The War of the Flowers

by Tad Williams

  39 STEPCHILD

  The blurriness of pain began to recede as Theo stumbled out of the elevator with a helmeted guard holding his arms on either side. The long hallway came into focus as though appearing out of the fog. Anton Hellebore slowly leaned down — to Theo's dazed mind the tall fairy seemed twice normal height — and seized his face in a grip that was much more powerful than the pale, soft hands would suggest. He pulled down one of Theo's lower eyelids with a cold finger so he could examine his eyes.

  "Look at that," he said cheerfully. "So many of the rootlets of blood are broken that the white of the eye turns quite pink — it's as though they tried to jump out of the sockets. What do you think, Tansy? There must be many undiscovered uses for annis venom in this exciting world of ours. Perhaps we should make that your new project."

  Tansy was clutching his own face as though trying to hold broken pieces together. "Certainly, Master Hellebore," he said through clenched teeth. "If you wish." He sounded like he would have agreed to being shot out of a cannon to avoid talking.

  Theo heard himself make a very strange noise — a kind of bubbling groan, very distant — and then realized that it was not him at all but Cumber Sedge waking up. Almost comatose for hours, the ferisher had avoided being savaged by his own annis-cuffs, but from the noises he was making, recovering from a cauling didn't sound very nice either.

  "What . . . ?" Cumber looked around blearily. His knees buckled but he had a pair of personal constable-wardens just like Theo's and they kept him from falling.

  "We're in Hellebore House," Theo said. "Don't move or the thing around your wrists will bite you. And don't say anything." It was ultimately pointless, but at least their captors wouldn't get anything blurted out by accident. Make them work for it, he told himself, but that made him consider what kind of work that might be and his legs went rubbery. The hell with it — who am I kidding? I'll tell them anything they want to know. Nobody stands up to torture forever, so it's just a question of when you wave the white flag.

  The simple, unmarked door at the end of the hall looked like nothing so much as the entrance to a janitor's closet — the type of place people got dragged into for this kind of thing because there were buckets and tools and concrete floors with drains. "Look," Theo said suddenly. "I'll tell you whatever you want to know. Tell your daddy that, Hellebore. Just let the ferisher and the little sprite go. You don't need them — you're only after them because of me."

  Anton Hellebore flicked him a look of contempt. "My . . . daddy . . . may not want to talk to you. He may just want to cut pieces off you because you did something that annoyed him — your friends too, for all I know. If you think you can bargain you're as stupid as your uncle, or whatever that Remover creature really was. Your side lost. You are an orphan. You have no power and you make no deals."

  As if to silently illustrate power and access, the door at the end of the hall swung open. Theo's guards let go of his wrists and one of them put a boot in his rump and shoved him through.

  His hands annis-wrapped, Theo could not keep his balance; he stumbled and fell, then struggled up onto his knees. At first it was dark except for a circle of light that touched the wide desk but illuminated only the single flower at its center. The light grew brighter as a man stood up behind the desk. In person, he was quite strikingly beautiful — a god of the underworld. It was easy to see where Anton Hellebore got his height, but there was none of the son's sullen immaturity in the father's pale face. For a long moment the endlessly black eyes regarded him in silence.

  Pleased to meet you , Theo could not help thinking, the old Stones song ringing in his mind. Hope you guessed my name. A moment later he wondered, Is this the one who's been in my head? He seemed powerful enough, and more than cruel enough, but for some reason Theo didn't think it was so. Out loud, and with his voice only shaking a little, he said, "And you must be Satan, Lord of Darkness."

  Nidrus Hellebore actually smiled a little. "And you must be the last of the Violets. What a tiresome family. Like birds — musical, flighty, shrill. But the nest has long since fallen from the tree and nearly all the eggs are shattered." He shook his head, dismissing the tiresome business of the destruction of an entire clan. "The rest of you out there may also come into the office. Do not waste any more of my time than is necessary."

  His son and Tansy entered, along with the four constables, two of whom were still propping up Cumber. Nidrus Hellebore raised an eyebrow. "Guards, you are dismissed."

  "Are you sure, Lord Hellebore . . . ?" Tansy began and then abruptly fell silent. The constables showed an open-palm salute before marching out.

  "They're both bound, Father," said Anton Hellebore with a touch of pride. "Helpless. Something new of mine . . ." Lord Hellebore came out from behind the desk and moved behind Theo. It was hard to keep still, stinging annis or no stinging annis — just the proximity of the fairy lord brought a deep chill of unease, like knowing Dracula was examining the back of your neck. "I don't think we'll need these anymore," Hellebore said. Something flicked Theo's wrists. A moment later the pressure of the annis cuffs was gone and his wrists were prickling with returning circulation.

  "But Father . . . !" "Don't be petulant, Antoninus. Do you really think that a physical restraint around their arms is better than what I can do?" All of a sudden Lord Hellebore was in front of Theo again. His hand came up so quickly that Theo did not even begin to flinch until after Hellebore's finger had tapped his forehead. He seemed to have put some kind of freezing dot on Theo's skin, something so cold it burned, but before even a second had passed it became less intense and yet somehow wider, spreading across his skin and into the muscles, tangling itself around Theo's spine like a climbing thorn. "You will go wherever I tell you to go," Hellebore said. "You will do whatever I tell you to do. For now, you will stand and listen and speak only when I ask you a question."

  "Die, you corpse-faced bastard," was what Theo wanted to say, but as in those nightmares where he tried desperately to scream but couldn't, only a tiny whistle of air escaped his mouth. As he struggled against silence, Hellebore moved in front of Cumber. The ferisher's eyes were wide with terror.

  "What does this one know?" he asked.

  "Perhaps nothing, Lord Hellebore," said Tansy. "We brought them straight to you."

  "I brought them," Anton proclaimed. "I was in charge." "Yes, and you made some other decisions as well," said his father. "Not very good ones, in fact." He touched Cumber's forehead and repeated the words he had said to Theo, then made a broader gesture. Lights began to gleam against the dark walls, or perhaps even within the walls themselves; Theo could suddenly see that the space was quite large, that the desk was in one corner of an octagonal room some forty yards across.

  The walls were windows — a complete circle of windows providing a spectacular penthouse view of the City spreading away on all sides, a view that made Hellebore House appear to be what it had now become in fact, the hub of Faerie. Staring at the three-hundred-and-sixty-degree cityscape, Theo found that he still had a little freedom of movement, could move his head and arms, even shuffle his feet a bit. He tried to take a small, inconspicuous step backward and discovered that he didn't have that much freedom: he was held to the spot where he stood as though magnetized.

  Hellebore gazed at a patch of light across town that blazed like a highway flare. "I see a fire in the warehouse district, Antoninus. Why is there a fire?"

  "The Remover's place was f-full of traps." The younger Hellebore was suddenly fighting a stammer. "I . . . w-we couldn't . . . I had to . . ." Hellebore's voice was ice. "We will talk about it later. I am not pleased. Just now, however, we have more important things to do." He looked up at nothing at all for a silent moment. "Ah. The others have arrived and are on their way up." He turned his queerly uninterested stare on Theo. "You are struggling to say something. You may speak. Use the chance wisely."

  Theo swallowed the insults he wanted to spit at him. "You've got a friend of mine. In a jar. May I se
e her?" Hellebore considered for a moment, then nodded his head at Tansy, who ran to Hellebore's massive desk and lifted out the bell-shaped jar from the place it had been hidden. "You may walk to the desk and have your reunion."

  Theo dimly heard Anton Hellebore protesting, heard his father's low, amused voice replying, but he did not care about any of it. He moved toward the desk, feeling altogether normal except when he tried to step more than a little bit out of the way, at which point a kind of numb cramp set in until he turned his foot back in the right direction again.

  He stopped in front of the desk, more or less of his own volition. She was standing with her tiny hands pressed against the inside of the bell jar. "Oh, Theo, I am sorry," she said. He could barely hear her.

  Tears filled his eyes. "It's my fault, not yours."

  She said something else he could not make out.

  "What?"

  "You may open the jar," Hellebore told him.

  "Father, do you think that's wise?"

  "Open the jar." Theo only wished he had done it sooner, so that it felt like his own idea, his own gesture. His hands moved toward the heavy glass vessel and lifted it away from the base. Applecore took a moment to fan her wings and then sprang into the air to hover in front of him. She was crying too, and that upset him more than had any of the pain inflicted on him. "I'm sorry I dragged you into this shite, Theo, really I am."

  "What are you talking about? None of this was your fault."

  "I was the one who brought you out of your world in the first place." She was pale and bony-thin and had bruised-looking blue circles under her eyes.

  "It's good to see you, Applecore," he said quietly. "It really is. I thought . . . Cumber and I thought you were dead." She darted a pitying look over at Cumber Sedge, then stiffened when she saw who stood beside him. "Tansy," she said slowly. "What in the name of the bloody Trees are you doing here, you traitor? I heard Hellebore talking about you — you sold us all out, you lyin', murderin' . . . !"

  Before Theo or anyone else could move she had darted across the room and was buzzing around Quillius Tansy like a maddened hornet. He swatted at her. "Stop her! My face, she's going to . . . Somebody kill her!"

  Hellebore spoke in a deep, untroubled voice. "Walk to the window." Theo wondered who the fairy lord was talking to, and understood only when his own legs began to carry him toward the nearest panel of the City panorama. He tried to fight, but could not — it was as though Hellebore had reached directly into his spine and was manipulating his nerves like the strings of a marionette. The view of the City shimmered and distorted, stretching, bending, then began to dissolve like some ultraslow view of a soap bubble popping. There was another window behind it with an identical City-view spreading below. Hellebore must have mirror-screens in front of the windows, so he can look at things beside the view, Theo thought absently. He's got spiders, dragons, all the modern conveniences . . . Then the outer window began to open, sliding up like a rising eyelid, and Theo could feel cold air slapping at his face.

  "Stop!" Applecore shouted. "All right, Hellebore, I'm off Tansy — just make him stop!" Theo took three more steps before halting at the frame of the open window. Each time he swayed in the wind he could feel how easy it would be to tilt too far forward and simply tumble into space, go spinning down through the air to the ground many hundred feet below. A few small drops of rain patted against his cheeks and forehead. If Hellebore misjudged how long and how steadily he could stand on his tired, tired legs, there was nowhere to go but down . . .

  "Sprite, I allowed you out of the jar because now that we have the last of the Violets in our custody you no longer matter," said Lord Hellebore. "But when you attack one of my employees you become an annoyance. Rather than waste our time and impair our dignity chasing you, I instead remind you who wields the power."

  Applecore was still hovering above Tansy, just out of his reach. "But you wouldn't go through all that trouble to get him and then chuck him out a window, now would you?" Her defiance was not entirely convincing.

  "There is some truth to that," Hellebore said. "But I could have him pull out one of his own eyes without impairing his usefulness at all. I'd prefer not to have a mess like that in my office, however, so if you irritate me I will simply throw the ferisher out a window instead. Now I am through talking to you."

  Applecore looked back at him hard — as hard as a person her size could look at the master of all Faerie, anyway — then zipped across the room and landed on Theo's shoulder. "Get away from there now, Theo," she said. "Please."

  "You may step back from the window," said Hellebore, and Theo suddenly found that he could. He took a few steps backward, then his knees finally gave out and he half-sank, half-fell to the floor, clutching the carpet as though at any moment the room might turn sideways and send him tumbling back toward that open window, that leap into nothing.

  "Lord Foxglove and Lord Thornapple are in the outer office," announced a crisply inhuman voice. "They are late. Send them in." Hellebore turned to his sulking son. "For the time being, I think we should find some secure accommodation for Master Violet, or whatever he is to be called."

  "Yes, Father." The younger Hellebore seemed to perk up a little.

  "But not in the laboratories. Do you understand me? He is not to be experimented upon. I have far more important uses for him." The outer door opened and two well-dressed fairy men walked in, both lean, both in that indeterminate middle age that, as far as Theo could tell, indicated they had reached at least a few centuries of age. One had reddish-gold hair, straight and hanging to his collar in a way that in any other city would seem intentionally foppish. He wore a huge medallion on the chest of his tailored suit and had a certain watchfulness in his manner that Theo guessed might be the fairy equivalent of nerves. The other, his unnaturally black hair so dark as to seem dyed, but still no blacker than his spidersilk suit, and with bushy white eyebrows in weird contrast, was clearly Poppy's father. Theo did not have much attention left for anything but minute-to-minute survival, but it was still very disturbing to see the face of the woman he had come to care for so much reinterpreted in her father's stony mask.

  Thornapple looked Theo over with some interest. "So this is the Violet heir. He does not look like much."

  Your daughter likes me a lot more than she likes you, buddy, was what Theo wanted to say, but of course he didn't.

  "Your pardon, Nidrus," said the golden-haired one, Lord Foxglove. "We were delayed. The streets are full of troublemakers." "I know." Hellebore waved a white hand in casual dismissal. "We will find the little goblin soon, I think. A depressing public execution is the best example for the shirkers and ne'er-do-wells blocking our thoroughfares."

  Thornapple gave him a curious look. "Have you not heard? It is more than the unemployed and the usual rabble-rousers. The goblins are rioting, Hellebore, rioting! They have set fires all through the Sunlight district and come flooding out of Goblintown. At this moment there are thousands of them surrounding New Mound House and threatening to burn down the Parliament! At least twenty constables have been killed already. By the Grove, have you been ignoring your calls all day?"

  Hellebore for the first time seemed surprised. "Because of a broken stick? Are you telling me that the only thing that has kept the goblins orderly was some ancient treaty?" He turned and flicked his fingers at the windows. The cityscape shimmered and vanished as the mirrors came on, the elevated view replaced by street-level perspectives of angry crowds fighting with armored constables. Theo guessed that an ornate, multistory building behind the scene of conflict, a little like a white, gray and gold wedding cake, must be the place they called New Mound House, the parliamentary building. He was surprised and pleased to see that it was not only goblins who seemed to be fighting against the authorities — many types of fairies were there, including some that, except for their wings, looked not much different from Hellebore and his peers. They had thrown together barricades across the streets and built fires in trash cans.
Rocks and other objects were banging off the constables' shields, but for the moment it seemed a bit of a standoff.

  "It won't do them or us any good," Applecore whispered in Theo's ear. "The Flowers are too strong. But it's grand to see, isn't it?" "Oberon's Blood." Hellebore stared at the scene, his mouth twisted as though he had eaten something very sour. "Set fires in our City, will they? Then I will see Goblintown burned to its foundations and the ground seeded with salt. A whole goblin generation will . . . will . . ." His eyes narrowed. "What . . . is . . . that?"

  A disturbance was eddying through the crowd of goblins and their allies, a surge as though the mob were some unicellular animal about to divide itself and reproduce. A gap formed and people threw themselves out of the way, barely avoiding the mounted riders who crashed out onto the street of the paved no-man's land in front of the startled police. Theo bit back a shout of surprise. He had seen these riders before, and also their singlehorned mounts.

  "Grims!" snarled Foxglove. "Where in the name of the Elder Trees did they come from?" They were weirdly stirring in their bright furs and feathers, something not just out of an earlier, wilder era of Faerie but out of a dream, a full-blown nightmare. Spears and spiral horns flashed and bell-mouthed rifles gouted fire as the howling troop surged forward. Theo thought that with their gleaming yellow eyes and painted faces stranger than any mask, the wild goblins looked altogether uncontrollable, like all of Hallowe'en lifted up and flung forward by a hurricane wind. The constables who stood in their way with riot shields locked together did their best to stand up to the hundreds of spear-wielding riders and razor-hooved unicorns, but the grims had the advantage of momentum; within moments they had crashed through the police line, scattering the constables, spearing dozens and crushing as many more under their mounts' kicking, silver-hooved feet. Heartened by the charge, the mob surged forward with a rising, rumbling shout of gleeful bloodlust that even through the mirror-stream lifted the hairs on Theo's neck, and fairy and goblin alike threw themselves on the reeling Parliamentary Guards.