They stepped off the spiral platform to the short tunnel leading to the ant queen’s chamber, and found just a little ant traffic. The ant queen was smaller than Moonsinger had expected, and she still used her legs, shifting back and forth as her attendant ants groomed and fed her. “The egg-layer is rather small,” he said to Feegalo as he watched the nursing ants crawl to a chain of freshly laid eggs, then take each one to the hatching chambers.
“She has not been our ant queen for long,” Feegalo said as he removed a prayer cloth to reveal a delicate container of Trellana’s urine. “She will grow much larger if . . . if . . .”
“If what?” asked Moonsinger.
“If Goddess Ant Queen wills it,” Feegalo said. Again, Moonsinger saw what he thought was a smirk on the priest’s face in the combined light of their torches. He knows something he’s not telling me.
“And you have set some of Trellana’s urine before her since her departure?”
“Of course I have. I’m offended by the question. Excuse me while I conduct the ritual.”
Feegalo raised the container to the ant queen as she probed his shoulders with his antennae. He muttered in the Holy Tongue and then smashed the jar into pieces. The liquid within it sprayed in little beads that were caught on the claws of visiting ants, where they would spread it throughout the mound. As Feegalo bent to pick up the pieces of the jar, Moonsinger bent to help him.
“No need for that, Brother. This is my duty.”
“I do not mind at all,” said Moonsinger as he used his sleeve to mop up a bead.
“You should not, Brother. Only a priest may handle a Vessel of Sacred Urine, even after it has been broken.”
Moonsinger nodded and handed Feegalo the pieces, which he set inside his handbasket, then fussily rearranged.
The two of them were returning on the ant up the spiral when Moonsinger sniffed, his nose detecting that musty and acrid smell again as they neared one of the mushroom chambers. Is that odor coming from there?
“I have never seen a Palzhanite mushroom farm,” he said to the priest.
“They are little different here than the ones at Loobosh,” said Feegalo, ending his sentence with his pompous little laugh. “Or at any other mound.”
“Well, I should like to see one. For one thing, I’m hungry.”
Before Feegalo could stop him, Moonsinger slid off the riding couch and approached the farm’s entry, his torch before him. The odor—stronger now—was sharply sour. He held up his torch, and saw that across the chamber’s outside wall was a faint coating of bright velvet. He stepped through the rough opening and saw the chamber had no human tending to it and, frighteningly, its mushrooms were dead or dying. They were withered or liquifying under clumps and tendrils of a bright yellow mold.
“Mold!” Moonsinger whispered, and felt sick in two ways. “Yellow Mold! Pious Feegalo!” he screamed towards the entry. Moonsinger felt his skin rising up and trying to crawl off his body. An ache in his skull was throbbing and turning into an ear-pounding. Bright, painful lights flashed in his eyes. He felt his lungs shrivel, and ran from the chambers as he coughed, knowing he should not inhale. When he was out in the tunnel, he inhaled the better air, then took the sleeve he had moistened with urine and rubbed it over the velvety mold. The mold should have disappeared in an instant; but it remained and seemed to grow before him.
“Good gods!” he said, staggering before he collapsed. As he looked around in the dark, he realized Feegalo and the carrier ant had left without him. And he’s likely fleeing this mound!
Princess Jakhuma ate the last of her stash of acorn shreds, sharing the final bits with Kula and some other mothers with babies at their breasts. A woman of her country, staring into their circle, came towards the princess humbly, with large, pleading eyes. Her cheekbones were all too prominent in her face. She extended her thin arms and bony fingers in the fashion of praying as she bowed her head. “Please, Princess. I am your loyal subject Tsepalang. If you have any more food to share, I have been without it for days now.”
“I am sorry, Tsepalang,” said Jakhuma. “I eat what little remains, not to nourish myself, but to feed the babies who can only suckle for food. We have, all of us, lived some years. These babies may die before they see one summer.”
The woman, looking shamed, dropped her head. “Yes, Princess. Your heart is as great as your wisdom.” The woman bowed again, but was too weak to raise her head and stumbled before she fell.
“Sit,” Jakhuma commanded her, then reached into her garment for a last bit of acorn. “Take this,” she said, and pressed it into the woman’s mouth. “Our men are returning soon and I know they will bring us food.” Tsepalang, touched by the princess’s compassion, wiped at her eyes as she chewed the bit.
Jakhuma looked to the sky, and saw a few clouds as the sun touched the western horizon and its bottom melted and blurred. She was praying to her rain goddess when she heard a clamor in the other camps. Sebetay and his men were returning from the border wall. She saw their weapons stained with human blood, not insect, and her heart sank. The men’s expressions were fierce as they pushed through the Spit Witch’s camp to reenter the safety of their own. Spit Witch and the others in their camp paid the returning Ledackis little attention, too weak from their own hunger to make any threats. Jakhuma braced herself, and set her face to hide her disappointment.
Sebetay struggled to reach her, exhausted and out of breath. His legs and arms were covered with deep scratches and his shoulder was bloody with a knife wound. She looked at the other men behind him as they collapsed to their knees, a heaving mass of fright and fatigue.
“I am sorry, Princess,” said Sebetay as he tried not to sniffle and look weak. “We captured a big, fat leaf-cutter, but . . .”
She watched as he lost control of himself, bending in half to clasp his knees with his hands. He was hiding his wet eyes from her, biting his fist to quiet himself, but his shame and his suffering had erupted in convulsive gasps as his body trembled. Her own tears came and she looked down at him, across the sinews of his bloodied back, and was stirred by a whirlwind of different emotions. Beyond her despair, she realized there was a darkly sweet ache at the center of her misery. He had been a common soldier in their old country. Now, she knew, she loved him.
“You bring honor to our nation,” she said, and touched his shoulder and felt the warmth of his skin. “All of you fine Ledacki men have risked your lives to try and save ours. Your mission was not possible.”
Sebetay stood, gritting his teeth to steady himself, and looked in her eyes. He had become, once again, her valiant protector. “I must be truthful,” he said.
“Speak your truth.”
“Princess, there is no future for what remains of our Meat Ant people beyond that wall.”
She was quiet, aware that everyone around them was listening.
“But there is no future for us here,” she said.
“I do not disagree. But the people of that nearby country are not letting us in. And if they were to let us in tomorrow, we would be sharing it with all . . .”
“With all of those people,” Jakhuma said, jerking her head to the other camps.
“And worse. Far worse,” he said, lowering his eyes.
She looked at the baby, who pulled away from her breast and had something like a smile on her little face.
“Where would we go?” she asked Sebetay.
“Away from here,” he said.
“Ledack . . . or whatever it has become . . . could not be worse than here.”
“No place could be worse than here.”
The two were quiet, looking into each other’s eyes, silently relaying their fear of returning to the South and their greater fear of staying in the camp.
“We’ll leave in the morning,” she said, raising her voice, knowing that all had been listening. “I command no one to follow,” she said, turning to those around her. “Though all of you may join us.”
“We’re going on a journey,�
�� said Kula as she patted the back of No Name, who was draped across her shoulder. “But I think it’s time we named you before we go. I’m going to call you Hopeful. Would you like that?”
The baby burped. Jakhuma smiled . . . and so did the rest of her people.
Chapter 42
A Fine Day of Reckoning
Polexima was not comfortable wearing armor. She could not imagine anyone ever was, as her body plates banged against those of the driver in the saddle they shared. Punshu had prodded their roach south, near the shores of the Great Freshwater Lake and he spat every so often as he chewed a plug of kwondle bark. In the lustrous chitin of the roach she saw the pink and orange of the dawn as the sun edged up and painted the mountainous clouds with blood and fire. It had been a long night of travel, but at last they reached the corner of the lake, where they were to turn east and cross into enemy territory, the direction marked by a twig tower with a bloodred arrow at its top.
“Left,” she said to Punshu, who adjusted his grips along the roach’s antennae. It felt like a strange and unnatural thing to do, but she raised up the sword at her side—a sword she had never swung—and tilted its end towards the Barley Lands. From behind her she heard the tapping of claws on the sand. As her arm grew tired, she wondered how long she could hold up the sword, this light, little thing made for a child to train with. Here I am, a lame woman riding a roach into war. And people are following me, ready to fight, because they believe in me as their queen.
I wish I believed it myself.
They passed under a drying chamise shrub, with thick clusters of tubular flowers that fell and drifted over the roaches like sleepy little ghosts. Ahead in a clearing was a locust cage, where pilots stood at its front, awaiting the queen’s arrival. She waved her sword and they bowed, entered the cage, then cut the rope that released its back panel. The first locust that emerged flew north to Cajoria to confirm her arrival. The second flew east to the Barley Lands. The third pair circled in a wide arc above them.
The procession picked up speed when the roaches’ smaller antennae lashed and snapped, drawn by the scent of other roaches. After weaving under a canopy of mallows, the procession emerged to find the sleds of the Britasytes sparkling in the newborn sun. Just beyond them, men of the Plep clan completed the dismantling of the border wall to allow for a crossing. The sight was frightening to Polexima and made her stomach flip. Here it was: this entry point to war, to danger, to certain carnage. “Mother Cricket,” she prayed aloud, “I ask for Your protections and seek Your guidance.” Breathing deeply, she felt herself sinking below her fear to find her resolution, and within a few breaths the trembling ended. Punshu, sensing her confidence, turned and looked at her, smiling to reveal the bright white teeth that come with youth. She envied those teeth, so large and straight and shining in his dark and beautiful face. Anand had told her that Britasytes only married strong, bright, or beautiful outsiders in order to improve their race, and she wondered if Punshu wasn’t an expression of all three. He halted their roach as Zedral rode out on his own to greet them.
“Are we ready, Chieftain?” she asked as their roaches’ antennae made a thwarted attempt to probe each other.
“We are . . . Your Majesty,” he said with a faint, brief smile that failed to mask his apprehensions. “Once our banner is lowered, proceed quickly.”
“Understood.”
Polexima watched as he rode back to the caravan, then tethered his riding roach to the chain of them at its tail. After climbing the ladder of the last sled, he shouted, “Hoist!” through its voice-cone. The first sled raised the long, unfolding pole with its banner of Madricanth. They waited for what seemed too long before a pole in the East rose with the green and orange banner of Katydid.
“Permission has been granted to the roach people to enter,” said Polexima under her breath. Though it may be the last time they ever do. The Britasyte sleds lurched forward, followed by the reserve of loose roaches.
“Forward,” Polexima shouted, raising her sword, and Punshu slackened the antennae. The queen and her driver rocked in their saddle as their roach crawled over the break in the wall, to follow the Pleps into the Barley Lands. Polexima looked over her shoulder. She exhaled in relief to see that thousands more mounted roaches were, yes, still following. Ahead of her, she saw Seed Eater laborers dismantling their crude, loose wall of sand and ant droppings to allow for their entry.
The queen knew her mind should be focused on the war effort and alert to attackers, but she felt a strange satisfaction as, at last, she entered this foreign country. All her life she had wondered what it was like in this place that was so close, yet so forbidden. She had seen harvester ants and Seed Eater soldiers as corpses, and sometimes as captives at assemblies. But here they were, brown ants in their own country, retreating from the roaches to the tops of weeds and barley stalks to wag their gasters and shoot their poisons before they abandoned their territory.
The queen and Punshu pulled up their goggles and breathing masks from around their necks before the poison could reach their lungs and eyes. To their right she saw the first of the pebble mounds and the scrawny, tawny-skinned villagers who had cleared the wall. They had the slow gait of the weak and hungry, and seemed unafraid; but they tensed when the Britasyte’s sand-sleds pulled to the side of the route to let the parade continue—a continuation of armored warriors on riding roaches. Polexima watched as the villagers whispered, pointed, then quietly went east. She turned over her shoulder to see them all running, as best as they could, to a fresh release of Bee-Jorite acorns.
She looked to the pebble tower, where an armored sentry was all too stiff as he stared at her from under his orange helmet beneath the Katydid banner. The sentry was stunned, slow to realize that he was witnessing an invasion. He reached for the knotted end of a rope to sound his wooden warning bell when an arrow cut through his wrist and severed his hand. A broad arrow found his neck and sliced through his throat. His head tumbled out of the tower and landed before the queen’s roach, which would not proceed until it had licked it, then eaten it.
We can kill each one we pass, but they’ll know we’re here soon enough, thought Polexima as she looked into the sky. The locust scouts circled above her, signaling that the Bee-Jorites were safe from attack—for the moment. She took the bow from around her back, loaded its string, and pretended she could aim it as she searched through the weeds. Her arm tired quickly. “You are an old lady,” she muttered to herself.
Emperor Volokop was seated on his raised throne at the edge of the sacrificial pit as his high priest and Mantis priestess completed the morning prayers to Lumm Korol and His mount, Night Mantis, as they disappeared with the stars. The clerics sang the ancient words as their cenobites counted severed right ears in piles of twenty-eight. The prayers came to a halt when it was certified that three hundred and sixty-four ears had been counted and piled into the ceremonial turquoise basins. One was set under Night Mantis’s triangular head, and the second was set on top of it so that Lumm could enjoy their blood and aroma. It annoyed Volokop that the laborers who were refilling the pit were wailing and sniffling when they had been warned against it. He summoned the moon priest and whispered in his ear.
“Blessed subjects of His Divine Emperor Volokop,” shouted the priest. “Do not desecrate this offering to the gods with your sniveling. Be joyful that your loved ones have been relieved of this life and honored to enter the Land of Ever Young, where they are drinking and eating at the Endless Feast, seated under the shade of Goddess Katydid. Be happy, be relieved, and know . . . they wait for you to join them.”
When the last of the sand and soil was tamped down, the high priest and the Mantis priestess circled around its rough surface, then up the throne’s platform to transfer the string of skull-shaped moonstones from the idol to the emperor. The beads were slipped over his crown’s antennae, but they caught on the protruding lumps and thick folds of his deformities. The emperor tugged the string down to what had once been his ne
ck.
“Lumm Korol accepts your offering and offers His grace, Your Imperial Majesty,” said the high priest.
“Night Mantis wishes you the quickest victory,” said the priestess.
Volokop looked to his brothers, sons, cousins, and nephews, standing to the right of his throne in their gleaming armor of golden beetle chitin. “Noble princes and princelings, Moon has blessed this war. We honor Him by retaking what He granted to His chosen people at the center of the Sand.” The emperor rose from his throne, and unsheathed his sword as he joined the clerics at the bottom of the platform, slowly shifting the bulk of his legs as the princes and princelings lined up to kneel before the three. Each was tapped on the shoulder by the emperor’s sword, slapped in the face by the priest, then kissed on the cheek by the priestess. When all were blessed, the emperor raised the curved end of his sword. “To war!” he shouted in the Four Directions, and the message was repeated to the ends of the vast camp. Hundreds of thousands of common soldiers raised their swords, then filed to the cages to release their ants and ride them on the sand route leading west. As the first of their divisions rode out, the imperial elite fighters went to their corral and uncaged the largest and strongest of the war ants to follow after the fodder soldiers. Further away, the princes and princelings rode to their corral, where they climbed up two-sided ladders to mount the stilted ants to be the last to arrive at the invasion and prepare for the emperor’s entry.
How long I have waited—how long my people have waited—to solve this Slopeish problem, Volokop thought as his own mount and its driver were brought to him, a gorged and sturdy war ant that could support his weight. Little stinger ants were crawling over and under its massive abdomen that rose to reveal its end beading with poison. The emperor’s bonneted servants helped him up a gilded ramp to reach the saddle-throne that had been customized to fit his immensely swollen legs and buttocks. As he looked into the sky to check for rain clouds, he noticed a pair of blue insects winging in a strange pairing in the distance.
The Prophet of the Termite God Page 39
