“Get on with it!” Metron’s attenuated voice demanded.
Hakken looked at the crystal. He raised his eyes to Garric’s. “Shut him off, will you? Or by the Sister—”
Garric gestured with his free hand. “Get on with it,” he said curtly. “And Metron, don’t make pointless noise.”
Hakken grimaced and sighted along the rod, bringing the free end directly under the cone of light. His eye still close to the slowly wobbling tube, he reached back with his left hand to the bladder and gave it a sharp squeeze.
Nothing seemed to happen. Garric frowned and opened his mouth to speak.
“Don’t move!” Hakken snapped. “With the tube this long, it takes—”
A puff of dust, colorless in the starlight, spurted from the far end of the tube. It spread as it sank into the bromeliads.
“All right, let it go,” Hakken said, dropping his end of the bamboo. “And by the Lady’s mercy, don’t stir the stuff up when we get down.”
The bromeliads’ sword-shaped leaves were so long the points curved back to the ground. They thrashed violently. Garric snatched at his sword hilt.
A creature lurched out. It was the size of a man and walked on two legs, but its lizard tail balanced a head with a seawolf’s long jaws. Garric felt Gar’s fearful spirit cringe as the boy remembered the fangs that had pierced his brain.
The creature flopped forward. Its hind legs slashed the ground for a moment with claws like sickles; then it was still.
“Don’t waste time!” Metron said. “Get me to the ground at once so that I can scry a path for you!”
In miniature, the wizard’s voice had the tone and self-importance of an angry wren. Nasty little birds, wrens; egg-thieves and bullies when they could get away with it, though amusing to have around at times.
Hakken grimaced as he set the rope ladder’s hooks on the face of the wall. Garric nodded and jumped to the ground without bothering to lower himself by his hands first. The turf was springy, and the modest drop wouldn’t have mattered even with rock at the bottom. They didn’t need the ladder to enter the garden—or for themselves, to leave it, unless one of them was badly injured—but there was no telling what condition Thalemos would be in if they freed him.
Garric grinned as Tint landed beside him, so lightly that she scarcely seemed to bend the grass. When they freed Thalemos; he’d chastened Ademos for negative speculations.
Hakken walked down the wall, gripping the ladder with his hands to fix the hooks properly. “Now what?” he whispered, looking around them.
Metron was already chanting. “We wait for him,” Garric said, curving his left index finger toward the crystal on his breast.
He drew the sword he’d sharpened carefully before the band left Thalemos’ villa for the city. He’d wanted to go over it again as they waited in the shop, but he knew the blade was already as keen as he could make it. Further passes on the whetstone would only remove metal that he might need in the coming hours.
The grass curling over his bare feet had a warm, dry texture that surprised him. It didn’t seem to be harmful—Tint would have reacted before now if it were—but it was an unpleasant contrast to the coolness he’d expected. Hakken didn’t seem to notice, though the sailor’d worn a look of sour worry since they’d set off from the villa at dusk.
Tint rose on her hind legs and sniffed, then lowered her head and snuffled in a narrow arc across the grass. Garric watched her for a moment, then made his own assessment of the garden.
It wasn’t the same place as it had seemed from above. A clump of what might be a kind of yucca—spiked heads on smooth woody trunks—nodded slightly. There was no wind that Garric could feel.
To his left, easily within length of his sword, was a plant with drooping sword-shaped leaves in a low stone coping. Huge white flowers grew within the curtain of foliage, but because the bells hung downward it was only now that Garric noticed them.
Were they turning? Surely they were turning, the bells lifting slightly on their stems like some many pale faces rising to stare back at the intruders.
Tint noticed Garric’s interest. She jumped upright and caught him by both shoulders, pressing him hard. Her head was turned back to watch the flowers.
“Bad, Gar!” she said. “They lie, they hurt Gar!”
“What do you—” Garric began.
A rank odor made him choke in surprise. Something changed, in his nostrils or in his mind itself. He drew in a deep breath and felt himself relax utterly.
Garric couldn’t compare the smell with anything he’d known before. Images cascaded from his memory, every joy he’d known in life. Triumphs, kindnesses done him, friendships, and flashes of insight come upon him from all sides: the day he first opened a volume of Celondre, the evening the sky to the east was ablaze with three keystones of rosy light bleeding from the sun setting on the opposite horizon, the moment he took Liane in his arms for the first time…
Tint bit his chest.
“Hey!” Garric shouted. If the lizard had heard them coming over the wall, then there wasn’t much hope that whispering would hide their intrusion, but Garric still would’ve kept his voice down if he’d remembered where he was.
That was the point—he hadn’t remembered. The flowers’ perfume, now a stench like that of eggs rotting, had carried him into a reverie that would have ended…
Hard to tell where it would’ve ended. It wasn’t likely to be a place Garric wanted to be, though.
Hakken, his eyes glazed and drool hanging from his mouth, walked slowly toward the clump of flowers. Garric stepped in front of the sailor and slapped his face left-handed. Hakken staggered back, gasping angrily as he groped for the short-handled axe in his belt.
His nose wrinkled. “By the Lady!” he said. “By the Lady! I’ve not smelled anything that stunk so bad since we raised the Erdin Belle with all the rats that’d drowned in the hold when she foundered!”
“Bad!” repeated Tint. The flowers were slumping back on their stems and starting to close. The odor dissipated as suddenly as it had appeared. If it hadn’t been for the beastgirl…
Garric hugged Tint to his side, her shoulder against the point of his hip. She purred like a big cat. “Thank you, Tint,” Garric said. “You saved our lives.”
A moth of red wizardlight flew out of the crystal on Garric’s breast. It went arm’s length ahead of him, just above the grass, then paused to flutter in a tight figure-eight.
“Follow the guide!” Metron squeaked. “Follow it precisely and don’t waste time. The Intercessor’s enchantments will react to your presence. What was safe before may close in on you.”
Hakken drew his axe and looked at Garric. Garric said, “We’re going to walk exactly where the moth flies, Tint.” He stepped off, suiting his conduct to his words.
Instead of going directly toward the tower through the loose line of yucca-looking plants, the moth led them to the left around the circuit of the outer wall. The course took them close to the lizard—dead or just unconscious?—and the clump of bromeliads where it had hidden.
Hakken, closely behind Garric, hesitated. “The dust…?” he said. “If we stir—”
“Go on, go on!” piped the wizard. “Do you think I can hold this forever?”
Tint padded past Garric on all fours, glancing to either side but showing no concern about the residue of the spores. Her attention was focused primarily on the yuccas to her right. They quivered, but the beastgirl stayed beyond the trunk’s height from the base of the nearest. Garric followed, more reassured by Tint’s nonchalance than he was by Metron’s wizardry.
The moth’s quivering path took it over a bed of flowers that looked like red fangs with spiky black tips. Garric hesitated for a moment. Tint, pacing forward nonchalantly, saw his doubt and stopped also.