“Is this your infant?” asked the skull-face, scornfully imitating an upper caste accent. “Would this be the Princess Pareesha whose birth was celebrated just before her sister Trellana left on a fission trek?”
“No! I mean… who… who are you? Where are you from?”
“Do not ask questions,” he said, exaggerating the harsh accent of his caste. “I am Pleckoo, a soldier for Hulkro, and disciple of his prophet, Commander Tahn.”
Pleckoo examined the elaborate dress of the baby and when he held his torch closer, discerned a family resemblance.
“Commander,” he said to Tahn through an interpreter. “This is the infant whose birth was celebrated with feasts in the royal palaces while workers starved in the outer rings.”
Tahn gave his order. Pleckoo reached for Pareesha. “The brat comes too,” he said.
“No! Take me, but leave my child with the priests!” she screamed.
“The priests will all be dead,” Pleckoo shouted, and then boxed her ear. “Give us the baby, or I will snap her head off.”
Polexima would not give the baby up. Pleckoo signaled the others. They slew the priests, King Kammut and all the princes. The men’s chests were slashed open and their rib cages were pried up. Those who tried to run were stabbed or shot with arrows through their backs. Princess Lamalla’s disguise as a boy had worked too well and her head was lopped off her neck.
The men turned their swords towards Polexima and surrounded her. She felt a lump in her throat as big as Palzhad as she handed Pleckoo her child. Someone grabbed her hair and dragged her out to the tunnel. She screamed as Pareesha was tossed in a circle like a ball.
Ghost ants converged on the corpses of the royals. Polexima collapsed at the horrible sound of crunching that could only be the snapping bones of her family. Children stuffed into sacks wailed as they were dragged off. Polexima and Pareesha were stripped, doused in the kin-scent of the ghosts, and thrown into a sack that was hoisted away.
“Back to Halk-Jalal,” Tahn said, leaving behind the most worthy treasures. He was anxious to avoid the gathering armies of Slopeites, knowing their ants in the nearby mounds had smelled the invasion by now.
The ghost ants were large but quick, with tall legs that took powerful strides. They herded the smaller raider ants that had stopped to lick their prizes of eggs and larvae in order to coat them in the ghosts’ kin-scent. The raiders crawled with their captives onto their giant sisters before all raced south.
Breezes with the scents of the invaders slowly roused the sleepy ants at the southern mounds of Bentilamak, Rinso, and Caladeck. A few leaf-cutter soldiers were out and marching with their gasters held high as they sprayed recruiting-scent to call out their numbers. The human sentries of Rinso rode their ants to the tops of rocks to look south. They witnessed the uncanny sight of transparent ants racing through the Petiole, the narrow channel between the Tar Marsh and the Great Jag that led to the Dustlands.
It was far too late for the Slopeish commanders to rally their armies and ants to attack. Like ghosts, this new enemy seemed to have faded back to the Netherworld. The ants that had mobilized to enter the Dustlands kept losing the invaders’ trunk-trail. The scent of the ghosts had vanished as quickly as they had.
Chapter 15
The Anointing of Queen Trellana
When Anand awoke, he was lying on his back on a soft mattress of cocoon skins and looking up at the underside of a magnificent and leafy bortshu. When he raised his head, he realized he was in the sand-sled of the Scraper caste. Beside him were a water bladder and a bowl of dried mushrooms. He squeezed some water on the fungi to reconstitute them and drained the rest to quench a vicious thirst.
He looked to see Elora’s mother and the female kin of her caste marching behind the sled, pulling a smaller one of their own. They were smiling at him and, in defiance of all rules, the mother spoke and made eye contact.
“How do you feel?”
“How long have I been sleeping?”
“Three days. When you are ready, you must rejoin your caste. They know you are with us, Anand.”
Anand. She had called him by name!
“Someone wishes to say something to you,” the mother said. Anand turned to see Elora swinging in a hammock behind him. She was pale and weak, but managed to smile.
“I have something for you,” she said in the faintest voice. She offered him a new doll of shredded grass fibers. He took it and looked at the faceless head.
“Thank you,” he said and returned it. “Will you take good care of her for me?”
“Yes,” she said and smiled. “But he’s a boy. His name is Anand.”
“Oh.”
“I heard you, Anand.”
“Heard me?”
“In the spider’s lair. I wanted to say thank you, but I couldn’t. Thank you.”
“You are very welcome.”
He wanted to kiss her cheek, but instead he jumped off the sled. He was walking away, sore and stiff, when Elora’s mother called after him.
“Good-bye,” she said, and he saw that she was weeping with gratitude.
As Anand passed the other castes, they whispered and pointed at him. Some even smiled and he realized news of his deed had spread. He approached his own caste with trepidation. Keel, Tal and the others looked as grim as ever as they lugged their load. Both father and son shot angry looks at him.
“Get into the harness, hero,” Keel said and spat. “Some people will go to any length to steal a couple days rest.”
Anand shrank, expecting to be smacked with Keel’s pole, but instead he saw a faint smile. Once Anand had resumed the harness, he saw that the others, even Tal, regarded him with a quiet admiration. Anand’s position in the harness had changed as well – he was no longer on the far outside of the arrangement, but in the middle.
Change is possible, Anand thought. Then he wondered, How much change is possible?
The day came when the procession slowed for good. In the distance, Anand could see sheets of sunlight on the edge of a clearing. They were leaving the forest for a meadow but were halted by its dense grasses. Sentries relayed the orders down the tail of the parade until they reached the midden caste. All were told to set down their burdens and bring their knives and scythes and shears. “This is the place,” Dolgeeno had said.
The laboring castes hacked at grasses and plants and pulled up roots. As they cut their way through, flushed-out grasshoppers leapt up and were targeted by idle soldiers with bows and arrows. The kills were piled high for a feast to follow the anointment of the queen.
The tents for the priests and royals were already assembled. Trellana prepared for the anointing that would precede the first of her Sacred Wettings. Maleps was on the perimeter, hunting with the military and eyeing the females who labored in the thicket. It would be his right to breed with the most comely of them once Trellana had been seeded. He was already making his choices, and being advised as to which of them had reached womanhood.
While completing a path back to the center of the encampment, the midden caste was summoned to collect a neglected pile of commodes. Anand dreaded the return to his usual tasks when Keel informed him they needed to construct a pen to conceal their caste if they wished to witness the anointing. Perhaps in the celebration afterwards someone would take pity and leave them a grasshopper. It might even be toasted in a sun-kiln, since there was abundant sunshine in this place.
When Sun was at his zenith the following day, drumbeats summoned the pioneers. The seeded ant queens had been released from their cages, but they were leashed to stems of sturdy plants. Within the radius of their confines the queens began the digging of burrows that would eventually become the first mushroom chambers. Soon, they would drop their fungus pellets in the moist sand and lay the first eggs. It was urgent that Trellana be anointed and begin her most important function.
The day of the anointing was warm and clear. After a bath in dew tinctured with kin-scent, Anand walked with the midden caste. They carried their bar
rier in segments to the clearing as delicious smells of roasting insects wafted their way. Backed against a wall of uncut grass, they looked through slits as the pioneers gathered before the royal tent.
Glistening on the platform were the new Mushroom Thrones of carved and jewel-encrusted amber. A thick puff of mist went up and Dolgeeno appeared, in a simple garment but with his tallest miter. His arms were smeared with drone semen and his face was powdered with golden pyrite.
“Your queen and king,” said Dolgeeno in the common tongue, and the crowd bowed their heads. Maleps appeared from the tent in great finery, with threads of real gold. He held out his hand and Trellana appeared. She was in a simple gown of yellow that was slit up the sides. She wore short, functional antennae for as soon as she was anointed, she would commence her duties. Her hair was unbound, stripped of lacquer, and combed to fall down her back. Her only adornment was gold face powder. She and Maleps climbed a flight of steps to the platform.
A priest set a basin bulging with an amber drop on a stand before Dolgeeno. “Behold Queen Trellana,” he bellowed, “direct descendent of Goddess Ant Queen.”
“You may look upon me,” said Trellana, and the crowd raised its eyes. She sat on her throne. Dolgeeno presented the basin to her.
“Ag kwilkshus, bok kwilkshus,” he sang in the holy tongue and she thrust in her arms and coated her hair. Combined in the fluid were the individual scents of the surviving ant queens.
“Behold Trellana, Sorceress Queen of Dranveria, a New Colony of the Great and Holy Slope,” sang Dolgeeno. The crowd fell to their knees as she was led to the closest of the new burrows. Trellana turned her back to the opening and waited for the ant queen to appear. The ant did so promptly, roused by the intense scents of the anointment. She ran her antennae over Trellana’s body and accepted her as the first of her “daughters,” and allowed her to squat at the entrance.
As the priests held the panels of her dress, Trellana urinated. She had drunk a great amount of water and was happy to release some of it, but she had to save enough for the other burrows. She was ready to stop in midstream when she gasped in pain and continued to piss it all away. Dolgeeno went to examine her.
A dart had hit her naked shoulder.
Trellana fell on her side, her eyes glazing over as a dart pierced Dolgeeno in the neck. He stumbled as a hard rain of darts poured down on the crowd. Behind the barrier, Anand watched in confusion. He realized the pioneers were under attack, but from where? He turned and saw movement near the surrounding grasses then realized something had pierced his chest.
It was a dart. He tried to pluck it but his limbs went dead and he fell to the ground.
Anand felt as if his bones had been ripped out of him, as if he had melted. His breathing was shallow and his eyes could see, but he could not blink nor move his limbs. On the end of the dart he saw the fuzzy antennae of some tiny moth.
Around him he heard screams of panic. The pioneers fled into the grass only to encounter new flanks of attackers. They were a faceless army of humans and their leaders rode into the clearing on blood-red hunter ants. Anand wondered if his powerless body would be roasted alive in the sun-kilns of these attackers. A commander mounted on a blue striped ant crawled over him and raised the fallen helmet of a Cajorite as a signal to advance.
Were these the legendary Dranverites?
The Illustrated
Prophets of the Ghost Ants
PART TWO
A Prisoner of the People of the Blood
Coming in 2015
The complete novel Prophets of the Ghost Ants is available as a paperback at: www.amazon.com
CLARK T. CARLTON is a novelist, journalist, screen and television writer and an award winning playwright. He was born in the South, grew up in the East, went to school in the North and lives with his family in the West. As a child he spent hours observing ants and their wars and pondered their similarity to human societies.
MOZCHOPS aka Paul Phippen is a senior concept artist and designer for video-games and other media. He was the principal designer for cult racing hit Re-Volt (Awarded NVIDIA HIQ ‘Best-of-Class’ Summer 1999) and created work for other popular games, including Batman & Robin, Fantastic Four, Warhammer, Heroes of Might & Magic, Spongebob Squarepants and Jimmy Neutron. A six year break from the industry gave him just enough time to complete his personal book project, the graphic novel Salsa Invertebraxa, which was awarded Best Art in Comics at the 9th @$$IE AWARDS, AICN Comics and nominated by the Aurealis Awards for best graphic novel 2012. Originally from London, UK, Paul resides with his family in SE Asia.
The Illustrated PROPHETS OF THE GHOST ANTS: Part One, The Roach Boy Page 9