Memory Seed (37 page)

TALES FROM THE SPIRED INN

THE GREEN REALM BELOW

Through the rain Kytanquil could see the aquamarine lamps of the Spired Inn like corpse lights floating around a mausoleum. The inn was a tall, domed structure with a single door, to which she ran as the wind blew drizzle into her face. It was the last centre of culture in this northerly district of the dying city of Kray.

And it was her home, for Kytanquil was the daughter of Oq-Ziq, notorious thief and local ambassador for the jannitta culture, and Balgydyal, notorious lecher and ambassador for nothing.

Inside the hall she stuffed her boots into an antiseptic bin, pulled off her film protectives and dressed in a white shift and slippers that she withdrew from her kit, belting the shift with string and inflating the slippers with a minipump. She opened the door into the common room and strolled in. Dark alcoves of oak surrounded her, their carven sides flickering as a multitude of giant candles sputtered and hissed. A few locals drank dooch from tankards. At the bar she saw the innkeeper, Dhow-lin, a crusty old woman dressed in the traditional smock of her aamlon culture.

This was through force of circumstance a cosmopolitan inn, where melancholy Krayans mingled with exotic jannitta, who were in turn mellowed by the intense, almost elegiac musicality of the aamlon. Kytanquil, never quite at home with any of these cultures, nevertheless found the mixture a comfort, for her personality was not sober, not passionate, nor yet profound. She was a drifter. Not a loner, but a misfit.

Her appearance caused a trio of priestesses from the Temple of Youth to stare at her. She was unusually tall, her short, bleached hair slicked back with antiseptic gel, her sad, dark eyes – identical to her mother’s – like anti-lamps in a bright face. She ignored the priestesses, and they returned to their whispered conversation.

Dhow-lin greeted her. ‘Come along. Drink?’

Kytanquil approached the bar and replied, ‘Is she in?’

‘No. Out raiding some unsafe homes wired off by defenders this morning. Four or five families forced south to the refugee streets.’

‘Hmmm.’ Kytanquil nodded to the bottles of mootsflosser. She enjoyed a special relationship with Dhow-lin on account of her mother, allowing her such luxuries as credit and free board. ‘Make it a big glass.’

Swilling the creamy liqueur around her goblet, she surveyed the clientele. Apart from the priestesses, all were locals. She turned back to the bar, only to see Dhow-lin’s hand waving a slip of plastic at her. ‘I forgot, this message came for you.’

Only one symbol had been printed on the fragment, a red splotch looking like a leaf. She did not recognise it. But her bracelet did.

It had been a present from a mysterious relative, an object she had owned since her rite of puberty, a wide bracelet of gold, copper and silicon with an object embedded in it like a soft emerald. Now that dark jewel glowed, and as she waved the slip at it bright green beams burst out. One of the decorative frills beside the jewel moved to become a slit, and before she knew it the slip was being ingested by the bracelet, until all that was left was the smell of lavender incense. The whole incident lasted just seconds.

‘What did it do?’ Dhow-lin asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Kytanquil replied, ‘I had no idea it was active.’

Dhow-lin was unimpressed. ‘It’s trouble, that’s certain. Throw it. It’s useless for bartering and it ain’t a weapon.’

‘It is an heirloom,’ Kytanquil pointed out.

‘An heirloom that even Kray’s greatest cat-burglar can’t identify,’ Dhow-lin scoffed, adding in a sing-song voice, ‘That’s dangerous.’

‘My mother doesn’t know everything.’

Dhow-lin’s response was cut short when another slit opened up and a translucent orange wafer slid out. It fell to the bar with a metallic plink.

Dhow-lin gasped. ‘A Garden fret!’

Kytanquil did not recognise the phrase, but she understood the shock in Dhow-lin’s voice. ‘A what?’ she asked.

After a pause, Dhow-lin said, ‘A call from the secret inhabitants of the Garden. They want to meet you.’

‘Why?’

‘Nobody but them can know, can they? They’re the ultimate secret society, older by far than the Phallists, more skilled than the Club of Shadowy Thieves. You better go.’

‘But where exactly?’ Kytanquil asked.

‘Go to the Greenhouses, that’s my advice. But don’t tell nobody I said so.’

And so Kytanquil found herself outside the Spired Inn, looking south, wondering what to do.

Only one thing to do. Prepare weapons and locate the Greenhouses.

~

The Garden was shunned by all in Kray, too dangerous to cross, with its sucking marshes, carnivorous plants, and razor flowers that leaped from the ground to cut out the eyes of the unwary. So Kytanquil followed its southern wall, until she saw the single safe area, a zone of grass by a gate, at its far end the twinkling panes of the Greenhouses. She called out her name and purpose, but nobody answered. Slowly, she walked up to the nearest Greenhouse, and entered.

A man stood up from behind a wooden box. Kytanquil jumped, one hand at the dagger on her belt. He was dressed in a leather apron and boots, under these muddy protectives rough garments of denim. She could not see his eyes, for they were hidden behind wraparound sunglasses so polished they reflected every gleam of candle and lamp. When he smiled, she saw teeth filed to points.

‘Hello,’ he said in a deep voice. ‘Who are you?’

In silence Kytanquil held up the orange wafer.

‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Then welcome to our realm! I am Awanshyva.’

‘Who are you?’

‘The Advocate of the Plants.’

Kytanquil looked at him, dread making her skin crawl. Bloodstains marked his clothes, and his teeth were decayed to the colour orange. ‘Why did you call for me?’ she asked.

He seemed not to have heard her. ‘I am ashamed to admit that in my youth I did eat plants. But now I am wholly carnivorous. The destruction of Kray, which is the final city of humankind, is an end I pray for every night. Ah, yes.’

Kytanquil cringed and took a step back. Time to depart.

‘But there is need of you,’ Awanshyva said, his voice suddenly loud, ‘for you wear the bracelet of–’

‘This bracelet?’ Kytanquil interrupted, raising her arm. ‘You know what it is?’

‘Not yet. Now is the time to find out. Follow me.’

He turned, and like a zombie began to trudge deeper into the greenhouse. Kytanquil hesitated, then gripped tight the handle of her dagger and followed, thinking that they would go deeper into the Garden. So she was surprised when he stooped to pull up a metal cover in the earth, then drop into the chamber below. She was left peering down into the pale green gloom, in which Awanshyva stood like a troglodyte, his wraparound shades reflecting the peppermint light provided by countless tiny fungi.

‘Come,’ he said.

Kytanquil felt torn. Afraid of the man, yet impelled by the curiosity in her drifting spirit, she hesitated on the brink of the hole, before gripping her dagger still tighter and jumping down. ‘Don’t even think of touching me,’ she warned. ‘I was trained in steel combat by Oq-Ziq, my mother.’

‘That is a lie,’ Awanshyva countered.

Shocked by his certainty, Kytanquil found no reply.

‘Dead, you are useless,’ Awanshyva remarked. ‘Now follow me, and please do not fear.’

So Kytanquil followed. At the end of the chamber stood the remains of a door, which Awanshyva smashed aside with his fists. He led the way into a tunnel that after a hundred yards opened out into a chamber filled with rotten wood. Luminous orange and green fungi lit the place. At the further end lay another manhole cover, which Awanshyva prised open. A ladder of rusting iron led the way down into blackness. Kytanquil took a flashlight from her kit and peered into the depths, but it was too deep for her weak beam to penetrate. A claustrophobia born in the bottomless pit enveloped her.

Without a word Awanshyva began to clamber down the ladder, leaving Kytanquil no option but to follow. She descended miner style: one hand behind, one hand in front of the ladder. Occasionally she would stop to close her eyes and draw a few deep breaths. The cold was intense.

After some time she heard boots striking a wet floor. She pointed the flashlight down to see a wide ledge damp with slime. Stepping off the ladder she kept hold of one rung, for the lip of the ledge was a sheer drop into blackness that even Awanshyva avoided.

‘Are we here?’

Her voice reverberated in discrete echoes.

‘No.’

Slowly Awanshyva walked along the ledge. Rusting shards of metal stuck out from the wall, here and there plastered with red algae and the pale eggs of some subterranean crustacean. Slime dripped upon them from stalactites that twisted like questing tentacles. Kytanquil shivered, her reserve of bravery reaching its end.

Awanshyva led the way into another series of rooms, these carved from the rock with chisels, or so it seemed from the deeply gouged surfaces. Puddles of stinking water reflected the flashlight beam. Occasionally small green creatures would leap from these puddles and scuttle away, screeching with rage. In the last room Awanshyva pulled up another cover, then let himself into the hole. Kytanquil dropped down after him, to find another room, and another manhole.

They dropped into a room lit by blue fungi, glued to the walls in stripes as if they had dripped from the coving over the centuries. A smell of dead meat made Kytanquil retch. They hurried on into another tunnel, leading down, the slime on the floor making them slip and slide.

In desperation, Kytanquil whispered, ‘How much further?’

‘We are almost there.’

At the end of the tunnel lay a cavern, its roof a single dome of blue fungi, so that for a few seconds Kytanquil had to squint, until her eyes became used to the illumination. A single column lay central, surrounded by items of junk, litter, fungi, and pale creatures like rats, with whiskers longer than their own bodies.

Kytanquil jumped. Three people walked from behind the column.

They were naked, their skin deep green, their black eyes defocussed, with matted hair and black lips. Awanshyva turned to her and said, ‘These are three of the Slow People.’

Kytanquil took a step back, so that he stood between her and the creatures. ‘Ugh, what are they?’

‘In the Green Quarter, deep now under cushions of fungi and twisted vines, lies the Venus Heart, an ancient plant that thinks. But it lives on a different time scale. A minute of its time is a year of ours. Its winter is our ice age. Certain personages need to communicate with the Venus Heart–’

‘Wait, wait,’ Kytanquil interrupted, ‘I didn’t come to this Goddess-forsaken pit to hear a lecture. What’s this to do with me?’

‘Those of the secret societies–’

‘But you’re one of them.’

‘I am the Advocate of the Plants, the seed of communication used by the societies when they wish to interact with the outside world. This is why they sent you the Garden fret. You are the one who will communicate with the Slow People, who will in turn communicate with the Venus Heart, who–’

‘I doubt it very much,’ Kytanquil retorted.

After a pause Awanshyva observed, ‘It is true you cannot be forced.’ There was no menace in his voice.

‘That’s right. I won’t be told to do anything.’

‘Do you wish to escape Kray?’ Awanshyva asked.

‘Yes! But I’m verging on reveller. What’s the point in looking? This is the final year.’

Awanshyva considered this, then said, ‘A year on your time scale maybe. But suppose you were offered the chance of life on another?’

‘How? And who by, the secret societies of the Garden?’

‘Perhaps.’

‘They’re only people, probably religious zealots who think they’ve found the answer, just like those of the Temple of Dead Spirits, or of the Goddess for that matter.’

Awanshyva nodded, and a cruel smile came to his lips. ‘I do not recall describing those of the secret societies as human.’

Kytanquil said nothing. She had not considered the possibility of pyutons inhabiting the depths of the Garden, but now it seemed obvious, since the entire rotting green heart of Kray was inimical to human life. And this might also explain the references to longevity...

She replied, ‘I don’t think I want anything to do with this. Take me back to the surface.’

‘Are you certain that is what you want?’

‘Yes.’

Awanshyva considered for a moment, then said, ‘Ah, so you wish to die along with the city.’

Kytanquil sighed. She wanted to live. She wanted to survive. The dilemma that faced her was one of life and death. She wished she was somewhere else, in a quiet, warm inn, with people she knew and a glass of baqa in her hand.

‘I’m not prepared to do dangerous things,’ she said. ‘These Slow People might kill me. How can I live on a different time scale to the one biologically programmed in me?’

‘I see that I must show you more,’ Awanshyva remarked.

‘More?’

‘It was hoped that experience of the Slow People would be enough to convince you of the importance of your task.’

‘And?’

‘We must return to the Garden.’

Kytanquil did not like the sound of this. ‘And then?’

‘Another meeting. And then your decision.’

They departed.

~

Back in Awanshyva’s greenhouse Kytanquil asked what would happen next. He replied, ‘You have two choices. Either you journey into the heart of the Garden and meet the secret society who charged me with bringing you here, or one of them comes to meet you. The former option would be the best for us all.’

‘I’ll take the latter.’

Without a word Awanshyva turned to a panel of controls on one of the planting benches. It glowed yellow under the warmth of his hands, causing his wraparound shades to glitter with reflections like motes of sunlight. She thought she heard him muttering under his breath, as if speaking to it, but the patter of rain upon the panes above her head drowned out the sound. Then he jerked his head up, as if he had heard a noise.

‘One comes,’ he said.

Unnerved, Kytanquil said, ‘What, already?’

‘It will be here soon.’