The Prophet of the Termite God

by Clark Thomas Carlton

  The cage had also been wearing to the humans. Both the Bulkokans and the Britasytes had to take up harnesses and join the roach team in lugging the cage through the difficult, upward passages. The cage was cumbersome, as the queen inside it was the largest of all the bees. She had several daughter bees as her attendants who paced around the cage and shifted its weight. Also in the cage were some human attendants, whose job was making sure the bees had abundant sugar water and other nourishments, and that they remained free of the honey-mites that mysteriously appeared and affixed themselves to the queen’s underside. Once discovered, the women in the cage would bite the honey-mites’ heads off, and then eat or toss them in a pile for later consumption.

  After the procession resumed, Daveena saw that several roaches from the front sleds had also been replaced. The released draw-roaches crawled off slowly into the wilds, but one just sat and waited to die. “Punshu,” Daveena shouted to her driver. “As soon as we get to Palzhad, I believe we will need to contact the Pleps and get their help to replenish our roaches.”

  “They are good and quick at that,” the boy shouted as the buzzing of the bees grew louder. “As long as they can find a warm, sunny place and gorge them on some good and oily amaranth.”

  She looked out at the mixed weeds in the orange sunshine of the late afternoon as they neared the mouth of the Petiole. In the North, she saw what might be a loose formation of blue locusts, plummeting just south of Palzhad. It made her think of Anand—as so many things did—and her longing for him renewed with a bittersweet ache.

  “I’m bored, Punshu. Come sit with our convalescing guest and let me drive awhile.”

  Punshu looked over his shoulder and gave her a hard gaze. “Madame Anand, with all due reverence, you should not be roach-guiding. Especially not in these dangerous lands . . . and not when you carry the commander’s children.”

  How did he know she carried twins? Daveena asked herself—not as if she expected privacy anymore. As she looked out, she noticed the roach’s second, smaller pair of antennae were drawing back, then darting and whipping.

  “What’s the roach picked up?” she asked.

  “I’m not sure, Madame. The stroke of the left would indicate . . . people.”

  “People. In the Petiole? From where?”

  All the caravan’s roaches had become alert and energized. In the distance, Daveena could see vague figures wandering out of the thickening weeds to make their way up the Petiole’s channel of clear-sand leading to Mound Palzhad. The darkly sweet smell of the Tar Marsh came from the East. Further ahead she saw the masses of rock piles on the channels’ west side, which led to the boulders of the Great Jag.

  “Those are people out there, without ants,” Daveena said, making out a mixed group of wanderers from the Southwest. In back of them appeared to be a larger group of men from the direct south, and an even larger group of women and children coming out of the Southeast.

  “Who are they? Where are they coming from?” Punshu said.

  “They look to be from all over Hulkren—captives, I think, as we were.”

  The roach caravan reached the Petiole’s mouth and entered. Daveena wondered why there wasn’t a single leaf-cutter ant returning up the clear-sand with bits of shredded leaves or grass for the mushroom gardens of Palzhad. In the distance, she heard the murmur of what sounded like a large human settlement on a market day. As the caravan got further north, she smelled the odors of humans, and then she saw them: masses of refugees. She knew the caravan could not stop, that they must proceed, though the people ahead were likely to panic when they saw a train of roaches, with a swarm of bees overhead with stingers gyrating at the ends of their abdomens.

  The roaches were picking up speed, excited by the rich smells ahead. The buzzing of the bees increased as they flew faster and faster within their loose sphere. Now it was Daveena who was scared. Punshu looked fearful as well, judging from his silence and dilated eyes when he turned to check for her safety. She felt her body vibrating with the bees’ increasing noise and then felt short, rough blasts of wind from their wings as they hovered lower. The drivers of all the sand-sleds struggled to keep their roaches in formation. The queen bee’s wings buzzed angrily in her cage as it tottered on its scale-lined runners and jolted over ridges in the sand.

  From the height of her sled, Daveena saw the Petiole had filled with humans who were waiting for them—either to greet or confront them—and standing as a dense wall. Some had weapons at the ready. At the same time, she could see that behind this wall were other humans who had panicked. They were fleeing from the bizarre invasion of a bee swarm partnered with a roach intrusion. The frightened were slipping down the channel’s edges to wait in the shallow waters of the Tar Marsh, or they were going left to climb and hide within the jagged rocks.

  As they got closer, Daveena knew from their rags that these people had been Hulkrish slaves. The men standing bravely as a wall wore ill-fitting Hulkrish armor and helmets. Some had rough pikes thrust out before them, while a few held up Hulkrish swords. They seemed unafraid of the advancing roaches but cautiously eyed the striped and noisy flyers above whose single sting could kill a human. Daveena’s sled pulled out of formation as its roach lurched to the side.

  “Slow the roach!” she commanded Punshu.

  “I can’t!” he shouted. “There’s thousands of people out there—stinking of ghost ants!”

  Daveena watched as Punshu flattened himself over the saddle, straining as the roach raced to the wall of steadfast humans. They did not disperse until it was too late; the sleds of the caravan crashed into these men and sent them falling, flying, and felling the others behind them. The pikes were useless against the roaches’ hard chitin, and soon their antennae were lashing and the hooks of their legs were catching and gouging the men stinking of ghost ants. Some men of this army fell under the sleds’ runners, which scraped over their skin and bloodied it. Others crawled and trampled over their fellows to the channel’s edge to slide and slap through the mud of the marsh and collide with its globs of floating tar. The caravan came to a complete halt when the sleds collided and jammed each other.

  At the back of her cabin, Daveena opened her wedding chest to remove a battle-axe with an amethyst blade and rope hook. She climbed on top of the cabin and spun the axe over her head as a warning. Looking to her left she saw that the cage with the queen bee had fallen on its side. The bee was alive, but buzzing her wings in a rage as her daughter-attendants crawled protectively over her, spraying a bitter odor of warning-scent.

  Looking north, then south, Daveena saw masses of refugees coming up on all sides of the crashed caravan, even at the back of it. Hungry, emaciated people were returning from out of the mud in the East and climbing down from the rocks in the West. They gathered in an eerie silence around the glittering wreck, and stared at the bejeweled Roach Clan in their brilliant colors and at the honey-plumped bee people in their striped and fuzzy garb. Some of the refugees glanced up in fright at the bees, a few of which made alarming dives. One refugee stepped closer to Daveena, an older man wearing a Hulkrish helmet too large and loose for his head. He shouted at her in an unknown tongue. Others followed his lead, shouting at the other Britasytes until the cacophony was earsplitting.

  “What are they screaming?” Punshu asked Daveena.

  “I am sure they want food,” she said.

  Men wearing a mishmash of Hulkrish military gear were pushing their way through the crowd. None of them wore the white paint. Some raised worn and broken swords, and others aimed thick Hulkrish arrows poised in bows of ghost ant jaws.

  “What do we do?” Punshu asked. “There’re thousands of them!”

  Chieftain Thagdag, atop his sand-sled, turned to face his clan and shouted through the amplifying-cone on its roof. “They’re hungry!” Thagdag shouted. “Throw them your food!”

  Daveena and Punshu went inside the cabin and retrieved their sacks of flattened and sugared aphids, the berry leathers and root chews, th
e cricket brickle, and the dried and shredded puffball mushrooms. They dropped the food over the side of the sled, and the refugees pressed in to fight over it. Shadowy flickers from overhead increased as the bees dropped, angrily grazing humans who got too close to their mother in her cage.

  Punshu and Daveena gasped when the hungry pressed in further, chasing the puffball mushrooms, which had scattered and rolled to the queen bee’s cage. The bee swarm dropped on these men and women, landing on their heads and blinding them with their claws. As the humans spun or fell, the bees stung them in their chests and backs. The attacked were instantly dead, their eyes bulging from their sockets. As some bees pulled away, they left behind their stingers and the sack of poison that ripped out of their abdomens. Other bees were stuck, pivoting in circles on the chests or backs of the dead, attempting to extricate their stingers to keep their lives. Refugees with bows and arrows aimed at the bees and felled a few—which only incited the rest to attack.

  “Get away!” Daveena shouted to the bowmen in the Seed Eaters’ tongue. “You’re making it worse!”

  The refugees ignored or did not understand her and continued shooting. The bees fell in a heavy rain of black and yellow. No sooner had they fallen than the refugees descended upon their corpses, rolling them onto their backs to haul away to butcher and eat. More refugees converged on the caravan, angrily shouting at the Britasytes to surrender the rest of their food. Daveena noticed a strange-looking person among them—a large woman or perhaps a man, wearing a brightly painted garment that hid part of his or her face. The person rushed towards her, screaming in Slopeish, attempting to climb up and into the sled. “Give us your food. We know there is more!” screamed the attacker while raising a black glass sword.

  “We have no more!” she shouted as she raised up her axe. Punshu crouched before Daveena, defending her with his short sword as a new front of men with bows and arrows burst through the chaos. One of them, a gawky, limping giant with red hair, was shouting in the Seed Eaters’ tongue.

  “There’s more bees inside that cage!” he shouted to his men. “Break it open! Kill them!”

  “Noooooo!” Daveena shouted. “Don’t go near that cage!”

  “Who are you to give orders?” he shouted back.

  “I am the wife of Commander Quegdoth, ruler of Bee-Jor!”

  The giant laughed. “The god-king of Bee-Jor is married to a roach woman?” He turned to the ragged and snarling men behind him. “Kill that woman, then kill those bees.”

  As arrows flew at them, Daveena and Punshu scrambled to the back of the cabin and yanked up the panel to the hiding place below its floor. Punshu gasped when his shoulder was grazed by an arrowhead that broke open his skin. Save us, Mighty Crawler! Daveena prayed.

  A loud flutter of wings fell over the sled. They heard refugees screaming, then running in fear. Darts, thin and whistling, could be heard pouring down from above. Daveena peeked outside to see that hundreds had fallen to the darts, twitching as they entered into fits. Some refugees were running back to the Tar Marsh and sliding in its mud, while others dispersed through the maze of rough rocks in the West.

  “Daveena!” she heard from outside the cabin. “Daveena! Come out here—it’s safe!” The voice she heard both soothed and excited her. She and Punshu edged out of the cabin’s riding ledge to see Anand seated behind a pilot on the back of a locust, his dart gun at the ready. Hovering above him was his swirling air force on a few hundred locusts. The refugees further north were scattering, getting out of the way of the Bee-Jorite People’s Army of Palzhad as they marched up the Petiole with their grass shields protecting them.

  “Surround and protect!” Anand shouted when the army reached the caravan. The foot soldiers made a protective circle, four-deep, around the sand-sleds. The outer circle joined their long shields together as a barrier.

  “Good travels, beautiful wanderers!” Anand shouted in Britasyte, and his tribesmen reappeared from out of the wreck. “Right these sleds!” he commanded, and roach and bee people set about making repairs, assessing damage and gathering up their fallen possessions as the roaches were reset to their harnesses. Daveena walked Punshu to the sled of the Two Spirit to treat his wound and then—heaving with joy and relief—she ran to Anand, climbed up the locust’s leg, and hugged and kissed her husband as his pilot dutifully looked away. She was intoxicated as she fell into his arms, love-blind, as the world around her turned into a warm, black mist. All she could see for the moment was her husband’s shining and beautiful face. A moment later, she burst into tears, sure that she would lose him soon in their increasingly dangerous world.

  Chapter 15

  The Passenger

  Pleckoo was out of breath, in that dizzied, panicked place that had become so familiar to him as he escaped another danger. Where am I? I must clear my head. He remembered he was under a roach-sled that he had come to raid in an attempt to find food.

  Looking out from under the sled he saw the fallen bodies of other refugees. They were not dead, but were twitching, breathing in short gasps with their tongues licking the air. He jolted when he saw the darts in their chests—Anand and his terrible darts! He was immersed in that agony again—the moon-long living death—when he noticed the bright blue legs of sky locusts near the sled. Crawling on his stomach over the sand grains, he looked out and saw the pregnant roach woman who had threatened him with her battle-axe. Now she was in the arms of a man seated atop a locust. Other locusts were landing now—locusts and their human riders. They were reporting to the man holding the roach woman in his arms.

  Pleckoo’s shock turned to bitter rage when he heard the man speak in Slopeish. “I’ll ride back with the caravan,” he heard the man shouting to fellow locust riders as they dropped from the sky. “It will soon be too dark to fly.”

  The Roach Boy! Pleckoo thought. In my sights already. Thank You, Hulkro.

  He knew he had little time before he was discovered. At the moment, Anand was lost in some disgusting reunion with one of his filthy roach-whores. Looking up at the sled’s underside, he saw what had to be a hatch into the sled’s cabin. He searched for his sword, found it was nearby, and used the sharp end to push up the panel. Pulling himself up quietly, he saw he was not in the cabin, but just below it in some kind of secret compartment that had air vents. He raised his head quickly and bumped it against the low ceiling. In the darkness he searched with his fingers, and found sacks full of dried food and maybe jewels and other goods tied to the walls. At the back of his head was a bedroll. The sled jerked and soon he was a captive, riding inside it. Feeling the scrape of the scale-lined runners as they slid over the sand of the Petiole, he knew he was in for a rough ride. In the confines, he managed to unravel the bedroll under his body, and it was almost comfortable.

  This caravan is returning to the Slope! he realized. And it’s going to take me with it! For the first time in a fortnight, he smiled, which felt a little strange. Thank You, Hulkro. Something has gone my way. Then he remembered that once he was back on the Slope—or this so-called Bee-Jor—that he would need leaf-cutter kin-scent and soon.

  Through the walls, Pleckoo could hear the foot army marching alongside the procession, and further off he heard the scrambling and shouting of refugees as they cleared the camps that clogged the Petiole. They were shouting at Anand, begging for food or entry to Bee-Jor, he thought; but then he heard cheers. “Quegdoth, Quegdoth, Quegdoth!” they chanted.

  Forgive them, Hulkro, for they know not what they say.

  As he lay on his back, he probed the compartment’s ceiling and found the hatch to the entry of the sled’s cabin. He heard the muffled sounds of Anand and the woman speaking in their ugly tongue, with its clicks and pops and irritating melodies. He knew their backs would be to him if he gambled a peek. Perhaps he could sneak up on them and slay one, if not both.

  After gently pushing up the lid he peered out and took in the cabin’s rich interior. Moonlight poured in through a slice of clear quartz in the ceiling a
nd illuminated a wealth of gold and silver pyrite, as well as discs of sliced amber embedded in chests and drawers and secured in the walls. To the right was an idol of the Roach God standing in front of an enormous faceted stone, perhaps a red opal, which had been cut to increase its brilliance.

  Raising his head higher, Pleckoo saw his cousin’s back. Anand wore a cape that looked the color of dried blood in the moonlight and he had wrapped it around the shoulders of his woman. They snuggled, their heads tilted into each other, as they chatted. Pleckoo clutched the handle of his sword—yes! He could crawl out and slice through Anand’s neck before he had time to turn and recognize his attacker. That’s what Hulkro wants me to do, he thought—when he noticed a silk cocoon mattress to his left. On top of it was some bloated Seed Eater boy whose eyes popped when he noticed Pleckoo. He could see the boy’s tongue was swollen and stopping up his mouth. The boy’s nose made a faint whistle, followed by quiet snorts, which drew attention. Pleckoo dropped below and let the hatch’s lid fall quietly back into place.

  Below in the compartment, he pondered slipping out the floor hatch to escape and blend in with the refugees. But in back of the sled was an even larger one, carrying a cage of bees that might run over him. Surrounding it all was the army on foot, marching beside the caravan as a moving fortress. And what would he do once they had crossed into leaf-cutter territory? He would be vulnerable to ant attacks after he distanced himself from the stinking roaches. He closed his eyes and waited for guidance from the Great Wood Eater. Until he received his message, he decided he must pray.