Last King of Osten Ard 02 - Empire of Grass

by Tad Williams

  Tyrant. Even hearing the word made Simon want to growl like a bear, but to be compared to Elias . . . ! These wretched, grasping men! “We have lowered the taxes on the peasants because many of them are all but starving after several dry winters, and the harvests this year will be even smaller.” Simon was doing his best to stay patient. He had discussed it all with Pasevalles and felt certain of his position. “While in the last years, you Erchester guildsmen with your tariffs and tolls have taken larger and larger shares of their market produce. That is to say, in truth, you lot raised the taxes, and so now you must yourselves pay more for the common good.”

  This reasoning, of course, quieted them not at all. Simon wished he could rub their faces in the real threats they all faced, especially the renewed threat of the Norns, but that was largely still a secret.

  “Enough!” he said at last, silencing them for a moment. “Do you not remember I buried my daughter-in-law scarcely a sennight ago?” He gestured at his mourning clothes. “Do you think I wear black because I like the fashion? Go away now and come back to me with something other than loud complaints. I have my own figures, you know, so don’t try to fool me—you are not the only ones with a counting house and clerks to make sense of all these numbers.”

  When Oystercatcher and the aldermen had been shown out, murmuring among themselves, Simon leaned back and wagged his hand for the page. “Wine, and less water in it this time,” he said, then turned to Tiamak, who had been watching silently throughout the discussion. “There are times I can almost understand Elias—before he went mad, I mean. A little harsh discipline would not go amiss with men like that.”

  Tiamak made a discontented face. “I wish you would not say things like that, Majesty.”

  “I’m not talking about hanging them, man, I’m talking about a broomstick across the backside like Rachel the Dragon used to give me.”

  “I understand what you mean, Majesty—Simon—but the Hayholt is as leaky as a cane basket. Everything you say will eventually be whispered around Market Square and other, farther places, and they will not believe you were talking about a mere spanking.”

  “Well, damn everything to Hell, who could put up with this?” Simon glowered. “There’s a reason I used to let Miri do most of this sort of thing. She’s better at it than I am.”

  “Let us say that she is less surprised by how difficult people can be,” Tiamak suggested.

  Simon gave him a long look. “Something is bothering you. And it’s not just how I barked at Oystercatcher.”

  Tiamak looked a bit guilty. “What makes you say that?”

  “Knowing you for more years than I can tell. What troubles you?”

  “Nothing I would trouble you with in turn. That is my task, sire, to take care of small matters so you may act on the large ones.” Tiamak waved his hand, trying for a gesture of airy dismissal, but looking instead a bit unsettled.

  Simon wanted to pursue it, but he was tired and hungry and the day’s work had just begun. “Well, then, let us have something to eat and some cheerful talk before we must begin this nonsense again.” Tiamak looked relieved, and Simon couldn’t help wondering at that. “By the way, your lady wife, is she well?”

  Tiamak nodded. “Very busy with inquiries and work of her own, but otherwise happy and fit.”

  “And your own health? Robust, I hope?”

  “Yes, Majesty, and thank you for asking.”

  The king glared at him, only half-serious. “‘Majesty,’ again? With no one else around?”

  He bowed his head. “My apologies. Yes, Simon, my wife and I are both well, and thank you for asking.”

  * * *

  Thelía was writing a letter to her old mentor and friend the Abbess of Latria, but when she noticed the look on Tiamak’s face she put her quill down. “What is it? You look as though you have seen something dreadful, my husband.”

  He groaned and slumped into a chair. The stairs up to the fourth floor had made his leg ache. “I have. Or at least, something that makes me feel that way.”

  She brought him a cup of burdock wine. “Here, drink up and share your thoughts with me.”

  He had not planned to share his discovery with anyone, but Brother Etan, who had found the terrible book, was gone and the burden of so many secrets was beginning to exhaust him. Tiamak made a swift decision and prayed to He Who Always Steps On Sand that he would not regret it later. “Stay a moment,” he said. “Let me get something that I wish to show you.”

  Thelía looked over the contents of the box, which Tiamak had taken out and arranged across a piece of cloth on the table.

  “I had not wanted to make you a part of keeping a secret from the king and queen, but I begin to distrust my own judgement.”

  “What are those?” she asked, reaching a hand toward a trio of latticework silver balls. He had discovered as he set them out that they rattled.

  “Do not touch anything!” he said, louder than he had intended.

  She looked at him in surprise. “Why such a tone?”

  “Because we still do not know what killed Prince John Josua, and we do not know where these things have come from—and these were his. That is why I put on gloves.”

  “You think they are evil?” She moved a little farther back from the table.

  “I cannot say—I am not even certain what that would mean. But there could be something on them that made the prince ill.” He took a breath, then slid the box a little closer to his own seat. “As to what those silver balls are, I cannot say. Bells from a horse’s bridle? Beads from a necklace? But I have a question for you.” He gestured toward the collection. “Have you ever seen anything like these things? Could they be from the time of the Nabbanai Imperium? Or even ancient Khand?”

  Thelía gave him a strange look. “How would I know?”

  “Because to me, they all have the look of Sithi work.”

  “This castle was built atop a Sithi city. You may well be right about that—but what is your concern?”

  He took up the gray wooden circlet in his gloved hand, held it to the light so she could see it better. “The carving is old, but every cut is still sharp. And see the color! I think this is witchwood.”

  She squinted. “It is beautiful, in a way. But I ask you again, why the concern?”

  “Because as I told you, the box was hidden in John Josua’s study. Hidden like that dreadful book by Bishop Fortis.”

  “You should have told the king and queen about that,” she said. “As I already said.”

  He sighed. “There are many things I might have done, and it may be true that I should have done them. But the reasons I chose not to speak up are still real. I do not want to go to Simon and Miriamele with troubling news about their dead son until I am sure of my facts.”

  “John Josua had a forbidden book,” Thelía said with a shrug. “He hid a box of gewgaws that might be Sithi-made. Neither of those things seem unusual or unlikely for a scholar-prince living above the ruins of an old Sithi city.”

  “That book belonged to the wicked priest Pryrates, enemy of mankind, who plotted with the Norns . . . and with worse things. These objects—well, if they are Sithi, where did John Josua find them? The tunnels underneath the castle, at least those that lead to old Asu’a, were sealed off at the same time as Hjeldin’s Tower was filled with stones and locked, twenty years ago and more. We scoured the castle for anything belonging to Pryrates and destroyed all we found. How did John Josua get any of these things?”

  “I still do not understand why this box troubles you so.”

  “It is not the box, my good wife. In fact, it is particularly this.” He again held up the carved circle of silver-gray wood. “Can you guess what it might be?”

  She stared for a moment. “A frame for a small picture, perhaps? Or for a hand mirror?”

  “Yes—a mirror. Exactly.” He set it down a
gain. “Do you see this thin crack—as if it broke just enough for whatever was in it to be removed?”

  “You are making me fearful, husband. Your face is quite frightening.”

  “That is because I am frightened. The Sithi used mirrors like these to speak to each other—and, as we guessed from what we know of Pryrates, such mirrors, called Witnesses, could also be used to speak to . . . things. Things we do not understand. The sort of dark, nameless spirits that are spoken of in Pryrates’s book—which John Josua also had hidden away.”

  For a long moment Thelía did not speak. “You think he may have found a Sithi mirror,” she said at last. “One of these things you call ‘Witnesses’ . . . ?”

  “I fear it, yes. Worse, I fear such exploration may have had a part in his death.”

  “Then you must speak to the king about all this.” Her face now mirrored the strain he felt, the helplessness. “You must! If this is true, he and Queen Miriamele deserve to know.”

  “I know,” Tiamak said. “And that is what most frightens me.” He took another long swallow of his burdock wine. “Some truths, I cannot help thinking, are best left unlearned, and some secrets undiscovered. But I am the League of the Scroll now, for all purposes, since I will not hear from Binabik for many months, so it falls to me to worry and to decide.”

  “Not just you, husband,” she said, and got up from her seat to come and put her arms around his shoulders. He pushed the box away where she would not brush against it by mischance. “You are not alone in this world,” she said, her cheek against his. She smelled of rosemary and lavender and other growing things. It almost made him weep. “You have me to share your burdens.”

  “And that frightens me most of all,” he said. “Oh, Thelía, I wanted you nowhere near any of this. But I fear I have grasped too much and now it is all spilling from my hands.”

  8

  ReeRee

  Morgan floated up out of what seemed like a dreamless sleep. The hillside around his hiding place was covered with broken branches and damp leaves blown into mounds like ruined castles, but the storm had passed and the sky was a brilliant blue between the trees.

  His first waking movements started the small, warm bundle against his chest squirming. Long fingers reached up and pulled gently at his whiskers, which he had not shaved since the day before leaving with the Sithi, and the events of the stormy night came flooding back.

  He unrolled his cloak a little to look at the thing he was holding. As the light fell on it, the little animal made soft noises of pain or discontent—ree, ree, ree. It seemed to be favoring one of its forelegs.

  A pang of hunger dug at him, and for a moment he was looking at himself as if from outside, a lost young man making a pet out of a wild creature while he himself was starving. It’s the size of a plump hen, he thought. Or a rabbit that could feed me for days. But even as one cold, sensible part of him considered this, another part of him was horrified by the idea. The creature looked up at him, hare’s mouth gaping in concern, as if it understood his thought. Its eyes were far too much like a real child’s, with a frightened ring of white around the edges. A wave of revulsion rolled over him.

  This was madness. This must be the kind of thing his grandfather had told him about, when someone had been alone too long. Soon he would be talking to himself, perhaps even to imaginary people.

  “I won’t,” he said out loud. “I won’t let it happen.”

  Morgan leaned out and set the little animal down on the ground just in front of the crevice. It looked at him with wide eyes but made no effort to run or even crawl away.

  “Go on,” he said. “Off to your tree. Go!” He made a shooing motion, but the creature only stared back in wide-eyed alarm. Full of anger fueled by the stupid nastiness of hunger, he picked the little thing up roughly—it squeaked in pain—and carried it down the slope, then set it down in a dry spot and walked back to the crevice, resolutely not looking back.

  When he got back to the limestone outcrop he could still hear it crying. It was not the whine of a deserted puppy or the piping of a kitten, but a series of high-pitched moans, with hitching breaths between each forlorn “reeeee!” that sounded so much like a human child it made the hairs on his neck stand up.

  I have to find food, he told himself. I have to get out of this cursed, endless forest. I can’t afford to care about some animal.

  But in Morgan’s mind there now seemed a mysterious connection between the creature that had fallen from the tree and his young sister; it almost felt as though he had left a weeping Lillia behind in the forest.

  When he returned to the wreckage of the tree, he discovered the little animal curled silently on the ground, trying to hide its face against its own belly with indifferent success. For a moment Morgan thought it had died and his heart stuttered, though the sensible part of him still wondered why he even cared. But when he picked it up it opened its eyes and looked at him gravely.

  “Chik,” it said in a scolding tone, then more softly: “Reeeee. Ree.”

  “Maybe you’re a nighttime creature,” he said. “Maybe I need to let you go when it’s dark. But what are you?” He turned the animal on its back; it barked angry little chiks at him and kicked and squirmed. It had the twin rows of teats down the belly and nothing in the way of an obvious pizzle. “So you’re a she-Ree, not a he-Ree.” He laughed, then wondered if that might be a sign of encroaching madness. “But what kind of beast are you?” Morgan had never seen anything like her, apelike in some respects including the fingered hands, but with limbs and snout more like a rabbit or squirrel, and the stub of a tail at the bottom of her backbone. “What do you eat? And, for the love of our merciful Lord, what can I eat?” He hadn’t seen any berry bushes, nor anything else he recognized, and hunger was making him want to give up, lie down beneath a sheltering tree, and sleep. But he recognized the danger.

  That’s how it begins, he told himself. Someone told me that—you’re hungry, then you’re not so hungry, then you’re just sleepy. Then you die.

  Probably something his grandfather had said. Which reminded him—beetles? Had his grandfather once said he’d lived off beetles in the woods? His shrunken stomach fluttered at the idea, but whether from revulsion or hunger he could not say.

  Morgan’s new companion was reaching out over his shoulder, as if trying to snatch at something, her clawed hands stretched wide. He turned and saw a sort of gall or nut he hadn’t noticed growing on a bush near him, an object about the size of a chestnut and covered in thorny, tight-fitting scales. She waved her paw at it again and he reached out and twisted it loose from the branch. He gave it to her, but she could only use one of her forelegs—the other was still tucked protectively against her chest—and the nut or seed or whatever it was fell to the ground.

  Annoyed, Morgan bent and picked it up, then held it prickling against his thumb in place of her injured leg while she held the other side. She began gouging at it with her long teeth, and soon had peeled off a good portion of the skin. The inside was a pale cream color, like nut meat, but the smell was something more fruity.

  When she had eaten about half of it she let it go as though it no longer existed. Morgan picked it up, wiped away the dirt, then peeled off a bit more of the armored rind with his thumbnail. It didn’t smell sweet like a berry, but it still had a wholesome scent he liked. He nibbled a little bit and thought it tasted like nothing much, but at least it was not bitter. He waited to see if he had poisoned himself, but when a little time had passed and he felt nothing except the renewed awareness of how little was in his stomach right now, he peeled and ate the rest, then plucked the last few that the birds and insects had not attacked and ate another one. He offered a piece of it to his passenger, but she was apparently sated, at least with this particular delicacy.

  “I suppose I’ll have to give you a name. Who are you? Chik-ree? ReeRee?”

  He decided that she should
be called ReeRee, which sounded like a name, but she was a chikri, since he had seen others of her kind, perhaps even her family. He wondered for a moment if they missed her, but that made him think of Lillia and the rest of his own kin, and he did not want to linger on such thoughts. He cradled the beast in the crook of his arm as he went searching for more things to eat.

  Thus, a partnership was formed. Morgan let the little animal choose things she seemed to like, and in most cases it turned out he could eat them too. A few did not work out, like a cluster of red berries that ReeRee downed with glee but which Morgan vomited up a hundred steps later. But he found most of her diet edible, if not exactly what he would have chosen.

  Together they stripped the leaves off a flowering plant—they were peppery and made Morgan’s mouth water—and later found a tree whose fruit looked like small brown apples, but tasted like book paste and crunched like a honeycomb when you ate them. Acorns were too bitter for Morgan to eat more than a bite, but on the shaded ground where the acorns lay he found little grassy stems that ReeRee ate happily and Morgan managed almost to enjoy because they were moist.

  By the time they had reached the top of the hill behind the rocky crevice the sun had nearly topped the trees on the western horizon, and a wind had sprung up. He could already see that the top of this hill would not reveal anything beyond him but more forest—the crest was only halfway up a wide valley, with higher ground blocking his view of the distance. He decided that even though the storm had passed, he would sleep again in his rocky crevice.

  When they arrived back at the base of the outcrop he made a sort of bed for the little animal in his cloak, then, after long search to find dry wood, built a fire on the slope in front of his refuge. He had no meal except for a couple of the scaly fruits, and no meat to roast or wine to soothe his worries, but for the first time in at least a few days his stomach was not aching. As he sat and warmed his hands in front of the flames, he felt something inside him he could only think of as peace.