All That Lives Must Die - Eric Nylund [194]
But he obviously was not the good little boy everyone believed. He had not consulted Louis as he had promised, and any visit to the Poppy Lands had to have broken dozens of Audrey’s rules. How delightful.
Louis smiled at this new development.
Sealiah’s plans involving Eliot had to be further along than he had dreamed.
But when had he crossed? And more curiously, how had he returned?
All this Louis considered in a heartbeat.
“My business today takes me past the Mirrored Realms,” he told the Ticket Master.
The Ticket Master looked disappointed, for he hadn’t tricked any salable information from him.
The Night Train’s last stop was the Mirrored Realms—and anything past that in the Hysterical Kingdom was only the business of the fool who attempted such a journey.
Louis had spoken the truth: He did have business past the Mirrored Realms with Mephistopheles . . . just not at this time.
The Ticket Master bowed again, left, and the train slowed.
Louis glanced outside at impenetrable jungle. The only path was the train tracks that cut through. Every flower was in full bloom. Every fungus clouded the air with spore. How deadly. How lovely.
The Night Train pulled into the station house, paused only a moment as required by the Infernal Transportation Pact, and then the brakes released, and the engine chugged ahead.
No one either had departed or gotten on.
Louis looked into the car ahead. No sign of that gossip-mongering Ticket Master.
He turned to Amberflaxus and held one a finger. “Stay,” he ordered.
The animal continued to lick itself, pretending (as always its habit) not to notice him.
Louis borrowed a small bottle of whiskey from the wet bar, and then from the poker table scooped a handful of diamond-studded chips along with a set of dice—the minimal supplies one might need in the wilderness.
He slipped out the back and off the train . . . and infiltrated the Poppy Lands.
The hothouse train station had been shelled, and most of the frosted panes were shattered. A billion bits of glass glistened on the ground.
Of course, the station would be an obvious target. It was only a matter of time before Mephistopheles cut the train tracks as well.
Louis had to act with haste, gather information, and then be on the next train out.
He wrapped his cloak about him and walked in the ditch alongside the road toward Sealiah’s Twelve Towers, her so-called Doze Torres. She would no doubt make her stand in her castles, where she felt safest.
The poppy fields were on fire: violet, lemon, pink, and crimson blossoms withered in the flames. Green smoke drifted over the lands and flashed with hypnotic phosphorescence.
Louis held his breath.
Droogan-dors fought on the distant hills and valleys, flitting wraiths among the gloaming.
A mere league to his left, hundreds of shadow creatures swarmed and circled a legion of Sealiah’s noble knights, the Order of the Thorn. The dark tore at the warriors . . . then their fires burned out . . . and the shades moved in. Frost crackled over the ground there, killing all traces of vegetation.
Mephistopheles was no fool. He carefully whittled away parcels of her land, gathering strength while Sealiah lost hers.
But Sealiah was no fool, either . . . and Louis wondered what trick she had yet to play.
Motion ahead on the road caught his attention: a fat shadow writhed between a dozen poorly defined shapes—rat—crow—worm—camouflaged in the blackness.
Louis slowed, creeping artfully so that nothing should be able to detect him.
A black eye materialized in the mass of the Droogan-dor, however, tracking him, the body underneath coiling to pounce.
He smiled at the creature. “Nice doggie,” Louis whispered. “Just a neighborly visit from a neutral observer. Nothing to raise one’s hackles over.”
It sprang.
Louis sidestepped its charge and dug his nails deep into the shadow flesh, clenched his fists—ripped hide free from flesh and bone.
The thing screamed as it dissipated into an oily mist.
Louis grinned and his pulse pounded. Such wonderful violence. He had not felt the thrill of destroying