“If you have to.”
The next morning, Zedral supervised the move of the caravan further south until it was out of view of New Bulkoko. When the clan was settled within a stand of catchweed bedstraw, Zedral went to his smaller dressing chest and pulled out his oiled leaf poncho and stemmed cap.
“Just where are you going?” Grillaga asked.
“To see this ceremony.”
“You told them you wouldn’t watch.”
“I told them I accepted that they did not want us to see it. I did not tell them I would not see it. I hope that’s what you translated, because I don’t want to lie.”
She was quiet. “Can I come with you?”
“Get dressed.”
After donning camouflage, Zedral and Grillaga wound their way north through a mix of dry weeds and younger green ones, then crawled under a cluster of rippleseed plantain where they hid in its shade. They peered over a pebble-slab to find the Bulkokans in the midst of their ceremony. The cage that contained the bee queen had been joined to an opening in the hive. As the cage’s front slat was raised, the mass of Bulkokans were on their stomachs, prostrate, in a circle. The kings made buzzing sounds as they pushed in the cage’s back panel, forcing the queen bee and her attendants to crawl into their new home.
“Where is Queen Ladeekuz?” Zedral asked.
“That’s got to be her on top of the cube. Look up.”
Zedral noticed Ladeekuz sitting on top of the hive on an improvised throne of woven twigs with leaf remnants. Her head was tilted up at the sun and her palms were out as if receiving a blessing. When the queen bee was inside her new home, the six kings climbed up ladders on the hive’s walls to join Ladeekuz and surround her throne. They held hands and swayed back and forth, making buzzing sounds in a strange pattern of long and short bursts.
“They’re singing,” Zedral said.
“Or praying,” said Grillaga.
The rest of the Bulkokans rose and went to the side of the hive where they picked up ropes that had been bundled into cables. They walked outwards with the cables, stretching them tighter, until the hive began to rise. Zedral could hear the people straining as the hive was hoisted higher and higher until it reached a slot that had been gouged into the flat of a branch. When the hive was locked and glued into the slot’s corners, the kings shouted to the people below, who responded with an ecstatic cheer. After the cables were released, all the Bulkokans raced up the ladder to join their royals in the tree.
“What are they carrying?” Zedral asked, noticing that the men and women had full hands.
“I’m not sure. It looks like a shield on the left arm.”
“And pikes in the right hand,” Zedral said. “Probably with bee stingers on their ends.”
As the Bulkokans raced up the spiral, the shouting of the people seemed less like a celebration and more like the shrieks of phantoms. Once they had made it into the tree, the shrieking continued, mildly muffled by the evergreen leaves. A few moments later, Zedral heard what sounded like a chain of screams from the tree’s upper branches.
“I’m frightened,” Grillaga said. “They’ve gone mad up there!”
Zedral did not want to admit that he also felt scared. They looked into the east of the tree and saw falling, fluttering leaves as well as broken sticks and bits of bark. Then something else started falling from the eastern branches, something that screamed as it plummeted.
“They’re falling!” Grillaga shouted. “From high enough that they could die! They’re sacrificing themselves!”
“Or sacrificing others!” said Zedral. “This is what they didn’t want us to see. Those look like children out there.” He stepped out from under the plantain. “Run back to the camp and tell everyone to pull the sleds here now. Ride with the Two Spirit and tell him what you’ve seen.”
Grillaga ran back to the camp as Zedral ran towards the tree, watching as more and more people fell to their deaths or an extreme injury. As he got closer, he gasped to see that the fallen were not Bulkokans, but a pale-skinned people with fuzzy yellow hair that was almost white at its ends. Many of them had been stabbed or shot with arrows, while some had simply been pushed. He heard the crying of one of them who had the good luck to land in a clump of green fescue. The wind had been knocked from her and she struggled to inhale. Her large, lavender eyes shifted in panic as Zedral came forward.
“I won’t hurt you,” he said, using all his strength to lift her into his arms, where she went limp, too shocked and weak to struggle.
Chapter 35
Surprising Visitors
Trellana yawned and didn’t bother to cover her mouth. She was bored and tired of standing before another rough, ugly dwelling and another rough, ugly family. “Welcome to Palzhad,” said King Nuvao as he handed a bumpy sheet of paper and an ink bladder to a dark-skinned man whose family included two filth-covered brothers, six stinking sisters, his waddling, pregnant wife, and eleven children with crusty nostrils. “You and your wife and children have been granted the right to occupy the lot of this dwelling and its current construction by me, King Nuvao of Palzhad, and by my sister, Her Majesty, Queen Trellana, for as long and you and your descendants obey our laws. Do you swear your loyalty to Bee-Jor and to Palzhad and the Eight Laws, and all laws that will descend from them?”
“I do,” said the man as he looked over the sheet of paper, which had a smeared impression of Quegdoth’s ubiquitous code stone printed from a wood block. At the top of the sheet was some other writing that Nuvao read aloud as his finger ran under it. “Miptak the Split Toothed, Defender in the Laborers’ Army, and mineral sifter, formerly of Mound Xixict, is granted lot 1737 and its existing building on the fifty-third ring of Palzhad.”
Miptak coated his thumb in ink, then pressed it into the paper’s corner as acknowledgment of his agreement. The king gave him a sheet in return which had other writing and numbers. “This is your deed, loyal defender. Keep it hidden and safe at all times. And never let it get wet. No one has the right to remove you or your descendants from this parcel that you have earned as long as you are law-abiding.”
“Thank you, Majesty,” said the man, and bowed. His family had been looking in awe at the wreck of a house they had received, a windowless, sand-and-tar dwelling that was dark with an ancient grime and broken in many places. The family stepped through the torn and flaking diaphragm of its one and only entry, and Trellana heard the usual gasps of delight as they compared it to the stilted hovel they had left on the flats of Xixict. She was irritated by this family in particular because the men, mineral sifters, were wearing a wealth of semiprecious jewels as necklaces, a treasure they were entitled to keep under the Dranverite’s new edict. They had seen her staring at their jewels with an envy she knew she had not concealed. Those are not real gems, she thought, just some rare bits of colored quartz. But I want them all the same. It surprised her when the family’s head, this Miptak with an awful gap between his broken teeth, jilted all protocol by speaking directly to her.
“Do you like my necklace, Majesty?” Miptak asked, fingering chunks of fool’s tourmalines that were crudely strung with a coarse twine. She puckered her mouth as if having eaten something bitter, then gave him the slightest nod of her head.
“Would you like it?” he asked as he stepped forward and fingered the gaudiest of its tricolored gems.
I do want it—but that would be accepting a gift from a low-caste laborer. She made another awkward nod, still not making eye contact. He lifted up a gem to his eye and looked at her through its violet side. “I like it too. I think I’ll wear it all my days,” he said before grinning, then disappearing into his new home. Trellana fumed through her tiny nostrils as Nuvao smirked and shook his head. “Oh, Trellana. Would it be so awful to laugh at yourself once in a while? Just try smiling, and at least acknowledging the people at this mound are humans like yourself.”
“I am not just any human,” she said. “And how many more times must you drag me out here for one of th
ese housing assignments?”
“This is your duty, your privilege. Show them some respect, sister, and the people will return it to you as their queen. These are families that fought in the war, the war that saved your royal bottom. Why, these recent arrivals were forced to leave their old mound. They rolled acorns here over rough sands for more than a moon so that all of us, you included, might have something to eat besides mushrooms.”
“My unending thanks,” Trellana said. “But the only thing acorns are good for is to remedy runny bowels. Now can we go back to the palace?”
“We’ve a few more families waiting for their deeds. Then we can go home.”
“We can never go home.”
“I am at home,” he said. “Why, it feels quite homey here in Palzhad.”
After finishing the deeding of several more houses, Trellana heard a thorn horn announcing the arrival of an ant train at the ring’s dew station.
“Run, Trelly,” Nuvao said. “If we hurry we can catch that train. Wave your scepter and they might wait for us.”
“I would sooner use my scepter to crush in my own skull than run after some ant train.”
“As you like. But if you do crush your skull in, you’ll miss tonight’s surprise.”
“What surprise?”
“That would be telling. See you at dinner.”
Walking to the main artery, Trellana would not allow her guards to hail any of the returning foraging ants for her to climb and ride to the top as they were unsaddled, an indignity she would not suffer. She stuck her nose in the air and trudged up to her palace as the guards laughed at jokes they whispered behind her back. After they delivered her to the tunnel opening, they failed to bow and ask for permission to leave before departing.
It was dark and sadly silent in her chamber by the time she entered it. A single torch in its wall holster was all that lit the emptiness. Her servants from Cajoria stood nearby, slumped and quiet, having endured a day far duller than hers. She raised her arms over her head as a signal that they should undress her, and they seemed grateful for something to do. Barhosa entered the chamber after calling, “Creet-creet.”
“Majesty, King Nuvao has suggested you dress for dinner tonight.”
“Oh. This surprise he mentioned. Has someone arrived?”
“I believe so. I believe it is a man he has been entertaining for a while.”
“You are not sure if it is a man?”
“I am not.”
“It would be surprising if my brother were entertaining a woman.”
Trellana turned to her servants, who were luxuriating in this little bit of news. “Ladies, bring me my crushed silk gowns, the yellow, pink, and scarlet ones with the low necklines. This pregnancy has thickened me and I may as well show off my . . . increased assets.”
After Trellana powered her face with some old and clumpy bee pollen that had to be re-crushed in a mortar, she made her way quickly to Nuvao’s chambers with two servants following behind to carry the tails of her trains. As usual, her brother was sitting on a floor cushion at a leaf platter as opposed to a formal chair and table. For some reason, he was shaking with laughter. The leaf was covered with worn, chipped-quartz platters that held generous pilings of pickled and dried foods, as well as a shiny lump of hoverfly loaf, whose top bore a cube of green mint jelly. It was not exactly a holiday feast, but it was more than mushrooms and morning dew.
A man’s back was to her, a man she hated at first sight for his overly round shape. The folds of his back were apparent through his thin robe and they jiggled in synchrony with his laughter, which was a harsh howl mixed with effeminate titters and chopped up with irritating snorts. Trellana knew in a moment it was pointless to have oiled her breasts and worn her revealing gowns. The man stood, turned, and bowed to her, and worked at stifling his laughter.
“Trelly,” her brother said through muffled snickers, “we are honored to have the celebrated Brother Moonsinger as our guest tonight.”
“Your Majesty,” Moonsinger said. “Such an honor to meet the woman who has agreed to rule Palzhad.”
“You must forgive me that I am not familiar with you,” said Trellana as she examined the moth-shaped cut of his deeply pink hair with its waxed wings. His face paint was unsettling; the dark lines around his eyes and his thickened, clumpy lashes made her think of colliding millipedes when he blinked.
“Brother Moonsinger is from Mound Loobosh,” said Nuvao. “Now he circulates through all of Bee-Jor and has become quite famous.”
“A famous tutor?” How I loathe tutors, these horrendous eunuchs who stuffed my ears with poetry and history, she thought as she looked for the testicle jar that should have been hanging from his neck.
“I was a tutor. And I am still teaching,” he said, “but my lessons are no longer confined to royal ears. As Commander Quegdoth has urged us, we must share all knowledge with all people.”
“Brother Moonsinger is our greatest storyteller,” said Nuvao. “His performances are very much in demand.”
“I see,” said Trellana as she signaled to a servant to bring her a low chair so that she would not have to sit on a floor cushion. “Our tutors are now working as common entertainers in order to make their way.”
Nuvao’s face went dark for an instant before it brightened again. “There is nothing common about the Brother’s stories, Trellana. They are skillful, thrilling histories, and as entertaining as they are educational. Perhaps the Good Brother will grace us with a story after dinner. In the meantime, you and I have something serious to discuss with him.”
“Oh, do we?” Trellana said as she signaled to one of her servants to fill her quartz platter with some unusually decent food. “A bit of everything and a lot of that,” she whispered after pointing to the loaf.
“As you know, Trelly, in the Great Division we gained Mound Venaris but we lost Loobosh, our seat of learning.”
“I did not know that,” said Trellana.
Brother Moonsinger’s eyes popped in surprise. “Really, Majesty. I’m sure you might remember: it was negotiated that Loobosh would remain with the Slope since it is very much in the West,” he said. “However, many of the Learned did not want to remain in the Old Slope. Like me, they wanted to be a part of a promising new nation where we were invited to impart our wisdom in this new profession of ‘teacher’ . . . not tutor.”
“Well, how very generous of you,” Trellana said. “Though I am sure it will be an exasperating challenge to educate so many deficient Bee-Jorites.”
“It is quite generous,” said Nuvao, his eyes rapidly blinking. “Brother Moonsinger is a very generous man who has provided us with this lavish dinner tonight, generously given to him by those deficient Bee-Jorites as a thanks for sharing his gift. And what, dear sister, may I ask, have you brought to the dinner-leaf tonight?”
Trellana sighed. He’s worse than Mother.
“I have brought myself,” she said, “to this godsforsaken mound where every moment is a misery, but all of them made possible because my essence allows these ants to thrive. The sacred mushroom may have lost its prestige, but may I remind you, our leaf-cutter ants are lethal defenders that keep us all safe.”
“Indeed,” said Moonsinger. “But your brother and I have been discussing a new prospect, one that may strengthen this mound even more, and one that will revive Palzhad as one of Bee-Jor’s greatest mounds.”
“I wouldn’t dare try and stop you from telling me,” said Trellana.
“The Learned Ones who left Loobosh for Bee-Jor seek a new home, a new center of learning. King Nuvao tells me you have plenty of room here in Palzhad, many empty rings with empty dwellings that need rebuilding. This is a neglected but beautiful queendom with an impressive history that appeals to men with curious natures.”
They want to bring more prattling eunuchs here, Trellana thought. Thousands of them to annoy me. “Curious natures, yes. Are you telling me all the eunuchs want to live on Palzhad?”
“Yes,” said Nuva
o. “They do, and we should welcome them. They would run what Quegdoth calls schools, learning places for children, and later, they would have a higher place of learning—something called a university, which we could establish in one of the unoccupied palaces.”
“We’ll invite all the curious and the quick learning to be teachers. But first,” said Moonsinger, suddenly serious, “we must end the practice of castration for those who enter the learning life. The Learned will never again be eunuchs.”
“End castration? I thought it improved memory and intelligence. Along with weight gain. The fatter, the smarter.”
“It does not,” said Moonsinger. “Nuvao is no less bright than I am for having all his parts and for keeping a fine figure.”
“Under the Eight Laws, it would be a violation to take away a boy’s testicles,” said Nuvao. “The mutilation of another’s person.”
“We’ve come to realize that the priesthood enforced this cruel practice to maintain control over the common people, to keep them stupid,” said Moonsinger as sadness fractured his voice. “Remove the intelligent boys from the tradesman and working castes and one takes away the chance to pass on their seeds. The end results are dull masses willing to accept dull lives. That is exactly what happened to me, when I proved myself a bit too clever.”
“Well,” said Trellana. “If you tutors are only coming to realize this now, perhaps you are not as clever as you think.”
To Trellana’s complete surprise, Nuvao and Moonsinger laughed as loud as a tumble of rocks, and then they laughed some more. Servants standing near the wall stiffened and looked uncomfortable. Trellana felt a crushing envy.
“Whatever it is you are drinking, I would like some,” said Trellana.
“It’s not what we are drinking,” said Nuvao. “And as ecstatic as I am at the moment, I will not allow you to break your promise to Quegdoth: no fermentation until your babies are born.”
The Prophet of the Termite God Page 31
