Empire of Grass

by Tad Williams

  Now Eolair felt stung. “The king and queen are not such weaklings or cowards that they will be dictated to, even by this Unver Shan.”

  “Then we will all see the end of things. I know your people are many and their castles are strong. My people will die too.” Her face, so fierce only moments before, now was pale and full of horror, as though she could actually see the terrible things she foretold.

  “Lady Hyara, I hear you.” Eolair was angry with himself for letting his own feelings leak through. “I do not want war between our peoples, and I know the king and queen do not want it either. Talk to Unver. Tell him to speak to me before he sends a message to them, and together we will find a way to make peace that both peoples can live with.”

  She shook her head violently. “I cannot speak to him—not about such things. It is not my place, and he would not listen.”

  “If he is as clever as you say, and loves his own people as much as you say, then he will listen. If he cannot take advice from a woman, perhaps he can take it from an old Hernystirman who has seen many things and many wars.” Eolair patted her hand where it clutched the bottom of the window. “The King and Queen of the High Ward have enemies more frightening and more deadly than the clan-folk of the grasslands—believe me. They do not want war with the Thrithings any more than you do. Tell Unver that I will be a go-between. He has treated me fairly so far, so I will see that my masters, as you call them, do the same. Do not despair, my lady. While good people live there is always hope.”

  “But when the spirits themselves want war, and the people’s hearts do too, nothing can stop it.” Without another word she turned from the hole in the wagon’s door and was gone. When he looked out, Eolair saw only a dark, slim shape flitting away across the grass.

  * * *

  When Hyara returned to the great tent, she found her sister kneeling beside what had once been Rudur’s bed; it was rank now with sweat and dried blood. Vorzheva was spooning broth into her son’s mouth. Unver’s wounds had healed a little, but his face was still disfigured by the cuts and the swollen flesh that surrounded them. Hyara could tell by the way the Shan sat that his flayed back was also still terribly painful, but as usual he kept all sign of discomfort from his face. She knew this sort of strength well from the men in her clan and both admired and detested it. It made all pain, including that of other people, into something to be ignored, something unimportant.

  In a month, Unver’s torn skin will be only hard white scars, she thought. But not all wounds heal like flesh.

  Fremur was there too, and he spoke sternly to her. “It is not good for you to walk about so late, Hyara. You are the Shan’s kin. Someone might wish to do you harm.”

  She wondered how much of his concern was really for her, and how much for Unver’s dignity. Thrithings-men did not like their women, even older relatives, to walk about freely, to go without suitable escort or without getting permission first. But Hyara had lived with those strictures for so long that she was not willing to be bridled again, especially not by a man ten years or more younger.

  And it is not as if he has asked for my bride price, she reminded herself. Who is he to me, anyway, except the servant of my sister’s son? Let him speak for himself if he wants a say in my life.

  “I went out for a walk,” she said. “That is all. How is Unver?”

  “The Shan is well,” said Fremur.

  “He is regaining his appetite,” her sister said.

  “By the Sky-Piercer,” Unver growled, pushing the bone spoon aside, “have I died? Do I need a shaman to speak for me, like the spirits of the ancestors?”

  Fremur looked pleased, perhaps to hear Unver still swore by the Crane Clan’s totem. “Of course not, great Shan.”

  Unver looked at Hyara. “And what did you see while you walked?”

  She hesitated. “Much and nothing, as always.” If he asked her what she had done, should she tell him? Nobody had ordered her to stay away from the stone-dweller, Count Eolair, but she sensed that Unver would not like it if he knew, and if he knew she had begged the foreigner to find a way to avoid war he would probably be furious. No man of the grassland clans wanted a woman to speak for him, much less to plead for peace.

  Luckily for Hyara, Unver seemed to have his mind on other things.

  “The Thanemoot is almost ended.” He wiped soup from his lip with a disdainful flip of his fingers. Vorzheva and Hyara had shaved his mustache so they could clean the deep cuts that went down his cheeks and into his upper lip. She was not used to seeing a man of his age with no whiskers. He did not look as bizarre as Fremur’s slave, the man once called Gezdahn Baldhead, who now crouched in a corner of the tent staring down at the ground, but it still made Unver seem strange, like something entirely new.

  But he is the Shan, she reminded herself. That is as new and different as any man could be. Even Edizel from days long past had not had a story as unusual as her nephew’s.

  For the first time, she thought of Unver’s father, Prince Josua. When Josua had first come to the Thrithings, Hyara had been a mere child and had barely seen him or heard him, since he had come as one of his father King John’s envoys and met only with Vorzheva’s and Hyara’s father Fikolmij, thane of the Stallion Clan. When Josua and Vorzheva came back years later, Hyara was old enough to watch and understand. Josua had almost died at the hands of one of her father’s minions, but in the end had survived and even triumphed, a humiliation that had burned in her father’s heart forever after. But over the years, as Hyara had grown into womanhood, Prince Josua’s face had left her memory, though she remembered what he had done very well. It was as though her sister had married a sort of ghost, some kind of supernatural being who could not ever be completely seen.

  But now, as she looked at Unver’s face, and despite the terrible injuries, she thought she could see things in his hard features that brought back long-buried memories of the prince—the high forehead, the long jaw, the cool gray eyes.

  What else has his father given to Unver, the man who will now rule all the grasslands?

  She could not ask that question—she was not even certain any of the others would understand it—so instead she said, “You grew up among the stone-dwellers, Unver Shan. What are they like?”

  He fixed her with eyes that sometimes seemed impossibly cold and distant, but now looked faintly mistrustful, more like those of a cautious child than the ruler of all the clans. “What do you mean, Hyara?”

  “Do not remind him of those bad times.” Vorzheva put the empty soup bowl down on the floor so sharply that the spoon rattled and spun. “We were deserted. His father left us. We were alone among people who despised us. How can you ask him to remember such things?”

  The faintest shadow of a smile curled Unver’s lip, still clotted in several places with dried blood. “Your memories are not mine, my mother. The city beside the marsh was not a hateful place to me, except when I was dragged away from it. I had to hate it then, or I would have hated myself.”

  Hyara was fascinated. It was the most she had heard him say about his past. “What is Kwanitupul like? I have always wondered. I met a trader once who made it sound like a magical place, full of every kind of person and thing that ever was.”

  “It was filthy and cramped,” said Vorzheva promptly. “I used to stand on the roof of that cursed inn, praying for a change in the wind so that I could smell the clean air of the grasslands and not the stink of the swamps.”

  Unver did not look at his mother but held Hyara’s eye instead, his hint of smile still lingering, although there was something else in his face now too, an anger she did not entirely understand. “A child can make his home anywhere, I think,” he said. “If there is something firm on which to stand.”

  Fremur suddenly stood up and walked across the grass toward the place where the hairless slave crouched. “And you! What are you listening to, you dog? This is not for your ears.
This is the Shan that you tried to betray, and yet you sit there like a spy, hearing all. And it is only because Hyara begged for your life that you are not rotting on a stake. Get out of this tent, you wretch, or I will throw you out.”

  The one called Baldhead did not say a word, but rose and hurried out, head down and shoulders high, as though he expected something to be thrown at him. It was true that Hyara had suggested that Fremur spare him, but not out of sympathy or softness. As someone who had watched her father’s way of ruling all her life, she knew that harsh lessons did not breed obedience, only a treacherous silence.

  “I should have killed that piece of offal when I meant to,” Fremur said, looking at Hyara almost in accusation. “If you spare a dog he will never bite you, but men are not so trustworthy.”

  “Ho, Fremur, you must have known more loyal dogs than I have,” said Unver, laughing a little, though it obviously hurt his healing face. “There is no animal I know—dog or man or horse—who, once injured, will not wish they could return the injury.”

  “We need fear those injuries and treacheries no longer,” Vorzheva said with the crisp certainty of someone who did not entirely believe something, but wanted to. “Now we are the ones who will help those who deserve it, and beat down those who try do us harm.”

  “And on that, my mother,” said Unver, any trace of a smile now gone, “you and I can truly agree.”

  33

  Shadows on the Walls

  “Come, High Magister Viyeki,” said Prince Pratiki. “Stand with me and watch our warriors at their brave work.”

  The prince-templar was resplendent in an ancient suit of witchwood armor worth more than everything Viyeki owned put together. His hair was bound into two deliberately hasty war-braids, and his famous sword Moonlight hung at his waist. But Pratiki was no mere Sacrifice officer: the prince-templar was a relative of the queen herself, a rank greater than even the High Martial of all the armies of Nakkiga could hope to achieve. Pratiki had not achieved greatness, it was a part of him, a certainty that informed his every breath and thought. “Please, my lord,” he asked Viyeki again, turning this time to look back. “Come and join me.”

  Pratiki, Viyeki had come to learn, was surprisingly generous for a Hamakha noble, courteous with all who served him, even slaves. But as with most born into great power, he did not understand the obligations even his generosity laid on those around him.

  Viyeki joined the prince and his troop of personal guards at the edge of the hilltop, though he would rather have stood apart, where he would not need to hide his occasionally untrustworthy thoughts. The moon had dipped behind the hills, but even by starlight it was easy to see General Kikiti’s army swarming silently toward the mortal fortress called Naglimund. Viyeki could not help wondering what it would be like to be a mortal inside those stone walls, to see so poorly after the sun was gone and then to discover such a great force coming out of the night to attack.

  The mortals think us demons and monsters. As the war-poet Zinuzo wrote, “The forces of darkness and death are before us, and they hate what we are. They hate our breath, they hate our warm blood.” But he spoke of the enemies we faced when shadows first crept across the Garden. Did he ever dream that others might see his own people the same way?

  “Ah,” said Pratiki, with the cheerful interest he might display while watching particularly involving game of shaynat. “Look! Now the Hammer-wielders step out. They are proud, everyone tells me. Like your Builders, Viyeki, it is said they love their tools more than they love their own families. But Hammer-wielders are so few these days!”

  A dozen Hammer-wielders ran uphill through a hail of arrows from the walls, gliding like birds despite the heaviness of the tools they carried. Pratiki was right about their sparse numbers, and already one had fallen, pierced through the chest by a defender’s arrow.

  “Surely they will never be enough to bring the walls down,” said Viyeki. “Why are there not more of them?”

  “Because these days our armies are full of halfbloods,” Pratiki told him. “Little more than children, most of them. They have not had time to learn the old arts. But do not fear, Magister—Kikiti and the other generals have planned carefully.”

  The defenders inside the stronghold were swarming onto the walls now, but the weak-eyed mortal archers could scarcely see the Hikeda’ya to aim at them, and though another of the Hammer-wielders fell, the rest of the small company quickly reached the base of the curtain wall. Viyeki knew from other battles that they would swing their great stone-headed mallets with the care of gem-cutters, each striking a single point until the wall quivered like ringing crystal. If enough of them struck, it would set even the thickest stone barrier crumbling. But surely this company of Hammer-wielders was too small!

  To Viyeki’s astonishment, the first place the attackers struck was not against the great wall itself but at several places on the ground before it. He watched as they spread out even farther and pounded the ground again with their great mallets, soundlessly and with no visible effect.

  “What are they doing?” It was all he could manage to keep the agony and confusion from his voice, to maintain the bloodless, placid tones of a Nakkiga noble. “Do you understand what is happening, Prince-Templar?”

  Pratiki sounded almost amused. “I told you not to fear, Magister. The wall will come down soon enough—all the walls will come down. But it will take a while before the rest of our attack begins. It is a long way here from their burrows at Fort Deeping.”

  Viyeki had no idea what Pratiki meant, but he was distracted by the Hammer-wielders. The survivors had spread out far along the curtain wall but now hurried back toward the center of the wall, the fort’s main gate. There they gathered, almost shoulder to shoulder, then swung their weapons in unison. This time they did what he had expected all along, slamming their huge mallets into the base of the curtain wall. All of the weapons struck within a few paces of each other, and where they crashed against the mortared stones pale cracks spread across the massive wall like frozen lightning. As the cracks grew longer, Viyeki saw mortals fleeing in panic from the battlements above. The wall beside the gate began to shiver. He felt a little reassured now—this was nearer to what he had expected. Another blow and at least this one narrow section of the curtain wall would collapse. He could already see the pale forms of a few of the warrior-giants as they lumbered up the slope in anticipation.

  “See! The mortals cannot stop us, or even slow us greatly,” Pratiki declared. “General Kikiti and his troops, with the help of the Northeastern Host, will have taken the fortress before sunrise. Then you and your people will be called on to do your part, High Magister. I am confident you will find success just as our Sacrifices do.”

  Again Viyeki was a bit confused—he could not remember ever hearing of the Northeastern Host before. But the mention of his own task had reminded him of how little he understood of anything happening here.

  “I hope you are right, my lord.”

  Pratiki gave him a swift glance. “I hear doubt in your voice, noble Viyeki. What troubles you?

  Because of the prince-templar’s calm, almost gentle way of speaking, it was sometimes difficult to remember how important Pratiki was, and how powerful. “I would be more confident of my order’s success, Highness, if I knew exactly what it was my Builders and I were expected to do.” As soon as the careless words left his mouth Viyeki regretted them: even the kindest member of the queen’s clan might consider them treasonous.

  “Do?” The prince-templar looked over to him again. “What do you mean, Magister?”

  “I beg your pardon, Serene Highness. Of course I have faith in the mission with which our queen honored me, to find Ruyan Ve’s ancient tomb and recover his armor. But I confess I do not understand how any of that will help the queen or her people.”

  “It is for the Witchwood Crown,” said Pratiki, and now his voice was stern. “You know tha
t, High Magister. Everything we do is bent toward recovering the Witchwood Crown.”

  Relieved that the prince-templar had not immediately denounced him for his doubts, Viyeki hurried to reassure him. “Of course, sire, of course. But before these last days I had heard of this crown only in whispers, my prince, and none of them were from sources I trusted—until now. Although I am certain,” he hastened to say, “that my ignorance was necessary.” He hesitated, then decided he had stepped too far into the river to turn back; he must wade on, no matter how high the water might prove. “In fact, I confess that I do not even know whether this crown is a palpable thing—”

  “Look, look!” Pratiki was distracted again. “Even with so few Hammer-wielders, we begin to have success! The wall beside the gate is crumbling—see there!—and the giants are pushing their way into the fortress.” The prince paused, still looking down on the battlefield. The faint chaos-sounds of battle wafted to them across the night air. “You do not know what the Witchwood Crown is, you say?”

  “I confess my ignorance, Highness.”

  A few moments of silence passed before Pratiki spoke again. “It is about the witchwood itself, you see. The last trees are dying.”

  “So I have heard.” It would have been almost impossible not to know that—the subject had been whispered about in the councils of the powerful even before the queen had awakened from her long slumber. “But what is this crown, if I may ask? And what will it do?”

  “The queen knows,” said Pratiki slowly, as if repeating something he had been taught at a young age and had not considered since. “Our blessed Mother of All knows and, as always, she has decided the proper thing to do. She will find a way to bring back the witchwood. For without it, Lord Viyeki, what are we? We lost the Garden—shall we lose the last and most precious remnant of it in these lands as well? Shall we become no different than the hapless, short-lived mortals?”