Beside the Golden Queen strode her Lord Escort, the black chitin of his exoskeleton gleaming in the afternoon light. Lord Kintiniklintit was, frankly, the largest Vanquisher Maggie had ever seen. Good, she thought. At least I'll be killed by the best.
Beside him, in a dark brown robe, walked a husky man in a golden mask. Lord Karthenor.
Maggie's right leg shook as she walked. She halted, willed it to stop trembling, tried to show no fear.
Let them come to us, she thought. So she stood and leaned her head back, closed her eyes, trying to excise these images from her mind.
A cool dawn breeze blew; through partly opened eyes she saw clouds on the horizon.
Clouds! Here in the desert where Felph told her it had not rained in ages. Maggie wanted to taste the fresh air, to feel warm rain on her cheeks, to bask in sunlight.
She closed her eyes fully, shutting out the images, inhaled deeply. She knelt and took Gallen's hand in her right hand, squeezed tight. "Gallen," she whispered, "if you try, you can smell Felph's rose gardens from here." The aroma came, distant and sweet.
In moments, Lord Karthenor and his Dronon master stood before her, their shadows falling over her.
"Closing your eyes will not make us go away," Karthenor said.
Maggie opened her eyes. He was fatter than she remembered. The golden mask he wore, shining with its own wan light, made his face gleam like some round moon. She
wished she had a gun. "The avaricious we have with us always. Just because I wish you dead, does not mean I think you will vanish."
"I'm happy to see you again, too," Karthenor laughed. "Who would have thought that when I captured a silly girl six months ago, it would lead here, to the green fields where you will die?"
Maggie didn't want to speak to Karthenor. He wasn't worth it. She found herself shaking with rage. She knew Gallen had a translator in his pack that would let her speak to the Dronon, but she did not want to look foolish, digging it out now.
"Talk to your bugs," she said, nodding toward theLord of the Seventh Swarm, just behind Karthenor.
"Gladly," Karthenor said, and he fumbled to switch on the translator pinned to his robe.
"Tell them," Maggie said, recalling the words to the ancient Dronon ritual, and she shouted, "You are my food, nothing more! This land is mine. All land is mine! A Great Queen comes among you. Prostrate yourselves in adoration. Prepare to do battle!"
She yelled the words so Karthenor would not say them. The translator on his lapel shouted the words in Dronon, so their clicking tones carried over the field.
To her astonishment, Lord Kintiniklintit halted and bowed to her, crossing his battle arms before him in proper obeisance.
It was an unnecessary gesture, a gallant gesture. She didn't deserve it. By Dronon custom, Maggie had dishonored her entire swarm. No Golden Queen ever refused a challenge. None dared run from battle. The Dronon were uncertain how to handle such behavior, thinking it madness. And on Dronon, the mad were destroyed without remorse.
Maggie smiled at this Lord Escort, the greatest of all Vanquishers. Ah, I like this one, Maggie found herself thinking.
She stepped forward, shouting the ritual, "I am Maggie O'Day, Golden Queen of the Sixth Swarm. For five months I've ruled my swarm. Our children shall eat your corpses! Our Vanquishers shall claim your domain. Your royal children shall fertilize our fields! Your hive shall submit to us!"
Maggie shook with rage. In her nightmares, in her dreams about this confrontation, she'd never imagined being angry. But they were going to kill her, damn them!
"Your Golden Queen will submit to inspection!" she shouted.
Cintkin, Queen of the Seventh Swarm, crossed her front arms in obeisance and bowed. Maggie made a great show of walking to her so the white workers, like fat lice huddling in her shadow, scurried away.
Maggie searched the queen's carapace, looking for scars or wounds, anything to give her an excuse to back out of this fight.
Though she played the bold one, her eyes kept straying to the Dronon surrounding the fields, searching for Orickor, or anyone who might save her. Maggie looked behind
her to Gallen, and involuntarily she gasped. Gallen had recognized their predicament and pushed himself to a crouching posture: He tried to stand on his good leg, precariously balancing.
Maggie turned and ran back to him, held him so he wouldn't topple. The wind blew through his long blond hair, and Gallen balanced himself by leaning against her. It took all his strength. He grunted in pain, and his lower lip trembled.
Maggie's heart pounded, her mouth felt dry. She looked at Gallen, at his lips purpled and bruised, and wanted to kiss him one last time, but dared not. Somehow it would
be demeaning to share that one last intimacy with the Dronon.
"Are you ready?" she asked Gallen.
"Yesh," he said through swollen lips.
Maggie nodded, mind numb, and called to the Dronon.
"I find your Golden Queen worthy. Let the battle begin!"
She paused as Karthenor's translators relayed her message. She expected Lord Kintiniklintit to attack immediately.
But Karthenor's eyes gleamed, and he shouted, "Wait!
Lord Kintiniklintit must first inspect Maggie O'Day, to find if she is worthy." Karthenor did not even try to hide the gloating tone of his voice. He stared at Maggie. Her heart pounded.
Don't make me do this, she whined within herself. Don't do this to me.
But Lord Kintiniklintit parroted Karthenor' s sentiment.
"I demand right of inspection on this Golden Queen." She did not blame the Lord Escort. He had no way to know what he asked. He didn't understand human modesty, didn't know the humiliation his "inspection" would cause.
The Lord Vanquisher stepped forward to remove her clothes, to inspect Maggie's flesh for signs of scars, for any impurity that would make her unworthy to participate in combat. It was the one last rite, the way for her to prove she was truly the Golden Queen of her hive and had not lost her title.
But as the Lord Kintiniklintit approached, Karthenor stepped forward and smirked. "I'll help you disrobe her, My Lord."
Lord Kintiniklintit really had no gentle means of disrobing Maggie. She'd have been forced to do it herself, but as Karthenor stepped forward and grabbed her tunic, ripping it off so he exposed her breasts, Gallen came alive at Maggie's side.
With blinding speed Gallen slammed a fist into Karthenor's throat. Gallen's black battle gloves, with hardened selenium chips at the knuckle of each finger, made the blow deadly.
The Lord of Aberlains staggered back, eyes flying open wide, gasping, and clutched his throat. The blow had landed squarely on his esophagus; the instant swelling of his trachea began the slow work of strangling Karthenor.
He dropped to one knee, gagging and retching, lips turning blue as his life ebbed, then recognized his dilemma.
He fumbled inside his robe, tried to pull a pistol.
Lord Kintiniklintit saw the move, slapped the human with the back of one great battle arm, dashing him backward on the ground some five meters off.
There, Karthenor lay choking until his miserable life ended.
Rage seemed to rouse Gallen. He pulled off his own pack, pulled out his translator, put it on his own lapel, then glared up at Lord Kintiniklintit.
"You object to the examination?" Lord Kintiniklintit asked Gallen. "This is your right, but in doing so, you relinquish your swarm."
Maggie drew a breath in surprise. She wanted nothing more than to relinquish her right to control of the Sixth Swarm. She'd sought to escape her role as its leader ever since she'd won the position. But if she relinquished leadership, Kintiniklintit could simply kill her without a fight. That's what Dronon did to human leaders who succumbed. They threw them away.
But perhaps Kintiniklintit was different. Perhaps he would merely mark her, give her back her life. He seemed a noble sort.
And yet, and yet, even if he offered that boon, Maggie could not accept it. To d
o so would be to betray mankind.
She could not admit defeat. She needed to let the Dronon know, to make them understand, that mankind would never suffer their domination.
Gallen said it for her. "No, you have the right of inspection, but I won't let men like Karthenor touch Maggie. He was not worthy to touch the Golden. It was not his place."
"Agreed," Lord Kintiniklintit clicked.
The great Vanquisher stepped forward, and Gallen unfastened the back of Maggie's dress, pulled it away for the Dronon to see. Maggie wished she had some scar, some recent cut. A blemish, even the smallest one, might save her life. But her skin was flawless.
Gallen worked his way around, struggling to keep his balance on one leg, revealing her bit by bit to the Lord Escort, until Lord Kintiniklintit had verified her worthiness.
"I find this Golden Queen to be without blemish," Lord Kintiniklintit said at last. "I find her worthy."It was done. There was nothing to do now but fight. Maggie still wore Gallen's mantle, wondered if she should give it back, if he could put up any fight; he made no move to take it.
Lord Kintiniklintit backed away. He held his arms in the air, in sign of the temporary truce that would end only seconds from now, when the battle began.
Gallen didn't move, stood leaning against Maggie, looking into her face, holding her right hand with his left. In his right hand he held up a scrap of her torn dress. She felt
the warmth of his breath on her neck. He bowed his head; some of the long hairs of his head tickled her shoulders.
She looked into his blue eyes; he stared through a mask of bruises; she imagined from his eyes he would not fight, and she'd not fight. Instead, they'd die like this, holding each other.
Thirty paces across the field, Lord Kintiniklintit dropped his battle arms and buzzed his wings, taking to the air for the attack. A tide of voices rose with him, a million Dronon clacking their praise in unison.
At just that moment, the sun cracked over the horizon, shining over the field. It lit Kintinikiintit so that he seemed to have risen, gleaming blackness made alive from the
shadows, and it lit Gallen's upturned face, white like a flower petal. Clouds were racing in from the North, but for a few moments, the sun would yet shine.
The Lord of the Seventh Swarm circled the huge field once, his wings rumbling. The swell of Dronon voices thrilled Maggie somehow, despite the fact that they came from her enemies. Maggie looked across the field, saw the morning sunlight shining on the Golden Queen and her little white attendants.
Kintiniklintit circled the entire field, and as he passed over each Vanquisher, they each raised their incendiary rilfes in the air and shook them, so that it almost appeared
as if each arm magically kept the great Vanquisher aloft.
As he circled once, he built up speed, then came round half a circle again until he lined up with the rising sun, then veered toward them.
Maggie had been watching Kintiniklintit's progress from the corner of her eye; now she turned to Gallen. She wanted Gallen's face to be the last thing she saw.
"My love," he whispered.
Chapter Forty Three
Thomas gripped his pulp pistol with both hands. Dozens of sfuz scampered along the ceiling, whistling a strange, frenetic call, issuing from a wide passage that led lower into the city. Their purple-black eyes gleamed in the light of Felph's glow globe.
Feiph dropped into a crouch and fired rapidly. Black gobbets of gore blasted from the sfuz. Feiph screamed in fury, as if possessed, "Back me, back me!"
Thomas stood at Felph's back, firing over his head. Something heavy hit Thomas, knocking him forward, and a searing pain in Thomas's ribs told him he'd been stabbed.
He fell into Feiph, knocking the lord headlong, but Thomas had the presence of mind to spin as he fell, firing twice.
A sfuz stood over Thomas.
The creature's lower jaw disintegrated under the force of the gunfire.
Thomas whirled again, opening fire on a sfuz on the ceiling directly above.
The thing exploded, dropped like a bag of warm mud,knocking Thomas backward, so his head slammed into the floor.
Everything went dark for a moment, and he woke to Feiph shrieking, shrieking, firing his weapon. Thomas pushed a dead sfuz off his face with one hand, rolled to an elbow.
Feiph stood, ringed by four sfuz. One had tossed a sticky net over him, so Felph's left hand lay pinned to his body. Feiph screamed, desperately fired his weapon. His gun was empty.
Thomas snapped a shot at the nearest sfuz. The shot hit the floor and exploded into shrapnel. Perhaps that saved them. If he'd hit the sfuz directly, the shell would have exploded within the creature. As it was, the shell sent fragments into two sfuz, so they dropped to the floor.
More importantly it sent the last two racing out of view just as Thomas fired again, only to find his pulp gun empty.
Thomas stood taking stock of himself. His back hurt. The wound felt deep. Blood ran down his spine, and that firghtened him. He couldn’t see the wound and he was so much in shock, he could hardly feel it. It seemed he stood outside himself, recognizing something was wrong, not knowing what.
Lord Felph, who crouched on the ground, did not glance at Thomas as he reloaded his pistol. He pulled off the spent clip and dropped a full one in reflexively, then charged forward.
Thomas wanted to ask Feiph to turn around, to examine his wounds. He wanted to know if he bled badly, but his Guide would not let him speak.
So he staggered onward woodenly, impelled only by his Guide. Damn it, Thomas thought. If Karthenor doesn't free me, he'll use me up without knowing it.
Thomas imagined clutching Karthenor's throat, imagined the revenge he'd extract-when he got free.
Lord Felph clutched his glow globe so tightly, it lit like a star, and he rushed forward, excited, darting from side to side, glancing down each adjoining passage. He found a path that corkscrewed deeper into the city, till at last it opened onto a wide landing.
Here, a great battle had occurred. Dozens of dead Dronon littered the floors, some with their carapaces split and spilling vile fluids. Sfuz lay among them, some crushed under Vanquishers' battle arias.
But most corpses showed no external sign of damage. The limbs were horribly twisted and clenched, as happens when a creature suffocates. The air here was choked with smoke. Even now, hours after this battle, Thomas could hardly breathe. The corpses so cluttered this corridor-in many places stacked three or four deep.
In this battle, no one had emerged victorious.
Felph clambered over the bodies, forging down a long corridor whose sides rose up like canyon walls. Identical images had been carved in bas-relief on both stone walls:
a birdlike creature, flying through flames, writhing in agony.
At the end of the corridor, the sfuz corpses lay piled so deep they blocked the passage ahead. Felph ran to them, climbed to the top of the heap, and pulled several dead sfuz away.
Thomas began clambering over the bodies, his feet sinking into the soft flesh, his hands punching into the warm fur as he dropped to all fours. The bodies shifted beneath his weight, making his feet sink in deeper, as if he climbed up sand.
Felph moved several bodies, enough to reveal a passage. Behind these corpses, in a darkened corridor, Thomas glimpsed a curtain of green light, green raindrops that glowed with their own light, falling into a vast pool.
"Here! Here!" Felph shouted. "The cisterns are here!"
Felph dropped his glow globe, pulled more sfuz aside.
Thomas suddenly felt as if he were being watched.
He spun, saw nothing but sfuz corpses, all lying so quietly. They terrified him. The sfuz, with their soft dark fur, felt warmm, to his touch. Thomas knew they were warm because of fires that had burned here within the past hour or two. Marks from incendiary rifles scored the walls.
Yet Thomas feared that the sfuz would leap at his touch.
He couldn't bear to pull at the corpses as Felph did. He f
elt trapped.
He whirled again, thought he caught a movement from the corner of his eye-the wispy gray shape of a sfuz, leaping away. But this shape had no body, only a shadow.
I'm imagining things, Thomas told himself.
Thomas shivered, looked down at his hand. His hand was on the belly of a sfuz, its legs curling helplessly up, like a dead spider's. Its four eyes stared at him, undimmed in death. Perhaps this bothered him more than anything, to see these eyes, still glowing with life, even in death.
Up ahead, Felph finished pulling corpses away, began climbing down the bodies on the far side of the corridor. "Come on!" he shouted.
Thomas followed unwillingly, a human machine, scrambling over sfuz corpses, till he half slid, half tumbled down some bodies to stand beside Lord Felph at the opening of a vast chamber.
The green rain showered in a thin curtain before them, baffling his eyes so that Thomas could not see well beyond the opening of the chamber. instead, his eyes were drawn to the curtain of dancing lights. The falling droplets made no sound as they dripped to the floor, nor did the huge droplets of light bounce on the stone and splinter under the impact.
Beyond this curtain of liquid light, Thomas could see an enormous cavern. The green rain did not fill the chamber. Instead it only showered along the wails, in a great irregular circle. From this, Thomas guessed that the far wail was back a quarter of a mile or more; the chamber rose hundreds of yards to the ceiling.
A vast dew tree filled most of this cavern, its trunk at least a hundred yards wide, rising up and up till it met the roof, then proceeded through the stone. The hoary roots of the tree splayed from it in every direction, like twisted fingers emerging from a purple hand, and among the roots were knobby pale growths, like knuckles.
Felph just stared. This tree, here in the stone cavern, was totally unexpected. And it was so huge. Everywhere its dark roots seemed to wriggle across the floor-veins and arteries. Something large, like an anteater, with an enormous snout, trundled along the ridge of one twisted root.
Lords of the Seventh Swarm, Book 3 of the Golden Queen Series Page 34