In the Realm of the Midnight Gardener

When they stopped at last, Domingo counted the time in a measure of days. The Tindalosi turned to face him. “We are here,” one of the corpses spat. It was foolish, he knew, given what he’d just endured, but he took a moment to tuck in his shirt, dust himself off and brush back his hair with his fingers.

“Now what?” he asked, lacking anything better to say.

“We will return in one night’s time,” one of the corpses explained. “Meet us here when you have retrieved the root. If you have what we wish, we will guide you back to where you came from, and give you your reward.”

“And if I return empty-handed?” he asked. For the first time he’d ever seen, the Tindalosi actually smiled. It was an experience he’d not have wished on his worst enemy. It was as dismal and cold as it was disturbing, the rictus of killers. They said nothing, but their reaver’s leers spoke volumes. “Ah,” he said, smiling sardonically. “Don’t return empty-handed, is that it?”

“Your choice,” one of them chattered. “Your choice.”

Yes, if being torn to shreds was a choice. It was their turn to have the upper hand. He’d not specified in the contract a penalty for his failure, so it was open to interpretation. They could kill him, and no breach of the contract would exist. He’d have to remember that for next time. A stupid oversight.

“Why not wait here while I retrieve your goods?” Domingo asked. “A full night might be far too long. I don’t want to be stranded here longer than I have to be.”

“The Midnight Gardener is not nearby,” one explained. “But sentinels are here, and would...sense us. One night, and we will return.” Domingo shrugged. One night it was.

He suppressed the human instinct to extend a handshake, turned and headed down the path.

Twenty minutes later, he emerged out of the forest, out on to a rutted dirt road. The road ran in both directions as far as the eye could see. The forest from which he’d emerged stood behind him. On the other side of the road, a river ran parallel. On the river’’s far shore, a hedgerow wall grew ten meters high, running parallel with the river and the road, clearly a barricade to whatever lay beyond it. It was dark, very dark outside, so it was difficult for Domingo to make out much more than this. The night was lit only by starlight and the luminous shine of three pale half-moons. Even this illumination would soon be gone; a cloud front was rolling in from the west, or at least where he imagined west should be.

This was a hazard to any traveler on the Garden Path. Crossing to unknown worlds meant that once there, direction was by instinct alone. Only up and down, forward and back were constants. Some dusters, human ones anyway, still carried an ancient human device called a compass. These used magnetics to position an absolute north, but as only some worlds had the style of magnetic poles as were found on Gaia, such artefacts were usually rendered worthless. Domingo found that such abstracts rarely helped. Best to make do with instinct, the terrain, the position of landmarks and the local stars.

Unfortunately, even these were only dark blotches around him, quickly fading into an absolute blackness as the clouds rolled in. He’d soon be crashing about in pitch darkness, and that would not do. Hardly the style of a master thief about his skulky business.

He unslung his satchel and opened one of the interior pockets, removing a small, metallic vial. He uncorked it, and carefully sipped, drinking no more than a quarter of the vial’s contents. Predilection was to upend the little vial, but he knew better. The concoction was hard to manufacture, and equally expensive. Besides, it was potent, and only a small draught was necessary for the effect he required. He quickly corked and stowed the vial, pulled the satchel back over his shoulder, and sat down on the dirt road. The potion’s effects wouldn’t take long.

In short order, his head swam, and an intense euphoria and nausea washed over him. It was so strong a sensation that even seated as he was, he struggled to remain upright. The world flashed in a panoply of colours, half-witnessed visions, whispers and hushed echoes, flickers at the corner of his peripheral vision. He held steady, shivering against a cold that wasn’t there, rocking back and forth as the drug’s stronger effects washed over him in confusing and giggle-inducing waves.

“The whirl of eternity is something, isn’t it?” Juan Polino said maniacally, eyes ablaze. “How I miss the little things. Careful that they don’t carry you away, eh?” Domingo wanted to retort, but found himself mute, breathless, on the verge of a shriek he could not quite get out. That made the old man laugh all the more. He clung on.

It was long moments before the worst of it began to subside. It culminated in bright, sudden flashes of white and strange whirling patterns that remained on his retinas even as others replaced it. It faded, faded, dimming as the potion mellowed into his nervous system.

At long last, it was passed. Domingo looked about, the euphoria and nausea turned to a nervous will to go on. And now, the dim remaining light was replaced by a pale blue glow to everything around him. His eyes were lit up with a cerulean gleam.

Darkness was banished, thanks to the Faer fire elixir.

He shakily clambered to his feet, and started off down the road. He edged to the bank of the river and looked across at the hedgerow wall. It was all but perfectly sculpted and most assuredly impenetrable. He’d not bother with that unless it was absolutely necessary. Nothing said amateur like some noisy idiot trying to clamber over a hedgerow. Why not simply call out his position and intent to whomever or whatever was nearby. He’d follow the road to see where it led. Most likely, there’d be an entrance somewhere. He headed off.

The Faer fire elixir was working as expected, but as with any substance used by Dhystara, it was not without risks. Nothing was free. The elixir had given him sight in the darkness, but Domingo found that walking along the road was a peril in itself. He struggled to keep the elixir’s hallucinogenic after-effects at bay. His legs felt unimaginably long and elastic; following the simplest line of thought propelled him into a netherworld of dream and phantasm, plummeting him into a droning nausea. The hedgerow boiled and churned; the river and the road melded and crossed. His pupils waned and waxed as the horror and the ecstasy bubbled up from his belly into his swooning brain.

But as he kept moving, he realized it wasn’t just after-effects. It was getting worse. Somehow, he’d taken more of the Faer fire than he’d meant to, and had got moving too fast before it’s effects had passed. Domingo groaned as the full brunt of the dosage surged into him.

He weaved from side to side, then slipped and slid off the road down to the river bank. The gurgling waters down the bank were a nebulous abomination at that moment. The water, he was sure, would sear his flesh, fill him with unimaginable agony. He clambered back up on to the road, careening forward with blurry confusion, sure that he had left something behind.

The dark, inchoate silhouette of a man was stretched out before him on the ground, staring into his soul and mocking his braided steps. He needed to be away. He could hear masses upon masses of them were coming. Panic gripped him, but he couldn’t say why. He tried to hurry, but then looked back, half-expecting their numbers to overrun him. There was nothing there, only slow-moving amber star grit wafting in the night breeze. He turned and bumbled on, then felt something slam into him, sending him sprawling. He stumbled and fell, and lay there giggling. Teeth chattering, wanting to cry out, he puffed air from his cheeks to stop the turbid sky from whispering unintelligible mysteries that he didn’t want to know.

“Shut up,” he hissed, head bobbing. “Shut up, damn you!”

“The Vault of Heaven is calling, Domingo,” Juan Polino hushed. “What choice do you have but to listen, and obey?”

Domingo stupidly nodded, murmuring his worthless response. He lay face down in the crawling, star grit road, his fingers weakly clawing, grasping for anything to right him. Then he was still.

~~~

Domingo gasped and shot up. He looked from side to side, to the sky, to the road before him.

He cursed. How long had he been out?! Looking around, he didn’t think it could have been that long. The Faer fire was working as expected now. He could see clearly about him, so it was a short nap he’d taken. But what sort of jackass maneuver was that? Over-dosing himself on the Faer fire elixir was the work of a downright novice.

He removed the vial and examined its contents. He’d only taken the amount he’d intended. What the hell had happened? He’d made this batch himself not but a month before.

Juan Polino nodded. “Now did I correct you when you made this batch, and say that it wasn’t three of those fungi that go into making the elixir, but instead should be six?”

“Yes! You told me to use six!” Domingo said. “You told me it was six!”

“Hmm, yes,” his master admitted. “Yes, I suppose I did. Well, you were right. Three is probably closer to the truth.”

“Probably?!” Domingo demanded. “You doddering old hack! I knew you were wrong when you told me that!”

“Then why did you listen to me?”

Domingo wracked his brain for a good response, then spat instead. “Never mind! I don’t have time to be lying around in the dirt, stoned to the gills.”

“With dirt all over your face,” Juan Polino added.

“Yes,” Domingo snapped, wiping his face. “With dirt all over my face. I have to get moving.”

So he got up and headed off.

It was half an hour later that he reached the entrance he sought. The road stopped there, with a small bridge extending over the river to a stone archway in the hedgerow.

He crossed the bridge, then stood a few meters away looking at the archway.

The Tindalosi had said that the Midnight Gardener wasn’t home, but the question had to be asked: how could they know? Had they orchestrated his (her?) departure? Or was this just another trick to keep him going forward no matter what? No, they wanted those blood turnips, so his success was their success. He supposed it didn’t matter one way or another. He had to press on. That, return empty-handed to die, or remain stranded here until he was discovered.

Then he noticed something in the shadows near the archway, and it made him smile.

“Aha,” he chuckled. Now he saw why the Tindalosi had been desperate enough to hire a lowly Umnya to do their dirty work. Lying in a ramshackle pile on the road beside the bridge were four or five Tindalosi corpses, lifeless, devoid of their hosts to prop them up. He edged in for a closer look. Dead, definitely, and had lain so long that new life was already sprouting over them, small seedlings growing on their flesh and in their mouths. He’d never known a Tindalosi to lay an elaborate trap for anyone, but one could never be too careful. Just to be sure he jabbed at them with the long knife to satisfy himself that they weren’t going to cause any mischief. The corpses took the knifing and did not move.

Now to find out how they’d ended up like that. He stepped up to the archway for a closer look, when from the interior of the archway, a dozen ropey vines snaked out with the speed of vipers. The vines were as long as two men end to end, each feathered with jagged-edged leaves and ending in an un-blossomed flower pod. These orange-red pods weaved in front of him, going from side to side, like asps prepared to strike. Sarba vines, bred specifically to sense the stench of Tindalosi corpses. Sarba vines were bred that way, to sense this or that species. Domingo stood stock still, his eyes riveted to the swaying things.

“Let’s hope that Tindalosi stink hasn’t rubbed off on you, eh?” old Juan Polino said, eyes flashing.

“Indeed,” he whispered, the quaver in his voice betraying fear.

“Any hint of it, and those Sarba vines will kill you for certain. You did just prod one with that blade of yours. Might be enough.”

Domingo swallowed dryly, creeping forward. The vines danced and weaved around him, hovering so close to his face that he could smell the pungent perfume of their unblossomed petals, taste the acridity of their hidden spines. They moved with him, tracking his slow shuffle like asps disturbed in their nest, ready to lash out at without notice. Domingo forced himself not to breathe, not to betray a sudden movement which might end him then and there. The vines kept with him, craned to reach around him, kept their flowers trained on this interloper in their domain.

But as he inched crossed the archway, the vines paused an instant, then retreated into the tops and sides of the hedgerow.

“Aw,” old Juan Polino said. “That was no fun.”

Domingo at last took a breath. Bloody things could have scented the stink of the Tindalosi on his knife and ended him then and there. He would have ended up like those corpses piled up at the entrance. He glanced back.

Knowing what to look for, he saw that each of the corpses was darted with Sarba spine seeds. He should have known. Those weren’t any seedlings growing over those things. Those were young Sarba vines growing from the corpses’ mouths, nostrils and eye sockets. The vines used their victims to propagate their species.

He’d passed his second trial, this one having stopped those Tindalosi outside. Ironically, had they simply tossed some pollen from the same plant over themselves, they would have passed through unscathed. Not that he would be the one to tell them that trick. Let them discover it on their own. All the more chance for him to profit by them further down the line.

The path from the archway wound down and around a small hillock, but already Domingo could feel something was not right. He rounded the bend and stood gaping.

Before him was an enormous manor house, a stone and wooden monstrosity, equal part fortress and mad conjurer’s lair. Portions of the manor appeared to have been built, but much of it appeared to have been grown right out of the ground, shape-shifted to form towers, battlements, a curving band of living trellises that clung to the fortress, extended into long branches which hung into space.

But to look at it, he was instantly aware that there was something horribly wrong with the place. The manor kept shifting, turning, warping in and out of perspective, as if it was only part way in the world. The stones and the trellises, the very place appeared to breathe, to convolve back in upon itself. The world itself seemed to warp and twirl where the manor stood. It was a thing not of the living worlds, something surpassing the geometries of ordinary space. The manor and the grounds around it convulsed as to the beating of some unseen heart. Domingo had to avert his eyes, look only sidelong at it, or he knew he would be sick.

This was what ancient legends spoke of when they talked of the citadels of demons, of the kingdom of gods. Men were said to look upon such places and know only weakness, confusion and fear.

So what was the cause? He considered briefly the Faer fire elixir, but dismissed it at once. He’d known the dizzying heights of the elixir many times, even beyond what he’d experienced on the road not long before. No, this was not that. There was something loathsome and disturbing to what he was seeing, something which plagued him to look upon it.

Forming a half ring around the outer edge of the manor grounds were an evenly-space band of twisted, burnt-looking trees. They were ugly and dessicated things, with no leaves, no shoots; even their roots looked cracked and long since dead. But they were alive. Domingo was sure of this as he was that they were responsible for this distortion before him.

Through the Faer fire, Domingo could see that these things emanated a gruesome radiance which poured into the distortion, fed it. Was it the radiance, or was it the terrible, almost human moan which poured from each of those trees, a droning, unintelligible dirge.

However these things were accomplishing this, it was without doubt they were the source of the nauseating distortion. Only the half ring the trees formed around the manor and the grounds was twisted and turning back on itself. Everywhere else he looked, all was normal. These trees were planted here intentionally.

Domingo was loathe to go near those trees, even to pass close to them. Even from a distance, Domingo could feel a malignant intelligence to them, smell their unmistakable stink of malevolence.

Domingo had intended to sneak around the outer edges of the grounds, keeping well to the shadows of the hedgerow wall. The trees made that impossible. He was being forced to cross the manor grounds, right through this misshapen barrier before him. Crossing into that sickening whorl was not an idea he relished, but what other choice did he have? This was the only way in.

What would happen in that place? Domingo couldn’t imagine it would be pleasant. His greater concern actually was would he be able to cross whatever that was, or was there even another side to it. There was no way to know, but he had no choice but to proceed.

With a tentative gait, he stepped over the edge separating solid ground from the squirming dissolution within the ring of trees.

The moaning grew louder. The din rose and rose, and grew so loud that he could no longer hear anything else. Only that awful, unending monomy rang in his skull. The sound wrapped around him, heaved at his insides, bent and flexed him into oozing strands of cold treacle draining from a jar. He screamed, but there was no sound. It was lost was lost. Only the trees’ terrible lamentation was there, churning him into fragments and sticky strands.

Domingo was slowed to the pace of their awful moaning, to the ponderous writhing of the field. He struggled heavily to make sense of the panoply of smeared reality around him, but forced himself onward, gooey and distending.

His every motion smeared this fluidic world like a brush across a canvas wet with paint. Direction, motion, it was losing meaning. The bleeding of shapes, the cold pulsing of time and form, it was all too undefinable. He was losing himself to it, and felt panic shoot through him, as well as an urge to undo this decision, to turn back and get out. But he realized with a shock of revulsion that turning back was already impossible. His effort to turn around would smear everything, leaving what was forward and what was back a blurred puzzle he would be powerless to solve. He had no choice but to keep straight, follow his feet, let them carry him on.

Worse even than this loathsome upheaval of space and form, with every instant, he was pressed down by a languorous debility, a draining of his strength and his will. That moaning, that incessant drone diluted his focus and his resolve to go on. It was oppressive and seductive, this weakness. He wanted nothing more than to submit to it, to close his eyes and let it all carry him away. He hated his own forced steps, hated himself for even attempting them.

His head, bent down and backwards, was writhing a half dozen meters from his shoulders by a serpentine neck. His face was squished flat, then wept down as the melting of fat in a pan. He could see his dolorous limbs listlessly flailing from his torso. His steps ranged up and writhed back. Weak and distended, he forced them on, willed them to take even just a single step more.

One more step. He’d taken two now, over what felt like an eternity. To take another, his dripping, serous mind struggled to imagine how he could manage it. Domingo Ladrón, the sky, the grounds, the manor, everything was melding and mixing into a liquiform mess on the daubing canvas of those moaning trees. The lids of his eyes draped down, melted over his eyes as that oppressive exhaustion made thought, volition, any more care to go on all but impossible.

He wanted it to be over, for everything to let him be, to stop and stand and to forget it all. There was no way across, no way of knowing, no way to save himself. He would let go, give in, be washed away in the droning. To stop, to let his eyelids slip, to stand silent and still and slide deliquescent into the pulsing all around him, it was his only wish.

The lids lifted the faintest crack.

One. More. Step….

There was a slurping pop, and it was past. Everything was solid and real once more. The manor house, the grounds, even the trees were as still and calm as the night above them.

It was over so abruptly, Domingo blinked and frowned in confusion. He turned and looked back. Back the way he’d came, the hedgerow, the hill, even the smallest bit of river, all of the land on the other side of the half ring of trees were a roiling mess, pulsing and displacing as the manor and the grounds had been before. He’d come no more than a handful of steps through the trees’ barrier. And he’d survived.

He fell to his knees and vomited.

His stomach painfully drained, Domingo crouched behind a crumbling statue and gave the place the once over. The manor was still a dismal, dark place, all shadows and grim fancy, but the awful spell which had undone his senses was past.

Clearly those blasted moaning trees had done something to him, jangled his faculties into seeing and feeling that terror. Domingo thought the Faer fire elixir had been bad. That viscous nightmare had near on done him in.

Now the manor and the grounds were merely oppressive, the sort of place where one expected to hear the echoes of crazed laughter, the rumbling of engines and the boiling gurgle of brewing pots. Unnerving, sure, but at least it had stopped squirming.

Domingo had to admit that whatever that field was coming off those trees was an ingenious trap. The sight of that phantasmagoria would have seen most off. For those brave or foolhardy enough to try to cross it as he had, they’d have to glop their way through that sensory churn the same as him, and that was no easy task. It would have been easy to stand there and give up. Had he not forced himself to take that couple of steps more, he’d still be trapped in that dripping figment, a befuddled dope all goggle-eyed and flailing, made easy prey for whatever things guarded this place.

He glanced back at the repugnant wave beyond the ring of trees and shuddered. He’d not risk going back through that again if he could help it. He had to press on and hope there was another way out.

Domingo gave the manor long consideration as he crouched there. He was no superstitious lout, but he would avoid that place at all costs. True, given who supposedly held court there, there would be any number of treasures waiting inside. Potions, ingredients, unknown herb and plant strains, but most of all recipes that would advance any duster’s position and power. If this was indeed the lair of the Midnight Gardener, such knowledge would be found in there. But no. Treasures are never free, and places like that were invariably mazes of dark corridors, locked gates, and home to who knew what sort of creatures and traps. Any attempt to loot the place would most likely end with him becoming a permanent resident of its dungeons, or buried somewhere on the grounds.

Once his legs had stopped shaking and his stomach felt up to it, he made off across the grounds, trying to keep to cover wherever possible. Yet the closer he got to the manor, the fewer places there were for cover, so he was forced to make short dashes between shadowy places, rushing for anything he could hide behind.

He heard something, the sounds of movement nearby. He froze, waited crouched a long time, but in the end heard nothing more. His cover was good where he was, so it was time for a short break. He nestled in to the hedges where he hid, sat down and took out a small meal of dried fruit, jerky and water. He needed to fill the void he’d left behind that statue.

While he drank and ate he mused. The Tidalosi were not known for speaking out of turn. Lying to get something out of him, sure, but there was nothing for them to gain by making up a story about this being the realm of the Midnight Gardener. But it didn’t seem possible. The Midnight Gardener, after all.

The Midnight Gardener was a legend. Generations had whispered about the mysterious figure, tall tales and things attributed to him that couldn’t otherwise be explained. No one even knew if the Midnight Gardener was a man or a woman, or neither, or both. Every story told something different. At the very least, he/she/they/it were said to be well over six hundred years old, kept from death’s grasp with concoctions of his/her/their/its own creation. The rumours told that the Midnight Gardener had found immortality, that the greatest duster who had ever come out of the human race had raised himself beyond humanity, freed himself from the mortal coil. He spent his days now in research, exceeding even the Faer in the ways of the Garden Path and dusting. He bred plants, hunted new species across the living worlds, discovered new twists and turns on the Garden Path. The Ixtapodan, some said, considered him one of their own, an Ixtapodan in Umnya form, and as such, granted him understanding of the Jualafh that was unavailable to all outsiders. The Ghorl called him Huulg N’Tuuk, the maker of life, for it was said he could spin plants from the very air. Yet how was that even possible?! Dhystara could do many things which the average rabble would consider sorcery, and some of it might be just that. Yet weaving life from thin air? That was more than mere sorcery. That was in the realm of pure miracle.

Domingo had finished his meal, was rested and was tired of this line of thought. There was no way to know if it was true or not.

“But what if it is, meat head?” old Juan pointed out. “What if it IS true what those demons told you?”

If it was true, if this was the realm of the Midnight Gardener, then Domingo could count himself amongst a tiny few who had even crept this close to the domicile of, dare he say, a god. No one would ever know.