Empire of Grass

by Tad Williams

  He knew he should decline a second glass, because the headiness of the first was urging him to let down his guard and relax in the presence of a convivial and apparently like-minded companion. Viyeki knew the penalties of such inattention too well—he had seen friends of his father’s executed for humorous remarks that had later been judged treason. He accepted a second glass—the urge to caution had to be measured against not offending someone who had a great deal of power—and only touched it to his lips from time to time.

  “Myself,” Pratiki said, “I often marvel at the naked ambition you see in some of the folks at court, saying or doing whatever they think will allow them to reach into more pockets and kiss more noble feet.” He shook his head and showed a thin smile, then began a long and outwardly humorous story about the greed and duplicity of several different nobles. Viyeki smiled or shook his head in disgust at the correct moments, but his own worries were making it hard for him to pay attention. He wondered whether he could make some excuse and depart before too much longer; he had many reasons not to offend Pratiki, but he was surprised by how much the prince-templar was willing to talk. Viyeki began to long for silence.

  “But you know how these things are, High Magister Viyeki!” said Pratiki. “What puffed-up fools some of our fellows are. What was it the poet said? ‘My brains are in my purse / You can hear them clink / Silver is what I am / Silver is what I think.’”

  Something about the words tickled at Viyeki’s memory, but the conversation was interrupted by the silent entrance of one of the prince-templar’s Hamakha guards. Once through the tent flap, the snake-helmeted soldier fell into motionless attention, as though suddenly frozen by a gust of icy wind.

  Pratiki gave a small nod. Formally invited to exist, the guard now made a gesture of apology. “Sacrifice General Kikiti wishes to enter your presence, Serenity.”

  “Send him in, of course,” said Pratiki, but he shot Viyeki a quick look that almost seemed to say, “And here’s one of the fools I was talking about.”

  If General Kikiti was a fool, Viyeki had to admit that he did not look the part; he was unusually tall and harshly handsome in the bony, beak-nosed way of some of the oldest families.

  “You are welcome, General,” said Pratiki as Kikiti kneeled before him. “Rise! I wish you good tidings on this Drukhi’s Day. I hope you are free to take some wine with me later—we have much to discuss.”

  “I hear the queen in your voice,” Kikiti replied, glancing briefly at Viyeki. The general did not look overjoyed to discover the magister and prince-templar talking together. “I would be honored, Serene Highness, and we do indeed have much to discuss. The remainder of our forces have now arrived and taken their positions. We are ready to begin our conquest of the mortal fortress.”

  Once again, Viyeki saw clearly what small importance Kikiti and the Singer Sogeyu and the rest gave him. Kikiti had not greeted him, and now he was announcing an attack on the mortals—essentially starting a new war—without even the pretense that Viyeki had anything to say about it or wielded any power whatsoever. The queen’s orders to Viyeki were meaningless.

  Meaningless. It was an arresting thought. Did the queen lie? Is that even possible? Is it only that others bend or flout her words, or does she sometimes say things that are not true even while knowing they are not true?

  It was so shocking to consider that Viyeki felt almost light-headed. Despite his earlier promise to himself he took a long sip from his rock crystal goblet of cloudberry wine, and was relieved to feel his heartbeat slow as the drink worked its way through him like cold fire. “Your pardon, General Kikiti,” he said suddenly, emboldened a little by the complicated taste of the wine and the reputed drops of kei-mi said to be put in each cask by the vintners of the Order of Gatherers. “You say the remainder of our forces have arrived. This is the first I’ve heard of this. May I ask where they come from and who commands them?”

  “Of course you may ask, High Magister,” said Kikiti in a tone that belied his words. “They were sent from the forts of the Northeastern Host, under the command of General Ensume.”

  “The Northeastern Host?” Viyeki had never heard of it. “And why did they not accompany us from the first?” He turned to the prince-templar. “I beg your pardon for this unseemly interruption, Serenity. Perhaps the general and I should have our conversation elsewhere. We shame ourselves by sullying your hospitality on this sacred day.”

  Pratiki looked amused again, and lifted his cup for a long, savoring sip. “No, by all means, continue, High Magister.”

  Kikiti now assumed an appearance of calm courtesy. “My officers and I have been watching the mortal fortress for some days. We decided we needed a greater force to ensure quick and complete success of the queen’s mission.”

  Which meant no prisoners, Viyeki guessed—no mortals escaping the conquest to spread tales of the attack. Perhaps this Northeastern Host was a group of specially trained killers. “Ah,” he said. “As expected, the Order of Sacrifice is full of foresight and wisdom.” He rose and bowed to Pratiki. “Many thanks for the generosity of your time and counsel, Highness.” Just to make Kikiti think, he added, “I will consider carefully what you said about the motives of some who claim to be trustworthy. Your words were instructive.” He then turned and made a much smaller bow to Kikiti, emphasizing the difference in their nominal rank, even if it seemed to mean nothing here in the wilderness. “And good tidings to you on Drukhi’s Day, Host General. Please give your officers my wishes for the queen’s favor.”

  It was only when he had escaped the silken confines of Pratiki’s tent and stood once more on the windy hillside, knee deep in waving grasses, that he realized why the prince-templar’s earlier words had troubled him.

  He quoted that bit of doggerel—“My brains are in my purse”—but it was written by Shun’y’asu, whose work is forbidden by the queen. Viyeki was not completely astounded. He knew that those in the highest families sometimes bent the queen’s rules here and there as a symbol of their power and pride. But it seemed a strange thing for the prince templar to say to someone he did not know, someone he definitely had no need to impress by being daring. I may be the high magister of an order, but compared to Pratiki I have no importance at all. My magistracy could be given to another this very day, and I doubt anyone in the Hamakha Clan would even notice. So why would Pratiki quote Shun’y’asu to me? Does he wish to make me think he is somehow an ally, or a potential ally? Is he trying to trick me into a traitorous remark? And if not, what other purpose could he have?

  It was even possible that the prince templar might have no purpose at all, might just be the sort of powerful noble who enjoyed flouting rules he considered petty, secure in the protection of his bloodline.

  Viyeki stood, motionless and silent, and watched clouds silvered by the moon sail across the purple sky. Now that nightfall had made the Hikeda’ya army’s movements all but invisible from the fortress across the valley, the hillside encampment was full of brisk but silent activity. Kikiti’s Sacrifices were pulling down their shelters and removing all traces of their stay, a trait of Viyeki’s race since the earliest years here in the new lands, when Viyeki’s people had been few and dragons had been everywhere.

  But then we only fought to protect ourselves. Then we fought only when we had to, so that we could keep our race alive. Now we seem to fight for something different. Is it only revenge we seek now? Does anyone in the queen’s palace actually believe we can defeat the mortals?

  But those questions had no answers. Viyeki returned to his own shelter and bade his secretary and servants gather up his things in preparation for whatever would happen next. He felt certain that if he waited for Kikiti and the rest to warn him they were departing, he would most likely rise from his next sleep to find himself alone on an empty hillside.

  * * *

  In the days that followed, Tzoja shared several more meals with the Hidden. The pollwa
g feast was not the least appetizing thing they served, but some foods she liked, especially the clump of white fungus strands called Cave Icicle. She preferred such things cooked, but because they did not make fires, everything Naya Nos’ folk ate was cold and raw. Tzoja had dreams nearly every night about the joy of eating even dry, charred puju bread, but she had to admit the Hidden were doing their honorable best to make up for the destruction of her supplies by their hungry, roving young.

  Over the course of several meals she also heard more of Naya Nos’s stories, which all seemed to be about the history of the Hikeda’ya themselves, stories full of racial pride and a worship of purity that seemed to have nothing to do with the distorted creatures who listened so raptly to them. She also could not help wondering why the Hidden were here at all, living like wild animals so deep beneath the city.

  “You tell so many fine stories of the People,” she finally said to Naya Nos. “But there are many things I don’t understand.”

  The childlike creature was enthroned in Dasa’s broad lap so that he looked like a little king, and there was even a touch of condescension in his voice as he answered. “The stories are all true.”

  “I’m sure. But . . . are you the People?” She spread her hands to indicate all the strange creatures around them, gathered to share the story. “Are these stories about you?”

  Though they never spoke to her, at least a few of the others could apparently understand Tzoja’s Hikeda’ya speech, because they groaned. She was afraid she had said something insulting, but Naya Nos had a strange expression on his face—not anger, but a deep sadness.

  “Alas,” he said. “We are the Incomplete. We are the Ruined and the Misshapen—the mistakes. But with help from the Lord of Dreaming, someday we will be true men and women of the People, and on that day we will come out of hiding.”

  Tzoja had known since the first time that the Hidden were telling themselves a version of the Hikeda’ya’s story, but they were too bizarrely misshapen to be Cloud Children, or even Tinukeda’ya. The changeling Ocean Children took many shapes, but as far as she knew, only the shapes into which they were bred. She had never seen any as grotesque as the Hidden. How had they been allowed to live?

  They also talked of the Lord of Dreaming who would save them. That might be the queen’s strange kinsman, Lord Jijibo, but what why would someone like him be revered by the broken and malformed Hidden? Why would he collect his people’s deformed, despised children? Charity did not seem a likely answer.

  * * *

  • • •

  Even with the Hidden’s fairly regular contributions, Tzoja still had to find new ways to feed herself. She did not enjoy the taste of the mosses, lichens, or other plants that the Hidden gathered along the lake’s edge, but by watching carefully and eating only what Naya Nos and his people ate she was seldom made sick. She even constructed a net out of an old rag she found in one of the festival cottage’s bedchambers and managed to catch a few small fish with it. The first time, she was so hungry she gobbled them whole, but as days went on her fishing improved and she began taking them back to Viyeki’s house. She carefully cleaned them outside, buried the entrails in the garden, then ate them raw with a little of the parchment-twist of salt that remained to her. At such moments she felt almost content.

  Days and then weeks went by, the passage of time in this timeless place measured only by her daily visits to the distant water clock. She took some of her meals with the Hidden, but they were too strange to provide much companionship. Most of her days were spent in the secure darkness of the festival cottage instead, often in a half sleep full of dreams of other days, often about the place in Kwanitupul where she had spent her earliest years, or of her grandfather’s wagon, more a prison than a home. She also dreamed of her time living with the Astalines, of the years of growing happiness there, and the single night of horror that had ended it.

  * * *

  • • •

  At thirteen years of age and still with no name but Derra, she had run away from the Stallion Clan, from her dreadful old grandfather Fikolmij, his casual cruelties and his unwanted touch. It had meant leaving her mother as well, but the distance grown between them and Vorzheva’s constant, angry misery had helped with the decision.

  It had not been easy to get away from her grandfather’s camp, and she had planned it from the First Green Moon to the Third—an entire spring. She picked out the gentlest horse in the paddock, a yearling named Sefstred, and began secretly feeding her bits of leftover food.

  Stealing the horse was no small crime: her grandfather and the other clansmen regarded theft of their valuable stock as an attack on themselves, and if she was caught the very least she would receive was a brutal whipping. It was even possible she might be put to death, so when the night came for her to sneak out of the wagon and make her way to the paddock, Derra went as slowly and silently as honey dripping from a comb.

  She had picked a night when she knew one of the laziest of the Stallion clansmen would be guarding the paddock, and as she had hoped, she found him sleeping. She did not know what terrible punishment his inattention earned him after her escape, and had never much cared. Nearly all the men of the Stallion Clan had treated her like a slave, and only the fact that she was the thane’s granddaughter had protected her from being raped, but it had never stopped their leering and fondling.

  She had made her way north on her stolen horse, fording the broad Umstrejha that ran along the forest fringe before turning west toward Erkynland; where she knew her father had been born, where his “ungrateful friends” (as her mother always termed them) lived in the great castle called the Hayholt. She reached the capital city of Erchester at last, overwhelmed by its size, stink, and the constant, seemingly pointless bustling of its citizens, but the Hayholt castle guards turned her away from the gate each time she tried to enter.

  The money she had made from selling Sefstred was running out, so she begged for a position at the inn where she was staying. She became the taverner’s girl-of-all-work, and could have become his mistress too if she wanted, or filled that same position for any number of the inn’s visitors. She was a handsome girl, and everybody who knew her seemed to agree—everybody except Derra herself, who did not like the strong, hawklike nose she had inherited from her mother. It seemed odd to her that in later years it was one of the things Viyeki always cited when he talked of her beauty—the most Hikeda’ya thing about her, he often said.

  After a few months she was lured away from her tavern work and into the service of a wealthy fur merchant named Herwald, who hired her to act as a sort of ladies’ maid and child nurse for his wife, a loud, vain, proudly ignorant, but often kind woman named Leola. Derra spent many months in their employ, and they even took her on one of their trips to Rimmersgard to buy furs at a market town named Hudstad. Traveling in the north was an overwhelming experience: she had never seen heavy snow or mountains, except from a very great distance, and could not imagine how anyone could live in such a cold, forbidding place—though she would find out soon enough.

  The merchant Herwald suffered a terrible loss when he bought a load of what he thought were illicit young fox skins, then discovered after they had traveled miles from the market that he had bought only a few actual fox skins, the layer on top, and that the rest were the dyed pelts of rats and other vermin. Herwald might not have discovered the swindle until he was back in Erkynland, but a rainstorm washed off the dye, and the wagon shed a continuous stream of red into the roadway until a rider who had come upon them from behind warned them that something in their wagon was dripping a great deal of blood.

  Herwald was alternately furious and weepy about how he had been tricked, but it was too late to do anything: the traders he had bought from were not bonded guildsmen and would be long gone with their takings. At the next inn he sold Derra, without even telling her, to a trio of fur traders arriving late for the same market and in a hurry to
get rid of their wares in the few remaining days.

  The fur traders, thick-bearded, uncommonly silent men from Vindirthorp in the east of Rimmersgard, worked her hard and fed her little, but at least did not molest her. That was probably because they were all related to each other somehow, and Derra was a joint purchase—an investment. One of them had brought his wife and young child along on the journey, and the wife was ill and too weak to care for the child. There was more to the story than Derra ever learned but the wife told her some of it during the moments when she felt well enough to converse: the traders were grim men from the stoniest outer lands, places where dragons and vicious trolls still roamed, and they did not waste their masculine conversation on women and servants.

  But after Derra had been with them little more than a sennight, the wife let slip that the trading brothers were preparing to return to distant Vindirthorp and that Derra would go back with them.

  The idea of becoming a kitchen slave again for men not very different from her grandfather and his fellow clansmen terrified her, so on the night before they were planning to depart she ran away.

  The people of Hudstad were no more or less charitable than other Aedonites, but most of them were poor and there was no work to be had now that the market had ended. Derra received a few crusts of bread and spent two nights out of the snow in the chilly, wooden church, but it was a suggestion from the church’s sexton that truly saved her. He told her of what he called “a nunnery” just outside the town; he called it Saint Asta’s.