Thirteen days later, Anand sighted Zarren-dozh, a mound that had once been the religious and political center of the Slopeish nation. It was enormous and glistening under fresh shellac. Its ghost ants were the largest Anand had seen.
Strangely, this mound had more resemblance to Cajoria than Jatal-dozh. Not all its inhabitants could live in its chambers, so rings of outside dwellings had sprung up like mushrooms after rain. The rings were not a shamble of shanties, but the dwellings were small and made of modest materials.
What was very different was that there were other kinds and colors of ants that lived among the ghosts and even hitched rides atop them. Among the adopted ants were yellow leaf-cutters who carried grass and leaves from some distant meadow. So this is where they grow their mushrooms, thought Anand.
The human slaves were more abundant and just as miserable, but were culled from races in lands unknown or forgotten by Slopeites. Everywhere he looked, Anand hoped to see the people of his mother’s clan. He searched the face of every brown-skinned girl wishing that she was Daveena. What if she had been hamstrung or was pregnant with the child of a Hulkrish rapist? When Anand’s rage began to consume him, he determined to empty his mind. He knew that rage must wait in hiding, like a lair spider, and spring at the appropriate time.
It took much of the morning to climb to the top of the mound, where Tahn the Prophet occupied a crystal palace. Anand was brought to large, spacious rooms of his own. The interiors conformed to the Hulkrish ethic of austerity, but there were barrels of flashy treasures and the floors were piled with rugs as thick as beds. One of the rugs saddened Anand when he realized it was a Britasyte creation, a skillful depiction of a red scorpion carrying her young on her back. Had they taken it from the Pleps?
For the first time in moons, Anand would sleep on a true bed. He ate from a leaf piled high with sun-toasted cricket eggs. The eggs were surrounded by dunking-cups of different sauces. A servant girl bathed and painted Anand for his audience with the Prophet. The paint was more refined, less sticky, and as pure white as a cloud. He was admiring his startling whiteness in an obsidian mirror when he heard the rustle of someone squeezing through the portal.
Anand noticed the ragged nostrils first and tensed. He remembered to use his Dranverish accent.
“Captain Pleckoo!”
“Quegdoth . . . The Prophet sent me to welcome you to Zarren-dozh.”
“I am honored.”
“I’ve just met the commander returning from his conquest of the Thrip People in the west. Such a lazy people from his description—they harvest thrips as food and their silk for clothing. The men spend most of their time eating kiln-roasted cannabis and dancing in worship before some scorpion idol. Their women do all the work.”
“Why have they never been conquered before?”
“They live in the west, which the ignorant think is some Land of Death where the Sun dies each day.”
“Were they receptive to the Prophet’s message?”
“The Prophet said they were too fuddled to hear it. They practically handed us their women who he says are quite beautiful, that he can’t fuck enough of them. Our Prophet was disappointed in the battle—he can’t savor such an easy victory. But enough of that. He’s quite intrigued by you.”
“Is he?”
“Of course. He’s heard all about this remarkable recruit with a talent for war and languages—from a land of outrageous wealth. Just as I may rule the Slope some day, so may you rule this place called Tjamed.”
Anand was imagining Pleckoo in his white paint seated atop a Mushroom Throne. The image was so disturbing he was unable to move any part of him including his mouth.
“I’ve got to go, Quegdoth. Let your girl here know if you need anything. She’s yours for all purposes. Praise Hulkro.”
“Praise Him,” Anand managed to say.
After Pleckoo left, Anand looked deep in his mirror and labored internally to construct a mask of adoration and reverence for the Warrior-Prophet. Anand wanted to jam his dagger through Tahn’s skull, but knew that at their first meeting, he had to win his love.
CHAPTER 37
HULKRO’S PROPHET
Anand yanked out some nose hairs, which made his eyes tear, just before he pulled himself through the portal into Tahn’s chamber. When Anand reached the Prophet, he had the appearance of someone trying not to cry.
“Who is this that snivels before me?” asked Tahn with a grin. “Surely not a warrior for Hulkro?”
“I am indeed a warrior for Hulkro,” said Anand, affecting a quiver in his voice. “I would be lying if I said I was not overwhelmed with gratitude at this moment. Before anything else, I should like to say I am thankful, Commander.”
Anand looked Tahn in the eyes. Inside them, Anand saw what he really desired: images of slashing the fraud in two and then stomping on his skull until it was a fine paste. Tahn smiled at him, charmed to see him holding back tears.
“For what are you thankful, young man?”
“Never did I imagine I would be here in the presence of the man selected by the One and Only to reveal his desires for mankind.”
“What did you think you would become?”
“I thought I was to waste my life as a hungry slave, mated to a miserable wife so that our enslavers would have workers for their own children.”
Anand turned away from Tahn and pretended the need to compose himself. “Forgive me, Commander,” he said, striking his most manly pose. “But since submitting to the will of Hulkro, I am often overcome by joy.”
Tahn nodded his head and rose. “Hulkro is love,” he said and opened his arms. Anand had imagined this very moment and summoned up the image of his return to Yormu at Cajoria. When he walked into Tahn’s arms, Anand hugged with the warmth he would give his father.
“Now then,” said Tahn, pulling away. “I have always planned, as my final triumph, the conquest of the rich and mighty Slope. But perhaps it is just a step to a place more magnificent. Will you tell me about this intriguing land called Tjamed?”
“Of course, Commander. I am just as curious about Zarren-dozh.”
“I’m sure you are,” said Tahn and patted Anand’s shoulder. “Ambitious men are curious men.” Tahn brought Anand to a portal that led to an outside terrace where they looked upon the glories of the Hulkrish Empire’s capital.
“Is it true that the ants of Tjamed have a golden chitin?” Tahn asked. “And that the mounds are made of yellow pyrite?”
“Yes. It is so abundant it is almost worthless to the Tjamedis. And so is rose quartz, which is almost as easily sifted from their northern sands. But the greatest treasures of Tjamed are its millions of souls who hunger for the light of the True God.”
“Yes, yes,” said Tahn, heading for a divan. “Sit and have a bowl of mead with me.”
As if he were in a trance, Anand wove a description of Tjamed for Tahn. He was uncertain as to where he had pulled the details, but much of what he recited was from studies and histories of peoples absorbed by the Dranverites. When Tahn asked him how they could reach Tjamed, Anand had a ready answer.
“Tjamed has existed in near isolation for ten thousand summers. A great and violent river, the Malvup, is impossible to traverse and separates the country from other lands. It is only at the height of summer, in the dry season, when the river sinks underground and rocks emerge, that bridges can be laid and a crossing becomes possible.”
Tahn began calculating when to make his conquest. “I will have to consult Hulkro on when we might take Tjamed. It may take some time to absorb and convert the Slopeish nation—so perhaps this Tjamed should wait a few years.”
When Tahn had no more questions, the two of them faced each other, held hands and gave thanks to Hulkro. A guard escorted Anand back to his chambers, where he collapsed on his bed. The trance he had entered to weave his tale had taken all his energy.
The following morning, Anand was summoned to the top of the mound, where he looked with Tahn on fields full of wa
rriors on ants engaged in exercises. They left to review the troops upon an ant that crawled swiftly down the mound as they ate breakfast from sacks around their necks. Anand pulled out the cap of a fresh leaf-cutter mushroom that was gleaming white.
“Prophet, this type of mushroom is a great rarity. How do you come by such a treasure?”
“After the termite, the ghost ant is the greatest of all Hulkro’s gifts, for ghosts can enslave any other ant. Soon we will export a leaf-cutter queen to every mound in Hulkren, and as the mushrooms swell in our mounds, so will the wombs of our women.”
Anand was astonished. So he knows about the mushroom’s powers!
“In Tjamed we have heard of the Slopeites,” said Anand, “and their yellow ants which strip trees. The people are said to use magic to grow this fungus. Supposedly their queens are sorceresses.”
“Just as the ghosts brought back ant slaves, we brought back Slopeish humans, including one woman in particular. They do what they must to make these mushrooms grow.”
“But this woman—is she somehow divine?”
“Only Hulkro is divine. The woman has no magic. It is simply a matter of nature, something her water provides that discourages the mold.”
Anand’s heart was thumping as he asked his next questions. Would the answers lead to the question that plagued his being: Were Daveena and the Pleps alive?
“But what is it about this woman’s urine in particular? It must be special.”
“Not so special, Quegdoth. At first, the powers of her water failed and the Yellow Mold threatened to rot our tunnels. Then we forced her to admit she ingests something to give her piss its powers.”
“Really! What was that?”
“The eggs of grass roaches. Since this ‘sorceress’ resumed eating them, the mold has vanished.”
“Strange. Are eggs of roaches so easily obtained in this sandy place?”
“We sustain a colony of such roaches on our outskirts,” Tahn said, as his nose wrinkled and his voice dropped. “And the human clan that tends them.”
“A clan of roach people?” asked Anand, with a derisive chuckle in his voice that didn’t completely hide his excitement.
“Yes. They call themselves Britasytes. And a filthy, loathsome bunch they are. Never trust one, for their every word is a lie. They are failing us now, even though we have offered them their lives.”
“Failing you, sir?”
“Their roaches are dying and they are producing less of the eggs we will need for other leaf-cutter colonies. We may need to extinguish this clan and abduct some other one and see if they might be more cooperative.”
Anand hid his alarm. An idea came to him that he considered perhaps a moment too long before speaking. Tahn was staring at him, wondering about his silence.
“May I confess something, Prophet?”
“Certainly.”
“In Tjamed, my family were . . . we were . . .”
“Yes?”
Anand hung his head.
“We were . . . roach slaves.”
“Roach slaves?”
“Yes, sir. Please, understand, it was not something we chose. Our caste was confined to an area where it was our duty to raise roaches. We collected and tanned the egg pouches for leather and made boots and other goods derived of them. I was considered polluted—as was all my family and all in our caste.”
Tahn was smiling.
“You are not polluted, Lieutenant Quegdoth. Here in Hulkren we have no castes. Hulkro loves all his children and all men are welcomed to soldier in his Army of Universal Love.”
Anand nodded, wiped at true tears which had leaked for reasons he wasn’t sure of. “Thank you,” he said.
“Thank you for joining us.” Tahn said, then looked at Anand with a strangely sweet expression. “Would you know then what we might do to revive these roaches—to insure their survival and increase their egg production?”
“I might,” said Anand. “I’m interested to see them, as I am interested to see all of Zarren-dozh.”
“And you will. As I should like to hear more about Tjamed. Can you teach me their language?”
“Brefok,” said Anand in Dranverish. “That means ‘certainly.’”
Anand was prickly with guilt. He did not want to teach Tahn the Dranverites’ language much less inform him of a great and rich civilization he would lust to conquer. Anand had started a lie to save his Britasytes, and now it threatened the nation he admired. I will need to end this danger that threatens every nation on the Sand and soon, he thought even as he mustered his warmest smile for Tahn.
After the inspection of the troops, Anand toured the auxiliaries that sustained the capital and was brought to the termite colony first. Tahn brought Anand to the edge of a great pit where slaves pulled sleds of twigs and wood chips to dump through the hatch of a latticework grate. Below were the termites eating wood from distant pines to enrich their lymph with turpentine.
“Hulkro loves all His creatures,” said Tahn, “but He takes the guise of the humble termite, the insect that thrived in these devastated lands. It was the termite that fed the Chosen People when they were lost, that enabled our early victories.”
“Why are termites so seldom eaten now?”
“At one time it was all we Hulkrites had to eat. They were gathered to the point of extinction as their own food source, wood, was vanishing. That’s when Hulkro ended our trial and sent the ghost ants to save us. Now termites are only eaten in the rituals.”
“How did the ghost ants appear?”
“They descended from the heavens,” said Tahn. “Just after we prayed for food, an inseminated queen landed before my clan, an ant more magnificent than we had ever seen. She had shed her wings, ready to burrow and raise her first brood. That’s when the clouds parted to reveal Hulkro, in His aspect as Flying Lord of the Heavens. He said, ‘I offer this ant queen to you and your people, my Prophet. From her, all glories and victories will arise. Take care of her, guard her, rub her scents on your people, and she will provide for you.’”
“She did not attack you when approached?”
“She would have. But then a drone landed just after her, spent from planting his seed. Before he died and exuded the death-stink, I rubbed myself on his undersides to rob him of his odor. My clan did as I did and the queen accepted us. She laid her first eggs near the abandoned mound. The hatchlings grew quickly, were excellent hunters, and brought back food for all of us.”
“From whom did you learn to ride the ghosts? To antennate for food and steal kin-scent?”
“The righteous of many nations have fled here and brought their skills and knowledge. Oh, Vof Quegdoth, now those righteous will prevail. So say I.”
“Then so says Hulkro,” Anand responded. Both looked to the sky and nodded in submission before turning north. On the breeze, Anand caught a familiar scent of roaches. His heart raced with fear and excitement.
“I . . . I do believe I smell roaches,” he said, wrinkling his nose.
“We are close to their pit,” said Tahn, looking disgusted and angry.
“Commander, if I may ask, have you given up all hope on these roach people?”
“I have. A few of these Britasytes submitted to the faith and went through the rebirth ritual. As soon as we gave them freedom to move about, they ran off. Most were recaptured—we fed them to the ants.”
Anand gulped. “Idiots,” he said after recovering. When the ants would crawl no closer to the roaches, Tahn and Anand dismounted and went on foot. They reached a great pit covered with a lattice grate of heavily shellacked wood. Anand looked down and saw the roaches clinging to the grate’s underside were failing. He knew exactly what was wrong with them. Their bodies looked thin and small and the mild shake of their antennae indicated a lack of water and proper food. He looked between them and could make out the shadows of the sand-sleds at the pit’s bottom.
“These roaches are not doing well,” Anand said, “but I would need to have a closer look somet
ime to figure out what’s wrong.”
“Perhaps you could accompany one of our faithful who descends now and again to bring up the eggs.”
“Of course, sir. It’s been a while since I’ve covered myself with roach muck. But I would do it for our Lord Termite.”
“When you do, promise me you will bathe several times afterwards,” said Tahn, and Anand joined him in chuckling. It was the greatest performance of Anand’s life, for he was stricken with grief. His people needed freedom and wandering as others need food and water. They had to be sick and dying in this dark hole in the ground.
Tahn led them to a trunk-trail of ghost ants to catch a ride and continue the tour of insect colonies. “I’m very interested in bringing more lights to Hulkren at night,” Tahn said as they reached an area where lightning flies were being cultivated. Anand watched as a raggedly dressed foreman with a great head of fuzzy hair pleaded for something. His rags were not white and his skin was not painted, nor was that of the other humans in a vast cage imprisoned with the flies.
“What is this infidel’s complaint?” Tahn shouted to the Hulkrish overseer who translated.
“He says they need more rotting wood and black soil. They need more water to keep everything damp or the eggs won’t hatch. He says the flies won’t thrive or reproduce if they can’t fly about.”
The lightning-fly foreman pounded his fist into his hand and dared to show an angry face to Tahn whose eyes turned to slits and whose lips disappeared.
“He says his people haven’t enough food either,” added the overseer.
At that moment, a slug, the favorite food of lightning flies, was being eased through the hatch of the grate. The slug landed on its back and writhed with its long, moist sucker to the sky. The scrawny, fuzzy-haired people converged on the slug and tore it with their naked hands to stuff in their mouths. Tahn was furious.
Prophets of the Ghost Ants Page 24
