by Conner, Jack
Avery and Sheridan, former lovers, reconnect somewhat as they hurtle along through the darkness. He doctors her back to health and she keeps him chained up. They cross beneath the borders of Octung and go far beyond, eventually coming upon Laisha, an exotic country occupied by Octung.
Finally Sheridan is able to hand the Device over to Octunggen authorities. Instead of having Avery arrested, Sheridan allows him to roam free. The two form an odd bond. Avery and Layanna had been on a break because of her refusal to forgo human sacrifice, and he and Sheridan resume their old physical relationship. On the side, he works with Laishan rebels to try to overthrow Octung and steal back the Device.
During a revolt organized by the rebels, he attempts to do just that, betraying Sheridan, but she had seen this coming and switched the Device with a bowling ball. He got away with the bowling ball while she retained the Device, which is to be taken to the Over-City, that great aerial construct of Octung, now approaching Laisha. Avery escapes, but in the chaos the locals take him for an enemy and nearly kill him; they’re massacring all the outsiders they can find. Luckily Janx, Hildra and Layanna finally show up and save him.
He discloses to them that Ani is aboard the Over-City, along with Sheridan and the Device. Sheridan had had Ani brought here to be given to Avery once the Device was aboard the Over-City. He’d given up having his daughter back for a chance at getting the Device away from Sheridan, thus partially redeeming his earlier mistakes. Layanna forgives him and they resume their relationship, although they have to hide out from angry Octunggen occupiers (who have retaken control of the city) in the meantime.
While Sheridan and the Device get away aboard the Over-City, Avery and the others are hunted. They find shelter with Layanna’s human son Frederick, who lives in an expatriate quarter of the city. He’s never forgiven Layanna for leaving his father, and he’s become a bitter junkie hooked on hava.
Determined to end the threat Layanna poses once and for all, the Octunggen occupiers bomb the city with an alchemical gas, causing strange effects among the populace. Octung sacrifices the entire city to kill Layanna.
BOOK FIVE
Avery uses Frederick’s addiction against him, and the group secures a dirigible, going after the Over-City and rising above the toxic gas. They infiltrate the aerial brothel known as Paradise, kidnap a high-ranking Octunggen officer and take possession of his aerial yacht, a very expensive dirigible.
In this, they pursue the Over-City and at last land on it, posing as loyal Octunggen. They rescue Ani and confront Sheridan, who informs them that Uthua is leading the ceremony that will activate the Device in favor of Octung even then. They have reached the sea and Octung has reversed the Device’s functions.
Avery, posing as Sheridan’s plus-one, attends the activation ceremony with her, having concocted a plan with the others. Sheridan is arrested at the ceremony but Avery is left free. Sartrand attends the ceremony, as well, and Avery tricks him, getting him to attack Uthua. While the two Collossum fight, Avery steals the Device and runs. He rejoins the others and they fly away with all the forces of the Over-City in pursuit.
Layanna restores the Device’s original functions just as the dirigible is shot down by Uthua. She prepares to activate the Device aboard the sinking ship when Uthua arrives in person. Sheridan, who is with them at the time, fights Avery while the others hold off Uthua. Frederick sacrifices his life to wound the Collossum, and Uthua is sent into the sea. Avery asks Sheridan why she’s siding with beings like Uthua, and she tells him it’s because she wants Octung to win; if it doesn’t, the R’loth will rise up and prosecute their war themselves, and it will be terrible. She begs Avery not to activate the Device or the world will suffer.
Ani shoots Sheridan. Avery activates the Device. The Over-City falls. The War of Octung is over. But Avery knows that Sheridan is right. Now the R’loth, denied their puppet Octung, will act themselves. Avery braces himself for the worst.
BOOK SIX
The worst arrives. The R’loth send giant beings that look like starfish to obliterate one island after the other, killing millions. The Starfish drive toward the mainland. Avery and Layanna collect samples of Starfish tissue and mean to analyze them, find some weakness of the Starfish.
The band has been picked up by a whaling vessel, and in its medical bay Avery works on Sheridan, saving her life so that Ani will not be a murderer … and maybe for some other reason, too. Layanna is very suspicious of that other reason and she refuses to sleep with Avery because of it.
Sheridan, once well, betrays them into the hands of pirates, who seize the whaling ship. Pirates have replaced Octung as the R’loth’s power at sea, and the pirate fleet, ruled by Janx’s former boss and old enemy Segrul the Gray, worships the R’loth. The band is brought to Davic, a Collossum and Layanna’s former husband. He attempts to kill them, but they manage to escape, after having seen Sheridan be sent off on an important assignment, something to do with an Atoshan relic. She’d been dispatched to Ghenisa, but for what they don’t know.
They arrive at the mainland to find Prime Minister Denaris at odds with Grand Admiral Haggarty, a puppet of Sheridan’s and an agent of Octung. The Grand Admiral is trying to stage a coup and take over the government. Denaris gives Avery’s band refuge and allows them to set up lab in which they analyze the Starfish samples.
During this time the Voryses make contact with Avery. His late wife Mari was a distant relative of the old ruling family, the Voryses, commonly referred to as the Drakes. Despised and hated, they had been dethroned half a century ago and their members killed or driven into hiding, like Mari. Ani is a descendant and they want her to rejoin her family, led by a man called Idris, who would be King of Ghenisa like his forefathers. He wants to take power, using the turmoil to his own advantage. Avery refuses the request, but Idris asks him if Ani’s been having strange dreams. Sure enough, she has, and they’ve been bothering both her and Avery. She dreams of singing, and a doorway. Could these dreams be shared by other Voryses, and might they have some insight into what they mean?
Meanwhile the Starfish drive ever closer to the mainland, wiping out one island after another. There is no sign of Sheridan and no news of what her special assignment could have been. Finally Avery and Layanna have a breakthrough in the laboratory. They discover that the nectar of the rare “ghost flower” allows Layanna to establish a psychic link with the Starfish tissue. In theory, if she can ingest enough fresh nectar and can “plug herself” into the brain of one of the giant Starfish, she can send a psychic pulse out to all the Starfish, killing them and saving the world from the wrath of the R’loth.
The hitch is that the ghost flower only grows in the Crothegra Jungle, also known as the Atomic Jungle. A man named Losg Coleel holds the sole rights to the nectar, and he resides in the war-torn city of Ezzez. Avery leaves Ani with her “Uncle Id”, patriarch of the surviving Voryses, hoping for the best, realizing he can’t take her into the Atomic Jungle, and the four members of the band depart for Ezzez at once, only to learn that Sheridan knows where they’re going … and why.
BOOK SEVEN
They arrive in Ezzez to find a city torn by war. Octung's presence is strong but heavily disputed. The city is also half-overgrown by the Crothegra Jungle, the so-called Atomic Jungle, which is resurgent due to the recent conflict which has distracted those who'd tended it before. Avery and the others make their way through the chaotic city with the help of local rebels, are attacked by Octunggen-controlled soldiers and scatter.
Avery finds Losg Coleel in hiding in the Maze of Dark Delights, and the doctor and Layanna help the merchant find a place of relative safety in the rebel headquarters. In return, Coleel tells them where they can find the ghost flower. He is out of the flower and Layanna needs the raw nectar, so their only option is to journey into the Atomic Jungle itself to seek out the flower.
During all of this Avery's band is menaced not only by Octunggen-controlled soldiers but by a mysterious new enemy, a group of robed fi
gures that appear to be walking, maggot-infested cadavers. The maggots are unnatural. The Infested beings want Layanna for some reason, though Avery's group doesn't know why.
The band ventures into the jungle, finding one of the villages Coleel employs to harvest the ghost flower, but still the flower's nectar is not strong enough. The band will have to penetrate into the "haunted" quarter of the jungle where the ghost flower "vines" originate.
They also discover more Infested beings and believe the source of the "Infection" may stem from the Gomingdon, the so-called haunted quarter ... the same place the vines originate from.
Troops led by Sheridan attack the village and the band is forced into flight. In the chaos Avery finds himself separated from the others. Lost in the Atomic Jungle, he nearly falls prey to local wildlife, but Sheridan, also separated from her group, saves him, and the two travel together. Along the way, they renew their bond somewhat, although neither quite trusts the other.
The Atomic Jungle ends, becoming a strangely mundane jungle, right where the Gomingdon starts, and there, right in the middle of the Gomingdon, is a long-abandoned, pre-human city of great size and eeriness. Avery and Sheridan explore the outer edge of the city and climb one of the spires to its top. Where are the others? They don't know.
They sleep beside each other that night on the building's rooftop, but Avery vows not to make love to her. Despite this vow, in the morning the two begin to make love ... when they are interrupted by the arrival of Layanna, Janx and Hildra, all of whom are horrified.
Janx begins to strangle Sheridan, but Avery convinces him to at least let her speak. She says that her party arrived by dirigibles and that she'll give the band one of the airships if Janx releases her. Reluctantly, he agrees. Without the airships they'd have to find their way back to civilization through the vastness of the Atomic Jungle on foot, a journey which would almost surely kill them.
It's then that Avery notices that Layanna, Janx and Hildra didn't arrive alone. Several of the "Infested" are with them, and they mean to take the group for an interview with the Colony.
Chapter 1
“Interview?” Avery said, as he was marched through the streets of the lost, inhuman city. “Colony?”
Layanna took the lead, with the rest filing along behind. Maggot-infested men and non-men hemmed the humans in from all sides, choking the street. Avery realized that the city belonged to them, or at any rate that they inhabited it. He and Sheridan, lacking binoculars, hadn’t been able to see them clearly from above. They’d assumed them to be normal humans and non-humans somehow working together, but instead each and every one of them was infested—as, he realized now, had been the priests of the Restoration. They must have been dispatched to Ezzez as agents of the so-called Colony, though why Avery couldn’t fathom. Something to do with Layanna, clearly.
“What do you mean, interview?” he asked Hildra. She was the only one of the group that would speak with him, surprisingly.
“We’re goin’ to meet their boss,” she said, jerking her chin at the maggot men. “Goin’ to meet the leader.”
“Willingly?”
“Willing ain’t got much to do with it.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, soon as we came on the city, these jerkwads surrounded us. Her Highness tried to amoeba-out on them, but she couldn’t. Don’t know why. ‘fore we got here she’d eaten a bunch of nasty fuckwhats, got her shit back together, but somehow ... here ... somethin’ blocked her.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Neither do we. Neither does she, or that’s what she says.”
“I doubt she would lie about that.” Thoughtfully, he added, “Atomic Sea infection doesn’t penetrate here.”
“Noticed that. Think they’re connected?”
“How could they not be? Layanna’s power stems from the sea. The infection is the sea, or its effects. For whatever reason, this city, or something in it, blocks Atomic properties. But ...”
“Yeah?”
“... with the fact of the ghost flowers, and the maggot men, it evidently has properties all its own.”
“Great.”
He glanced over his shoulder to see Sheridan trailing behind him, Janx just behind her, keeping a careful watch on the admiral, not that she could have bolted in any case, not with all the infested beings about.
“But it’s Layanna they want,” Avery said. “Not us. Correct?” Just like the priests in Ezzez.
Hildra rolled a shoulder. “They spoke to her, in that weird static voice they have, and she seemed to understand. She nodded, and they took us into the city.”
“How did you find us—Sheridan and myself?”
“You were the only Atomicly-infected thing in the city, bones—at least, the only one not taken over by maggots. Blondie could sense you.” In a low voice, she said, “She almost seemed ... well, excited to see you again. I think she’d been worried about you. Between you and me, I think she was about to give you some nookie.”
He hung his head. The worst part of it was, he wished he and Sheridan had finished what they were doing. In fact, he had half a mind to drag her into the next alley and do just that. At the thought, he felt an uncomfortable strain in his crotch.
Kill it, he thought, again hearing Hildra’s voice. Kill that fucker dead.
“There’s more bad news,” Hildra said. When Avery raised his eyebrows, she said, “They took our weapons. They took everything ‘cept our clothes.”
“We can still collect the nectar. Find some way to use it.”
“Maybe.”
He pulled in a breath. “Layanna called these things the Colony.”
Hildra nodded. “I think that came from them. I had a different name in mind.”
So did Avery. The Infested, as he thought of them, led the group into a larger road, where an elephant stood waiting surrounded by more Infested. It was a colorful scene, as the riot of different lifeforms, some bearing bright crimson plumage like the Nisaar, or colorful silver-green scales like a few of the infected humans, or iridescent and irregular spots like the toad-creatures known as gromids, with the great tusked pachyderm towering overhead complete with gold-brocaded palanquin, the sun making each filigree shine ... but Avery saw only grayness and grimness. They all crawled with maggots underneath, even the elephant, which answered his question from the previous day. They were walking corpses, some of them, the reek of death curling off in odious waves, while others would die soon enough—though in truth they were all already dead, really, their original minds gone, now corrupted to the service of these insectile vermin, who seemed to only be able to enslave their host when the infesting colony grew large enough—when the host Became. Then, what? It developed a rudimentary mind?
That had been what the priests of the Restoration did to their victims, he supposed, when they clamped their hands on their flesh. The priests had poured their maggots into the bodies of the victims in large enough quantities for the victims to almost immediately Become. To die and rise again in service to the Colony. To become part of the Colony.
The elephant sat, and the Infested made Layanna and then the others climb into the palanquin. Without being told, the elephant rose and marched through the streets toward the city center, simply one of the group following some sort of group will or, what ... directed from afar? Avery thought this likely. The creatures were drones. Somewhere there was a queen or the equivalent—the boss, as Hildra had said. Perhaps more than one. These poor shambling creatures were merely extensions of that overall will or wills.
Avery saw why the elephant had been necessary. The city was huge, in proportion with its buildings, and traversing it by foot would have taken forever. His eyes had been fooled into thinking it was smaller than it was when seeing the buildings from a distance, but up close he saw their true dimensions, and his mind reeled. The original inhabitants of this place must have been giants. The other Infested rode their own mounts, horses and great lizards, one group a huge fuzzy white worm
—all taken by the maggots, of course.
As the elephant passed through a city square (or what looked like one; who knew what sort of city planning and culture the vanished race had possessed?), Avery beheld a great statue, and he couldn’t help but let his jaw fall open. The thing must stand fifty feet high or more, and at first he thought it to be a representative figure, larger than life, but no—it fit, somehow. Its size looked almost natural amid the cyclopean city. It was life size. Amid the bird feces and abundant flowering vines, Avery couldn’t tell at first what the figure was, but slowly he made it out, and shook his head. The being depicted resembled something like a giant upright cauliflower, irregular and covered in bushy lumps, with no easily definable figure, but various gnarled, tangled limbs that might have been its version of arms and legs, a riotous bloom of a head, and a thick, knotty torso.
“Mother’s balls,” said Hildra. “That what I think it is?”
“An original occupant of the city,” Avery said. “It must be.”
“Hell of a thing,” Janx said, which, while not strictly spoken to Avery, was not strictly spoken to anyone else, either. Avery took it as a good sign. Though tempted to say more, to start a dialogue with the big man, Avery decided not to press his luck.
To Layanna, he said, “Do you know them?”
She eyed the statue with a frown. “I’ve read of a similar race, but it exists across the sea, in Ruiglin.”
“Bullshit,” Hildra snorted. “I bet you know just who they are.”