Lords of the Seventh Swarm, Book 3 of the Golden Queen Series

by David Farland

  Wings flashed in the darkness around the bole of the tree.

  Life. With the green rains and the unexpected forest, the movement of animals within that room, Thomas got the impression of abundant life, everywhere beyond that veil.

  "Of course, of course there would be creatures here," Felph said. "There can be no death in that room."

  Felph glanced up at the top of the chamber, far above, and Thomas followed his gaze. A machine covered its roof-vast and hoary. Thomas saw huge piping carved in the stone, engines whirring silently overhead. He could not guess the purpose of this great machine, but he could guess part-all along its edges, the green rain fell. As if the rain dropped from this machine.

  Lord Felph seemed reluctant to enter the room, to pass through the veil of green light-or perhaps he was merely curious. Experimentally, he held out the butt of his pulp pistol, so sheets of rain fell over it.

  The green drops seemed not to spatter the gun, but merely to pass through.

  In wonder, Felph said, "Well, I've never seen anything like this, nor heard of it." He glanced at Thomas, as if to ask his opinion on whether they should proceed. Thomas could tell him nothing.

  I am but a simple man of Tihrgias, he wanted to say. What do I know of such things?

  Surprisingly, Thomas's Guide let him speak. "Och, man, let's tuck our tails between our legs and scurry out of here," he said. Then he could say no more.

  Karthenor had told Thomas to protect Felph. Perhaps a word of warning fulfilled that commandment.

  Felph frowned. "It's an energy field of some kind. I've heard of physicists who've tried to create stasis fields--holes in the universe where time ceases to exist, but they always collapse. Anything stored in such holes is destroyed.

  But. . .see-" Felph pointed to his left, to a corner away from the tree, in an area of the vast chamber where Thomas had not even looked. There a mass of white bones lay in

  huge piles. Among the bones were strange, dusty, birdlike faces, staring out at them. "Qualeewoohs died there and rotted. Over the centuries, their bones fused." Felph shook his head. "If the corpses are fossilized, time exists beyond this veil. So I wonder what the veil accomplishes?"

  Lord Felph regarded the fossils thoughtfully. "And the bones make me wonder. Qualeewooh legend says that if one drinks the Waters of Strength, the Waters give eternal life. But if that is true, why is this room little more than a grave?"

  Thomas shivered as he began to understand what treasure Felph sought. It frightened him to follow a man so obsessed.

  "Tell me," Felph said. "Do you think it could be true, that the Waters let some part of you-your spirit-travel to another dimension? If that is so, it may be that this energy field is really the portal, not the Water. Or perhaps the Water acts as a catalyst for a physical change that can occur within this room."

  Felph laughed giddily. "After six hundred years of seeking this end, I find myself frightened to enter this chamber.”

  "Do not enter," Thomas warned.

  Felph ignored him, began talking rapidly. "You know, I have studied Qualeewoohs for centuries. They say ideas have life. The seeds of ideas exist outside us, and are planted in our minds by gods. The Qualeewoohs wear spirit masks to make that task easier.

  "But they say in time, thoughts grow and take flight. on their own." Felph gazed past the barrier. "Most human biologists seem to believe that the Qualeewoohs' sayings are a metaphor, a nice way to say we must not simply follow our heart, but should give it wings."

  Felph muttered under his ' breath. "I have sometimes wondered: could it be a metaphor for what happens when one drinks the Waters of Strength? Could the thoughts and intents of your heart take flight, transform into something else, some more pure and lasting form of life that exists beyond this dimension? The Qualeewoohs say their ancestors fly `between the stars.' I've pondered that. Space. Empty space. Could they mean their ancestors exist in a realm without-matter? Or in a world human science cannot yet weigh or measure. And if that is true, what would be the advantages of transferring one's consciousness to that realm? And what might be the penalties? And would it be wise?"

  "Do not go," Thomas said one last time. He meant that Felph should not go into that new realm he spoke of with such glassy-eyed wonder. The notion terrified Thomas.

  But Thomas's words jarred Felph. He spun, gazing at Thomas as if he'd never seen him. "Of course I'll go. This body is but a clone. This life one of many I can spend as I want! If the Waters kill me, what does it matter? Why shouldn't I go?"

  Thomas could give no reply.

  Lord Felph turned and strode through the green rain, passed through, turned and stared back at it in surprise.

  Thomas could only follow.

  He touched the green veil with one hand, felt something cool, like a cold wind washing through him, like a million icicles piercing every fiber of his being. As he passed

  through the wall of shimmering rain, he felt a tug, as if he'd just pushed through a tangle of vines only to find something, something insubstantial, left behind.

  Thomas, too, turned to look back, for he feared he'd see his body dead on the floor, on the other side of the veil.

  But the corridor he'd just passed through was empty. Felph chuckled nervously, then turned and marched over the ground.

  In the distance, among the folds of roots about the great tree, Thomas heard strange, hooting calls. Something made a noise like breaking glass, and Thomas thought he glimpsed shadowy movements, as if small animals scurried, but he could not see clearly in the half-light. The green shimmering rains did not give much radiance, not enough to see well by.

  The ground crunched oddly beneath their feet. The floor was littered with white stones. Thomas hiked through the chamber as if by moonlight, and Felph raised his glow globe till it flooded the path at their feet with piercing whiteness.

  At Thomas's feet, an ancient purple skull stared at him from shadowy sockets, silver Iines engraved over every surface. Around the skull were bones, white bones of ribs and wings. These made the odd crunching. Thomas leapt aside in horror, jumped on a tangled mass of rubbery root instead.

  Felph began breathing heavily, as in fear. "I'll do this," he whispered. "I will walk between the stars!"

  He climbed a rubbery- root, began jogging, waving his hands as he tried to balance. He followed the roots toward the great tree. "Dew trees always set their roots in water," he explained as he ran, his shadow writhing behind. "The Waters must be just ahead."

  Thomas- followed more clumsily. Something whistled over his head, and he felt beating wings, looked up to see some batlike creature with translucent wings flap past his shoulder.

  It was not a long journey, but an arduous one. As the roots increased in thickness, Thomas found himself walking higher and higher above floor level, until he was dozens of meters up. Creatures scampered into hiding as they passed-lone-snouted furry things that had bored holes the width of a hand into the roots of the dew tree. From some of these holes the dew tree exuded a, sweet-smelling liquid; shrimplike insects in hundreds of sizes and colors huddled

  around these holes to feed, each waving a dozen small pincers at Thomas as he passed.

  As Thomas ran, he saw a large, eyeless beast, like a lizard, quietly clinging to the side of a root below him. It gaped its mouth wide, showing row on row of teeth as pale as quartz.

  The air here was richer, somehow more invigorating than anything Thomas had smelled before. It was neither warm nor cool, and carried no scent of the smoke that had choked the corridors of the warrens above.

  Everywhere, wild creatures fled at their coming. Eden, Thomas thought, I am in Eden.

  Lord Felph kept darting to the side of the trunk now, holding out the light as far as he could, looking down for water. They were still far from the bole of the tree, but suddenly Thomas heard a splash as something plunked into the pool at their approach, almost at their very feet.

  "There!" Felph shouted. "Down there!"

  He held his
light high. The root they stood on was perhaps a dozen meters above water, and it shot wriggling tendrils down.

  The light reflecting off the water's surface showed gleaming patterns of ripples over the dark tree roots. Yet the pool below was clear and dark. Thomas could see minnows darting deep beneath its surface, some larger eel shape wriggling at a leisurely pace farther down-then blackness.

  Lord Felph pressed the glow globe into Thomas's hands. "Hold the light for me as I climb down."

  Thomas did as ordered. Holding the lamp would protect Felph, keep him from slipping. Thomas's Guide allowed the action.

  Felph began scrabbling down the slope of the root. He used the round holes burrowed by creatures as handholds. When he got near the bottom, he called to Thomas. "Throw down the glow globe. I can't see handholds in this dark."

  Thomas hesitated a moment, unable to move, until he decided Felph would be safer with the light. He tossed the glow globe. Felph caught it deftly.

  Felph squeezed the globe to brighten it. The waterlogged roots were dark and slippery. Felph carefully tested each step, and his journey took well over two minutes as he

  sought a path around various roots, climbing down in one spot, learning he'd found a false trail, then climbing to another.

  Thomas began following in Felph's trail, but in the shadows it was too difficult. He managed only to climb down partway, then crouch in a hollow, holding to a twisted knot.

  Felph found a path down to one root that dipped at water's level, providing a platform so he could reach the clear pools.

  Thomas's heart pounded. Everything had gone silent, the animals around them. No scurrying creatures. No hooting cries. It was the quiet of a forest, when wolves- are on the prowl.

  Sfuz, Thomas thought. He backed against a root, hid in a dark crevasse. If sfuz were coming, he didn't want to be standing in the light, in full profile.

  So pervasive was the'quiet, Thomas found himself glancing up, watching roots above Felph. The globe shone its brilliant light down around the roots of the great tree, but Thomas could not see beyond that paltry circle. Everything else was in the shadows.

  Thomas heard Felph grunt, followed by burbling sounds. Felph crouched on a twisted root, and dunked a canteen underwater, letting it fill.

  Suddenly in the darkness, on the huge root on the far side of the pool, Thomas spotted movement. Shadows separated from a stump and moved into the light.

  Thomas pointed his weapon, expecting trouble.

  A young man stepped from behind a wrinkled knob of root. Thomas's heart was pounding. Thomas considered calling out a warning, but his Guide would not let him. He'd been told to be quiet. Then Orick stepped out of the shadows behind the young man. Was this young man a friend, then? Thomas relaxed his guard.

  The young man drew a pulp pistol, aimed at Felph.

  Thomas would have opened fire, but his Guide forbade it. If the young man pulled the trigger in his dying throes, then Felph might get shot. Thomas would have failed in his charge to protect Felph.

  Holding the pistol forward, the young man said, "Father, don't touch that."

  Chapter Forty Four

  Cooharah and Aaw sat in a rock pile in the starlight just before dawn. Cooharah watched a line of thunderheads approach, bringing the grumble of distant thunder, the first rain so far south in a decade. The bone years were ending.

  The light of Brightstar was warming the land, melting the great ice floes in the north, as the teach songs said would happen.

  It should have been a wonder. This should have inaugurated an age of hope, a new beginning for Cooharah.

  Instead, he felt dismay.

  Aaw preened her wings, as if discussing some minor thing. She cooed, "We must atone. Two lives for one. This is law."

  Last night, still unsure of the extent of their wrongdoing, it had been relatively easy to deny the voices of the ancestors, easy to flee. But Cooharah and Aaw had lived the laws since they were chicks. To disobey them would have been madness. The ancestors would cry through the spirit masks, over and over, a litany of guilt.

  "I will go," Aaw whistled. "I will take the egg. We shall atone for the oomas."

  "Negative to the fourth degree," Cooharah whistled. "I will not live without you."

  Aaw quit preening, looked up at him, eyes bright in the starlight. "Then we give three lives for one. Our atonement will be generous."

  It seemed so easy for her to speak of death. Sometimes, Cooharah thought the ancestors spoke more clearly to her than to him. But he knew it was not true. He was the one who had stayed up at night, vainly clawing his spirit mask, trying to silence the voices of the ancestors. If he'd managed to unmask himself, he'd have become outlaw. His life would have been forfeit, should other Qualeewoohs see him.

  Now he realized how impetuous he had been. It was true he heard the voices of the ancestors more strongly than Aaw. Such was the make of her spirit mask, that she heard them only distantly. But she had a firmer mind, a more obedient nature.

  "Your atonement is generous," Cooharah whistled. "Mine is not. I give my gift grudgingly." With that, he flapped his wings, took to the air, heading south, toward the aerie of the comas. Aaw followed. Behind them, the distant thunder snarled.

  Chapter Forty Five

  Gallen held Maggie tightly, never wanting to let go. Kintiniklintit swept overhead, finishing his great circle over the Dronon Swarms, having built up his wingspeed. Gallen had seen Dronon do this before, and he didn't fear attack in these first few seconds.

  Maggie was shaking. He'd never seen her show such fear. She trembled like a child who has had a nightmare. She stared into his face.

  Everywhere all around them, the swarms of Dronon Vanquishers drummed their mouthfingers over their voicedrums, till the sound was a rumbling storm. Six Swarm

  Lords had gathered to the killing field, each with nearly half a million Vanquishers, workers, and technicians, so that now literally millions of Dronon raised their voices in unison, cheering the Lords of the Seventh Swarm.

  Gallen knew such meetings must be impossibly rare on Dronon. Battles for succession would attract only two pairs of Swarm Lords. But there had never been a battle like this, a battle where the fate of two species hung in the balance.

  Above them, Lord Kintiniklintit finished his great circle, veered to attack from far away. Gallen pushed Maggie aside. His head felt clearer. Perhaps it was the nanodocs from Orick's precious blood, but he felt less dizziness; his wounds were less swollen. Still, his leg was broken, despite Maggie's binding. Even with a full course of nanodocs, it would have taken days or weeks to heal. Gallen could hardly stand on his one good leg.

  "I have to fight," he told Maggie.

  "You can't win," Maggie said. "Not with your leg."

  Gallen closed his eyes, as if the very thought of fighting pained him. "I can't win, but I can fight. That's what I do." He needed this. He needed to know he'd done all he could.

  "Then I'll fight with you," she said.

  Maggie wore his mantle. She began to remove it, place the net of black rings on his head. But he knew it would be no use. He couldn't leap about. Couldn't kick. The mantle could do nothing for him.

  "No," Gallen said. "You keep it. You're in better physical shape than I."

  Lord Kintiniklintit's wings rumbled, a slight shift in tone that indicated he was picking up speed, Gallen looked up. The sun was just rising, and in the northeast, a line of

  thunderheads loomed. Ruin's dark sun did not give much light, as red and distant as it was. With the clouds obscuring it, it gave even less. Still, Kintiniklintit made his first run from that direction, choosing to fly in out of the sun, blinding his opponents.

  Gallen hobbled to Maggie's right, held her shoulder lightly, balancing on one foot. The grass here was part of an open field, somewhat barren. Gallen knelt and pried up

  a large rock from the ground, held it in his right hand.

  "When Kintiniklintit comes in, he'll expect you to split left, me to sp
lit right," Gallen whispered. "Don't do it. Fall right. I'll be in front of you."

  "What if he spits acid?" Maggie asked. She'd once told him that in all her dreams, it was not dying from wounds inflicted that worried her, it was the painful burning from acid first.

  "I'll feint right," Gallen said. "I won't really move. If he spits, I'm hoping he'll miss." And if he doesn't miss, he thought, I'll be shielding you with my body. You've done so much for me, so much to help me, that this is the last service I can offer.

  Maggie nodded. She shivered, terrified. Perhaps she wanted to turn and run, or to curl into a ball and hide, but Gallen needed her to stand beside him, to prop him up. He

  wasn't sure she could do it. Gallen feared that when Kintiniklintit attacked, she'd simply remain standing, too frozen to move.

  Gallen squeezed her shoulder and squinted up into the light as Lord Kintiniklintit completed his great circle and veered at them, full speed. He raised his serrated battle claws over his head as if to attack.

  At one time that battle stance would have struck terror in Gallen, but he'd heard how Kintiniklintit fared in other battles. His great arms could chop a person in half like a cleaver. Death would be instantaneous.

  Kintiniklintit rushed toward them, wings humming, carapace sullen in the dawn light. Gallen recalled how he'd fought the Dronon before, his incredible leaps, his diving

  and weaves.

  He wished Maggie could move like that. Perhaps she could have, months ago. But not now, not with a child in her.

  When Kintiniklintit was a hundred meters out, Maggie tensed as if to run, but Gallen held her shoulder stiffly. Everything seemed to slow. Kintiniklintit was coming in

  low, too low. It was a killing run. He didn't plan to spit his acid on them, as other Dronon would have. He planned to split them in halves, give them a quick and merciful death.