Empire of Grass

by Tad Williams

  Bored with sitting in one place, Morgan rose and made his way to the table, being careful not to stand too close.

  “The more fortunate for us,” Tanaheya said. “But the runes are old. The Hermit Ibis cypher? I have not heard of it.”

  “Nor would most scholars—only a few records remain. At a time of great discord among the Hikeda’ya, when secret messages were common, it was devised by the infamous philosopher Yedade.” Vinyedu began to run her long fingers along the row of what to Morgan were incomprehensible symbols, more like stylized pictures of insects than proper runes. “It is not derived from the words themselves, but from the . . . I have forgotten the word—by the Garden, must I speak everything so this mortal child can understand? From the kayute.”

  “Brush strokes?”

  “Yes, from the number of brush strokes with which each rune is created—from “A” with but one to “HIN” with thirteen. But enough of this. Let us see what we can make of Himano’s parchment. I will cypher the runes and you write them down.”

  It took no little time, but both of the Sithi worked with a newfound interest. Morgan walked slowly back and forth behind them, wondering whether it would turn out to be anything in the end. Perhaps the parchment was only what Tanahaya’s master had been reading at the time of his death, and he had simply fled from his enemies without dropping it. And even if it was something more, what difference could it make? It would not bring Tanahaya’s teacher back to life, and neither would it change Morgan’s own situation, still deep in the forest and far from his home and family.

  “Now read it,” said Vinyedu when she had finished.

  As Tanahaya looked over what she had written her face changed, eyes widening just a little, but to Morgan, at the end of long hours of nothing happening, it seemed like a shout. “Did you find something?” he asked, then closed his mouth and bit his lip when Vinyedu gave him a hard, chilly look.

  “It is a chronicler’s tale of the founding of Asu’a,” said Tanahaya slowly, reading back over the document. “The place you were born, Prince Morgan, that mortals call the Hayholt.”

  “But the Hayholt is hundreds of years old.”

  “And I told you that we built Asu’a there—our greatest city—before you mortals came to these lands. Now be silent and listen—you and Eolair spoke with Jiriki—it is about that thing.” As Morgan struggled to remember, Tanahaya slowly read it out in the original language, then translated into Westerling so he could understand.

  “‘But in those days a great enmity had grown between the two—’” Tanahaya paused. “I do not know a word to fit your tongue, but I will say ‘respected’ or ‘mighty’—‘between the two mightiest clans of the Keida’ya, that of Hamakho Wormslayer and that of his wife, Sa’onsera the Preserver. Great Hamakho did not live to see the new world, and his body was consumed by Unbeing when the Garden fell, but from his crypt his descendants had brought the crown of witchwood which had been entombed with him. Now, in secret, the Hamakha buried that crown beneath the keystone of Asu’a even as the great palace was being built, and with it they laid a dozen seeds of the witchwood brought from the Garden itself, that no catastrophe might ever leave the People without the sacred fruit, the sacred leaves, the tree of our people, nurtured in the soil of the place that gave our race birth.’”

  “The Witchwood Crown,” Morgan said, remembering. “That was what my grandparents and Eolair and all the others kept going on about. The Witchwood Crown!” All their talk, months behind him, now came flooding back. “We had a message from someone who was traveling with the White Foxes—a mortal.” He let the thoughts sift. “He said the Norns wanted to take back the Witchwood Crown. Does that mean this is the crown they were talking about?”

  Vinyedu was staring at the runes as though something else was still hidden there, but Tanahaya turned to Morgan; he saw something in her face that chilled him. “I fear it can mean nothing else,” she said. “Why else would my teacher Himano have tried to escape with this piece of old writing? He must have discovered it and understood what it meant, but somehow the Hikeda’ya found out. They killed him to silence him. They murdered him to hide what they truly seek.” Tanahaya was finding it hard to hold in her anger, but Morgan could see fear as well. “Queen Utuk’ku seeks the witchwood seeds buried with Hamakho’s crown, because those seeds must now be the only living witchwood seeds remaining. If they can make the witchwood grow once more, it will give Utuk’ku and her most powerful followers back their ageless, timeless strength. And now we know where they seek them. The crown and those last seeds from the Garden are buried beneath the castle of your birth, Morgan—beneath the Hayholt.”

  46

  The Bishop’s Worries

  Pasevalles was halfway down the stairs beyond the secret door when he realized he was not wearing his thick leather gloves. He set the tray down and took them from his belt. It was always a bad idea to forget precautions, but especially in the deep places that belonged to the red thing. He had no guarantees that it would not start placing poisoned sewing needles and house nails once more in places where they could scratch an unwary visitor. He and the lurker had a truce of sorts, and Pasevalles had lived up to his end of it by bringing offerings of meals, as he did today, as well as the occasional young woman, but he was not entirely certain that the red thing was a human creature—he was not even entirely sure that it was a living thing. Who was to say when it might grow tired of their bargain?

  Gloves donned, he carried the tray down to the place where, by tradition, he always left it. There was no sign of the chambermaid he had carried down days earlier, but he had not expected to find any. Whatever the red thing did with the young women he brought, it never left anything behind to suggest their ultimate fate.

  As he set down the tray he thought he heard a quiet noise from the cobwebbed heights above him, like a rat skittering across one of the fallen beams.

  “Is that you?” he asked, expecting no answer and receiving none. “I brought you something from the kitchens. Meat. I pray you will enjoy it.” He settled himself on a fallen cornice that had tumbled from atop a wide doorway. The dark places beyond it were largely blocked by fallen timbers and masonry. This part of the underground castle lay between the deepest levels of the mortal buildings and the beginnings of the old Sithi ruins, so it was a strange mixture of the ancient cellars and remnants of the far more ancient palace called Asu’a. Pasevalles had explored as far as the red thing had allowed him, but he did not much like the deep ruins. He always felt watched there, even when he could tell that his hidden host was occupied elsewhere. He heard unintelligible voices and felt currents of air where there should be none, and encountered scents he never smelled in the living buildings above.

  “I’ve been wondering about you again,” he said to the darkness above him. “What you are. Who you are. How you came to be here. No, do not fear! I have no desire to end our . . . friendship by trying to seek you out. Everyone has things to hide. Everyone has the right to keep to the shadows if they choose.

  “But it is a game of thought for me—an exercise. I would not want you to tell me even if I guessed correctly. Still, my mind plays with it like a tongue probing in the hole where a rotted tooth once sat.

  “You wear red and you are particularly protective of Pryrates’ tower, especially the depths beneath it. But many people saw the priest die, burnt to ashes by his onetime master, the Storm King. Still, if any mortal could survive such a thing, it would be the Red Priest. But would he hide? That does not seem likely to me.

  “Perhaps you are Cadrach the monk, the queen’s friend. His body was never found after Green Angel Tower fell—but of course, many bodies were never found, though several died in the tower on that last day. The deep hole left behind by its collapse was simply filled in with stones and earth and covered over, then a mansa said over the rubble.

  “Or are you something else? Did Pryrates open a door to some oth
er place and release you? Did his death leave you trapped in a world unfamiliar to you? That is possible too—I have learned much about the Red Priest’s explorations, though I can only understand a little of what he did.”

  He sat for a while, enjoying the quiet. Even the red thing, if it still listened, had gone utterly silent.

  “You see, I have been thinking about many things,” he went on at last. “Things that, as always, I keep from all the others above. Like you, I must hide the greatest part of me. You use darkness and the depths as your cloak— I use a fair face and fair words and unending caution to keep my secrets. But it becomes tiresome, always dissembling. As there is a part of you driven to see the light, even if only the light from the stars—yes, I know that you have found a way up through the stones of Hjeldin’s Tower to the roof—I sometimes long to share what I am thinking. It is tiring to speak the truth only to oneself.

  “You see, I have been considering the throne—the High Throne. For long I thought only of bringing down those unworthy creatures who were given that seat, of slowly undermining their rule just as you have somehow moved heavy stones to give yourself the freedom of Hjeldin’s Tower. For years I could think of nothing else but taking away everything that God had given to the Commoner King and his hard-faced wife, the Mad King’s daughter. My father and my uncle died so those two could rule. I was driven in disgrace from my own house and forced to walk the streets as a beggar and cutpurse while they sat in comfort on the throne of all Osten Ard.

  “It seemed enough at first to begin to pull their empire apart and to see how the loss of their son tormented them. But when they made their grandson heir, it came to me that if I played the game with courage and daring, I could someday rule through him. Oh, I thought that would be a wonderful jest, the grandson of my enemies dancing to my tune. A drunken fool for my puppet, who would do what I told him as long as he was left to dissipate himself.

  “But now, my silent friend, I have begun to think I might have set my aim too low. The king and queen have never been strong in their rule, always too quick to forgive their enemies, to placate those who are hardest to satisfy—especially Simon, that creature of low birth, whatever lies they might have invented about descent from King Eahlstan. He and his wife have always sowed the seeds of their own failure. But then some grasslander fools attacked the troop accompanying Morgan and threw my plans into chaos. What good to be a trusted counselor with no trusting ear to listen? What good to make a puppet of a prince if he dies before he can take the throne?

  “But, like you, my secretive friend, I do not surrender easily. I never wanted merely to destroy them. That would be too simple. Anyone can kill a king or a queen. The trick is to ruin them slowly, so that they see it happening. To take their precious High Ward apart piece by piece so they must mourn each part as it is lost, and to destroy their family and allies, death upon death. I thought to end it with their own ends, leaving myself as Morgan’s only trusted advisor when he became king, but now Morgan is gone and even I do not know where he is, or if he even lives.”

  For a moment he fell into another silence, this one full of fury he could barely suppress. If he had before him now the barbarians who had caused so much trouble, he would take them to pieces and savor every whimper, every scream. That such foolish animals should thwart years of intricate planning . . . !

  He closed his eyes until the rage cooled a little, then took a deep breath. “Ah, but that is when it came to me, you see. Why should I mourn the loss of my puppet? Because if the king and queen fail, or die, someone must still sit upon the High Throne. Someone must replace them when the day comes.

  “Why not me?”

  He stood. “Know this—I ask nothing from you. I will not expose you. Even if I win my way onto the Dragonbone Chair—and I promise you, I have no childish qualms about sitting on that particular throne—I will not drag you from your hiding place or even reveal your existence. You have helped me in my task. I am grateful. These speculations of mine are only amusements. I do not care if you are the deathless spirit of Pryrates himself or merely a beggar who found his way into the ruins beneath the Hayholt. I do not want or need to know your secrets. We have an arrangement I would not change, the things I bring to you in exchange for letting me use the Mooncloud—the Master Witness. And I have kept all my promises—remember that. Without me you would have to go hunting for the things you need, and risk being captured and dragged into the light.

  “We are allies. I remind you of that. I want nothing else from you today. Enjoy what I have brought you. I promise there will be more. If you stay true to me, there will always be more.”

  For a moment he thought he saw the glint of an eye in the shadows of the overhead beams, but it might have been a trick of his own guttering torch. Pasevalles bowed toward the place where he thought the red thing crouched, then turned to find his way back out of the depths.

  * * *

  Tiamak met his wife on the stairs. He was going, she was returning.

  “Do not disappear,” she said. “I have a question for you—and a message.”

  He waited, not without impatience. “They are busy moving books for me,” he explained. “I dread to think what they will do with some of the older volumes if I am not there to watch over them.”

  “Moving them where? I thought the library building was stopped for the present.”

  “It is, my lady. But Lord Jeremias is in a passion because we need more rooms for Countess Yissola’s entourage, so my books must be moved from the places I have been storing them. But they must be protected, not left in leaky cupboards, and I am the only one who will make sure that doesn’t happen. Surely you don’t think I’d trust Jeremias and his minions with that.” He paused. “I thought you had a message for me.”

  Thelía gave him a dubious look. “You remembered that, but not the question I said I had? I mentioned the question first.”

  “Well, then. The question first.”

  “Good. How does your bread oven work?”

  He stared at her in confusion. “My what?”

  “You know, the thing you call your bread oven. Your alchemical furnace, the one in the forcing shed.”

  “The athanor? What on earth do you want with that, wife? I thought your religion prejudiced you against all such foolery?”

  “Enough of your jibes. I do not want to do alchemy, I simply want to try to learn something. I found the bedclothes, you see.”

  “Now I am confounded all over again. What bedclothes?”

  “Those that were on the bed when the Sitha-woman was brought into the residence back in Marris-month. One of the chambermaids found them at the bottom of one of the linen chests. She was about to wash them when I heard of it. I only managed to save them.”

  “Save them why?”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Are you truly so distracted, husband? Where is that very sharp wit of yours? We never found the arrows that almost killed the Sitha woman. We still have no idea of what poison was used on them. But on the bedclothes there are black stains—stains of the poison, I would guess, from when Etan took the broken arrows from her poor body. The arrows vanished and someone left the sheets in an out of the way place. Perhaps one of the maids was too lazy to try to clean them, and thought to hide the evidence.”

  “Or feared the poison, as any sensible person would. Yet you are going to handle it?”

  “Carefully, of course. You did not marry a fool.” She almost smiled. “But I do not know how to fire your silly oven, and I need proper heat for what I wish to attempt. How do I do it?”

  Tiamak did his best to reassemble his now utterly scattered thoughts. “Brother Theobalt, Etan’s less than adequate replacement, can show you how to do it, although he must be watched at all times lest he burn down the forcing shed. But will you please be careful, my dear one? Whatever poison was used on the Sitha is nothing to trifle with.”

 
“I already told you I would be careful. I have handled at least as many poisons in my life as you have. Now run along to watch over your books and I’ll find Theobalt.”

  “Now you are the one teasing me, Thelía. You spoke of a message for me . . . ?”

  “Ah, yes. It came to me in a very roundabout way, I must say. I think Bishop Boez wishes it kept secret. He would not put it on paper, but entrusted it to one of his servants to whisper it in my ear.”

  “Whisper?”

  “I exaggerate, but not greatly. Bishop Boez requests an audience with you at your earliest possible convenience—but in the Almonry, not here.”

  Tiamak sighed. “He Who Always Steps On Sand, give me patience. And I suppose ‘earliest convenience’ means “even as clumsy workmen are mishandling a collection of writings beyond price or replacement.”

  “Do not drag me into this. But I think Boez is a good man and would not ask for you over nothing.”

  Tiamak stood on his toes to kiss her cheek. “I promise I will go see him as soon as I make certain they are not setting some priceless volume of Senigo on fire. And speaking of setting things on fire . . .”

  “I will keep a close eye on Brother Theobalt, yes. Go, then. Go to your precious books.”

  “None so precious to me as you are, my wife.”

  She made a face.

  * * *

  • • •

  When the counting-priest showed him into the back room of the Almonry, Boez stood to greet him. “Forgive my sending you such an unorthodox message, Lord Tiamak. Will you take some refreshment?” He looked around the table and its mounds of records as though an ewer of wine and plate of cakes might be hidden among them. “I can call for some,” he said after a moment.

  “Please, do not trouble anyone.”

  Boez came around the edge of the desk, polishing his spectacle-glasses on his surplice before setting them back on his thin nose. He had a slight squint, and the habit of bobbing his head forward as if for a closer look, which made it seem as though he wasn’t quite sure who was on the other end of the conversation. “Well, then,” he said. “We will get straight to the matter at hand, my lord. Will you walk with me?” The priest had the air of someone who had recently been told a dozen or more important things and was trying to keep them all in his head but failing, and was feeling dreadful about it. In that way, at least, he reminded Tiamak a bit of his old friend Father Strangyeard. Tiamak did not know Boez well, but for that alone he rather liked him.