The War of the Flowers

by Tad Williams

  "A finger . . . ?" Theo had thought things were already at rock-bottom. "You want to have a finger from one of us before you'll let us cross?" He darted a look back and was half-certain he could see something coming down the tracks toward them out of the dark distance.

  "No, no. A finger from each of you. That's a very generous offer, you know. In the old days, I'd have just eaten one of you. At least one." Theo stared at the nightmare beast crouched in its armor of pale folds like some kind of giant sumo toad. He had a moment's fantasy of simply running past it, but somehow knew without being told that it wouldn't be so easy. He also thought that the bargain might not be so agreeable after it caught him.

  This is crazy! This is a bad dream . . . ! He looked back. Something was coming toward them out of the shadow, a moving bit of darkness; it was only a distant speck, but getting bigger every moment.

  "All right," he said out loud. He felt suddenly cold all over, sick to his stomach. No good delaying. "You can take them from me." He stuck out his left hand, tried to make a joke despite his spiking terror. "At least I'm a singer, not a guitar player."

  "He can take one from each of us," argued Cumber.

  "Now you shut up. You wouldn't even be in this if it weren't for me." A huge, bumpy hand with skin like damp rubber folded around his own so that only his fingers stuck out, his hand and wrist gripped as though by an industrial vise. "Oh, you sing, do you? If you're ever back this way, you should drop in again — I love music." The immense mouth yawned open and Theo stared in horrified fascination at the tangle of rotting teeth. How would he be able to wash himself down here, clean and bandage the wounds? What kind of horrible diseases would infect him? He couldn't look. He curled his middle finger and index finger to keep them away from that filthy maw, shut his eyes tight and concentrated on not throwing up as he waited, waited . . . waited . . .

  He opened his eyes again. The massive face was close to his hand, but the horror-movie mouth was closed, as were the eyes. The thing was sniffing, or at least its two pinhole nostrils were twitching.

  "What is that smell?" the troll rumbled. "Like cow, but . . . but different."

  It took Theo a moment. "My leather jacket?"

  "I've never smelled anything like it." It flared its nostrils and inhaled deeply. "Cowskin! But not like any I know."

  "It's from the mortal world," said Cumber. "That skin comes off a cow from the mortal world. Very rare." "It's . . . lovely. Makes my mouth water something fierce." The troll turned to stare at Theo over his prisoned hand. The little eyes narrowed again in a cunning squint. "Tell you what, not that your fingers aren't nice in their way . . . but I'd be willing to make do with only one in exchange for this piece of skin."

  "No fingers," said Cumber. "You get the cowskin, but that's all."

  For an absurd moment, Theo almost argued — his beloved jacket! He'd had it for years. Then he thought about how long he'd had his fingers.

  "Well . . ." The troll frowned a doughy frown then released Theo's hand. "Right, then. A bargain."

  Theo hastily shrugged off the jacket, but pulled out his great-uncle's notebook before he handed it over. "It's yours." "Nice," the thing said in its deep, suety voice. "I'm not even going to eat it all at once. I'm going to savor it. Thanks. Say, if you ever pick up anything else like this, remember — I love to bargain . . . !"

  But Theo and Cumber were already hurrying across the bridge as fast as their weary legs would carry them. It was only after they had left the bridge and its guardian far behind that Theo realized he had left Tansy's telephone-brooch in the pocket of his jacket. He had no plans to go back for it, of course: as far as Theo was concerned, that piece of two-legged ugliness was welcome to blow out Tansy's long-distance bill or download a ton of troll-porn and charge it to the Daisy commune.

  Betray me, huh? Taste the Revenge of Vilmos!

  They collapsed at last and lay gasping for a long time until they regained the energy even to sit up. "Come on," Theo said at last, climbing slowly to his feet despite every muscle in his body shrieking at him not to do it. Cumber's globe was only a flicker of green now, no stronger than a nightlight in a child's bedroom. "We can't stay here. That thing was right behind us."

  "But it has to cross the bridge to catch us." "You don't understand how bad that thing is, how hard to stop." A sudden and unwanted memory of it coming through the screened bathroom window of his cabin like cheese through a grater weakened his legs so much he almost fell down again. "You have no idea."

  "Perhaps," said Cumber, "but you're probably underestimating how difficult it is to get past a troll guarding its own bridge."

  "What if it takes the troll's body, like it took that constable's?" Cumber considered for a moment. "I don't know if that's even possible. If it is, it will be slower but a great deal stronger. But it would have real trouble following us aboveground, I think. A troll like that probably hasn't seen full daylight for centuries. It would be like making it walk through an oven on red-hot coals."

  "That zombie-thing won't care — it probably doesn't even feel pain. It kept Rufinus' body even with all the insides fallen out." "Yes, but it would also be very conspicuous — people would certainly notice a cave-troll stumbling around like that. Make it a lot harder for the thing to sneak up on us." He frowned as Theo helped him stand, then they began to walk rapidly along the tracks again. "Yes, I think we need to think about going back aboveground once more."

  "But where do we go? Do you have some friends that . . . that could hide me?" He felt ashamed for asking — he had already brought this young fairy nothing but trouble and terrible danger.

  "Not in the City — not anymore. I've never lived anywhere here but Daffodil House. Let me think. We certainly do need to find someplace safe — I can't believe that Hellebore and his cronies would stage a monstrous attack like that and then let everything else go on as normal. It must be an all-out Flower War. They'll have troops out rounding up their enemies, most of whom won't be seen again."

  Not only am I the strangest stranger I could ever be , Theo thought as they limped along the tracks, listening always for the sound of pursuit. Now I'm a fugitive, too. Everybody's trying to kill me. And at this very moment my favorite jacket that I've had since I was a teenager is being eaten like steak tartare. A laugh came out that was half sob, or perhaps it was the other way around.

  This has to be the worst fairy tale there ever goddamn was.

  ————— Cumber's globe of light had shrunk to the strength of a dying, greenglowing match by the time they found a worker's ladder leading up from a switching station to the surface. Wearier than he had ever been in his life, it took Theo half an hour to climb the one hundred or so rungs, pushing Cumber up ahead of him step by cautious, exhausted step. They emerged at last out of a service hut on an empty railroad siding beneath a muted dawn sky full of dark, sooty clouds. Surrounded by trees and hedges, they could see little of the city, but at least half a dozen vast pillars of smoke still rose to the heavens around them.

  "They've burned all their enemies' houses down," Cumber whispered. Too tired to speak more, they climbed down off the railroad embankment and found themselves in an industrial district, but one in which there were few signs of life; the only movement came from swirls of snowy ash picked up and dropped by the circling winds. They found a bus stop and waited with dumb hopefulness, but after a quarter of an hour it seemed obvious that no buses were coming.

  "We have to put some room between ourselves and that thing," Theo said. "We probably can't lose it completely — it's already followed me all the way from my world, and it certainly tracked me from the train station where it got Rufinus' body — but we can buy ourselves some time."

  "Let's head for a main road," Cumber suggested. It almost seemed a cruelty beyond any of the horrors Theo had survived to have to walk again when he was so tired and sore, to have to put one foot in front of the other. The streets were so empty that he could not help wondering if Hellebore and his army of Exciso
rs hadn't done more than simply attack their enemies, if they hadn't found some way to destroy the entire populace of Faerie as well. But as they moved into what seemed more of a commercial district they saw a few signs of other living beings — a car passing at the end of a street, faces peering out through upper windows, and finally a line of people waiting to get into a small corner store — stocking up on necessities, Theo imagined.

  Cumber abruptly hobbled out into the street, leaving Theo to gape after him. A moment later a tiny little truck appeared out of a side street and began to head away, but Cumber caught up to it at a limping run and stood talking with the driver for long moments, then waved Theo over.

  "It's the end of the world," the little bearded fellow was saying as Theo approached. His skin had a distinctly azure cast and he had ears like a kangaroo rat. "Stone's honor. I'm heading out toward Birch where my people are. You'd be wise to get out, too."

  The truck was of an appropriate size for its gnomish owner: since Theo and Cumber could not fit in the tiny cab, they stretched out on the bed of the truck, making themselves as comfortable as possible in the middle of a collection of weird tools and artifacts that seemed as though they'd only be useful for sitting on top of other things to keep those things from blowing away. The little truck moved agonizingly slowly, but it was bliss not to walk and they made fairly good time with so few other vehicles on the road. The knotted black pillars of smoke seemed to stare down at Theo like monstrous cobra gods, but even that could not keep him from sliding in and out of sleep as the little vehicle jounced its way across town.

  He woke up, his head aching horribly, to find that the truck had stopped and Cumber was trying to get him to climb out of the back. The driver did not wait for thanks: as soon as they were both on the sidewalk he put it in gear and puttered away.

  It seemed to be a public park. Theo did not care. He let Cumber lead him down a dirt path and then off the trail and into a grove of trees. They clambered into a tangle of ivy that blanketed a hillside and stopped. Within moments Theo had dropped into sleep like a stone falling down a well.

  27 BUTTON'S BRIDGE

  His first dream was a surreal horror, chewing and chewing on something that fought against him, something that actually struggled in his mouth. He was full of dark rejoicing but also horrified by his own casual cruelty, simultaneously exalted and revolted. He passed on into other dreams that were more ordinary but no less dreadful, full of images of tiny bodies falling to dust in his clumsy hands, of a mulch of crisp black wings whispering beneath his feet like drifts of charred onionskin.

  He woke up shivering beneath a sliver of moon. The world was cold and dark and he hurt all over. He was alone on a hillside, tangled up in ivy. He was alone.

  "Cumber!" Theo's voice was a raw croak and the effort made him cough until the stars that should have been in the sky but weren't frolicked right in front of his eyes.

  "Ssshhh." A shadow came toward him. "Don't make so much noise!"

  "I thought you were gone." "I've been looking for firewood. Well, and I've been out getting the news. Here, put this on." He tossed him a tattered, dirty thing that might have been a bedsheet; after a few puzzled moments of examination, Theo decided it was supposed to be a shirt. "I found it in a rubbish bin," Cumber explained.

  Theo realized he was naked from the waist up. Of course, my jacket . . . He pulled the shirt over his head. It was so big on him that he wondered if it had belonged to an ogre. "Getting the news? How?"

  "You don't think you and I are the only folks hiding out in this park, do you? In fact, there are a lot more folk here than usual — not just the homeless ones, but all kinds of people who suddenly don't want to be in buildings anymore, who want to be under trees and sky like the old days. Everyone's terrified." Cumber sat and produced a small collection of twigs from his pockets. "I thought I'd never want to see anything else burning," he said. "But right now, I need a fire."

  Theo sat in silence while the ferisher arranged the sticks, then took a piece of what looked like newspaper out of his pocket and rubbed it between his finger and thumb until the edges curled and began to burn. As he held it to the bits of bark he'd piled around the sticks, Theo asked, "Was that the paper? Or did you do that?"

  "Make the spark?" Cumber shrugged. "I did. Quite an easy charm, really — you could probably do it yourself with only a little practice. But I couldn't have done it yesterday. Too sore, too tired to think."

  "How are your legs?"

  "Nothing broken, but they hurt and the burned parts itch like a gnome's knickers. How are you?" "Miserable. Scared. Alive, though, and that's something." He stared at the small flames beginning to climb the pile of kindling. "What do we do now?"

  Cumber Sedge shook his head. He had managed to clean some of the worst of the dust and soot from his yellow-brown face and looked almost like the young lab attendant he had been when Theo had first met him. "I don't know. It's chaos out there."

  "What do you mean, 'out there'? Where are we?" "Rade Park, in the Gloaming district. One of the biggest parks in the City — kind of a reminder of how things used to be, before Hellebore and the others — yes, good old Lord Daffodil too — tore down all of True Arden so the City could grow." He blinked. "It's hard to believe Daffodil is really dead, the old tyrant. Actually, he wasn't all bad. And Lady Jonquil was always kind to me, when she remembered I was there — I wonder if there's any chance . . . ?"

  "No." It sounded harsher than Theo meant it to be. He reached out and gave the ferisher an awkward pat on the arm. "I'm sorry, but I don't think so. I saw what happened. Nobody got out of that meeting room alive."

  "And Applecore . . . ?" Cumber Sedge seemed to be trying to keep hope out of his voice — out of his heart, too? "She might have got out. Or not even been there when it went down. She left a message that she was going to go outside." A thought struck him. "Oh my sweet . . . of course! Applecore left me a message — said she saw someone I knew hanging around outside Daffodil House. I've been thinking she meant Tansy, but he said he didn't know anything about it . . ."

  "I have no idea what you're talking about." Theo explained his brief, brutal encounter with the treacherous Count Tansy. "So he was the one who set me up in the first place, it seems pretty clear. But that doesn't matter. What I was saying was that I thought Applecore meant him — that Tansy was who she'd seen. But it wasn't, it was his relative Rufinus she'd spotted, or anyway it was his body walking around. And of course she found that a bit surprising because the last time we'd seen him, well, he'd been pretty much dead as a doornail. So she went off to find out why someone we thought was on the ex-citizens list was hanging around out in front of Daffodil House." He nodded. "Makes sense."

  "So you're saying she went to go have a better look at . . . that thing? The thing that tried to murder you? The thing that followed us?" "Yeah, exactly." He sobered as he realized what the ferisher was worrying about. They sat for a while in silence, staring at the flames. It was no good talking any more. They had little reason for hope, and nothing more practical to rely on. "So what did you hear while you were out getting wood?" Theo finally asked.

  "It's war — the real thing." Cumber sighed and poked the fire. "The mirror-streams are full of it. Hellebore and Thornapple and their allies are claiming they only did it because they were going to be attacked, that it was self-defense. Nobody believes them, of course, but no one's in a position to argue with them, either. They have Parliamentary troops out all over the city, looking for what they're calling 'conspirators,' which basically means anyone they consider an enemy."

  "Like you and me." Cumber smiled. "Well, like you. I could probably still plead ignorance and be allowed to go back to the countryside — find a job herding goats or something." His smile faded. "Unless the mere fact of knowing you makes me an enemy, too."

  "I don't think you want to find out," Theo said. "I think the questioning would be very bad for you."

  Cumber let out a long breath. "Well, then I guess I'm a fu
gitive too."

  "So is that it? It's all over — Hellebore burned down his enemies' houses and now he's the winner?" "Not quite that simple. For one thing, he's made a lot of the other houses rethink things, even if they're not going to say or do anything about it right now. After all, how could you trust someone who'd do that to three of his oldest allies? Hellebore and the other Excisors are on top right now, no question about that, but they're going to be like the old kings of the giants who murdered to get their thrones, then always had to sleep with one eye open, watching for the one who was coming to murder them in turn." Cumber spoke with grim satisfaction. "And that's not all. The rumors — the least mad and unbelievable ones I've heard this evening, anyway — say that a lot of people got out of the houses or weren't around when the attacks came, including Lady Jonquil's son, Zirus. The rumor is that he's found refuge with another family, and even that he's planning to raise an army and fight back. A study of history suggests that the first reports are nearly always wrong, but it could be that Hellebore and the others haven't done as thorough a job as they'd hoped."

  "Well, it's not as if that's going to do us any good," Theo said. "We don't have any influential friends. Of course, Zirus seemed to have a fond spot for you. Would he take us in?"

  "Maybe. If we could find him. But of course, no one's going to admit just now that Lord Daffodil's nephew is their guest — not with Hellebore and Thornapple running the Parliament of Blooms like it was their own corner nectar-shop."

  "So what do we do? Stay here?" "Maybe for a day, but we're too vulnerable out here in the woods. We don't know how long it will take that dead thing to track you down, and this park has also got a bit of a werewolf problem at night during the best of times . . ."

  "Say no more." Theo moved closer to the fire. The darkness of Fairyland, he had come to realize, not only might harbor nearly anything you could imagine, it almost certainly did. "So what do they want, Hellebore and Thornapple and those people? We still don't know why they're interested in me, either. Why go to all that trouble to try to kidnap me out of Daffodil House?"