Title
Page 6
She encountered two cities during her walk—one of them a ghostly place covered in mist with great buildings the size of mountains. It had been visible far in the distance, but when she walked towards it, the place slipped away from her like a mirage, becoming harder to see, more distant, bending and warping. She finally decided it wasn't really in The Lands at all—just a reflection of some city on one of the real worlds. If she kept walking towards it, she might be able to make the mirage take on solid form, but anything she found there would likely be pure fantasy, just illusions fashioned from her own imaginings.
The other city had been very old; a tiny place with buildings made of stone, lost many centuries ago in the currents of time, and then brought back temporarily, something that was known to happen occasionally in the very deep parts of the wild country.
Camilla had entered this city, and walked its streets. The people there had looked on her with contempt, and she’d seen bodies lying on the cobblestones with their lips sewn shut.
She’d fled that place in tears, trying to outrun a strange madness that had begun clawing at the edges of her mind.
Over many hours of walking, the degree of Camilla's freedom varied. Sometimes the voice in her mind—which existed as a strange kind of music—came to her in a way that was almost pleasurable; almost seductive. She liked the voice during those times and she wanted to be controlled.
At other times it was like a raging river, and she felt caught in it, trapped. During those times she was filled with unspeakable terror.
And there were also moments when The Great Father left her alone, where she was mostly just herself, and these became more frequent as the journey went on, and as she demonstrated that she understood there was no escape.
Sometimes she would become afraid, start to panic, and then the voice would come back to her, soothe the fear away. Other times she would begin to feel rebellious, and the voice would crush her utterly, completely destroying her will.
There was a give and take, and most of the time the voice of The Father protected her from her own fears, sealed her awareness off from the most worrying realizations, such as the fact that she'd been envenomed by one of The Great Ones, and the fact that there was no way to undo that.
In the short term, the consequences were obvious—she was Apep's thrall. In the long term, it was more complicated. There was no way to be sure what might happen to her.
The serpents were able to create a dizzying variety of venoms, which could be used in an almost endless number of ways. The type typically used for enthralling someone was frequently—but not always—deadly in the long run. Some people survived and were just fine afterward. Other survivors suffered tremendous permanent damage, including physical changes that made them hideous, and mental derangement.
Many things could happen, and many of them weren't good. She was young, and that was perhaps in her favor, but she didn't feel especially optimistic.
Luckily, she wasn't able to dwell on these things. Apep kept her mind busy, kept it focused on the immediate task. And that was better. Constant fear and worry wouldn't do her any good anyway.
- - -
Eventually, after many, many hours of trudging forward, The Father led her to a well worn path through a grove of strange fruit trees.
She followed the path till she came to a great depression in the landscape, as if from a massive meteorite striking some time in the distant past. The steep sides of the bowl were overgrown with thick tropical vegetation. A wide stone stairway, obviously ancient, led hundreds of feet down to the bottom.
This was the place she’d been searching for. Camilla knew it immediately, and she started down without any hesitation.
Each individual stair was very deep, and about as high as her knee, as if the stairway had been built for giants. Going down them was awkward, but going back up, if it were required, would be much worse, especially considering her fatigue.
I'll have to stop and rest some time, she thought. There's no way I can keep this up much longer. But the Father’s voice in her mind, constantly pushing for more and more, suggested otherwise.
She noticed a thorny species of vine growing alongside the stairs on both sides, wrapping around the trees, and hanging from the branches. A variety of fruit she'd never seen before—bright and red, about the size of a fist—dangled from the vines here and there.
A pressure inside her, accompanied by the ever present buzzing in her mind, compelled her to stop in her tracks.
She approached the edge of the steps and examined the fruit.
Vague ideas began to pop up in her mind, and she suddenly understood that the fruit was important to The Serpent. It wanted her to stop here and eat.
She wondered why, but she was exhausted and hungry enough not to give it too much thought. She picked one and took a bite. It was soft and juicy like a grape, but the taste was sour and it burned her mouth. Still, she found it impossible to stop eating, and within less than a minute she'd finished it.
Immediately, she picked another and ate it just as fast. Then one more.
Afterward, she sat down on the steps as her mouth burned and her eyes watered profusely. She half expected to vomit, but it never happened, and after a while she actually felt much better—sated.
She resumed her descent, moving faster than before.
30 feet ahead of her, a little troop of white monkeys with long tails shot across the stairway, some of them glancing her way as they went by and making angry noises.
The further she descended, the more the sun seemed to retreat—the trees down lower were bigger, and the branches overhung the stairway like a canopy, casting deep shadows. The shade caused the temperature to cool some, but the air became so moist and sticky that it didn't matter.
Near the bottom, she stumbled, busting her knee, scraping her hand. Then she sat there, bleeding and crying like a child.
Another one of the white monkeys watched her suffer, and jabbered at her angrily, then threw one of the red fruits at her, hard enough so that it burst, splashing her face and eyes with burning liquid. She cursed and screamed, and it ran away.
She cried more and listened to the sounds of strange birds calling.
Then, after a while, the tears had run their course, and she sat there, rubbing at her bloody knee, thinking.
Camilla knew that she had been swallowed completely by the chaos now. So much so that without the voice of The Great Father to guide her, she would never find her way back to the stable reality of the surface.
And maybe it would be better to stay here. Anything could happen in this place. Anything was possible. Maybe the venom could even leave her body if she stumbled into the right reality current. She'd heard of all kinds of miracles and wonders happening out in the swirling endlessness.
No point in hoping for anything like that, she thought, suddenly unable to keep the horror buried inside herself any longer. I'm probably going to die eventually. And if not, I'll end up a hideous monster. Probably insane too.
Only very healthy people survived the venom unscathed, and she had always been sickly. Her blood was weak. On both sides of her family, almost everyone died fairly young. It didn't take a genius to see what was coming. A hardier person might walk away from this, but Camilla felt sure she wasn't going to. There was no way to fix it. No way to turn it around. She was all but doomed.
The terror rose up, a physical sensation that seemed to start somewhere between her chest and stomach, and she could sense the power of it, the raw desperation, the horrible craving for survival at any cost. But before the feeling could get a real foothold in her mind, the song of Apep pressed a little harder, reasserting again the uncontrollable desire to complete the task she'd been given, causing that desire to fill every corner of her thoughts, obliterating everything else.
The terror abated suddenly. Camilla stopped crying, ignored the pain in her knee, and pressed on.
2 - Bridge Work
At the bottom of the stairs, she came to a
huge, roughly circular, area; paved with smooth white stone, overgrown with vines and moss, slimy with moisture.
There were corpses everywhere—old enough that nothing remained but bones. Many of them had died carrying melee weapons—swords, axes and spears—now rusted and pitted with age.
In the center of the great circle stood an enormous tree, by far the biggest she'd ever seen: 20 feet around at the base, easily.
A pattern of deep ridges, regularly spaced, spiraled up the side of the trunk. There was something unnatural about them, but from this far away it was hard to say what it was.
Hundreds of feet above, in the branches, she could see a collection of small buildings.
Treehouses.
Up there, she thought. That's where I have to go.
She wasn't sure how she would do it—the tree looked impossible to climb, but she knew there was no turning back. There wasn't even the slightest temptation to give up.
She crossed the distance, and soon walked into the deep shade cast by the long branches.
Nearer to the tree, there were cracks in the paving stones through which massive roots, larger around than a person, erupted; and fallen leaves had, over the centuries, rotted away, coating the whole area with a layer of rich, black soil.
Bodies littered the ground here too, but in this area, they were mostly buried so that she could only see rough outlines. She had to walk carefully to keep from stepping on them.
When she reached the tree, she could see that the spiral pattern in the trunk was a sort of natural ladder.
Each of the rungs was just the right shape so that you could grip the edge with your hands and curl the fingers around. She grabbed one, leaned back to test it, and found it easy and comfortable to support her weight that way.
She looked up again at the treehouses. From here she could see a narrow network of bridges, running between them, connecting them.
Camilla shuddered to think of climbing so high.
Then she promptly stopped thinking about it—there was no point since she had no choice anyway—and began to climb.
It was easier than expected. The ridges were deep enough to provide excellent footholds, and she was able to stop and rest her injured knee periodically on her way up.
Before she knew it, she had ascended well over a hundred feet, moving to the left or right occasionally, to avoid the enormous branches.
As she drew nearer to the treehouses, she could better see the bridges connecting them, and what she saw caused a raw pang of fear to spring up inside her. There were holes rotted into them, and the wooden support beams beneath were covered with legions of orange mushrooms, a sure sign of decay.
A single bridge, wider than the others, had been joined directly to the trunk, obviously intended as an entry-point. It led to a circular porch area, which looked to be in decent shape, comparatively; and then from there, other bridges spread out to all the different houses.
As she studied the arrangement, the truth dawned on her: there was no way to reach the houses except for using the bridges.
No matter how rotten they were, she would have to walk on them.
She stopped right where she was, glanced down, and felt her heart jump into her throat.
It was so far to the bottom.
I don't think I can do this.
Her thoughts turned, briefly, to the idea of climbing back down, and that was when she learned the true extent of Apep's control. Before she could fully comprehend what was happening, there was a burst of harsh activity in her mind, as if an electrical explosion was happening behind her eyes. Then her hands started moving on their own, followed by her feet.
Camilla began to climb again.
She was a puppet.
If Apep wanted it, at anytime, he could simply turn her into a puppet.
It was a terrible thing to lose control of one's body. She'd never felt so helpless before in her life.
No! she thought. Please, stop! I'm sorry! Please don't do this to me!
For a moment her limbs continued climbing without her permission, and then, slowly, she felt physical control return to her.
But she fully understood the message—her freedom was conditional. She would do what she was told, one way or another.
Big warm tears rolled down her cheeks as she climbed up the rest of the way, not allowing herself to think too much about the terrifying task ahead of her.
At the top, she paused a moment to look around.
The treehouses—four altogether—were resting on branches not very far from each other. They didn't have the rustic, primitive look one would expect of treehouses. They were boxy and sturdy in design, made from heavy wood beams rather than raw tree branches, and they were very well crafted, with real glass windows; diamond shaped instead of square.
From up here, the bridges looked a bit safer—there were no mushrooms growing on them at least, nor could she see any sign of insect infestation. She didn't like the fact that they lacked safety railings, but at least they were reasonably wide.
The rounded porch area she'd noticed from beneath reminded her of a gazebo. It had a roof, and railings, and there were wooden tables and benches inside. It was positioned in the middle of everything, with five bridges running from it, one to each of the houses, and another—which, she supposed she would have to use—that crossed the distance to the tree trunk.
The bridge was about 30 feet long. Even though it didn't look so bad from this angle, knowing what she did about the state of the wood underneath the surface, it still seemed like a long walk.
I can do it. she told herself. I'm very thin and light. If I move slow and careful, nothing bad will happen.
She edged along the trunk till she was right next to the bridge, then took a deep breath and stepped off onto it, making sure to put her feet on a spot above one of the heavy support beams.
She stood there, listening, waiting for the crunch of rotted wood giving way. A gust of wind came through, shaking the branches. She felt the bridge move underneath her with the wind, and a little cry of terror escaped her throat.
The wind died down, and she stood there for another few seconds to catch her breath and gather her courage again. Then she started across.
She looked down at her feet as she walked, trying to ignore the vertigo that hit her during the moments when she accidentally caught a glimpse of the ground far below.
The wind gusted twice during the crossing. Both times the bridge shook noticeably, and she stopped, waiting with bated breath for the inevitable collapse, but it didn't happen and she made it safely to the porch.
The place had the feel of a cozy, communal gathering spot. There were rocking chairs and benches, and tables with copper ashtrays, and hooks attached to posts with old-fashioned lanterns hanging from them. She could detect the slightest whiff of sweet pipe tobacco in the air, and there was a half-finished wood carving of some kind of insect—a giant roach, maybe—on one of the tables, with wood whittlings lying on the ground in front of a nearby chair.
There was something odd about the furniture, and at first she didn't know what. Then she realized it was the size: everything was a little smaller than it should be. The difference wasn't drastic, but it was noticeable.
Of the four houses, one stood out as nicer than the others. The bridge leading to it was tidy and free of dead leaves, and there was a broom leaning up next to the door. The windows looked cleaner, and behind some of them she could see white curtains.
That's the one, she thought. Whatever she was sent here to get—and she felt sure now that she was meant to retrieve something—was in that house somewhere.
A wave of relief washed over her at the realization that her journey was almost over. She put aside her fears about the rotted bridges and started crossing to the house.
She was halfway there when the first bird hit her—a gray pigeon. It caught her in the arm with astonishing force, its beak penetrating deep into her flesh.
She screamed.
 
; The bird bounced off, landed on the bridge, already mostly dead from the impact, and twitched madly till it fell over the side.
The next bird hit her in the back of the head, hard enough to make her dizzy, and she fell forward. Her left knee hit a rotten place in the wood, and burst through it, but before she could even take a moment to think about the prospect of falling to her death, another bird hit her buttock so hard that its beak penetrated the fabric of her dress.
She yelped and started crawling forward.
A fourth bird crashed into her ear, and then, half a second later, two more hit her in the back of the neck.
She crawled faster, screaming continually now.
A bird landed on her head, started ripping at her with its talons, and pecking. She ignored it and kept crawling. The small porch surrounding the house was just a few more feet away. She would be able to stand up there and get the crazed bird off her.
As she crawled the last few feet, she felt more impacts on her ribs and arms. Blood was pouring out of her ear, running down the side of her face.
When she reached the porch she stood, her legs shaking from terror, and swiped hard at the back of her head, knocking the attacking bird loose. Then she grabbed the broom by the door, and swung it wildly around herself, screaming with a mix of rage and terror. "Stop! Stop! Leave me alone!"
Another bird dove in towards her face and she barely managed to dodge at the last second. It hit the house behind her with a thud and a crunch of bone.
She could hear many more birds in the distance, what sounded like a whole flock, crying out angrily, wings flapping.