The Prophet of the Termite God

by Clark Thomas Carlton

  As a section of the wall was torn open, Terraclon resisted pacing and tried not to look impatient. He reminded himself to stand in imitation of Anand with his shoulders back, his chin up, and his feet held solidly apart, as if daring someone to push him. From the corner of his eye, he looked east and saw war widows in their grimy whites returning from a trip to the weeds. Terraclon assumed they had been out for an idle pleasure ride, but he could see their saddles were hung with stuffed foraging sacks and they rode sturdy carrying ants instead of the smaller obstacle and speed riders. The widows are gathering their own food now, instead of expecting its delivery. This is progress! Turning briefly to smile and wave, he was reminded of his dark skin when none of them returned his gesture or even acknowledged his presence.

  The roach caravan was traveling at a good clip, but it could not arrive fast enough. At its head, Terraclon saw a bright orange blur and then realized it was the tunic of a young driver whose face looked all too grim as the sleds got closer. Alarmed, Terraclon ran to the driver as the sled made its crunching scrape over the loose sand of the wall’s break.

  “Where’s Anand? Where’s Daveena? What’s happened?” he shouted.

  The driver’s face fell and he looked both ashamed and panicked.

  “No much Slopeish words,” he said, and then pointed back at the Barley Lands. “At Worxict. With emperor.”

  “Flea-piss!” Terraclon cursed, feeling his heart bashing around his rib cage. “Who speaks Slopeish in your caravan?”

  The boy shook his head.

  Should I fly to Anand? What would I do if I found him? I can’t even talk to these roach people! Wait, there are Slopeish speakers among the Britasytes in Cajoria—the ones who escorted the bee people.

  “Cajoria!” Terraclon shouted. “You’re going back to Cajoria,” he shouted at the boy. “Fly him back with us, now!” he commanded a female pilot in the process of docking her locust. She nodded, remounted, and offered her hand to the young driver, who took it as he climbed the spikes of the insect’s leg to sit behind her on her saddle. Terraclon remounted his own locust, prodding it with long strokes of its left antennae to dissuade it from finishing a trough of finger grass.

  On the flight to Cajoria, Terraclon looked down at the familiar landmarks to guide him home, but everything looked dry, sun-bleached, and unfamiliar. For a moment he was sure he was lost . . . that chain of rocks, that star-shaped patch of sand, that cluster of drying poppy pods didn’t look right. After these were the great patches of datura, that lovely but deadliest of plants, with its enormous moonflowers and its thorn-covered fruit. The smell from the flowers reached his nose, which was pleasant at first and then made him faintly dizzy, then mildly ill. He was painfully reminded of the time he had wandered up to a datura, so taken with its massive blossoms that he crawled on its leaves to touch its bright white sepals that fused into a single tube. Sometime later, he remembered, he woke up ill and with blurred vision. For days, he was stuck in a waking daymare where he argued and wrestled and punched at a larger version of himself. During all of it, he endured an endless thirst and a constant need to piss that left him aching with a thousand inner itches he could never scratch. When the effects finally subsided, he found himself lying in Anand’s shelter. “I had to drag you out from under that plant and clean the pollen from your face,” Anand had said with a loving anger. “You fought with me, punched me in the eye, and made my nose bleed. I had to knock you out before I could carry you back to the midden. Your own mother wouldn’t care for you so I dragged you up here.” He had looked over at Corra kneeling next to him, and realized she had been forcing aphid syrup and lymph water down his throat and had been changing rags about his middle . . . the most humiliating thing of all. “Nothing I haven’t seen before,” she had said as she brought him some proper food. “Mine’s bigger,” Anand had said with that smile that radiated like the morning sun.

  Terraclon felt haunted by that smile now and ached to see it again.

  Anand. How many times have we rescued each other? And where are you now, my brother? If the Seed Eaters have harmed you in any way, they will all suffer and die. As Terraclon stared below at the windblown weeds, he imagined the Seed Eater soldiers were already under them, crawling by the tens of thousands on their bearded, poison-spewing ants.

  He was lost in his thinking when the locust made a sudden dive over the datura patch. “No!” he screamed out loud when the insect landed on one of the massive flowers and began to eat it from the inside out. Terraclon pinched his nose, held his breath, and jumped off the saddle. He ran under the plant to a clearing where he could be sighted, and waved his arms at his squadron until one of them spiraled and landed. Terraclon ran to his rescuer and climbed onto his saddle, and released his breath once they were in the air. Just as he gripped the pilot’s waist, he felt a touch of the datura’s madness, like a blackness bubbling over him as they leapt into the sky. Sometime later, he woke from an addled sleep to see Cajoria coming into view.

  Maybe Anand is a hostage of the Seed Eaters. What would they want from us to give him back? I hope Polexima can help.

  Polexima was seated with Pious Frinbo in her quiet, sun-warmed chamber as he supervised her attempts at what he called “record keeping” and what Anand called writing. She watched as he scratched the figures into the roll of coated paper before handing her the stylus, this firm sliver of hard wood with an embedded amethyst tip. His intricate figures, which stood for her name, were compact and neatly rendered; but when she tried to re-create them, she could not help but make large and crooked scrawls. She sighed.

  “Like any skill, Your Majesty, writing takes practice,” Frinbo said. “And I’m not sure it’s something a woman could ever do that well.”

  “You should be very unsure, Pious. Quegdoth says half the scholars in Dranveria—their name for the very learned—are women. And it was a female commander who soundly defeated the pioneers of Cajoria before they could reach for their arrows. And Quegdoth says it is a woman who presides over their collective nations of hundreds of millions—who serves in the same capacity as a king.”

  “The gods created women to bear and raise children,” said Frinbo. “And this is a great honor. It is what makes women happiest—if they embrace that duty. Would not Your Majesty rather be spending some time with your grandchildren instead of wasting it on record keeping? That has been our job since the Sand was created—what the gods call on holy men to do.”

  Polexima, worried about her most recent children in the care of Dneepers in the Grasslands, had completely forgotten her grandchildren. One of them was named Sahdrin the 87th or 88th, she was not sure. They were looked after by her husband and his concubines, she assumed; and then she realized she did not know. Perhaps I should check up on them—in case Sahdrin is dipping their sugar tits in spirits to keep them from crying.

  Her worries were interrupted when she saw a dark and sinewy man pull himself through the flaps of the wall opening. Following him in was a Britasyte boy with great masses of curly black hair that were split into three cricket-tails.

  “Majesty,” said the man, and she realized it was Terraclon in the tight clothes of a locust pilot. “I need to speak with you. And just you.”

  “Oh, Pious Terraclon! I did not recognize you. Pious Frinbo, can you allow us some privacy?”

  “Right,” said Terraclon. “I should have asked . . . can we . . . may we have some privacy please, Pious Frinbo.”

  Frinbo looked annoyed as his eyes darted between Polexima and Terraclon and the young roach rider he had brought with him. She realized Frinbo objected to leaving her with an outcaste, whose clipped ear was all too visible under his wind-tangled hair, regardless of his promotion to head of the clergy. And Frinbo didn’t like the young companion of the Usurper’s Priest either, whose bare legs were smeared with roach grease under his smelly cape.

  “Pious Frinbo, would you be so kind as to visit the king and check on my grandchildren?” asked Polexima, smiling at Frinbo’
s frown. “Could you make sure that they are well and comfortable? I was just on my way to visit them.”

  “As you wish, Majesty.”

  Frinbo pulled his hood over his head, reset his antennae, and fluttered off in the rustle of his long-jacket. Once he was gone, Terraclon doubled over, clutching his stomach as sobbing shook his body. “Anand’s lost in the Barley Lands,” he blurted out.

  “What?”

  “His mission has failed. He’s dead . . . or a prisoner of Volokop. And so is Daveena. The Seed Eaters are gathering their forces, masses of them, and they’re coming for Cajoria—in half a moon or less!”

  Polexima was quiet as she absorbed the news. She told herself to take deep breaths, then looked at Terraclon’s companion, a boy who did not speak Slopeish but joined with Terraclon in his crying. She looked into Terraclon’s tear-filled eyes as they broke from her gaze. He’s ashamed. His tears reveal his love for Anand.

  “We must fight without Anand,” she said, gripping her staff and standing her tallest. “We must ask ourselves what he would do, what he learned from the Hulkrites. In this case he would not wait for the enemy to invade, to draw them in. He would throw the first punch.”

  Terraclon gave her a ghost of a smile. “You’re right, Polly. But these are not Hulkrites,” he said. “Anand knew the Hulkrites. And I fought them. But the only Seed Eaters I ever knew were corpses at the midden. I only know how they smell . . . not how they fight.”

  She managed a chuckle. “I know someone who does. Let’s hope he’s not too smelly to receive us.”

  “As our Holy Slope expanded north, it was the barley dwellers’ ants more than their soldiers that stopped us from taking the lands we needed,” said Sahdrin with smiling eyes. Polexima saw he was flattered by her visit and the chance to advise her. “The harvester ants have an insidious poison that they shake from their abdomens when at war. It made us weak and dizzy and blind for days. We became easy targets for the Seed Eaters’ spears and arrows, as well as the attacks of their ants. We could not defeat them until my ancestor, Lakjin the 93rd, adopted the silk-layered breathing masks of the weed worker caste of Culzhwitta.”

  “Why did the weed workers wear breathing masks?” Terraclon asked.

  “They wore them when they removed the deadly datura plants.”

  “Daturas!” said Terraclon.

  “Yes,” said the king. “It is the worst of weeds. Just the slightest exposure can induce insanity, and a small ingestion means death. I have smelled it recently on my pleasure rides—those maddening flowers—and meant to order its removal. Of course no one listens to me now.”

  Terraclon was struck with the start of an idea. Datura! The locusts eat datura! They are immune to it!

  “Later, we added the goggles worn by the hunting castes in their pursuit of the stink-spewing darkling and blister beetles.” the king continued. “Once we were equipped with these, the harvester ants posed less of a threat. We took the lands our gods had granted us and pushed the Seed Eaters east.”

  “One has to wonder if the Seed Eaters’ god is telling them to take back those same lands,” said Terraclon, falling into a royal accent as he reached for more of a kiln-steamed fruit fly in a black sauce of nightshade berries. He passed the platter to the Britasyte driver at his side, who had barely eaten a thing and spent the dinner nervously taking in the opulence of the royal chamber.

  “Why, after two hundred years, did the Seed Eaters start winning again?” asked Polexima.

  “For the same reason that anyone wins a war: they had more men than us,” said Sahdrin. “The Slope’s armies had been divided in two, with half in the West to fight the Carpenter nation. The barley dwellers were aware of that—alerted to it, no doubt, by those slimy roach people who play all sides for the right price.”

  “Do you have proof of what you’re saying about the roach people?” asked Terraclon as he dropped the platter with a clank and glanced at the boy next to him. “If you don’t, then you are violating the sixth law of Bee-Jor . . . lying about others to cause them harm.”

  “No proof,” said Sahdrin. “But strong suspicions, since roach people have betrayed us in the past. Their loyalty is to their own.”

  “As your loyalty is to your own,” said Polexima.

  Terraclon squinted and his mouth tightened. “Tell us, Majesty . . . if you would, please . . . just how do the Seed Eaters fight?”

  Sahdrin shrugged and looked upward with his good eye as if that was a stupid question.

  “Much the way we do—on the backs of their insects. The harvester ants have their poisons, but our leaf-cutters are inured to it. Our ants are faster, have thicker chitin, and their longer mandibles are the sharpest of any insect on the Sand. Harvester ants have large and heavy seed-chewing heads that slow their crawl. And they are low to the ground and thin-shelled—vulnerable to punctures from above.”

  “What advantages would the Seed Eaters have in the next battle?” asked Polexima.

  “As I said—more men. Likely many more men, now that our noble army has been devoured by ghost ants. The Seed Eaters’ royals will send thousands of waste-soldiers on antback as the first wave. These men are sacrificed—the fodder-pawns—to waste our ammunition and draw us out.”

  Polexima and Terraclon looked at each other, appalled.

  “Yes, waste-soldiers,” said the king. “We’ve always fought atop their corpses against the second wave, the highborn warriors who are better armored and mounted on mature soldier-ants. The last wave are the tower-ants, on stilts. These have a driver and a bowman on their saddles, to aim down with venom-dipped arrows. And always among their forces are the under-wave, those stealthy, stinging ants that are too small to ride. Just a few of them can overwhelm the mightiest leaf-cutter by clamping on to them to inject their poison. And just one of those little buggers can kill a man if they can sting through his armor or find open skin.”

  The king signaled his servant for more liquor, a too-red drink with the cheap, sweet smell of blood flowers. Polexima used her staff to block the servant. “Thank you, kind servant, but the king has had quite enough to drink at the moment,” she said.

  “Oh, Polly,” Sahdrin said as the servant rolled the barrel away. “You have always underestimated me.”

  “We must remind all our soldiers that water and kwondle tea are the only good drinks before a battle,” said Polexima to Terraclon.

  “Yes, Majesty,” said Terraclon. “Fermentation only makes us feel smart.” He turned to Sahdrin. “Your Highness, I saw the stilted ants in the war with the Hulkrites. Their riders were up high and very difficult to shoot at with arrows or blow-darts.”

  “You don’t aim at the riders. You aim at the ant,” said the king. “Kill the ant and you topple the riders. Once they’ve fallen, plunge at them with a sword or shoot them with an arrow. You can also rush the tower-ants on foot with a shield over your head. Hack at their stilts with a battle-axe, and then attack the riders once they have fallen.”

  “That is not a good idea,” said Polexima, on the verge of losing her temper.

  “And how would you know, Polly?” asked the king. “What battle did you fight in?”

  “I know that a long time ago, a certain young prince attacked the stilts of one of these tower-ants with his new amethyst battle-axe, a weapon he was all too anxious to try out. And I know that the tower-ants’ riders toppled, then rose up on their legs to chop off those of the same young prince . . . and take one of his eyes.”

  Sahdrin was quiet, hung his head. “Who told you that? Some long-ago rival? Or some gossipy hairdresser?”

  “I had heard it before I ever met you. Everyone has heard it.”

  A silence passed that was embarrassing for all of them. She was searching for something to say when Terraclon spoke up.

  “King Sahdrin, what can you tell us about how the Beetle people defeated the Slopeites?”

  Sahdrin looked at Terraclon with what Polexima thought was some grudging respect, meeting his eyes
as he spoke.

  “They used a cowardly trick. Their only victory against us in centuries was the digging of traps—deep trenches at the back of the usual battlefield. They hid these trenches with a canvas disguised with pine needles. Our ants and soldiers fell into these traps and were attacked by soldiers embedded in the trenches’ walls. The soldiers that crawled out were picked off by crews of Beetle Riders with their leashed tridents, a cruel and crude weapon that yanks out hearts and rib cages.”

  Terraclon was quiet and turned to Polexima. “Why don’t we have trenches on all sides of our nation?” he asked.

  “Deep, wide trenches,” she said. “And why don’t we use tridents on retractable leashes?”

  “And why would the two sides fight each other at the usual places of battle . . . as if they had agreed to meet there?”

  “I do not know,” said the queen. “It seems foolish to . . .”

  “It was honorable!” said Sahdrin, interrupting. “Or it was. We had a code once.”

  “Assuming a code of honor in an enemy is stupid,” said Polexima. “The Hulkrites built a vast empire in a matter of decades because they had no honor whatsoever.”

  The king winced, then looked annoyed with his wife. “You will have to fight in the old way. If you are planning some kind of preemptive attack on the East, then I should lead it.”

  “What?” gasped Polexima.

  “Who else will do it? I am one of the few remaining kings in this land. And the only one qualified to lead an army.”

  Polexima glared at her husband as her lips drew tight. She held her breath, but before she could stop herself she laughed out loud, in a sharp, coarse way that embarrassed her. “Excuse me,” she said. “I meant no offense. But thank you, Sahdrin, for the kind offer. So very brave of you,” she said, and then burst out laughing again.