Empire of Grass

by Tad Williams

  As the forest days crept by the Chikri lost almost all their fear of him, and came closer and closer until whatever tree he was in was usually crowded with the furry creatures. There seemed to be a couple of dozen in the troop, and the more he watched them, the more convinced he was that ReeRee was still young. Most of the others were at least half again as large as she was, and their coats had lost the oblong spots that covered hers. And while ReeRee and one or two of the other small Chikri were endlessly full of curiosity and mischief, the larger ones seemed interested only in gathering food and resting.

  The troop, with ReeRee now a part of it once more (though she also stayed close to Morgan) began to move steadily though slowly in one direction through the woods, resting each day a half a mile or so from where they’d begun. When he tried to lead ReeRee another way the other Chikri scolded him, and when he let her choose the direction she followed her family or tribe. He no longer trusted the position of the sun after many frustrating days of circular travel, certain that the Sithi had bespelled this entire part of the forest, but the Chikri seemed to be heading in what he would have guessed was a northwesterly direction. His father had told him once that many animals had paths they traveled every season, just like human roads but invisible to the eye, so he guessed that the creatures were following an ancient food-gathering trail. For now he was content to move with them, though he often had to scramble to keep up. The Chikri did not come down from the treetops if they could avoid it, and then only to feed on some particularly succulent bit of forage like newly-discovered berry brambles or a hazel shedding ripe nuts before scurrying back into the branches again.

  Once the troop came across a solitary apple tree, which stood in the middle of a stand of ashes like a lone cuckoo in a nest of blackbirds. The apples were small and sour but the taste made Morgan ache for home. He put several down his shirt for later, and even cried a little when he ate one that night, with ReeRee chuntering quietly in her sleep as she lay curled against his belly.

  The strangest thing of all, though, was how alive the treetops were. Morgan had never thought much about trees before, only climbed them as children do, usually with an objective in mind, such as pilfering fruit or hiding from a tutor who never thought to look up while searching for escaped pupils. When Morgan had thought about the treetops he had more or less assumed that, other than birds and a few squirrels, the heights were empty, nothing but leaves waving in the wind. Instead, as he was now learning, an entire world existed there, and it felt as if he alone had discovered it.

  The first things he learned was that the trees themselves came in dozens of kinds beyond the common ones like ash, oak, beech, and elm. Each one was different, especially for climbing and sheltering. Some, like silver-barked hornbeams, seemed to present their boughs to the climber like stairs, regular and sturdy. Beeches had hard, slippery bark. But some lured him toward the heights and then left him stranded far below the crown, with all the tree’s best sights, fruits, or nuts still out of reach. Once an old pear tree tempted him with fruit in its high crown, but the branches proved thorny and, even worse, as fragile as kindling. He got scratches all over his legs and on his belly from that lesson, as well as a limp for most of a day, when his rope caught him during the fall and swung him hard against the trunk. Worst of all, the single pear he had plucked before he fell was so sourly unripe that he could barely swallow it and felt ill for hours afterward.

  Morgan had never imagined how many animals, birds, and bugs made their homes or at least spent a large part of their day in the trees. He saw snakes entwining through the upper boughs, green and shiny as damp grass, and salamanders squatting contentedly in the rainwater puddles that collected where broken branches had left a hollow. The treetops were an entire little world, and now that world contained at least one lost prince as well.

  * * *

  Qina was on her hands and knees, examining the welter of different prints that covered the clearing in front of the granite outcrop. She lifted a fallen leaf with the edge of her knife.

  “Here is a good sign,” she said. “We are lucky there was a storm while he was here, so the ground was wet and the prints are deep. Prince Morgan’s footprint lies on top of the bear’s track and looks newer, but it is hard to tell for certain with so many other prints, especially all of these kunikuni. Daughter of the Mountains! All of those creatures I have ever seen are small, but some of these prints look much bigger than of those that live in the trees at Blue Mud Lake.”

  Binabik was examining Morgan’s armor where it hung on a tree branch. “The strange part is not the kunikuni, daughter, but where the prince has gone. There are many of his tracks to say he stayed here some time, but he is not here now and beyond this clearing the footprints simply end.”

  “At least we know he was not carried off by the bear,” said Qina’s mother Sisqi, who had coaxed a small fire into being. “There would be some sign.”

  “I think your thought is a right one,” said Binabik, “for which I give thanks. I see no evidence of a fight. And I think it has been several days since he was last here. But how did he go away without leaving footprints? It is as if he learned to fly.”

  “It is certainly a puzzle,” said Qina, her face so close to the ground that her nose almost touched the earth. She looked up at the sound of Snenneq’s quiet chortle. “What are you doing there? What is funny?”

  “I am remembering when you spoke Westerling to the prince. ‘Oh, Morgan Prince, that is a terrible puddle,’ you said.” He poked the fire happily. Because he thought they would be at least a day examining the rock and Morgan’s camp, Binabik had given Snenneq permission to hunt and cook food, and Qina’s betrothed now had a pile of several birds wrapped in wild grape leaves beside him. “‘Puddle,’ Snenneq said again and laughed.

  “Not all of us spent so many hours learning the flatlander tongue,” she said, scowling. “Some of us had more important lessons to master, like learning to read tracks.”

  “A Singing Man must be able to speak to those beyond his own tribe,” was his lofty reply. “And my skill with their tongue helped us in many ways on this journey, and made us friends among all the flatlanders—even the Croohok!”

  “Oh, yes, the Croohok loved you,” Qina said. “Especially those who tried to beat your head in.” She waved her knife significantly. “Remember, even a sheep’s bladder puffed full of air can be emptied with one swift poke.”

  Snenneq took a mock-stumble back from the small fire and toppled slowly onto his back where he waved his arms and legs in the air. Vaqana, Binabik’s wolf, gave a bark of annoyance. “Ah! Ah!” Snenneq cried. “My betrothed has stabbed me and let out my air! Ah! Save me, Binabik—your daughter has sharp claws!”

  Qina rolled her eyes. “Are all men such fools?” she asked her mother. “And does it grow worse or better once they marry?”

  “I think your father chose Little Snenneq to be the next Singing Man because they were so much alike,” Sisqi told her. “They both love to tell jokes that no one else finds funny but themselves.”

  Binabik shook his head, frowning. “May I remind you, wife, of the words of my own master, Ookekuq? He told me once, ‘There is only one creature in all the world more ridiculous than a human woman.’”

  “And that creature is?”

  “Oh, a human man, of course.” Binabik turned from his examination of Prince Morgan’s mail shirt and began once more to pace the clearing in front of the outcrop. “I must climb this rock, I fear. Perhaps that is the way Morgan left, and thus no tracks were left for us to find, although it seems too steep.”

  Snenneq stood and brushed himself off. “My birds will not go in to cook until the fire has burned down to coals. I am a good climber. Let me do it.”

  Binabik waved his hand. “If you wish. But do not be so busy talking about your climbing skills that you muddle any tracks or signs there might be.”

  “But why must we climb
the rock at all?” Snenneq said, walking around the side of the outcrop until he was out of Qina’s sight. “Here is a tree right beside it,” he called. “It would be possible to throw a rope over one of those branches, I think, and reach the top of the rock that way. Perhaps that is what Prince Morgan did.” He inspected the trunk. “Look, Qina, here is something strange. Have you ever seen woodpeckers make this sort of hole?”

  She came to his side. “It does not look like a woodpecker hole to me, O Singing-Man-To-Be. Woodpecker holes are rounded, the result of many strikes of the beak. This is only a single very narrow strike, like a knife blade.” She stared at the twin punctures in the bark. When she turned to Snenneq he was chortling again. “What has seized you? Has my mention of a knife reminded you how nearly you escaped being punctured, my beloved bladder?”

  “No, no. I am thinking instead that I know what Morgan has done, and why we cannot find his tracks beyond this place. Wait here.” He trotted quickly to where his great ram Falku was tethered, nibbling on damp grass, then began to root around in his saddlebag. Hurrying back, he showed her: “Look,” he said, “and then tell me your nukapik is not wise beyond other men.” He lifted the climbing-iron, its rawhide straps trailing, and set it against the trunk. Two of the front spikes fit the holes in the trunk as though they had been made for them.

  “Kikkasut’s Wings, I think you are right!” she said. “Father, Mother, come look!”

  Binabik and Sisqi examined the holes and the spikes of the climbing iron. “That was indeed a clever idea, Little Snenneq,” Binabik said. “I see now why we see no tracks on the ground.” He shook his head as he looked up into the high branches. “But how do we follow him now?”

  “Vaqana’s nose might follow him, even without tracks,” Qina suggested. “It has been days since he passed, but the wolf might still catch his traces if we move now, without waiting.”

  “But my birds!” said Snenneq, clearly heartsick. “The coals are almost ready!”

  “Wrap them well and perhaps when we stop tonight we may still enjoy them,” said Binabik. “Morgan must rest at sunset—he may have learned to travel through the trees like the kunikuni, but I am guessing he does not leap from limb to limb in darkness. So Qina is right—now we must go.”

  Snenneq mournfully wrapped each of the wood pigeons in an extra layer of leaves and placed them carefully in his saddlebag, as though he were holding a funeral for tiny but beloved friends.

  * * *

  Morgan awoke in the darkness of deep night, although at first he didn’t know what had wakened him. The Chikri surrounded him in the branches, silent in sleep, with ReeRee curled on the branch where he had tied himself to the trunk. But something was strange, and it was only when he realized that he could hear a voice speaking quietly—no, not speaking, he realized, so much as singing or chanting—that he noticed that the stars speckling the sky above him were completely and utterly unfamiliar.

  He stared at the alien shapes of the constellations—no Staff, no Horned Owl or Lamp, not even the sky-shapes of winter, which would at least have suggested earthly skies—and was certain that he dreamed. The singsong voice murmured on, not from beneath him as he had first thought, or even from the treetop above, but inside his own head. Morgan became even more certain that he was still asleep, although he could not ever remember a dream quite as real as this one.

  After a while he began to take meaning from the quiet, musical collection of sounds, as though they had paraded before him wrapped in cloaks, then threw off their disguises to reveal their true selves. As he came to understand the words, he also realized it was a voice he had heard before, but this time it did not speak just to him but, it seemed, to the sky itself.

  O, stars of our home! it said, and that single phrase seemed to strike his thoughts with such a feeling of loss that he almost wept. Loneliness swept through him like wind through branches.

  O, stars of the vanished land that even my grandmother never saw! Here in this nowhere place I can only see your shapes as she gave them to me, in word and thought and song! I ask you to grant me the strength of the true light, whether the sky-lamps of the fallen land or these, the phantoms of our lost Garden!

  I see the Pool, and the Swallower, and the Bend of the River. So they must have glimmered above Tzo, the city named for their light, when it first fell upon our eyes so many ages ago! The Blade, the Well, the Dancer, the Reaching Hand—all lost! Do those stars still shine somewhere, or did they go dark when Unbeing took the Garden?

  Morgan could not move, could only listen and stare up at the unfamiliar lights. If this was a dream he could not awaken from it, no matter how he tried, but could only listen as the words that echoed in his head grew even more sharp, more sad. Slowly he came to realize that he was not truly hearing words but ideas: somehow the voice was speaking some tongue he did not know and could not speak, a thing of strange melodies, but still he understood almost all.

  But why mourn this way? said the voice in his head. No one can hear me. My beloved mate is gone, my people are lost to me. My children and my children’s children are beyond my reach, and I am caught between one world and another, between life and what comes after. Why mourn? This is our lot, the way of the People, to see too late what they should know in their hearts from birth. Grandmother, I was wrong not to heed you. The voices lie until lies become truth.

  And in that instant, Morgan finally knew who was speaking. When she had spoken to him before it had been in dreams and had frightened him so that he did not think about it when it ceased, fearful of going mad. But now he remembered the words from what seemed another life, in the cave where he had gone with Eolair and the two Sithi, Aditu and her brother.

  All the voices lie except the one that whispers, she had said then, and Morgan had heard her though her lips had not moved and her breath had not carried the words. And that one will steal away the world. This could only be the mother of Aditu and Jiriki, who he had seen lying near death, covered in a shroud of butterflies.

  The voice continued, growing ever quieter. So it must be permitted, it seems, neither to go back nor to go on, with no one to hear me, and a world in pain.

  Thus will end Likimeya Y’Briseyu no’e-Sa’onserei, guttering like a candle . . .

  “Likimeya!” Morgan said out loud, and found himself sitting upright on the branch where he had fallen asleep, straining against the rope that held him as though he might burst loose and fly over the trees toward those unfamiliar stars. Beside him, ReeRee had wakened too, and stared at him with a worried look. The stars above the treetops, though still stretched and strange, were once more the night-fires he knew. The Lantern again hung high in the sky, tilted as if it were falling away into an unimaginable abyss, but still the same recognizable star that had heralded summer’s arrival all his life. And the voice that had awakened him was gone, as if the candle to which she had compared herself had truly been extinguished.

  Morgan shook his head and pulled ReeRee close, his heart beating fast, his cheeks wet with tears he could not entirely understand. Despite the warmth of the little animal’s body and the dark shapes of her fellows perched on branches all around him in the forest night, Morgan felt like the last and loneliest person in the world.

  14

  A Sip of Cloudberry Wine

  “To the Mother of All.” Prince-Templar Pratiki dipped his finger into the wine, then lifted it to his lips and gently blew upon it.

  Viyeki did the same. “To the Mother of All.”

  “And to the White Prince, whom we celebrate today.”

  “And to the White Prince,” Viyeki echoed.

  It was a great honor to be invited to drink cloudberry wine with the queen’s noble clansman for the celebration of Drukhi’s Day, but Viyeki was not altogether happy. For one thing, a mission given to him by the queen herself, with the clear imputation that he would be the leading figure, had turned out to be something st
ranger and less satisfying. General Kikiti and his soldiers were preparing to launch an attack on the castle mortals called Naglimund, but Viyeki and his builders were only there to dig. And now, for no reason Viyeki could understand, Prince-Templar Pratiki was here too. Viyeki had no particular dislike of Pratiki, but it had not escaped his attention that he had been superseded in yet one more way. Still, he knew better than to complain.

  “You are kind to share this day with me, Serenity.”

  Pratiki waved his finger, flicking the idea away. His posture was astonishingly good, and as part of honoring the day, the prince-templar wore his long white hair like an ancient warrior-priest, the braids tied with bird-leather straps, so that he looked more like a statue than a living Hikeda’ya. Still, what Viyeki had heard over the years inclined him to like Pratiki, though that counted for little in the deadly world of Nakkiga politics.

  “So how has time behaved to you here in the wilderness, High Magister?” Pratiki asked. “You must find it hanging heavily while you wait for the Sacrifices to discharge their part in the queen’s mission.”

  “Time has been tolerable. I think about the problems we may face when it is time for my Builders. And I read The Five Fingers, of course, because it never grows old in its wisdom.”

  “Of course,” said Pratiki, but a shadow seemed to flit across his face. It was always difficult, even for another noble like Viyeki, to guess at the thoughts of a Hamakha clansman—the queen’s relatives made a particular fetish of inscrutability—but for an instant he thought Pratiki had looked disappointed.

  Is he trying to trick me into saying something foolish? Is someone in the court whispering against me?

  Perhaps sensing Viyeki’s discomfort, the prince-templar gracefully changed the subject. They talked of small things, of favorite spots in Nakkiga, of mutual acquaintances—the small number of those testifying to the different circles they inhabited—and of court life. The cloudberry wine was clearly of some magnificent ancient vintage; it eclipsed even the bottle that his old master Yaarike bequeathed him as a reminder of a significant drink they had once shared. This wine was even more bitterly tart than Yaarike’s, but also had more flavors than Viyeki could count, tangs of smoke, flint, even slate, all swimming in and out of the berries’ sweetness like a school of swift silver fish, and it overwhelmed his senses.