Empire of Grass

by Tad Williams

  “But the river must be close!” he said in frustration. “I can smell it! Almost hear it!”

  “I can smell it too,” she said. “But the rams are tired and so are you.” She looked to their two mounts, Snenneq’s Falku and her Ooki, chewing shoots of dry autumn grass in their annoyed-looking, sideways manner. “We have a pair of birds left from your excellent hunting yesterday. Let us make a fire. You rest while it burns down to coals. I will wrap them in some wood garlic leaves. That will give you something to smell that will not frustrate you.”

  Snenneq smiled, then kissed her nose and stood. “I agree with your plan. But first I will do one thing. I will climb that high tree and see how much of this foul thorn and bracken lies between us and the river. Perhaps there is an easier way to get through it.”

  “You should not be climbing trees while your hands are still bleeding,” she scolded him. “If you tear loose those bandages I will not do my work all over again. And if the smell of your blood calls some hungry animal, I will not lift a finger to save you.”

  Snenneq pounded his chest with his fist. “I hear you, Grandchild of the Herder and Huntress! I will be most carefully careful of my bandages. And in case some fierce beast should scent me on the wind and think me supper, I will carry my ax in my belt, and if attacked I will use it to dissuade my attacker from such foolishness.”

  “You’d better sharpen it first,” she said. “You’ve been hacking at the bushes so long it’s probably as dull as your tongue.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “It could never be as sharp as yours, my betrothed.” But he took out his whetstone and brought the blade back to a keen edge before he started climbing.

  Qina could hear him rattling in the branches high above, noisy as a weasel trapped in a basket. She leaned closer to the fire and poked the pieces of wood apart so they would burn down more quickly. “Are you well?” she called. “Do you see anything?”

  “Leaves!” he cried. “More filthy leaves than you can imagine. But if I get a little higher, I think I will be above them and then can . . .” He fell silent again, or at least his voice did, but she could hear the rattling as he clambered higher. “Hah!” Triumph was plain in his voice. “Now I can see the river in truth! It is not far away, and I see also that we can find a better path through this hateful undergrowth.”

  She sighed and leaned away from the fire, which was making her sweat. “Is there perhaps not a way we could walk around it instead?” She heard a loud rustle above her. “Snenneq?”

  “What? Daughter of the Mountains, woman, I am trying to do what you asked!”

  Something still rustled in a treetop above her, but it was not the same tree that Snenneq had climbed. “There is something else in the trees!” she cried. “Snneneq, be wary!”

  “What did you say? I cannot hear you. Are you shaking the tree? Do you want me to fall and break all my most useful parts?”

  “It is not me! Something is in one of the other trees—something big!” She paused and now could see leaves trembling near the tree’s crown. A moment later something large clambered from one tree to the next, and now was in the one next to Snenneq’s. “Come down at once! Something is coming toward you!”

  “What do you mean? What is coming?”

  The branches were swaying, but the thick foliage of the new tree, a buckthorn, made it hard for Qina to see anything but the movement. Before she could shout another warning, whatever it was slipped from the rustling, rattling crown of one tree and into the foliage where Snenneq sat hidden. “Get out of the tree!” she cried.

  She got no reply. A moment later the entire upper section of the Snenneq’s tree began shifting, the branches wagging as something heavy moved through them. She heard a cry of surprise from Snenneq, then he cursed loudly. Qina grabbed a smoldering branch from the fire and picked up the knife she had been using to split the birds, then ran to the base of the tree.

  “Snenneq! What is it?” she cried. “I’m here! I’m coming up!”

  “No!” he shouted, and his voice was ragged with fear. More commotion, more rattling, then she heard sound of tree limbs breaking. Her betrothed gave a loud cry and an instant later something came crashing down through the branches. It struck first one branch, then another, bending the large ones and snapping the smaller. She leaped out of the way as it struck one last branch nearly a dozen feet from the ground, hung there for a moment, then slid off and crashed to the mossy ground with a muffled thump.

  “Snenneq!” she cried, hurrying to him. His eyes opened. There was blood on his face. “Are you alive? Oh, by the ancestors, do not be dead!”

  He stared at her, then over his shoulder. His eyes widened. He grabbed her and wrestled her to one side, rolling half on top of her, as something large came skittering headfirst down the trunk of the tree and sprang onto the ground. Groaning at the effort, Snenneq dragged her backward, away from the knotted roots.

  The thing rose onto its back legs until it stood twice her height, as big as a flatlander man, and Qina felt her heart smack against her ribs in fear. She had never seen anything like it. It was man-shaped, but nothing like a man, with dull, shiny skin of several colors, muddy gray, brown, and green. Its face was a rigid horror of black, bulbous eyes and quivering mouth parts at the end of the blunt snout. It raised its front limbs—its arms—and she saw that each one ended in weird, clawed paws halfway between human hands and the flattened feet of some climbing lizard.

  Then it lunged toward them and there was no more time to think. It grabbed at Qina first, but Snenneq had his ax in his hands, though he had no time to grasp it properly and only managed to strike the thing with the back of his ax-head. He hit it squarely and one plated arm dropped to the thing’s side, apparently useless, but the clawed hand of the other arm closed on Qina’s hair and began pulling her. It was too strong for her to resist, so she lifted the smoldering brand and pushed it into the twitching mouth as hard as she could. The stick hissed and steamed and the thing let go of her with a terrible whistling shriek.

  Now Snenneq had his ax the right way around. He leaped on the creature, hammering it over and over around the head and neck while it buzzed and clicked and frothed from its wounded muzzle. His relentless blows cut the armored body, but did not seem to do much real damage.

  “Go and get . . . !” he shouted, but Qina was already scrambling back toward the fire on her hands and knees to find her Huntress spear. The creature had a squeezing claw around Snenneq’s neck when she returned. She dared not attack its midsection for fear of hurting her beloved, so she aimed at the back of the thing’s neck and used both hands to plunge the spear into the leathery tissue between the armored head and the shell-like back. The sharp stone spearhead smashed out through the front of the creature’s neck in a fizz of pale fluid. Qina pulled back on the spear, yanking the flailing creature off of Snenneq. It writhed and fought so hard that it pulled the spear from her hands, but Snenneq was finally free. He stumbled to the place where he had been cutting brush and came back with a large stone, which he lifted just as the creature was trying to right itself, then crushed the horror’s head like an egg. It collapsed, nothing left above its shoulders but a sticky ruin. Its jointed legs thrashed for a moment, then gradually went still.

  Qina and Snenneq both crouched on hands and knees like sick dogs, gasping for air. At last she stood up and went on shaking legs to her beloved. “Are you badly hurt?”

  “I have bruises I will feel for some days,” he said, “but nothing worse. And you, my so-brave nukapika?”

  “My neck is scratched,” she said. “I will not be able to rest until I clean it. What was that foul horror?”

  Snenneq rose and scraped the worst of the mud and leaves from his clothes. “I do not know.” He went to the dead thing and poked it with his booted foot.

  “It looks as though it is plated like a crab,” she said. “Or a beetle.”

  “A
ghant,” he said, almost in wonderment, as though he had seen a new star in the sky. “Hearts of our Ancestors, I swear it is a ghant. But not like any I have ever heard about. And what is it doing here, in the Aldheorte?”

  “But they are creatures of the southern swamps, are they not? I have heard my father speak of them.”

  “There never have been any so far north,” Snenneq agreed. “Not in the tales of any of the learned folk I have studied. But Queen Miriamele and others fought them in the Wran during the Storm King’s War—Miriamele and Duke Isgrminur even went into a ghants’ nest to rescue Lord Tiamak when the creatures had captured him. But those ghants were nothing so manlike as this—and nothing so large, either. This one is nearly twice the ordinary size.” He took the still-smoldering brand from her and tipped the wreckage of the thing’s head so they could see what remained of its face. “See, the eyes are in front, like a man’s. And look—those are so much like hands, but true ghants are said to have claws like an insect.” He stared at it, frowning. “I would like to study it more carefully, but I think we do not want this dead thing near our campsite. Let us carry it away some distance.”

  “I’m not touching it,” Qina said firmly. “I’ll gather some branches and we’ll weave them together and roll it onto that.” She bent closer to look at it but could not stand the sight of its smashed, gaping face. “Did you hear the noise it made? As though it was trying to talk—to use words like a man.”

  “Do not say such things, even if they are true,” said Snenneq. “It will be hard enough for us to sleep tonight. I think I may have lost my appetite.”

  “You truly are upset.”

  Snenneq detached her spear from the slimy ruin and wiped it on the ground. “By Kikkasut the Winged Father, I am!” He handed her the spear. “You fought well, my wife-to-be, but by all the sacred mountains of Yiqanuc, I am glad we have nearly reached the river, if such things climb in these trees. What is a swamp-demon like this doing here in the middle of the forest?”

  * * *

  There was far more to Da’ai Chikiza, Morgan was now learning, than even the extensive ruins he had already seen. Vinyedu led them into the city’s depths, and as they descended to the lower levels he saw they were riddled with underground chambers and passages, not the hasty work of mortal miners nor the braced tunnels of siege engineers but continuations of the buildings above and created with the same care. Though the walls of these new passages were often covered in moss and black lichen, in places Morgan could see the stone beneath them, which had been protected from the elements even as the surfaces beside them slowly wore away like a marchpane sweet melting in the sun. Here the carvings were still hard-edged, as fresh as if they had been crafted only yesterday; Morgan saw bits of hands, faces, leaves and flowers, as well as dozens other things too shrouded by moss and dirt to recognize.

  These glimpsed details, so beautiful and yet so inhuman, filled him with the most powerful homesickness he had known in months. It seemed likely no other mortals had ever seen them, and that should have filled him with wonder, but instead it made him feel small. The weight of all this ancient, abandoned grandeur turned his own life—perhaps even the whole history of his mortal kind—into something fleeting, the glint of dragonfly wings in summer sunshine, the brief flash of something born only to die.

  At last they reached a wide underground chamber almost as large as the Place of Voices, though the roof was comparatively low, only three times Morgan’s height above them. The walls here were also meticulously carved, but the lichen and moss had been removed or kept away, and the dozens of lamps set in niches along the walls shed enough light that he could have studied the ancient carvings instead of guessing at them. His attention was caught instead by more than a hundred Sithi ranged about the broad chamber, silent as deer. Many of them looked up as Vinyedu led them in, and he could almost imagine them all startling at an unexpected noise and running away.

  Seeing the immortals in such numbers of course reminded him of Aditu’s and Jiriki’s camp at H’ran Go-jao, but those Sithi had been busy with the daily life of their settlement, working, dancing, laughing; these Pure seemed half-asleep. A few stood or sat in small groups around the archive chamber, but he saw no sign of conversation between them. Others sang quietly by themselves or in small gatherings, but where the music of the other Sithi camp had touched his heart with joy, the melodies he heard here seemed more like the keening of mourners.

  “What are they all doing here?” he whispered to Tanahaya.

  “There are many more living here in Da’ai Chikiza than I suspected,” she said. “In evil times, even my people can be convinced to reject history, though they claim to embrace it.”

  Most of the Sithi faces looked hard, cold, and unwelcoming, so it was a relief when Vinyedu announced, still in Westerling speech, “We will draw apart from the others so that I can read Himano’s parchment.” She gestured for Morgan and Tanahaya to follow her.

  “They don’t seem very pleased to see us,” Morgan said, but the jest sounded hollow even to him.

  “Nearly everyone here would be happier if we both were dead,” said Tanahaya. “But the most dangerous enemies are often those who do not make their hatred of you plain to see.”

  He tried to take comfort from his father’s sword bumping at his hip, but it did not much help. He had seen how fast the Sithi moved when they wished, and he did not think the legendary Sir Camaris himself could have defeated so many of them at once; Morgan knew he was only a mortal princeling who had spent far too much of his training time bending an elbow with Astrian and Olveris in The Quarely Maid.

  All the dozen or so Sithi in the smaller chamber looked up as they entered, but after seeing Vinyedu they returned to their reading. Morgan and the others had entered what he guessed must be the heart of the archive, the walls honeycombed with alcoves containing rolls of parchment. Some contained several such scrolls, but the largest number of alcoves were empty or held only scatters of dust.

  The dust of ideas, Morgan thought, and it gave him a peculiar, skin-creeping feeling. The dust of ideas from long, long ago that nobody remembers anymore, not even the Sithi. Where had they gone, the ones who wrote all those things—thought all those thoughts?

  It doesn’t matter, he told himself, almost in anger. They’re not here. They’re not alive. I’m alive. And I want to stay that way.

  Vinyedu went to a flat table, an abbreviated column made of shiny gray stone unlike anything Morgan had seen in the city so far. She took the parchment Tanahaya had given her and spread it out, weighting it with two rounded stones that looked like they had been gathered from a riverbed. “I cannot speak the mortal language and also read the secret tongue of old Nakkiga,” she said, “so I will be silent for a time. But I will have one of my people bring you something to eat and drink. Is there anything that would be poisonous to mortals?”

  Morgan was not certain whether she was speaking in jest. “I’m not certain I should tell you that.”

  Vinyedu actually smiled, though it was little more than a tightening of the lips with a slight pull on each end toward her sharp cheekbones. “I meant only that we should avoid giving you such things. I will guess that water, bread, and honey will not harm you.”

  “Do you have any wine?”

  The smile went slack. “None that I would give to you, mortal child.” She made a gesture to one of the silent Sitha, who turned and glided from the room like a sailing ship on a freshening wind.

  * * *

  • • •

  It was surpassingly strange that Morgan had gone in the matter of a few hours from fearing for his life to utter boredom, but that was exactly what had happened.

  He still did not trust the Sithi, or at least this particular frowning variety dressed in white, but the simple fact of a full stomach had gone some way to calming him. Since eating, he had sat with nothing to do but watch Tanahaya and the one cal
led Vinyedu as they took dusty scrolls out of dusty alcoves, read and discussed them in the liquid Sithi tongue, then put them away again.

  At least Tanahaya is enjoying herself, he thought. She had called herself a scholar many times, but during their time together she had been consumed with the business of staying alive—or at least with keeping him alive, if Morgan was honest about it. Now he could see her doing what she most cared about, and it was like watching a warrior finally able to draw a sword and put enemies to flight. She moved with such confidence in an unfamiliar place that he thought even Vinyedu had noticed. Morgan did not pretend to understand the immortals, but it looked like the older Sitha had stopped treating Tanahaya like an enemy and had begun to give her the courtesy due a near equal. Certainly when some of their discussions grew heated, at least by the reserved standards of the immortals, Vinyedu no longer seemed merely scornful.

  Morgan could only hope this meant the Pure were less likely to execute him: Vinyedu was clearly one of their leaders, and her opinion might make the difference between life and death. Because he was in favor of not dying, Morgan had sat quietly all this long time, not even asking permission to walk outside the archive chamber.

  “Ai!” said Vinyedu suddenly and loudly. The pitch of her voice was enough to make Morgan sit up. Tanahaya gave him a quick look—a warning? Hadn’t she noticed how careful and quiet he had been?

  “What did you find, S’huesae?” Tanahaya asked in Westerling.

  The silver-haired Sitha looked up and for a moment seemed startled, as though she had forgotten a mortal was in the archive. “The answer, it seems. As I said, it is a court cypher from the era of the Tenth Celebrant, but it was not one I had seen. But here it is.” Vinyedu gestured to the parchment she had unrolled on the stone table.