“It is Pleckoo of Cajoria’s midden,” said Terraclon as he urged the ant forward for a closer look. The old, fat priest looked at Pleckoo with drunken indifference, then turned away from him, casting his gaze down. Dolgeeno slouched and had a roundness to his shoulders that suggested his own defeat. Terraclon cocked an eyebrow and spoke in the haughty way of priests. “Welcome home, Pleckoo. We have heard the most sensational things about you,” he shouted before his face turned into a snarl. “Anand’s planning something very special for your homecoming, he is,” he added, returning to the guttural accent of their caste. “Bring it forward,” he shouted to the guards behind him who went to the sand-sled and raised up a block of wood on their shoulders. They set the block before Pleckoo, who saw the source of the sweet smell—it was pine wood, with a fresh termite track on its surface.
“This is a home of your invincible termite god,” said Terraclon. He signaled with his hands for the men to turn the block around. Glued to its back was a crushed termite king with ragged wings. “This will keep you company at the assembly during your denunciation,” said Terraclon. “You can pray to it! Beg it for mercy! Demand it release you from the days of torture ahead. And all the world will see your god is nothing, a blind and powerless drunkard who will let you suffer before you die.”
Terraclon came closer. “When your beloved cousin returns, we’ll hold an assembly, a trial and then a days-long execution. We’re thinking about a death by a hundred thousand cuts, one for each of your victims. Also in consideration is the careful removal of the bones from your body, one at a time, to set before your Hulkro as a sacrifice. You’ll be alive but like some helpless, quivering jelly.”
“I can’t bear to be in his presence another moment,” said Polexima to Terraclon. Pleckoo saw her familiarity with the little flower boy, and it disgusted him. The queen turned to the cage and stared in Pleckoo’s blinking eyes. “Anand’s asked us to wait to exact his justice,” she said. “But before he arrives . . . I can think of a number of things I’d like done to a rapist. He should know exactly how it feels, and in the presence of spectators.” The mob lowered their heads as the royal party turned and exited.
Anand! Polexima had said his ugliest of names, and a new anger was rising up in Pleckoo, that sweet and empowering rage that had always served him. I can break these ropes with Hulkro’s blessing, he thought, then smash through this cage to kill these unfaithful. Pleckoo felt strength building in his muscles and then willed his limbs to move, to stretch and then break the ropes. Hearing himself grunting, he strained and heaved before he felt himself snap and fall into a black void. When he returned to consciousness, he was in the same cage, bound by the same ropes, but bleeding from new chafing. As uncontrollable waves of grief ran through him, he gritted his teeth to stop his sobbing when he noticed a third mob had arrived to feast on his suffering. Their laughter was all too loud and pierced him like a thousand daggers when he realized it was Keel, the midden’s cruel foreman, with Tal and his other sons. All of them had been gorging on food that had stretched the stitches of their fancy clothes.
“Why, it is Pleckoo! A son of the midden has returned!” shouted Keel. “Anything we can get you? Some more ropes? A little more piss?”
“We heard you was in a bad way,” said Tal. “And we’re ever so sorry. We heard they’re planning to cover you with oak mites until you renounce Lord Termite . . . or they drink all your blood.”
Keel and Tal came closer to the cages when the guards jerked up their swords. “Away from the cage,” said the first guard. “By order of Commander Quegdoth.”
“Right, sir, right.” Keel signaled to his sons they should leave. He looked up at Pleckoo, jutted the first of his three chins, and wrinkled his mouth to a frowning slit. “Don’t you worry, Termite’s Little Ass Licker. In the midden we don’t forget our own. Before Anand gets back, we’ve got our own plans for you.”
Pleckoo could not contain his fear. He had to scream his prayer but all that came from his throat was a dry cough.
Kill me, Lord Termite . . . before my cousin gets back!
Chapter 33
Worxict
The beetle-drawn sled was not quick, but it was as steady as a hauling roach as it carried Anand and Daveena day and night through wild bean and barley fields, and around oak stands and past endless villages atop their little pebble mounds. All these villages were tethered to each other by long ropes from the peaks of their pyramid towers, in a vast web that had to be tied to the central government of Worxict. Anand imagined an enormous spider king who lived in the capital at the web’s center, where he wore eight crowns, one over each of the multiple eyes in his head. Occasionally the sled stopped to change drivers and beetles and allow for life’s little necessities. Anand and Daveena were grateful for the moments they could stand.
One of the few sights to break up the landscape were growths of the paddle cactus, a clustering plant with thick, juicy leaves that were spotted with prickly dots of sharp hairs and had edges lined by sharper spikes. At the top of the paddles was their round and intimidating red fruit. These were covered in patches of hairs that could break off and sink into human skin, resulting in a painful irritation or even death. Anand remembered eating pickles and preserves of cactus fruit in Dranveria, but only on special occasions, as they were expensive and dangerous to harvest. As they passed one of the clusters, Daveena pointed out a crew of thickly padded men at the tops of ladders who sawed at the crimson spheres. One of the men had slipped and fallen, and he dangled from a paddle spike that had caught the back of his clothing. Anand was worrying for this man when the beetle driver tossed Daveena another squeeze bag of water and some ground seed cakes without halting the sled.
During the day, the sled kept to the left of the route to allow for the passing of foot soldiers marching west by the tens of thousands. That sight filled Anand with dread. How many of them had massed at the border? And near what mound on the border? Would the war be over by the time they returned—if they were allowed to return? Who would ever come to rescue him and Daveena in this place?
“I’m sorry I’m so quiet,” he said to Daveena during another stretch of tedium.
“I’m as worried as you are,” she said, and took his hand.
His worries deepened as they went deeper into barley country and they saw another frightful parade of foot soldiers, followed by a longer chain of supply-sleds. These were followed by a train of sled-cages packed with harvester hatchlings, ants whose poisonous spews would be potent by the time they reached the border. It was the fifth day of traveling when they fell in the shadow of an ancient, massive oak tree with a monstrous tangle of above-ground roots. The driver stopped to offer a prayer to the tree and tapped his head, his heart, and his navel and Anand sensed they might take a turn.
The right half of the tree was dead and scorched by the suns of a thousand summers. Its gray and withering arms pointed weakly to the South, and the sled’s driver seemed to obey the tree when he looked up, then steered the beetles right, and onto a route that traveled through a grotesque complex of bulging pebble structures. Not all of the structures looked inhabited, and only a few of them looked purposeful. Those that housed humans had crooked quartz windows, which did not seem placed so much as clutched by their pebbles. The black, dust-covered tar that glued these pebbles together looked as if it were oozing from them. Much of the tar had dripped down in thick splotches that held the corpses of long-dead midges, gnats, and hoverflies. As Anand and Daveena went deeper into the strange cityscape, it seemed to be popping up before them, assembling itself by some powerful magic and growing ever taller and stranger.
“I feel like I’ve drunk the Mildew,” Daveena said.
“Exactly,” Anand said as they passed through dwellings that seemed randomly strewn through the barley grass. “It’s so weirdly ugly, it’s kind of . . . beautiful.” They were stunned by the buildings’ magnificent irregularities and random shapes. Some buildings resembled clusters of warted wasp
galls and others were like the low, radiating bark fungi that grew near tree roots in summer. Other dwellings had round or boxy understructures that were almost conventional, but they had free-form roofs that resembled wrestling fat men or piles of wrinkled and rotting fruit. Some roofs incorporated acorn caps that tilted or appeared to be sliding off, or were sometimes stacked for a wobbling effect. The facades of these dwellings—if they were dwellings—were decorated with grooves that resembled the contorted mating channels of cicadas on tree branches. Their walls had multiple hollows, the insides of which were painted with random, lacy designs of curlicues in green and orange paint.
The structures were increasing in height, and obscured the ant mound that Anand knew had to be behind the city, as he saw as many harvester ants as he saw humans. The bearded ants with their large, grain-chewing skulls came close to the Britasyte visitors, but would just as soon flee from their roach-scent and speed away in a curved and indirect way in keeping with the place itself. The few ants that wriggled their abdomens and sprayed their noxious scent in defense were attacked by a patrol of men with long quartz swords who cut off the ants’ stingers. Most harvester ants stayed well above the city, crawling on its roofs, or at the top of the ovular walls that led to the palace.
The well-to-do men and women of Worxict walked slowly in their voluminous but stiff-looking gowns, and their heavily ornamented nimbus hats were like a weight to be balanced. Walking ahead and in back of the well-to-do were their servants, whose bodies looked freer in loose garments of uncolored cloth. On top of the servants’ heads were the large, oblong bonnets with long tying sashes. On the sides of the bonnets were something like wings, which made a light snapping noise as they flapped. At the front of the bonnets were stamen-like antennae that the servants used to negotiate with the occasional probing harvester ant.
As before in Durxict, the sled entered into a series of wall rings that led to the palace. And just as before, the first ring housed a market, but this one was stupendous, as large as a pond and with an unnavigable maze of stalls and tables. Through this maze moved thick, alternating currents of marketers bearing baskets and sacks on their heads or dragging a decorated sand cart. As the sled rode up the market’s central route, the marketers pulled to the side to stare at Anand and Daveena with the same eerie quiet as the villagers who had gawked at them in the barley grass. Most of the marketers were servants wearing the enormous bonnets, many doing the bidding of a nearby master or mistress.
The market ring was followed, as Anand expected, by another prayer wall; but this one had not hundreds but thousands of seated clergy chanting to the Seed Eaters’ innumerable deities on the floors of the arched windows. Most of the clergy chanted upwards to the sky, but some were chanting downwards, perhaps to gods living underground. Anand could see carvings of the deities in the wall’s hollows, which depicted most of them as having insects’ heads, but human bodies. On the left side of the wall ring was a section where perhaps a hundred priestesses in bright green cloth communed with the Katydid Goddess and chanted in unison. Next to them, on the right side, was a section where a hundred priests in dark-blue and white robes honored Lumm Korol, the moon god. He was depicted with bright white skin and a very round head, and was mounted on a dark blue mantis, with its claws up and its ruffled wings fanning from under its elytra.
The sled continued to the prayer wall’s back end, through an opening shaped like ovals colliding with triangles. Dangling from the opening’s top were windblown strips of bee velvet spattered with stripes and speckles of brilliant colors. When the sled passed through these strips, Anand and Daveena gasped to enter one more towering yet lopsided ring structure of forty or fifty stories. These walls were thickly embedded with cunning carvings of humans, and all of them were wrapped in a true gold. Custodians in orange bonnets were at work on cleaning dust from the carvings while gardeners in green bonnets worked on the ground at uprooting weed seedlings and fungus from the spaces between the tiles.
“Who do you think they were?” Anand asked as he looked at the carvings.
“Ancestors, most likely. Their lines of royals.”
“This nation is older than I thought, if they’ve had hundreds of emperors. Look at those,” he said, pointing up to the third row. “Those carvings are less skillful. And the faces change after that. The eyelids have folds and their chins have grown.”
“You’re right,” she said. “That must have been the point of some conquest.”
Ahead of them was a narrower opening to one more tunnel, the roof of which was a rippling structure of interlocking orange crystals. After they entered this tunnel, the sled wove through its winding sides, and Anand and Daveena gawked at its walls, which were encrusted with a wealth of golden and silver pyrite. The tunnel ended, at last, at a vast and tiled plaza before the emperor’s palace, set at the foot of the capital’s massive ant mound. The plaza was covered with bonneted custodians who brushed and polished asymmetrical tiles sliced from stones of the purest white. Anand and Daveena held their breaths as they took in the most overwhelming structure yet, unsure if this was a palace or just some strange and unfathomable vision.
“This palace, if that’s what this is, is not atop the mound but before it,” Anand finally said, feeling dizzy.
“The mound couldn’t support something like this at its top,” said Daveena. “It’s too much!”
Sculpted pebbles bulged across the palace’s meandering walls in thick veins that clustered, then tapered, like upended tree roots in a pattern that was dizzying to the point of maddening. The ends of the palace had no corners, but were thick ropy structures that undulated downwards and slithered through each other, like a pile of worms that had made love in an orgy, then collapsed from fatigue. On the palace’s roof were thick clusters of innumerable towers, with tops that ended in bizarre sculptures of imaginary insects and flowers of impossible intricacies. Great, sliced-quartz windows with almost perfect clearness made up much of the facade, and from behind them, courtiers were gathering to look at the expected strangers.
“Are we sure we’ve not imbibed something that produces visions?” Daveena asked.
“We haven’t,” Anand said. “Because we’re seeing the same thing. I am sure the architects of this palace wanted us to feel this way . . . sick and intimidated.”
“You mean frightened . . . if I am being truthful,” said Daveena.
“Yes, I am a little frightened myself.”
“Which assures me that you are the sensible man I married,” she said, reaching to link his arm. “I might also add that I feel a touch underdressed,” she said, and then nodded discreetly at one of the windows, where a number of court ladies had clustered. They wore long jackets with thick embroidery that looked embroidered again. The high, broad lapels of the jackets made the women’s long necks and faces look like the stamens of the swamp lily. The gowns underneath the coats were a thick orange silk covered with layers and layers of a diaphanous lace. The women stared at the strange visitors over fans of jewel-beetle chitin that changed colors as they were flapped. None of these women wore antennae, which signaled a lack of contact with ants or exposure to the outdoors. Faceless attendants under pink bonnets stood near to these women, awaiting orders.
The main entry on the palace’s left side—nothing looked centered here—was like the shape of a butterfly partially emerged from its cocoon. The entry’s door slowly lowered with a rope mechanism, to become a bridge that the sled rode over to enter the interior. When they were finally inside the palace’s chamber, it was so vast they could not see the walls of its south end. The sled stopped and its driver, a man who had said nothing to Anand and Daveena, bid them to step down, something awkward to do since they had not been offered a flight of steps. Anand, wobbly from poor sleep and weak from endless sitting, felt like a child climbing down from a weed, and not at all like a dignified envoy when his feet finally touched the floor. He helped Daveena down by grabbing her legs and setting her on a dizzying array of str
iped tiles. From a distance, the courtiers watched them while sticking close to their walls as they whispered behind their fans. Anand wondered how the chamber was so well lit, when he looked up to the ceiling and saw it was a spiraling dome tower of crystals, cemented with an orange resin. The chamber was richly furnished with chairs, divans, and tables all carved in a similar, unbalanced style and placed near the walls to leave a vast and empty center.
“I don’t think this is the throne room,” Anand said.
“I’m not sure what room we’re in,” said Daveena. “But I still think I’m dreaming.”
Anand shook his head. From out of the distance, a guard of at least forty men appeared, wearing a lacquered armor made of hardwood covered in ant chitin, with its perforated panels tied together by twine. The guards carried weapons—bows and arrows and naked swords—that were highly ornamented but looked dangerously sharp. Their leader stepped out from the formation. He walked in a curving way towards the strangers before pointing to Anand’s sword and dagger as he spoke in Yamich.
“He says, ‘No stranger stands before the Divine Emperor of the Center of the Sand with weapons on his person,’” said Daveena.
“He wants me to give him my blades? A sword is one thing, but a Britasyte does not surrender his dagger.”
“He’s suggesting—in a polite way—that you surrender your sharp things if you want to meet his emperor.”
“All right. They don’t appear to know what a blowgun is. Don’t tell them.”
Anand unsheathed his sword and handed it over by its handle. More reluctantly, he gave them his dagger, the one that Terraclon had made for him before the Fission Trek. The guard’s leader looked at both briefly and then at Anand in curiosity before he walked backwards in a curve to his formation, arranged like a crescent moon. Anand heard a clattering of rattles in the distance. The guards split into two formations to allow for the entry of something or someone. As Anand waited, he and Daveena took in more of the palace’s interior. The walls in the near distance were hung with skillful tapestries, most of which had taken several lifetimes to complete. All of them seemed to be religious in content, and featured insect-headed gods riding atop clouds, or growing out of rich, dark soil, or emerging from the insides of flowers to bestow boons or seeds or jewels on adoring humans with orange hair. Around the chamber, the two heard clicking and tapping sounds from the insides of ovoid cages perched at the ends of spiraling pedestals. Inside these cages, Anand could see rainbow-colored shield-beetles eating basil and mint leaves to release their aromas.
The Prophet of the Termite God Page 29
