Here the late summer’s heat filtered through the leaves to drip in an almost palpable golden broth. Too late I wondered if perhaps I should have worn my Aide’s shift-stained and ugly, but woven of lighter cloth. But pride and my determination to confront Roland at the Masque and regain standing among my people had made me choose my own clothes—which quickly grew damp and weighted from the heat. My heavy braid burned against my neck. I winced and shrugged it from shoulder to shoulder, until it snagged on a bramble hedge. I tugged it loose and tucked it into my collar. Almost immediately I snared my sleeve upon the same briars. I pulled the thorns free, careful not to tear my brocade; another step and I was trapped on more. Neither were my boots fit for this sort of travel. The marshy ground soaked the felt soles until with each step I thought I sank to my ankles in muck. But I scrambled on trying to keep a spur of grief and indignation at my heel.
The late hour held little chance of my meeting anyone else, although there was much traffic among the Museums that bordered this part of the forest. For a short distance well-trodden paths wound between great oaks and with apples already burdened with fruit: west to the Historian south to the Weavers and Aviators and Botanists who trafficked with the Ascendants. To the northwest stretched a broken stone road leading to the Zoological Garden, perhaps an hour’s walk from here.
I followed this path. I hoped it would bring me to the Tiger Creek, which I could then follow to where it poured into the Rocreek not far from High Brazil. Myrtle and kudzu choked the path; slender apple and cherry saplings sprang from the ferns, heralding new wild orchards. With only a few hours of daylight remaining I walked determinedly, fending off tree limbs and straggling vines as I tried to keep the Obelisk in sight.
I went slowly, swiping at trailing vines and strands of spiderweb heavy with pollen and the striped husks of butterflies. Other trails intersected mine. These seemed to lead nowhere, and were probably known only to the lazars who traveled them on their midnight raids and forays. Certainly only lazars or the great hunting beasts—wolves and wild dogs, cat-a-mountains and eyra and the dog-faced lardmen who figured so prominently in Doctor Foster’s most gruesome stories—could slip down those strangled green tunnels.
The ground beneath my foot suddenly shuddered. A strangled shriek made me yelp and jump back, terrified. In the center of the path squatted a couvado toad, fat and round and misshapen as a rotted pumpkin. As I stared it grinned fatuously at me. Then its huge mouth gaped open and, with a gurgling belch, it turned itself inside out, exposing its pulsing heart and vivid entrails.
I covered my mouth with both hands and quickly turned away. Blindly I chose another path that seemed to veer toward the setting sun. I staggered down this, stumbling madly through honeysuckle thickets and rank orchards.
2. The light of imagination is quenched in . the darkness of a history so ancient.
THE FARTHER IN I went, the less clearly marked was the trail. Eventually I found myself in a tiny clearing where a dozen breaks in the underbrush might have been paths leading deeper into the forest. I chose one because pale blue veronica carpeted the earth there. As my feel crushed the soft blue mat of flowers their blossoms wept sweet tears. I hesitated, breathing their fragrance and recalling the name Doctor Foster had taught us for these tiny blooms: lose-all-care. They had a haunting scent, redolent of spring rain and the promise of twilight. But when I started to move again I found that I had forgotten which way I wanted to go. I turned, and sighted a patch of narcissus nodding in the bole of a dead tree. I shook my head trying to recall which path was mine. Surely I wanted to follow the sun? This way, then, where the light poured through a gap in the trees …
But a moment later I knelt among the white narcissus …
I did not wonder how they came to bloom there in early Autime, which were harbingers of spring; nor how the faintest of breezes seemed to make them whisper and sigh like frightened children, so that I crooned comforting words to them. I only knew they were the most lovely flowers I had ever seen, and I did not want to leave them.
And I might have remained there until full dark brought my doom, had not a fire ant climbed and stung my wrist. Its bite seared through my entire hand. I gasped, killing the ant with an ungrateful swat. Then rubbing my eyes I stumbled back to my feet.
Ruddy light now filtered through the leaves. I had long since lost sight of the Obelisk, and hours might have passed since I first entered the woods. My flesh crawled as I recalled Doctor Foster’s tales of the evil flowers spawned by the rains of roses: of Philantha Persia’s abduction by lazars when she went to hear daffodils laughing by the river; of Botanists lured to their deaths in the Rocreek by sighing lyacinths with the eyes of women; of almond-scented lilies whose fragrance alone brought madness and death. Such stories I had always dismissed; yet here I was now, bewitched by a patch of narcissus! I moved to brush the leaves from my hair, and as I did so saw that a slender green shoot had wrapped itself around my sagittal as I lay dreaming. I cried out and yanked the vine from my wrist, heedless of the cries of the flowers I trampled, I turned and ran.
I forced myself onward, biting my hand to keep from falling prey to the narcotic fragrance that seemed to rise at my every step. But I could not cause myself enough pain to keep fully awake. Every few minutes I would pause, and only when my head nodded against my chest would I start awake and then stumble on. The ruddy light deepened to violet. A great thrashing of wings and twittering signaled that birds were coming to roost above me. Twigs and leaves and moths fluttered about my head as they made their nests for the night. I paused to brush the leaves from my hair. When I began to walk again it was with heavy steps, as though the earth clung to my boots, reluctant to let me pass. I glanced down, then yelled in disgust.
A silvery track stretched before me. Each step I took wrought me in contact with this. My feet were sticky with some gleaming stuff. A few paces ahead humped a slug as thick and long as my arm, its pearly eyestalks waving as it oozed forward with a sound like lewd kissing. At the sight of that monstrous thing all hope left me. Blinking away ears, I floundered from the path and threw myself against a twisted apple tree, hugging it in despair. I glanced down at the sagittal, which seemed to hold my last promise of ease.
“Franca,” I choked, and turned so that my back rested against the tree’s broad bole. Then I opened my tunic and held my fist above my chest, willing the sagittal to strike But it was satiated by Franca’s death, or my desire was not strong enough to wake it. It remained a lifeless ornament and heavy, cold as bronze. I struck myself with it, bruising my ribs; yelled hoarse nonsense like one gone berserk until I woke the little golden finches and they fled the apple’s’ boughs crying peevishly. And still my sagittal slumbered. It would not strike its host.
Finally I gave up and sprawled at the foot of the apple tree to wait for death. It would come quickly enough, here I need only sleep until the flowers took me. Or lazars, or aardmen. I glared at the faithless sagittal, then drew it closer to my face. The translucent shell now gleamed like an amethyst held up to a candle flame. I could even see the silhouette of the propodium curled inside, a dark finger gloved in light. I stared at it numbly.
Moths began to hover in the twilight, drawn to the sagittal’s dim glow. They drifted before my face like falling blossoms, and it seemed that the beating of their wings somewhat cooled the heavy night air. The night-coils woke as well. The tree I leaned against rustled as the flowering vines stirred, their scent a sweet syrup. I tried to fight this new languor, which felt as if a thicker, slower blood dripped into my veins. But it was hopeless. Within minutes I was yawning, and finally rested my head upon soft ferns.