“Defenders,” he shouted, sighting the delivered barrels of spirits. “Relief is on its way. In the meantime, get very well drunk—as you have never drunk before.” As casks and barrels and kegs were opened, the men of the blinders’ caste arrived in their stiff rags, crusty with dried green muck. Many of them squinted—unused to daylight—and soon they were taking in the magnificence of the crystal palace’s ballroom.
“Men of the blinders’ caste,” Anand shouted as Terraclon and Polexima joined him. “Welcome and thanks for your help today. Our defenders need your skills. You must cut out the mites under our fighters’ skin with the same delicacy you use to cut out the eyes of the ant hatchlings.” The blinders looked surprised and proud to take up this task. “Defenders, can I get a volunteer?” Anand said, turning to the infested. “Who will go first?”
A man stepped towards Anand with a square jaw and squarish nose that he recognized.
“You, Good Defender, were a wasp rider, yes?”
“I was, Commander Quegdoth. I am Hwagol.”
“Bring Hwagol a keg,” Anand said, “and a blanket to lie on. Pious Terraclon, show our good blinders how this is done.”
Terraclon, now dressed in a simple tunic, dipped his knife in the keg before the rest was handed to Hwagol to drink. The blinders watched as Terraclon delicately cut around the raised flesh, then peeled it back to reveal its living inhabitants in different stages of development. Some mites were large and dark and immediately active. Others were smaller and pale and showed little life. Anand looked around at all the infected men whose faces were a mix of hope, dread, and agony. He gasped when he realized that all of them, all those infected, had been pilots. A moment later, he realized they weren’t just locust pilots—all these men were riders of night wasps.
The mites came from infected night wasps!
Sweat beaded on Anand’s brow, and his throat felt like it was twisting shut. Medinwoe and the Dneepers, he thought. Out there in Hulkren! All of them wasp riders! They must be in agony!
Polexima supervised the palace servants as they spread through the ballroom laying out blankets, cushions, cloth, and old clothes—whatever could be used as bedding. Men quickly fell to the floor as the blinders set to a task only mildly more gruesome than their usual work. Screams of pain echoed around the vast chambers as skin was cut open, with mites injecting their venomous fangs in an attempt to stay fastened. Terraclon continued the surgeries, with Polexima joining him as his executioner, smashing the mites into a blood-soaked mush with a mallet. Around the ballroom, piles of the dead mites were shoveled up and into the painted and ornate trash bins that palace servants usually hauled through festive evenings.
Anand tried not to cringe as he listened to the splash, the splat, and the wet rip of the tiny monsters as they were excised and killed. I am responsible for this, he thought as the men’s screams and calls for mercy to the gods pierced his ear. But why wasn’t I infected the first time I rode a wasp?
“Messenger,” he shouted to the first of the long-legged young runners. They waited attentively at the main entrance, their hands clasped behind their backs as they stared at the gore. The first of them trotted to Anand and turned his right ear after a shallow bow. “Yes, Commander Quegdoth.”
“Get a speed ant and go to the locust cages. Summon the foreman who tends them and have him alert the locust pilots that they are needed. Tell him it’s urgent—hundreds of lives are at stake.”
As the messenger sped off, Pious Nuvao walked swiftly towards Anand, his face puckered in disgust as he took in the carnage. “Anand,” he said. “These men should be ingesting something more than spirits right now. We can end their suffering in moments. If you are still in pain you should drink this.”
From under his cloaked arm, Nuvao lifted a seed canteen and pulled out the stoppers on both ends. He took a light suck of it, then handed it to Anand, who drank the rest. It was a sweet, floral liquor but something musty and bitter was in it, burning his throat. The taste that lingered on his tongue was vaguely familiar, and so were the sudden, beautiful sensations that made his insides feel like a rushing brook.
“The black mildew,” he said. He looked out the window and saw that the cage he had ordered had been placed by the dew station. Guards were forcing the Widow Gafrexa and her sisters-in-law into it as they screamed and fought and spit. The guards responded by hurling them in. They tumbled, then stood and rearranged the lacy coverings that fell down the tiers of their pyramidal gowns. Anand gasped. “That’s it!” he said aloud, and laughed. He turned and saw Nuvao next to Terraclon, comforting him as he rested and offering a drink of water from a nearby basin. Anand kept laughing as he walked towards them, which he knew seemed strange given the present circumstances.
“Just what’s gotten into you . . . Quegdoth?” Terraclon asked.
“I’ve seen something, a vision, for the assembly—what we need to do! Nuvao, where is it the priests keep their scrolls? In the storage room? Let’s have Pious Dolgeeno meet us there.”
“He will be there late in the afternoon to bless the day’s recordings. But none but priests have ever been allowed in the storage rooms,” said Nuvao.
“Then it’s best we surprise him.”
Chapter 8
The Heavenly Field at the Feet of Grasshopper
As he looked at his fingers wet with his own blood and pus, King Medinwoe knew they could go no further than the mound of Ashkad-dozh.
The return to Dneep, through a devastated Hulkren, had been a delight of open spaces as he surveyed the sprawl of this sun-drenched land. Now the mission to destroy the ghost ants and free the Hulkrites’ slaves and captives was not only incomplete; it was ending in humiliation and insufferable pain. The Dneepers’ roach caravan halted, once again, to rest the ailing roaches which suffered in this place. This also allowed his men ample time to deal with the deepening irritation in their legs. Now with each scratching, the agony only got worse; just touching the welts prompted the creatures within to pump out more of some excruciating poison. Medinwoe could barely look at his men, who were palsied and wailing as they attempted to claw or cut out the tiny monsters. And now he realized he could no longer ride or walk himself. His body spasmed so violently that his hands could barely hold, much less prod, the antennae of his roach. The last of the men to stay mounted, he fell off his saddle and dropped to the sand.
“Good Dneepers,” he shouted to his men as they writhed on the ground. “We may die here—might be eaten from the inside out by these demons in our legs. But we must try and cut them out, whatever they are. Take your knives and daggers and work on each other . . . you cannot cut them out of yourself. I have tried.”
As he looked at his men, he knew most had only half-heard him. Some made the attempt to unsheathe their knives, and a few could at least hold if not grip them. Medinwoe was distracted by a fresh pain in his inner thigh, when a reddening welt popped of its own accord. Something was pushing out, and when it emerged it spun left, then right, as it extended its eight legs to shake off moisture. He grabbed at it to fling away when it scurried down his leg and clamped in his ankle with a sharp bite. The mite swelled and reddened as a second one near his knee emerged in a slow burst of pus and blood.
Medinwoe took his knife, made from a roachling’s pincer, and scraped up the mite from his ankle. It swung on the blade with its fore-claws before it fell, then scampered off. He grabbed the second mite with his hands, then regretted it when it sank its fangs into his fingers and pumped its venom. His hand stiffened with aches as the poison spread, and he writhed on his back and bit his tongue to stop himself from the indignity of screaming. Around him, the roaches were shifting, colliding with each other, stretching the tethers that bound them as a team. They’ve picked up the scent of something, the king realized as he sniffed the air. But what? Ants? Beetles? Hulkrites?
He turned to the man closest to him and saw it was his young nephew, Prince Tappenwoe, whose wisp of a yellow beard was wet with sweat and snot
and tears. “Uncle, please, try and cut them out,” he said, “or at least cut off my legs!”
“Men!” he shouted. “We will survive this! These creatures want out of us—if we can’t cut them out first, they will leave on their own!”
Tappenwoe set his head against an upended sand grain and braced himself. The king attempted to use his clumsy left hand to make an incision and open a welt on his nephew’s shin, but he could not control his fingers. He tried making a shallow stab to kill the mite; this seemed to work, and the blister stopped its throbbing. Stabbing at all his nephew’s blisters, each jab ended with the boy’s yelps of pain. The king stopped when he felt a different, deeper pain at the back of his thigh and turned to see that a Hulkrish arrow had pierced him. Another flew past his arm and entered his nephew’s shoulder.
“Hulkrites!” he shouted as arrows skidded over the hard and greasy chitin of the roaches or found their targets in the Grass Men’s flesh. The roaches, excited by the smell of advancing predators, were whipping their antennae in a fury. They bashed into each other as the cargo-sleds were bandied about, shaking out their contents as they teetered. As the roaches pulled away, the rudders of the sleds ran over the Dneepers, grinding and spreading them over the rough sand and leaving them exposed.
Medinwoe used the last of his strength to push up a long, flat sand grain to use as a shield. He looked through its cloudy glass to see an army of hobbled men—and perhaps some women—advancing towards them. None in this army were covered in white paint. They wore rags and the salvaged armor and the ill-fitting boots of Hulkrites, but they were not warriors for the Termite. Some raised broken swords or bows and mismatched arrows as they grunted and screamed threats in a jumble of tongues. They ran, as best as they could, not towards the Dneepers, but to the carts in back of their thrashing roaches.
The raiders helped each other climb up to the rattling wagon beds, where they took their contents and tossed them into the arms of their fellows. They unwrapped the bundles of flattened ant eggs, worm jerky, and cured cricket and cicada meats, and stuffed them into their mouths. The clay jars of aphid and barley syrup were broken open, and they scooped out and ate their oozing contents and licked it off the shards. Some raiders climbed up to the other carts, where they found the squat barrels full of insect fat and arsenic, and greedily ate it because it was sweet and rich.
When all the wagon beds were emptied, the raiders stood in a circle and stared at the squirming, screaming roach riders, who were unable to rise and fight and reclaim their goods. A few raiders stepped closer to the Dneepers and used rapiers to cut off their tunics for a closer look at their exotic wounds. They stripped Tappenwoe of all his clothes, then pulled him over a barrel to stare at his crawling skin, which brought gasps followed by giggles, then a startled silence when a mite erupted. When it spun out of its messy liquid and scooted away, the raiders cheered. Their children chased after the mite until one stabbed it with his pike, then held it aloft in triumph.
The cheering came to an end when the raiders’ leader, a man who looked like his ears had been chewed off, shouted his orders, then pointed his bow and arrow down at the fallen Dneepers. The other bowmen followed Chewed Ears’s example, and they spread through the shaking, spastic Grass Men, examining each one and shouting foreign words that were a threat of some kind.
Medinwoe did not understand much of what they shouted at him. From their gestures he realized the raiders wanted his fine sword, his finer dagger, and the jeweled medallion around his neck. He looked over at Tappenwoe, who gave forth with a piercing shriek as yet another mite ripped out from the side of his thigh. Chewed Ears came over and shouted at the prince, annoyed by his screaming, and stuck his heel in the prince’s mouth to quiet him. In his torment, Tappenwoe could not control himself, convulsing as he choked. Chewed Ears screamed in pain when the prince bit through his boot and into his foot. “I can’t breathe!” the prince shouted.
“Please! We’ve done nothing to you! What’s ours is yours!” Medinwoe shouted. Chewed Ears was coming towards him, nocking an arrow, as Medinwoe mumbled his prayers to the Heavenly Field. “Save us, Great Grasshopper!” he repeated, until he sank into a trance, down to a place where the world was smaller and quiet. He was resigning himself to dying when he saw a circle of turquoise blurs overhead, and heard the buzz of beating wings.
The raiders were falling, pierced by darts and arrows, or they were running for their lives. Medinwoe could make out men and their weapons on the backs of the locusts, and smelled drops of the brown sludge that sprayed from the insects’ mouths when they spiraled. The hobbled attackers disappeared into the sparse weeds, but some who had eaten the poisoned insect fat fell from a sudden illness. They were on their knees, clutching their stomachs as their contents erupted with violence. Some fell facedown in their own vomit to suffocate quickly, while others twitched in violent spasms before going stiff and dying.
The blue locusts landed, making awkward and jarring descents. Medinwoe smiled to recognize them as men of Bee-Jor. Behind each pilot was a bowman with a readied arrow, or else a dark-skinned rider dressed in stiff rags with a long, thin knife at his side. These men in rags looked both exhilarated and airsick by what had to be their first flight.
The leader of the pilots jumped from his locust and ran towards Medinwoe. He appeared to be a young, yellow-skinned Slopeite, perhaps a defector from his upper caste, and he spoke to the Dneepers’ king in their similar tongue. “Commander Quegdoth sends his deepest apologies,” he said, and bowed his head. “I am Captain Dziddens of Mound Cajoria of Bee-Jor. Our commander wants you to drink this before submitting to the blades of these skillful Bee-Jorites. They have come to cut the wasp-mites from your legs.”
Wasp-mites! So that’s where they came from, Medinwoe thought. The captain and other locust pilots pulled hollowed seed canteens from their backsacks. “These are from the secret hordes of the Slopeish priests,” said the captain as he unstoppered the canteen.
Medinwoe and the others sucked the liquid out of the seeds. He tasted the nectar of honeysuckle, but then his tongue sensed something bitter that irritated his throat. The king sucked his canteen dry, and a moment later, the pains in his legs felt like something almost pleasant. The Bee-Jorites and their locusts, the cloudy sky above, the wailing of the defeated raiders hiding in the weeds all seemed beautifully, strangely hilarious—and so did the darkly ugly, knife-bearing Slopeite coming towards him to cut out the parasites under his skin. Medinwoe smiled when he realized he wanted to talk to one of these wasp-mites, wanted to question and sympathize with it, as well as examine it for its strange beauty. I want to forgive it for having been born with such a difficult nature, he thought. The only pain the king felt now was from his mouth, which was stretched too wide in a grin.
Whatever he had drunk, he must drink it again. He must have this every day and share it with all Dneepers. The knife cutting into his legs was painful at first, but then felt like the tongue of the most skillful concubine making her way up his thighs. This coarse, night-dark Slopeite in his awful rags had taken on the appearance of a heavenly slave. After he skillfully cut around each welt and plucked out the mite by its safer end, he handed them to the handsome, well-born Captain Dziddens, who skewered them on his rapier. And all of this was happening under a soft shower of the tiniest gold flakes that sprinkled from the sun—overwhelmingly gorgeous. When all the mites had been removed, Medinwoe’s body turned as light as milkweed fluff. A wind picked him up and he floated and rocked on warm currents until he reached the pristine blue of the sky . . .
Medinwoe reached a cloud with the beautiful face of a woman, who sang a welcome to him in the sweetest voice and urged him to climb on her back. He sat atop a soft bulge on the cloud-woman’s back to ride under the great blue dome. They flew in an instant to a distant place, beyond the known world. The king looked down on a vast, open place which he knew immediately as the Heavenly Field at the Feet of Grasshopper.
Soft, fluffy hands in the cloud
reached for him and set him on the ground. He looked up to see Lord Grasshopper, as tall as a tree, and seated on His crystal throne. All six of His hands were petting His worshippers, who queued up, patiently waiting their turn to adore Him and to be adored. Across the plain was a gently glittering, multicolored sand that was fine and soft to the touch, and warmed Medinwoe’s feet. Fragrant flowers, changing their colors through the rainbow’s spectrum, were softly waving on their stems. One flower above him dipped its petals, then shook out a shower of caterpillar custards rolled in glistening honey crystals.
As Medinwoe feasted on the sweet meats, a choir of thousands sang the sweetest music from clouds that spiraled above. He watched hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children join hands in a circular dance around the towering Lord Grasshopper. A few of His worshippers stopped dancing when they noticed Medinwoe, and rushed towards him with the most joyful expressions. Sweet-tasting tears streamed from the king’s eyes when he recognized his father, his mother, and his grandparents, all restored to their youthful beauty. He fell into laughter-filled embraces with each one, then followed them into the dance, where his ecstasy increased with each kick and step. It was then that he noticed that all in this promised world had yellow skin—skin as bright and yellow as the mustard blossom.
Where are the dark-skinned dead? he wondered. The brown- and black- and tawny-skinned of other nations?
At that moment, Grasshopper looked at Medinwoe, and spoke directly to him as he fell away from the dance.
“The dark-skinned have their own paradise,” He said in a loud but sweetly pleasant voice. “Their promised lands are provided for them by my cousin, Locust, my sister, Milkweed Butterfly, and my aunt, Cricket, where they can be among their own for eternity. You, King Medinwoe, were chosen by me to lead my Chosen People, my greatest creation, out of the grass of Dneep and back into the Promised Clearing, to make it the Pure and Yellow Nation.”
The Prophet of the Termite God Page 8
