Empire of Grass

by Tad Williams

  Simon waved and one of the pages came to fill his wine cup. This time Tiamak did not look to his wife. “How do you feel, Majesty?” he asked instead.

  “Oh, God save me—Majesty.” The king looked around. “There is no one here but you, me, and Pasevalles. Must you?”

  “It makes it easier for me to remember when there are others around. But I will try not to call you ‘Majesty’ if it displeases you so, Simon.”

  “And don’t scold me for asking, either.” He frowned. “It is just that I have had another poor night.”

  Tiamak saw his opening. “I wish you would let Lady Thelía make you up a sleep draught tonight. My wife is very skilled, as you know.”

  “It would not be any trouble,” she said quickly. “A little melissa, some chamomile perhaps. I could also stuff a cushion for you with peppermint and rose petals, which both help in bringing easeful sleep.”

  Simon shook his head. “Binabik made me a charm for sleeping and it gave me the most terrible dreams—far worse than no dreams at all. Do you not remember? You were there, Tiamak. I terrified that poor child in old Narvi’s castle by walking in my sleep.”

  Tiamak took a breath for patience’s sake. “But, Simon, that was different, from what Binabik told me . . .”

  “Charms or medicaments, it makes little difference. There is nothing wrong with me that Miri’s return will not mend. I miss her, that’s all. But soon she will be back and everything will be well again. No, no charms, no simples.”

  Tiamak looked to Thelía. He was annoyed that the king considered their application of study and careful experiment no different than the troll’s Mintahoq conjurations, but it was clear that whatever he and Thelía thought, they would get no farther with the idea today. “Well, then,” Tiamak said, “what shall we do first of the many things that want your attention?”

  “What about this Yissola?” Simon asked. “So she is definitely coming here, is she? Why? What does she hope to accomplish?”

  “She is said to be a powerful and persuasive woman, Majesty,” Pasevalles offered. “I am not sure it is wise to give her a private audience.”

  Simon lifted an eyebrow and his weary scowl deepened. “What, Lord Pasevalles, are you like my wife, who does not think I can be in a room with another woman without turning into a mooncalf? Do you think she will blink her eyes at me in a wanton way and I will throw over the Northern Alliance for her Perdruinese Syndicate?”

  “Of course not, Sire. But these are complicated matters, and although not so pressing as the Norns”—Pasevalles paused to make the Sign of the Tree—“it is still a sort of war. The Sindigato and the Alliance try to block each other from the ports they call their own, and in the neutral ports they are always fighting. Sometimes men die in these brawls. They also kidnap sailors from one another’s ships and even engage in acts of piracy, although that they do carefully and selectively.”

  “Ah, so because it is complicated I need to have you and Tiamak standing over me? The Commoner King might not understand such heady issues?”

  Pasevalles showed a hint of strained patience, a look that Tiamak suspected he wore himself from time to time. “No, Majesty. All know and respect your good sense. But these are not the sort of disputes that can be solved without a great deal of study, of contracts and treaties. Surely you do not plan to do all those things by yourself?”

  “No, damn it, I don’t.” Simon’s temper was much shorter than usual, Tiamak could see, and again he desperately wished the king would let him do more to better his health. When Simon lifted his hand to display his frustration, it trembled, although he did not seem to notice. “But I don’t think there’s any harm in me talking to this Yissola without an entire army of clerks and functionaries hanging on our every word. Sometimes people are much simpler than you suppose, Pasevalles. Sometimes they just want to be listened to and heard.”

  “I’m sure you are right, Majesty.” Pasevalles nodded and sat back, but he looked concerned as well, and Tiamak could not help wondering if he needed to work more closely with the acting King’s Hand, at least on the matter of the king’s ill health. Even without considering his beloved library, Tiamak worried that too many important tasks were still left undone. With the distraction of the Norns and the doubts about King Hugh’s loyalties, John Josua and the forbidden book—as well as the likelihood that Simon’s son had explored beneath the Hayholt—had not been discussed for at least a fortnight. Tiamak did not like the idea of trying to defend a castle riddled with underground passages without exploring them carefully, but Simon seemed to find the whole idea too painful, as though he should somehow have guessed his son might find the castle’s underground secrets and protected John Josua from them somehow.

  Ah, Brother Etan, I sent you away too quickly, Tiamak thought. I could use another trusted hand in the castle these days! He remembered that he had not replied to the monk’s last letter, which had been sitting on the table in his chamber for days, half-buried under a growing pile of other matters demanding his attention. I hope you are safe, Brother.

  Still, he thought, like Simon I must deal now only with what is before me, not what I wish or hope for. It is clear that a storm is coming, though we do not know how big it will be or how hard it will blow. We can only prepare ourselves and pray for luck.

  * * *

  “What do you think?” Tanahaya asked the young prince. “Is it not a fine boat?”

  Morgan looked at it with what she suspected was more than a little distrust. Like most mortals, he wore his feelings like rich clothes, displayed for all to see. “Will it really float?” he asked. “Won’t the water come through?”

  She let herself laugh, though she did not entirely feel it. “That is why the reeds are tied so tightly together. Now help me carry it down to the water.”

  The lightness was only in her voice. Inside, Tanahaya was still choked and sickened, as if she had swallowed a hard-shelled nut that had lodged part way down. It was almost impossible to believe that her teacher Himano was truly gone. When she left him to go to Jiriki and Aditu she had known they might never again spend long mornings watching the grasses give their dew to the air and the birds in all their colors darting like glints from a rainbow, but she had not guessed how complete the separation would be.

  It was hard not to abandon the present entirely for the happier world of memory. Himano had possessed a way of talking about things that had happened far in the past as though they had happened only yesterday; to be in his company was to be simultaneously in ancient days and in the present moment. “There,” he would say. “Such a song that thrush sings, as if it had just thought of it and wanted everyone to hear such cleverness and beauty! Do you know, Vindaomeyo would not begin making an arrow without going out to his garden and thanking the birds for their feathers? He did not care for cities, and lived surrounded by flowers, as we do. He also moved carefully and quietly, so as not to disturb the life around him. Even the songs he wove into his craft were no louder than the buzzing of a single bee.”

  And so she would sit beside her teacher, watching the hairy bees dart from blossom to blossom, and it was as though Vindaomeyo the Fletcher sat with them.

  But the duties of the present could not be ignored for long. With Morgan’s help, Tanahaya pushed the boat out into a shallow backwater and then climbed in. She held out her hand to the youth, who took it with a certain hesitancy she did not understand. She was amazed by her own overconfidence of only a few moons past, that she had thought to go to live among mortals as an envoy, to represent her entire people to them, without spending years and years studying them first. It was hard enough to understand this single child, with his moods and misunderstandings.

  You were right, Himano, my dear master, when you told me that we learn best only by understanding how little we know.

  Morgan climbed in and the boat rocked, but Tanahaya knew she had built it well. He leaned too fa
r to one side and almost lost his balance as it tipped. “Feel its motion,” she told him. “Let the movement of boat and water into you, but slowly. Make it part of you.”

  “I’ve been in boats before,” he said, frowning.

  “I meant no insult. But a small boat, especially on a fast moving river, is a different thing. You cannot force it to behave. The water goes where it wants and the boat goes with it. But you can let that movement flow up into you and put yourself at its center.”

  He looked at her with an expression she hadn’t seen from him yet, one that spoke of both annoyance and amusement. “You said you were a scholar, but what you really are is a tutor, I think.”

  “There is some truth there,” she admitted. “My master Himano was both, and he wanted me to be the same. Knowledge—understanding—cannot be hoarded. It must be returned to the world. The story of life and thought, that is everything. And we are all part of that story.”

  Now Morgan seemed interested. “I was just thinking about that yesterday. That I’m in a story, like my grandparents were. And my grandfather used to say you never know what kind of story it is when you’re in the middle of it.”

  She nodded. “He is wise, then—but it goes further. We are all in a story—existence is a story. What sort of a story, though, is not always clear to those who live inside it. That is what a scholar is, someone who tries to see the shape of all stories, both the small ones that are tales of people or places, and the larger one that we all share, the story of everything that is.”

  “Now you’ve lost me.” He settled himself in the prow of the little boat.

  “I do not fully understand it myself,” she said, and allowed the pain inside her to seep closer to the surface. “And now I have lost my teacher, who tried to help me find that understanding. There are times when I wonder how I can live in this story any longer—a story that has so much sorrow in it.”

  The mortal youth was silent for a long time, thinking. “I don’t think any of it has much to do with what we want. I think God puts us in the story that He thinks is right for us, but then leaves it to us to make our way through.”

  She thought about this. “God” was a word she knew, but it was not a word she used because it was too small, too . . . human. She considered what Morgan had said as though he had named the sun, the sky, the dark and the light—and memory and hope too—and found she could understand the idea better. With that understanding came another. The loss of Himano was indeed part of her story, just as his teaching of her and his death had been parts of his.

  “I think your grandparents taught you well,” was all she said.

  * * *

  • • •

  Tanahaya had not been on the river in many years. As they let the current ease them along, helping it here and there with their paddles made from bark and long branches, its beauty helped to ease her sadness at losing Himano. In places the trees crouched and leaned as though hoping to learn some interesting news; in others the banks widened and the shallows were full of nodding reeds where red-winged blackbirds preened, showing their bright epaulets to the world as if hoping for congratulations. And always the river turned and turned again, finding its way—finding the only way—with a perfection that almost left her breathless.

  The river is the story but water is the life, she thought. Water has no artifice, no aim. It goes always where it should, without desire or fear, whether beneath the light of Mother Sun or of the sad, empty house of Father Moon. The river shapes the water, gives it direction, but that direction is not what it truly is. The river is only where it is, when it is, and sometimes how it is.

  This last thought became stronger when they reached the first of the rapids, where T’si Tsuyahsei descended swiftly downward, excited and frothing. They bounced and swerved for a splashing, chaotic time before the danger of overturning grew too great; then, at Tanahaya’s direction, they paddled to the bank and carried the dripping, heavy boat downstream until the water grew calmer again.

  She could see that Morgan was thinking about food. It must be painful, she thought, to be unable to ignore such thoughts, to live in a body that was constantly crying for nurture, like a child who had not yet learned to speak. Still, she did not want to stop until they were ready to make camp for the night, but they had nothing to eat unless they caught more fish. She had hoped to sight Da’ai Chikiza before stopping, at least from a distance, but she could tell that would not happen today.

  “I’m hungry,” said Morgan.

  “I know,” Tanahaya told him. “We’ll stop soon.”

  “How far away is it?” he asked as he sat in the bow, watching the river roll past them, glassy and serene. “This city we’re going to?”

  “Many hundreds of years,” she said, “—at least in memory. But we should reach it tomorrow.”

  “And they’ll let you use the mirror? The Witness?”

  “I do not know for certain that any of my kind still survive there. The Pure have kept themselves separate from the rest of us since Jao é-Tinukai’i was attacked during your grandfather’s time there. The loremistress Vinyedu led several of her kin and a few others to Da’ai Chikiza. It could be none of them have survived. But if we do find them, you must let me speak for both of us. The Pure are proud and full of anger toward your kind.”

  Morgan looked startled. “What do you mean? Are they going to try to kill us?”

  “I cannot imagine they have strayed so far from wisdom.”

  The river bore them on, and for long moments its song was all she heard.

  “I couldn’t help noticing,” Morgan said at last, “that you didn’t really answer my question.”

  “I know. And I would not elect to go there if I had any better choice,” was the best she could do.

  * * *

  Morgan hunted for things to eat as carefully as he could, using every bit of woodcraft he had learned from ReeRee and her family, gathering wild currants and digging up a large sheepshead mushroom from the ruin of a rotting log. Thinking about the little creature he had traveled with so long filled him with unexpected sadness. He hoped she was still alive, still with her family.

  From ReeRee, his thoughts immediately jumped to his sister Lillia. With her, at least, he did not have to worry quite so much about the danger of snakes and foxes, but he still ached at the thought of her so far away. She didn’t even know that her brother was still alive! That made it all the more important that he and the Sitha did what they had to so he could return home to Lillia and the rest of his family.

  When he had gathered enough to make the small fish they had caught into a proper meal, Morgan hurried back to their camp beside the river. He knew Tanahaya was in more pain about the death of her teacher than she had showed him, and he wanted to do what he could to make her feel better.

  Because the clearing she had chosen for camp was in a hollow concealed between two thickly-forested hills, Tanahaya had made a fire. He took the berries and mushrooms from his bag and crouched down to hand them to her. She looked at them for a long moment, then smiled.

  “Thank you, Morgan. It is good to have someone to travel with. To have a friend.”

  Then, to his astonishment, she reached up and took his head between her cool hands and pulled gently until he bent even closer, then kissed him on the forehead. “You are a kind young man,” she said.

  He straightened, his cheeks and forehead suddenly warm, as though he had come inside out of a chill wind. “Thank you,” he said.

  He should have been content with this display of affection, even happy, but it confused him and made him think about the day he had watched her bathe in the river. He had tried to push the memory of her slender, golden form from his mind, but it had never gone very far away. Now it came back as strongly as it ever had, even on the longest, most lonely nights he had spent sleeping near her.

  “Give me a few moments to boil the m
ushrooms, then we will eat,” she said. “Meanwhile, sit beside me and warm yourself. Your skin is cold.”

  * * *

  • • •

  During the first hour of darkness the winds rose and a great chill crept down the river valley, silencing the night birds and waking Morgan from sleep. To his surprise, he found Tanahaya curled on the ground beside him with her back toward him, apparently also asleep, something he had seldom seen since they had traveled together. Shivering in the new and deepening cold, he tried to ease back into slumber but could not. The sudden cold reminded him of his grandparents’ stories of the days of the Storm King’s War, of the winter that had fallen on Erkynland and would not end.

  Is it happening again? Are the Norns sending more storms?

  Without turning toward him, but as if she had heard his thoughts, Tanahaya said, “It is only the autumn spinning into winter. Do not fear the cold, it is nothing unnatural. Move closer to me if you are too badly chilled.”

  He did, sliding forward until he was lying just beside her. His sleepy mind wandered over the Sithi and the way they seemed to understand and even control weather and direction, and sometimes even the sun and the lights of Heaven. But if they are so powerful and this Utuk’ku still terrifies them, what can mere mortals hope to do against the Queen of the Norns . . . ?

  His anxious thoughts growing disjointed and circular, he drifted back into sleep again.

  When he awoke once more it was the darkest part of night. The campfire was scarcely a glow and the chill had grown fierce, so he huddled closer to the warm body beside him. In that moment she seemed little different than the other women he had woken up beside in the years since he had become a man, and he moved closer still, until his face was pressed into her hair, and he could smell the strange, clean scent of her skin.