Ah, fuck, not Prue . . .
Godsdammit, he wished he could have seen her this morning, touched her hand, steadied himself. Shuddering, he gazed into the sparkling blue water. Because he was going to have to go down there, and he wasn’t sure he had the courage to do it. But they were all linked somehow—this death-stench, the task the gods had given him, Inga and Prue.
The moment he’d reached The Garden that morning, he left the singing class flat and pelted up the stairs to her office. But her door was locked. “Prue!” he’d yelled, giving it a healthy thump.
A short silence, the creak of her chair. “If that is you, Master Thorensen,” came her voice, perfectly composed, “go away and leave me work. I’ll send the completed books to you by messenger.” The rustle of paper as if she’d slapped something down hard on the desk.
He’d made a rude gesture at the unresponsive door, but then he’d put his hands on his hips and stared at it, imagining her working on those damned accounts. His lips quirked with grim amusement. Once he’d had the idea, it had taken him most of a night to create the crazy effect, and to make separate copies of what was serious and essential, but he’d chuckled as he’d worked. He’d never had to cook the books before.
Mistress Prue and the dark goddess would find it took more than a curt dismissal to get rid of Erik Thorensen.
Now, he pulled off his boots and shrugged slowly out of his jacket. On second thoughts, he removed his shirt as well, ripping out the laces to tie his hair back and tucking his talisman and its chain into the pocket. He couldn’t risk losing that. The source of the corruption was under the water stair, beneath the Leaf. Praise be to the Horned Lord, the water was clear and calm. He was big enough and strong enough for this, surely? Fencing with his friend Gray kept him fit and made him a competent enough swordsman for the stage. He could hold his own in a barroom brawl or a knife fight.
But swimming? He hadn’t swum much since he’d left the place of his birth, New Norsca, on Concordia. On the other hand, he sang opera for a living. He could hold his breath longer than anyone he knew.
Barefoot in his trews, Erik padded across to the nearest garden and leaned over the wall. Gazing about, he noted the lush vertical lines of daffydillies and the graceful fronds of a widow’s hair tree, bending at the exact angle to brush the dimpled surface of a small, irregularly shaped pond. A dense bank of delicate plants starred with small pink flowers tumbled over the edge and drifted across the water in a sprawl of lace.
Very pretty.
He shoved the bundle of his clothes and boots under the twisted roots of the widow’s hair tree, behind the bright trumpets of the daffydillies. A middle-aged woman leaned out of a second-floor window and shook a cloth; Erik froze and her gaze passed right over him.
Without giving himself further time to think, he turned, walked rapidly down the water stairs and kept going, straight into the canal and the death mist in the air.
Warm and silky, the water caressed Erik’s body, plastering his trews against his skin. But as he stroked around behind the stairs, it grew darker and the swamp stink intensified to an almost unbearable level. When he stopped to tread water, a stealthy chill grabbed him by the ankles. Enough light penetrated to create a flickering world of broken reflections. Directly before him was a dark, ragged arch, three times taller than he.
Wonderingly, Erik swam closer, reaching out with curious fingertips. The surface was as tough as the bark of an ancient tree, striated and knobbed, pitted in some places with crevices so deep Florien could have squeezed right into them. And all of it was wet and shiny.
When he examined his palm, it dripped with an eerie green light. Phosphorescence.
With an exclamation of disgust, Erik wiped his hand on his trews.
This was stupid. Going in there, following that dark, noisome tunnel to the gods knew where . . . it was crazy. Lord’s balls, this was the living flesh of the titanplant!
So what if he was the only one who smelled the rot? He’d go to the queen, to the proper authorities, and force them to believe him. They’d do it properly, bring torches.
Something soft and wispy brushed past his knee and Erik damn near swallowed his tongue. He thrashed in the water, peering down. When it didn’t come again, he drew up his legs to extract the small knife he wore in a sheath against his calf.
Four feet away, a head broke the surface. A tubelike snout whiffled. “Hoot?”
The little animal disappeared in a neat swirl.
“Hoot?”
Erik spun around. Gods, there was another one behind him! Or perhaps it was the same one. He gripped the hilt of the knife.
Out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of a sleek blue body barreling through the water at extraordinary speed. Breaking the surface, it soared straight over his head, brushing the underside of the stairs, before it dived neatly back into the water. In its wake trailed a formless melody of hoots expressed in a sweetly minor key.
Now there were six of them surrounding him, no, eight. Possibly ten. Their heads bobbing, singing their strange, double-throated song. Occasionally, one would break formation to gambol across the water, as if with an excess of energy.
They looked just like the creatures on Prue’s shawl, the one he’d used to—
Erik lowered the knife. “Seelies,” he gasped. “You’re seelies.”
He could scarcely credit it, but it looked like the biggest one nodded. Its dark, bulging eyes stared into his for a heart-stopping moment. “Hoot!”
There was no time to fight, even to take a real breath. A wall of blue fur surged forward, jammed itself tightly around Erik’s body and propelled him forward toward that hideous opening—at first slowly, then faster and faster, until the dark closed in all about him and the stench.
Erik struck out, his massive shoulders bunching, but he had the sensation that for every seelie he struck, another replaced it, then another and another, until he was submerged in blue fur, flying through the black water, the tunnel growing closer and closer until it brushed his hair and his thrashing feet.
His lungs squeezed with agony, just as they had when he’d nearly died of the lungspasm as a child.
Can’t breathe, can’t breathe.
His whole body became a litany of babbled prayers and demands.
Lady, Great Lady, don’t kill me again. Not yet, not ’til I’ve finished whatever the hell this is.
His vision filled with spots, the blood thundering in his ears.
His head broke the surface and he whooped in grateful gulps of air. One seelie inserted itself under his left arm, holding him up, while a second pushed and pulled him toward a ledge, nudging and hooting the whole time.
“All right.” Erik collapsed, his lower body still in the water. Stubby, clawed web-paws wouldn’t leave him be. Urgently, they tugged, leaving scratches and bruises. “
All right!
Gods, if it had been anyone but me, they’d be drowned, you fools.” He rolled over.
The eerie glow of phosphorescence showed the roof of the chamber some twenty feet above him, the walls made of that same barklike material. It was more a hollow than a room really, but huge, roughly circular, the water lapping dark as ink. Inside the Leaf of Nobility! Erik glanced upward. This echoing, stinking space was but a small irregularity to the titanplant, with its leaves hundreds of feet thick. He gave a tired grin. All those fine noblelords and ladies above, if only they knew! With a snort, he hauled himself onto the ledge.
Experimentally, he reached behind him and prodded the wall. His finger sank into the knuckle and one of the seelies gave a hoot of distress. A half dozen of them floated before him, their whiskers twitching with agitation.
Unconsciously, Erik lowered his voice to a melodious rumble. “There’s something wrong, isn’t there?”
The largest one answered, a continuous trill of notes, finishing on an amazingly complex chord. How did it do that?
“Is it what I can smell?” He touched his nose and made a pantomime of sniffing and coughing.
The chamber filled with loud, emphatic hoots. Dark water turned white with the thrashing of little bodies.
Erik tugged at his hair, needing the pain. No, he thought carefully, he wasn’t mad, he was sitting in a hollow space inside a gigantic Leaf conversing with creatures out of legend. And he was probably going to drown at some stage of the proceedings.
His other life was locked away in a shining bubble, small and bright. Gone beyond his touch. Prue McGuire and her vivid aquamarine eyes. Himself standing center stage, looking out over the footlights, hearing that special hush, the one that meant you held all those hearts in the palm of your hand.
Gods, he loathed small places, too damned big to tolerate confinement. The weight of the entire fucking Leaf was leaning on the back of his neck, the wet-rot stench corroding his nasal passages, making his chest ache. Fuck, he
hated
this!
Get it done. Get it done right.
“You want me to see it?” he sang back, using the same tonal pattern.
The big seelie turned a complete somersault out of the water. “Hoot, hoot,
burble
!” it sang. Then it sped over to Erik’s ledge and tugged at his foot.
“Wait, wait.” Erik kicked it off. “We have to do this carefully. Do you understand,
carefully
? Or I’ll drown.”
“Hoot?”
The big seelie stared at him, doubt in every whisker twitch, its protuberant eyes extraordinarily expressive. If it hadn’t possessed so much natural dignity, it would have looked cute.
I bet the Lady loves you,
thought Erik, not without envy.
Dripping, clad only in his trews, he hauled himself to his feet and gave the performance of his life.
This is how it has to be,
he sang in the Voice,
this way. You see?
With his mind, he formed pictures as clearly as he could. Himself breathing deep, sinking beneath the water, the seelies guiding, not pushing, letting him come up for air when he signaled. Then he sang it all to them, again and again.
By the end, the little creatures were caroling a hooty descant, virtually dancing on their tails in the water.
Despite himself, Erik laughed aloud.
The seelies froze, seemingly entranced.
Then the big one grabbed Erik’s ankle and pulled him under. But when he jackknifed for the surface, it released him immediately. Erik trod water, expanding his massive chest, sucking in air until he felt giddy, fizzing with the gods’ gift.
With a final inhalation, he dived for the bottom, accompanied by a retinue of seelies. A nudge on his shoulder and they had him headed into a different, shorter tunnel, back under the monstrous weight of the Leaf. His guts lurching with apprehension, Erik peered ahead. Pressure echoed in his ears, the world gone all silent and drifty. The seascape was patterned in degrees of shadow, no light, only gradations of gray and black. Traces of luminescence clung to what he could see now was a forest of stems, of weeds and vines.
And beyond . . . one of the gigantic stems of the titanplant itself.
A monstrous, dark shape, as big around as three palazzos together, bigger than the largest Technomage Tower he’d ever seen. In awe, he tracked the length of it as it fell away below, to disappear into the utter black of the deeps. Then back up again, to where it joined the underside of the Leaf of Nobility.
Sinuous silver shapes, some with gleaming teeth or long ropey tentacles, darted about on the periphery of his vision. As soon as the seelies approached, they faded gracefully away, but he had the sense of them, their endless, voracious patience.
His lungs beginning to burn, Erik pointed at the cable stem, and two seelies thrust themselves beneath his arms, accelerating until weeds battered at his face and shoulders with the force of their passage.
Close up, he could
see
the putrescence. Tentatively, he reached out, tumbling forward with a startled grunt when his arm sank into the soft mass as far as the shoulder. Particles of rotting flesh circled away on the slow currents, clinging to his hair, his shoulders, like evil, slimy snowflakes.
Gods, he was
inside
the guts of a giant corpse, like some small, filthy scavenger, watching it dissolve into a foul mush.
With a flurry of kicks, he backpedaled, his vision hazing with revulsion as much as with lack of air. Urgently, he gestured.
Go back, have to go back
.
Between them, Erik and the seelies got him back to the hollow chamber. For a long time, he lay sprawled on the ledge, his chest heaving. The moment he struggled to his elbows, the leader seelie tapped him on the ankle. “Hoot?” It looked over one blue-furred shoulder, in a different direction. “Burble?”
“Shit, not again?”
“
Hoot!
”
Wearily, Erik pumped himself full of air. But this time, it wasn’t quite so bad. The seelies took him so deep, his ears began to ache, but then they brought him back up again, allowed him a snatched breath and hustled him across the canal, looking both ways, so like a set of blue-furred sneak thieves he had to smile.
He was so turned around, he couldn’t work out which Leaf this was, but once underneath, it was clear enough what they wished him to see. A huge cable stem green with health, firm and resilient to the touch; the water clean and clear; sparkling shoals of fish and bright, floaty things with long, drifting skirts. Animals that looked like flowers. Flowers that looked like animals. So many species, he couldn’t count them all.
When he finally lay sprawled and waterlogged across a set of unfamiliar water stairs, the sun on his face was such a benediction that tears sprang to his eyes. He bowed his head.
Thank you
.
My Lord and Lady
.
Just—thank you
.
“Hoot!”
Sitting up, he tried to shake the water out of his ears. “Yes,” he said. “You did well. Relax, this is finally it, the task the gods set me. I’ll find someone who can fix your problem.”