Winterlong (19 page)

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.

I dreamed fitfully: of Franca, her pale face framed by falcon’s eyes; of Roland panting above me, his hands enchained with light. Once I started awake to see that dozens of white moths had settled upon my chest and face. Their wings opened and shut as they fed upon the nectar that dripped from the night-coils, their tongues unfurling in black threads. I brushed them off, but they only wafted a few inches above me before lighting onto my legs again. With a sigh I fell back to the ground.

Then I must have dreamed; but a dream such as I never had before, a dream that seemed to show me the dreams of all things that had been, and died; and then all the dreams of dreams; and last of all those of Death himself dreaming of all that was to be—

Of archosaurs rising from their adamant beds to pluck planets from the void; of rivers boiling, and humming trees, and beasts that wept like men; of metal ships that ravished the sun into a thousand stars, and a flaming cathedral rising from the blackened earth; of myriad entombed figures released from their stony beds, and a demonic girl whose eyes burned in a face that mirrored my own; of dying children whose voices rang out like sweet bells, and a cadaver who spoke sagely with Death.

Of all of these; and untold others—myself and Roland and Miramar, and Fancy and Francesca and Doctor Foster, too—all of us, linked in a ronde set to the sound of hollow pipes booming as we swept across the sky.

And then I woke: to a kiss cold as Franca’s, so that I tried to will the feathery crush of bracken beneath me into an unyielding marble floor. But the ferns crackled as I groaned and stirred; and the eyes that met mine were not hers.

“Wake, Raphael,” a voice said.

I breathed in sharply, shaking the last drunken moths from me. Night had fallen. In the deep blue sky that showed through breaks in the trees I glimpsed a silver spar of moon and many stars. I stumbled to my feet, bracing myself against the apple tree as I tried to remember where I was and what dream had brought me there.

“We are waking now,” someone whispered. I rubbed the nectar from my eyes, blinking as I tried to see who spoke to me from the shadows. A flash of terror warned me of lazars; but a lazar would not know my name.

And a lazar would not be so beautiful.

“Who are you?” I stammered.

He dropped from a tree a few paces from me. A glimmer of light hung about him, as though the frail moonlight sought him here gladly. He smiled: a boy a little younger than myself; the most beautiful boy I had ever seen.

“Raphael,” he replied. His voice was honeyed, not yet broken, but mocking as no child’s voice should be. That, more than his unearthly beauty, frightened me. “You know me.”

For an instant my thoughts careened through all those I had loved, vainly seeking his among pillowed faces in Saint-Alaban, Persia, High Brazil, my own House. But no Paphian would crop his golden curls thus about that white forehead; no Paphian ever had skin so fine that the moonlight seemed to melt into it to glow from within eyes the color of moon lilies.

“No,” I said. “I do not know you. I would never have forgotten you.”

“Already you have forgotten me,” he said. Suddenly it seemed that his face altered. For an instant Franca’s features passed over his own: splotches of leaves and mold upon his face the quick reflection of bruises that had blurred her cheeks and breast. I gasped and stepped toward her.

But it was not Franca. Her features rippled and were gone. Instead I found myself reaching for a bloated corpse propped against the apple tree, its hollow eyes wormed with foxfire, its shattered jaw hanging limply upon a neck ulcerated by the rotted remains of a hempen rope. I cried out: and then he stood there once more, still and white and lovely in the fitful moonlight.

“I do know you,” I whispered. I shivered uncontrollably. “The Hanged Boy …”

He nodded. “That is a name,” he said after a long moment. “You may call me by another.” Smiling, he crossed his arms upon his pale hairless chest.

“Lord …” I began.

“No,” he murmured. I could almost imagine that the unblinking green eyes regarded me with pity. He stepped toward me. I was shaking now and crouched on all fours like a dog, my hands kneading the earth frantically as I tried to steady myself.

“Please go.” I shut my eyes. “Please, please go …”

“No, Raphael,” he repeated. “We are waking now …”

He reached for me with a hand that gleamed with a hard pure light, a hand white and cold as bone. His touch evoked the frigid impression of the kiss that had awakened me. And then I knew that I had not really awakened earlier; that in my seventeen years I had never been awake. Only now; because only he could wake me. I felt as though those fingers bored into my skull, probing the soft center of my brain where sleeping thoughts trembled for release. I would have cried aloud, but that cold clenched my jaws shut, gripped my neck in an unyielding vise, froze my eyes so that I stared up at him and trembled at the sight.

Because such beauty as his shrieked for worship. Those luminous green eyes, his face and body radiantly white, that exquisite form … I was stirred by desire such as I had never known, save when I had seen the lazar’s corpse so long ago, and Franca’s that afternoon. And that terrified me more than all else: because I knew that such beauty could not be evil, any more than mine could be; that such beauty would seek and find worship surely as a flower seeks sunlight and rain.

But even as his beauty roused me I saw the livid horror seething within his eyes, the corruption and utter madness of extinction that he expelled as unconsciously as I breathed air. And as I had seen within Franca’s broken face a strange and compelling beauty, I knew that from now on I would glimpse within whatever was lovely the foul thing it would become.

And then I did scream, and begged him to take back that knowledge and vision, the awful counterpoint to my soaring dream.

“No,” he whispered. His cold mouth pressed against mine. “You must learn: it is all one, Raphael. It is all one …”

At these words I fainted. When I woke he was gone.

I thrashed to wakefulness, tangling my fingers in the grass. The moon had scarcely moved across the sky. From the night-coils’ tongues still dripped a slow sweet rain. For a moment I thought it might have been a nightmare brought on by those poisonous blossoms, or the ghastly white moths they fed.

Then I saw the jackal.

It crouched a few paces from me, beneath that same tree whence
he
had dropped a short while ago. Like a wild dog, slender, with a long muzzle and pointed ears; but with hair the color of frost, milky white except where a darker stripe crossed its back from tail to head. Escaped from the Zoologists, maybe—they bred them for hunting—although I had never seen a white jackal before.

Perhaps I had grown brash in the face of all the terrors of this accursed place. Because I was not afraid of it.

“Go on!” I yelled, shying a stone at its muzzle. The jackal darted to one side. I would have thrown myself upon it and strangled it, I was that maddened. I grabbed the overhanging limb of a tree and glared. It did not run away. It sank back upon its haunches again, head cocked to one side, regarding me with an alarmingly prescient gaze. I snatched up another stone but it slipped into the shadows to reappear in a moment—so close that I dropped my weapon and tripped in my haste to get away from it.

As I fell, something snaked about my ankle, something soft yet unyielding. I tried to scramble to my feet and collapsed, my elbows sinking into the loamy earth. When I glanced back I saw that a vine thick as my wrist had crept from the tree and encircled my ankle. It was pulling me backward, as if a hidden green winch cranked me toward the tree. Other vines disentangled themselves and looped to the earth, their pale trumpets opening and closing as if scenting something besides their own sickly fragrance. As the vines humped toward me I saw that the small and ineffectual green thorns protecting each bloom had turned bright red, as an anole’s throat blossoms when it sights a foe. They whistled softly as the vines flailed through the air. I rolled onto my back, striking at one as it whipped past my face. Like a serpent it drew back, the wind hissing through the hollow thorns. Other vines lashed about my legs. The trumpet-shaped flowers swelled and disgorged a heavy fluid onto my legs, thick as honey and with a cloying scent. Where it seeped through the fabric of my trousers I felt my legs grow numb.

The first vine tightened about my foot. I felt a prickling where another, smaller loop of vegetation attached itself. As I watched helplessly the vine lashed against my leg, until one or another of the tiny thorns pierced my skin. There was little pain, but I saw a trickle of blood seep from my boot.

That same odd fearlessness stayed with me in these moments. I dug my elbows into the soft earth and pushed myself up, watching as my own blood welled into the vines. They pulsed slightly, the pale jade flesh darkening to evergreen where they fed. The narcotic effect of the thorns kept me from pain. No doubt it dulled my senses as well. When I saw the jackal rushing to nip at my feet my first thought was to kick it away from me, and I twitched my legs uselessly. I watched in mute amazement as, snarling, it darted between the thrashing vines, tearing at them with its fangs and slipping between them like quicksilver. The thorns slid through its silvery fur like the teeth of a comb, catching nothing but air. The dog leaped and snapped a thick vine in two. The pieces fell, squirming, and I realized this was the vine that had held me fast. I yanked myself free from the myriad tendrils clinging to my tunic and rolled away. The jackal spun about and followed me through the writhing vines.

In the darkness one path shone brighter than the others, moonlit. I stumbled toward it only to find the jackal blocking my way. I turned and ducked under a tangle of ivy; the jackal was there in front of me.

“Go
on!”
I yelled, pulling a rotted branch from a tree and brandishing it. The animal sat back and cocked its’ head. Behind us the night-coils thrashed and hissed harmlessly, out of reach. “Damn you,” I swore.

I was almost as angry with myself as I was fearful of the animal, because hadn’t it just saved me? Jackals were wild dogs, and dogs were rumored to be friendly toward humans sometimes. Miramar had often told of how as a child he had tamed a wild dog that could do tricks. I had seen him weep to recall it. Doctor Foster verified that they had an ancient and noble history before the concatenations that had resulted in the aardmen and other geneslaves. Miramar swore that dogs could understand human speech.

But wild dogs hunted and indiscriminately fed upon humans, as did the aardmen. I slashed the air with my stick, glancing around me for signs of other predatory plants or beasts lurking in the moonlit trees. The jackal cocked its head, following me with its slanted eyes. It did not appear hungry. When I took a step forward it rose and followed, tail twitching.

“What do you want?” I stopped and faced it head-on. A small glade tufted with pale myrtle reflected the starry break in the trees above us. The jackal halted, then threw back its head and cried.

Not the barking or howling I had so often heard in the distance, but a mournful yodeling that had the varied cadence and intonation of speech. Behind us the night-coils grew still and the wind died. The jackal alone cried out, as if calling to the very stars. At that sound the hair on my arms and neck stood up. My dream rushed back upon me: the dream of the Hanged Boy, whom the Saint-Alabans call the Gaping One.