A few days after that, the stone to Polexima’s chamber was pushed aside once more. Pleckoo stood before her with a fungus torch under his chin illuminating his skull-like face. He had already visited several times with other defectors from the Slope. They had taken a heated pleasure in belittling and beating a royal. Polexima no longer resisted these assaults, and they soon lost interest.
“Rise, oh Queen,” Pleckoo snarled at her while curtsying. “A special treat for you today. An outing.”
“Where are we going?” she asked in a demanding tone.
“You’re going where I say you’re going,” Pleckoo answered. “And if you don’t want my sword thrust through your precious one, you’ll pull yourself through that portal. Leave the brat behind.”
Polexima set down Pareesha and kissed her forehead. She pulled herself out to the tunnel, which was poorly lit with shriveling fungus torches. She was weak and her ankles were shackled with cuffing grass that cut her skin as she trudged. Pareesha cried in the distance.
“You are from the Slope,” she said to Pleckoo.
“I was a Cajorite,” he answered. “But I’m a Hulkrite now. As a boy in your queendom, I cleaned the nobles’ shit pots. Why, your own probably wafted under my nostrils on occasion. But that is no more. Among these people I am a warrior in an army, one just promoted by our Prophet to captain.”
“What do the Hulkrites want from me?”
“Your holy piss, Your Majesty, so we can grow our own mushrooms and an even larger army. Soon every low-caste laborer in every Slopeish mound will be liberated to worship Hulkro.”
“Hulkro? Our people will never bow to the Termite God.”
“They will when they hear His words through our Prophet. Hulkro is the One True God. He fed us in the time of the Trial, and bestowed the ghost ant upon us at its end. Now He sends forth His warriors to liberate all peoples.”
“You are a son of the Slope, a descendent of Ant Queen. Why abandon that privilege and take up with these monsters?”
“The privilege of cleaning up your shit?” Pleckoo’s laugh was short and cutting. “No, there was no privilege in serving you and your false gods. There has never been and never will be a Goddess Ant Queen. The One God rules the Sand, The One God moves the sun and moon, and The One God created all men, insects, plants, trees, and fungus.”
When they reached the opening to an ant’s chamber, Pleckoo turned to Polexima and looked strangely reverent and gentle. “All men are equal before the Termite. Hulkro blesses those who praise His holy name.”
“Hulkro!” said Polexima, and bit her lip to stop from grinning. “The Termite is the deity of decadent primitives . . . the sub-humans of the lands abandoned by Slopeites.”
Pleckoo was enraged. He grabbed Polexima by her arms and threw her into the ants’ chamber. She fell on her face and was stunned, then dizzy.
“Get up!” Pleckoo shouted. “Behold the power of Hulkro!”
Polexima rose slowly and looked out at the chamber which had been richly lit for her. To her horror, she saw leaf-cutter ants scurrying across a carpet of shredded leaves to take leaf shards from arriving kin. Oblivious to their enslavement, the leaf-cutters took food from the mouths of tending ghost ants.
“Your ants from Palzhad have been absorbed by our ghosts, just as your people will be absorbed by Hulkrites,” Pleckoo said. “During the Great Trial, our people lived in forests destroyed by the Slopeites’ leaf-cutters. Your ants chased them into tunnels of termite-ridden wood where Lord Termite sheltered us. The Trial is over and we are unstoppable—as Hulkro is unstoppable.”
“Mantis will show us how stoppable you are,” said Polexima, turning away from the terrible sight of leaf-cutters living with ghosts. “Your body will be thrown to Her in sacrifice. Hulkrites will be slaughtered before they can retreat to their tunnels or these old Slopeish mounds.”
“Mantis! Mantis is an idol, nothing more. You will grow to worship our god, grow to love him. Hulkro will forgive you once you abandon the little dolls on your altars.”
Pleckoo came up from behind her, clamped his hands over her head and forced her to face the back of the chamber. “Look over there, Majesty. A gorgeous sight.”
She saw a winged ant with a bulging gaster, one that was likely a newly hatched leaf-cutter queen. Pleckoo turned Polexima to face him, grinning into her face.
“Yes, Queen. An egg-layer—one that thrives—has been seeded and will soon be laying eggs. Now piss, Urine Sorceress of the Cajorites! Bring forth your magic water!”
“My urine is holy,” she said. “But it may have no power in this evil place.”
“The nature of your urine is part of some grander design. It is just a coincidence that this potion lies within you. Your daughter’s daughters will possess this ability and those children will worship Hulkro.”
Polexima lifted up her garment and squatted, but nothing came.
“I cannot,” she said.
“Piss,” he said, “or you won’t be able to suckle that brat of yours.”
She breathed out and emptied her mind until a trickle came.
“Kind thanks,” Pleckoo said, and jerked her back up.
“Was it so awful for you in Cajoria?” she asked as she stood and looked closely into his disfigured face. Her defiance vanished as she confronted the twisted cartilage that jutted through the flesh of what had been his nose. She turned away from him, nauseated.
“What do you think? Why can’t you look at my face?” he asked, grabbing her by her shoulders. “Keep looking!” he shouted. “Look at what was once my nose!” He shook and shook her, then pushed her to the ground.
“I had never seen a mirror. But I knew how ugly I am from the expressions of others as they passed me. When the Hulkrites found me dying in the Dustlands, they fed me, taught me their language, let me ride on a ghost ant. When I was ready to apply the White-Paint of Submission, they handed me a mirror. Only then did I know how truly gruesome I am.”
“If your nose was cut off, you committed some crime,” said Polexima.
“A crime? A crime?” he bellowed at her. “I did nothing to no one!” He began crying, turned his face away from her in shame. Polexima went hot and her head throbbed. She looked at Pleckoo as he relived some terrible moment and wiped the sweat from his brow. He turned back to her, grimacing.
“Should I cut off your nose, Majesty, so you’ll know how I have suffered? Should I?”
He removed his knife, grabbed her nose and gouged the skin of it. She felt a drop of blood well up.
He did not do it. He threw her to the ground once more and kicked her ear. Overriding her fear and pain was an insufferable pity for this man as she imagined his life.
“Get up. Starting tomorrow, you will see how hard life was for me,” he said as she trudged after him in the tunnel.
“Wh-what do you mean?”
“No one eats for free in Hulkren.”
CHAPTER 17
ROYAL INSULTS
When Anand woke, he realized he was on his side and the cloth on his face had fallen away. The morning sunlight was rapping on his eyelids, which had been closed of their own accord! Remembering he had been paralyzed for days, he opened his eyes and was blinded by Sun slicing into the cage. His body was stiff and achy and his head throbbed with pain. His arms reached in a great stretch as he yawned. He felt the shoulders of someone next to him as his arms extended. Then he heard a piercing scream.
The woman Anand touched jerked up from her mat and kept screaming. He sat up and realized his face was a finger’s length from Queen Trellana. She was backing away, trying to rise, staring in horror at the missing earlobe that identified him as polluted.
“Get away from me, you brown-skinned maggot!” she shrieked. Trellana backed into an old woman from the cocoon-chewing caste. In an instant, over one hundred Cajorite pioneers, emerging from paralysis, were violently roused in the cage. They were surprised to find themselves so close to their monarch. She was as naked as the rest of
them and attempting to hide her body with hands shorn of jewels.
“Don’t look at me,” Trellana screeched at them. “On your knees, faces to the ground!” Everyone complied except for Anand and an old, fleshy man with mottled skin.
“Your Majesty,” he said, “it is I, Pious Dolgeeno.”
Indeed, it was His Most Pious, unrecognizable without his dusting of gold-powder and a grand costume. Anand could see he had lost weight on the journey and skin that used to stretch over his girth was hanging in ugly folds. Trellana turned her spiteful gaze to Anand, who continued to meet her eyes.
“How dare you stand there and look at me! How dare you touch me!” she shouted. With a subtle defiance, Anand slowly assumed a position of subservience.
“It was an accident, Majesty,” he said. “I had no intention of touching you.”
“How dare you address me!” she screamed, red in the face with fury. Her high-pitched ranting pierced every ear as well as those in the cages nearby. “I am polluted!” she shouted at Dolgeeno.
“I will begin prayers to reverse it at once,” Dolgeeno responded even as he cupped his shriveled genitals to hide them from her and the others, “but we have no potions to complete the rite.”
“Our captors must be the most disgusting primitives on all the Sand,” Trellana ranted. “When we are rescued, I will have this filth-collecting boy executed by bathing before the entire mound.”
Anand’s body was trembling with a rage beyond his control. He raised his head, then rose on his feet as the queen stared in disbelief. He looked her directly in the eyes.
“Allow me to look on your hideous face, Trellana, for that should be the greatest punishment of all.”
Trellana gasped. Anand could see her knees weaken and she struggled to stand erect. The others in the cage held deathly still, in total disbelief.
“The gods will punish him if we cannot,” said Dolgeeno finally. “And when he is dead, his soul will be flung down to the Netherworld, where night wasps will sting him for all eternity.”
“Your gods will do no such thing,” Anand said. “I spit on your stupid gods as I spit on you.” And Anand did exactly that, spraying the priest’s face who stumbled in horror and fell on his ample backside which sent tremors through the cage.
Trellana gathered herself and turned to the others. “No need to wait for assembly! I command you, my subjects, to seize this boy, and tear his limbs off. Throw his pieces out of this abominable cage!”
The others looked to each other in confusion. How could they obey this order and touch an untouchable? Anand decided that if he were going to die, he would have the last word.
“Very well. When I am torn into pieces, Holy Queen, my hope is you will dine on this.”
Anand grabbed his penis and shook it at her. She went into a paroxysm of screams, ran about the cage and tripped over her low-caste subjects. They did not dare to touch or right her when she stumbled and fell in the crowded confines. The screech-filled chaos continued as she ran around, her backside covered in little curls of shredded straw, when she tripped over one of her subjects and fell facedown.
“You heard me,” Trellana shouted as she spit out straw and rose from the floor. “I command you to kill this boy! Isn’t there a soldier in this cage?”
There was not. It seemed the Cajorite soldiers were the one group that the captors had sequestered in separate cages. A man with the splotchy skin of the tar worker caste spoke to the priest.
“Holiness, please remind Her Majesty we are forbidden to touch a boy of such low caste. And he’s a half-breed, a son of the roach-eaters. His blood will pollute us—could blind us and eat our skin—if we tear him to pieces.”
When Trellana heard this, her wailing climbed to a pitch that was unbearable. It summoned a cadre of guards to the cage, covering their ears. Trellana screamed at them in the servant dialect.
“I am Queen Trellana,” she huffed, “of Mound Cajoria of the Great and Holy Slope. If you do not wish for your own extermination, you will release me and my priest now.”
The guards did not understand a word, but they certainly looked irritated. As she ranted, one of them covered his mouth with a finger and made a shushing sound.
“Do not shush me,” she screamed. “When my father’s soldiers descend on this place, they will hang you from rafters and cut off your feet. You will bleed to death while watching your families get thrown to the ants for dismemberment. Others of you will be baked to death in a sun-kiln while . . .”
Trellana continued to list a series of tortures as the guards made their decision. They stood in a circle, shrugging their shoulders. Finally, they departed from the huddle and unlashed the cage’s gate. Trellana exhaled with relief, regaining her poise as she prepared to step out.
“Step aside,” she said to the guards as she cocked back her head. “You will bring me suitable clothing and take me to whomever is in charge.” Once Trellana had set foot outside the cage, a guard raised her blowgun. The dart landed in Trellana’s forehead and she slumped to the ground. Her subjects watched as her free leg popped up and twitched.
Not very queen-like, Anand thought as he watched her body go all too still. He felt a twinge of relief, a moment of amusement, and then pure dread for her when he considered the depth of her torment if she were to be paralyzed for another moon. Still, he thought, it’s better her than me.
Not to mention that at least she’s stopped screeching.
Sometime later, bowls and boxes of strange foods were brought to the cages as well as bladders of drinking water. Anand noticed that the foundation of the cage had removable drawers on its sides that were pulled out, loaded with provisions, and then reinserted to reach the prisoners. Anand watched as a cheerful youth with a pink complexion and pink eyes set down platters of ant eggs. Anand looked at him through the bars and said “Thank you,” first in Slopeish, and then in Britasyte.
The second “thank you” caught the youth’s attention. He spoke in his own language to Anand, who shook his head and shrugged his shoulders, then repeated the strange words. The young man pointed to himself and said what Anand assumed must be his name: Dwan. Anand pointed to himself and said “Anand.” They grinned at each other, but soon the Cajorites were pushing in to get at the meal.
“Stop,” said Dolgeeno with an imperious wave. “I will distribute what appears to be food. I don’t believe our captors meant to give ant eggs to common laborers.” Turning to Anand he said, “And you will not be eating.”
Anand’s hunger was painful and to see food was taunting. He reached for a water-bladder when Dolgeeno shouted at him.
“No! Touch that bladder and none of us can drink from it!”
Anand’s mouth was as dry as sand in a rainless summer. “Then it is all mine,” he said, and sucked. “Though I would gladly share,” he added after wiping his mouth. He held out the bladder, but all in the cage turned away. Anand chose that moment to grab an ant egg, bite the end of it and suck out its jelly before munching on its rind.
He looked over at Dwan who seemed fascinated and disturbed by what he had witnessed. Dwan cocked an eye, smiled at Anand, and then ran off. Anand had the sense he would be returning with others.
CHAPTER 18
POLEXIMA THE SLAVE
The Hulkrish recolonization of forsaken leaf-cutter mounds resulted in a crude imitation of life on the Slope. The mound of Zarren-dozh was structurally sound, but the ghost ants had done little more than clear the sand-filled tunnels. The human slaves were set to repairing the exterior, patching and repitching the rain shield, and making the chambers habitable again after two hundred summers. When they were cleared of their ancient dust, the walls and floors were reinforced with cocoon skins soaked in resin. Before the resin was dry, Hulkrites moved their barrels of war booty, their families, and their slaves inside.
One of the Hulkrites’ slaves was the Cajorite queen who had thought of herself as compassionate. She thought she appreciated the daily ordeals of those whose st
ations required them to spend their days in labor, many in the darkness of her mound’s interior or in the dangerous wilds of its weeds. But like others of her immediate kin, she thought the laborers were not suitable for anything other than drudgery and had been born with a constitution for it. She believed they embraced their work as a sacrifice to the gods and carried it out as a happy prayer.
How little she had known—how little she had wanted to know.
On her first day of working with slaves, she understood that the most prayerful of them could not possibly find joy in repetitive tasks that lasted from sunrise to sunset. Her back was a throbbing tangle of aches, as the only way she was allowed to keep her baby was in a pouch strapped at the chest. The sole pleasure in labor was the promise of sleep, a promise sullied by the dread that it all started again in the morning.
Before Polexima was set to work on the renovations, her morning task was the cleaning of chamber pots, which she and other Palzhanite nobles emptied into a vat. Pleckoo and the other Slopeish defectors took particular delight in watching Queen Polexima carry out night soil. As she did, she prayed that the gods would soon reveal the plan for her rescue.
In the afternoons, Polexima immersed sheets of cocoon skins in resin, a rare substance in a treeless region. The smell of resin was sickening and made her lungs ache and her head throb. Her thoughts were torn and disconnected, like a nightmare, and when darkness fell, she could not remember who and where she was. Pareesha suckled lightly at her mother’s breast as the milk had the taste of resin. The baby was losing weight.
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