The Wine of Dreams (23 page)

The tip of the vermiform style stroked Marcilla’s naked arm, then moved down
her torso and along her thigh towards the knee. When it reached the calf it
reversed its motion, making a long and languorous pass as it moved over the
contours of her abdomen and breast, very gently and very delicately. Every
touch, it seemed, brought her a little closer to life and consciousness. She
began to make sounds—not cries of alarm but deep, slow moans.

Reinmar saw that Marcilla was now able to move her limbs a little. It seemed
that the touch of the writhing thing within the black bell was restoring warmth
to her muscles. Reinmar had no doubt that her heart was beating again, but he
had no idea how strong and fast that pulse might be.

At some stage, Reinmar presumed, this monstrous creature would have to
transmit its seeds into the gypsy girl’s body. He knew only too well what her
destiny was supposed to be—the seeds would take root in her living flesh,
ready to begin the patient work of transforming her substance—but he could
only guess what intermediate stages there might be. Would she be allowed to
wake, to see what fate awaited her? Or would she remain locked in her dream as
the blood coursed through her veins and her fever grew?

He could not believe that she would be allowed to know what was really
happening. He clung to the hope that the dream in which she was lost—itself a
product of the wine of dreams—would be a dream of paradise, and that no matter
what became of her as she lay in the crack in the cavern floor she would know
nothing but happiness. In time, no doubt, she too would live as a plant,
producing a glorious flower-head of her own, and any consciousness that remained
in her bloated and petrified head would be the awareness of bright and eternal
light.

Was that, he wondered, how every plant and flower in the world imagined the
heavens?

All the while, the priests continued their incantation, murmuring liquid
syllables in a language that Reinmar did not recognise. All the while, too, he
tried to free his blade with his left hand, but the unpractised fingers still
could not undo the knot and he did not dare release his ready grip on the staff.

Marcilla seemed to be coming closer to consciousness all the while, although
she had not yet reached the brink—but as she recovered more power of movement,
the nature of her movements changed. As the pendulous style continued to caress
her, she ceased her futile attempts to wriggle away and moved more responsively,
as though the tickling touch no longer irritated her.

But she was coming back towards the very brink of wakefulness. Reinmar was
certain that there would come a point when it would need no more than a rival
touch to bring her out of her dream. If she could only be snatched back from the
edge of disaster at that propitious moment, she might still be saved. She would
be fully alive again, and her dream could be broken. If he acted at exactly the
right time, he might still save her. If not, she would lie in that shallow pit,
uncoffined and unburied, until her transformation was complete. She would melt
into the welcoming rock while the first ivory-white shoot sprang up from her
navel, extending its tender leaves to bask in the white fire which poured from
the pitted ceiling of this world-in-miniature.

He could not let it happen.

Reinmar let go of the knot securing his sword and struggled to control
himself, knowing how difficult it would be to complete the course of action he
intended. His most urgent need was that Marcilla would be able to flee with him
when he ran, so that they might make their reckless break for freedom together.
They would have to climb the spiral stair together and quit the grounds of the
gloomy temple which stood sullenly above them, without any delay. There were six
men to be felled here, but there might be as many as fifty or sixty more who
would join the chase as soon as the alarm was raised. It would not be easy to
outrun them in the forest—and even if they managed to reach the wagon, and
Godrich and Sigurd had contrived to mend the wheel…

Reinmar looked across at Matthias Vaedecker, and the sergeant immediately
glanced sideways to catch his eyes—but the signal Vaedecker sent with a quick gesture of his hand was a command to
be still:
watch and wait.

For the moment, Reinmar obeyed—but he knew that he would not be able to
maintain his obedience for long.

Reinmar wanted nothing more than to rush forward, swinging his staff with
deadly force, but he forced himself to be still for a few moments longer. He
knew that Vaedecker was right, and that he had to wait until the caresses of the
loathsome flower had brought Marcilla all the way back to life—but he also
knew that he must not wait an instant too long, lest everything be lost. He had
to discover that precious moment when she would be best capable of conscious
thought and movement, but had not yet suffered the final act of pollution which
would lead inexorably to her destruction. He waited, tense and taut with the
agony of uncertainty as to how long he could safely delay.

In the meantime, the worm in the flower’s mouth, which seemed to grow pinker
with every moment that went by, continued its measured dance upon the floor of
Marcilla’s tender flesh, exploring her contours and teasing her with the
revivifying effects of its touch.

She was now able to reach out towards it, as if she were trying to catch it
as it passed, but she was still sightless and slow, while the worm-thing was
quick and clever. It evaded her groping fingers.

Reinmar watched and waited, although the tension in his heart and limbs was
becoming unbearable.

Marcilla began to writhe more urgently, and there was no question that her
limbs had regained the greater part of their strength—but still she could not
open her eyes. She was lost in her dream, without the least inkling of where she
was or what was happening to her. Perhaps, Reinmar thought, she imagined herself
still safe on the hearth of the farmhouse, slyly pleasured by the hallucinatory
power of the sweet wine that she had quaffed before sleeping.

Then, just for an instant, the style paused in its writhing and drew back a
little. The tip parted, to expose a deeper structure within: the stigma, which
presumably bore the spores of destruction. The stigma was golden yellow in
colour, like the summer sun of the world above, and it glistened with mucus.

The tissues of the style parted, like eyelids at the moment of awakening.

Marcilla parted her own eyelids at long last, and looked up into the great
black hood of the flower which hovered over her, and into the sightless daemonic
eye which threatened her. She opened her mouth uncertainly, as if she did not
know whether to scream or to cry with glad delight—but no sound came from her
trembling lips.

Reinmar, as certain as any man could be that it must be now or never, did not
bother to look to Matthias Vaedecker for permission. He let out a howl of
fiendish glee as he bounded forward, with the raven-headed staff raised up high,
to snatch his beloved away from the cruel attentions of his dreadful rival.

The five monks who still had their backs to him began to turn in alarm as
soon as they heard his war-cry, but in their confusion they bumped into one
another, their limbs becoming entangled as they raised their arms to defend
themselves. The only one exempt from this confusion was the sorcerer-in-chief,
who had been officiating at the rite.

As soon as he moved, Reinmar felt the gaze of the chief monk’s unnaturally
radiant eyes upon him, and he knew that however stunned the others might be, the
man who had invoked the attentions of the black flower was dangerous. To meet
this challenge before it was properly laid down, Reinmar changed his grip upon
the staff, holding it as if it were a spear, with the ornamented end directed
forwards. He charged into the other five celebrants, knocking them sideways without making any attempt
to ensure that they stayed down once they had fallen. He made straight for the
worst of his enemies.

The wooden beak of the raven’s head was angled thirty degrees and more from
the line of the shaft, and it had not been sharpened, but the weapon was still
spear enough to strike through the coarse cloth of the spellcaster’s robe and
carve a bloody wound upon his breast as it rebounded from his ribs.

The stricken man fell backwards, letting loose a pathetically faint cry of
anguish as the force of the blow drove the breath from his lungs.

Reinmar’s left hand was free to seize the vermiform style of the flower, and
this he reached out to do. Had it begun to recoil into its bell he would not
have been able to reach it, but the flower made no defensive response at all. If
anything, it actually moved its gaping mouth towards him, extending its wormlike
tongue in his direction as if it were curious to touch and taste the attacker
who had sprung so unexpectedly from the ranks of its worshippers.

The golden stigma seemed more like a staring eye than ever, but it was
entirely blind to Reinmar’s purpose.

Reinmar’s mind had become suddenly clear as he discharged his pent-up tension
in furious action. Perhaps, he thought, the plant was entirely innocent of the
ways of the upper world. Perhaps it knew nothing of nature red in tooth and
claw, of violence and predation, or of anger and jealousy. Perhaps, having been
lovingly tended by the patient priests in this deep, secret and nightless cave,
it had no experience of any kind of attack whatsoever. Or perhaps, after all, it
was only a flower, devoid of any intelligence or reflex, helpless in its
vegetable impotence.

For whatever reason, the tip of the style was still there to be seized and
held when Reinmar reached out, and seize it he did.

He had expected it to be sticky and cold, but it was silky and warm. There
was the slightest of thrills to the touch, as if it were trying to renew the
life even in him, who had never suffered any simulation of death.

Reinmar pulled, as hard as he could, in order to draw as much of the length
of the thing from the maw of the flower as might be drawn, and to make it as
taut as he could. Then he shouted to Matthias Vaedecker, who was hurrying to his
side. “Strike!” he yelled. “Sever the thing from its root!”

Vaedecker seemed to be angry, and was certainly cursing volubly, but he
hacked at the style, slashing at it from a height, determined to sever the cord
with a single blow. The strike was almost too successful. Stretched as it was,
the plant’s peculiar organ was already under considerable tension, and its soft
flesh offered little resistance to the sharp blade. It snapped so suddenly that
Reinmar nearly fell backwards, with the piece which he had severed coiled about
his hand.

He stumbled so badly that his knee struck the ground, and only then
remembered that there were enemies all around him, eager to grab him and pull
him down. Luckily, they were still confused and he had a firm grip on the staff.
Reinmar tried to swing the staff from side to side, as Sigurd would have done,
but he had nothing like Sigurd’s strength, and the staff had insufficient
momentum to knock anyone down. He was fortunate that no one snatched it from his
grasp, or struck him while his knee was on the ground.

The flower, which could never have known injury before, recoiled from the
shock spasmodically. Reinmar saw that its great stalk, which had moved with such
stately grace before, shuddered briefly before erupting with a titanic
convulsion, whose whiplash effect caught a couple of the priests as they
exclaimed in horror, and sent them tumbling like ninepins.

The part of the style that was left for Reinmar to clutch writhed in a
similar fashion, but it could not contrive to grip his hand. He gladly let it
fall into the crevice beside Marcilla’s body, where it continued to squirm. It
shed no blood or ichor, but the flesh which had been cut across showed red and
raw within its paler sheath, and the blind golden eye that had so briefly opened
was tightly closed again.

Marcilla was certainly awake. She screamed, with far greater effect than
Reinmar or the priest he had struck down with his makeshift spear.

As the scream cut through his confusion, dispelling a little of his wild
anger, Reinmar became suddenly aware that Matthias Vaedecker’s sword was red
with blood. The soldier was holding it in both hands, hacking first to the left
and then to the right with brutal efficiency.

Reinmar saw one man’s face cleaved in two from temple to jaw, so that the
features came away like a mask. He saw another with his throat slashed,
clutching both hands to his neck as if he might somehow seal his carotid arteries and secure his windpipe. He saw
another lurch back clutching his belly, though he had too few fingers to stem
the flow of his uncoiling intestines as they slid through a great gaping wound.
He became belatedly aware of the fact that Vaedecker was calling him a fool, and
howling at him to run—and he saw that other priests were approaching from
three different directions. They were coming in ones and twos, but they were not
bumping into one another in alarm and confusion, and they were armed with
iron-bladed spades, sharp-tined forks and huge wooden staves. If he and
Vaedecker waited for them to gather in full force, they would be considerably
outnumbered.

Reinmar was neither shocked nor sickened by the sight of so much blood; he
still had a plan to execute. Marcilla’s newly-opened eyes had been dazzled by
the white light and she had thrown up a hand to protect them, but she was
evidently well aware of the fact that she had woken into a frightful nightmare.
Her distress seemed boundless. Reinmar, still staggering from his temporary loss
of balance, caught the girl’s right wrist in his left hand, and tried to drag
her to her feet. For one hideous moment he thought that she could not rise—that there was insufficient life in her to allow her to stand up, let alone to
run—but the fervent insistence of his grip ultimately proved irresistible.