It was the smell of burnt blood. Outside, in Henry’s memories of New York City, there hadn’t been any scents at all, save for a thinly remembered coppery scent Hawk didn’t want to think too hard about. But here, the air smelled of damp, of cave, of Holian incense and of burnt blood. Worship, she thought, Gods and their festering holiness. She hadn’t missed it at all. The horrors of Nasheth’s procession, her brutally deformed Archon, and the depths of her altar, all came rushing back on fetid wind. Hawk, caught in the memory of burning, dropped to one knee and heaved. Fortunately, her dream-stomach was empty.

  “Hawk?” Henry said.

  “God,” she said, aware of the irony. “I’d forgotten that smell.”

  “No one truly forgets gods and their worship,” Shadow said. “Especially when that worship is cruel…and rank.” He dropped down and lifted her up. “All the more reason to use the serum,” he whispered. “Blot out the indelible.”

  “Stop it,” she whispered. Her heart couldn’t take both flashbacks and his commitment to self-destruction.

  They stood at the edge of a great cliff, looking down at a place festooned with glorious plants. Mostly of the pale, white-leafed variety, with their towering trunks and glowing flowers. The walls and visible palace atop a grand ziggurat gleamed golden; the banners on the forward gates and soaring towers were green.

  “The city of Nasheth. Illyris has her seven walls. Argon, his altars and fighting pits. Kali’Mar has nothing now. Nasheth’s is the City of Gold.” He paused, made an inscrutable face, and added, “It is where Mattias was born.”

  “How old was he when he entered her service?” Hawk said, as they started to walk down towards the golden walls.

  “Young. I believe he had just achieved manhood. Nasheth does not accept children, and he was quite young to be Archon when he first arrived at the Temple of Light. I’d say he grew into it, but he was quite green, and quite proud of it, when first we met. He’d learned to fear gods. He had yet to learn to hate them.”

  They walked forward with the logic of a dream. The plants that grew along the path dipped and swayed, with huge, almost monstrous blooms bordering the path. There was a swirling, mesmeric effect to the plants’ movement, the swaying of the flowers. Every color imaginable seemed to be represented, though not always where it ought to be. She saw a lily-shape in green, leaves glowing violet and blue and gold. Blue, too, was a rose-shape with a hotly glowing heart. Drooping pink bells dripped with crystal nectar. The scent was heady, glorious, sweet, overwhelming. She began walking closer, wanting only to take a closer look at the largest of blooms.

  Shadow’s hand caught her, and the other went to Henry, who had also begun to walk towards the plants. “’Ware,” he said. “Those are carnivorous. Deadly poisonous, too. See?” He pointed down, where the flowers grew from the earth. The space beneath the spreading leaves was filled with bones. Rabbit bones, mouse bones…human bones.

  Hawk swallowed, now aware that she’d been drawn in, and her own death had been dripping from those lovely flowers she’d nearly touched. “Is this a part of the dream-maze?”

  He shook his head. “It’s a remarkably accurate version of Nasheth’s approach. Perhaps a bit exaggerated, but not by much.”

  “What happens if we ‘die’ in this dream? Do we ‘die’ in real life?” Henry said.

  “Die? No. But you’ll be lost in dreaming and may never come out of it. Some people will go mad forever. Some will recover. Some—” He trailed off.

  They had, in the true fashion of a dream, reached the front gates of the City of Gold. They were, of course, golden, and unexpectedly mirror-smooth. Hawk had thought there’d be carvings, signs and sigils of Nasheth’s power, but there was just a perfect mirror, unmarred and—no. No, it wasn’t unmarred. There, written on the gate were huge letters, several feet tall, thick and black and clearly applied by hand. They spanned the full length of the gates, and said only this: Sorry, Old Friend.

  Shadow gave a cry, fugitive and hurt.

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  “What?” Hawk said.

  “I forget, but there was no one else he could build this maze against. He’s warded his mind against me. Whatever this is, it is his choice. He wants to be lost. He wants to stay lost.” Shadow shook his head rapidly, reaching clawed fingers towards the gate, only to draw them back as if burned. Then he rallied, his spine stiffening. “None-the-less. He may be here. He may be several levels further down. We must reach him, before his hold on this body fades.”

  He put his shoulder to one half of the gate and pushed. The perfect mirror split in two, with the word Sorry splitting off from the rest of its sentence. An unbelievably putrid wind greeted them. It held the scent of flowers, of roses and lilies and night-jasmine at its sweetest; beneath it, the smells of humanity, of shit and urine and sickness. Beneath that was the layered stench of sacrifice. He rushed through, leaving Henry and Hawk to pick their way through a plethora of roots, cabled vines, and the carnivorous, poisoned flowers.

  There was a road, of sorts, paved with rocks flecked with gold, with milk-quartz and with marble. Abstract patterns flowed across the street, echoes of paisley print that were emphasized by the hungry roots coursing through the stones. Each step was treacherous and uneven, and littered with bones. The bones were everywhere, and the remains of wild things had given way to domesticated ivory…mostly of the human sort. Skulls had vines twining out of eye sockets, jaw bones shattered off of joints. Someone’s scapula lay pierced through by the thorns of a carnivorous rose. Its heart glowed with the warmth of hearth and home, its petals were red as blood and its thorns dripped a sticky poison that had entrapped several birds.

  It's a dream, she told herself. It’s just a dream.

  “How accurate is this, still?” Henry said, swallowing.

  “Close indeed,” Shadow said. “Though the plants might be a wee bit overgrown.”

  You think? She stepped over a tangle of roots, several of them thicker than her own wrist.

  “We need to reach the Temple of Earth. Nasheth kept Mattias there until she sent him to the Temple of Light. And I warn you…it will not be pleasant.”

  “I haven’t seen a pleasant thing since we stepped into this dream,” Henry groused.

  “I liked the kids playing in Central Park.” Hawk said.

  “Yeah, the kids were nice. I bet Yankee Stadium would be nicer. Too bad we can’t go there.”

  “Your focus, dreamer, would be most appreciated,” Shadow said. “We need to stay with the here and now. Otherwise we may very well wind up where we do not wish to be.”

  Hawk nodded and continued on.

  The Temple of Earth was, of course, made of gold. She thought at first that it was merely a coating, a plating on the walls. Then she slowly began to realize that no, these were not gold-coated bricks with steel-colored motor. They were gold, and had been soldered together with what seriously looked like lead. Not good for any kids, coming through to lick the walls, she thought. The gates here were also a smooth, gold mirror. They could barely get it open for the weight of vines growing across it. Oh, the flowers were truly riotous here, and the ground was nearly a carpet of bones. Very few of them were safe animal remnants. Long limb bones lay tangled in their own ribs, a skull or three hanging from the vines that had grown into them. Carnivorous flowers opened small blooms like starlit jasmine, or large blooms, the hungry roses. There was a safe path one could walk, but it was unforgiving. Hawk had to draw her arms against her chest and move with the most careful of steps. And of course her footing was threatened by the plethora of bones. The scent of flowers overlaid the scent of decay.

  They were very nearly to their goal when the treacherous ground beneath her feet suddenly gave way. A staircase, leading down, had been hidden beneath vine and bone. She fell through the maze of plants and skirted down the golden steps, knocking bones, viscera, and decay as she rolled. The stench here had no floral notes. It was pure death, and the bones here were not picked clean white. Faces still had flesh upon them, mouths opening for screams. She tumbled all the way down to the bottom floor, another pathway of gold and quartz, of gleam and beauty, but now it was mostly hidden beneath the bones.

  “Hawk!” Shadow called. “Hawk, are you alright?”

  “Yeah!” She said. “I think so.”

  And then she heard a rustling sound. It was hollow, as bones tipped over. She spun around on heel and saw…nothing. Nothing but a few ribs, freed from a chest, that fell in a small pile on the golden floor.

  “Nevermind! There’s something down here!” she shouted.

  “Come up here. Now,” Shadow said, his voice firm.

  “Coming.” She turned around, and the rustling sound got worse. A whole bank of bones just past her collapsed downwards. A skull rolled over to her feet, looked up at her with desperate, staring black sockets. She dropped down and lifted it, only to discover to her horror that it was sticky. And the sticky burned.

  “Ow!” She dropped the dead skull and lifted her own feet. The ooze had adhered to the bottom of her shoes. It was dripping off the walls here, rolling down in thick, unforgiving chunks of sticky. It coated every bone. And then she realized what she was seeing.

  It’s digestion, she thought. Whatever these stairs had lead to before, they had plunged her down into the stomach for a thousand hungry plants.

  And that was when the roots wrapped around her boots and dragged her down, down into the bones.