Empire of Grass

by Tad Williams

  Tanahaya was trying to order her thoughts. She had not spoken to Jiriki or Aditu for two moons, and suddenly realized how many things she needed to tell them. She did not even know if her horse had made it back to H’ran Go-jao with the message that she was following Morgan.

  As they reached ground level and mounted into the Place of Sky-Watching, rain fell on them through the ruined dome, spattering across the cracked, bare stone of the floor and making the ferns bow and dance. Once there had been nothing to see beyond the dome but sky, but over the years Oldheart had grown so close and high around the city that now all but the area directly above the roof was crowded with thick greenery. Tanahaya looked up at the hemispherical lattice of stone, crumbling in more than a few places but still stretched above the great chamber like a fishing net or a web, and wished keenly that she could have seen it in better days. Behind her, Morgan had stopped to stare upward as rain fell on his shoulders and matted his hair.

  “Once the framework you see was filled with panes of crystal called Summer Ice,” Tanahaya told him. “We have lost the wisdom of its making now.”

  “Speak for yourselves, you and the rest of the Zida’ya,” said Vinyedu from the top of the stairwell that led down below the chamber. “We Pure have found the secret again. One day we will have what is needed to rebuild it—to bring Da’ai Chikiza back to life.”

  Tanahaya watched her vanish into a stairwell hidden behind part of the great frieze that covered the circular chamber from the floor to the bottom of the webbed dome. Stone representations of the moon calendar spanned the chamber, many carved as if in violent motion, each creature devouring the next—Lynx swallowing Crane as Crane in turn devoured Tortoise and Tortoise consumed Rooster, an endless cycle that represented the procession of seasons and years.

  Morgan was still staring upward, but Tanahaya could see that the armed guards were growing impatient.

  “Swiftly, please,” she told him. “I do not want Vinyedu to change her mind.”

  “I thought I saw people in the trees,” the young mortal said. “Up there.”

  Tanahaya looked, but saw nothing in the thick, intertwined boughs that loomed over the dome. “Did you hear her say there are Norns out in the forest? The Pure are warlike, as you have already seen, so do not fear—or at least do not fear a few Norn soldiers.”

  Morgan only shook his head, but let her lead him across the uneven floor of the ancient chamber to the stairs.

  As they entered the wide chamber, their escort of Pure warriors fanned out on either side of the doorway. Tanahaya barely noticed them as she took in her new surroundings. The Place of Sky-Watching had been a gaudy shambles open to the forest and the weather, but the Place of Silence was its opposite, a windowless, almost featureless circular chamber of stone lit only by the glow of a few lamps. Instead of the carved stone creatures that paraded around the walls of the domed chamber, the only decoration here were concentric horizontal lines that climbed the cylindrical walls to its low roof, as if she and Morgan now stood inside some mighty stone beehive. Large vertical alcoves with empty shelves, were carved directly into the wall of the chamber at intervals, thirteen in all, each with its own empty bench before it, but though all the benches faced the center of the room, nothing stood in the chamber’s center but bare dirt and a broken stone plinth, half of it standing, half lying on the floor.

  “Is that—?” Tanahaya began, but Vinyedu did not let her finish.

  “The seat of the Dawnstone. Yes, it was.” The mistress of the Pure did not bother to hide her painful feelings. “Da’ai Chikiza’s Master Witness. It vanished when the floods came and all the people fled the city. Some say it was swept away and lost. All we know for certain is that it is gone from our knowledge and from our hands, like the Green Column of Jhiná-T’seneí or the Speakfire, lost in the collapse of Hikehikayo.”

  “We all know these tragedies,” Tanahaya said. “Nobody grieved more deeply for these losses than my master, Himano. But I do not need a Master Witness. One of the lesser ones will do for my purposes.”

  Vinyedu surprised her then by reaching into her robe and withdrawing an object the size of two open palms, the largest Witness-mirror Tanahaya had seen. The dragon scale of which it had been made was intact, polished to a glassy sheen, and couched in a frame of age-darkened witchwood.

  “It is very old,” Tanahaya said reverently.

  “One of the first made in these lands of Exile.” Vinyedu held the mirror out to her. “Take it,” she said. “Use it. But remember my strictures.”

  Tanahaya weighed it in her hands; the mirror was heavy, and seemed as full of potential as a living thing. “This will not be swift,” she told Morgan. “Sit quietly, please. No harm will come to you.”

  His look suggested he was less confident about that than she was, but he found a space along the wall that was free of tumbled rocks and slumped to the ground to wait.

  Studying the Witness, Tanahaya could not help wondering about the monstrous creature of whose body the polished scale had once been part. The dragon scale had a burnished silvery sheen over layers of reflection and refraction, so that her own image seemed that of a phantom. She held it up and stared into it as she chanted the Words of Joining—silently, because her master Himano had taught her that when she used a Witness she was not singing to anyone but herself. She did her best to order her thoughts and her needing heart so that she could reach out to that which she so deeply needed to find.

  The scale’s shimmering surface seemed to have moving depths beneath it, like water. She let herself slide down through the levels and currents until she found the deeps that lay behind it all, the dark but clear place where only thoughts moved.

  Jiriki of the Sa’onserei, she called, or she might have sung it—the words were no longer just words, but something less easily defined. Jiriki, can you feel me? I have need of you now. Join with me. But nothing came back to her except silence and emptiness. She tried to make her thought even more pure, as sharp as a blade. Willow-Switch! My need is great. If you have any power to answer, join me!

  Then she felt it—a warming, then something emerging, small at first, but growing until it seemed to fill all the empty place. And at the center of it, he was.

  Spark? Is that you? My heart fills with joy to feel your thoughts again. Are you well?

  A surge of joy swept through her. In body, yes, dear friend, but troubled and full of news you must hear. She could not keep the jaggedness from her thoughts, though she feared they must be uncomfortable for him. I am in The Tree of Singing Wind, with the Pure. The mortal youth Morgan, grandchild of your friend Seoman Snowlock, is with me. He is alive and, for the moment, also safe.

  That is welcome news indeed, Spark. She could feel his sudden pleasure and relief, like buds bursting from a naked bough.

  But there is more you must know, and it is fearful.

  Speak, then, and I will listen. But I wish there was no need for haste. You have been missed.

  My teacher Himano is dead. She waited for his wordless rush of sympathy and surprise. Killed by the Cloud Children. He was trying to escape them with a parchment written in their ancient tongue—trying to hide it from them, I believe, but they caught him and cruelly ended him.

  Utuk’ku’s crimes are unending, Spark. I am full of sorrow.

  Master Himano is beyond this world’s pain now, but your mortal friends are not. The parchment says that the Witchwood Crown Utuk’ku seeks—a dozen seeds buried with Hamakho’s crown—was hidden long ago beneath the castle of the mortals, in old Asu’a.

  She could feel his surprise deepen, and with it a creeping frost of worry. Are you certain?

  As carefully as she could, Tanahaya shared what she and Vinyedu had learned. For long moments afterward the course between them was silent, empty. Then she felt him again, but now his thoughts seemed to come like echoes down a long valley, faint and indistinct.
>
  . . . Grim, but we cannot be . . .

  Jiriki? Willow-Switch? I could not understand you. . . . At once. We feared something . . .

  Then she could not feel him at all, only the emptiness that yawned between them. Tanahaya spoke the Words of Joining again, wondering what she had done wrong. Nothing came back to her, as though the scale had suddenly lost its potency, though she had never heard of such a thing happening.

  And even as she wondered at this a new force intruded abruptly into her thoughts, something she could almost see and could certainly feel. Strands of nothingness that somehow had substance were stretching across the empty places where the Witness had brought her, filling the darkness and twining about her own thoughts until she felt caught like a bird on a limed twig. The strands suddenly seemed to be everywhere, closing off the space that only moments earlier had seemed almost limitless. Frightened, Tanahaya tried to let go and return to the world, but she could no longer feel her hands or the Witness she held, could no longer see, though her eyes were open.

  The strands grew together into a single mass, the shape of a mask like a gloating face, its empty mouth and eyes agleam with scarlet light.

  A new and unfamiliar voice pushed into her thoughts then.

  So. Tanahaya, is it? Himano’s little pupil. It is a great pity you were not with him in his last moments. Does that grieve you? Would it have been worth it, to suffer as he suffered and to die at his side?

  The only remnant of her body she could feel was her heart, pounding faster and faster as the cold thing enveloped her in hopelessness.

  Begone! she said, though her thoughts were so weak she felt as if she murmured against a thunderstorm. You are not wanted here. You will fail. Nakkiga has fallen under shadow, but shadows can be driven away.

  The thing laughed, and she thought its disgusting enjoyment might drive her mad. And what do you know of shadows, young scholar? What do you know of any darkness but your own ignorance? Come, and I will show you things Himano never dreamed of. Come to me and be my pupil instead. You will learn that the darkness goes on and on forever—it has lessons for you that you cannot even imagine!

  The presence on the other side of the Witness was far too strong for her: Tanahaya could feel it pulling her out of herself and deeper into the cold that lay behind its fiery laughter—the cold of death, the cold of emptiness unending. Her racing heartbeat was now a single overwhelming and continuous thunder, like many drums pounding at once with no silence between beats. She could feel herself diminishing, stretching, being pulled ever closer toward a place of return.

  Then something snapped that pull like a cut thread. The darkness flew to pieces and light flooded in, a bright, blinding glare that she slowly recognized as the few small lamps that lit the Place of Silence, achingly bright compared to the darkness that had nearly swallowed her.

  Tanahaya was on her hands and knees, head ringing and body shocked, as if she had fallen a long distance to the stone floor. The blurry form in front of her became Vinyedu. Someone else was crouching beside her, trying to lift her.

  “No.” Her own voice sounded like something dying. “I will rise when I am ready.” She realized it was Morgan trying to help her, and felt a moment of unexpected affection for him. “Do not fear,” she told him between gasping breaths. “I will be well again.”

  When she could finally climb into a crouch, she saw that Vinyedu was again holding the Witness. “I had to pull it from your hands,” she told Tanahaya. “Something had you.”

  “Yes, it did. Something dark. I think it might have been Akhenabi of the Stolen Face. It felt like what I know of him—arrogant and cruel.”

  “Arrogant, cruel, and very powerful,” Vinyedu said. “He bears no weapon of witchwood or bronze, but he is Utuk’ku’s greatest servant. You are fortunate I was here, but I have done myself no favors in breaking your bond with the Witness. I hurt all over, as though I have been burned.” Vinyedu sighed, and for the first time Tanahaya heard real fear in her voice. “We have learned a terrible lesson today. The Witnesses are no longer safe—” Vinyedu began, but she never finished. Someone was calling from the Place of Sky-Watching in the hall above them—a voice tinged with alarm.

  “Cloud Children! There are Cloud Children in the city! There is fighting in the passages!”

  Vinyedu gave Tanahaya a savage look. “Your great need to speak to the Sa’onserei has revealed us to our enemies.”

  “No,” Tanahaya cried. “That can’t be! Even Akhenabi could not find us so quickly!” She turned to Morgan. “Unsheathe your sword and stay with me. Do not leave my side, no matter what happens.” And so saying, she drew her blade and guided him to the stairs that led upward to the rain and the city.

  * * *

  Rain was falling hard now, rattling the leaves above their heads, and the wind made the trees thrash as the Sithi named Liko led Aelin and his men deeper into the ancient forest.

  The immortals had taken their horses—several of Liko’s followers were riding ahead of them through the dark, wet wood. The rest of the Sithi led Aelin, Maccus, and wounded Evan swiftly across high, slippery places and along hillsides dense with bracken, forcing the captives to leap over new-formed streams that raced down the muddy slopes into the dells below. Thunder growled and threatened, and from time to time a flash lit the sky beyond the trees, as though some impossibly vast creature was searching for them with a lantern.

  At last, about half way across a long slope, in a spot thick with trees and dotted with rocky outcroppings, Liko the leader slowed to let the rest of the company catch up. Aelin was grateful for the chance to catch his breath—the immortals seemed able to run forever without wearying.

  “Be quiet. Now we go into lodge,” Liko told them, his face stern. “I go first. Follow without noise. You understand?” Apparently satisfied, the Sitha made a sound like the cry of a bird; an instant later, the ground itself lifted up. Startled and fearful, Aelin almost fell before he saw that the opening into the earth had been covered by a sort of wooden screen disguised on top with dirt and leaves, and had been lifted by a Sitha beneath it, who now climbed up to hold it ajar.

  “By Cuamh himself,” breathed Maccus Blackbeard. “Would have walked past that a dozen times and never guessed.”

  Liko abruptly struck Maccus on the back of the head, not hard enough to injure him, but enough to freeze the Hernystirmen with surprise. Again the leader of the Sithi brushed his mouth with his fingertips, then pointed to the hole.

  They were surrounded by armed Sithi, their weapons and horses gone, and even more dangerous enemies were lurking in the forest. As Uncle Eolair would say, Aelin told himself, when you are given only bad choices, choose the least dreadful. He took a shaky breath, then lowered himself feet-first into the darkness.

  The tunnel was steep but short: Aelin managed to slither down and land with no injuries except to his dignity. Maccus and Evan were coming down behind him, so he crawled forward, then suddenly light burst out before him. The glare came from a shining round stone set on a wooden tripod, and though it was not as bright as it had first seemed when he came out of the dark tunnel, it was enough to show that the lodge, as Liko had called it, was a long, low, angular cavern inside a great mass of ancient limestone. He heard his two men emerge behind him from the base of the tunnel, but Aelin did not look back, overwhelmed by what was in front of him. He could not see how far the cave extended, but the part he could see was full of Sithi. Some were sharpening their swords—not made of proper metal, but a substance that looked more like stone or polished wood—while others fletched arrows, or sat alone or by themselves or in unspeaking groups. The silence of so many felt unnatural, and made Aelin’s heart beat faster.

  Liko the Shrike had left them without a word, and now Aelin saw him talking to a hooded figure on the other side of the cavern. He then bowed and disappeared deeper into the cavern, out of Aelin’s sight.

&n
bsp; “Evan’s bleeding quite a bit, sir,” Maccus said. Aelin turned to see that the young Aedonite’s face was white and he was shivering, his eyes unfixed. Aelin rose to look for something to bandage the wound, and almost stumbled into the hooded figure with whom Liko had spoken. This figure threw back the hood to reveal another handsome Sitha face, this one female.

  “Your companion looks to have lost much blood,” she said. “My grandson should have told me.” She spoke with slow care, but her command of Westerling seemed nearly flawless, much better than Liko’s. She turned and called softly, then another Sitha rose from where he had been grinding something in a mortar and came toward them. The female Sitha spoke to him for a moment in their tongue, then with her help he removed Evan’s mail shirt. After a moment trying to unknot the wet cords of the shirt beneath shirt, the Sitha drew a small, thin knife from his sleeve. Maccus made a noise of surprise and reached for his own weapon.

  “Stop,” said Aelin. “Be still. He means Evan no harm. He is only cutting away the lad’s shirt.”

  “You are correct.” The Sitha woman had hair as white as a sun-bleached linen, which gave her a look of age, but her angular face seemed to Aelin like that of someone still capable of bearing a child. “We will not harm your friend.” She looked on as the Sitha she had summoned pulled the shirt back. Evan’s back was smeared with blood, but the wound did not look too deep. “Good. There is no sign of poison,” she said.

  “Are we prisoners?” Aelin asked as he watched.

  “No,” she said. “I do not think so—but not precisely guests, either.” She gave him a strange look; Aelin did not think it looked friendly. “My grandson did right to bring you here—these hills are not a good place for mortals. The long shadow war we have fought here against our own kind has become deadly.”

  “Your own kind? The Norns?”

  She nodded. “As you call them, yes. And you, mortal man—who are you and why are you here? Liko feared you might be sent to spy on us, but I think the Hikeda’ya would not bother with observers who were so obviously out of place.”