Empire of Grass

by Tad Williams

  A glimpse of movement on the riverbank just ahead of him made him slow and stop. When he saw what had caused it, he was momentarily relieved by its small size, but sickened again a moment later by its shape. It was a salamander or something like it, but it had no eyes and as many legs as a centipede. It wound slowly across the open ground, each leg seeming to grope forward individually, toes flexing, before it disappeared into the black grass.

  As he stood staring after it, the ground shook beneath his feet, a tremble so slight he might have believed he had imagined it but for the swaying of the black fruit on the branches. He began to walk again, watching the cliff walls above him for rockfalls.

  The mists grew thicker still. Morgan’s way grew darker, and what little sky he could occasionally see over the valley had begun to turn from blue to twilight purple. He cursed himself for his foolishness at entering the valley with no idea of how far he would have to walk. He still had his flint and steel and could start a fire, but he doubted he could find any dry wood for a torch along a damp riverbank in this unending sea of mist. The idea of being here when full night descended made him hurry his steps. He suddenly wanted to be out of the gloomy, narrow valley more than he had wanted anything in a very long time.

  Then the ground lurched beneath him again, stronger this time. He stumbled and almost lost his footing, and had to steady himself against a rock slimy with moss. Something in the moss stung his fingers, and he was so busy wiping his hand, trying to get the rest of the slimy stuff off his skin that he was caught flat-footed and unbalanced when the earth trembled for a third time, spilled him off his feet, and left him sitting in the mud. A snake as long as his leg—which in full sunlight might have been colorful, but was now banded only in shades of gray and purple-black—slithered out of the grass near him and writhed past so suddenly that he did not even have time to pick up his sword before it was gone.

  He scrambled to his feet and looked up for the chunks of valley wall he felt sure must have broken loose, but saw only a scatter of small, flat stones cascading down the cliffs, making ripples in the mist where they fell.

  Thoom! The fourth tremor was the strongest yet, and came with a sound like thunder. As he began to climb back onto his feet Morgan had a sudden realization: each rumbling shake had been the same as the one before, but louder. Like footsteps. Like footsteps coming toward him.

  Slimy with mud and nearly blinded by the thick mists, he felt something leap past his ear with a noise like a hornet’s buzz. An instant later he saw an arrow juddering in the bark of a willow tree that overhung the river—it had only missed him by a hand’s breadth. As he stared in stunned surprise, two more shafts flew past him, hissing like a drover’s whip, and snapped into the tree just above the first one, the three in an almost perfect vertical line up the smooth gray trunk.

  Morgan ran deeper into the mist, away from whoever was shooting at him, his sword still useless in his hand. His thoughts sped and fluttered madly—all he could think of was the next arrow, the one that would strike him in the back and end everything for him forever, here in this dismal, swampy valley.

  A fifth great tremor struck then, and if it was a footfall the foot must have been as large as a house. The ground bucked under Morgan’s feet, and he tumbled forward into water that had sloshed out of the river and drowned the black grass along the bank. As he struggled forward on hands and knees, desperately trying to gain purchase in the muddy grass, dirty water streaming into his eyes, he looked up and saw an impossible thing.

  Something unbelievably huge was coming slowly down the valley toward him. In the dense mist it almost seemed a vast section of the stony cliffs had broken loose and come to life. He could hear trunks breaking as the monstrous shape approached, great bursts of sound as trees the size of the Festival Oak back home shattered into flinders. He could make out little through the murk except that the shape had two legs, and above the legs a shadowy body as wide as the prow of a great ship.

  Morgan turned and ran back the way he had come, no longer concerned about arrows. The terror of the monstrous shadow was on him and he could think of nothing else, only escape, only staying ahead of the world-devouring, giant thing.

  On he ran until he saw the entrance to the valley before him, a delta of light against the pearly mist, but the monstrous footsteps seemed even closer behind him now and he could not keep his balance on the shuddering ground. A few more arm-flailing steps and he fell. He tried to get up, to stagger forward—the end of the valley was so close now!—but he could not make his mud-coated limbs work properly. He could barely even think at all and began crawling onward on his hands and knees like some crippled animal, certain it was useless, that it would be only moments until he was crushed by that impossible thing like an ant beneath a human boot heel.

  Then something caught him from above. His belly was squeezed as though gripped by a terrible serpent, and it forced the air out of his lungs as he was jerked up into the swirling mists.

  PART TWO

  Autumn’s Chill

  What is this land?

  The seasons here change as swiftly

  As a scholar turns a book’s pages

  Spring becomes summer, summer fall

  Then winter again kindles spring

  A year in this land is a fire that burns, dies, and burns again,

  Forever consuming itself

  —BENHAYA OF KEMENTARI

  20

  The Summer Rose

  Fremur shrugged. “It does not matter what you or I think. Unver does what he wishes, and he listens to no one. He has never been different.”

  A lifetime among the men of her clan should have prepared Hyara for his words, but she still felt a hot rush of anger. “But you are his friend! Don’t you care? If Rudur Redbeard gets Unver in his power he will kill him.”

  Fremur wore a look of careful disinterest. Hyara had hoped the young thane sitting next to her would be different than the other men, but it seemed she had misread the few words they had passed together. “Friend?” he said. “Unver has never had one. Just because I am the closest thing to it does not make me his friend.” And at last, to her immense relief, he betrayed something of what he was feeling, a flash of anger, a glimmer of fear. “The difference between Unver and Redbeard is, Unver Shan has honor, which he holds above everything—even friendship.” He looked at her now in a way that seemed almost beseeching. “Surely you know that,” Fremur said. “He is your sister’s son, after all.”

  “Sister’s son, yes, but I have not known him since he was a child. And I scarcely know my sister Vorzheva any better. She is many years my elder, and went away to live in the city with her Prince Josua while I grew. When she left our father’s camp, I thought she had triumphed—met a man who cared for her, who wanted more for her than a wagon full of bawling children. Then years later she came back, face dark as a thundercloud, bringing her twins with her. My father sent young Deornoth away—that was Unver’s name then—and told us he would beat us bloody if we ever spoke of him again.” Hyara could still feel how that day had all but silenced Vorzheva, like a spell turning her to stone. “Our father,” she said, tasting the bitterness. “I am glad he is dead.”

  “There,” said Fremur, with a hard laugh. “That is something Unver has done for you at least—killed that old monster Fikolmij.”

  “You do not know as much as you think.” She looked around, but nobody in the Stallion Clan’s camp was paying any attention to them, all busy with plans of their own during the short but all-important festival beneath the Spirit Hills. Thanemoot held too many distractions for anyone to care much about the quiet conversation of others—boasts to make, horses to trade, yerut to be drunk with old friends or old enemies, until everyone involved had forgotten which they were, friend or enemy, and could only stagger out from beneath the merchant canopies and try to find their way back to their camps. Still, Hyara lowered her voice. “Unver
killed my husband Gurdig, yes.” She paused, remembering, and a little of that unspeakably strange day came back to her. “The spirits aided him, that is sure. I saw that with my own eyes.”

  “I know of Unver and the spirits,” Fremur agreed, with no little feeling.

  His words hung in the air. “Then you understand me,” she said at last. “But Unver did not kill my father—my sister Vorzheva did. I saw that with my own eyes too.”

  Fremur looked surprised, even shocked, and in that moment she could see that he was still young, that however much he might want to be just another clansman, hard and cold as a blade, there was still a part of him that felt things. “Truly?”

  “She had sworn she would one day.”

  “Then why do people say Unver did it?”

  “Because he lets them. Now that Fikolmij is dead nobody will speak out against him, so he takes her crime on himself. Besides, everybody hated my father and most were glad to hear he was finally gone. The only thing they would hate more is the idea that a woman dared to raise her hand against her own father. If the others in the Stallion Clan knew, my sister would be staked out for the wolves.”

  Fremur laughed, and it was Hyara’s turn to be surprised. “Ha! Well, they will not hear it from me. How did she do it?”

  “With a cooking fork in the throat and a knife in the chest. He did not die well, but I did not raise a finger to help him.” She could not bear to tell this near-stranger about the terrible things her father had done, so she hid a shiver of rage, drawing her shawl close around her shoulders though the evening was warm. “But all this is off the path, Thane Fremur.”

  He laughed again, but it felt different this time. “Thane. I cannot grow used to it. In fact, after the moot has ended I doubt anyone will still be calling me that. My clansmen do not care much for me or for Unver.”

  “But for now they follow you. And friend or not, you must keep Unver from going to Rudur’s camp. Everyone at the moot is talking of Unver and what he has done! Rudur Redbeard cannot let a rival like that leave the Spirit Hills alive. And then the rest of us, all who came with Unver, will be murdered or made slaves.”

  Fremur reached out and took her hand. Hyara was both startled and strangely gratified by the younger man’s touch. Her husband had not treated her as anything but a brood mare for long years before he died, and even then not as his favorite. “I cannot stop him, Hyara,” Fremur said slowly. “The spirits are in him and no man alive can talk him out of anything, especially where his honor is concerned.” He shook his head. “Rudur has invited him, and every man in every clan at this moot knows that. If Unver does not go, no matter how wise a course it may be, they will whisper that he was afraid of Rudur.”

  “Who cares what the others think?” She almost shouted it, then struggled to bring her voice back under her control. “Is it better to be dead and honored than to be alive?”

  “For some, yes.” Fremur took her hand again and squeezed it, then rose from the logs where they sat. “Even though I will almost certainly not be a thane by the time the last Yellow Moon wanes, I am a thane now, and I must see that my people will be safe tomorrow.”

  “And you?” Hyara asked, and hated herself for how much she cared about the answer. She scarcely knew this young man, who must look on her as an aging widow. To need was to be weak, and just as among the animals of the grassland, the weak attracted predators. That was a lesson she had learned from her terrible father, and she took it seriously. “Will you be safe, too? Or will you follow Unver in his foolish, deadly need to keep his honor?”

  “He saved my life,” Fremur said. “Honor is not only a way for men to find their deaths, you know. Your sister acted with her own honor when she killed Fikolmij, it seems to me—I have heard tales about him. We all do what we must to live inside our own skins.”

  She could not bear to look at him, so she lowered her eyes and nodded. “Then may the Grass Thunderer look over you.” Hyara remembered he was not of her clan. “And the Crane,” she began, but could not remember the spirit’s proper name.

  “The Sky Piercer,” he said, and this time he smiled. “Yes, I hope that all the spirits will watch over us tomorrow. Do not give up all hope, lady. I saw the wolves surround Unver, saw the leader of the wolfpack pay him homage. He is not like other men.”

  And neither are you, Fremur Hurvalt’s son, she thought as she watched him walk away. So your death at Redbeard’s hands will be mourned by few but me, I fear.

  * * *

  Members of many clans lined the path that a thousand hooves had beaten into pockmarked dust to watch Unver and his followers ride past, heading toward the Black Bear camp at the end of the lake. Fremur saw that women and children stood among the men, as though this were a feast day, and most of the watching faces were full of excitement. Whether it came from seeing the now-infamous Unver Long Legs in the flesh or at the prospect of Rudur Redbeard’s killing a rival was difficult to say. Many shouted as they passed, mostly in mockery—here and there someone called “Tell Redbeard we want our pasture lands back!” or “Rudur is a thief!” as though they hoped Unver and his band of a dozen clansmen would take up their grievances.

  Fremur spurred his horse forward until he reached Unver, who rode with negligent grace and a hard, impassive look that might have been carved from wood.

  “We are fools to ride into Redbeard’s camp,” Fremur quietly told Unver. “If you have a plan, at least let me know. I was the only one who took your side from the start.”

  “I have no side.”

  Fremur cursed silently. The events of the last moon had only made Unver less talkative, if such a thing was possible. “Rudur Redbeard will not think so. He will kill me and the rest of my men just as dead as he will kill you.”

  “He will not kill me. We are his guests.” But the way Unver said it did not sound so much like belief as indifference, which was little help to Fremur’s stomach. He had felt all morning like a serpent was wrapped around his innards, slowly squeezing.

  A man pushed closer to where they rode, shoving others out of his way. He was large and very drunk but also young, his mustache still downy.

  “Hoy, Long Legs!” he shouted. “Hoy, Unver! That is your name, isn’t it? ‘Nobody’! And that’s what you are!”

  Unver turned his horse so abruptly that the young man had to jump back to avoid it. Unver leaned down from the saddle like a hawk watching something small and full of blood scuttling through the grass. The young grasslander had not expected this reaction and stared up at him, still as stone, eyes wide, dazzled.

  “No one calls me ‘Nobody’ unless they are somebody,” Unver said. “Are you?”

  The young man could not answer. Unver nodded, as if in agreement and turned his horse back toward Rudur’s camp.

  When they reached the gate the Black Bear Clan had erected for the Thanemoot, Fremur looked back at the men following them. “Where is Gezdahn Baldhead?” he asked. “He said he would be here.”

  His Crane Clan men shrugged.

  Unver dismounted and tied his horse to the fence, then walked across the grass toward Rudur’s huge tent as his other companions secured their mounts and followed. Fremur had to take swift steps to stay abreast of Unver, but he was determined that if it came to a fight he would not be thought a coward by any, even if that meant today would be his last day alive. Unver had come back for him when he could easily have left him to die. Fremur could not pay for a life with anything less than a life risked in return.

  Grand as it was, Rudur’s tent was only a small part of the Bear Clan camp. A wide awning stood beside it at the center of the encampment, twenty paces long on each side and open at the front; on the other two sides of the awning, Rudur’s wagons served as makeshift walls. A large banner of the clan’s totem, the Forest Growler, hung from the wagons at the rear, so that the man on the high stool seemed to wait for them in the bear’s red, toothy m
outh. Half a dozen more men sat at his feet; rough, bearded warriors, thanes of their own clans but also Rudur’s bondsmen. Fremur knew them all at least by reputation, and could not imagine raising a sword against them as anything other than a form of self-slaughter.

  The man on the stool, Rudur Redbeard, seemed both like and unlike his followers, although his thick gold armbands and the golden torque around his neck marked him out as more than just an ordinary clansman. Rudur was not overly tall or overly bulky, but the muscles in his tattooed arms were taut as whipcords. He had a thin nose and eyes narrow as knife-cuts, but did not glare or glower like the thanes who surrounded him. Instead he watched Unver’s approach with a half-smile on his face and the keen attention of a hunter. Rudur was neither old nor young, perhaps a decade beyond Unver at most, and his famous red beard showed grey only in streaks on either side of his chin.

  Fremur could see men and even some women at work around the camp, but saw no other armed Bear clansmen in sight, and none of Rudur’s folk stood staring like the grasslanders who had watched their approach. Was Unver Long Legs coming to Rudur’s camp really so uninteresting to them? Or did they fear violence? And was that why Fremur’s clansman Gezdahn had not accompanied them after saying he would?

  “Ah, here he is,” said Rudur loudly at they approached. He had a shaman’s voice, as though each word took on greater meaning than if spoken by another. “Unver of the Stallion Clan, come to pay his respects. Or is it Sanver? I hear you had that name once. I hear you even have a stone-dweller name as well, though I cannot remember it. And are you Stallion or Crane Clan? Many are talking about you here—asking questions about you—but perhaps you will tell me—what are you, exactly?”

  “I am what you see,” said Unver. “And I did not come to pay respects, although I bring no disrespect either, Redbeard. I came because you asked me to.”