It was a long ride to the city center, but eventually what Avery perceived as a palace made for alien giants loomed before them, and some distance beyond the palace reared the great black dome structure ... but up this close it was revealed as not just massive but mountainous. What was in there? The whole city was in its shadow, as if the city was simply fungal growth around a tree.
The elephant knelt before the palace steps and a myriad of Infested ushered Layanna off, barely waiting as the others scrambled to keep up. The Infested had built wooden ramps and human-sized steps to make mounting the grand staircase possible, or at least easier, for non-giants, and they showed Layanna to the newly erected walkway, escorting her in their slouching, bilious way toward the great doors above. Avery and the others hastened after, careful not to let themselves brush against the Infested as they went.
Avery gasped as he entered the great building and the massive environs of the inside became clear. He had been inside cathedrals and other grand structures which had made him feel tiny before, but this ... the walls seemed to stretch miles to either side, and the ceiling vanished into distance high above. The giants who had dwelt here must have felt like he had in those cathedrals. But if they had felt like ants here, he felt like bacteria.
It was all overgrown in vegetation and showed the ravages of time most clearly. Sections of the high-flung ceiling had caved in, admitting shafts of light into the gloom, illuminating the great heaps of the broken ceiling sections, or what must be them; it was impossible to tell, exactly, as they were overgrown with dirt, grass and trees, basking in sunlight from above. Grand columns, carved into terrifying if mostly overgrown shapes, towered about the chamber, holding up what was left of the ceiling—which, in fairness, was most of it. Some of the pillars had broken, though, and great cracks showed in the floor where their overgrown remains lay. Even the cracks had been filled in by earth and shrubbery. Rats and squirrels scampered about, then retreated when the Infested and their charges came close. Other, larger animals, stirred behind the trees. An unintended park had risen in the ruins. Well, not a park, really, Avery amended, noting the carcass of a deer whose throat had been torn out (by a tiger, perhaps?) and its belly gnawed upon—but an extension of the jungle.
The Infested led Layanna and her party to another staircase and showed her up the ramps and scaffolding that had been built here, too. The Infested had been busy during their time in the lost city, however long that had been, and Avery saw teams of them hauling away blocks of stone, clearing away shrubbery or erecting more scaffolding on other giant staircases here and there. They moved in unified shuffles, acting in concert with each other like marionettes on the same string.
Avery was huffing and puffing, with sweat soaking into his clothes by the time they reached the top of the staircase, and he could tell the others were winded, too, all except the Infested. They said nothing, nor did their expressions or body language betray sign of any individual thought—though they could act separately, perhaps in some measure independently, one gesturing forward while another took up the rear, one going forward to ensure the sturdiness of the ramps while others kept an eye on their charges. Avery wondered if they were controlled like Virine had controlled the glabren, just wound up like clockwork toys and left to run.
The Infested led the group down a massive hallway, around heaps of overgrown rubble, and through an equally grand doorway into what must have been the Throne Room or equivalent of the vanished race of giants. Many Infested gathered here, ranks of them, some holding rifles or submachine guns, grenades—Sheridan’s eyes lit up when she saw those—or machetes. The people and creatures bearing the weapons had probably been doing so in life, or at least before the maggots had taken them, proof of the conflict in the area, and Avery wondered if the knowledge of the host passed into the group consciousness when the host was absorbed, when he or she Became. It must be. Otherwise the Infested would not know how to erect scaffolding or use firearms; what did maggots need with such things?
There must have been hundreds of Infested in the room, silent guardians to their master, and their reek, the stench of rotting and rotten meat, was nauseating. Even as Avery watched, the arm of one man, who was gray and more dilapidated-looking than most of the others, actually fell off, to no sign of discomfort on the man’s part, and neither he nor anyone else bent to retrieve it, or even seemed to notice its falling. Flies buzzed about him, and others too, crawling on faces and oozing eyeballs.
The Throne Room was not arranged like the typical human version of the same chamber, with a dais along the wall opposite the doorway with a kingly seat upon it, but rather like a pentagram, with a raised portion in the center and giant-sized stairs leading up to it. Once more Avery and the others were forced up another set of ramps, though this one was shorter than the others, and onto the dais where, at some distant time in the past, the king or high priest or insectile queen or seed lord had made its lair, but where that place may once have been was now a bowl scooped out of the stump of the dais and filled with a sight that sent shivers down Avery’s back.
A great maggot the size of a truck squirmed in the bowl, literally in a bed of countless smaller maggots ... and many, many corpses. The reek that rose up from the bowl made Avery stagger back. One of the Infested shoved him forward, and Avery teetered on the brink, then drew back. For a moment, he panicked at the contact, then realized the thing had touched him only with the butt of its submachine gun. Relief flooded him.
The great maggot glistened and moved, however sluggishly, below them, and at the motion the Infested on the dais opened their mouths and emitted that awful radio-static hum. Avery gnashed his teeth against the sound.
“For fuck’s sake shut up!” Hildra cried, covering an ear with her one hand.
“Allow me,” said Layanna, and stared hard at the maggot overmind, if that’s what it was, perhaps communicating with it on some other level. Though denied the power to bring her other-self over, she seemingly could still use her psychic abilities. It must be so, for the Infested ceased their awful din.
“What’d you tell it?” Janx asked.
“I said to speak Ghenisan, if it could.”
It could. In wet, garbled voices, all of the nearest Infested said in unison, “We have waited your coming for a long time, O Waker. You are welcome to our home.”
“Waker?” Hildra repeated, wrinkling her nose.
“Why have you awaited me?” Layanna said.
“You must wake the Sleeper. You must retrieve the Key.”
“Shit on that,” Hildra said. “Ask it if we can go already.”
Looking around, Sheridan said, half under her voice, “I agree.”
Instead, Layanna asked the maggot, “Is that why you dispatched your emissaries to Ezzez—to find me?”
“The Waker must be found.”
“They must have been using the cult of the Restoration as a cover to search for this individual,” Avery said. “And to disguise what they truly are.”
“And to spread,” Janx said. “Remember, they were makin’ more of ‘em.”
“We came here for the nectar of the ghost flower,” Layanna told the maggot. “It’s a bloom that glows only at night. Can you help us find where it originates?”
“You will be taken to the Dome. You must awake the Sleeper. You must retrieve the Key.”
“It’s a broken fuckin’ record,” Hildra said. “Don’t bother.”
“What are you?” Layanna asked it.
“We are the Those Who Seek the Waker.”
Layanna frowned. “That’s your only purpose?”
“Yes, O Waker. To draw attention. To enlarge. To bring One Who Knows here. Long have we awaited your coming.”
“Why do you think I’m the Waker?”
“Only one with abilities beyond this world can wake the Sleeper. You are the first such one to arrive. You must retrieve the Key. You must wake the Sleeper.”
As if against her will, Layanna turned to Avery, and he could sense her unspoken solicitation of advice.
“If it will get us out of here,” he said, “agree to anything.”
She seemed to sense the wisdom in this. To the king maggot, she said, “Take us to the Dome.”
Several Infested stepped forward and surrounded her. Without touching her, they indicated she should return down the ramp. Layanna complied. Avery and the others tried to follow her, but the Infested blocked them off.
“My friends are coming, too,” Layanna informed the maggot lord, and Avery could hear the strain in her voice.
“You must wake the Sleeper,” spoke the voices of the Colony. “These others are not Wakers.”
