As Stubby twitched, he tried to regain control of himself, shouting broken words. Tal stepped on the boy’s chest and plunged into it with his boot until he heard it crunch. “Hold still,” Tal whispered, then kicked at Stubby’s cheeks until teeth flew from his bloody mouth. He kicked the side of Stubby’s head, harder and harder, until he heard a crack in his neck. The boy’s body went still and then his eyes rolled up in his head.
“C’mon, boys, let’s push this thing over and make it quick,” Keel said. His sons gathered on one side of the cage and pushed it towards Stubby’s body to trip it for the fall. Pleckoo’s heart pummeled his lungs as the cage fell and his back slammed against the sand. Save me, Hulkro, he tried to say aloud as his body was stunned with the impact. Keel and his sons, making the sounds of ravenous termites, cut up the ropes that bound the cage’s gate, then tore it off. The sons poured into the cage, surrounded Pleckoo, and made the sign of the Termite by curling their fingers into little antennae while squeezing their eyes shut. They snickered quietly as they sawed at his ropes with the teeth of their daggers. Pleckoo’s eyes filled with tears as they freed him from his confines, but he was too shocked to move his limbs.
The sharp stench of the shit-soaked ropes was stifling. “Lord Termite, you stink!” Tal shouted. “Like your mother’s rotten hole, you do!” Tal hauled up Pleckoo’s limp body by his neck and pushed him up and out of the cage’s opening. Keel jerked him up, then tossed him onto the sand. Pleckoo felt blood returning to his limbs, both agonizing and a relief. He got to all fours, slowly, then stood and wobbled. He tried to back away as Keel and his sons surrounded him in a circle. They scowled at him through the eyeholes of their hoods and he heard their snickers.
“Look at him,” said Tal. “He’s got pocky skin!”
Pleckoo looked at the skin of his arms and legs, which bore their impressions of the ropes and made him look like a basket. Much of his chest and stomach were covered in scabs and wet scrapes. An intense nausea overwhelmed him and he fell. Kill me! Make it quick! Pleckoo tried to say, but all he could do was wheeze as Keel and his sons pressed in.
“What’s that?” said Keel. “You want us to kill you? End your misery here and start it anew in the Netherworld?”
Pleckoo knew Keel would not be merciful but would protract his torture, keep him just a step from death to extend his pleasure. The two looked in each other’s eyes, glaring. How would he do it? With one final whipping, stretched over a pebble until he bled to death? Or would they fill his naked skin with darts to watch him twitch until he succumbed to their poisons? As Keel stared in his eyes in silence, Pleckoo heard his own breathing and soon it seemed as loud as a windstorm. Keel reached for Pleckoo’s wrist and jerked him to his feet.
“Go,” Keel said, pointing his chin to the North.
What? Pleckoo mouthed.
“I said go! Before anybody sees you.”
Pleckoo’s legs felt as brittle as straw when Keel released his grip. Pleckoo was struggling not to black out and fall when Keel pushed him.
“Get out of here, Pleckoo! Before I change my mind.”
Pleckoo scrambled away with the world wobbling around him. As he limped as quickly as he could, he looked south over his shoulder, sure that at any moment darts or arrows would be filling his back and this cruel game would come to an end. But Keel and his sons just stood there, looking right to left from inside their hooded heads, worried that someone had seen them.As Pleckoo stumbled north, the strength of his legs returned and his arms started swinging. He squeezed through drying weeds and yellowing grass, veering around the midden’s shelters where old women or children might sight him. As he got further north, he could dimly see the bortshu forest beyond Cajoria’s borders and he could smell the dankness of the Freshwater Lake. Strangely elated, he imagined reaching the border wall and climbing up it to slide down its other side—to the place, he had been told, “where priestly magic ends.”
Whatever was beyond that wall, it had to be safer than Bee-Jor. At the very least, it was a better place to die.
Yormu lay under the tar weeds, having to breathe their difficult reek. “All right, sons, let’s hurry off to war,” he heard Keel say. “Let’s see if we can’t kill a few Seed Eaters and win us a nice house up on the mound.”
“If not our own palace. I like that one Anand was living in,” said Tal to his brothers’ laughter.
Yormu muffled his breathing as he waited for them to leave. The pain in his side was throbbing again, but a worse ache was in his head, like mallets banging from the inside. They let Pleckoo go! They freed him just to torture my son! He muffled his breathing with his hands and thought back to those days after the war, when Anand had set the new order. Yormu remembered shaking his head when Anand told him that, for now, the foreman of every caste should remain in his position to provide a “smooth transition,” and later there would be something called an “election.” If Yormu had his way, he would have hung Keel and Tal by their ankles in the center of the midden to be gnawed on by moon roaches until they were nothing but stinking bones.
Yormu took deep breaths to calm himself, then realized he had to find somebody to try and report what happened. He crawled from under the tar weeds and dragged himself to the fallen cage. He was using its bars to stand when a group of boys ran into the dew station. The tallest and oldest of them with a fuzzy mustache came at Yormu, his hand near his dagger holster. “Who are you?” he shouted, rage in his face. Yormu shook his head, weakly, and leaned against the cage.
“You released him! You released Pleckoo!” the boy shouted when Yormu staggered and fell. His opened mouth revealed his missing teeth and tongue as he cried out in pain and clutched his broken ribs, furiously shaking his head no as his tears flew. His left hand pointed weakly to the East where Keel and family were on their way to war. His right hand tapped his nose and then pointed north to Pleckoo as he tried to mouth his name and emitted only a popping sound.
The boys stared at Yormu in silence. “Traitor! Traitor!” Fuzzy Mustache shouted, whipping out his dagger.
Chapter 41
Realities
Brother Moonsinger was hopeful as he wandered through the empty southern palace of Palzhad to survey its chambers. It had been abandoned for centuries, but as his three-toothed sandals stirred up clouds of dust in its corridors, he saw its potential as a place of higher learning. Old Pious Feegalo of Palzhad followed him dutifully, his tattered long-coat making little rolls of the floor’s thick and fibrous dirt as it dragged. They entered a vast hall with a domed ceiling, and Moonsinger recognized it as a hall of assembly where priests, officers, and royalty of all the mounds had planned their battles and celebrated their victories. On its northern wall was a faint mosaic of Mantis with Her six weapons and the bleeding Moth god clutched in Her mouth. I’m not sure about restoring that! he thought.
The hall had been a sunny place—ideal for the writing and reading of scrolls—but the great quartz windows were pocked and cracked from windblown sand, and they were stained with a stubborn grime. He walked towards one window with a break in its quartz, when he smelled something both sour and musty and wondered where it came from.
“Do you smell that?” he asked the priest.
“I’m afraid I haven’t much sense of smell left,” said Pious Feegalo, whose tiny nose had just slits for nostrils. “All I can smell here is neglect.”
Moonsinger lowered his head to sniff through the window’s break and was astonished by what he saw. Stretching to the southern horizon were the refugees from Hulkren. He had known they were there, but the weeds that had hidden their numbers were gone—and now their numbers were staggering! The last time he had looked from the palace to the Dustlands, the refugee camps had been further away, and there was a buffer of weeds between them and the border wall. Now, that buffer was gone, and the refugees had divided into hundreds of factions and were camped in a patchwork of flimsy fences, filled with flimsier shelters. They’ve destroyed all the weeds! A good storm coul
d shift everything and throw them into chaos!
On top of the border wall, he could make out a skeleton crew of Bee-Jorite border guards mounted atop their patrol ants. The ants weaved slowly and clumsily through each other as they paced east and west. Among them were unmounted sentry ants, looking almost as sluggish. Moonsinger looked over to the stadium’s arena, where the markets had been suspended, and he saw a spread of ants that were listlessly crawling, and a few that were dead. The Hulkrish war had diminished Palzhad’s modest number of ants, but in the last moon they had recovered, were almost flourishing. Why weren’t they off in a parade to gather leaves? Why hadn’t the dead ones been dragged to the midden? It’s too soon to be slowing down for the winter rest!
He heard, faintly, what might have been the shouts of refugees from below the wall, then watched as an unmounted patrol ant raised its gaster in the attack mode and quickly disappeared. She looks like she’s been yanked! he thought. He heard cheers, and realized the ant had been caught and killed. A short time later, the ant’s rustlers appeared, hauling her corpse behind them as they returned to their camp. The Bee-Jorite patrolmen were threatening arrows, but Moonsinger saw they were few in number. New bands of rustlers came towards the wall to capture their own ants, emboldened by the success of the others. These people are risking their lives just to feed themselves!
His heart stopped for a moment, and he held his breath when he realized there was a much greater problem. “I need to visit the ant queen,” he blurted out.
“Brother Moonsinger . . . you are not a priest,” said Pious Feegalo with a haughty chuckle. “Only a priest may visit the egg-layer in her chambers.”
“Pious Feegalo, may I kindly remind you that King Nuvao ordered you to show me every part of this mound that I wish to see,” he said, sniffing the air again. “And it is urgent that we check on the ant queen.”
The priest had a strange little smirk that made his nose look even smaller. “As you wish, Brother. I need to visit her myself.”
Sebetay and his men were on their hands and knees at the northern edge of the camps, examining and repairing their noose. It was at the end of a rope they had fashioned from tightly twisted rags of their own clothing. They stood, nearly naked, holding shields made of acorn husks with their left hands and gripping assorted weapons with their right. Sebetay was not sure if the rope was strong enough to capture an ant, and worried that if it landed on the thorn of one’s back that it might shred and snap. Then he worried that he was not strong enough to hurl the noose at all.
The journey to the wall had been both exhausting and contentious as they negotiated, pushed, and squirmed their way through different, dangerous camps. Many refugees would not let them pass until the Ledackis raised their weapons and threats were shouted. A skirmish with some Stink Ant people had resulted in a wound to his leg. The Stink Ant men filed their teeth into sharp points, and one of them had bitten into Sebetay’s calf and tried to tear it off. He had to jab at the biter’s neck with his spear until he finally severed the man’s spine. The beads of blood that had dried on Sebetay’s calf were an itchy reminder of the gruesome encounter, and he fought the urge to scratch at them.
He saw the rumors about the sentry ants were true—they were fewer in number, smaller, and seemed slow and clumsy as they paced atop the border wall. Only a few of them were mounted by patrolmen. As the patrolmen shouted threats in their strange tongue, he realized from the pitch of their voices that they were boys—boys who looked new to their weapons and lost inside their oversized armor. Sebetay turned to his men and pointed at the sky as a signal for prayer.
“Great Meat Ant,” he prayed aloud. “Help us feed Your people. Bless us with abundant meat so we may serve You better.” After his men lined up behind him, he strutted forward, raised the noose, and twirled it with one arm as his shield bobbed in his left. A sentry ant at the top of the wall turned in his direction when she caught his scent. She raised her gaster and then her antennae before she raced down the wall with her mandibles parted. A patrol boy was on the ant’s back, having lost control of it, unable to aim an arrow as he shouted his threats.
Sebetay looked up into the ant’s growing face when he hurled the noose, sure he had thrown it too soon. It flew over the antennae and dropped on her node. “Pull!” he shouted, and the men yanked on the rope and cinched the noose. An arrow bounced against Sebetay’s shield when the ant was jerked forward and off its legs. The patrol boy’s threats turned to tearful crying when he lost his seat and fell. He turned and struggled up the wall, slipping in its loose bits of sand, until a woman, perhaps his mother, pulled him to safety.
The ant was not theirs yet, but Sebetay could almost taste its blood, and he grinned. He used the loop on his shield to hang it from his neck and protect his back before joining his men on the rope. They hauled the ant south but when they reached the edge of the camps, they saw a wall of men who looked like living skeletons. They were a mix of different tribes, but all of them were weak and staggered as they stood. They did not beg as the men and their carcass came forward, but stood in a disturbing silence with their hands outstretched, their mouths agape.
“Halt!” Sebetay shouted to his men, realizing they could never drag the ant corpse through this camp, much less the hundred after it, without it being ravaged. “Cut it into three and shave it!” he commanded. The men set to work at shearing off the ant’s legs and antennae, and then chopped through the node and petiole. Afterwards they used their random blades to scrape the sharp bristles off the divided parts until they were smooth enough to carry on their shoulders.
“Before we go back, we’ll eat some,” said Sebetay. “We’ll need our strength.”
The living skeletons watched in silence as Sebetay scooped out a handful of lymph from the opened end of the ant’s head and scraped it onto his men’s palms. They licked and sucked and gasped in relief to taste food and feel it in their stomachs. When all had eaten, they squirmed under the divided ant to raise its pieces. “One . . . two . . . three!” Sebetay shouted, and the Ledackis rose with their burdens and marched. We’ll avoid the Stink Ant camp, Sebetay thought. But he knew other, perhaps worse, obstacles were all along the way.
The army of skeletons had multiplied and were standing ten-deep, unmoving except for their blinking eyes. “Step aside!” Sebetay shouted, threatening with his spear in his free hand. “Step aside or be killed!”
The rest of his men kept pace with him, their teeth bared and their brows furrowed, as they brandished pikes and swords and screeched and roared. But the army of skeletons did not part. The Ledackis pushed forward, their pikes piercing chests and their swords slicing limbs and heads. As the first wall of the starving fell away, they were replaced by fifty more. These living skeletons pressed together in a tighter wall, blocking the Ledackis and their precious cargo, weakly reaching for the ant meat. The Ledackis attempted to push through but were having a hard time breathing in the density of humans; the air was poisoned and stank with the bitter breath of famine.
Sebetay looked behind him to see the living skeletons were pressing on their rear. Hundreds had surrounded his men, a barrier of skin and bones that left them no room to fight. Before Sebetay knew it, the ant head on their shoulders was drifting away from them, as if it were a leaf fallen on a stream. He looked right, then left to see the abdomen and thorax floating away atop a sea of spindly arms. Soon after, he heard the crack of chitin as the pieces were broken open, then screams and shouting as the starving fought over every drop of lymph.
“That’s our food!” Sebetay shouted inside the mob. “We caught that ant! Return it—or we’ll cut open your stomachs to take back what you stole!”
No one heeded his threats. Unable to use their blades, Sebetay and his men pulled to the center, pushing and shoving the living skeletons to prevent themselves from being crushed and smothered. Once the ant carcass was consumed, the horde fell away. The Ledackis were grateful for the space and air, and caught their breath. Sebetay looked a
round and saw a mass of trampled corpses on the sand, and the bits of the ant’s chitin. A few of the trampled were alive and struggling to crawl or rise. From out of a nearby camp, he saw what looked like spiders rolled in broken straw, then realized they were men in a frightening covering of grass bits glued with human blood.
“Raise your weapons!” Sebetay shouted to his men, sure this was a new threat; but the straw men were scavengers, not predators. They crawled onto the corpses to claim them, hissing and snarling at the Ledackis before dragging the dead through an opening in the wall of their camp. The wall was quickly rebuilt before the straw men gathered in a circle to butcher the corpses with hand axes of shattered sand grains.
Sebetay was in shock as he stared at these men—-if they were men—then fainted from holding his breath too long. He dropped his head to fill it with blood, then raised it to hear the gruesomely wet ripping sounds of the scavenger-cannibals flaying the corpses. When he stared too hard, they stood to hiss at him, and threatened him with the bloody ends of their tools. When he didn’t move, they hurled bits of the butchered humans. He snapped out of his shock when an ear, then a pair of testicles, landed on his face, then slid down his chest.
“South,” he said, turning to his men, whose faces mirrored his horror. And once we get there, then what? What do I tell my princess Jakhuma?
Moonsinger had traveled farther than he expected into Palzhad’s depths. His arm was tired from carrying a torch by the time they had arrived at the ant queen’s chamber. “We have traveled very far,” he said to Feegalo.
“Yes, Brother,” said the priest with a touch of condescension. “I would have thought you knew our ant queen and her brood chambers are down deeper than all the other mounds on the Slope—or rather, of Bee-Jor and the Slope if you will. It is the oldest and largest of all our mounds.”
“I did know that, but I had never experienced it,” said Moonsinger as they dismounted from the carrier ant. “But I might add that the ant also seems slow. All the ants seem slow.”
The Prophet of the Termite God Page 38
