The distant clattering got louder as Anand and Daveena sighted what had to be an indoor sled coming towards them. Fifty boys dressed in an armor of golden beetle chitin were hauling in the sled. At the back of the sled was a large, upright disc of a blood moon with spatters of grey blemishes painted across its face. Atop the sled was what looked like a cloth replica of the palace itself, complete with a random spray of carvings of harvester ants wrapped in true gold.
As Anand looked at this astonishing replica of the palace, he slowly realized that it was a garment. Protruding from the very top of the garment, through a collar, was a bearded head wearing a crown made from green and orange poppy jasper in the shape of a broken arrowhead. On the other side of the sled was an old man wearing a tall, thin hat that seemed to grow like a sprout out of the pile of his wormy braids. This man wore a simple, baggy blouse of white and blue over tight green pants with a design of tendrils that curled up the thighs. His white and orange beard was braided into seven ropes of various lengths, and when he opened his mouth to speak, he revealed teeth that were stained with the same green as his pants. Daveena nodded her head to him when he finished speaking.
“He says, ‘I am the Holy Father of the One True Faith of the Barley Lands,’” said Daveena, translating. “‘You stand before His Imperial Majesty, the Emperor Volokop, the ruler of the Center of the Sand, the direct descendant of the Barley Mother Katydid and Her consort, Lumm Korol, God of the Night Sky and Tamer of Blue Mantis.’”
“Your Majesty,” said Anand, bowing. “We are humbled to stand before you and honored by your welcome. I am Anand, a Britasyte trader, and this is Daveena, my wife.”
The emperor shouted a brief command.
“He says, ‘Come closer, I want to look at you,’” said Daveena, then she and Anand stepped forward until the Holy Father bade them come no further with a pointing of his gold-wrapped barley stalk. Once they were closer, Anand could see that the emperor’s face was as off kilter as everything else in Worxict. One eyebrow was larger and thicker than the other, and arched higher over his right eye. His left nostril was wide and round while the right one was small and narrow. His lips were thick and bulging on the left side but tapered to thin lines on the right and when they opened they revealed long and crooked teeth that seemed to be fighting each other.
“‘You are Britasytes,’” Daveena said to Anand, interpreting for the emperor. “‘But one of you have also made this claim of being a Dranverite, a rider of the red ants from the northern unknown.’”
“I am a Dranverite,” Anand said, “a member of their Collective Nations. This is a choice I made, which they welcomed. I am also a Britasyte roach person as well as a member of the free State of Bee-Jor. I bring you a message and an offering from the Bee-Jorites, the new nation that has risen on your western border.”
Anand looked at the emperor’s face and at that of his old priest, and saw their resemblance to the bee people of Bulkoko: all of them had that same fold that covered their eyelids.
“‘An offering from the Bee-Jorites—really. How can a man have three loyalties?’” Daveena interpreted for the emperor as he cocked his head left, then right.
“I can,” Anand said. “One can be a Britasyte and a Bee-Jorite and a Dranverite within our new nation. We are fifty-one united mounds in what was once the eastern region of the Slopeites’ United Queendoms. We have separated from our mother nation to create a better one, a country where the welfare of the people is primary—a place where all may aspire to a happy life.”
“‘Welfare of the people! Happy lives for all! Astonishing!’” Daveena relayed the emperor’s condescending tone. “‘Are you saying the Mushroom Eaters no longer aspire to steal my lands for their people to occupy, and for their ants to strip of its leaves and grass?’”
“Yes,” said Anand. “We abjure any territorial expansion. As a demonstration of our respect for your nation, and as acknowledgment of the crimes of the Slopeites, we are returning the mound of Xixict to you and we will not attempt to retake the mounds of Dinth and Habach. We have already relocated our people from Xixict to our northern mound of Palzhad. You will find no resistance from our Bee-Jorite defenders when you resume occupation of what was always your mound and its surrounding territory.”
The emperor and his priest looked at each other and then back at Anand after the translation was completed. When the emperor spoke again, he was shouting.
“‘Only one of my mounds being returned? Seven mounds were stolen in the last two hundred summers. What else do you Bee-Jorites have to offer us when my people ache for space?”
“We are willing to negotiate further concessions.”
“‘I’m not interested in concessions. I want all my mounds back.’”
Anand had figured out what the emperor had shouted before Daveena had begun her translation.
“Majesty, we are a new nation, facing many struggles,” said Anand. “In time we could work out a plan that would allow for . . .”
The emperor interrupted Anand before he could finish.
“‘Whom is it you really speak for?’” Daveena translated, and then added with a whisper, “Speak carefully, my love. He’d be eager to imprison the commander of the Bee-Jorites’ army.”
Anand hesitated. “I represent the people of Bee-Jor as well as the wandering tribes of the Britasytes. We are one nation now.”
“‘But you are different races.’”
“Yes. But we are all humans.”
“‘You do not speak for the Dranverites?’”
“I do not. Not at this moment.”
“‘So Dranverites are not coming to your defense in our coming war on your . . . Bee-Jor?’”
“We do not need to war on each other,” Anand said.
“‘Why would we not war on the Mushroom Eaters, when they are weak and recovering from the attack by Hulkrites? You call yourselves by a different name now, but it doesn’t mean your ancestors didn’t slaughter our people and steal our land.’”
“Slaughter—of both our peoples—is what we both can avoid. I ask that you not visit the crimes of the Slopeite royals on the common people of Bee-Jor. The commoners are not the descendants of Slopeish soldiers, but of the original inhabitants of the land, a brown-skinned cricket people.”
“‘I’ll ask you again. Whom do you speak for? Who rules in this Bee-Jor?’” Daveena paused in her translation, looked at Anand with fearful, darting eyes. “‘Tell me who sent you here!’” she completed.
Anand knew he had to speak quickly, could not hesitate. Tell as much of the truth as possible.
“The new ruler of Bee-Jor is also a Dranverite and a Bee-Jorite and was once a low-caste Slopeite,” Anand said. “He is Commander Vof Quegdoth, a soldier who trained in Dranveria, spied among the Hulkrites, then raised an army of Slopeish laborers to destroy the Termite worshippers in the War of One Night.”
Anand watched as the Emperor shook his head and jutted his lopsided chin in rage.
“‘This Quegdoth is the one who pushed the Hulkrites into our land, a trickster who forced us into his battle. This Quegdoth used my armies to defeat his enemies when the Slopeites proved too weak.’”
“Quegdoth knew that after the Slopeites were conquered that the Hulkrites would turn on your nation next. They would have destroyed you. If it had not been for Quegdoth and his army, the Hulkrites would be occupying this palace and replacing your harvester ants with their ghost ants after they raped your women, enslaved your children, and exterminated all your men . . . and you.”
Anand watched as the emperor seethed before he summoned his high priest with a wag of his finger to come near. The priest took out a ladder from under his emperor’s garment and set it against the carving of the moon. Once he had climbed atop it, the two whispered in each other’s ears. As Anand watched them whisper, he thought what he saw would be wildly funny if the threat of a war wasn’t all too urgent. After the exchange, the priest climbed back down, reinserted the ladder, then re
sumed his stance and harsh stare as the emperor spoke.
“‘I want to know more about Dranveria,’” translated Daveena.
“Yes,” said Anand. “I would be glad to tell you more. In the meantime, I request that you pull back your soldiers from Bee-Jor’s borders.”
“‘Certainly not. In the meantime, you and your wife will be my guests.’”
“For how long?”
Daveena gulped before she made her translation.
“‘For however long I decide. We will always protect you and the other roach people who travel in our lands. And you will be allowed to return to the Slope—or Bee-Jor or whatever you’re calling it—just as soon as we have destroyed it to rebuild it as our own. And perhaps you can tell me how I might capture this Vof Quegdoth. I think he would make the most interesting pet.’”
Chapter 34
The Bee Palace
They aren’t lazy, Zedral thought as he watched the Bulkokans hard at work on the building of their new home. They had decided on an oak tree they had determined was a little more than seventy years old and fully grown. It had a trunk that would not expand anymore, and sturdy branches that would serve as a foundation for their branch dwellings. The tree, dubbed New Bulkoko in their own tongue, was on the furthest ends of Bee-Jorite territory, in a place where both Cajorites and Britasytes seldom ventured. Anand called the forested lands further north the Buffer Zone, and he had explained them as a place where his Dranverite nation had no claims or alliances, but some loose agreements with innumerable tree peoples who dwelt in the forest’s canopies.
“I’m still wary. This tree is very far north,” Zedral said to Grillaga, his eldest wife, who had been translating for the Bulkokans when it was learned a few of them spoke the Carpenter tongue.
“Too far north?” she asked.
“We only come this far when we’re starving, when the other weeds are emptied of game. I remember being here one night as a boy, when we heard what we thought were tree goblins torturing the cicadas. It might have been someone screaming at us to stay away.”
“This is the tree they chose,” Grillaga said as she looked in a mirror to pluck the hairs above her upper lip that had sprouted since her bleeding ended. “Things are well under way. Their spiral-ladder should reach the tree crotch by late afternoon.”
“What are you doing to your face?”
“I’m making it as presentable as possible,” she said, just as her twig tweezers broke. She reached for another pair in her vanity box.
“It looks painful.”
“It is. But mustaches are only admired when they are worn by men.”
“I suppose so,” he said, when he was diverted by an approaching party. “We’re getting another royal visit.”
The men who had identified as three of the six king-husbands of the Bulkokan queen were strutting to Zedral’s sled with their staffs stabbing the air as they bobbed. They stood before him, stiff and arrogant, without so much as a nod of the head.
“We’ll need more saws and axes,” said the first of them.
“And thicker ropes and more twine,” said the second.
“And food,” said the third. “And we’ll have nothing to do with ant-grown mushrooms.”
Zedral understood what they had said, and cut off his wife before she finished the translation.
“Tell them we will supply it all gladly,” he said to Grillaga. “After each of them licks my asshole.”
Her mouth dropped and hung open.
“You’re speaking to kings,” she whispered in Britasyte.
“Then these kings can lick my asshole. With their royal tongues. And their queen can lick yours.”
“I’ll tell them you’ll send a messenger to Cajoria. Right away.”
“Do that. Then ask these arrogant red-haired pricks why they need so much rope. Hopefully it’s so they can hang themselves.”
As the question was translated, Zedral studied the kings’ faces and watched them shrug and wrinkle their noses at him.
“He says they must have more and stronger ropes.” said Grillaga. “If they are going to hoist what will be their new bee palace into the tree’s branches.”
“A bee palace?”
“What we call a hive, I think.”
“The sooner we get them up that tree, the better. I didn’t imagine there was a people I could hate worse than Slopeites.”
The king in the center had long front teeth that protruded over his lip, even when his mouth was closed. He raised his voice while slapping his staff in his palm.
“He says they must work quickly, before it gets any cooler,” said Grillaga. “The queen bee has just enough time to lay eggs to populate the hive with workers that will feed her through the autumn and warm her during winter.”
The three kings walked away with not so much as a good-bye.
The following morning, the requested supplies arrived and the Bulkokans were back at work. Zedral watched as they completed the spiral-ladder. Soon after, most of them were climbing up it to spread over the lower branches, then disappear in the leafy shade. Zedral worked through the morning, and was enjoying himself as he repaired a hunting bow, when he heard a loud creaking sound, then faint shouts of warning from inside the tree. The lowest branch was dipping and then it cracked and fell.
The Bulkokans spiraled back down the ladder and went to work on the fallen branch they had severed. With a fierce determination, they sheared its leaves and chopped its twigs, then chipped off its bark before slicing and sawing its hard wood into planes, planks, and beams. By late afternoon, they had assembled an open cube with multiple slats inside it, which they glued together with the last of their propolis. Soon after, the beams of the structure were covered with sheets of wood to make an impressively clean and bright-looking hive. When it was completed, the kings returned to Zedral’s sand-sled with new demands.
“Grillaga, come here now!” said Zedral, calling to her at the back of the cabin, where she was at work with the other wives on a block of tourmaline that they chiseled into bits for beads and insets. “We’re getting all six kings,” said Zedral. “I need your second tongue.”
All three of Zedral’s wives stepped out to the riding ledge to see the royal males walking as a living hexagon. Grillaga gave them a brief nod of her head. The king with long front teeth spoke to her in a tone that sounded of pure insolence. He made aggressive gestures with one hand while shaking his stinger-ended staff with the other. She cocked her head at him as he spoke while glancing at Zedral with slitting eyes that betrayed her disgust. When the king finished speaking, he made an offensive sweep of his hand.
“I don’t like it when my ears bleed,” said Zedral. “Just what did he say?”
“He said they will need their roaches back, that they will build a cage for them at the base of the tree as a repellant to leaf-cutter ants and other insects. They want us to gather some green grass and grains for their roaches to eat, and some water for them to drink.”
“What else did he say? Something’s put a scowl on your face.”
“He’s said that tomorrow morning they are going to engage in their most sacred ceremony, the introduction of a queen bee to her palace. It will coincide with the ceremony of the ascension of Queen Ladeekuz and her Bulkokan subjects to their new tree home, the first of many in New Bulkoko.”
“So?”
“So he’s told us to stay away, to remove ourselves from their sight. It’s a ritual that only Bulkokans can witness.”
“And why is that?”
“Only bee people are allowed this privilege. He has told us we are not quite worthy—we were molded from Roach’s droppings. Their ancestors, on the other hand, sprang up from the fallen honey drops of Goddess Bee. The ceremony is a holy moment meant only for Bee’s chosen tribe.”
Zedral was unsure of how to react. His bow was freshly strung, and he thought if he had an arrow, he might load it to shoot through the king’s throat in order to sever his neck bones.
; “Tell the kings that they can lick my asshole.”
“Oh, Zedral . . .”
“This time I mean it. Tell them they can lick my asshole. Or I’m going to stand up and lift my tunic and spread my buttocks to show it to them.”
Grillaga was silent.
“Tell him!”
Grillaga breathed loudly through her nose, then shouted her translation. Zedral watched as the kings bristled and bent backwards, as if blown by a powerful gust. They asked Grillaga to repeat herself, which she did in loud, clipped words. The speaking king stared at Zedral and spoke.
“He’s asking me if you are well,” translated Grillaga. “He wonders if you are not infected with an evil spirit and if you would like some of their medicinal honey.”
“Finally! An offer of some kind,” he shouted in a fury. “Tell Their Highnesses that I was ill, but I am much better now. I will accept some of their honey and I will accept that they do not want us to watch their ritual. Tell them that they might have requested this instead of commanded it.”
Grillaga completed the translation as the humbled king bent his head and spoke in a softer voice. “The king asks if there is anything else you’d like to tell him.”
“Yes. Tell him I still expect all Their Royal Highnesses to lick my dirty, hairy, shit-matted asshole.”
“I’ll tell them you wish them well in their new home and offer the blessings and protection of our mutual god, Madricanth, and that you look forward to a future of trade to benefit us all.”
The Prophet of the Termite God Page 30
