The Last Garden

by J C Gilbert

  Darcy held his gaze steadily on Daniel, but the elves had secured his mouth tight with a length of golden cloth.

  Daniel smiled at Darcy’s lack of response. “What’s the matter, ay Darcy? Got yourself in a right mess, didn’t you?”

  “We have to do something,” said Lilly.

  “If I can get close enough I can pacify Daniel. Then we can take him through into your realm.”

  “What about Darcy?”

  “We can come back for him once we secure Daniel.”

  “OK,” said Lilly. “Let’s not mess this up like we did with Carl that time.”

  I remembered clearly the time she was referring to. We were fighting Eric and escaped briefly into the Cheathr Ark to recover. When we got back, Carl had gone. It all worked out in the end, but it definitely shook my confidence in using down wind worlds for respite.

  “Agreed,” I said.

  “So what do you need me to do?”

  I surveyed the scene in front of me. I would need to get right up next to the throne, as Daniel had not moved from the seat. There was no cover between us and the throne, and any sudden movements would likely be picked up by the watchful eyes of the elves.

  We needed a distraction.

  Ordinarily, I think of Lilly is a literal walking distraction. She just had a talent for chaos that in my experience has rarely been matched except for the actual forces of actual chaos. But if I sent her flying in, there was a chance that we would miss our opportunity to take Daniel into the Cheathr Ark.

  No, I needed her by my side.

  I couldn’t use the fire magic either. It always drained me when I used magic of any kind, and I needed all the reserves I had to use the Orb of Lyren. It was going to be hard enough to focus with this headache.

  Quite suddenly, none of that mattered.

  Darcy started growing, pulsating, transforming. I had seen him do this a couple of times before, and there was no way he would be doing this if he knew that Lilly was here. His skin started to fade to gray, similar to the elves. Every part of him seemed to grow and shrink and then grow again. The cloth around his mouth was pulled tight and then snapped.

  “What on earth is happening to Darcy?” asked Lilly.

  Her question was echoed almost exactly by Daniel.

  Laertes turned to look at his prisoner, losing his composure a little when he saw what was happening.

  “I thought you said that this boy went to a human school?” asked the elf.

  “It’s OK,” I said to Lilly. “He didn’t want you to know, but he is OK.”

  The cuts in Darcy’s back began to separate, and a host of tentacles spilled forth. Darcy grabbed for each of the elves, knocking them together and chucking them aside. He was angry, very angry.

  Laertes drew his sword.

  I remembered myself. “Come on,” I said to Lilly.

  For a moment, Lilly was transfixed by what she saw in front of her.

  “What are you?” demanded Daniel, some fear in his voice.

  It was now or never. Either Daniel was distracted enough to not notice us, or this was never going to work. I darted forward towards the boy, grabbed his hand, and seized the Orb of Lyren with my other hand. I focused hard on opening up the passage to the dimension that this orb was connected to. It was a dimension of white light and peace. It took all my strength to wrestle open that domain, to hold it open, to allow that force to flow through me.

  Daniel’s eyes were wide, and he looked at me, his face moving from anger to sorrow to content. He looked like he was about to fall asleep. I smiled through my utter exhaustion.

  “Lilly, it’s working!” I said.

  I became aware of Lilly placing a hand on my shoulder, ready to transport us into the endless sea.

  But then Daniel’s expression changed.

  At the same moment that I expected to see sleep, I saw malice. He pulled his mouth into a hideous grin and threw us backward. We fell, sprawled across the museum floor.

  “Thank you very much,” said a voice that was not Daniel’s. He stood up from his throne, and stood tall, seeming to grow a few feet in the process. His skin was rippling and changing to a deep red color. “Thank you very much, indeed.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  With a gesture of his hand, Daniel summoned the squirrel creatures. Darcy, who had left the elves sprawled about the throne room, leaped onto the map table in the center of the room and then launched himself toward Daniel.

  I bent my mind to summon the fire from its realm and quickly created a wall around myself and Lilly as the squirrel soldiers swarmed towards us. The shield was weak, due to the efforts I had expended on the Orb of Lyren.

  “I thought that thing was supposed to calm him, not make him more psychotic,” said Lilly.

  “I don’t know what happened,” I said.

  Darcy’s leap never reached his prey. Before he could attack Daniel, or the creature that had been Daniel, he was frozen in mid-air, the great arms which protruded from his back hung limply around him.

  “I like this shell,” said the demon, his voice warped and hollow. “It seems to be an interesting combination of the pleasing and the uniquely terrifying.”

  Darcy’s face contorted as he apparently tried to say something. The spell, however, kept him silent.

  My fire shield wavered, and the demonic squirrels poured in, burning themselves in the process. None of them showed the least bit of concern that they were on fire.

  “Lilly, the Cheathr Ark. Quickly”

  “But Darcy!”

  It was too late, the squirrels had seized us, holding us down so that we could do no more. My fire shield flickered and went out.

  “I have you to thank,” said the demon as he approached us, inspecting us. “Do you have any idea how hard it is to quell a soul within its own body? They are easy enough to manipulate, to suppress, but to utterly crush? Very hard, indeed.”

  “I–”

  “Come,” said the demon. “I have prepared a place for you. With a wave of his right hand, a portal opened up. It appeared to lead into utter darkness. The demon went in front, holding Darcy suspended in the air above him. Lilly and I were taken in afterward.

  Soon the portal was closed, and all was black. My heart raced as I struggled to get free, panicking in my confinement, oppressed by the darkness.

  After a time, my eyes adjusted to the low light, and I began to see shadows around me. There were many right-angled flashes of dark and darker dark. It seemed to me that this was not a natural tunnel we found ourselves in. The walls around me had a faint reddish tinge to them. I searched my mind for what that could mean, but I came up with nothing.

  The smell was the same as the museum grounds only stronger. I wondered if we had come to the demon’s homeworld. Elaine did not seem sure whether he had one or several worlds caught up in his domain. There was no way to tell for sure.

  Elaine. Where was Elaine? Trapped as we were, I could think of no other way in which we could escape. And if she didn’t show?

  Our captors, the squirrel soldiers, moved mechanically through the tunnels. Now, as before, I saw no signs of life behind those eyes, if indeed, those black sockets could be called eyes.

  Light appeared further up the tunnel, a flickering orange light that spilled over the stone walls. I could now clearly see that the walls were red with specks of ashen gray.

  As we drew closer to the light, the tunnel filled with choking ash. Lilly began to cough uncontrollably. When we reached the fire, it became clear that it was the stone itself that was burning. The smell of sulfur was intensified, and I wanted to gag. To my relief, we were carried past the fire and further into the darkness.

  As we were transported through these tunnels, we passed several of the flaming stone slabs and their accompanying clouds of ash. Each time we did, I came a little closer to passing out at the smell.

  When at last we stopped, it was right next to an outcrop of several
of these burning stones. I arched my neck to see where we were and saw that the demon was unlocking a great iron lock with an oversized key. It was a prison cell of sorts, with parallel iron bars fitted vertically from the ceiling to the floor.

  The demon moved Darcy into the cell first. He was still held in the same position that he had been in when he jumped at the demon back in the throne room. His look was one of fury, made terrible by the signs of the monster within him.

  Lilly and I were carried in after. As soon as the squirrel soldiers let go of us, Lilly jumped for the door. She was quickly pushed back, thudding into the stone floor, before the door was closed tight.

  The demon refitted the lock.

  “I will be back for you in a couple of days,” he said. “In the meantime, I have matters to attend to. I hope your stay in my dungeon is truly uncomfortable.”

  With that, he turned to go. A few of the squirrel soldiers looked at us for a moment with those strange dead faces and then followed after their master.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Darcy was out cold. He returned to his natural form soon after the demon had left and his spell had worn off. He lay unconscious in the corner of the dirty cell.

  Lilly did her best to make him comfortable but was silent on his recent transformation.

  “Can we use the Cheathr Ark?” I asked.

  “I tried that already,” said Lilly. “It doesn’t seem to be working here. Besides, even if it did, we would still be trapped in this place as soon as we tried to leave my realm again.”

  “Would be nice to recover there, at least. My fire magic isn’t working either. I don’t know if that is because of the energy I spent using the Orb of Lyren, or because there is something about this place that is preventing us from doing anything of that kind.”

  “About that,” said Lilly, “what happened back there? He was supposed to drift into some kind of deep sleep, wasn’t he?”

  “Yeah. I presume we misunderstood the metaphysics of the situation. I think what happened was that I was able to quell the part of Daniel that was was Daniel. It seems that as soon as he was gone, the demon was able to take over his body more fully.”

  “So we helped him?”

  “Significantly, apparently.”

  Lilly started coughing as a cloud of ash rushed through the prison cell. I covered my mouth as best as I could with the sleeve of my sweater, but there was only so much I could do.

  “I know that it’s all very complicated, with worlds and dimensions and stories and books, but right now, it seems very much like a demon has just taken us into hell,” said Lilly.

  “Yeah,” I said wincing. The ash had clung to the back of my throat, causing it to sting.

  “Well, it’s not all bad,” said Lilly. “My glasses seem to be working.”

  “What do they say?” I managed to croak.

  “We are apparently surrounded by something called brimstone. It says here that once lit, the brimstone will burn forever.”

  “Yeah, I think there is a good chance that this is hell.”

  “How long do you think we will be in here?” asked Lilly.

  “Eternity is the generally advertised duration.”

  There we waited without any sense of the passage of time. It might have been two hours, or it might have been five, but after a while, I tried to sleep. I curled up against the back wall and Lilly, and I shared my sweater as a pillow. If there was one good thing about being captured and locked up in hell, it was that it wasn’t very cold.

  I awoke later. I couldn’t tell if it really was morning, but I felt like I had slept through the night. My back and neck cried out in agony as I stretched. I sat up and watched the fire dance on the brimstone. Ash was falling all around like snow. Lilly slept a little longer.

  “Alex,” said Lilly when she awoke.

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m thirsty.”

  “Yeah. Me too.”

  “Alex.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Do you have any water?”

  My mouth felt like I had eaten nothing but charcoal for a decade. It was then that I started to worry that the demon either had no intention of keeping us alive or that he might forget that we were even here. If we didn’t find some way to get water soon, then we would dehydrate for sure. I think I heard once that you can go without water for three days. I suspected that in this place, it would be more like two.

  Darcy remained unconscious for a couple more hours. When he did awake, we filled him in on the situation as best as we could. Lilly tried to use the Cheathr Ark again but without any luck.

  “We will die if we don’t get water soon,” said Darcy.

  “Really?” asked Lilly, trying not to sound sarcastic. “Why don’t you just turn into that tentacle thing again and open these bars?”

  Darcy looked embarrassed, shooting a glance at me. “I haven’t been able to access that part of me,” he said carefully. “There seems to be something about this place, or maybe about this brimstone stuff, which is shutting off the flow of power from other worlds. I don’t know what to do,” said Darcy. “I’m legit scared.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  Sometime later, maybe six or eight hours later, a group of the squirrel soldiers appeared outside of the cell. One of them unlocked the door lock, and half a dozen of them entered the cell. Darcy immediately tried to overpower them, but he was outnumbered and severely weakened. One of the squirrels struck him on the side of the head, and he appeared to blackout.

  “Darcy!” cried Lilly.

  He was carried limply out of the cell, and the door was locked behind him. We watched helplessly as he disappeared down the corridor. Two of the squirrel soldiers remained behind, staring at us with empty eyes.

  We sat in silence. There was nothing more to say. An hour after Darcy had left, Lilly stood up suddenly and rushed forward towards the bars.

  “What are you looking at!” she yelled at the soldiers desperately. Then she turned to face me. “We should never have trusted Elaine,” she said. “It was a mistake. She has betrayed us, and it was a mistake.”

  “We don’t know that,” I said. “For all we know she is trying to find us right now.”

  “For goodness sake, Alex. You don’t really believe that do you? Surely she knew that the Orb of Lyren would knock out Daniel and not the demon. This is her area of expertise, after all.”

  I didn’t say anything in response. The dehydration was making me drowsy, and I really didn’t have any defense.

  “Do you think that the demon will try and take Darcy’s body?” asked Lilly, her tone shifting from angry to afraid.

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “Something tells me that it would take more than the Orb of Lyren to quell Darcy’s spirit. The demon had to befriend Daniel first, remember? Maybe that’s a part of it?”

  Lilly said nothing but sat down against the wall of the cell, her looks void of hope.

  Later, Darcy was returned to the cell. He was conscious, but look defeated.

  “What happened?” asked Lilly, “did they hurt you?”

  “They just did some tests,” said Darcy. “I have the worst headache,” he added.

  That night it was far more difficult to sleep. I woke several times, apparently because of my thirst. Sometime after what I supposed was midnight, two more guards appeared at the door. These were not squirrels, and I had never seen their kind before. They were plump and pale white and wore dusty blue cloaks. Their faces were wart covered, and large tasks protruded from their lower lips. They didn’t even look inside the cell as far as I could tell.

  “They will be replaced soon,” said one of the guards.

  “Plans are developing then?” asked the second guard. This guard had a bottle of water, and I watched enviously as he sipped from it.

  “You haven’t been to see?” asked the first guard.

  “You know how it is,” said the second guard, screwing the cap
back on his water bottle.

  I became aware that Darcy was awake and watching the exchange.

  “Our lord will be pleased with them, I’m sure,” said the first guard.

  “When will this new army be ready?” asked the second guard.

  “From what I heard, we can expect the war to start any day now.”

  “Please,” said Darcy, “just a sip of water for my friend here.”

  The guards turned around and looked at Darcy as if confused that he would speak to them at all.

  “I’m not giving you water,” said the second guard. “What a strange thing to say.”

  “Prisoners asking for water,” said the first guard, “what will they think of next? I suppose you want a pillow too?”

  “We will die,” said Darcy. “Please.”

  “Without a pillow? I very much doubt that. Dying is kind of the point though,” said the guard. “Honestly. You just can’t get the prisoners these days.”

  The pair then started talking among themselves again about what they called the upcoming war. From what I could tell, they were neither of them very highly ranked in whatever military organization they were a part of, and they were hoping that they could prove themselves in combat and earn some respect. From what I saw of them, I doubted that was really on the cards.

  I must’ve fallen asleep listening to them talk, because when I woke they were gone. They returned again around the time that I supposed was dawn.

  This time Lilly was awake too. She looked at them through half-lidded eyes. I wanted her to say something witty, compare them to something incongruent, just do something Lilly-like, but she was too weak even for that. We really were going to die here, I thought.

  And then quite suddenly, one of the guards attacked the other. They drew a small dagger that had been strapped to their right leg and plunged it deeply into their companion’s belly. The attacked guard barely had time to gasp in surprise before he was done, dead on the brimstone floor. The remaining guard waved a hand over the lock, and it clicked open.

  I blinked, confused, only half aware of what was happening.