17 - In the Earth of Xanadu

In the owner’s country there were the enormous, flashy security programs; the dragons that scorched the code for bits around themselves, their shadows sending vaders, worms, trojans and parasites, vikings, vomps and snarks cowering into the darkness, burrowing under legitimate code like sandsheets wiggling into the desert.

In the earth of Xanadu, counter worms burrowed quietly, mycelioid tendrils creeping under the surface, growing hidden boojums that did not activate unless alien code sent it coalescing into an active clump of teeth and terror.

Kyrus’s path back along the glowing trail the zardukar and the zon held open for them was as rapid as he could think, as fast as he could concentrate to link along the path back to their own bodies.

Ilax, unconscious in his arms, faded alarmingly, despite all that Kyrus could upload for him.  The code forest around them thickened, darkened, loomed over their narrow, glowing path.  His footprints, placed carefully and squarely in the track they had left behind, were careful to not disturb the code, but the mycelia crawled into the edges and the footprints shrank so that his code could not help but touch.

Shocks of alarm spread and the hair-thin strands of boojum merged and flowed along together behind Kyrus and Ilax, trailing like a veil drapped over his arms. The air behind thickened and grew more solid as the united threads formed strands, and thorns and began to grow claws.

Claws grew paws and fangs, poisonous glands swelled and linked to those fangs, dripping. But boojums did not run, they flowed.  Every step that Kyrus took, as his safe path shrank, drew the small monsters after them, growing out of the shadows.  The edges of his path suddenly began growing tendrils that spiralled up, seeking to trip him, biting through his boots and holding him as he ran.

He tripped, nearly fell, staggered upright and ran, trying to outrun the land.

*Shashi... I can’t make it out.  There’s more security here than there was before.  Shashi!*

*Hide, Radiance.  We’ll send you all the power we can, till we can find you, get you out!*

It was their back-up plan.  He truly wished with all his heart that he would not have to do this but... he looked down into his husband’s nearly transparent face, and decided.

*Send.  Then get us out.*

The flood of energy was almost enough to knock him over, the zardukar pouring themselves into the two of them.

*I’m sorry, deovar... I’ll keep you safe.* Ilax was already in quiescent mode, to conserve his energy, to conserve his strength, and it was the work of a moment to pack him into the image of a cocoon, a pupa, wrapped tight in wax, leap up into the air and take the form of a bee, clutching the cocoon, willfully letting go his line out of Xanadu, giving up his path home, his path out of Prime’s country.

Just in time as the boojums swarmed the connection and devoured it, ripping it into terraflops of meaningless information.  The glowing path out dissolved into a waving nest of tentacles tipped with venomous fangs.

*Look for the bee tree, Shashi.*

And all communication from the owner’s country cut off.