Prophets of the Ghost Ants

by Clark Thomas Carlton

  Accompanying the procession were hundreds of tiny grooming ants that clustered about the princess as Trellana mixed her perfume with queen-scent, the potion that sparked grooming behavior. The little groomers crawled on her trains and her towering but unfinished coiffure with their mouths opened to offer their regurgitation. Trellana brushed one away from her eye with more violence than usual to see the king staring sideways with his good eye.

  “Are you well today, my pretty?” Sahdrin asked.

  “Certainly I am, Father.”

  “You do not seem excited at the prospect of having a sister.”

  “Well, yes, of course I am excited,” she said with all the enthusiasm of a corpse. “But I am not excited at the idea that I might have to leave you within a year.”

  When they reached the portal to the queen’s chambers, Sahdrin’s servants helped him down from the ant and plucked off his false legs. Trellana began her entry, slowed by her ten-layered costume. Once inside, servants straightened her trains as she fanned herself with the clipping of an eye moth’s wing. She waited for the commoners to draw away before floating to the crib. Peeking over her fan, she stared silently at the infant’s face as the king, refitted with his legs, swung towards his wife on crutches carved from cricket femurs. He set his hand on her arm.

  “Was it a painful birth, Polly?”

  “The most painful since Trellana,” said the queen. “But I have the comfort of knowing it shall be my last.”

  The king swung himself toward the crib to join Trellana and look at the second female heir. “Congratulations, Mother,” Trellana finally said without making eye contact. “You have done very well.”

  “Thank you, Trelly. Her arrival will make us a little less sad when you leave,” said Polexima, but rather flatly.

  “She shall be very pretty,” Trellana said, pursing her small lips, glossy with green paint.

  “If she becomes even half the beauty you are, she will be very lucky indeed,” said Sahdrin.

  “Indeed,” said Polexima through a sigh, betraying her disagreement with her husband about her oldest daughter’s appearance. “That’s . . . that’s a rather ambitious coiffure,” said the queen as she looked up at her daughter’s jewel-embedded tower of hair.

  “It’s what they are wearing at the Kulfi and Goojinet Mounds,” Trellana said, continuing to stare at the baby.

  “I always have a learned orator in my chambers when I get my hair done,” ventured Polexima. “Perhaps you should be learning more about our history now, of the kinds of difficulties you and your pioneers might encounter.”

  “Oh, how tedious, Mother. We have plenty of people to address any complications.”

  “It’s not tedious. As you get older, you’ll realize there are advantages to cultivating yourself. You should be learning our poetry and sagas, our—”

  “But I’m not old, Mother,” Trellana snapped. “You are. I should like to enjoy my youth before cramming my head with the words of your ‘learned’ blatherers.”

  Polexima sighed again as Trellana frowned and fixated on a crack in her fingernail. The princes entered the room, drunk and noisy, and their sloppy entrance allowed the unwanted grooming ants in. Some of these ants surrounded the crib and frightened Pareesha with their offers of vomit. A servant swatted the groomers away, then brought the baby to the shushing queen, who saw the newborn was rooting for milk. As Polexima nursed, she broke into a folk tune from her native mound of Palzhad.

  Little one, life is short,

  But very long on sorrow.

  Make the most of every day

  And don’t live for tomorrow.

  The servants smiled at the song, especially as it used words from their caste dialect. Trellana, her brothers, and the king did not understand the lyrics, though, and looked annoyed by the queen’s singing. The priests did little to hide their distaste before Pious Dolgeeno interrupted.

  “If Her Highness will excuse me,” he said, before turning to his men. “Priests, the Princess Pareesha has survived the sting. We must descend to the cathedral and consult with the gods to tell us when Princess Trellana’s Fission trek should depart.”

  “Before you do,” said Polexima. “I should like to speak with the scouting party about the new site.”

  “Why?” asked Dolgeeno. “The site was determined and approved nearly a year ago.”

  “Who approved it? Not me. I will not send my daughter and thousands of our people into the wilderness without some assurance of their safety. I should like to speak with the scouting party before you leave for the cathedral.”

  “As you wish, Majesty,” said Dolgeeno, sending his quickest novitiate as a messenger.

  Trellana trembled. She wanted to be a queen but had never wanted to leave Cajoria and found a new colony. She had always been told this was her destiny, but the arrival of this infant was turning those words into a reality. She suddenly felt constricted by her clothing and unable to breathe. She fainted, and fell softly into the thickness of her own costume, her mouth open. Before they were chased away, grooming ants responded to the signal that she was hungry and she came to and realized the ants had regurgitated into her opened mouth.

  A short time later, the men who had found and approved the site of the new colony arrived at Polexima’s chambers and stood before her and the king and Trellana. Their expedition had begun nine months earlier when the priests’ oracles indicated the likely birth of a healthy princess.

  “The site of the new mound, a meadow surrounded by woods, is north and slightly east of here, a journey of eleven days by caravan, or two days on fleet ants, in the uninhabited territory known as Dranveria in the old tongue,” said Pious Estaine, the priest of the tree god Bortshu-mox. He wore a twin-winged seedpod as his miter and drew a map with his finger in a dust-box.

  “Eleven days by caravan? Two days by fleet ant? No Slopeish mound is supposed to be more than one day’s ride from another by fleet ant,” said Sahdrin, his voice loud but trembling.

  “How can I be so far from you, Father?” asked Trellana through whimpers.

  Estaine bowed to the king before responding. “Majesty, it is some distance, but the oracles were correct. The new site is a meadow surrounded by glorious stands of untouched bortshu trees . . . an ample supply of leaves for twenty generations.”

  Commander General Batra, the officer whose soldiers had accompanied Estaine, jutted out his box-like chin before speaking. Around his chest was a necklace of dried human ears from tree cannibals he had personally killed on the journey. “Pious Estaine is correct, Your Majesties. The new site is distant, but treaties with the Seed Eaters prevent us from going east and we risk war with the Carpenter tribe if we venture west.”

  “What is the terrain like?” Polexima asked.

  “It is still an extension of the Slope, so not prone to flooding, but with reddish sand,” Estaine answered.

  Polexima flinched when she heard “reddish sand,” unsure of why it disturbed her.

  “And it is not occupied?” she asked.

  “Not by ant peoples. The tree canopies are full of cannibal tribes, but they are primitives who pose little threat.”

  “Why have we not colonized it before?”

  “Our journey was not without incident,” said Commander Batra. “In the old tongue, the name Dranveria means ‘domain of lair spiders,’ of which there are many. Some in our party succumbed to them. Others were carried off by . . . night wasps.”

  At the mention of night wasps, a long silence chilled the room. Sahdrin sighed through his nostrils. “Very well,” he said.

  “I don’t know that it is very well at all,” said Polexima, searching her memories.

  “Fission has happened hundreds of times in the history of the Slopeish peoples and in conditions just like these,” said Dolgeeno. “Nearly always it is peaceful and successful. Princess Trellana will be protected by Commander General Batra’s army, as well as by me, my priests, and all our magic.”

  Polexima’s e
yes shifted as a rush of images filled her head. “One remembers old stories about a previous attempt to colonize the land of red sand,” she said, “and of the mysterious and brutal . . . Dranverites.”

  “Stories? What stories?” Trellana asked. She shot her mother a piercing look, then turned to Dolgeeno.

  “In one legend,” said the queen, “the dried bones and bloody clothing of Kulfish pioneers were returned to their original mound in neat, cube-shaped piles.”

  With slit eyes, Dolgeeno turned to Estaine and Batra.

  “Pious Estaine, did you see even one little Dranverite on your expedition?” he asked, as if he were speaking to a child. “How about you, General?” he sang with a smug smile. “Anyone mounted on a . . . red hunter ant?”

  “Of course not,” said General Batra. “I give my word as a soldier.”

  “By all the gods, no!” swore Estaine in agreement with the general. Polexima watched as both men blinked at each other, then looked away in haste.

  “People tell lots of silly stories for the fun of being scared,” said His Most Pious, turning to Trellana. “Fear not, Princess. The omens for your new mound are exceptionally good. There are no such beings as Dranverites and certainly no one to challenge Slopeish supremacy.”

  Trellana and Sahdrin sighed with relief, but Polexima was still not sure. She searched the faces of the men for signs that they had lied. She did not sense an out-and-out deception, but she was sure of an unease between them.

  “I overheard a conversation,” Polexima said, “whispered between my servants, in their own tongue.” The queen began to whisper herself. “They said the laborers that accompanied your expedition were not killed by insect and spider predators, but by our own Cajorite soldiers.”

  “Ridiculous,” said Dolgeeno with a roll of his eyes. “Soldiers have no right to kill your subjects without cause—they would risk their own execution.”

  “Perhaps these laborers saw something,” said the Queen, “something you did not wish them to report to the mound.”

  “Like what, dear Queen?” Dolgeeno asked impatiently, his words worked into a melody.

  “The border walls of another nation which they were ordered to clear . . . as their last act before dying.”

  “Polexima, really,” said the high priest as he shook his head and sent ripples through his wattles. “What calamitous shape we would be in if we believed the stories of the simple folk.” He turned to Batra and Estaine. “Again, under oath to Mantis, did either of you see red ants or anyone riding on one?”

  “Certainly not,” said Estaine.

  “By Mantis, no,” said Batra.

  “Then you are dismissed,” said the high priest, cutting short the meeting. “If Your Majesties will excuse me, we must prepare for our divine audience.”

  Polexima watched Dolgeeno’s weighty buttocks jiggle under his robes as he exited the room.

  How I loathe that man.

  After changing into their evening robes, Dolgeeno led the priest of each of the Slopeites’ gods on an ant train down the spiral path to the cathedral deep inside the mound. Since he had left the queen’s chamber, he had been preoccupied with Polexima, once again irked by her endless and unwomanly curiosity. Perhaps this new daughter will turn her away from affairs of state and back to motherhood, he thought.

  “Stop thinking about her,” said his seat mate, Pious Estaine, who was sure of why the high priest silently frowned in the soft light of their torch topped with a lightning-fly egg. “You can’t change her and you can’t kill her.”

  “Are you so sure about that?” Dolgeeno asked, smiling ever so slightly.

  Estaine feigned a gasp and slapped his chest. “Why, Pious, unless you include me in this plot I could have you stripped of scent for treason.”

  “Perhaps then you might finally succeed me as our mound’s high priest.”

  The two chuckled as they patted each other’s thighs.

  “Here’s something that will help you forget Polexima the Palzhanite,” said Estaine. He handed Dolgeeno his consecrated wafer of the Holy Mildew, the precious fungus the priests scraped from the ceilings of the mushroom chambers. The two chewed their black, bitter wafers and the effects were almost instantaneous once it was washed down with a slug of honeysuckle liquor. Once inside the sanctuary, gorgeously lit by a thousand torches, the priests paced in a chant circle before a gaudy altar with their hundred idols. Their feet disappeared and they floated in a joyous trance. Soon, the walls would melt and the idols would transform into the real gods—gods who would make pronouncements and answer the questions of mortals.

  CHAPTER 5

  THE TRIP TO THE SWAMP

  Anand and Terraclon had no rags to change into, but nudity was a serious crime on the Slope. They cut shoots of new grass, pierced the middles with holes and made capes of them. They fashioned antennae from grass fibers, wiped them with kin-scent, and tied them to their heads. No sooner were they dressed than Keel put them to the gruesome work of porting corpses to the swamp at the edge of the Freshwater Lake. The lake was considered polluted since it was shared with the enemy Seed Eaters, so there was no worry they were ruining Cajoria’s drinking water. Not that this made dragging dead bodies any more pleasant.

  The boys reported to a man from the steering caste, who, like most of the mound’s workers, was starving and had sunken cheeks. Using his shriveled limbs, he handed the boys turbans scented with leaf-finding-scent. The boys strapped themselves into reins attached to trucking ants hitched to vats stuffed with stinking dead men. Once the boys put on the turbans, the trucking ants could not help but follow and lug the vats behind them.

  The two friends dreaded the tedious hike to the Punk Weed Wilds, but they picked up batting poles from a pile. “The end will be in sight,” said Anand, “once we take the first step.” Terraclon, who was usually chatty, was as silent as stone as they trudged along.

  “You’re quiet today,” said Anand.

  Terraclon exhaled, looking away from Anand.

  “My parents have stopped speaking your name, Anand. They just call you ‘that half-breed boy.’”

  “So?”

  “So they think you will make me unmarriageable and tempt me into eating roach flesh. They say I am too old to spend time with you.”

  Anand rolled his eyes at this. “Again, Ter. I’ve never eaten roach flesh. Neither has my mother. Her people eat roach eggs, but only when there is no other food to be had.”

  “You know what my dad says about her . . . that she worships a roach demon. And she steals Slopeish babies and stains them with roach dye to make them dark. Some are raised as Britasytes and some are fattened and eaten.”

  “Ter, you know my mother. She’s never been a cannibal and neither are her people. And they would never raise a Slopeite as one of their own.”

  “Why not?”

  “They think the Slopeites, and the Cajorites in particular, are as stupid as they are ugly.”

  “They think we’re ugly?”

  “Hideous. And you are, you know. All of you Slopeish people. And you stink.”

  “We stink?”

  “The Britasytes think the smell of ants is nauseating. They can’t understand why anyone would link their lives to creatures as vile as leaf-cutters.”

  Terraclon laughed, revealing his oversized teeth. Using their poles, they swatted at the flies buzzing about the carts. When one refused to fly off, Anand looked around to see if they were alone, then used his pole to stun the fly with a hard knock to its head. When the fly fell, Anand used the sharp end to stab thorough its brain.

  “Impressive!” said Terraclon as he slapped Anand’s back. “Who taught you this?”

  “All roach people are hunters, including my mother.”

  Anand tore open the fly’s abdomen with his knife, scooped out some of the lymph, and ate it.

  “What are you doing?” asked Terraclon, suddenly wary and looking both ways.

  “I’m eating. Come on. Let’s get some fat on y
our frame.”

  “That fly belongs to the royals!”

  “The fly belongs to us if we eat it,” said Anand.

  “When you’re hungry, it’s hard not to see the point in that,” said Terraclon as he quickly scooped out some green flesh. When they finished eating and resumed their trek, carrion beetles crawled up from their holes to munch on the fly’s remains, effectively removing the evidence.

  Terraclon was singing in a high, clear voice as they walked around a defoliated bortshu tree. It took the boys thousands of steps to traverse the trunk. Ter stopped singing when they heard war song in the distance.

  Heading their way were the last of the Slopeish soldiers returning from the conflict with the neighboring Seed Eaters. As usual, they were singing the Hymn of Glories that boasted of Slopeish invincibility. Some of the men were carrying upright pikes with the severed heads of Seed Eater soldiers on their points.

  The boys pulled their vats off the path as the soldiers approached. Ter bowed his head and glued his eyes to the sand as the procession made its way. Anand bent his head to the ground, but his eyes peered up. The soldiers rode on the tallest of ants with mandibles that were large and lethal and exoskeletons that were a deep and glossy yellow. Around the men’s necks were the breathing filters they wore when fighting the Seed Eaters, whose harvester ants sprayed noxious battle fumes.

  Slopeish soldiers may have spent all their days in preparation to kill and be killed, but to Anand it seemed they were always smiling, something he resented. When he stole an upwards glimpse, his head was smacked by the flat of a sword. He looked up to see a chiding soldier, nearly as young as himself.

  “Eyes to the sand, boy,” said the soldier and Anand’s ears went hot. He gazed at the ground until the procession passed.

  The boys reached the edge of the marsh with towering punk grass that waved its brown cylinders in the wind. They dumped the contents of their carts, then backed away as water bugs swam up from the swamp and converged on the corpses.