thought!

  Impossible!

  Huldru threw wide his senses, encompassing the outer skin of the ool. He felt the tug of the winds, the brush of the rains. The ool shot across the sky, its feeding tentacles retracted for greater speed. From the horizon, other ool approached, converging.

  Huldru touched the ool’s primitive mind-cluster, probing. He was quickly shoved aside, cast into a sensory storm that drowned him. The other Veil Lords cried out, communing.

  My children! The powerful thought pounded into Huldru, a scream borne of a mind far more vast than even that of a Veil Lord. And then . . . communion died.

  Chapter 11

  Rian slept and, sleeping, dreamed. He dreamed the old dream of the steady, hateful companion. He tried to force himself awake, but could not. As always, he began to wonder which was the dream world and which was reality. Was reality an endless service to a hopeless, thankless cause, a continual striving for that which all but the oldest and most foolish realized would never be attained? No amount of industry or unity of purpose, no matter how rigorously enforced by the Father’s intercessors, could bring about the impossible. Myths did not become reality. Legends had no power to become tangible. To think, to believe, otherwise was simple folly.

  Or could this be reality, this the true shape of things, this innocence, the naive world he had inhabited before awakening to the brutalities of existence, of life? He wished it so, prayed it so, even as he knew it was not. He sank himself fully into the dream, longing and loathing and wishing never to awaken, or to awaken now, and have done with the tantalizing, cruel dream forever.

  He held his mother’s hand, the sharp talons of her fingers always gentle on his skin, ticklish where they breezed across his palm or his wrist. Never had that hand struck him in anger, though he had seen her roused twice before. Backed by the tightly packed muscles of her shoulders and upper arms, her clawed hands could crush a man, pummel through the toughest armor.

  He held her hand now, rubbed his face across her rough, abrasive skin, and felt the love bleeding through and into him. She cupped him in her lap, the bony plate that sheathed her bosom
warm and hard and smelling only of her. He closed his eyes, sinking into her, sinking into the dream.

  No! he begged. Please, end here. Let it end here, now.

  But the dream swept him onward, unstoppable in its cruelty.

  Bliss was an illusion. His mother died, victim of her own accelerated, uncontrollable bone-growth. In the end, bone shrouded her entire body. The surgeons’ efforts to cull back the growths extended her life, by days, weeks, or months. In the end the growth came too quickly, and she died in her sleep, suffocated as the bone extended inward, crushed by its immense weight. Rian found her silent and cold on her bed, and wept unashamedly by her side until the keepers came to take him away to the orphanage.

  Rian.

  The orphanage had spelled the end of his illusions, all of them. An end to the innocence of childhood, and an awakening to the reality of the brutal, monstrous world in which he lived.

  Rian.

  The dream shattered, and Rian jerked upright, banging his head on the bunk above. His roommate, Blaen, mumbled in his sleep. Blaen rolled over, the joints of the bunk protesting with a faint squeal. Rian cursed under his breath and rubbed his head, feeling a rising lump.

  “Rian.” The voice was hardly more than a whisper, almost lost in the sounds of Blaen’s renewed snoring. With mere slits for nostrils and a distorted palate, snoring was an unavoidable part of Blaen’s sleeping.

  Faint light from the corridor outside their room spilled into the darkness through the open door, falling like a bar across Rian’s covered legs. Something moved outside their room, something stealthy, furtive. Gray shadows mingled in the bar of light.

  “Rian.” Quiet, soft.

  Blaen’s snoring rose in volume. Rian swung his legs out of bed and drew on his tunic, which he had tossed at the foot of the bunk. His belt he wrapped around his waist, touching each of the sheathed daggers, taking comfort in their cold weight. He slipped his feet into his unlaced boots.

  “Rian. Come.”

  The soft voice pulled him. He crept toward the door, hearing small feet pattering away on the floor tiles. A dark blotch ducked around a corner as he jerked open the door and jumped out into the hall. The wall panels buzzed, and the faint scent of antiseptic cleaners rose from the shining floors. The quiet sounds of retreating footsteps disturbed the silence.

  “Hello? Who’s there?”

  “Rian, come.” It came from around the bend in the corridor, low and whispery. A small hand emerged, beckoning.

  “Who are you? What do you want?” Rian rushed toward the intersection. Childlike laugher echoed, followed by the slap of naked feet on the metal floor. Rian’s boots pounded, leaving scuffmarks on the well-manicured metal tiles. A dark shape, low to the floor and quick, vanished around another corner, less than a hundred feet ahead of him. The laughter followed after it.

  Something about the shape . . . Something familiar. Rian picked up his pace, running now, and entered a high-ceilinged concourse with broad stairs both ascending and descending. A few pedestrians milled around, conversing in low tones. They stared at Rian as he entered, puzzled expressions on their faces. A few, noting his weapons belt and the touch of his hand on his daggers’ hilts, put hands to their own weapons.

  “Did you see someone? Did someone just run through here?” he demanded, approaching a slope-shouldered man who dragged a flat-bladed tail behind him. The man shrugged, backing away a pace from Rian.

  “Are you all right?” a woman asked, her voice a rattling hiss. She put out a tentacle to steady Rian, who shook it off and took a step back.

  “I’m fine. There was . . . There was someone. I woke up, and there was someone.” He shook his head, frowning. What had he heard? What had he seen?

  The tentacled woman smiled, an odd parting of split lips. “It must have been a dream, then.”

  He shook his head. “No. Not a dream. There was . . . a little girl? A dwarf? Something. At my doorway, calling me.”

  She shrugged, her tentacles rippling like snakes with the motion of her shoulders. She eyed him strangely and moved away, whispering to her companion.

  “Rian, this way.” The soft voice slid through the commotion unimpeded, snatching at his attention. He jerked toward the descending stairway, saw a dark blotch disappear downward. Rian wasted no time, shoving through the crowd toward the stairs. A few voices rose in alarm or anger at his rough progress. He ignored them, quickening his pace and leaping down the stairs to the first landing. The steps switched back, and again he caught a tentative, tantalizing glimpse of a dark shape below him, moving rapidly.

  He followed. The lure stayed just beyond his view, allowing only fleeting glimpses, as he wound down at least a dozen flights of steps toward the depths of the Enclave. Rian found himself in a branching of ways when he reached a little-used level with hallways of smooth, aged metal and light panels that flickered and hummed. The dim corridors stalked off in four different directions. Again the childlike laughter came to him, mocking.

  “You’re getting waaarrrmmm-er, Rian. This way, hurry, hurry. Don’t be late!”

  “Who are you! What do you want!” Rian stopped where he was, glaring into the corridors ahead. The lights flickered, casting distorted shadows. What was he doing? Chasing shadows? He growled deep in his throat and drew one of his daggers.

  The lights behind him flickered and winked out, casting him in darkness. Ahead, down the path from which the taunting voice had come, the wall panels flared into brilliance, washing the gleaming corridor with harsh light. He could see a hundred yards or so down the hall where it ended at a huge pressure door. The wheel in its center turned slowly as he watched, squealing from long disuse. Trapped air hissed as the door cracked open and swung inward on rusted hinges. Inky darkness welled up beyond the door.

  “This way, Rian. Come to me.” The laughter swelled, coming from all around him, out of the darkness. Softer sounds intruded, furtive movement, naked flesh on cold metal. Something clicked close to him. He turned, seeing blackness, sensing nothing. The ventilation system sighed, and warm air washed over him.

  He shivered, certain that he was not alone in the darkness. His own fear rose, sharp and rank, like spoiling meat, through his pores. Swallowing, he hefted daggers in his other hands, taking small comfort in the feel of the landskin-wrapped hilts.

  Something dry and rasping moved across the floor behind him, and Rian leaped forward, running toward the closest patch of light. The wall panels faded to darkness. He pressed onward, herded by the extinguishing lights, pushed by the furtive sounds within the darkness that always seemed too close for his comfort. A slight twitter emerged from the darkness, a chuckle that held nothing of mirth. Feral, lustful. He hurried onward, racing toward the open doorway at the end of the corridor, desperate to stay within the light.

  The mocking laughter echoed down the hallway, coming now from directly behind him. The door at the end of the hall trembled, and slowly, ponderously, began to close. Its ancient hinges squealed. A dim light kindled in the darkness beyond the portal, a beacon. Rian, panting now, rushed toward the door. His heavy boots slammed into the metal floor, booming.

  “Run, Rian, run!” Maniacal cackles reverberated through the corridor. The door swung faster, leaving only a small opening. The lights winked out and darkness closed in on him. The dry, rasping voice surrounded him.

  He reached the door as the last of the lights died. His fingers shot into the narrow gap, shoving inward as his shoulder crashed into the thick metal. He felt the impact on his spine. The door groaned open, and Rian tumbled into the room, rolling across the floor and slamming into a solid, circular table.

  With a final mocking twitter from the darkness beyond, the door slammed shut. The inner wheel spun as if worked by an invisible hand, and Rian heard stout locks engage. He scuttled back against the structure behind him, facing outward, his daggers held before him. He scanned the chamber by the dim, central light mounted on the ceiling.

  Circular and crammed with gleaming metal
structures, the room was thick with the scent of antiseptics, and something else. Ozone? Something that reminded him of the smell of impending lightning. Odd instruments, like those in the medical wing of the Enclave, hung from the ceiling, dipping down to nearly touch a series of raised, semicircular structures that rose from the floor.

  Silence reigned in the chamber. He could hear his blood surging. His pulse raced. Gone was even the harsh, mocking laughter, the taunting voice. Only the dull, monotonous hum of machinery at work and the tinkling of hundreds of muted bells broke the utter quiet.

  Rian slid to his feet and stared at his surroundings. The semicircular structures appeared to be workstations, similar to those used by the Elders. He recognized several of the devices hanging from the ceiling, having seen them numerous times in use. Others seemed oddly alien, and he could not guess their purpose.

  Along one wall were thousands of tiny drawers, each bearing a label in an unknown language, as well as a curious diagram of lines and geometric shapes. Mounted on another wall was row upon row of tiny, diamond-shaped crystals. In the center of the room, beneath a cluster of overhanging instruments, rested an oblong table with a depression in its center, and transparent walls that rose to form an almost tubelike casing. Display screens littered the tables and walls; Rian could not count the number of input keypads sprinkled across any available surface.

  He wondered if the Elders knew of this place. It seemed . . . hollow? As if it had not been used in a long, long time. None of the display screens were active. The keypads sat unlit. Though Rian could hear the hum of power supplying the equipment, it had the feel of dormancy.

  “Come into my parlor,” said the voice from all around him. Rian started, turning about in a tight circle, his eyes widening.

  “Who . . . Who are you?” Rian demanded of the unseen speaker. He kept his daggers thrust out before him as he spun in place. “What do you want?”

  The ventilators high on the walls hissed, and a discolored gas plumed into the chamber. “I have need of you, Rian. Desperate need. You present me with an opportunity. The opportunity to end this, for once and for all.”