The Hidden Worlds by Kristin Landon

Author:Kristin Landon [Landon, Kristin]
Format: epub, pdf
Published: 2010-03-12T00:40:49.109000+00:00

175

He lifted aside the spill of gray hair and laid two fingers

along the side of Paolo’s throat. For a while he did not

move. Then, slowly, he began to tear at his clothing. He

tore his hair loose from its clip at the nape of his neck. He

bent forward across the body of his father, and gave him

self over to darkness.

e l e v e n

g

Alone in the dark, Linnea walked carefully down the

broad stone path of Iain’s garden. Fear-sweat prickled

the skin of her back and shoulders. With every step the

sense of wrongness grew. She knew all the dangers of this

world, all the sensible reasons for leaving, and she’d

agreed to go. But someplace far back in her mind an alarm

shrilled. She looked back, but Iain had gone inside, and the

house loomed dark, sealed.

As she moved on, she told herself there was nothing

here to be afraid of. She heard the trickle of water; she

smelled the sun-warmed stones of the path and the acrid

scent of some kind of desert foliage. Here and there she

caught the hint, the fragrance of flowers. Some she knew.

Some she would never know.

She reached the lower wall of Iain’s garden and the man

waiting for her there, a dark outline against the diffuse

light from the City beyond. Not Rafael. “This way,” he said

t h e h i d d e n w o r l d s

177

softly, and touched her arm to guide her along the stone

wall to a low spot where she could climb over. The light

was strange—faint, scattered, reddish—and her unease

grew.

On the other side of the wall was a broad public path

paved in some hard, smooth, red-brown material, veined

like stone, lit by low yellow lanterns every dozen meters or

so. Now she could see that the man was indeed Mekael,

looking much like the holo Iain had shown her. He led her

along at a careful pace, one that would draw no attention.

She had never really walked in this world, outside Iain’s

garden. Transport was always by tube cars that traveled

below ground. But the path they followed now had been

made for pedestrians, men strolling for pleasure or to take

the air. Walking behind Mekael, pretending to be his ser

vant, she looked around hungrily at the world she had

barely seen. At first, high walls shut her out—walls of

stone, rough and picturesque, or smooth as satin and ele

gantly patterned; walls of every color of brick; walls inlaid,

carved, or brilliantly tiled. Sometimes fragrant-flowering

vines spilled over from the rich gardens within, or a tree in

bloom swayed, ghost black, against the pale night.

As they traveled, the public space between the walled

gardens widened. Lawns lush with grass stretched away

into shadows; brilliant flowers breathed their scent, their

colors strange in the yellow dimness. The trees whispered,

impossibly tall. She had never walked here. Never walked

on grass. But now there was no time. The man ahead hur

ried on, and she followed as she must, through the misty

light of the city and the storm, through the pools of gold

cast by the lanterns along the path, through the green-black

shadows under the dark trees.

178

Kristin Landon

Although it was

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