Worldsoul

Forty-Two

The orchard fruit was not, Elemiel told her, safe to eat. But there were seeds and a number of bracket fungi that were edible. Shadow did not feel like eating them, despite Elemiel’s assurances. There were no animals to hunt and at this, the demon pulled an expression that, after a minute, Shadow interpreted as eye rolling.

Night would soon fall, but that didn’t matter, so the Messenger said, because there was a moon.

The moon, whenever they were, was a lot closer to the Earth than it subsequently became, at least in myth, as became apparent when it rolled up over the summit of the hill. This was a young moon, its face a little less starred with craters. Shadow felt a comfort in its light, and it made it easier to see where they were going.

Elemiel led them deeper into the valley, past the black stone. Shadow had interrogated him about the elementals: the earth spirit, the fire, thinking he must know them well. But the Messenger told her that the fire spirits were new.

“Only the gardeners are original. The golems. Ancient technology, rediscovered anew closer to your day.”

“They have them in some quarters,” Shadow said. “They’re not always very reliable.”

“They were designed to be close to the earth,” the Messenger said, “and sung into submission, but in your time, most of those songs have been lost.” He walked up over a lip of land and pointed. “This is where we start to climb.”

There was a path leading up through the groves, into the hills. Shadow and Gremory followed, breathing in the scent of fir, still warm with the sun. Shadow could hear a nightingale, singing far below in the valley, and they came out into starlight.

“It’s only safe to come here now,” the Messenger said. “And even now, not very.”

“Why?” Shadow asked.

“They’re growing nightblooms. But most of the plants flower during the day.”

“What sort of flowers?” Shadow asked, with a sudden prickle of suspicion.

“The sort you’re afraid of.” He guided her to the edge of the rocks. “Be careful.”

She was looking down into a ravine. It was full of flowers, a garden in itself. The huge blooms were all folded, tightly as parasols. She was reminded of hibiscus, but each flower was the height of a man. The tip of the stamens protruded at the end of each curled flower, like an obscene tongue. She recognised them: she’d last seen one bury itself in the floor of the desert and destroy Elemiel’s hut.

“This is where they come from? Are they natural? You said ‘they’ grow them. Who are they?”

“I’ll show you. But keep close behind me-there are guards.”

As they walked, Shadow was conscious of things moving around them through the darkness. She heard no voices, but once someone ran past them, disappearing swiftly down the valley. She nudged Elemiel, not wanting to speak, although it seemed impossible to her that whoever was out there could be unaware of their presence.

“They aren’t interested in us,” the Messenger said, in what seemed to Shadow to be an unnecessarily loud voice. “They don’t know we’re here.”

“We’re pretty obvious, Elemiel,” Shadow said.

“They’re not in the same story-stream. Look above you.”

Shadow did so and saw that the stars overhead had changed their configuration again. The couple of constellations that she had recognised, low on the western horizon, had disappeared, but not enough time had elapsed for them to have sunk down below the rim of the world. These stars were new.

“That makes no sense, astronomically,” she said aloud.

“This garden is where stories overlap,” Elemiel replied. “You’re not seeing the world as it ever was: you’re in storytime now. Or more than story. Mythtime. In your city, there are many legends, but time doesn’t shift so much. Here, it does. The people around us can’t see us because I’ve taken the path that leads past the storystream. We’re not in the same space. Look-”

For a moment Shadow saw a fleeting sequence of impressions: the garden itself, a desert city made of low domes and huge walls, buried in a terrible storm of sand. Then other settlements rising in its place, abandoned when tribes swept down from the north. She saw a battle, between people who looked scarcely human. Then djinn and demons, stalking the battlefield and devouring the spirits of the slain. She did not see Gremory among them, and was grateful.

After that, the desert bloomed again, as if the blood of the fallen had watered it, only to sink down into the sand once more. A ghost city arose, but was dispelled by a magician who could have been the grandfather of Suleiman the Shah. And then the familiar outlines of the Khaureg, the Great Desert that had lain beyond Worldsoul since the city’s rise. Which was, Shadow was reminded now, relatively recent in the great scheme of things. She tried to pay no more attention to the beings that surrounded her in the darkness.

“The only thing you need to worry about is the guards,” the Messenger said.

“How will I know when those appear?”

The Messenger laughed. “Don’t worry. You’ll know.”