'All right,' he said, 'remember why we're here. We are collecting roses for the Beast.' At the mention of their tormentor's name, the madmen whimpered piteously. 'He does not want leaves or stems or thorns-especially thorns. Whatever you do, do not touch any part of the rose bushes except the flowers.'
Ganelon slung the small pack he had been carrying from his shoulder. 'The sack tied to your waist is for holding the flowers.' He dropped the bloom in his hand into his pack. 'Like this. Just the flower, nothing else.'
One of the older men, scarcely any hair left on his head, grabbed the canvas sack from his neighbor. He hugged it to his chest as if it were a long-lost friend. Ganelon returned it to its owner quickly, before a brawl broke out; then he led the old man into the garden.
'See, Grandfather,' he said kindly, 'we want all the pretty flowers, but only the flowers.' Ganelon beheaded a few blossoms to demonstrate. With palsied hands, the old man slowly pulled the roses free. Ganelon bit his lip as he watched the man's shaking fingers pluck at the blooms, but the man seemed to catch on quickly. With a quick word of praise, Ganelon was off to get the others started.
At first he kept a careful eye on the demented souls as they went about their task. As the afternoon wore on, though, Ganelon found himself less and less attentive. It was tedious watching them work, or attempt to work. And after three days with the madmen, leading them from the Beast's lair to this field just across the Invidian border, he had little stomach left for the manifestations of their sad, awful, infuriating sickness.
Thoughts of Helain were quick to provide distraction. The fragrance of the roses reminded him of the plans they'd made for the wedding, how they would transform Ambrose's store into a blossom-filled chapel. He was caught up in imagining what that happy event might have been like when a soft voice startled him from his reverie.
'They smell like churches should smell,' Helain said quietly. In her hand she cupped a single red rose. 'Though they're the wrong color. White roses are my favorite.'
Ganelon's heart sang. Even when she turned away in mid-sentence, making it clear that she wasn't speaking to him so much as to herself, the happiness lingered. The old Helain had surfaced for just an instant, long enough for him to realize she still existed. It was enough.
Helain knelt to collect the blossoms from a particularly thorny bush, and Ganelon moved to her side. Even if she weren't aware of his presence, he might bask in hers and hope for another glimpse of her old self.
She hummed a work song from the mine as she plucked the flowers. It had been one of Ambrose's favorites. The stout old fellow sang it endlessly around the shop. Helain went through three verses as she stripped the bush, pausing only when she dropped a large blossom. It fell onto the skeleton beneath the bush, into its open rib cage, where it sat like a suddenly resurrected heart.
Ganelon warily reached into the bones and retrieved the rose. He marveled at the bloom's color, a crimson so deep it was nearly black. He held it out to Helain. She looked first at the blossom, then up into Ganelon's face. Without a word, she slowly shook her head from side to side.
Before Ganelon could ask her why, a shriek of fear rent the garden's calm.
Bratu stood before a particularly large bed, face contorted with terror. One of the partially buried skeletons was moving. The bare bones trembled, seeming to push up out of the ground. Ganelon was at his side in an instant. He immediately spotted the rat, disturbed by the Vistana's proximity, as it burrowed deeper into its home within the bones. Bratu, however, was too blind with fear to recognize his terror's mundane cause.
Mouthing silent prayers to his ancestors, Bratu backed away from the rose bushes. He could not hear Ganelon's murmured words of reassurance or the frightened squeals of the other madmen. He shoved Ganelon's hands away when the young man tried to grab hold of him. An instant later, the Vistana toppled backward onto a plucked rose bush.
The struggle was brief, too brief for Ganelon to react in time to aid the Vistana. The thorns bit into Bratu's back. He howled in agony and tried to stand, but the branches entangled his legs. He reached down, frantic to pull himself free. The limbs of the bush bent to meet his fingers, and the thorns buried themselves in his hand. As they drank in the Vistana's blood, they pulsed and swelled in the wounds until they were all but impossible to shake loose.
More branches wrapped themselves around him, eager for his blood. Finally, the brawny Vistana got his feet beneath him. Using all his considerable strength, he pushed himself up. Some of the branches tore loose. Their thorns etched gory streaks in his flesh as they fell away. Most of the bush kept its awful grip upon him, so that when he stood, the skeleton from which the corpse rose had sprouted jerked to its feet, too. The skeleton appeared to wrap its arms around Bratu, though it wasn't clear if it was acting on its own or merely animated by the vines and branches of the corpse rose.
The sight of the skeletal remains clinging to Bratu shocked Ganelon into action. He reached for the Vistana's hand, but the corpse encircled Bratu's arms and pinned them to his sides. A steady, wet slurping sound came from the thorns as they drank in the man's blood. Even as Ganelon watched, new roses budded upon the stems and blossomed. Their petals were dewed with Bratu's blood.
The feeding frenzy of one plant sent the rest into motion. Branches lashed out, snaring arms or legs or faces with their inch-long thorns. Panic swept through the garden. Most of Ganelon's mad army not entangled by the bushes fled. Because the sacks had been tied to their belts, they carried the precious blooms with them as they scurried over the wall. A few froze, paralyzed by fear, Helain among them.
Ganelon tore one of the madmen free of a bush; the thorns claimed ribbons of flesh from the unfortunate's face as he came away. Shoving him toward safety, the young man stormed through the garden. Bones and branches crunched beneath the heavy tread of his braced leg. He found Helain huddled at the garden's center. Corpse roses snaked all around her, but luck or some unseen hand kept them from her fair flesh.
'I've spilled my flowers,' she said, gesturing to the red roses scattered across the path. 'There can be no wedding now.'
Ganelon tried to pull her up from the ground, but she resisted. A branch snagged his leg. He wrenched himself free, heedless of the deep cuts the thorns left in his calf. However, the blood spilled from those wounds drew the unwelcome attention of another rose bush, and it lurched forward hungrily. The corpse at its base stirred, too. Like a half-dozen others around the garden, the ravenous plant uprooted itself. Supported by its skeletal host, the corpse rose shuffled forward in search of blood.
Ganelon stuffed his own small, rose-filled pack into Helain's hands. 'The Beast wants these. Hurry.'
He protected her flight from the garden as best he could. The mobile corpses moved slowly enough for Ganelon and Helain to evade them. The lunatics already immobilized by the stationary plants were not as lucky. Crazed with hunger, the ambulatory roses descended upon the doomed men and women. The sounds of their feasting followed Ganelon up the hill, away from Malocchio's Dream Garden. The young man knew that the moist tearing and the agonized screams would forever echo in his nightmares.
When he was far enough from the garden to slow his pace, Ganelon removed the Beast's token from his pocket. 'Back to him,' he whispered into the ear. 'Take the roses back to the Beast.'
Ganelon hoped the madmen heard him. He had little chance of catching them now.
As he topped the hill, though, Ganelon was stunned to find the survivors of his mad army kneeling on the ground, groveling before a youth clad entirely in black. The sinister figure paced back and forth through the whimpering crowd, hands clasped behind his back. The steady clank of Ganelon's leg brace drew his attention away from the madmen, and he waited patiently for the newcomer to approach.
'Do you know the penalty for disturbing my garden?' Malocchio Aderre asked impatiently. 'I'm going to kill you whether you do or not, of course. I'm just curious as to whether you are ignorant or foolhardy.'
The tone was playful, but Ganelon recognized an undercurrent of deadly earnest there as well. He would have to deal with this carefully. Still, he felt an odd sense of comfort in the Invidian lord's presence. He'd spoken with this man before, many times. He just couldn't remember when.
These were more phantom memories caused by the Cobbler's graft, he realized. While Ganelon couldn't recollect the incidents that spawned them, he did remember the Cobbler's advice to him in the Fume wood: for these half-forgotten impulses to be useful, he needed to relax and simply let instinct take over.
'Neither fool nor imbecile, great lord,' he said, bowing as deeply as his leg brace would allow. 'I am merely an obedient servant on a mission.'
'The only servants I tolerate in this land are my own,' Malocchio replied. 'And you and this… rabble are most certainly not servants of mine.'
'Perhaps we are,' Ganelon corrected mildly, 'after a fashion.'
