Lords of the Seventh Swarm, Book 3 of the Golden Queen Series
Page 14
Of course, she had lied because she knew what Orick was asking. He wanted her to embark on a dangerous journey, to discover God. She said angrily, "The truth is, I don't want anything to do with your God. If he tells you that you can't love me, that you can't marry me no matter how much you love me, then I don't give a damn whether he created me or not. You say he wants me to be happy: well, I know what I need to be happy!"
Orick frowned. He tried to speak. but only an out. Of course she would be angry with? G-2. L. were. But Orick also knew she was lying still. The truth was that if she discovered that God lived, she'd have to
make some difficult changes in her life, and Orick knew that for many, it was easier to deny God's existence than to change.
Orick didn't know how to proceed, what to say next. Should he lie, say that if she discovered God, her life would be easy? The truth was it might be harder. God requires hard things of His disciples. Should he ask her not to be angry at God? What good would that do?
He half turned to leave, then stopped. "You say you don't want to know 'Him, but you know me, and you love me. You had better figure out why you love me, because I tell you this: He shaped my heart and soul, as well as my body."
He turned to leave, and though his words were as honest and as humble as any Orick could muster, he knew he'd left volumes unsaid. Perhaps he'd been wrong to come to Tallea without any thought or preparation.
"Ah, forgive me," Orick said, not quite able to turn his back on her. "I don't know how to say this. I'm making a mess of it." He would have left then, but as he turned, Tallea must have recognized his frustration.
"I love your kindness," Tallea said, filling the silent void. "Is your god kind?"
Orick stopped in mid-stride. He gazed, realizing that she was apologizing. She wanted to speak to him. "He watches the sparrows and knows their thoughts. He weeps when one dies. He says He cares far more for us, than for them."
"If your god is so powerful," Tallea said, "why does he let them die?"
"He doesn't," Orick said. "He's prepared a way so our spirits can return to Him. With Him, we will live forever. The sparrows go to Him."
"If they go to him when they die, then why should he weep?"
"Because," Orick said, "He doesn't weep because they're dead, He weeps because of the pain they must pass through to reach Him."
Tallea asked, "Then we must wait for death, in order to be happy?"
"No," Orick said. "Our spirits can go to Him now. Our spirits can mingle with His."
"If this would make us happy, and if he loves us, then he should just do it."
Tallea could not hide the desolation she felt. Her voice cracked. She wanted happiness. She wanted it so much, she was willing to do just about anything to get it. Orick could tell.
"You wouldn't break into the house of a friend, would you?" Orick asked. When Tallea shook her head, he said, "God will not force Himself on you. When He sends His spirit, He does so only by your invitation, and only when you are prepared to receive Him."
So it began. Tallea seemed eager to hear his words. Orick had always loved her, he freely admitted, but he also loved God. Perhaps her desire to learn of God came only from jealousy, her desire to check out her competition. Perhaps she was curious because she did crave happiness; Orick could honestly claim to have found a measure of it.
So it was that Orick, Missionary to the Cosmos, began teaching the woman he hoped would become his first convert.
Chapter Fourteen
Zeus did not wait an hour to contact Maggie once Gallen departed. He felt pressed for. time to carry out the seduction. As he strode down the corridors to Maggie's room, he wondered, What kind of woman would marry a Lord Protector? Someone who cares for others? Someone who. has been hurt? Someone who feels the need for protection? Someone who values faithfulness in a relationship? Or maybe Maggie valued law in and of itself, needed structure in her life. All these, perhaps.
Zeus snickered at the possibility that Maggie needed structure in her life. Order ... wearied him. He could imagine nothing more tedious than an ordered existence. Inwardly he shivered. If Maggie was one of those, it would be damned hard to pry her legs open.
There were other possibilities. Maggie might be attracted to strong men for their own sake. She might even adore violence. Perhaps she found it exciting to be married to a Lord Protector-someone who hunts and kills others who are just as predatory in nature. Perhaps Maggie had a wicked streak. If that were the case ... Zeus grinned at the possibilities.
Then, of course, the fact Maggie had married a Lord Protector could be an accident. Gallen and Maggie were hardly more than children. Gallen couldn't have been a Lord Protector long.
But it was no accident, Zeus knew. Even if Maggie had chosen Gallen before he became a Lord Protector, he'd at least had the potential to become a Lord Protector. His personality was set, his nature formed. No, Maggie chose to marry a Lord Protector, regardless of whether or not he'd won his mantle.
Yet the fact that Maggie was young gave Zeus hope. Young women were more. easily seduced. Newlyweds tended to still be in the habit of looking for mates, of fantasizing about others. Sometimes they felt concerned for their own adequacy as lovers, and would be open to experimentation.
Zeus's hopes ran high as he reached the door to Maggie's room, pressed the chimes to announce his presence.
Maggie appeared at the door, somewhat disheveled, her hair flattened on the right. She'd been lying down.
"Oh, it's you?" she asked, surprised.
"Yes, me," Zeus said, looking deep into Maggie's eyes. He could see no wickedness there-not the kind of flashing excitement of one who enjoys another's misery. Nor did he see sensual curiosity. She did not open the door wider in invitation, or look furtively down the hall to be certain they were alone. He dared only look into her eyes, though he longed to let his gaze slide down her body. The air was thick with her clean scent, a sweet perfume.
"Can I help you?" Maggie asked. Zeus imagined he could feel a certain weight behind those words, a hint of promise. If you need help, and I can assist, I will help you.
Zeus almost smiled. No wonder she had wed a Lord Protector.
"Yes, please, I think you can. I ... I mean I hope you can," Zeus said. He glanced back over his shoulder, as if afraid others might be watching.
"Is something wrong?"
"I need help," Zeus answered solemnly. "I want to escape from here, from Lord Felph. Will you meet me, tonight, at sundown?"
"You need my help?" Maggie asked, incredulous.
Zeus glanced back nervously. "You're a technician, right? I hope you can help. Will you meet me, in the North Garden, beside the peacock fountain? I-I'll give you dinner. I have no other way to repay you."
"Why not talk now?" Maggie opened the door wider, so Zeus could enter.
"No, Hera saw me walking down here," Zeus said, feeling inspired. "She's in league with Felph. I don't want her to know we're talking. Tonight. Meet me tonight." Of all his brothers and sisters, only Hera would dare interfere with Zeus's plans. She'd bet against this seduction. Zeus prepared to drive. a wedge between the women.
"All right. Where is the North Garden?"
"Down this corridor, five doors to your right, then follow your nose. You'll smell roses," Zeus said. He turned on his heels and left.
fester.
Chapter Fifteen
Lord Felph, I cannot condone another display like the one I saw this morning,” Gallen said as he stoof on the bridge of the Nightswift. They skimmed Ruin, crossing pewter-colored mountains that wrinkled the planet’s surface. At this altitude, the thick air left a blue haze over most of the ground, baffling the eye.
Felph watched out the window, Athena by his side. He stared at Gallen’s words. “Cannot condone it, eh?” Felph grunted. “Hmmmph. What will you do next time?”
“Stop you,” Gallen said.
“Fair enough,” Felph replied. “Since I don’t have any more clones to kill, it’s all academic.�
�� He chuckled softly to himself. “Ghastly business, wasn’t it?”
Gallen said, “Such things are best done in private.”
“You think so?” Felph said, raising an eyebrow. “You don’t know Zeus.”
“No one should have to look upon his own murder,”
Felph glanced back at Athena, and Gallen followed his eyes. The girl sat quietly in one corner,
her back to the wall. She was the most beautiful child Gallen had ever seen, both stronger than a Tharrin, and more sensual. Felph asked, “Athena, my child, has Zeus ever discussed his desire to murder me in front of you?”
She looked at her father and scrunched back toward the door a bit, unwilling to answer. Felph told Gallen, “She listens far more than she speaks.”
He waited; finally she said, “Yes.”
“Do you think it prudent of me to strike first?”
Felph’s withering gaze drew the next word from her.
“Yes!”
Felph smiled victoriously, said to Gallen, “You see? I did only what I had to. Zeus is dangerous. I’ve bred him to dominate. He resents those who hold authority over him, and he thought himself immortal. I wanted to disabuse him of that notion. Now he will feel the pains of mortality.”
“But it wasn’t fair!” Athena shouted. “It wasn’t fair to kill me, too!” I didn’t do anything!”
Felph looked back to the sweet, strong girl, smiled in apology. “I couldn’t very well kill the others and leave your clones alive. How would that look?”
“You’re always wasting my clones,” Athena said. “You make me camp out in the tangle, where I get killed.”
“No more,” Felph said. “I won’t make you go anymore. Now that your Guide is gone, I can’t take chances with you. You’re too precious.”
“What about today? You’re making me go with him-“ she pointed to Gallen.
“You don’t have to leave the ship,” Gallen told her.
“I’m a Lord Protector. I can handle myself.”
She studied him with a calculation, as if measuring the thickness of his biceps, the girth of his legs. “You don’t know what you’re getting into.”
Athena’s skintight pullover, a camouflage suit in shades of black and purple, revealed her every muscular curve.
Though Athena's face said she was thirteen or fourteen, her figure was that of a mature woman. Shapely, strong, graceful. Gallen said, "It does not matter if you think I'll live or die. If you're afraid of going into the tangle, I won't force you."
But Felph interrupted. "Of course she'll come. Athena has lived in the tangle longer than anyone. I've been acclimatizing her to it for years. You'll need her cunning."
"Six times this year-I got killed in the tangle six times this year," Athena said. "You call that cunning?"
Felph said, "Who else has ever lived more than a week alone in the tangle? You've survived for weeks at a time."
Athena lowered her head. "Teeawah isn't just any tangle. You can't just walk in.
Felph nodded to the viewscreen that covered the front wall of the cabin. "Ah, here it is."
In the past fifteen minutes they had traveled well over two thousand kilometers. Ahead, something strange showed on the viewscreen: all over the face of Ruin, the skies had been clear. When clouds appeared at all, they were high cirrus clouds, thin bands of white strewn like cobwebs over the blue sky. But ahead of the ship a storm raged, a storm unlike any Gallen had ever seen. Thunderheads loomed thousands of kilometers in the air, billowing in hues of darkest slate. At cloud top, lightning forked and darted like the tendrils of anemones as they feed from their rocks. In their lower region the clouds lost form, became a nebulous haze as torrential rains poured from the storm.
As for the tangle-Gallen could see the dark purples of Ruin's vegetation, but the trees and vines themselves were hidden in the shadow.
As quickly as Gallen saw the storm, the ship hurtled into it, smashing against clouds as if they were a wall. The ship shuddered in response, slowing, then everything outside the viewscreen darkened.
Felph motioned to the pilot seat. "This is your expedition. Gallen. You should take us down."
"Ship, stop forward progress, then begin gradual derive." Gallen commanded the Al, walking up to the controls.
Brilliant flashes of actinic light struck the ship, and some crackled inside. Gallen felt the ship list, buffeted by strong winds.
The ship lowered. The storm pelted the exterior with huge liquid droplets. Icy crystals broke apart on contact with the hull, sliding down the viewscreen windows. For long moments this was all Gallen could see, then the tangle appeared.
Gallen had imagined a leafy canopy, like that of some deciduous forest, but the tangle of Ruin was bizarre. Enormous grasslike plants spiraled above the canopy hundreds of meters, like twisted fronds of ribbon, while other trees sent out feelers, like enormous stamens that clutched the air-grasping, grasping. Gallen knew enough to stay away from them. One towering vine wrapped around itself, looking as if it were made of giant bells, welded side by side.
Lower in the tangle, huge growths had formed on the sides of plants, enormous lips of fungus in shades of orange or brown. Gallen could barely distinguish the shapes, the rain pelted the viewscreen so hard.
On one lip of fungus, a creature squatted. It had enormous black eyes that stared up at him menacingly. The creature had antlerlike growths on its head, a short trunk like an elephant's, a long dark neck with greenish splotches that might have been some froglike parasite gripping fiercely to it, and on its leaf-shaped body, it had enormous wings like those of a bat, filled with ragged holes, as if the creature had been blasted by lightning many times.
For a moment the creature gazed at Gallen's ship, as if trying to decide whether it was predator or prey. In that moment, the beast seemed old and powerful.
It backed up on its perch, opened its wings. Enormous claws extended from the apex of each wing. With these, the beast raked the air, warning the ship away. Then it leapt from its perch and dived into the tangle, a wriggling horror, an escapee from the regions of darkness.
Gallen had never seen a creature so odd, had never even faintly imagined such a thing might exist. Gallen looked at icy tangle. Climbing down would be nearly impossible. He asked Felph, "How do we get in?"
"Easy enough," Lord Felph said. "We drop the ship into the canopy, then pound the brush with phased gravity waves, breaking through the upper foliage. When we've gone as far as the ship can go, we have to get out and make our way down. Any ruins will be down on the ground."
"Upper foliage?" Gallen asked, concerned by the tone of Felph's voice. He'd imagined this wall of purple vines was the upper layer, and the ground would be a hundred meters beneath it.
"The tangle is at least two thousand meters deep here," Felph said. "The upper plants you see are mostly parasites, growing on the old-growth dew trees. But it's the ground we need to reach. Down deeper, the dew trees have grown for thousands of years, so that now their trunks are petrified by constant seepage. Storms rage almost perpetually over this tangle-they're caused by some rather odd geography, cold winds sweeping down from the arctic, clashing with wet air from the seas under the great tangle. Twenty thousand years ago, this area would have been warmer, dryer. A perfect Qualeewooh nesting site.
"But it's a mess, now." Gallen considered. "There has to be a way to get some view of the ground. We need a topographical map, something that shows the features under the tangle. If the Qualeewoohs built here, they would have built above ground."
"Of course," Felph said. "I've done some echolocation, but the results are confusing. As I've said, the lower trunks of the dew trees tend to become petrified, so they show as stone. What on the map looks like a tower is usually just the trunk of a dew tree."
Gallen asked, "But people have found towers here?"
"One or two," Felph replied. "But no one has found Teeawah, the city itself."
"Do your maps show where ruins have been discovered?"
"Indeed," Felph replied. "But it's not the ones that have been discovered that we want. No one has reached the ruins of Teeawah. I'll get the map, and let you tell me where to look."
Gallen agreed. Felph ordered the ship's Al to radio the palace, download copies of the maps, then display them on the ship's holo.
The lights lowered; one viewscreen displayed an image in grays and reds. The map showed an area roughly four hundred kilometers wide and six hundred long, a wriggling, serpentine valley between the hills. Thrusting upward from it, like myriad hairs, were thousands of petrified trunks from dew trees. The five successful treks into the tangle had all been in the same general area, a great central plain here a few steep bluffs jutted from the foothills.
Yet as Gallen studied the map, he did not think the area looked promising. The bluffs weren't large enough to support a city like the one he imagined.
"Why do you think the Qualeewoohs built here?" Gallen asked Felph, not because he needed an answer, but because he wanted the old man to confirm his own ideas.
"A rookery," Felph said. "Aside from holy places which are more historic sites than anything else, I don't see that the Qualeewoohs ever built anything except as a rookery Gallen considered what little he knew of Qualeewoohs' habits. At Felph's palace the Qualeewoohs had built rookeries into the face of the cliffs-and this whole valley was ringed with such cliff faces.
"The Qualeewoohs like to set their rookeries high," Gallen said.
"And far from water, to avoid predators," Felph agreed.
Gallen imagined himself winging through the cliffs that ringed the valley. As he did, he whispered, "They want shelter from wind. It keeps their clooes warmer, and it makes it easier for the chicks to learn to fly-fewer drafts and crosscurrents."