Тэд Уильямс - The War of the Flowers

While Thornapple and Foxglove searched for the mirrors, Hellebore stood with his hands thrust casually into the pockets of his trousers. He did not look directly at the place where the Remover sat, but that might have been courtesy, although Hellebore was not known for it. He had not seen this most honest of the Remover's various appearances before, but he had seen many things that even his most venerable colleagues could not imagine and was not in the least squeamish. "You realize that we will be crossing a line," Hellebore said at last, watching the angular Thornapple picking fastidiously through a pile of dusty framed pictures. "This will not be like what happened with the unborn child. If we fail, we may all be fed to Forgetting — you included."

"That is not much of a threat to me, my lord."

For a moment Hellebore looked troubled, but was distracted when the invisible figure stirred and even seemed for a moment about to rise and step out into the light.

" Don't touch that !" the Remover shouted, voice ragged but startlingly loud. "Put it down!"

Across the large room, Lord Foxglove, startled and a bit afraid, hastily put down the carved box he had been handling.

"The mirror is not there," the Remover said, more quietly now. "The next pile over. Do not touch that box again."

Hellebore had noticed something like pain in the Remover's words; he cocked a thin black eyebrow but said nothing.

At last the two powerful fairy lords came back, staggering like overloaded servants, each carrying a large mirror framed in ugly, coarse black wood. At the Remover's instruction they propped them facing each other on the floor with perhaps an arm's span between them.

"Here," the Remover said, and for a moment his hand appeared from the shadow holding a black candle in a dish. The two other lords quickly looked away, but Hellebore stepped forward and took the candle.

"Put it down on the floor midway between the mirrors," the Remover said. "Then light it and step back."

Hellebore touched index finger to thumb and made a flame. At the moment it ignited, the apertures in the ceiling above narrowed, or something else happened to block their light; within a few seconds the warehouse was dark except for the candle's flame.

"Silence now," said the Remover of Inconvenient Obstacles. "And I'm sure it does not need saying, but I will say it anyway — do not reach between the mirrors or in any way interfere with the light passing back and forth between them until I have finished."

He began to chant quietly, a sound only barely distinguishable from raspy breath. It seemed to take a long time. The flame above the candle shrank until it was scarcely larger or brighter than a firefly's lamp, a tiny point that nevertheless became the focus of all the darkness around it.

Something began to form in the space between the mirrors, a faintly glowing cloud, as though the original light of the candle had spread into something watery and diffuse. The cloud grew more distinct without becoming more solid, flowing from one side to the other of the light that bounced between the mirrors. It seemed constantly about to take shape, but although it never quite did so, there were shifting suggestions of a face, a dark hole of a mouth and pitted, empty eyes. It was hard to look at it for more than a few moments, even for the three gathered lords of Faerie. As the Remover's tuneless singing grew louder the thing began to move more violently, writhing and snapping within the empty space between the mirrors like something trying to find its way out of a cage. The room grew piercingly cold. The thing's mouth opened wide, then even wider, as though it could swallow even itself if it wished.

"What is it?" Hellebore's voice was perfectly modulated, not too fearfully loud, not too overawed and quiet.

The Remover fell silent. When he spoke at last, his weary voice seemed to come from far away. "An irrha — a ghost from one of the older darknesses, a spirit of pestilence unknown in the mortal world since the stones of Babylon were leveled."

"And it will… will do what we need? You said that force without wit would be useless. Are you telling me this… thing has wit?" Hellebore looked to his companions, perhaps for support, but they were staring at the shape between the mirrors with sickened fascination.

"It does not need wit. What one of you would have to do by craft, it will do by instinct, for lack of a better word. It is terrible in its implacability. It will follow its quarry wherever he goes, in whatever world, without pausing to rest and without a single qualm or hesitation. It does not think, not as you and I do, but it does not need to. It will take new bodies as it needs them to pursue its quarry, so it will never grow weary. Eventually — inevitably — it will find him and cleave to him, and then it will bring him to us. Clutched in its grip, the one you want will tell you anything, do anything, give up anything he has, just to be free of this hungry, gnawing thing."

"Ah. I see." Hellebore nodded. "It is very good."

"It is… horrible," said Lord Foxglove.

"It is both," said the Remover. "In all the spheres there are only a few perfect things. This is one of them."

When the three lords left the warehouse room, they found the two ogre bodyguards halfway down the corridor, staring up at the ceiling with mouths slack and arms dangling uselessly. Their legs worked just well enough for them to plod after their masters, but it was only when the black coach's doors had thumped shut and the horse-faced chauffeur had laboriously turned it around and driven it back out of the narrow street toward the freeway that the bodyguards began to blink their eyes and mumble. By the time the long black limousine passed out of the waterfront district they could talk again, but the huge gray creatures still could not remember anything that had happened to them while they waited in the hall.

"But, hey, you'll be getting some money from the house, right? You could buy your own PA system."

"I don't know. I don't think so — not right now."

"I'm serious, man. What they did sucked. I'd quit tomorrow if you wanted me to. We could find some other musicians, no problem. Guitar players, man, they grow on trees. The world is full of skinny guys who sat in their rooms all through high school learning to play every Van Halen solo."

Theo couldn't help smiling, even though Johnny couldn't see him. "Yeah, just what I need. Hook up with another worshiper of the extended guitar break."

"Whatever, man. Hell, we could get a keyboard guy, instead. We could play anything. You used to write some cool tunes, Theo. And lyrics, too — remember that thing you wrote about your father was a storm, or lightning, something like that? You should start writing again — you were wasted with the Clouds, anyway. You need to get back to your roots, dude. When I first met you, I used to think, 'Man, this guy's definitely going somewhere,' and I just wanted to hang onto you 'til you got there. You could be that guy again."

"What is this, National Theo's-Over-the-Hill-Month or something?" Cat had said something like it, too. Potential . A great word for people to use about you when you were twenty, an embarrassment when you hit thirty.

"What are you talking about, man? I'm just saying that you got tons of talent, Thee. You need to use it."

It was hard to talk. It had been good to hear Johnny's voice, to get past the stumbling apologies and into areas in which they were both comfortable (like what an asshole Kris Rolle was), but now he was tired. He hadn't been talking much lately and he was out of practice.

"I don't know, John-O. Maybe. Maybe later on. Right now I don't feel much like playing music, anything like that. You keep playing with the Clouds boys. Kris is pretty talented, really, even though I can't stand the skinny little bastard. Maybe you really will get a record deal. Don't give that up for me."