The Withering Garden

The pot lid hung from Isolde's belt now, and it knocked against her hip at every step, and every time it did she flinched.

She could not leave it. She had tried, once, on the steps of the city, to set it down in the dust with the dignity such a thing deserved. Her hands would not open. Brannoc had come and stood beside her, saying nothing, and after a while had taken a length of cord from his belt and tied it on for her, with the plain brisk tenderness of a man who has buried people before. He did not say a word. She did not either. Valerian walked ahead of them into the new Door with his shoulders set like a man carrying a beam, and for the first hour of Door Ten, none of them spoke at all.

The way out of the City of Mute Bells had been waiting at the corner of the lane, where the tin lay: a low gate in a wall that had not been there before, with a small bell hung over it whose clapper was no longer bound. It rang once as they passed beneath, one clear soft note, and the pleasant voice said, "Door Nine is passed. Four remain." Nobody answered it. Somewhere behind the words a hollow voice said, "Five," and nobody answered that either.

It was a garden.

That was all Isolde could say of it, at first. She stood on a gravel path between two ranks of clipped yew, under a sky of pearly, windless white, and every direction she looked there were flowers. They went on for acres. They climbed trellises and spilled from urns and lay in great drifts across the lawns, white and pale gold and silver-blue, so thick and soft and sweet that the air tasted of them. There were roses with petals like folded linen. There were lilies the size of lanterns. Foxgloves nodded in the borders, and a pale vine of moonflower went up the face of a distant wall, and every bloom was perfect, and every bloom was turned toward her.

It was beautiful. It was so beautiful that it felt like being watched by a congregation.

"Do not touch anything," said Valerian. They were the first words he had spoken since the bells. His voice was flat and rough. "Do not pick, do not smell, do not step on the borders. Walk on the gravel."

"What is it?" said Brannoc.

"I do not know yet." He stood very still, with his gloved hands loose at his sides. "I have been here. I think I have been here. It is only that I cannot—" He stopped. "I do not know."

"The rhyme will be on the gate," said Isolde.

She did not recognize her own voice. It was steady and clear and a little dead, and she understood that this was how she was going to get through it. She would be a scholar. She would be a pair of eyes and a pencil. She would read, and write down what she read, and put one foot in front of the other until the thing was over, and then she would sit down somewhere and fall to pieces. She would do it properly. She would do it when there was time.

Odile. Odile. I'm sorry.

She walked on.

…

The gate was iron, and wound about with thorn, and set in a high wall of old red brick at the end of the gravel walk. The two stanzas were cut into the lintel, in the Old Tongue, in a neat plain hand.

Tell no lie within these walls;

Every falsehood wilts and falls.

Open hands may pass the gate;

Closed ones come too late, too late.

She copied them out. She read the first letters, and her pencil paused.

T. O.

To.

She wrote it under the sentence. WHAT IS LOCKED AWAY CANNOT HEAL UNTIL SOMEONE STAYS TO.

"To what?" said Brannoc, over her shoulder.

"I don't know. It's a preposition. It's waiting for its object." She tapped the page. "Stays to what. To watch? To listen? To—" She stopped. She did not like the shape of any of the options.

"A lie wilts the flowers," said Valerian. He was looking at the nearest bed. A cluster of white roses stood there, absolutely fresh, with dew still on their leaves. "That is the rule. Say a false thing within these walls, and what is near it dies. It may be a petal. It may be a hedge. I have the impression that it is proportional."

"Proportional to what?"

"To the size of the lie."

"That," said Brannoc, "is going to be a problem for me. I've been telling people I'm fine for two years."

Odile would have laughed at that. Isolde felt the place where the laugh should have come, like a gap in a row of teeth.

"Then we only say true things," she said. "It's the easiest Door yet. We just don't lie."

Nobody answered.

They looked at each other. Valerian's bandaged wrist was pressed against his side. Isolde, who had two words for every situation, and one of them was fine, found her mouth closed on it. The silence went on rather long.

"Open hands," said Valerian, at last, in a dry tone. "Show me your hands."

They held them out, palms up. Isolde, Brannoc, Valerian. Three pairs, nothing in them. The gate swung wide.

…

The garden was a labyrinth.

They found that out on the second lawn. The yew hedges closed in, and the paths twisted, and every turning ended in a pretty dead end with a stone bench and a fountain and a bed of white flowers. They walked for an hour. They walked for two. The pearly sky never changed, and nothing moved, and the scent of the flowers grew heavier and sweeter until Isolde's head began to spin. Twice they came back to the same marble nymph. Twice Brannoc said something under his breath that would have made the nymph blush if she had been alive.

And in a corner of the third court, by a wall of climbing roses, Isolde found a body.

She thought for a heart-stopping moment it was Odile.

It wasn't. It was a man in a patched brown coat, face down on the grass, with his arms outflung. He had been dead a long time. The flowers had grown through him. A white rose came out of his sleeve, and a spray of lilies out of his collar, and a creeping vine had threaded the empty sockets of his eyes and bloomed there in two small stars. He looked, Isolde thought, quite peaceful. He looked like a man who had been very tired and finally been allowed to lie down.

"A Stray," said Brannoc, quietly. "Poor devil."

"He told a lie."

"Or he couldn't stop."

She crouched beside the body. In the grass near his hand lay a little leather book, rotted at the edges. She turned it over with a twig. Inside the cover, in a tiny hand, someone had written a single sentence, over and over, down the page.

I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine.

Her throat closed.

"Come away," said Valerian, from behind her.

She did. She stood up, and wiped her hands on her skirt, and walked after him down the green alley. She did not look at the pot lid on her belt. She did not look at anything. It was only when she was twenty yards on that she realized he had taken her hand, and was holding it tight, without a word, and that his own was as cold as snow.

…

Gideon Fallowes was waiting for them at the center of the maze.

She saw the green coat first. It was the brightest thing in the place, a deep unashamed forest green, with the tin lantern pin glinting at the collar, and it stood out against the white blooms like a fresh wound. He was sitting on the rim of a stone fountain in the middle of a round lawn, with his legs crossed and his hat in his lap, and he looked up as they came through the yew arch and smiled.

It was a lovely smile. It always had been. It was warm and rueful and entirely sincere.

"Isolde," said Gideon. "I'm so glad you're alive."

Behind him, around the lawn's edge, stood a dozen men in gray coats with lantern pins. They held their weapons low. They were not pointing them. Their faces were wary and tired and young, and between two of them, held loosely by the shoulder, stood a small boy in a patched jacket with his hair sticking up in tufts.

"Wick," said Isolde.

The boy looked at her. His face did not change. He had gone thin; his eyes were very large; there was a fresh bruise on his jaw. He did not move toward her. He only looked, with a steady, dreadful, adult patience, and then dropped his eyes to his own feet.

"He's safe," said Gideon. "He's eaten. He's slept. I've not let anyone touch him. I'm sorry about the bruise; that was before I knew." He spread his hands, showing them empty. The gate had passed him; he had come in under the rule. "Look. I know how this looks. I'd think the same. But I want you to know that I came here to talk, and not to fight. I'd like you to hear me out."

"Where are Nell and Posy?" said Brannoc.

"Safe, with the main party. Three Doors back. Quite well." He met the old man's eye. "I'd not lie to you in this garden, Master Rook. I'd be a fool."

The roses at his elbow stayed white.

Isolde watched them. She could not help it. Every petal was fresh. He had said it with perfect ease. She saw that he believed every word, and the garden knew he did, and the garden did not mind.

That's the trick, she thought, with a sinking certainty. A man can say anything here, as long as he believes it. It's only the ones who know that wither.

And Gideon doesn't know.

…

"Do you know what he is?" said Gideon.

He had the tone of a man at a sickbed, gentle and urgent. He spoke to Isolde alone, across the grass, as though the others were furniture. She stood with her hands open at her sides, because the rule demanded it, and she let him talk, because there was nothing else she could do.

"I'm not going to say anything cruel," he went on. "I'll try not to. I've nothing against him personally. I never have. He's been a good Overseer, in his way; he's been fair, for a monster. But you've got to understand what's behind that door."

"Which door?"

"The thirteenth." He leaned forward. "There's a thing there, Isolde. You've felt it. It's been leaking out through the seal for three hundred years, and it's the reason your sister is dying, and the reason ten thousand others have died. The Bloom. That's what it is. It's his sickness. It's coming out of him."

"I know," said Isolde.

"You know?"

"He told me. In the Aviary." She did not look at Valerian. "He didn't know what it was. I don't think he does now. But he told me what he could."

Gideon sat back. A flicker of something crossed his round kind face, surprise, and under it a swift and genuine hurt. "Then you know he's the one who must be ended."

"No."

"My dear girl—"

"No. I don't know that. I know you've been telling the Companies that for a year." She felt her pulse thudding in her throat. "I know that eight people went through these Doors before me, and each one stabbed him at the end, and each time it started again. I know it, because he told me, and I saw it in the Library, and because you said it yourself. In the Hollow. At the Waystation. The ninth."

"Because it's a cycle," said Gideon. "It's the only way. Each time we get closer. Each time the decoder reaches the door, we learn a little more, and the seal holds a little longer—"

"And the decoder dies."

"Not always."

"How many came out?"

He opened his mouth.

"The truth," said Isolde. "Please. We're in a garden."

Gideon looked at her for a long moment. He was a clever man, and she saw him weigh it. He glanced at the roses at his elbow. He glanced at his own boots. Then he said, quietly:

"None."

The roses did not wilt.

It was true. It was the truth, as he understood it, and he gave it to her straight, and for the first time she saw the crack under the warm paint of his face. He did not enjoy this. He had never enjoyed it. He sat in his green coat with his hat in his lap, and he looked, at this moment, like a man who has spent a long time carrying something heavy for the sake of a good cause, and is bone-tired.

"None," he repeated. "But it works, Isolde. Every Cycle, the Hunger is weaker. Every Cycle, it's pushed back. If I could save you, I would. I'd give anything. But a girl for a kingdom—"

"And Odile?"

His face stilled.

"She was seventeen," said Isolde. "She'd been a scullion. She had a pot lid, and she died this morning." She took the dented tin from her belt and held it up. Her voice did not shake. "Did you know she'd die? When you left her in the Hollow, did you know?"

"No," said Gideon.

And the white roses, all down the length of the border behind him, curled and went brown.

…

It went through the garden like a breath of frost.

First the roses. They shriveled where they stood, their petals crisping, falling in a dry whispering rain. Then the lilies. The foxgloves. The trellis of moonflowers bowed and blackened, and the lawn at Gideon's feet went gray as ash in a perfect widening ring. It reached the men in gray coats. It reached the little boy. It stopped, only, at the edge of the yew.

Gideon sat motionless.

He was looking at the withered flowers. He did not seem to understand. His face was blank, and slack, and curiously young. He turned his head, very slowly, and looked at the dead roses on his left hand, as if hoping to find one that had not changed.

"I didn't," he said. "I— I truly didn't think—"

The nearest foxglove crumbled.

"You knew," said Isolde.

It was not a shout. She hardly raised her voice. But in the sudden hush of the dying garden it carried like a bell. "You knew what the Doors do to people. You've known for a year. You sent Odile through a hole in the ground with a pot lid, because it was cheaper than telling her the truth. You knew, and you told yourself you didn't, because you had to. Because otherwise you couldn't do it." She was shaking now. "That's the thing about a lie, Gideon. It's not what you say to us. It's what you say to yourself."

He stared at her.

Then something went out of his face. A glass pane, a shutter. The warm sincerity fell away like a mask pulled off, and underneath it was a hard, bright, level face that she had never seen before: calm, practical, and utterly without apology.

"Lanterns," said Gideon.

…

It happened very fast.

The gray-coated men brought up their hands. They did not carry crossbows or pistols; they carried their lamps. Each was a squat, square lantern of dark iron, with a shutter of thick glass, and each held a flame so pale and so cold that it did not so much glow as drain. They lifted them all together and threw back the shutters.

The light struck Valerian like a wall.

It was white. It was colorless. It rolled across the lawn in a single flat wave, and where it fell the shadows died. The long dark shadow that lay at his feet, thick as a spill of ink, shrank and shuddered and shrieked. Isolde heard the sound. It was not a sound a man could make. She saw him go down on one knee, with his hands to his head, and the black thread round his wrist burst into a flare of light, and the whole of his power, all the thing he was made of, fold in on itself like a candle in a jar.

"Quiet iron!" cried Brannoc, and flung a pouch of sand; it burst in a flash that blinded the nearest lantern. "Isolde, get down—"

She did not get down.

She ran. She did not decide to. She flung herself between the white light and the man on the lawn, with her arms out, and the lid of Odile's pot held up in front of her like a shield. The light struck it. It rang. It threw a hard bright disc across the grass, and for one moment she stood in a patch of ordinary gray shade, and heard behind her Valerian drag a breath.

"Don't," she said. "Don't you dare."

"Isolde—"

"Don't you dare."

Something punched her in the shoulder. It was not painful. It was a sharp blunt shove, and she staggered, and looked down at a bolt of black iron sticking out of her coat. She saw it very clearly. She saw her own sleeve, and the iron, and the first dark bloom of red.

And then Valerian had her. He had come off the grass in a single movement, white-faced and blazing, and swept her behind him, and the shadows came up round him in a roaring black cloud. He took the second bolt himself. She heard it hit. She saw it come out of his back.

He did not fall.

He turned his head, with the iron through his chest, and looked at Gideon across the lawn.

"I told you once," said Valerian, in a voice she had never heard from him, "that I would put my strength between her and any creature, rule, or hand that would do her harm." The shadows bellied behind him like wings. "It was the second clause. I wrote it myself."

Gideon had gone gray. "You can't. You're pinned."

"Am I?"

The black hands came up from the earth.

…

She remembered the rest in pieces.

She remembered the lanterns going out, one by one, in the grip of a thousand black fingers, each with a small flat snap, like a nail being driven. She remembered men shouting. She remembered Brannoc, grim and huge, with a fistful of sand in each hand and a hole in his hat. She remembered the sound of a gate swinging, and a shout of "Fall back!" in Gideon's clear, hard voice, and a trampling of boots, and the long wet cry of a hedge being torn up by the roots.

She remembered Wick.

He came out of the melee like a thrown stone. He had bitten the soldier who held him, quite thoroughly; the man was clutching his wrist and swearing; and the boy shot across the dead grass with his hair on end and his jacket flapping, and flung himself bodily at Isolde. He hit her in the knees. He clung there, with his face pressed into her skirt, and shook.

"I didn't tell him," he whispered. "I didn't tell him anything."

"I know."

"He said you'd die. I said I didn't care."

"Hush." She put her hand on his head. She was kneeling on the lawn without knowing how she'd got there. Her shoulder had gone numb. "It's all right. You're all right. I've got you."

And she saw Gideon go.

He stood in the yew arch with a dozen of his men at his back, and his green coat torn, and his face as calm as a drawn blind. He did not look at her. He was looking at the man who stood in the center of the lawn with an iron bolt through his chest, supporting himself on a column of black air.

"It's a pity," said Gideon. "I would have liked you to know. It'd have been kinder." He put on his hat. "You'll find out at the door. They all do. You'll pick up the knife, Isolde, because it's the only thing in the room that makes sense, and then you'll know I was right. I'm sorry. I truly am."

He turned and was gone.

…

The black hands let go of the garden all at once.

Valerian fell.

He went down on his face in the ash, without a sound, and the iron in his back flashed in the light. She was beside him before she knew it. She had him over, onto his side, with her good arm under his head. His eyes were open. They were quite clear. They were the color of rain, and they looked at her with a mild enormous surprise.

"I believe," said Valerian, "I have been shot."

"Don't talk."

"Twice." His breath rattled. "It is a thing I have not experienced. It is remarkably unpleasant."

"I said don't talk." She was tearing at his coat. There was blood, black as ink and a great deal of it. It came up round the shaft of the bolt in slow pulses, welling over her hands. He should have been dead already, any normal man; she did not think he was normal; she did not think that mattered. "Brannoc! Brannoc, please—"

"I'm here."

"Get it out. Get it out of him—"

"If I pull it, he bleeds out." The old man knelt, grim, and put two blunt fingers to Valerian's throat. His face did not change. "Girl. Isolde. Look at me. It's through the lung. I don't know what he is, but I know what that is."

"No."

"It's a quiet-iron bolt. It's meant to kill things like him."

"No."

"Isolde."

It was Valerian. He had found her wrist, and was holding it, weakly. His glove was stiff with blood. "Isolde, listen. I am not afraid."

"I am."

"I know." The ghost of a smile touched his mouth. "That is the very thing I find so— so extraordinary. That someone should be afraid. On my account."

"Stop it."

"I have wished to say—"

"Valerian, if you say one more word that sounds like a goodbye, I'll— I'll—" Her voice broke. "I'll read you the Genealogies."

His laugh was a bubble of blood. "Cruel."

"I mean it."

"I do not doubt it."

The garden was dying around them. Every flower within sight was gray, and the white sky was dimming to the color of a bruise. Somewhere at the end of the lawn a branch cracked. And at her side the old fire-mage sat back on his heels, and shut his one eye, and murmured something that she realized, after a moment, was a prayer.

No, thought Isolde. No. Not you too. Not after Odile.

She put her hands on his chest.

She did not know what she was doing. She knew only that the Doors ran on truth, that this one ran on it above all, and that she had one thing left in her that had not been said aloud. She had been carrying it for three days. It had sat in her breast like a coal. She had been afraid of it, and ashamed, and she had said, There isn't time, and, It's too soon, and, Wait till it's over.

There is no time, she thought. There never was.

"I love you," said Isolde.

…

The garden stopped.

It stopped quite suddenly, the way a clock stops, in mid-motion. The falling petal hung in the air. The dust stood still. And in the center of the lawn, in the dry fountain where Gideon had sat, there was a small sound, a soft, secret rustle, like a bird settling its feathers.

A single rose came up through the stone.

It was white. It was not like the others. It rose on a stem as thin as a thread, and swelled, and unfolded, one petal after another, in a slow and silent flowering, until it stood the height of a man. It glowed. The light of it fell across the ash and the dead lilies and the wounded man. Where the light touched, the gray went out of things. The foxgloves lifted. The moonflowers uncurled. And under her hands the iron bolt in Valerian's chest turned to a long thin shaft of white petals and dropped away like snow.

His breath came in, deep and clean.

He lay looking at her.

"That," said Valerian, very faintly, "was not a lie."

"No."

"It did not wilt."

"No." She was laughing, and crying, and furious, and could not stop. "It's the rose. It's the key. It wanted the truest thing anyone could say, and I— I said it, I didn't think, I—"

"Say it again."

"What?"

"Please." His fingers tightened on her wrist. His eyes were very bright. They had a light in them she had never seen, a fierce, shy, astonished joy, like a man who has been handed a gift in the dark and cannot yet see what it is. "I find that I should like very much to hear it once more. In order to be sure."

She leaned down, and put her forehead against his, and told him.

…

The gate came out of the rose.

It was only a small one, a little arch of white wood in the garden wall, no taller than a child, where before there had been nothing but old red brick. Isolde saw it first as a shimmer. Then it was a door, and then it was open, and beyond it lay a dim stone passage with a lamp at the end.

"Door Ten is passed," said the pleasant voice, out of the sky. "Three remain."

And then, very softly, from the roots of the rose, another voice, a hollow one, said: "Four."

She went cold.

Valerian had heard it too. He had risen onto one elbow, with a hand to his chest, which showed no wound, and the color was coming back into his face. He stared at the little door. His lips parted.

"Isolde," he said. "Look."

She followed his eyes.

Cut into the jamb of the white arch, so small and so old that she had almost missed it, there was a line of writing. It was not in the neat hand of the rhyme. It was rougher, shallower, scratched into the wood with a knife-point in a hurry. She knelt and brushed away the ash.

It was in the Old Tongue. It was only one line.

…and the last door is not for leaving.