Empire of Grass

by Tad Williams

  She should have been beyond shame, but seeing the faces of Clan Enduya guards she recognized while they looked back blandly, as though they had never seen her before, hollowed her out completely. As the huntsman rapped out a few words to them she could only stand shivering, caught in a waking nightmare.

  One of the guards disappeared into the clan house; a scant few moments later the lady of the house swept in like something from a nursery tale, her diaphanous pale green dress billowing around her like forest mist, her face as icily perfect as an artist’s masterpiece. When she saw Tzoja, Khimabu’s matchless lips parted just a little, turning up at both ends in a small but immensely satisfied smile.

  “My lady,” said the Queen’s Huntsman, “is this the escaped slave Tzoja, servant of Lord Viyeki’s household?”

  “Oh, yes. Oh, yes, it most certainly is.” Khimabu stared at Tzoja like a delicious meal. “A very wicked slave she is, too, but do not fear—I have thought of many suitable punishments for her. Many.” She reached out a long-fingered hand, her movements graceful and measured, but the gleam in her bright eyes gave her away. “Give her to me now, huntsman—I cannot wait. Do you need payment? I will have my cleric take you to my lord’s counting room . . .”

  “No, my lady, you may not have her,” said the huntsman, surprising both women. “That is all I need of you—you have confirmed this is the slave Tzoja. She will not stay here any longer. She is not your prisoner.”

  Khimabu’s expression turned icy and her lip curled as if she would bite out his throat. “What nonsense is this from another mortal slave? My husband the High Magister is away on a mission for Queen Utuk’ku herself. In his absence, my word rules this clan house.”

  The huntsman bowed again. “I am a slave, yes, my lady, but this creature is now the queen’s prisoner—the Mother of All personally ordered her capture. Do you take precedence over the queen? I think not.”

  He left Khimabu stuttering in confusion as he led Tzoja away.

  At first Tzoja had a moment of hope, unlikely as it seemed, that the huntsman might have lied, that he might wish to keep her for himself. She was relieved to think that rape followed by death might be the worst thing she would suffer—a horror, but far better than what Khimabu meant for her. As they made their way up the great staircase to the upper level, approached the labyrinth that was the royal Omeiyo Palace, then marched through its great carved gates, Tzoja realized the huntsman had been telling the truth about taking her to Queen Utuk’ku and she abandoned hope entirely.

  * * *

  Even on horseback—Nezeru rode behind Rinde with her wrists bound—it still took them almost two full days to reach the War-Shrike Legion camp, and that was only the first surprise.

  With no warning, Scout Rinde stopped and dismounted in a small forest clearing on the side of a wooded hill. He made a trilling sound with pursed lips and a slab of rock that had looked to be half-buried in the earth rose upward, revealing another Sacrifice lifting it from beneath. Nezeru was forced onto her hands and knees and made to crawl into the hidden tunnel. It seemed like an elaborate arrangement for a mere Sacrifice camp and she wondered if the secrecy meant they were close to mortal lands. Certainly they seemed to have traveled eastward far enough. But she had never heard of Hikeda’ya encampments so far from Nakkiga.

  The passage beyond the opening was much larger than Nezeru would have expected, large enough for her to stand up and for two or maybe even three Sacrifices to walk abreast. Rinde and the other scouts prodded her forward. Here and there, holes in the passage ceiling let in light. When she looked up she saw a complicated arrangement of sticks and leaves that disguised the holes and would prevent anyone above from seeing down. As they walked through the tunnel Nezeru could see it was crossed by other passages just as high and almost as spacious, the work of much digging and bracing. Many Sacrifice soldiers passed them, and although a few cast curious looks in her direction none spoke. When another two almost ran into each other in a crossing just in front of her, they stepped apart without a word and went their separate ways.

  They’re under silence discipline, she realized.

  This was no mere camp she had arrived at, but a fortification meant for long-term survival in enemy territory. She knew Jarnulf’s horse had carried her a long distance, but could it have carried her almost all the way into mortal lands? Even so, she had never heard of such an elaborate underground fort so far from Nakkiga, nor knew of any reason for such a thing to exist.

  She was led to a door—something clearly crafted in Nakkiga and brought here. Rinde left her in the tunnel with the other two scouts while he went inside, then a short time later he emerged and gestured for her to enter.

  A surprisingly large room had been dug out of the earth and walled in wooden boards. A single Sacrifice officer stood over a wide table (another piece of woodwork too fine to have been crafted in the field) looking down at a collection of abstract shapes made from wood and set in clumps on a rolled-out tapestry. She did not look up. Rinde, who had accompanied Nezeru into the lamplit chamber, stood at silent attention just inside the door.

  Nezeru could see that this was no common officer but a league commander, a Sacrifice rank just below general. The room was lit by several small lamps, and stools were set around the table, suggesting a war council had just ended.

  The commander seemed in no hurry to acknowledge Nezeru but moved slowly around the table examining the arrangements of wooden shapes from different angles. She was lean and fit, her age apparent only in the thinness of her skin. But she held her left arm against her chest at an odd angle, as though it were injured.

  At last the commander paused and straightened, then turned hard, coal-dark eyes on Nezeru.

  “You claim to be a Queen’s Talon,” she said without preamble.

  “It is no mere claim. I am Sacrifice Nezeru, one of the Queen’s Talon commanded by Chieftain Makho. I have been kidnapped from my camp . . .” She hesitated then, reluctant to admit she had been bested by a mortal. “If you give me assistance to return to my Hand, you will be doing the queen’s will.”

  “I do nothing but the queen’s will,” said the officer. “Do not tell me my duty, Sacrifice. Rinde?”

  “Yes, Commander Juni’ata?”

  “Find this Sacrifice a place to take rest if she needs it, but she is not to leave the fort under any circumstances unless I command it. Is that clear?”

  “But I have a mission! The queen’s mission that she gave to us!” Nezeru could not believe even the most confident officer would risk the queen’s ire without more information. “You have not even asked me what our task is!”

  Juni’ata turned, the movement displacing her shoulder cloak to reveal a stretch of strange weathered yellow between her left glove and sleeve. Juni’ata noticed her staring and shrugged the cape aside, then pulled back the sleeve. At first Nezeru could not make sense of what she saw, but then she realized the commander’s forearm was not flesh but a single piece of what looked like walrus ivory.

  “A giant took my arm,” Juni’ata said, but she was not looking at Nezeru anymore: the shapes on the tabletop had recaptured her attention. “Bit off everything below the shoulder. But after I killed him, one of his leg bones was carved to provide me with a new arm.” The officer shook her head with something like dissatisfaction, as if wishing she could do it all again but even more artfully. “Scout Rinde, take the prisoner away now. I am working.”

  “Yes, Commander.”

  “Prisoner?” Nezeru was having trouble keeping her voice respectfully calm. “I am on a mission for the queen herself! How can you interfere?”

  Commander Juni’ata gave her a look as empty as a broken jug. “Anyone could claim that. We will discover what is real. If you speak the truth, Sacrifice, you will be allowed to return to your Hand. If you are lying, you will receive the full penalty for your broken oath.” She made a small hand-sign and Rinde too
k Nezeru by the arm, then guided her out again.

  “She is hard but fair, our commander,” the scout said quietly. “But may the Garden protect you if you ever lie to her.”

  She had no answer. Nezeru knew by experience that the cold discipline of the Order of Sacrifice would prevail, no matter what she said or did.

  22

  Misty Vale

  Something squeezed the breath from Morgan’s chest as it yanked him upward into the air—squeezing him so tightly that though he tried to scream in sudden terror, he could only summon enough breath to squeak.

  He jerked to a halt but still swung helplessly. The mists surrounded him, hiding both the ground and the treetops above so that he seemed to float in a swirling white netherworld. As the first moment of astonishment passed he realized he was not being held by gigantic fingers but by a rope around his chest, and that as he thrashed and fought to free himself the rope was working its way higher up his body—and that rope was the only thing keeping him from falling what he felt sure was a fatal distance.

  Morgan stopped struggling. His arms were pinioned, the rope pulled painfully tight around his arms just above his elbows, but he had a swift nightmare vision of the loop suddenly sliding all the way up to his neck. For a long moment all he could think of was the thief he had once seen on the public gallows in Breakstaff Square in Erchester. Inexpertly hanged, the man had wriggled like a fish for an achingly long time as he died. Morgan’s tutor (who along with several guards had been letting the young prince explore the marketplace) had tried to pull him away, but the last sight of the legs kicking in mid-air had never left him.

  He looked up into the tree, but the leaves hid whoever or whatever had snared him.

  Just then the branches rattled and the whole tree shuddered, as if a hammer as big as the moon had struck the ground. As Morgan swung violently back and forth he remembered that the rope on which he dangled like a plumb bob was the least of his problems.

  That thing . . . the giant . . . !

  It was still coming toward him, a monstrously huge shape made unrecognizable by mist and angled light. It was far too big to be real—but it was real, it was, and moving closer. Then it stopped. In that moment of stillness he could make out something of the thing’s squat shagginess—or at least its shaggy lower quarters, since the rest of the massive thing was still hidden by the swirling white haze. Its legs made shadows as big as grain silos.

  Morgan held his breath and let himself go limp, though his heart was thumping. He prayed to God and Usires and his Mother Elysia that the giant could not see him hanging there like a fat quail curing above a crofter’s door. For an achingly extended moment nothing moved except Morgan himself, gently swaying. Then the massive shadow turned and trudged back into the depths of the canyon, each thunderous step accompanied by the snap and crack of small trees being crushed.

  The rope around his chest tightened as Morgan began to rise again, rattling upward through the branches until he could see the other end of the rope was stretched over a sturdy branch, and held by a cloaked and hooded figure. His captor pulled him higher, then pushed him gently to one side as he rose until he felt something solid rub against him—a wide branch—then he was lowered again until he was sitting on it. The hooded figure reached out once more and, with a single flick of the hand so swift he couldn’t follow it, loosened the rope that held him. As it fell into coils his captor quickly reeled it in. No longer held in place, Morgan felt a momentary loss of balance and flung out his aching arms to grab at the branch.

  The shape jumped down beside him, landing so lightly the branch did not move. The agility made him think this might be one of the Sithi, but that only slightly reassuring thought was followed almost immediately by another: Or it might be one of those White Foxes.

  Before Morgan could get his bloodless, tingling fingers to close on the hilt of his knife, the cloaked figure put a cool hand across his mouth; the grip was much stronger than the slenderness of the fingers suggested. He tried to struggle free, but the stranger kept one hand over his mouth, then reached out with the other hand—which meant he or she was crouching unsupported on the branch—and gave Morgan’s ear a painful but silent twist, like a furious tutor with an unresponsive pupil. Then it pointed down into the mist below.

  One last time he opened his mouth, but when the hand pinched his lips closed Morgan finally understood. He stopped fighting and tried to make his breathing as shallow and quiet as possible. Something else was coming, that was clear. Something was looking for him, or for the one who had pulled him up into the tree, or for both of them.

  Such a long time passed that he began to wonder if his hooded and still unknown rescuer had been mistaken, but just when he was about to risk a whispered question he saw shapes in the mist below, only a few dozen yards from the tree in which he and his rescuer crouched. The shapes moved as silently as shadows, as ghosts, but they were no phantoms. Morgan held his breath until it burned in his chest.

  He had never seen a live Norn before, but he knew the three figures on the ground could be nothing else: their hair, faces, and hands were so pale as to be almost luminous in the day’s failing light. They wore armor made of what looked like lacquered wood, held long black bows in their hands, and seemed perfectly at home in this wild place, their steps soundless, their movements graceful but precise. As Morgan stared, one of them paused, his head tipped to one side as if listening, and Morgan felt his breath turn into scalding steam in his lungs. A dozen swift heartbeats sounded in his chest—two dozen! He needed to breathe so badly, but did not dare. The other two Norns waited like statures. Then, at last, the one who had stopped began moving again. Within a few moments the Norns had all slipped away into the mist, bypassing the mouth of the valley without a look.

  Morgan was shaking so badly now that he was afraid he would slide off the branch. He let out his long-held breath and drank in a glorious new one. His rescuer threw back the cloak’s hood and said softly, “Gone. We were fortunate. You were fortunate.”

  Morgan stared. He had been right—it was a Sitha, golden-eyed and golden-skinned, with long, white hair pulled back in a simple braid. At first he couldn’t tell whether his rescuer was male or female, but a delicacy in the features at last convinced him this was a Sitha woman crouched beside him. “Who are you?” he asked.

  She looked at him curiously. “You do not recognize me? You and your fellows carried me a long journey back to my home.”

  “You’re the one who was sick? Poisoned, I mean?”

  “Yes. My mother named me Tanahaya. And you are Morgan, grandson of the Hikka Staja, so I am pleased we finally meet.”

  He had only ever seen her pale and insensible, so ill that it had been hard to look at her because it reminded him of his father’s last days. In fact, this creature had looked so close to death the last time he saw her—carried into the Sithi camp—that it seemed nearly impossible to believe this could be her. Even more confounding, she had hauled the whole of his weight up into the tree by herself.

  “Tanahaya,” he said, experimenting with the sound. It sounded flatter and heavier when he said it. Morgan suddenly had a sense of what a mad picture this would make to someone else, him sitting on a tree branch exchanging pleasantries with a fairy after an impossibly huge monster, and then several demons, had just tried to kill him. “What was that huge thing?” he asked suddenly. “A giant?”

  “Not the kind you know—not what mortals call ‘Hunën.’ The thing that lives in Misty Vale is something different, and jealous of its privacy. Murderously jealous. Only a mortal would try to enter that valley—all my kind know it is forbidden.”

  “Forbidden by whom?”

  She shook her head. “How can it matter to you? The place has been forbidden since Amerasu Ship-Born’s time, or even before. But it is not merely the word of our elders that keeps us out—the smashed and broken bodies of those who wandered into that va
lley by mistake are warning enough.”

  Morgan knew that he was certainly never going to go near the place again. In fact, he was ready to get farther away as quickly as possible, and said so.

  “Not yet,” said Tanahaya. “The Hikeda’ya scouts are still close by. We will stay here until after nightfall.”

  “Hikeda’ya. That word means ‘Norns,’ doesn’t it? Those were Norns.”

  “Yes, your people call them Norns, just as they call us ‘Sithi.’ But I do not know what they were doing here, so far from their own lands. They have been tracking you for a day or two, I think.”

  That made Morgan’s blood turn icy cold. “Tracking me? Why?”

  “How can I say? I do not know why they are here in the first place. But I came upon them first and followed them until I found you, so I feel certain it was you they hunted.” She finally unfolded from her crouch and lowered herself onto the branch beside him. “You are luckier than you know that they did not catch you before I did. I think it is only your smell that confused them. You do not smell like a mortal anymore, but more like those Tinukeda’ya you were journeying with.”

  It took a moment—so many new words. “Hikeda . . . Hikeya, Tinkedaya. All these ‘Daya’s!’ I don’t know what any of it means. What are Tinka—the last thing you said?” A sudden idea came to him. “Are you talking about the Chikri? The little animals I was with?”

  She shook her head emphatically. “They are not animals, they are Tinukeda’ya.”