Last King of Osten Ard 02 - Empire of Grass

by Tad Williams

  The chikri creatures had made him a gift. For the duration of the meal that thought made him feel almost warm and safe. It was only when they had finished, and ReeRee was contentedly grooming the fur of her belly and arms, that he realized it was more likely that the food was a sort of ransom, like the tribute paid by villages to encourage troops of bandits or landless knights to pass them by without harming them.

  They’re afraid of me, he realized, and then he had an even stranger thought: That’s how we lived in the castle. We had the swords and the horses and the armor, and so everyone gave us food and gold. We always thought they loved us—but what if they didn’t? What if they don’t?

  His dream of being a dragon floated up to his thoughts again. He could still remember the feeling of lying torpid and suspicious as small creatures scuttled in the shadows.

  Is that how they think of us back home—the people we rule? Not as their rightful lords, not as their saviors, but as monsters they must convince not to kill and eat them?

  It was an uncomfortable thought, and one that did not quickly go away.

  9

  Appetite

  Afternoon was waning on the mountainside. The melted snow in the Witness pool had finally stopped bubbling and was beginning to ice over. After the labor of making the Witness and using it to speak with his master Akhenabi, Saomeji had stretched out at the base of a tree to rest with eyes closed, his strength exhausted. Goh Gam Gar, who had pulled the bound dragon all day and then dug the deep pit for the Witness out of the frozen ground, lay curled on his side within Saomeji’s fence of magical stones. The giant might have been a stone himself, a massive boulder covered in dirty white hair, the rumble of his slumbering breath echoing along the hillside. The bound dragon and the crippled chieftain had also gone quiet.

  Nezeru took a long, deep breath and let it out, still shaken from the Singer’s Witness ceremony but grateful for a rare moment free from the demands of others.

  Jarnulf gathered up his bow and quiver. “Now I must go hunt.”

  “I’ll go with you.”

  He did not hide his surprise. “Truly? What of your ward, Makho?”

  “I have done all I can for him today and with little result. I do not see how he can live much longer.” She began pulling on her gloves.

  “But what of Saomeji and the giant?”

  “If one of them wakes up and kills the other,” she said, “then that is one less for us to worry about.”

  Jarnulf’s look seemed almost admiring. “You have changed, Sacrifice Nezeru. You sound as though you have embraced Genathi’s Gift.”

  She was impressed by his choice of phrase. It was a reference to the blind Celebrant Genathi, one of the first born in the new land after the flight from the Garden, who had famously said, “Living in darkness is a gift, since the darkness will take all some day and we who cannot see will be least troubled by it.” It was the kind of sour jest her father’s father might make. “You may think what you will, Huntsman,” she replied. “A Sacrifice is practical, and I have an appetite.”

  * * *

  • • •

  They found a small lake nestled in a saddle of the hills, an hour’s walk from the camp. A flock of geese lay on the moonlit water like a rumpled blanket, and before long they had each taken a fat bird. Nezeru’s better eyes let her take a resting one with a clean shot; Jarnulf had to bring his down from the air with an arrow through its wing, then break its neck. The rest of the flock went flapping and honking to the far end of the water, so Nezeru and Jarnulf started back toward the camp. On the way they shot a brace of rabbits as well, but snow was beginning to swirl around them as they tracked the second rabbit’s bloody attempt to escape.

  “We had better hurry,” Jarnulf said as they found the dying creature and added it to their bag. “Even you won’t be able to see your way through this soon.”

  “I cannot see well now,” said Nezeru. “And there were places as we came out that I would not want to cross again without being able to see what was before me. I think we should take shelter until the worst has passed. The sky was clear a short while ago. This kind of mountain storm lasts only a little while.”

  He looked dubious. “Saomeji will think we ran away.”

  “But we haven’t,” she said. “Either he will send the giant to look for us or he will wait to see if we come back. You are not wearing a painful collar, Master Huntsman. You need not fear the Singer’s anger.”

  He shook his head. “You do seem changed, Sacrifice Nezeru. I am not entirely certain I like it.”

  “And I am not certain I care. Keep your eyes open. I remember there were some caverns, or at least openings in the rocks, somewhere just ahead.”

  They found a deep hole in the cliff face, and once inside they huddled together, watching the snow fall.

  “I wish to ask you a question,” Jarnulf said at last.

  “Why do you need to announce your asking instead of simply asking?”

  She felt him shake a little—a laugh. “I suppose I’ll find out. You are not carrying a child, are you? But you told Makho you were.”

  Nezeru was startled. “How do you know anything of that?”

  “We travel in a small group, day after day. I speak your tongue. It is not such a mystery. I saw how Makho and the other Sacrifice Kemme treated you—carefully, but without kindness. It suggested to me that they might be restraining themselves because you were useful in some important way, but they showed little evidence of that either. You were merely given duties that would not tax your strength, but neither coddled or protected you. I grew up among your people. I know how cautiously Hikeda’ya women are treated when with child. It seemed the most likely thing.”

  He had surprised her again and Nezeru did not like it. For a moment it soured her independent mood. “So tell me, clever mortal, how you knew that there was no child in fact?”

  “Oh, I heard Makho talking about it when you were away from his side—you know how he raves sometimes. I didn’t understand much of what he said, but I did hear him say, ‘The halfblood lied. There is no child—not yet. The prophecy is not fulfilled.’”

  “The prophecy?” She was honestly astonished. “What nonsense is that? And what makes you think his babbling has anything to do with me? There are other halfbloods in the world.”

  He gave her a shrewd look. “Come, Sacrifice, since the dragon’s blood burned him, Makho only speaks of two things—the end of the world and you.”

  If Makho’s words somehow did refer to her, Nezeru could not imagine what they meant.

  Jarnulf broke the silence at last. “Why did you tell them you were carrying a child?”

  “So Makho would leave me alone.” She found herself suddenly enjoying this chance to speak freely. “Now you tell me something. Why are you with us?”

  “You already know.”

  “Simply to serve the queen? Liar. That makes no sense. Makho knew it from the first, and I suspect Saomeji does too. Let me tell you what I think. You wish to re-enter Nakkiga, for some reason. You have offended someone powerful, or broken a rule, but you are tired of exile.”

  He nodded slowly, his face a pale, moon-silvered shadow. “Yes, I am tired of exile.” He spoke carefully. “You have most of it right. But that is all I will say. Still, I admit you are more clever than my first guesses.”

  “As you are cleverer than mine.” She felt something bubbling a bit inside her, and realized she wanted to laugh. It was an absurd impulse that she did not understand, but she could not deny its strength. “So, here we are, two enemies who underestimated each other. What is next?”

  “Two enemies? I thought we fought for the same side.”

  “We are being honest here, in this cave in the snow, mortal. Jarnulf. You know our two kinds can never be anything but enemies, whatever temporary accommodations we might make. We Hikeda’ya must enslave or ki
ll your people if we wish to survive. You must wipe us from the face of the world if you wish to do the same.”

  He was silent then as they both watched the snow dancing in the moonlight. At last she moved closer, until she was pressed against him from hip to shoulder. She reached out a finger and traced his profile. “Like, yet unlike,” she said. “Do you think we were created by the same hand, that we should look so similar?”

  His voice was gruff, almost angry, though he did not lean away. “I do not think so, Sacrifice.”

  “You seem very certain. How can that be?” Her fingers now trailed down his neck to the collar of his jacket. His skin was so warm! How could mortals be so warm-blooded and yet take cold so quickly?

  “What are you doing?” he asked at last.

  “Touching your skin. It is different than mine. Differences are interesting, are they not?”

  “What happened to honesty? I do not think you are speaking the truth.”

  “Not the whole truth, perhaps.” She paused to consider. She had been watching Jarnulf for days with a sort of growing admiration, not for what was human in him, but what was like the Hikeda’ya—his near-tirelessness, his willingness to do what needed to be done, his patience while dealing with the giant and Saomeji. Whatever his true goal, a lesser mortal would not have put up with the suffering Jarnulf had endured on this trip, nor would a lesser mortal have saved her and the others as many times as he had done.

  He should have been a Sacrifice, she thought. He has the making. He has the mind and the purpose, but the wrong blood—mortal blood. Like my own, but without the Hikeda’ya portion to offset the weakness.

  “You . . . interest me,” she said at last. “And after so many days now without Makho and Kemme looking over my shoulder, always waiting for me to make mistakes, I find that interest has increased to something more. ‘Appetite,’ I said earlier. ‘Appetite’ is as good a word as any. I am as surprised as you are to find I crave comradeship—a particular kind.”

  “That is not . . .” He stopped when her fingers closed gently in his hair. “Not a good plan, Sacrifice,” he said quietly. “Not for either of us.”

  “We will not know for certain unless we try. Do you mortals never couple unless making a child? Is it as joyless for your kind, then, as it has been for me, a half-blood who owes the use of her body to her people?”

  He gave her an odd look, as if it surprised him that she might display any resentment at all about her lot. And this mood of hers was unusual, Nezeru realized. She had been in a distracted, angry state ever since Saomeji had spoken to Akhenabi, and she had felt their conversation in her own thoughts and blood. Everything reminded her how little she mattered to them—that she was not truly the queen’s Talon or even Finger as far as the Order of Song was concerned, but more like a single ant in a nest, something to be used, sacrificed, discarded.

  Sacrifice. The meaning of the name had never seemed so clear. And this was what she had spent her entire life trying to achieve—the right to be sacrificed. It had been one thing when she had believed utterly in those above her, from Queen Utuk’ku herself all the way down to Makho, her hand chieftain. But it all felt different now.

  She realized they had both been silent for some time. “It is not your questions that have changed things. Do not flatter yourself, mortal. It is my own answers to your questions that trouble me.”

  “You are in depths I do not understand, Sacrifice Nezeru.”

  “Nor do I understand them myself. It is both frightening and . . . exhilarating.” She leaned back against the rock wall behind them. She could feel the length of his leg and torso against her. “What do mortals do when they are lovemaking?”

  She could feel him start in surprise. “What do you mean?”

  “You heard me. My mother calls it lovemaking. There is little of that in any coupling I have done with Makho or other Sacrifices since I reached womanhood. I cannot quite imagine it.” She laughed, a harsh, clipped sound. “So tell me, what do mortals do?”

  He was silent for long moments. “I am not the one to ask.”

  “Is that a joke? Or are you truly so innocent?”

  “I did not say I was innocent. Only that I was not the one you should ask.” He stared at the swirls of white spinning in front of the cave mouth like downy feathers from a torn cushion.

  “I do not care much,” she said at last, “whether you lovemake well or badly. I told you, I have an appetite—a hunger of the body, and something more. A hunger of the spirit, I suppose. I am tired of being alone in the world, with only those who despise me. Whatever else we are to each other, enemies, doomed allies, I do not think you despise me.”

  “No. No, I do not despise you, Nezeru.” His voice was tight with discomfort, more than she would have expected. “But there is no true connection possible between us.”

  “I said nothing of ‘true connection.’ I said ‘appetite.’ I wish to be soothed. I wish to be distracted. Now, show me what mortals do. Do you touch mouths?” She leaned closer, enjoying the smell of him, strong and lively yet not unpleasant, like a horse after exercise. “Do you do something else? Makho would only mount me and enter, like a conqueror taking possession of a town he had no interest in governing.”

  For a moment Jarnulf sat motionless as she breathed warmly on his cheek, then he slowly turned his head until his mouth brushed her skin. He pressed his lips against hers—tentatively at first, the skin dry and cold, but as several heartbeats passed their mouths warmed.

  In such a narrow space the mortal could not easily move the arm that was pinned against her side, but his free hand slid up her leg—slowly, as if he did not truly control it—then over her hip and onto the curve of her ribcage below her arm. For a while they only sat like that. Nezeru found it awkward but fascinating. Her childhood had been spent in the Order-house of Sacrifice, where little affection passed between the young troops, and any coupling had been swift and secret, a matter of stolen moments. The Hikeda’ya of her parents’ caste did not show physical affection in front of others—even an embrace was considered crass and showy when others were present—so this was utterly new to her. Still, she could not help feeling that something was wrong. Jarnulf, despite his rapid heartbeat and uneven breathing, despite every other sign of emotion, seemed content merely to sit like this, his mouth pressed against hers, his arm around her in an embrace that did not seem much more than brotherly.

  She took his hand from her ribs and lifted it to her breast, pressed it firmly, even squeezed his fingers as if showing a new Sacrifice how to properly grasp a sword hilt. As she did, his mouth opened a little, and they pressed themselves closer together. His hand on her breast was beginning to make her feel warm, to stimulate the longing she had been feeling into something more serious, something that made her squirm a bit. She opened her lips wider and let her tongue touch his. As their mouths mingled she felt almost vulnerable.

  Strange, so strange, she thought. Was this what mortals valued—not the sensations themselves, but the surrender to risk?

  But the sensations were nothing to scoff at; the pressure of his fingers as he gently squeezed her breast was making her feel increasingly heavy between her legs—sensitive, like a bruise just beginning to heal. She wanted to push herself against him, wanted to rub on him like a bear scratching itself against a tree, and the ridiculousness of that idea almost made her laugh. First she undid the front of her jacket so that he could touch her skin, then she tried to lie down and pull him with her, but the cave was too small for them to stretch out. Still, she wanted more of this unusual feeling, so she reached up and folded her fingers around his hand again—he lifted it away suddenly, as though caught in the commission of a crime—then slid it down across her belly and into the fork of her legs so he could feel the heat at the center of her, the heat that was now making her squirm and rub against him everywhere they touched.

  But the moment s
he closed her thighs on his hand to press his fingers tighter, he yanked his hand away and pulled his face from hers. He even began to clamber out of the cavern, which she only prevented by wrapping her arms around his waist and holding on.

  “Stop!” she said. “What are you doing?”

  “No.” He was talking as if to himself, not her. “No, no. It cannot be.”

  “What cannot be? Coupling? Don’t you like it? Isn’t that what you’ve wanted from me all along?”

  He shook his head violently. “No. I wanted nothing of the sort. You don’t know.”

  “Don’t get up.”

  “I’ll do what I want to—what I need to—!”

  But she felt him relax a little, so she let go of his waist. “Do not be so foolish, mortal man. If you don’t want to couple with me, nobody will force you. I think even among your own folk a woman does not have to beg for someone to mate with her.”

  He disentangled himself and pulled away as far as he could, not in revulsion exactly, but more as if he needed the space between their bodies to think clearly. She wondered if there was something else about mortals she did not understand. Were there formalities before coupling? Religious rituals? It was strange how little she knew about the creatures who were her own people’s greatest enemies.

  It was stranger still that she had just been trying to couple with one of them.

  “The weather is not so bad now,” he said without meeting her eye. “We need to go back. Saomeji will be angry if we stay away too long. He will be suspicious.”

  It was plain that nothing further was going to happen between them—not here, at least, not now. “Very well.” She tied her jacket closed again as he looked out into the fluttering snow. “Lead the way, then.”

  I have made some mistake, she thought as she followed him. Although Jarnulf was only a few steps ahead of her, she could barely see him through the flurries. There is something here I do not understand—perhaps he never thought of me as anything but a Sacrifice, as a Hikeda’ya, the people who enslaved him. But more than anything else, I feel frustrated again. And alone.