Empire of Grass

by Tad Williams

  After another silence, Etan at last ventured a question. “What did Josua say when you had told him?”

  She looked at him with reddened eyes. “All the expected things. That he cared for me. That I meant much to him. But he had a wife, and he loved her.” Her lips writhed like those of a baby about to cry. “I was furious, so hurt that I could barely take a breath. Instead of taking what I offered, a life of two kindred minds, he chose instead to chain himself to that . . . barbarian woman, that jealous savage who did not understand him. But the worst thing of all was his kindness. Even as I raged at him, as I slandered his wife and called him a fool, he never lost his temper with me. I still wake in the middle of the night remembering his sad face, those terrible words that he spoke so gently that I finally fell silent to hear him. He said, ‘I want to remain your colleague and dear friend, Faiera. Do not make me choose between our friendship and the marriage I have pledged.’ By my God and His Sacred Son, monk, I wish he would have hit me instead of saying that—I wish he would have stabbed me through the heart. No, he did stab me through the heart, but he did it with words, and with perfect, knightly kindness. Then he left. Left me in that huge, empty house. I had sent the downstairs servants away after supper so we could have the evening to ourselves. He took his belongings and went, apologizing all the time, as though the fault was his.

  “But the fault was that I was a fool. The fault was that I could not force him to love me. The fault was that I had lived with my feelings for Josua so long I could not believe he did not share them, at least a little.”

  This time Etan did not speak. Faiera stared across her dooryard at the wooded hillside beyond her little plot of land like some battered bird of prey just escaped from a terrible storm.

  “I went a little mad, I think,” she said at last. “I drank wine and walked back and forth, back and forth. I could not rest. I wanted to see Josua again, to take it all back, to tell him I had made it all up as a strange jest—anything to undo the terrible, final way he had left me. And in that madness, I picked up the Sithi glass. All I could think was that I wanted to see his face, see his expression. Was he sad? Had he at least cared for me a little? Or would I see nothing but scorn? I stared into the scrying glass, the Witness, and thought of him with all the bitterness and hope that swirled within me. And after a while, the reflection began to change. Something was there—but it was not Josua.”

  “What did you see?”

  She waved her hand again, but with the weariness of a dying person. “I don’t remember. I remember very little. I was drunk, and mad with grief and love. Something was there, and it spoke to me, though I did not hear words, and I do not remember now what it said. But it pulled me along and I fell in.”

  “Fell in? Fell into the mirror?”

  “There are no words, monk. Fell in, fell through, went beyond . . . I don’t remember. I recall very little, as I said. Sometime later I was walking through the house, feeling as cold and solid and empty of life as a stone statue, and I was putting a torch to the hangings, the furniture, my bed. Soon everything was burning. Then I was outside, watching it all as though someone else had done it.” She was breathing hard now, the sharp collarbones rising and falling above the bodice of her tattered dress. “There is little else to say. I went mad.

  “I lived in darkness for longer than I can remember—like an animal. At last some kind people found me and brought me to the Pellipan Sisters, who took me in and cared for me as best they could. Years went by, and little by little my wits returned. When I was something like my old self again I left the abbey and went back into the world, but there was nothing there for me anymore. My house was gone, I was thought dead, and in truth I felt dead. Later I learned that Josua had disappeared after that night, and I wondered if somehow the thing in the mirror had harmed him, or worse, had let me harm him.” She was wringing her hands again in a curious, unthinking way. “Monk, if you had the eyes of God himself and could look into my breast, you would see a heart of ashes. But this body of mine did not die, and I must live in it until my Ransomer takes me. I have made a life for myself the best I could. My learning, at least, has left me with some use as a maker of potions, a healer. I have lived by myself for a long time. I have thought of these things often. Still, I wish you had not come today.”

  Faiera pushed herself away from the doorframe, not without effort. He could see her legs trembling. She turned to him and her eyes were now cold and distant. “I know nothing of what happened to Josua, except that the last moments he was with me will haunt me until I die, and maybe longer. I doubt you will find him. Either he is dead or he does not wish to be found. And now, Brother Etan of Erchester, I think it is time for you to go.”

  42

  A Single Arrow

  Fremur and Unver were the last two to arrive at the great stone called the Silent One. Fremur thought the scene of the Shan’s torture an ill-chosen spot to hold this gathering, but Unver had insisted.

  Fremur moved to help Unver down from his horse. The Shan’s wounds had healed to deep, blue-purple lines on his face, chest, and back, but he still limped badly.

  “If you offer me that arm again where anyone can see, I will cut it off,” Unver said. “Many of these men are the same who called me a halfbreed weakling, and who laughed when I was whipped with the Summer Rose. I will not show them any weakness.”

  He swung himself down from the saddle and began to walk up the hill, hiding his limp with what must have been sheer will. Two dozen men representing a wide range of mostly western and southern clans waited for him beside Spirit Rock—Fremur saw the thanes of Wood Duck and Dragonfly, Adder, Fox, and Lynx. Most of them watched with carefully empty expressions but others showed open suspicion. Only Odobreg and the tall, long-bearded shaman Volfrag seemed completely at ease.

  To the obvious surprise of those waiting Unver walked past them to the tall stone, still flecked with spots of his own dried blood. When he reached it he turned and lowered himself to the ground, sitting cross-legged against the pole with the Silent One looming behind him like the tall throne of some stone-dweller king. Fremur seated himself on Unver’s right, then Odobreg came to sit on his left. The others joined, facing the Shan in a broad crescent. Fremur could not help looking at the thanes and remembering the tracks of the wolfpack that had sat in just this way during Unver’s long night—like subjects before a great lord. He hoped the others remembered that, too.

  The afternoon sun was already slipping toward the horizon and its slanting rays painted the crests of the Spirit Hills with a glow that was almost unearthly, but as the thanes sat in silence, all eyes on him, Unver did something very ordinary. He took off his skin bag and took a drink of it, then passed it to Fremur, who downed a swallow of the sour, fiery yerut before passing it to the next man, Anbalt, thane of the Adder Clan from the lakelands.

  As the bag moved from one man to the next, Fremur could feel the thanes lose a little of their stiffness. Sharing the yerut was not the gesture of some would-be monarch, but of an old grassland chieftain, someone first among equals. By the time the skin had made its way around the circle to Odobreg, who tipped it up and squeezed out the last of the thick, fiery drink, the thanes were looking at Unver differently.

  Volfrag began to intone a prayer, but Unver raised his hand. “The spirits spared me and saved me here,” he said. “We do not need to ask their permission. I would not be alive if they begrudged me this place.”

  The shaman’s bearded face showed nothing. “As you wish, Unver Shan.”

  “And if I am the Shan, it was not by my choosing.” Some of the chieftains stirred and shared covert glances. “But since the guardian spirits of all the clans have put their trust in me, I cannot turn away. I pledge my life to our clans. I pledge my life to you, the chieftains of those clans.” He paused, and it seemed that he would next ask them to pledge their lives to him in turn, but instead he said, “Who is with us, Odobreg?”
>
  “All that you see here,” said the Badger Clan thane. “And many others who have left Blood Lake with their people because the First Red Moon waxes and they have far to go. But not all are with you. Antelope Clan and Pheasant Clan refused to swear their allegiance. The thanes of Otter, Wild Horse, and Kunret White-Beard of the Vulture Clan all made excuses, but they are small-hearted and will crawl back to you if you stay strong.”

  “And what does that word mean—strong?” Unver set his hands on his knees, his back straight as a spear against the blood-spattered post. “Does it mean protecting our people and our lands? Then I will be strong. Does it mean waging wars that will do us more harm than good? Perhaps I will disappoint some of you.”

  “We cannot be disappointed in the choice of the spirits,” said Etvin, thane of the Wood Ducks, one of the youngest present. “We all saw what happened. You are the Shan.”

  “Then tell me what the people need.”

  Etvin hesitated, unready to be asked to speak so openly. “They need . . . we need . . . to defend our land from the Nabban-men. Every year they take more of the Lakelands. Every year we are forced farther out into bare, rocky lands while they build their houses and castles beside our rivers.”

  “Unver knows of this,” said Fremur. “We are Cranes, remember? We have fought the stone-dwellers for years all up and down the edge of the marshy Varn.”

  “I am no longer a Crane,” said Unver, not in anger but with grim finality. “Nor am I a Stallion, though my mother and grandfather were. If I am Shan, I am Shan of all the clans. But I do not forget that I was a Crane. Fremur speaks rightly. I do not ignore what the Nabban-men are doing, and Etvin speaks rightly too. If we are men, we will put an end to such thievery. If they reach toward our cookfire, we must send them away with burned fingers.”

  “Send them away with no fingers!” said Anbalt of the Adders.

  Unver smiled. “It is a way of speaking, only. I am not feared to shed blood. Any who know me can give witness.”

  “I saw Unver Shan kill many stonedwellers,” said Fremur. “Many. He saved a dozen of our kinsmen when armored Nabban-men had trapped them. He fought like Tasdar of the Iron Arm himself.” He was suddenly shamed by his own eager words—he was the youngest thane present and did not want to seem it. “He defeated my brother Odrig, who was bigger than any man here, even though Unver was already tired and hurt from another fight.”

  “We all know he is strong—that he can fight,” said one of the other thanes. “We have all heard the stories and we saw him survive what no one else could at Redbeard’s hands.” He turned toward Unver. “But will you fight against your own people? Your father’s people?”

  Several of the men stirred, and a few even dropped their hands to their weapons in anticipation of violence.

  “That is an ugly question,” said Volfrag, and for the first time Fremur saw a little emotion from the shaman, a spark of anger. Fremur still did not trust the man entirely—Volfrag had moved his wagon very quickly out of Rudur’s paddock, as the old saying went, but he was the most revered of all the grassland shamans; his support of Rudur had been a large part of what had made Redbeard a man to be feared and respected in the first place.

  “Peace, Volfrag.” Unver did not seem offended. “The stone-dwellers are not my people,” he said calmly. “I have not lived among them since I was a child. My father, may his name be cursed—I will not utter it—and may the buzzards pick his bones, left our family behind without a word of warning or apology. I owe him and his world nothing.” He held up his hand to forestall anyone else speaking. “But I know the stone-dweller world better than the rest of you. There are more of them than of us, and their castles are not built just to keep out the rain and wind. They have set all those stones together to protect themselves from each other—and from us. Their strong places are strong indeed. Even a great collection of clans would dash themselves against those stone walls in vain.”

  “So we should sit like helpless wild dogs while the wolves of Nabban bite away our land, piece by piece?” Etvin of the Wood Ducks spoke with real fury, his voice shaking. “I was born beside Shallow Lake. My family’s grazing land, the place my father tied his horses and built his first wagon, now belongs to a Nabban noble. He chased us away from our own lands like we were rats in a midden.”

  “Do not think we will sit helplessly,” said Unver. “But when we strike back at the Nabban-men—and we will strike back, I swear by the Sky-Piercer and the Grass-Thunderer—then the stone-dwellers will send their armored knights and foot soldiers numerous as ants against us. We cannot fight them in the old ways—if we could, why did High King Simon and his men defeat us so easily twenty summers ago, though we had three times their numbers?”

  The gathered thanes looked at each other, angry and shamefaced. The memory of that lost war was still painful, even for those who had not fought.

  “Because we fought the old way,” continued Unver. “Each man his own thane, with none listening to any other. That is how we were pushed to these empty lands in the long ago, and that is why we will be pushed and pushed farther east by the stone-dwellers of Nabban. Unless we learn to fight back in a different way. Unless we fight as a nation of warriors, not a collection of clans who come together only when they must.”

  Several of the thanes gave nods of approval, but others looked doubtful.

  “You speak of the High King,” said Anbalt. “Even now, he sits at the gate of our paddock, making demands. It is said you bargain with him, but it is not only the Nabban-men who steal our lands. All along the Umstrejha the Erkynlanders have begun pushing their way into our pastures, our hunting lands. We can scarcely water our horses without having to fight our way through them. And their stone city they call Gadrinsett is growing like a boil. Yet you have said nothing about them.”

  All eyes turned to Unver.

  “This is what I speak of,” he said. “We men of the grasslands, we are like children, our attention taken by each new thing that happens, forgetting what went before. The High King’s men have come to our lands because they barter with us for one of their nobles. He is an old friend of the king and the queen. They are willing to pay much for him.”

  “How much?” asked one of the northern thanes. “And if they pay in gold, how will it be shared? Who captured him?”

  Unver stared at him until the man looked down. “Gold? What will gold bring us? Where will we spend it? In the markets of the stone-dwellers, of course, as we always do. No. I want no gold from the High King.”

  “Horses?” said another.

  “Hah,” said Odobreg. “Horses from Erkynland? I would rather ride sheep like the snow-trolls do than one of those sway-backed, heavy-footed things.”

  Unver shook his head. “Not gold, not horses. What we will receive from the High Throne for the return of their valued friend will be agreements. Treaties. We will make them affirm that everything below the Umstrejha is ours.”

  Now several of the thanes reacted with open dismay, and Fremur caught Odobreg’s eye, letting him know to be ready in case trouble broke out. “We had treaties after the last war!” Anbalt cried. “Nabban gave us treaties and broke them all!”

  “But the High Throne did not,” Unver said. “The king and queen have kept their words.” He laughed, but anger coiled beneath it. “Do not act like fools! Do not think I trust the Erkynlanders to leave us alone forever. Eventually their people will need more room and whether the High Throne wills it or not, the stone-dwellers of Erkynland will turn to our lands. But that will give us time—time to learn to fight against them. And while we have peace with the High Throne, we will make war against the scum of Nabban who think to steal our land without a fight. Would you rather have war at both ends of the Thrithings, north and south? Or would you prefer to be able to fight back against our greater enemies now, and deal with the northern foes later?”

  This said, Unver let the t
hanes murmur among themselves as he stared out into the middle distance. The sun was all but gone now, but its light lingered all along the western horizon like blood seeping into water.

  “Here is my word,” he said at last, and the bearded men grew silent, watching him now with something like superstitious awe. Fremur saw that he had done something more than incite them—Unver had made them think. “As of this hour, all private feuds between clans must end. Those who cannot settle them peacefully will bring them to me—to all of us—and a settlement will be reached. We waste no more strength fighting among ourselves.”

  “Bring them where?” asked Etvin. “Will you rule from the Crane camp in the south, Unver Shan, or in the north with the Stallions?”

  “I will remain here,” Unver said, so calmly it was clear he had already decided. His words sent another stir through the thanes. “This place is sacred to all of us. It is here the spirits chose me. And it is in the center of all our lands—I will not rule as a man of the High Thrithings or any other, but as Shan, and the Spirit Hills will be my clan ground. This stone, the Silent One, will be my seat.”

  “I hear the spirits speak through your mouth,” said Volfrag solemnly.

  “And I hear hunger growling in my belly,” said Unver. The tall shaman looked offended, but the many of the thanes laughed.

  “Come, there is food for you at my camp for all of you—a feast,” Unver said. “My mother herself oversaw the preparations, and if you think I am a frightening enemy, you will not want to offend her hospitality. Let us make our way down the hill and celebrate a new day for the grasslands.” He rose to his feet so easily that anyone but Fremur would have found it impossible to believe how hard it had been for him simply to walk up the hill an hour before.