Read Online The Best of Lucius Shepard by Lucius Shepard - Free Book Online

himself
to one every half hour; but he was uneasy, unsure where to train his rifle in
the dark, and he exceeded his limit. Soon it began to grow light again, and he
assumed that more time had passed than he had thought. That often happened
with the ampules—it was easy to lose yourself in being alert, in the wealth of
perceptual detail available to your sharpened senses. Yet on checking his
watch, he saw it was only a few minutes after two o’clock. His system was too
inundated with the drugs to allow panic, but he twitched his head from side to
side in tight little arcs to determine the source of the brightness. There
did not appear to be a single source; it was simply that filaments of the cloud
were gleaming, casting a diffuse golden glow, as if they were elements of a
nervous system coming to life. He started to call out, then held back. The
others must have seen the light, and they had given no cry; they probably had a
good reason for their silence. He scrunched down flat, pointing his rifle out
from the campsite.
     
    Bathed
in the golden mist, the forest had acquired an alchemic beauty. Beads of water
glittered with gemmy brilliance; the leaves and vines and bark were gilded.
Every surface shimmered with light.. .everything except a fleck of blackness
hovering between two of the trunks, its size gradually increasing. As it
swelled in his vision, he saw it had the shape of a bird, its wings beating,
flying toward him from an inconceivable distance—inconceivable, because the
dense vegetation did not permit you to see very far in a straight line, and yet
the bird was growing larger with such slowness that it must have been coming
from a long way off. It was not really flying, he realized; rather, it was as
if the forest were painted on a piece of paper, as if someone were holding a
lit match behind it and burning a hole, a hole that maintained the shape of a
bird as it spread. He was transfixed, unable to react. Even when it had blotted
out half the light, when he lay before it no bigger than a mote in relation to
its huge span, he could not move or squeeze the trigger. And then the blackness
swept over him, He had the sensation of being borne along at incredible speed,
and he could no longer hear the dripping of the forest.
     
    “Moody!”
he shouted. “DT!”
     
    But
the voice that answered belonged to neither of them. It was hoarse, issuing
from every part of the surrounding blackness, and he recognized it as the voice
of his recurring dream.
     
    “You
are killing my son,” it said. “I have led you here, to this ayahuamaco, so
he may judge you.”
     
    Dantzler
knew to his bones the voice was that of the Sukia of the village of
Santander Jimenez. He wanted to offer a denial, to explain his innocence, but
all he could manage was, “No.” He said it tearfully, hopelessly, his forehead
resting on his rifle barrel. Then his mind gave a savage twist, and his
soldiery self regained control. He ejected an ampule from his dispenser and
popped it.
     
    The
voice laughed—malefic, damning laughter whose vibrations shuddered Dantzler. He
opened up with the rifle, spraying fire in all directions. Filigrees of golden
holes appeared in the blackness, tendrils of mist coiled through them. He kept
on firing until the blackness shattered and fell in jagged sections toward him.
Slowly. Like shards of black glass dropping through water. He emptied the rifle
and flung himself flat, shielding his head with his arms, expecting to be
sliced into bits; but nothing touched him. At last he peeked between his arms;
then— amazed, because the forest was now a uniform lustrous yellow—he rose to
his knees. He scraped his hand on one of the crushed leaves beneath him, and
blood welled from the cut. The broken fibers of the leaf were as stiff as
wires. He stood, a giddy trickle of hysteria leaking up from the bottom of his
soul. It was no forest, but a building of solid gold worked to resemble a
forest—the sort of conceit that