Empire of Grass

by Tad Williams

  But even as he set his arrow on the string and reached for the pot of dragon’s blood, which he hoped would be poisonous enough to undo even Utuk’ku the Deathless, the queen’s guards, alarmed by the dragon’s ferocity, fell back around the steps of the wagon and drew their white shields together into a single overlapping wall in front of the queen, like a flower closing its petals at sunset. Jarnulf lowered the bow and crouched behind the parapet again, waiting.

  It took no little time for them to subdue the dragon, and Jarnulf did his best to slow his racing pulse. When all seemed calm again, he dipped his arrowhead into the pot of black blood, trying to think only of that brief, fatal instant when he would see the queen revealed, and then dipped the point of the second arrow in and laid it on the beam where he could reach it swiftly if he was in need.

  The heads of both arrows were well-wrought iron, but within moments they were giving off thin wisps of smoke. Thunder cracked and rolled across the sky; lightning flared across the whole of the horizon, turning the night sky a glowing white. Jarnulf prayed that the Queen’s Teeth would choose that moment to unlock their shields, but instead they began to march from the wagon toward the tent, the queen still hidden in their midst, and Jarnulf could only murmur whispered curses.

  I will wait, then, he told himself. I will wait until she comes out from beneath the covering again. There will be a moment. God will give me a moment.

  But if God wanted Jarnulf to succeed, He seemed uninterested in bending the weather to His will. The winds grew even fiercer and the thunder bayed louder, ever louder, until the very tower beneath him seemed to shake in fear.

  It will be a very long shot, he told himself. The wind will make it very difficult. But this may be the only shot I am ever given and I must not miss. Strengthen my arm, I beg you, O Lord. Strengthen my eye.

  But even as he waited, unable to see what was happening beneath the great tent, Jarnulf could feel the very air around him grow prickly, as though a thousand tiny thorns pierced his flesh. It was all he could do not to scratch at himself; his arms trembled as he held the bowstring taut. Sorcery, he thought, hackles rising. Protect me from the Singers’ dark tricks, O Lord. Give me the strength and courage to do Your will.

  Then he felt something abruptly change, like a window thrown open in the middle of a freezing storm. A great cold swept through him and into him, a deadening frost that suddenly turned his innards to ice. It did not come from any single direction, like the wind, but from everywhere at once, and it clutched at him and squeezed until he lost track of the difference between up and down, between standing and falling. Jarnulf grabbed at the parapet, swaying, light-headed, and looked in alarm to see whether his movements had attracted attention, but the sentries on the walls were all staring down toward the hidden ceremony beneath the tent, motionless as statues.

  Jarnulf’s sensation of cold horror grew stronger and stronger. It felt as though something was trying to pull him apart, to crawl inside him. The great knot of clouds above the fortress was crow-black now, and its outer strands lashed like the legs of some terrible, legendary sea creature. He did his best to lift his bow, to train the arrow on the spot where the queen and her guards would appear, but blood was pounding in his temples so powerfully that he could hardly see. Spots of light danced before his eyes, seeming to match the prickling of his skin, but it was the sense of dreadful, endless spaces yawning before him that pushed everything else aside.

  God save me! He heard his own voice screaming, but he could not tell whether it was out loud or inside his own head. God save us all, they have opened up Hell itself!

  And then he found himself scrambling over the edge of the tower, not toward his target but away, away from the gaping hole in the world, away from the breathing heart of darkness the queen and her minions had flung open. He could make sense only of instants, cracks in the tower wall, bright white cracks across the sky, howling wind and horizontal rain. He fell the last dozen feet to the hard earth, then he crawled, bruised and gasping, into the underbrush at the base of the hill, aware only of his consuming need to escape that awful, life-devouring nothingness.

  * * *

  • • •

  When he came back to himself Jarnulf was lying on his side in a stand of bracken, panting like a dying buck. Every muscle ached as though he had been beaten with cudgels. His bow was nowhere to be seen—in his unreasoning horror, he had left it on the tower top. His hand still clutched the arrow, but all that remained of the iron arrowhead intended for the queen’s heart was a smoking black sliver.

  I have failed—failed You, my God, and myself. He was empty, strengthless, beyond any feeling but despair. I have failed all the world.

  * * *

  It had been fearful enough back on that day in the Chamber of the Well when the queen had summoned Ommu of the Red Hand back to life and the world. But Viyeki found it even more dismaying to feel something like that happening under open skies in the middle of the mortal lands.

  Queen Utuk’ku’s great train of wagons and soldiers reached the ruined fortress just before the middle of the night, climbing slowly under lowering skies up the steep switchbacks from the river valley. As soon as the queen’s massive carriage passed through the gates, the winds began to blow harder and harder, howling like all the souls swallowed by Unbeing when the Garden disappeared.

  The team of black goats pulled Utuk’ku’s wagon across the great open space of the commons, then halted at last before the tumbled gatehouse of what had once been the castle’s great hall. Viyeki, standing beside Pratiki in the inner keep, surrounded by the prince-templar’s guards, expected that the queen would soon emerge. His heart was beating so swiftly that he felt short of breath, but as the winds rose to a painful pitch and tattered clouds raced across the sky in front of the descending moon, Utuk’ku did not appear. Even the shaggy black goats seemed preternaturally still, their yellow eyes empty, only an occasional movement of their jaws or flick of their ears showing that they were not made of stone.

  Viyeki and the rest waited. The air had become oppressively close now, like the tunnels in Nakkiga’s hot depths, and for the first time in his life he felt himself utterly dislocated from his blood, from the world into which he had been born and had lived all his life. In a barely-contained panic he did not entirely understand, he asked Pratiki, “Why does the queen not come out? Is she ill?”

  “May the Garden forbid it,” said the prince-templar quietly. “But I think she waits for an auspicious hour. When the moon has set, perhaps, or at the moment of middle-night.”

  Viyeki looked quickly from side to side, but other than Pratiki’s guards, none of the other Hikeda’ya were close enough to hear them. “But why? I still do not understand, Serenity. What was the purpose of coming here? Of Ruyan’s armor and the dragon?”

  “I do not pretend to understand all,” said the prince-templar, his pale features composed to show no expression. “It is the queen’s desire. It is some cleverness of Akhenabi’s, I do not doubt.”

  In that moment, Viyeki thought he heard a faint, almost imperceptible sound of distaste in Pratiki’s words. Even the prince-templar distrusts the Lord of Song, he realized, and suddenly many things seemed clearer to him. Is that why Pratiki was sent here? Not because of what the queen wants him to do, but because some in the court do not want him, a well-loved figure who is one of the queen’s closest relatives, to remain behind in Nakkiga with Utuk’ku gone?

  Does Akhenabi fear Pratiki? Then another, even stranger thought came to him, one that for a moment made him forget the sky, the broken walls, even the royal wagon waiting silently only a few paces away. Does the Mother of All fear Pratiki, too?

  He could not consider that, not without risking thoughts that might lead to his own execution if the queen somehow overheard them.

  She is the Mother of the People, he thought, trying to bury his treacherous musings. I praise her. I must praise her. S
he is our soul and our salvation. It had not been so long ago that he had believed it utterly, but now he felt as though he were coming apart inside.

  * * *

  • • •

  Another hour passed. The winds rose to a shrieking pitch and rain beat down on the ground, spattering mud against the ruined walls of the fortress. At last, just when Viyeki thought his fearful anticipation might make him swoon or cry out in despair, he heard the creaking of huge wooden wheels. These wheels did not belong to the queen’s wagon, though, which remained shuttered and silent before the gate of the inner keep: another wagon was rolling forward from the great mass of vehicles arrayed just inside the fortress walls. This wagon was as long as the queen’s, but open like a farmer’s oxcart. It was also perhaps the strangest thing Viyeki had ever seen.

  The cart was pulled by more of the great, black goats, creatures bigger even than war horses, but it was also pushed from behind by the largest giant Viyeki had ever seen, a huge, dirty gray creature twice the height of the tallest Sacrifice soldier, with arms like tree trunks and eyes that gleamed foxfire-bright by starlight. But even this creature was as nothing compared to the thing that lay trussed on the cart—a dragon. A living dragon, Viyeki saw as its tail writhed beneath the restraining ropes. He had thought he was beyond astonishment, but here was a living dragon, captured and bound, being pushed slowly across the uneven ground of the mortal keep. He could hear the monstrous creature rumbling like an earth tremor, its growl so deep it was hard to separate it from the swelling thunder.

  The dragon-cart squeaked slowly past the gatehouse and continued toward Ruyan’s tomb where it lay beneath the wind-strummed tent on the side of the fortress nearest the great hill.

  “Stay, Magister,” Pratiki told him quietly, though Viyeki had not considered moving, had barely realized he had a body that could move. “We wait for the queen.”

  “It is alive,” was all Viyeki could think of to say.

  “An astounding feat, capturing such a beast without killing it,” Pratiki replied. “I was told that it was . . .” The prince-templar stopped abruptly. Viyeki waited for him to finish, but it quickly became clear that His Serene Highness would not say more.

  After the dragon-cart had trundled past, half of the Queen’s Teeth waiting beside her wagon formed up into new lines in front of it. A single drum began to pound; the white-armored guards began to march after the dragon. The driver of Queen Utuk’ku’s wagon, who had been motionless for so long that Viyeki had forgotten he was there, unfurled his whip and snapped it, and the silent black goats began to move. Their traces pulled taut, then the great wheels of the queen’s wagon turned and the carriage made its way slowly after the marching Teeth as the rest of her guards fell in behind her.

  “And now we follow, too,” Pratiki said. “Wear your most devout face, High Magister. We are in foreign lands.”

  Pratiki strode out, followed by his guards. Viyeki hurried after him, still trying to make sense of the prince-templar’s words.

  Lord Akhenabi himself, as well as General Kikiti, High Singer Sogeyu, and many other high members of their respective orders, had all been waiting beneath the tented roof since the queen’s arrival. Now the driver of the dragon-cart, with help from the groaning, yoked giant, brought the long wagon to a halt beside the open crypt as well. Viyeki did not much wish to join Kikiti and the others, and was relieved when Pratiki stopped and took up a position at the outer edge of the billowing nettle-cloth roof. Viyeki had no idea what was going to happen and wished he could ask, but he stayed silent. Did no one else feel what he did, that a door was about to be opened and something extraordinary and horrible was about to be released? Did that feeling not trouble any of them? His growing sense of dread was so strong it was all he could do not to turn and walk away.

  Even the captive dragon seemed to sense it. Now that he could see it more fully, Viyeki could not take his eyes off the imprisoned beast. It was moving against its restraints, though it was still tightly bound. The tip of its tail had pulled free and wriggled like some monstrous earth-crawling worm. Its jaws were wrapped in heavy rope, but its eyes, the dazzling color of a sunset, had snapped open, and the oddly jagged black pupils swiveled to watch every nearby movement.

  Now the Queen’s Teeth and the queen’s wagon at last reached the tent. At the noise of their approach the dragon began to squirm even harder beneath the many thick ropes that held it. As the queen’s wagon rolled to a halt the Teeth guards divided themselves into two lines, making an aisle that led from the wagon’s steps to the covering over the crypt. Another thunderburst rolled across the sky as the door above the steps opened.

  Utuk’ku herself appeared in the doorway, a small, slender figure robed all in white, like a mourner or a corpse. She did not step forward at first, only stood looking out at the great pit from behind her mask, at the waiting Sacrifices and Singers and the bound dragon. Then she began to walk down the steps, and though she moved carefully, she seemed so much stronger and more sure in her movements than the last time Viyeki had seen her, when she had brought Ommu back from the dead lands, that for a brief instant Viyeki almost believed that it must be some impostor instead of Utuk’ku herself. Then her voice rolled through his thoughts with a force that almost drove him to his knees, and all doubt disappeared.

  Take me to the traitor’s tomb, the queen’s voice said. Let us do what we have come to do. What we have waited so long to do.

  It was plain from the expressions of even the most stolid Sacrifices that everyone present had heard her words and felt their power. Even Sogeyu the Singer lifted a trembling hand to her forehead, as though the queen’s voice had pierced her like a blade. Only Akhenabi seemed unmoved. The Lord of Song stepped forward as the queen reached the bottom of the stairs and spread his arms in ceremonial welcome, sleeves whipping in the wind like pennants.

  Then, with a crack like the splitting of a rock face, one of the ropes that bound the dragon’s tail snapped; a moment later the entire bottom half of its coiling tail was free. It lashed back and forth, swinging so close to the giant’s face that the huge, manlike beast let go of the wagon and stumbled a step backward before reaching the end of the chains that kept him yoked to the wagon’s huge bed. Akhenabi’s halfblood servant rushed forward, waving a crystal rod at the giant, but the dragon’s tail swept out again and struck the halfblood, who tumbled head over heels, the goad flying into the darkness to land somewhere on the muddy ground. Lightning flashed again as the dragon strained against the restraints around its upper body and neck. Another of the massive ropes snapped with a crack that could be heard even above the rolling thunder. The dragon’s head lifted a full cubit off the wagon bed, stretching the bonds even farther.

  Then Akhenabi strode forward. The lightning flashed once more, and his mask of flesh seemed the face of a moving corpse, slack and lifeless, but with terrible, bright eyes. He lifted his arms and spoke a single word that Viyeki could not hear or understand. The giant, who had been crouched at the end of his chains, out of reach of the bludgeoning tail, let out a horrid screech and fell to the ground, rolling, hands on its huge, misshapen head.

  “Get up, monster!” shouted the Lord of Song.

  The giant staggered to its feet, still clutching its head, and then took a stumbling step forward and grabbed at the dragon’s flailing tail. For a moment the giant was thrown off-balance and nearly lost its grip, but the shaggy, manlike beast held on, yellow teeth clenched, and then let one hand go to grab at the wagon wheel. The giant let out another inhuman bellow, then Akhenabi shouted again and a dozen Sacrifices and a pair of Singers rushed forward to aid it. As the giant clung desperately to the dragon’s immense, muscular tail the Sacrifices grabbed at it as well, and the two Singers hurriedly draped a cloth over the dragon’s head. Viyeki guessed it was soaked in kei-vishaa, because within a few heartbeats the dragon’s struggles began to slow; after a short time it stopped moving entirely but for the g
radual heaving of its vast chest. More Sacrifices hurried forward with ropes, and soon they had the dragon’s tail and neck tightly bound to the cart once more.

  Only then did Viyeki look toward the queen, but he could not see her. The stairs of her wagon were surrounded by her Teeth, more than a dozen guards, and their white shields had been lifted and locked around her as if in imitation of the dragon’s own scales.

  “If the beast does not survive because of your carelessness, giant,” said Akhenabi loudly, “I will take off your wretched skin, piece by piece.”

  The giant, still shackled to the back of the cart, fell onto all fours, groaning.

  The shields of the queen’s guards now folded back and the slender, pale form of Utuk’ku stepped out. The guards quickly fell into place around her once more and escorted her beneath the great tent roof. Though she took only two dozen steps, it seemed clear to Viyeki that something had put strength back into those ageless limbs.

  “Swiftly now!” cried Akhenabi in his deep, rasping voice. “It is time, and past time. The hour when the world changes! Swiftly!”

  And as Viyeki watched, Singers in their redblack cloaks began to scurry out of the depths of the rippling tent like agitated beetles. Four of them appeared with a litter on which was stretched what Viyeki took at first for a body, but a white glare of lightning across the sky revealed the fine gold wires and crystal scales of Ruyan Ve’s armor, cleaned and polished. Only as the bearers set it down before the queen—far more reverently than when they had poured out Ruyan’s dust onto the wet ground—could Viyeki see the brown skull that now sat in the open gorget.