The Illustrated PROPHETS OF THE GHOST ANTS: Part One, The Roach Boy

by Clark Thomas Carlton

  With her head in his lap, he squeezed water from the bladder into her mouth. After scraping lichen from a nearby rock, he dampened it for a poultice. Taking his dagger, he excised the eggs. Anand pressed the lichen against the bleeding wounds and bound it with grass fiber. Her eyes were glazed and unmoving but then he saw her blink.

  “You’re going to be all right,” he said and he tried to smile. “I’m bringing you back to camp now. You will be with your mother before Sun is reborn.”

  Anand took her limp hand and held it, unsure if she could hear him until he saw a tear well up and spill down her cheek.

  *

  Anand’s legs were as wobbly as egg jelly by the time he reached camp. Elora’s mother was not difficult to find as she was lying outside her camp, muffling her weeping with a wad of cloth. In the dim light, she saw the figure of a boy carrying a limp body over his shoulder. Anand set Elora down. Then he collapsed. All the aches and pains in the world were weighing on his limbs.

  The mother dropped the cloth from her mouth and shrieked. Other mite scrapers surrounded Elora and felt for her pulse. They saw the poultice that Anand had applied and looked at his spent figure.

  “She’s alive!” said one.

  “This boy went back and rescued her! And he’s cut out the spiderlings,” said another.

  “Who is he?” asked the foreman, stroking the long moustache that indicated his authority. Elora’s mother rocked her daughter and could say nothing. All she could do was weep in relief.

  “He’s from the shit caste,” said a sneering boy who was Anand’s age. “Let’s kick him back to where he belongs.”

  Other boys were ready to take up the suggestion and surrounded Anand to stomp on him. He had heard their threats but was too weak to move.

  “No!” screamed Elora’s mother. She threw herself over the untouchable, looked into the eyes of the crowd and hissed.

  “You are polluting yourself!” screamed the woman’s sister. “He’s polluted your daughter!”

  “He saved Elora! Kick me before you kick him!”

  The scrapers’ foreman pondered what to do. He looked down at Anand, who wished they would stomp him out of his misery. Suddenly, he slipped into sleep so profound, it was dreamless: a pure black void that was almost death.

  Chapter 13

  Mound Palzhad

  At the halfway point of her journey, Polexima met her mother’s more modest caravan. Polexima and Clugna chatted in the shade of a daisy plant. They doted on the baby Pareesha before resuming their journeys.

  Riding inside Polexima’s sled was a learned orator from Mound Loobish, the seat of learning. His specialty was history of the Wars of Unification, the conflict that forever bound the tribe of light-skinned warriors with the dark-skinned primitives who had first settled the Slope. After four days of narration, he was about to end his recitation for the queen.

  “Locust and Mantis had commanded that the tribes become one, and yellow-skinned soldiers were given access to brown-skinned women. Thus all future peoples of the Slope, no matter how low-born, are related to each other and descended from Ant Queen.”

  The orator left the trance that enabled him to sing the vast chain of words. Polexima lifted up the flap of the sled’s tent to speak with her attendants. “Please bring us refreshments,” she commanded. A sentry scurried back on his ant to the royal provisions-sled.

  Polexima turned back to the orator. “Thank you, learned one. Will you join me for a repast?”

  “I would be honored,” he said as he adjusted his necklace which dangled a jar with his pickled testicles inside it.

  When the food arrived, the orator did not join Polexima in eating the bitter wafers proffered to her by Pious Kontinbra, the haughty priest that accompanied her on journeys. The wafers were mixed with dried fruit but she knew they contained roach eggs, something she usually consumed in her morning tea. Why were they required in her diet? Kontinbra watched Polexima eat the wafers, then excused himself and let his ant fall back. Without a priest to eavesdrop, she probed the orator as he smeared grub jam on a mushroom cracker.

  “Learned One, do you know the histories of the roach peoples?”

  “No, Majesty. The Britasytes are a secretive tribe.”

  “For how long have the Britasytes been granted freedom to travel on the Slope?”

  “Since the time of the Wars of Unification.”

  “Do they trade roach eggs?”

  The learned orator was quiet as he searched his chains of words. “The Britasytes do not trade roach eggs with Slopeites, only the cured goods made from them.” After a moment he added, “Roach eggs are known to be poisonous to Slopeites and can result in death after ingestion.”

  The queen sighed, certain she was not being poisoned. After thirty years she was still longing for the end of this mystery. Her frustration was forgotten when she sighted her home. Palzhad was larger and more impressive than Cajoria, but it was far less significant. Its lowest castes squatted in spacious dwellings within the mound’s closest ring, a condition that made Palzhad ridiculous in the views of other Slopeites. Even the workers of the midden occupied large and lacquered houses.

  Polexima saw that since her last visit, the outer rings had become denser with weeds too poisonous for the ants to mulch. The tall grasses smelled sweet, and at the top of their stalks were spittlebugs coating themselves with meringue. She thought the weeds were pretty and gave the mound a luxuriant quality, but others viewed the growth as further evidence of Palzhanite decline.

  Only trickles of ants were climbing up and down the mound. A few dropped their leaf pieces to run their antennae over the arriving Cajorites. The humans who were at home ran outside to see the queen they knew as a child. Polexima knew the faces of many of them and waved the arm of her newborn daughter. Preparations for a celebration were under way in the quarters of every caste of the mound.

  Atop, in the royal palaces, Polexima’s father, King Kammut, was girdling his bulging middle before meeting with chefs to taste-test his daughter’s favorite dishes. The feasting hall was decked with fungus torches, hung with banners, and scented with a carpet of shredded blossoms.

  Yormu and Corra were housed with the Palzhanite midden caste in their fragrant dwellings set among the weeds. It was Yormu’s first time in a house and he sat in his first chair. He was astonished when a torch, berry wine, and worm fudge were delivered. They were gifts from Kammut, who wanted all in the mound to celebrate.

  The Palzhanite untouchables were frightened by Corra’s darker skin and they looked for the poisonous stinger on her buttocks that Britasytes were said to possess. She lowered her skirt and laughed as she showed them she possessed no such thing. They were won over with her gifts of damselfly bangles, and by the liquor that had them giggling within moments of imbibing. She didn’t tell them it was enhanced with what their priests called the Holy Mildew.

  That evening’s moonlit sky was its own intoxicant and seemed to wrap the celebrants in safety. As the mound indulged in the festivities for which the Palzhanites were famous, no one was sober enough to notice the leaf-cutter ants were scurrying wildly, abandoning the mound. They were spraying alarm/disperse-scent as they fled with eggs and larvae clutched in their mandibles.

  Raucous laughter and orchestras throughout the mound were drowning the ears of the Palzhanites. In the royal feasting hall, His Most Pious Ejolta stood with his men near the windows, sneaking sips of fermentation as they looked out at the frenzied ball. Their raised eyebrows were a reminder not to abandon all propriety.

  The windows suddenly darkened as King Kammut was explaining the menu of the evening’s second dinner from pictures painted on a sawfly wing. He turned from his guests to see what had blocked the moonlight and glimpsed something like a monstrous phantom crawling up the windowpane. The priests looked down and were astonished to witness the queen ant being pushed and pulled down the mound by her attendants. Her fat body used weak legs to stumble over man-made structures and she tumbled dow
n more precipitous slopes. When she reached the bottom, her attendants attempted to push her beyond the weeds and to safety in the sand fields.

  It was far too late. A swarm of alien ants, some with human riders, had surrounded the mound and were gobbling up the leaf-cutters. The first Palzhanites to see the raiders could not absorb their appearance… an appearance so eerie it was paralyzing.

  Had ghosts erupted from the Netherworld?

  Chapter 14

  The Ghost Ants of Hulkren

  It has to be an apparition!

  Surrounding Palzhad was an army of enormous, transparent ants, an insect no Slopeite had ever seen, and half of them mounted by humans. They were a few hundred at first, then suddenly as innumerable as the leaves of a tree. The warriors riding on them were white as chalk and clad in transparent armor. Pious Ejolta clenched his eyes shut. When he opened them, the ghost army on ghost ants had not faded like a mirage, but was advancing through the weeds and up the mound, consuming the corpses of the royal guard whose mounts had fled or been eaten.

  “Priests, do you see what I do?” he asked.

  The priests watched in stunned silence as the invaders slaughtered the leaf-cutters, using massive pincers to pierce their heads and lift them to be guzzled whole. Eggs and squirming larvae were taken from the leaf-cutters’ mandibles by smaller ghost ants. These smaller raiders raced with their living prizes to a trunk trail going south.

  Ejolta raced to King Kammut, who was stiff with fear as his daughters whirled in a dance circle.

  “Majesty, we are under attack! A great army so numerous our ants are fleeing instead of fighting.”

  Kammut realized he had stopped breathing and exhaled. “Seed Eaters or Carpenters?”

  “Neither. They appear to be… ghosts.”

  “Ghosts?!”

  Kammut ran to the window and reeled from the bizarre vision. He jerked himself away to displace the orchestra’s conductor on his platform. The room quieted.

  “I regret to inform you we are under attack and our ants have fled,” the king shouted. “As quickly and quietly as possible, you are to walk to the tunnels and down to the shelters. Our guests from Cajoria need your guidance. We do not need panic.”

  The king’s message was relayed quickly through the tunnels and to the other castes. The Palzhanites had rehearsed shelter drills years ago, but after years of peace the practice was unfamiliar. In the feasting hall children and women of childbearing age exited in a daze. The military scrambled through the barracks and fumbled for their weapons.

  What brazen fools would attack a mound of the most powerful nation on the Sand? thought Kammut. He looked again at the phantom insects, whose insides glimmered with moonlight. “Slopeish armies will gather in an instant to confront these attackers. They’ll butcher them and send the rest running,” he said to Ejolta, with an imitation of bluster.

  Ejolta said nothing. He watched as an enemy sand-sled was pulled towards the Palzhanites’ ant queen. The egg layer made a pathetic attempt to crawl away, but her swollen gaster slowed her down. Her clustered retinue tried to protect her but they were picked off or crushed and then swallowed by the ghost ants. The human invaders fought back their own ants to protect the leaf-cutter queen. In an instant, the panels of a cage were erected around her to protect her from further assault.

  Kammut panicked when he realized these marauders were abducting the Palzhanites’ egg-layer. They wanted her alive! Just then, an unmounted ghost ant reached the feasting hall’s window. It was three times the size of the largest leaf-cutter soldier-ant and so frightening that Kammut staggered. “It’s best we dress the crown princess like a boy,” he said, and Lamalla was swept away and re-dressed. The other Palzhanites tumbled down to shelters designated by caste.

  Below in the weeds, the middenites awaited the moment they should flee. Ghost ants had surrounded the house they had gathered in and were sawing through its walls with their mandibles. “What do we do? They won’t let us in the mound,” Corra shouted as she paced the floor with her satchel of jewelry.

  “Our hiding place is in the weeds,” said the midden elder. “You must follow us. Leave your satchel!”

  As ghost ants’ heads poked through the walls, the middenites fled into the low weeds and ran under them to avoid attackers. Yormu stood in a daze. Corra jerked him by the hand and yanked him outside. She would not abandon her satchel. They ran through a maze of battling ants. As Corra ran, the satchel slowed her and they lost sight of the others. Above them, grass blades bent with the weight of climbing leaf-cutters.

  Setting her sights on one leaf-cutter, a ghost crawled up a barley stalk to engage the smaller ant. The two tangled and fell and landed on Corra. Yormu pulled her out from under them, but the thorn of the ghost’s petiole had pierced Corra through her lung.

  A gush of blood soaked her clothing. She was weak and in pain and could barely breathe. Yormu urged her on as human foot soldiers advanced through the weeds. She could not rise. Yormu was lifting her into his arms when the blade of a human soldier sliced out and into her chest. The warrior took aim at Yormu, who was blinded by blood. The weight of his wife’s body pulled him down and away from the deadly swipe.

  Foot warriors trampled over Yormu and then he felt the claws of ants. From near an abandoned house, a flap in the ground lifted. Someone grabbed his ankle and dragged him into the middenites’ underground shelter. Yormu surfaced, attempted to shout his wife’s name, and grabbed at her ankles. But her body was jerked away and hoisted up by a ghost ant that swallowed her whole. Yormu watched from under the flap to see her body as it slid down the gullet of the transparent invader. He saw her face and realized she was still alive as she thrashed and drowned in the ant’s fluids.

  In the upper stories of the mound’s barracks, Palzhanite soldiers shot arrows. The archers were too far away to take aim and their arrows fell like so much mist. Retreat was called for the first time in centuries. The mound’s defenders fled to the military’s shelters, where their wives and children waited. The soldiers entered in humiliation, and their presence deepened their families’ panic.

  Ghost ants reached the top of the mound, destroyed the living gate of leaf-cutter sentries, and poured down, killing and eating the crippled, aged, and lost humans. The human warriors came in the next wave, mounted or on foot, and grabbed at the wall torches to light their way. They fanned out through the royal compartments, uninterested in the abundant treasures. They journeyed downward through the rectories, the barracks, the merchants’ apartments, and the shelters of the laboring castes.

  The warriors splashed an X in glowing paint over every searched chamber. They took tunnels to the depths of the mound and spread through the mushroom chambers, the cathedral, the larval and queen chambers, the food stores and the water tanks.

  Tiny ghost ants sniffed out the clusters of humans through the shelters’ seals, signaling a find with whirling antennae. Foot warriors broke the walls with mallets and entered with their swords. They slew the males and crones within moments. Young women and children were bound and gagged.

  One warrior, scrawnier than the others, seemed central to the mission but inexperienced with his weapons. Beneath the transparent chitin of his helmet, his nose had been deformed, cut off to create two gaping nostrils with a knot of protruding cartilage.

  The Palzhanites were most frightened by this man with his skull-like face. When he came close to examine the dress and faces of the women, they saw his white skin was dark under its cracking paint. He shook his head before leaving on a new search, but not before he smashed a filled eggshell to release a noxious liquid.

  The warriors scurried out and left their victims to die from the liquid’s fatal fumes. Ghost ants were impervious to the gas and rushed in to eat the fallen or the fleeing. Palzhanite children and young women were doused in the kin-scents of the invaders and thrown into sacks dragged over the tunnel’s floors.

  Inside the royal shelter King Kammut sat with Princess Lamalla, Polexima, an
d her baby. With them were Polexima’s nineteen brothers. The air tube was clogged and all were sickened in the poisoning atmosphere. They were attempting to suppress their panic when Pareesha’s tiny fists flailed and she cried out. Polexima quieted her with a cupped hand, but it was too late.

  The walls crashed in. The foot warriors raised their torches to the royals’ faces. The man with the missing nose examined Polexima. She looked in the jagged cavity of his face when he scowled, nodded his head, and pointed. The warriors stared at the queen as she clutched her baby.

  “Didn’t expect you’d be here,” he said to the queen in the low tongue of the Slope. “You’ll be coming with us.”

  Polexima wondered how he had recognized her. If she had ever spoken with someone of his caste, she might know this man spoke with a low Cajorite accent. She went rigid with dread. What should I do with Pareesha?

  “Wh-where are you taking me?” she asked.

  “You know the place as Hulkren.”

  The skull-face conferred with another warrior of Slopeish stock who translated the words into Hulkrish for the others. Suddenly, the raiders backed away and bowed their heads as a magnificent figure rode through the tunnel on the largest ghost ant. Commander Tahn, the Warrior Prophet of Hulkro, dismounted in the swirls of his gossamer cape.

  Tahn was a man of forty summers with a high and noble forehead. Even covered in white paint, he had a startling beauty with a jutting chin, dramatic cheekbones and a full mouth. His eyebrows were knitted in anger, like twin caterpillars battling for the same morsel. He eyed Polexima and was pleased that she was still comely and of child-bearing age. He knew that he would enjoy her in his sand-sled on the way back and perhaps add her offspring to his family of thousands. He directed one of his newest converts to ask the queen a question.