Orson Card - Earthfall

"He's trying to communicate rage," said Nafai. "Is it working?"

"Oh, it's working," said Chveya. "You and he are definitely gaining control over the situation. They don't like you, though."

"I'm heartbroken," said Nafai,

"Break the spear," said Oykib.

"What?" said Nafai.

"That's what he's afraid of, as he stands there holding the axe. He's afraid you'll break the spear."

Nafai broke the handle of the spear across his knees. The crack of the breaking wood rang through the air.

At once the digger king took the axe in both hands and tried to break the handle. He couldn't. It was too thick, too well-tempered.

"Do something else he can't do," said Oykib. "He has to fail twice."

Nafai reached down and took the end of the spear that had the head on it. Using the tip of the spear as a knife, he cut quickly and deeply across his own belly. Blood immediately sprayed out onto the digger king's face, and for a moment Oykib saw, to his horror, that Nafai had cut all the way through the muscle and exposed his bowels. In moments, though, the cloak of the starmaster began healing the wound, and as the diggers watched, the wound closed without a scar.

The digger king took the head of the axe in his hands, as if he contemplated his own disembowelment.

"I don't want him to kill himself," said Nafai. "I don't have the power to heal him."

"Don't worry," said Oykib. "You did exactly the right thing. The one thing the war king can't do is shed his own blood for the people. Don't ask me why, I just know that's the quandary he's trying to deal with."

Chveya interrupted. "Someone else is coming."

They looked up and saw that the digger army was indeed responding to someone else. "Not the blood king," said Oykib. "It's the mother."

"The queen?"

"I think she's the war king's mate, yes," said Oykib. "But she's something more than that. They all call her ‘the mother.' "

"What, they have a queen rat?" said Chveya. "Like a queen bee or a queen ant?"

"These are mammals," Oykib reminded her. "It's a religious title, I think. Like blood king and war king." Then, tentatively, he made the sound he had heard in his mind. "Emeezem," he said.

"What's that?" asked Nafai.

"Her name. That's the name they're calling. And her title is Ovovoi."

"Say her name again," said Nafai. "I have to get it right the first time I say it."

"Emeezem," said Oykib. "It's not as if I know for sure I'm right."

Nafai lifted his chin and bawled out her name like a caller in a marketplace. "Emeezem!"

The diggers all fell silent. A single figure emerged from the woods and slowly approached Nafai.

She was obviously female, but the real surprise was that she was hairier than most of the males. She wore no decoration, but the pattern of graying in her hair served the purpose well enough. She looked regal; she also looked frail.

"She is begging the god to forgive her. She didn't know what the foolish males were planning."

"I want the baby," said Nafai.

"She knows that. Her women are searching for the baby right now," said Oykib. Then, suddenly, he realized what she was straining to see. "Hold your lantern up to Nafai's face, Chveya."

Chveya did it, and the digger queen covered her head and curled herself into a ball on the ground. "She can die happy now," said Oykib, "because she's seen your face in flesh at last."

"My face?" asked Nafai.

"That's what it seems to me she's saying," said Oykib. "You're the one with the pipeline to the Over-soul. I'm having a hard time making sense of any of this."

"Don't get testy with me," said Nafai. "The Over-soul doesn't hear the things you're hearing. Your connection with the Keeper is better than his."

Oykib felt a glow suffuse throughout his body. Pride and fear, a strange mixture. The Oversold needs me to help with this-that was the pride. But the fear was stronger: If I make a mistake, there's no one to correct me.

Emeezem uncurled herself from the ground. "She's waited all her life for you," said Oykib, trying to make sense of the images that flashed into his mind-images of herself as a child, of dark underground places. "She thinks it was you that made her queen. Because you accepted her."

"When could I have done that?"

"When she was a little girl," said Oykib. "I don't understand it, but her childhood memories include you."

"Her bond with you is incredibly strong," said Chevya. "Stronger than her bond with her husband. It's really amazing, Father."

"She's begging you to spare her husband's life. He didn't know about the kidnapping either. It was the blood king's son who did it."

Emeezem hissed and sputtered a fierce command to her husband, and he rose to his feet and shouted almost the same words. Moments later, a proud-looking male strode out, casting aside his weapon in a flamboyant gesture. He walked up to stand before Nafai, but he did not bow or show respect in any way.

Emeezem and the war king both muttered commands to him, but he showed no sign of hearing them.

The queen turned to Nafai and spoke a stream of what sounded like horrible invective.

"She's begging you to strike Fusum dead," said Oykib. "That's the young one's name-he plotted everything even though everyone had been commanded not to harm us."

"I'm not going to kill him," said Nafai.

"You have to do something," said Oykib. "This is the guiltiest one. The war king didn't dare to touch him since he's the blood king's son, so that's why he gave you the four actual kidnappers. But you're a god, Nyef. You have to do something to him or-well, I don't know. Chaos. The universe collapsing. Something really bad, anyway."

"I hate this," said Nafai. "How about if I take him prisoner?"

"And put him in our secure prison?" asked Chveya. "Good thing we built a jail first thing."

"Not a prisoner, then," said Nafai. "A hostage?"

"Strike him down," said Oykib. "They're terrified because you hesitate."

"All I want is Zhivya back," said Nafai. "I don't want any corpses here."

Volemak strode forward and took his place beside Nafai. "Bow to me," he said to Nafai. "Or whatever passes for a bow in their culture."

"Get on all fours and kiss Father's belly, then," said Oykib.

"You're kidding," said Nafai. "That's not what the war king did to show respect to me?

"The war king was offering himself as an unworthy sacrifice. You're greeting Father as your king and father."

"Do it," said Volemak. "They don't have to know that I don't have the powers of the cloak. They have to see that you, too, are taking directions from someone. That tells them that powerful as you are, they haven't begun to see our powers."

Nafai dropped down on all fours. But from that position he couldn't reach his father's belly to kiss it. He let his hands off the ground and rose up high enough, then pressed his face into Volemak's shirt.

At once there was a murmur among the diggers.

"Can you glow brighter than you already are?" asked Volemak.

"Yes," said Nafai.

"All right, when I touch your head, really light yourself up."

Volemak reached down with a flamboyant gesture and touched Nafai's head. At once Nafai seemed almost to explode with light. Even the humans gasped then, as the diggers cried out in terror.

"Well done," said Volemak. "I figured we needed to juice up the perception of power. Now, knock down this proud little puppy. Don't kill him, just put him out like these others."