Tainted Garden

by Jeff Stanley

  “My apologies, Lady. But with the dormancy of the Veil Lords, Lord Meloni has taken command.”

  “Dormant? The Veil Lords?” She remembered Erekel saying something about that, but had not found the time to question him further.

  “Come, Lady Dersi. We can discuss this on the way back to Lord Meloni. He will acquaint you with other things you need to know. I promise you, no harm will come to you. You have my word.”

  “I’m not going anywhere with you, Lhedri. Especially not back to that bowel-waste, Meloni.”

  Lhedri sighed and signaled to his men. They tromped forward along the corridor, acidrods held at the ready. “For reasons I can’t comprehend, you seem to care for this old fool, Lady Dersi. That being the case, I assume you would be loath to see him harmed, or dead.” He glanced at his guardsmen. “Kill him.”

  “What? No, wait! Stop!” Dersi cried. She moved in front of Erekel, putting her body before the acidrods.

  Lhedri shook his head. “Lady Dersi, you put me in an untenable situation.”

  “Leave me here, Lhedri.”

  “I can’t do that, Lady Dersi.”

  “Tell Meloni you couldn’t find me.”

  “I’m afraid that won’t work.”

  “Then it would seem we are at an impasse.”

  “It would seem that way, yes.” Lhedri gestured, and four of his men peeled away. They ran back down the hallway.

  “Where are they going?” Dersi asked.

  Lhedri ignored her. Catching Erekel’s eye, he said, “A dozen or more of your compatriots are down, dead or wounded. We saw more. I’ve just sent men to hunt those others down and kill them. If you value their lives, you’ll step away from Lady Dersi and give her into our custody.”

  Dersi felt Erekel twitch, heard the gasp of alarm from his lips. He grasped her upper arm, squeezing, and she put her other hand on his. Dersi felt tears well up in her eyes for the lives lost, and the further losses still to come. The weight of her responsibility in those deaths weighed heavily on her shoulders. She shifted, pulling away from Erekel.

  “Dersi, don’t,” Erekel whispered.

  She shook her head. “I’ve got to. I . . . I can’t let them die for me.”

  “They won’t find them. They’re gone by now.”

  “You don’t know that,” Dersi said. “Please, let me go.”

  “You don’t know what you’re doing!”

  “Yes. Yes, I do.” She hung her head as her fingers worked against his, prying his grasp away from her arm. She raised her eyes and seized Lhedri with her gaze. “Order your men to stand down, Lhedri. I’ll come with you. There’s no need for further killing.”

  Lhedri snorted. He barked out an order, and the four men halted at the intersection, their acidrods at rest. “A wise, compassionate decision, my lady. Already you display the wisdom of a Veil Lord.”

  “Shut up, Lhedri,” Dersi spat. She pulled away from Erekel. “Allow this man to pass unhindered.”

  “By all means,” Lhedri said. He gestured, and his men parted, clearing an avenue for Erekel to escape.

  “Dersi, I can’t . . .”

  “Go. Just go. Don’t make this be in vain.” Dersi refused to meet his imploring gaze. She squeezed her eyes tight against the fear and loathing.

  Erekel shuffled his feet, eyeing Dersi, Lhedri, and the other guards. Finally, he touched her shoulder, let his fingers trail along her arm and drop to his side. “Dersi . . .”

  “Go.”

  Erekel shook his head and turned away from her. Lhedri stepped forward, laying hands on her arm, squeezing. He pulled her farther from Erekel. “Take him,” Lhedri ordered. The guards sprang forward, seizing Erekel. One raised the butt of his acidrod and slammed it down on the dome of the old man’s head. Erekel dropped to the metal floor, senseless, drooling.

  “No! Lhedri, no!”

  “Bring him. Lord Meloni will want to speak to him personally. You others fan out. Find the others and kill them. Kill them all.”

  “You promised!” Dersi screamed. She balled up her fist and struck Lhedri in the mouth. He recoiled, but did not lose his grip on her arm.

  Lhedri jerked her around and pinned her arms at her sides, holding her from behind. She could smell the blood flecking his lips as he leaned in close to her and snarled in her ear. “He is a rebel. A traitor. They all are. There is no mercy for them, no leniency. Only death. I have my orders.”

  “I swear I’ll kill you, Lhedri,” Dersi said, her voice soft, hissing. She struggled against him, but he was too powerful. He pulled her arm behind her and levered it up toward her shoulder blades. She felt the stabbing pain in her shoulder.

  “Be quiet. Be still. Don’t force me to truss you. I do not want to hurt you, Lady Dersi. Not you, of all the Lords.”

  Dersi watched as Erekel was hauled up, his hands bound behind his back. A swelling purple bruise marred his wrinkled features, just above his left eye. In the center of the bruise a gash leaked blood into his eye. He shook his head, groggy.

  “Erekel,” Dersi whispered, straining against Lhedri.

  The old man’s head swiveled on its thin neck. Squinting, spilling blood down his cheek, he focused on her. “I’m alright, Dersi.”

  “I’m sorry, Erekel,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

  He shook his head. “Don’t. I’m alright.” He smiled, the gesture transforming into a wince of pain. “I’ve been in worse situations.”

  “Disgusting,” Lhedri said. He jerked Dersi away, down the corridor. “Remember your station, Lady. Your emotions betray your status as a Lady.”

  “Don’t talk to me of my station, Lhedri. Don’t you dare.”

  He said nothing, pulling her along. They reached the intersection and moved toward the common room at the end of the corridor. Behind her, dragged along by two guardsmen, Erekel struggled to free himself. Dersi heard one of the men cuff Erekel, cursing.

  Ahead of them one of the vanguard cried out. The harsh retort of an acidrod pierced the air, and the man reeled, crashing into the wall as his torso exploded in a spray of blood and acid. Dersi could hear angry curses and barked orders from the common room.

  “What?” Lhedri tensed, pulling slightly away from Dersi.

  Dersi struck. She leaned quickly forward, then snapped her head back. The back of her head cracked into Lhedri’s face. Bone shattered. She felt a hot spray on the nape of her neck. Lhedri’s hands came up to his face. Dersi ducked, pulling away from him.

  A group of rebels charged down on them. Acidrods coughed up their wads of corrosives, a dozen slugs slamming into another man, melting his flesh from his bones. A bloody skeleton dripping organs collapsed to the floor. Other rebels came on, brandishing crude weapons, blades and daggers and saws, clubs and hammers. Lhedri’s men knelt and raised the acidrods to their shoulders, firing into the mob.

  The hiss and stench of the pitched battle stunned Dersi. She scrambled away from Lhedri’s grasping hands. Lowering her shoulder, she slammed into one of the guardsmen restraining Erekel. The guard recoiled, stumbling into the wall. Erekel cracked his elbow into the other man’s face, then pulled himself free. The guard Dersi had battered raised his acidrod. He trained its nozzle on Erekel. Dersi smashed her fist into his face. The acidrod barked, spewing its slug into the wall above Erekel’s head. Erekel grabbed her hand and pulled her to him. She fell into his arms, overbalancing both of them. They tumbled to the blood-drenched floor in a heap as acidslugs crashed into the walls. The air itself stank of corrosives, and Dersi could feel her skin blistering, the pain gnawing at her.

  “Come on,” Erekel said, dragging her to her feet.

  “Lady Dersi!”

  Dersi turned and watched as Lhedri fought his way through the melee. He used his acidrod as a club in the tight quarters. Rebels hacked at Lhedri’s guardsmen with crude, effective weapons. The guards fell back and struggled to gain room to use their superior arms. Dersi watched a guard die, his head crushed beneath the weight of a metal rod in the hand
s of a huge man in harvester’s garb. Another guard drove the nozzle of his acidrod into the big man’s face. He fired point-blank. The harvester’s head vanished in a bright, repulsive spray.

  Erekel pulled her back the way they had come. They reached the intersection as acidslugs plastered the walls around them. Dersi shot a glance back, seeing Lhedri coming for them, shouting over his shoulder for his men to stop firing on Lady Dersi. His own acidrod dripped blood from its butt, his arms coated with gore to the elbows.

  “Here,” Erekel cried, leading Dersi along a side passage that sloped sharply downward. Lights flickered on in advance of their progress, illuminating plain, unadorned walls of uniform metal.

  “Where are we going?” Dersi’s breath came ragged, rasping up from her throat alongside the burning taste of bile. Her legs throbbed. She could hear Lhedri behind them, gaining quickly. And then she stumbled, tripping over her own feet. She sprawled out, bouncing on the floor, and rolled into Erekel. Together they tumbled down the incline, limbs tangled, crashing again and again to the unyielding floor. Dersi’s chin smashed down, jarring her teeth. She squeezed shut her eyes and screamed. Erekel echoed her cries.

  At the bottom of the incline they bounced into a blank wall and rebounded. Dizzy, bruised, nauseous, Dersi tried to rise to her hands and knees but could not summon the power. She heard the huffing of Lhedri’s breath from farther up the slope, his rasping voice cursing and crying out to her.

  Erekel untangled himself from her scissored legs, rising on wobbling knees. He dripped blood from his mouth and the egg-sized knot on his forehead, and he groaned in pain. Still he struggled, crawling to the far wall as Lhedri halted on the slope and raised his acidrod to his shoulder.

  “Erekel!” Dersi cried. An acidslug whizzed through the air, slamming into the wall mere inches from Erekel’s outstretched hand. The harvester screamed as his flesh boiled, but he reached up, up, straining to touch the shallow depression in the wall.

  Dersi heard the hissing thump of the acidrod firing again as Erekel’s hand slid into the depression. Behind the crackling of the acidslug hurtling toward Erekel came a dull, mechanical clanking, as a door at the foot of the incline began to rise from the floor. Slowly. Too slowly.

  Dersi screamed, defied her bone-weariness, and flung herself toward Erekel, straight into the path of the speeding acidslug.

  She sped across the landscape, unaware of the razor-sharp leaves that sliced into her bare flesh, cutting her to the bone. As she broke through a line of trees, the inner warmth at her core rose up, sealing her wounds, leaving blood to dry in the cool evening air. In the distance communion beckoned—one of the creatures the aliens called drakes—but she ignored it, single-minded in her determination to reach He, driven by the undeniable call to join him, to commune with him and become one.

  She passed through valleys and climbed ridges, forded streams and penetrated deep into clinging, cutting forests of once-alien trees, pulled like a lodestone toward the west, always the west, doubling back on ground she had already covered. Compelled by need.

  Since dawn She had run, and her body began to fail, to falter. But the need drove her onward, ever onward. She stumbled and fell, tearing the skin from her face and forearms on sharp stones that protruded from the cushioning landskin. Her footsteps filled with blood as she rose and ran once more, and the landskin drank.

  She must rest. But She could not. The need. The terrible, awesome, incredible need. The hunger and thirst of it pulled her onward.

  Inside, she could feel the quickening as her body, responding to the closeness, began its preparations. Ovulation. She must find He quickly.

  At dawn She had awakened to the screaming joy of the landskin communion. The joy that proclaimed that He had been found, that He was awake, and aware, and unfolding with knowledge and memory. At last He remembered, and communed. And the landskin cried out to her, kindling a beacon that pulled her.

  She could taste him on the landskin with each faltering step, scent him in the pheromones expelled in her wake.

  He was near.

  She felt his wounds, but knew that he would recover, had begun recovery, and sought after something within the hated confines of the aliens’ subterranean womb. Something dangerous. Something dire. The thought of his peril galvanized her to greater speed, allowed her to ignore the fatigue that permeated every cell of her body.

  She knew pain, pain greater than a physical wound. He had not unfolded all the knowledge, was unaware of her, of his purpose, of their promised union. Unaware that She sought. He did not seek her. His knowledge remained incomplete.

  But she would expand his consciousness, rid him of the taint of the aliens.

  Procreate.

  She ran down the steep side of a ravine and across sharp stones, cutting her feet, to kneel in the shadows of an oblong boulder. Her hand reached out, touching the rocky spot where, only days before, he had lain unconscious, unaware, unawake. Dried purplish crust, the residue of his crèche sack, lay thick on the landskin, coating the stones.

  She glanced toward the north, toward the single wall of rock and clinging alien vegetation that had separated them from one another, unaware. No more than a morning’s slow walk. So short a distance, yet days had passed, and more time would pass before their reunion.

  Farther to the north, in a valley churning with parasitic aliens, the mother ool of them both lay dying, in the last throes of agonizing pain. She could still taste her, could recognize her pain.

  She mourned.

  Now, with his spoor close on the landskin, She could follow He’s path with ease. She climbed the rocky slope, pausing in the shade of a razor-leafed tree that still tasted of him. Here the demands of her body caught up with her, and when she turned away to continue her pursuit She found she could not move her feet. She sank to the landskin, breathing heavily, unable to focus.

  Cilia caressed her, sank into her skin, fed her. Unnoticed wounds warmed with renewal, closed. Depleted tissues swelled with newborn strength. Impatient, She tried to pull away. The landskin refused to let her go, clinging, suffusing her with power and communion.

  She sent out a cry for him through the landskin, a summons.

  And dire certainty came flooding into her in return, a sense of dread, of menace. She felt his fear, his nearly overwhelming panic, and an electric tingle traveled through her. The threat was real, and growing.

  Come, she silently called. Come, quickly!

  I am coming to reclaim you, daughter, came her God’s reply, borne through the medium of the landskin. And in a flickering vision she saw them, saw them through the billions of sensory organs of the landskin: the ool, dozens of them, flocking toward her, churning the clouds into broken mists in their passage.

  Chapter 22

  Rian stumbled within the bubble as a tremor swept through the landskin. He fell to his side and rolled. The tentacles, rising up from his sides and disappearing into a sphinctered opening above, wound around his body, stretched taut. His chin slammed into the tough, fibrous flesh. His teeth clamped down around the tube in his throat. He felt something snap inside and tasted a hot gush of blood. Swallowing, he chewed on the tube.

  Wondering at the disturbance in the landskin, he managed to wiggle to his knees, his back pressed against the wall of the bubble. A shiver passed through the landskin at the touch of his naked skin. He smelled the acrid stench of burning flesh and turned to see a fizzing, oozing wound in the landskin.

  His bubble pitched, rolling, keeping the wounded area away from him. Rian lost his footing again and fell. One of the tentacles, stretched taut, snapped and fell across his naked chest. He pressed his back against the landskin. Again the bubble trembled, shuddered, and he felt oozing liquid well up beneath him, hot and stinging.

  Rising to his feet once more, Rian strained against the tendrils that rose through the apex of his bubble. Balancing against the undeniable sensation of movement, he turned in place, slowly winding the tentacles around his body, stretching th
em tighter and tighter. His breathing became labored as his ribs pressed down on his lungs.

  When he could wind himself no more, he strained against the taut tentacles, backing into the landskin wall. He pressed against the shivering flesh. Held there, while his bubble lurched and the landskin foamed. Held there, while the bubble rotated, shifting his feet to keep his balance, straining against the pull of his alien umbilicals.

  The bubble pitched, flipping over. Rian fell, eyes widening, trying to twist his body around so that he would not land on his face. The tentacles jerked him up short of the landskin floor, stretched, and screeched in protest. One by one they snapped, whipping around like lashes, scoring his flesh, drawing fresh blood. As the last of them broke Rian crashed down to the curving floor, landing on his shoulder and the side of his face. The tube in his mouth cracked. Sharp, brittle shards stabbed into his cheeks and gums. He gagged on the nether end, as it slid down his throat, and lodged there.

  Frantic, he heaved, tried to cough. He chewed on the shattered prosthesis, his teeth biting through crackling outer husk and into rancid, gooey tissues within. His tongue worked at the mouthpiece, pushing it from between his teeth. He gagged, hunched over, strangling on foreign tissue and his own bile and blood.

  Around him the bubble continued to heave, and Rian was tossed about like a doll, banging into the sides of the sphere, smearing the walls with blood.

  At last his teeth cracked through the remnants of the tube, piercing the thick strand of muscle that held it all together. Jerking his head from side to side he forced the tube from his mouth. He vomited, and the rest of the construction spewed from his throat, bathing him in digestive juices.

  Shivering, crying, Rian lay on the wildly pitching landskin, unable to summon the strength to do more. He managed to roll to his stomach. His forehead pressed against the oozing, ruined flesh of the landskin.

  Dimly he became aware that the sensation of movement had stopped, though he could not then decide the importance of that. Spent, he lay panting, moaning just to hear the sound of his own voice, and wept.