Empire of Grass

by Tad Williams

  “The first two, certainly.” The girl’s dark eyes now met hers and held her gaze for so long that Miriamele was the first to look away. “When we first met, Your Majesty, I told you that I respected and admired you. That was true and still is. But you are in a place you no longer understand, if you ever did. And if you do not leave, I cannot promise you will be safe.”

  Miriamele fought against rising outrage—was the child mad? Had grief at losing husband and uncle so closely together damaged her wits? “Pardon me, but did you just tell the High Queen of all Osten Ard that you cannot guarantee my safety? To be honest, I do not know what to say to such an affront, Lady Turia.”

  “Then do not think of it as an affront.” The girl smiled again, a swift, thin sliver of white, like bone revealed by a butcher’s knife. “Think of it as a warning, sincerely given. You do not understand Nabban, Queen Miriamele. This place is in your veins, perhaps, but not in your heart. You do not understand vindissa.”

  Beneath Miri’s anger something else was stirring, incredulity turning slowly to something a little like fear, but when she spoke it was with heat in her words. “Do you mean I do not understand vengeance, my lady? Or that I do not understand the Nabbanai word?”

  “You do not understand the idea, I fear, and what it means here. In Nabban, we do not wait for kings and queens to solve our problems. When blood has been spilled—family blood—we take revenge. My husband was murdered. I will have vindissa for that. Even if it brings God Himself down in fury—even if the whole city must burn—I will see the murderer of Drusis punished.”

  She said it with such flat certainty that Miri found it hard to respond at first. “These are terrible things to say, Turia. You are full of grief and anger—”

  “No. I am not.”

  “—But you do not understand what you say. I cannot leave, even if I wished to. This city and this country are balanced on a knife’s edge. I will stay here until I see peace return. Do you not think I want to go back to my home, my husband, my grandchildren?” She thought of lost Morgan and felt a sudden stab of fear she could not entirely hide, a shortness of breath that took a moment to pass. “No, Turia. This overwhelming anger is not the way. We do not know who killed your husband.”

  “I know.” She spoke with utter sincerity. “I know all that I need. And I will make his murderer pay.”

  “And what of your uncle? He too was killed. Will you find his murderer too and have your vindissa there as well? Must all of Nabban watch the blood-feud rage on and on, watch murder after murder, all for this vengeance you think is so important?”

  Turia laughed. It was an astonishing sound in the circumstances, a girlish trill that Miri would have expected from a child dancing around the Yrmansol tree at a jolly festival gathering—but Turia’s dark stare was flat, empty. “Vengeance is not something I choose, any more than I choose to breathe. It has been chosen for me. And you are not the only one who does not understand it. You speak of my uncle’s death. He tried to tell me that my vengeance for Drusis’s death was a small need, that it must wait until this and such was accomplished, that if I could but be patient—on and on, blowing like a bellows, saying nothing.

  “I will not need to take vindissa for my uncle’s death, Queen Miriamele, because it was my doing. He tried to forbid me my vengeance. If you seek to do the same . . . well, it will not go well, not for you, not for the High Throne. I make no threats, Your Majesty.” This time the smile was almost shy; Miriamele could still not entirely believe the words she heard were coming from this pretty, rosy-cheeked girl. “As I said, I admire you. I also have no desire to start a fight with the High Throne. But Nabban is mine. Proving that may take months or years, but I am young and patient. If you stay here it will not slow my work by even a day, but it will make things more difficult for everyone. And it will put you in harm’s way.”

  Turia abruptly rose and made another courtesy, even as Miri struggled to make sense of all she had just heard. “You had Count Dallo killed?”

  She gave a sort of shrug. “He tried to tell me what I could and could not do. But if you tell the duke or any of his courtiers, I will deny I said it, of course. And even if they believe you and try to hold me here, by tomorrow the supporters of my house will pull down the very walls of the Sancellan to free me, and more people than just the murderer Saluceris will die—many more. I do not wish that. It is unnecessary.”

  “Unnecessary?”

  “Yes. I do not claim vindissa against any but those who have wronged me. But it will be difficult to achieve it without many deaths, and the longer I am forced to wait, the greater those losses will be. Anger runs high in this city, my queen—anger my uncle fed for a long time, and his foolish son, my cousin Sallin, now thinks to use for his own gain. He thinks House Ingadaris is his now. He is wrong and will find it out soon enough.”

  “Stop!” Miriamele got to her feet. “This is madness, Turia. My heart aches for you, raised in such a household. I can see now that Dallo has poisoned your understanding, darkened your heart . . .”

  “Dallo taught me many things I needed to know. But he also lacked resolve.” She nodded her head, then pulled up her hood. “I came here to give you fair warning, Your Majesty. My vengeance will not wait. Leave this place before Nabban kills you. Leave it to those of us who understand its ways.”

  Turia opened the door and went out. For a moment Miri considered ordering Jurgen to stop her, to hold the girl so that she could make her listen to reason. For a moment Miri told herself that she could talk Turia into something like sense, that the terrible things she had said could be unmade or changed. But when she remembered Turia’s cold eyes, her tuneful laugh as she talked about murders done and murders to come, Miri knew she was lying to herself.

  “I have made a mistake,” she said out loud, though there was no one else in the room to hear her. She stared at the door that had closed behind Lady Turia. “I have made a terrible, terrible mistake.”

  44

  Departure

  Tzoja found herself thanking all the gods she could remember—the martyred Aedon, the Grass Thunderer of the Stallion Clan, even the Hidden God of the Astalines—for saving her eyes. Even if she were to be blinded tomorrow, she would remember this moment forever. She was trembling so badly that she had to clutch at the carriage’s windowsill to keep her feet. Surely nobody, not even the longest-lived of the Hikeda’ya, had ever seen anything like this.

  Queen Utuk’ku was leaving Nakkiga.

  Tzoja leaned out the window of the wagon, breathless and frightened. The procession stretched far ahead of her vantage point, to where the first of the Sacrifice legions had already reached the distant gate, while Tzoja and Vordis and the rest still waited on the Field of Banners beneath the shadow of the mountain. All along the ancient Royal Way the denizens of Nakkiga stood dozens deep, waiting for a glimpse of their godlike queen. Many had not seen the sun in years. They moaned and wept and cried out, exhilarated but also terrified by this unprecedented event.

  Hundreds of Sacrifice riders on powerful black horses rode behind the foot soldiers, and behind them rumbled the first of the train of immense wagons full of Hikeda’ya nobility. Their carriages were like great houses, each wagon pulled by a dozen shaggy Nakkiga goats with oddly shaped, powerful legs. The queen’s train stood waiting behind the courtiers’ wagons. Utuk’ku’s wheeled palace, made of half a dozen even larger wagons, the whole assembly as long as a merchant ship, now began to creak as the goats, a full half-dozen yoked teams, pulled against their harnesses. As the carriages rolled forward the wheels of the heavy carts cracked the already ruined stones. A few bystanders, mostly human chattel, were jostled helplessly forward by the huge crowd until they fell beneath those mighty wheels, but the wagons did not slow. Slaves trudged after with long, hooked sticks to drag away the mangled bodies.

  At last the leading section of the great parade was coaxed through the old gates on
the outskirts of Nakkiga-That-Was. The crowded wagon that held Tzoja, Vordis, and a half-dozen other mortal slaves now began to move, rocking and lurching as it slowly rolled past the hills of rubble that had been stacked after the siege and the mountain’s collapse. Tzoja heard the cracking of drover’s whips and shouted curses, then almost fell when the cart lurched into a rut of collapsed paving stones, though they were only halted for an instant. Drums beat and more whips cracked. Slaves strained against heavy ropes and sang songs of mortification and despair as the wagon began rolling forward again.

  “What do you see?” asked Vordis from the floor where she sat with the other captive mortals.

  “Everything.”

  “Tell me, please.”

  Tzoja did her best to describe the procession, which now stretched all the way into the wild lands outside Nakkiga-That-Was, but was distracted when the throng gathered beside the road began to shriek and wail in frenzy.

  “What is that?” Vordis asked, frightened by the tumult.

  “I’m not certain. I . . .” Tzoja fell silent, staring.

  Rumors had passed even among the slaves that the queen was not inside her great train of carriages, but Tzoja had assumed the Mother of All would enter them when it was time to for the procession to depart. But now, as she looked back along the line of wagons, she saw an astonishing immensity emerge from the darkness of the mountain. It was Queen Utuk’ku, mounted on the most bizarre and frightening beast Tzoja had ever seen, a creature beyond imagining.

  One of the Astalines had told her a story once of a legendary empress of Khandia, who rode out once a year on a great beast called an Ebur, an animal three times as tall as a man, with a snake for a nose and wings for ears. Tzoja had doubted such a monster could exist, but the queen of the Norns had just emerged from Nakkiga into the dull sunlight riding the back of a monster that beggared any Ebur that might ever have lived.

  The thing looked like a cousin to the borers of the lightless Nakkiga depths, armored like them in a segmented, dark-gleaming shell, but this creature was much longer than any borer, and had countless pairs of legs. Its front end was blunt, but many eyes glittered there, and its mouth was an abomination of twitching parts that might have been jaws or simply more legs. The queen, as well as several nobles and a handful of Queen’s Teeth guards, were mounted atop it in a sort of pavilion secured behind the immense thing’s head. As the vast beast crawled out into the light onlookers began to scream. It was hard to know whether they were more frightened by Utuk’ku’s monstrous mount or the unprecedented prospect of the queen’s departure.

  A low-caste Hikeda’ya woman held her child up as the many-legged beast approached, perhaps hoping for a blessing from the queen. Instead, the great, blunt head lashed to one side, and she and the child were snatched up and swallowed. Those around her tangled in shrieking chaos, trying to escape a similar fate, but the drovers walking beside the creature poked at its eyes with long spears that smoldered red-hot at one end. The many-legged thing flinched away and took no more onlookers.

  “Why do they scream?” Vordis asked. “What is happening?”

  “It is the queen,” said Tzoja, but words still failed her. “The queen is leaving the mountain.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Days passed as the great royal progress moved south and east, not as swiftly as it had marched out of Nakkiga, but still moving with surprising speed, the teams of black goats replaced at intervals with fresh ones so that those who had been pulling could walk unencumbered until they were rested. The massive train of the queen’s carriages never stopped moving for long.

  Queen Utuk’ku abandoned the pavilion on the back of the many-legged thing once they were past the outer wall of fortresses that surrounded the heart of Hikeda’ya lands and from that point rode in her train of carriages. For a day or so the monster’s handlers kept the great beast walking behind them, then the first snow flurries of the coming winter began to fill the sky and the great crawling thing slowed until it could not keep up. The last Tzoja saw of it, as she and Vordis were being brought to the queen’s carriages in a smaller wagon, the massive beast lay dead or dying on the road behind them, curled and motionless as a discarded ribbon, snow piling in the crevices between its segments. Its purpose of spectacle served, the royal progress soon left it behind.

  Several times Tzoja was summoned with Vordis and the rest of the Anchoresses to Utuk’ku’s great, linked carriages, but each time Tzoja was left with other body-slaves instead of attending the queen. She began to wonder why she had been plucked from her hiding place and spared the death she had thought certain, only to be ignored.

  Then came a day when Tzoja alone was summoned.

  “What will I do if you are not there?” she asked Vordis. “What if I cannot understand the queen’s words? I do not speak Hikeda’yasao as well as you.”

  Vordis touched her face with a cool hand. “Do not fear, dear friend. The Mother of the People will make her wishes known. Wait until you are instructed and do only what you have been told. It is frightening, but you are clever and brave.”

  Tzoja did not think of herself as particularly clever, and she knew she was not brave, but she also knew that she had no choice. She allowed the expressionless Hikeda’ya guard to lift her from the running board of their carriage onto his saddle. The horse was large and heavily muscled beneath the thick black hair. It had been years since she had been on a horse, since her days in the Astaline settlement when she had sometimes ridden a swaybacked old mare out into the birch woods in search of useful herbs for the founder, Valada Roskva. Feeling this much larger mount beneath her only reminded her of how much of her life had been taken from her. Every time she had found peace—during her childhood in Kwanitupul, her brief time in Erkynland after escaping from the Thrithings, or the dream of contentment that had been her time among the Astalines, even during the unexpected moments of comparative comfort with Viykei in Nakkiga—someone had snatched it all away again.

  Why have you chosen this path for me? She did not know who she was asking, did not know if she prayed to anything at all, but the question still burned. Why am I allowed no happiness?

  She was handed from one guard to another at the rear of the queen’s train of wagons, then delivered to a group of Anchoresses who silently washed her and prepared her for the queen. After she had been anointed and dressed in a clean robe, the blindfold and mask were put in place, then she was taken by one of the Anchoresses into the next wagon, a place of moisture and warmth and silence. No voice of Drukhi sang this time. She could hear no other sound of breathing or movement in the room, so she thought she must be alone.

  Come closer, said a warmth-less voice that seemed to come from everywhere at once. Tzoja flinched and almost fell back against the door. Come closer, the voice said again; she heard it everywhere but in her ears. She had no idea where it came from, or where she was supposed to go, but when she had regained control of her shaking legs she took a step away from the doorway.

  Here.

  Light-headed, her heart speeding like a bumblebee’s wings, Tzoja took a step, then another, her hands reaching to feel for obstacles. After a moment she touched something hard and solid. She stopped and let her fingers move carefully across it and realized it was a sort of raised bed or table.

  Do not fear, mortal creature. I did not bring you here to harm you.

  The source of the words seemed no closer, but Tzoja could sense something just beyond her fingertips, and she hesitated. “I do not know what to do, O Great Queen,” she said in a voice she could barely control. “I do not know how to serve you.”

  I suffer. The words entered Tzoja’s thoughts as though she had conceived them herself, but the strength, the potency of them were nothing of hers. I am in pain. My healers cannot help me. Do what your folk have taught you to do. If you succeed, you will be rewarded.

  At that moment, the o
nly reward that would have meant anything would have been to be set free to go and hide in the carriage with Vordis and the other slaves and never have to come so near to this overwhelming, frightening creature again, but she could not say that. She could barely think. “Then I . . . then I must touch you, Great Queen,” she finally answered. “I cannot know anything without searching for signs of your illness on your body.” Even as she spoke, she felt a sudden moment of hope, for surely the Mother of All would never allow herself to be touched by a mortal’s hands.

  Do what you must.

  Tzoja swallowed, then swallowed again. She cautiously reached forward until her fingertips encountered the almost intangible barrier of a spidersilk blanket that covered the chilly length of the queen: Utuk’ku was lying on her back like a corpse being prepared for burial. For the first time, Tzoja was truly grateful for the blindfold—she did not think she could have looked into the queen’s eyes so closely without her heart stopping.

  She let her fingers drift along the royal body, but kept them outside the blanket. With her hands on the narrow ribcage she could feel the slow movement of the queen’s breath, one inhalation for every half dozen of her own. She found the testing spot at the side of the queen’s neck, just beneath the cold metal of her mask, and felt for the heartbeat. At first, frightened and ashamed, she was certain she had done something wrong because she could detect nothing. It came at last—tum-tum. Relieved, she waited for it to return, and counted many of her own hurrying beats before she felt it again. Tum-tum. Slow, so slow! But how was she to know what was right for someone so impossibly old? She could not even guess at the queen’s age—from what she had been told, Utuk’ku might be a thousand years old or ten thousand.