Empire of Grass

by Tad Williams

  * * *

  At first the scratching sound seemed only part of Tzoja’s dream. When she opened her eyes, the blackness around her was so complete that for long moments she did not know where she was, but the furtive noises continued even as she lay in quiet panic.

  Finally memory returned, but the scraping went on. She turned over, her heart beating at a fierce, frantic pace, then crawled out of the parlor and down the twisting hallway toward the door.

  The scratching had stopped by the time she reached it, so she put her face to the keyhole and, to avoid making the slightest sound, held her breath while she peered through. By the ghost-light of the glowing worm threads above the lake she could make out a bulky silhouette with what looked like an extra head, and knew it was Naya Nos and his silent steed, Dasa. She opened the latch as quietly as she could, then stood out of the way so the huge carry-man Dasa could shuffle in.

  “What do you want?” she demanded in a loud whisper when the door was closed again. “Why have you come back? All my food is gone.”

  “To make repayment,” said Naya Nos.

  “Repayment?” she asked.

  “Some of the other Hidden have come back from the water—the ‘lake’ you call it—with a good catch of . . .” He frowned, his childish face puzzled. “Swimmers. Swimmers, I think you call them.” He made a sinuous side-to-side motion with his hand.

  “Fish?”

  “Yes. Fish. Swimmers? But you are invited. Come to eat.” He smiled broadly, but his companion Dasa’s face remained empty as a spilled bucket. “You will meet her.”

  Tzoja’s alarm returned. “Her? Who is that?”

  “The Lady of the Hidden. She knows of you already. We told her.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You need not. Because she is good and kind. She is our Lady! And she wants to meet you.” He grinned again and drummed his little legs against Dasa’s broad chest. “Say yes. We wish to make good the wrong we did you.”

  The idea made her fretful—every instinct she had told her to stay hidden, to stay away from these strange creatures—but if she could not find more to eat here beside Lake Suno’ku then she would have to return to the city to steal more food. The idea of fresh fish was also appealing—in fact, her stomach was already growling with anticipation at the thought.

  “Very well,” she said at last. “I’ll come with you. But only for a little while.”

  * * *

  • • •

  She let them lead her down to the edge of the lake, then followed in the carry-man’s footprints as he made his way around the water’s muddy verge through banks of ghostly white reeds. Dasa’s massive, shadowy shape suddenly turned to the side and vanished into a crevice in the cavern wall; Tzoja stopped in confusion. It was not merely a crevice, she saw as she stepped closer, but an actual gap that passed deeper into the mountain’s stony skeleton accompanied by a wide finger of the lake, and she allowed herself to enter. The glowing worms had also hung their glassy strands above the water here, so that she was accompanied into the depths by a dangling forest of small, cold lights.

  After a short, cautious walk behind the carry-man and Naya Nos, Tzoja found herself in a large cavern with the channel of lake water in the middle of it, the stony floor as uneven as butter swirled in a churn. But as she stared she could make out movement here and there.

  “Fear not, brothers and sisters,” called Naya Nos. “Come out! This is not an enemy but a friend.”

  Tzoja, still bitter about the loss of her supplies, was not quite willing to go as far as that, but she was distracted by the sheer number of creatures who now began to creep out from behind stones and out of crevices in the floor and nooks in the walls. Having discovered at least a half-dozen pillaging the kitchen in the festival house, she had assumed there might be twice that many Hidden all together, but in just this chamber she could see scores of them, all smaller than Dasa but in many different sizes and shapes.

  By Usires the Aedon and Dror the Thunderer, she thought, astonished. How do they all feed themselves? Especially when there is no one like me to steal from?

  “Are these all your people?” she asked.

  “Not all, but many,” he said. “Most! Some are out looking for more food. But they know we will feast today, so they will come back soon.” Naya Nos waved his spindly arms, clearly overjoyed by the idea of the bounty that awaited them. “And the rest are in the Lady’s Chamber, which is just there.” He waggled his hand at the place where the stream and the dangling glow-worms vanished into a dark oval at the far end of the large cavern. “She blesses the food!”

  “I hope she cooks it, too,” said Tzoja, but too quietly for Naya Nos to hear. She had caught and eaten a small fish out of Lake Suno’ku the day before, too impatient to carry such a small thing all the way back to Viyeki’s festival house and then build a fire. Anything was better than starving, but sucking the tiny bit of clammy flesh off the bones had been a less than delightful experience.

  The Hidden all shrank away from her as she followed her guides deeper into the chamber, but their eyes followed her every step. The creatures seemed as weirdly individual as those that had robbed her stores, ranging in size from nearly as large as Tzoja herself to some even smaller than Naya Nos, and in skin color from dark to pale. Many of them had features that resembled either Hikeda’ya or Tinukeda’ya—in a few cases, both—and most of those who had eyes shared the same color, an almost luminous yellow. Otherwise Tzoja could see no obvious commonality between them, except that all would have been culled without pity from the slave pens of Nakkiga.

  At Naya Nos’s suggestion she seated herself on a flat rock by the side of the water. Dasa slowly sank to his knees beside her. His rider clambered down, wiry little arms doing most of the work, then pointed to the far end of the cavern and clapped his hands in glee. “Look! See, they come! The feast begins!” He leaned toward Tzoja. “Do not fear—a special portion has been put aside for you, because of the wrong our young ones did to you.”

  She watched a couple of the larger Hidden approach with a dripping bundle between them that looked like a fishing net. As she watched the puddles that formed beneath their burden every time they stopped, Tzoja’s heart sank. So much for the meal being cooked.

  “Ah, so tasty,” said Naya Nos. “Swimmers are my favorite.”

  “Do all your people speak Hikeda’yasao like you do?” she asked, trying not to think too much about cold, raw fish. “I haven’t heard anyone else say anything.”

  “Some do. Most do not, or will not.” His animated face became grim. “Many were punished severely for making any noise at all.”

  “Punished? Who by? Where did you come from?”

  “The Lady will tell you all you need,” he said. “Do not fear—she knows everything that can be known about the People and the Hidden and everything that happens in the Sea Definite and Internal. But here, now, here!” he called to the approaching Hidden with their dripping net. “Let us serve our guest! Just here, then you can give out to the rest.”

  The two wide-eyed servers seemed torn between staring at her in fearful wonder and avoiding her return gaze. Both were naked except for rags around their loins, and both were achingly thin, with ribs and hip bones so prominent that one of the slender, graceful Hikeda’ya would have seemed overfed beside them. They set the net down and let it fall open. A pile of wet, wriggling shapes slid outward in all directions. Even in the cavern’s dim light, she could tell by the lumpy bodies and short, fat tails that they were not fish.

  “Pollwags,” she said. Her stomach knotted. “Frogspawn.”

  Naya Nos smiled, misunderstanding the tone of her voice. “We are lucky— so lucky! They breed near the place where the hot water comes up from below.”

  She looked down at the wriggling, mostly legless globs. She would have to eat some. It would be foolish not to. She couldn’t guess w
hen she would next find food.

  “Bless us and bless this bounty,” she said, repeating the prayer the Astalines had taught her to say at every meal, but unable to make herself sound either enthusiastic or truly grateful as she scooped up a wet, squirming handful.

  * * *

  • • •

  The last mouthful was no better than the first, but Tzoja had been hungry many times before in her life, so she shoveled it in like the rest and tried not to feel the swimmers that were still wriggling on their way down.

  “We are lucky today!” said Naya Nos. “You brought us this luck, maybe. But look, she is coming out now!”

  A stir went through the cavern as a little procession emerged from the chamber beyond, a scurrying parade of freakish shapes. Several of them were leading a larger figure by the hand, and as this newcomer appeared in the pale light of the glowing worms, Tzoja found herself staring. This was no crippled thing like the others: instead, this woman had the look of Hikeda’ya nobility in her height and graceful presence. Only her dark hair and large yellow eyes suggested a more complicated heritage.

  “Uvasika!” cried Naya Nos, and others around Tzoja echoed him from mouths of many different shapes, reverentially and over and over, until she realized they were not calling out some word of welcome but the name of the one who seated herself on a rounded rock beside the narrow span of water. Instantly, just by the dignity of her presence, that rock became a throne.

  “Come,” said Naya Nos. “Uvasika will want to meet you.” He scrambled up onto Dasa, who had been kneeling as patiently as any horse cropping grass, then together they led Tzoja across the cavern.

  “You may bow to her,” said Naya Nos quietly, then raised his piping voice as they neared the rock. “Uvasika, Lady of the Hidden, we have brought you an outsider—one of the People.”

  Tzoja made a clumsy courtesy. She had never learned any kind of court etiquette during her years among the Astalines in Rimmersgard or her childhood in Kwanitupul and the Thrithings, and her Hikeda’ya captors expected nothing from slaves except obedient silence, so she could only hope she was being properly respectful. She looked up to see Uvasika’s reaction, but found herself gazing into eyes that, despite their bright golden color, seemed as shallow as water on a flat stone. Is she blind? Why does she stare that way, as though she doesn’t even see me? “I am pleased to meet you, Lady Uvasika,” she said, but the dark-haired woman did not reply.

  Naya Nos chortled from Dasa’s arms. “She will not speak to you, oh, no. She does not speak. Not for ears to hear.”

  Uvasika’s placid stare turned to Naya Nos.

  “Yes, my lady, thank you,” he said a moment later, exactly as if she had uttered some pleasantry aloud. “She is, yes. This is the one. The children stole her food.” He nodded vigorously. “Yes, she was given first fruits of today’s fine catch!”

  Confused, Tzoja looked around at the other Hidden, who were watching their mistress with obvious admiration. Could they hear her, too? Was it only Tzoja herself who was deaf to the Lady’s words?

  “The Silent Princess speaks only to me and a few others,” explained Naya Nos proudly. “Do not be ashamed. She welcomes you and wishes to make amends for the mistakes of her children.”

  “Her children?” Tzoja could not help asking, looking around the wide cavern at the dozens of odd, malformed creatures.

  “We are all her children,” said Naya Nos proudly. “Not of her body, but of her heart. She protects us—and the Dreaming Lord protects us, too.” He turned his attention back to Uvasika. “Of course,” he said, smiling his wide, toothless smile. “It would be an honor, Mistress.”

  And indeed, as if they had all heard her clearly, the other Hidden began crowding closer, until Tzoja was so tightly surrounded she began to feel a bit panicked.

  “The Lady asks me to make this a Story Day,” Naya Nos announced, and his audience murmured like excited children. “For the honor of our visitor, our mistress will tell the story of our kind, and I will speak her words aloud.”

  “Once the People lived in a garden,” he began. “They lived happily, and all the trees and plants were there for them, and they ate what they wanted and made what they wanted. The People became many, and so at last they built themselves a great home that they called the Star, and they lived there a long time in happiness and peace.

  “But although they did not know it, they were surrounded by enemies they could not see, and these enemies hated them because before the People came, the garden had been only theirs, unshared. So the enemies sent great beasts to attack the People—beasts of the water, air, and land—but the People were brave. They fought those beasts and triumphed. Then the enemies grew even more angry, and brought forth even more of those fearsome creatures that were the first dragons, and set these terrible worms upon the People to destroy them. But the People would not be overcome, and at last the dragons were defeated. Those worms that survived fled to the far reaches of the garden because they feared the People.

  “The enemies of the People had no more fearsome creatures to send against them, so they came forth themselves, but in humble form, and pretended to make peace. At first the People trusted them, and together they built the Star into greater and greater beauty and size, and the People became even more numerous. But their enemies, who called themselves Vao, never meant true friendship. Instead they plotted in secret to drive the People from the garden or destroy them. As the years went by the Vao pretended to be the People’s allies, but all the time they were making a great and terrible magic, the greatest and most terrible ever done, called the Un Being. But when the Vao summoned the Un Being out of the void, they found that even they could not contain it or control it. Un Being began to devour the garden, and even the People with all their wisdom and craft could not make it stop.

  “At last it became certain that the Un Being would swallow everything, the garden and every tree, plant, and creature in it, that it would destroy the great dwelling-place Star and at last pull each mote of the garden away from every other until nothing remained. So the People built great ships, hoping to escape the end of everything, and set sail for the Unknown West. They took with them all they could of the old garden—even their enemies, the Vao.

  “Eight great ships brought the People here to this land, where the days were short as moments and the years flickered past like the wavering light of a fire. The People began to build again, and for a time the Vao worked with them, and it seemed that together they might make a world almost as perfect as the lost garden. But then the leader of the Vao was revealed to have plotted against the People once more, stealing from them what was theirs, and so he was cast into chains for his crime. His subjects fought against the People and were driven away, so the Vao went wandering, never again to have a home of their own, and all because of their own treachery.

  “But the People survived. The People will always survive. And as long as we are loyal, we Hidden will survive, too. The silver-faced Queen protects us. The Dreaming Lord perfects us.”

  “All praise to them. All praise!”

  The Hidden replied obediently to Naya Nos’s invocation, but even with so many of them in the cavern, their voices remained faint, little more than a whisper. “All praise!”

  The triumph they spoke of, and the Silent Lady’s protection, must seem very fragile, Tzoja thought, if they dared not make much sound even here in the depths of the earth. In truth, these Hidden seem no better off than I am, she decided, but the thought gave her no satisfaction. Knowing that others suffered did not make one’s own suffering any easier.

  She was confused and a little disturbed by Naya Nos’s story, and the meal in her stomach was not resting easily, either. She staggered to her feet and said, “I have to go.”

  Naya Nos was clearly distressed. “But we have taken much food from you. You must let us repay you.”

  “We will see each other again,
I promise. And I thank you for your hospitality.” She made a small bow to silent Uvasika, who regarded her with the blank face of a wooden doll. “Thank you, Lady. I wish you and your people health and good fortune.”

  “We will guide you out,” said Naya Nos, but she waved him off.

  “I can find my own way. Enjoy the rest of your feast.”

  It was only when she had made her way back out to the shore of Lake Suno’ku again, tracing her steps back along its stony shore and trying to ignore the noise of frogs because it reminded her of her meal, that Tzoja suddenly understood one of the things that had been bothering her about the story.

  The Hidden were clearly telling themselves some version of the Hikeda’ya’s own story—the Lost Garden, the city called Tzo, or “Star,” and the Great Silver Queen, who could only be Utuk’ku herself. But they were not themselves Hikeda’ya. She also wondered who the Dreaming Lord was, and why the name tugged at her memory?

  It only came to her as she reached the festival house and made her way inside. The Dreaming Lord . . . could they mean the queen’s mad relative, Lord Jijibo? He’s called “the Dreamer.” Viyeki had told her that the Dreamer had as many secrets as Akhenabi and his entire Order of Song. But why would someone as powerful as the queen’s odd kinsman be concerned with the broken and malformed Hidden?

  She could find no answer, and when the time came to try to sleep, she was haunted by the memory of empty eyes.

  10

  A Familiar Face

  Sir Aelin, grand-nephew to Count Eolair, was grateful to the gods of Hernystir for keeping him alive, but he was not entirely pleased with the situation in which they had left him—a prisoner of King Hugh’s Silver Stags.

  Dunath Tower had nothing so sophisticated as a dungeon, but it did have a great, windowless storeroom with a heavy door and strong iron locks, and that was where Aelin and his men were being kept after being captured by Baron Curudan and his Silver Stags. Curudan had left for Hernysadharc with most of his troop, having decided not to do anything irreversible with the prisoners before consulting King Hugh. He had left a dozen men behind under the command of his lieutenant, Samreas, to watch over Aelin and the rest of his imprisoned company.