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

by David Farland

  Nothing more. Nothing thereafter.

  I’ve died, he decided. I’ve died, and Felph brought me back.

  Beside the bed on a chair lay his cothes--a new white tunic, with the black robes of a Lord Protector folded neatly beneath and under them all, his battle gloves. To the back of the chair were strapped his weapons--the vibro-blade in its sheath, his incendiary rifle in its holster. At the foot of the chair lay his boots, black and polished.

  All the clothes seemed too clean, too fresh.

  Gallen got up, examined himself. He felt...odd. He pulled on the white tunic, wondering what kind of world he’d awakened to. What now, now that the Dronon had won? Which worlds would resist the Dronon rule; which would succomb? Worst of all, who would embrace the Dronon?

  Obviously, the Dronon had begun building their own world gates, sending ships through. Otherwise, they could not have reached him here on Ruin, not so fast. It had only been a matter of time before the Dronon developed such technology. Now all the human-occupied worlds would be within the Dronon’s grasp.

  But what of Maggie?

  If I died, Gallen feared, then she must be dead too. He’d been so close to her hiding place when the Dronon took him. They’d have found her.

  It takes six weeks to grow a clone, Gallen realized. She’s been dead for six weeks. And Maggie had never had her memories recorded. She was dead, and would remain so forever.

  Gallen did not want to live under Dronon rule, in a world without Maggie.

  Though he could not bear the thought of living without her, Gallen knew he would go on. He would fight. He’d continue fighting, and fighting. A hundred lifetimes, a thousand.

  So the struggle continues. He felt heartsick. Perhaps already, a new Lord Protector from the human worlds had defeated Kintiniklintit. Someone would have to step into the role. Gallen did not envy that person.

  Gallen stood a moment, slipped on his new tunic. A new tunic they give me, he realized, because the other is torn and bloody. He gazed down at the chair. Beneath the tunic lay his mantle-the black rings polished and free of rust, the memory crystals gleaming wildly. A small thing, so beautiful-yet so powerful.

  He picked it up, turned it over and over in his hand. Should I put it on?

  He did not want to. Orick had criticized him for his hardness, for his willingness to take on every battle, for his desire to right all wrongs.

  Balance and perspective. He'd lost that once. Perhaps because he'd lost it, he'd lost Maggie in the bargain.

  Though the mantle brought him power, it did so at too high a price.

  Gallen sat back on the bed, hung his head, and wept.

  It was a long hour later when he felt well enough to put on the rest of his clothes, slipping the mantle into the pocket of his robe.

  He wondered where Orick might be, if at least the bear had come out of the tangle alive. He doubted it. Crick would have fought the Dronon when they came for Maggie, Gallen thought.

  So Orick would be dead, too.

  Did Lord Felph revive Gallen simply to finish his quest, to go back in search of the Waters of Strength? Possibly so. A job left undone.

  A meaningless job.

  It seemed unfair.

  Gallen got up, stretched, and looked out his window. He recognized this wing of the palace. The north wing. The rose gardens lay beneath him, the great peacock fountain glistening black on a small hill among the throng of rosessapphire and peach, flame and saffron.

  Though rain pummeled the windows, he considered goi ig out for a walk. No, for a rose. A blood-red rose. Somethirrg beautiful, that you can touch and smell and hold.

  He stood watching the gray clouds sweep over the- valley in waves. The roses seemed to beckon him, the golden ones a remainder of sunshine among the deep gray.

  As he stood gazing out the window, they came to him.

  The great wooden doors behind him swung open, and Maggie swept in, ran across the room, and as he turned, she leapt into his arms, hugging him, kissing his eyelids, his forehead, his lips.

  She tasted the same as ever, her lips so sweet. She smiled hugely, weeping for joy. "You're awake. You're awake. It's been days!"

  Nothing had changed about her. Her eyes sparkled when she looked at him; her womb seemed a little larger, a little more full. Gallen stared at her face in wonder, holding her head in the palm of his hand, wanting to kiss her, wanting to just hold her in his sight.

  Orick and Tallea bounded in behind Maggie, and the bears kindly kept their distance, staring up at Gallen shyly.

  Like a floodgate, the questions poured from Gallen. Maggie and Orick told a story that was remarkable-as joyous as it was improbable.

  "How did I die?" Gallen asked, hoping he had died well.

  "You didn't," Maggie said. "You were wounded by the Dronon, wounded so badly, we carried you to the battlefield here before the palace. We fought Kintiniklintit, and just when we thought all was lost, the Qualeewoohs came and saved us-Cooharah and Aaw."

  "The Qualeewoohs?" Gallen asked. "Saved us. How?"

  Orick said, "The Qualeewoohs you freed, they came back to pay for Herm's life-to give their lives for the one they took. They challenged Cintkin and Kintiniklintit for Right of Charn."

  Gallen listened to him, incredulous. He could recall nothing-no battle, no ride to the palace.

  "Don't you remember anything?" Maggie asked. Gallen shook his head.

  Maggie said, "The battles were magnificent. The Qualeewoohs fly twice as fast as Dronon, and they fight in pairs, while the Lord Escorts must stand up to them alone.

  The thunderstorms swept in just as the battle began, bringing in a heavy mist and fog. Kintiniklintit never knew what hit him. The Qualeewoohs attacked from behind, like starlings harrying a crow, and drove him into the sky. He spit acid, but the Qualeewoohs wheeled and spun at such dizzying speeds, he never fazed them. When he got high enough, they ripped his wings so he tumbled to earth. His head split under the impact of the fall. Then they went after the Golden Queen, marked her with their talons."

  "I saw this?" Gallen asked.

  Maggie nodded, so calm, so self-assured. Of course it had happened. Gallen recalled the Qualeewoohs from the wild, so beautiful, regal, faintly ridiculous in their spirit

  masks.

  Lord Felph had discounted them, thinking them nothing, impotent. But the predators on this world moved so swiftly, had evolved so differently from antthing on Earth--or on Dronon--that in aerial combat, the Qualeewoohs had distinct advantages. No, Gallen didn't doubt that the Qualeewoohs could have won. He only doubted that he could have seen any such thing and forgotten so completely.

  "I-don't remember anything like it," Gallen said.

  Maggie smiled at him gently. "You were delirious. The Dronon beat you so badly. Perhaps the memories will come back in time." She reached up, stroked his face. "And Gallen, there's more.

  “The Qualeewoohs challenged the lords of the other five swarms, defeated each in turn, humiliated them."

  Gallen could not believe it. It seemed a dream come true, too good to be real. He looked to Orick for confirmation.

  “It's true, lad. The Dronon have fallen and shall never rise again. The Qualeewoohs won control, and Aaw has commanded the Dronon to return to their home world, and never leave again. She's destroying their world gates, removing all records of the technology, Yet she's done more.

  "The Qualeewoohs are painting spirit masks on all the Dronon. They don't believe that the Dronon have a total lack of compassion. The Qualeewoohs hope someday to train them, to prepare them to join the rest of the galaxy in peace. They'll never trouble us again."

  Gallen looked at them all, suspicious. He found the whole story so implausible, he didn't know how to respond.

  “`Never' is a long time, Orick."

  "Never, Gallen," Maggie said firmly. "Never! We have the Qualeewoohs' promise."

  Gallen felt startled, uneasy. "How can they keep that promise?"

  "Cooharah and Aaw have drunk from
the Waters of Strength," Orick said. "I found it, but too late to do you any good. The Dronon will never beat them in combat."

  Gallen considered. Qualeewoohs that would never die. Conquerors of time and space, nature and self. He wondered at what it all meant.

  Glancing from face to face, he settled upon Orick. "You found the Waters?"

  Orick nodded slightly.

  "And you, drank from them?"

  Orick shook his head, looked down at the floor. "I didn't dare. They weren't made for the likes of us. Zeus tried to drink from them. What happened to him was too terrible to tell. The Qualeewoohs' ancestors came to judge him, and they killed him."

  "But what of the sfuz? They drink the Waters, and derive some benefit."

  Orick shook his head. "That's debatable. Lord Felph has a theory. He believes that the Waters create a construct based upon your consciousness. And while the sfuz show some signs of intelligence, they don't seem to be fully selfaware. So they don't get the full benefits from the Waters of Strength, and the ancestors don't feel the need to put them in judgment."

  "In judgment?" Gallen asked.

  Tallea spoke up. "The caverns where the cisterns lie are full of bones, Qualeewooh bones, from those who were destroyed for drinking the Waters. Not everyone who drinks is allowed to enter their heaven."

  Gallen studied his old friend's face, then scratched behind Orick's ears. Gallen had dozens more questions, but asked none for the moment.

  The answers he heard left him unsettled. He knew that Orick was hiding something.

  So he celebrated that night with his friends, a grand feast in Felph's palace. Felph's latest clone led the celebration, with Hera and Athena in attendance, along with the servant Dooring and all the others in the household staff. To Gallen's great surprise, Thomas Flynn showed up. Orick had met him in the depths of the tangle, and Thomas played his latest songs on the lute.

  One of the songs he sang was a ballad, which told how he had followed Felph into the tangle, and what he the depths beneath Teeawah, when Zeus drank the of Strength. And he sang of his journey out, how Orick and Tallea had fought the horde of sfuz that had begun to revive, that sfuz that barred his way back to, the Dronon's shuttle.

  Of all the strange tales that Gallen heard that day, Thomas's fascinated him most. To lose a companion on one world, and find him in another galaxy, seemed marvelous beyond the telling.

  So he partied, and he celebrated the fall of the Dronon empire, and in his heart he wondered, and worried.

  It was not until four days later that the rains broke for a bit, and then Gallen insisted that he and Orick go for a walk alone in the fields in front of the palace.

  The fields were green, new grass sprouting in abundance. Everywhere lay signs of the Dronon-great holes in the ground where their ship had set down, the trampled fields where their millions had circled the killing field.

  Gallen surveyed the field a bit, then walked over to a spot on the ground, a spot dark with pooled blood. Two pools, side by side. Over the past seven weeks, the blood

  had first dried black, then soaked into the ground, killing the grass.

  Gallen went to the spots, gazed down and touched them with his toe. They told the story that Orick would have hid, and Gallen asked, "Where did you bury us, Orick?"

  The kindly bear gazed up, licked his lips, considering what story to tell now.

  "Where did you bury us?" Gallen asked. "I want to see Maggie's grave."

  Orick nodded toward a slight rise, where three hawthorn trees trembled in the breeze. The ragged clouds whipped overhead, so that the trees stood first in sunlight, then in shadow, their leaves rattling softly.

  Gallen went to the unmarked graves-two small plots, mud mixed in with the new tendrils of growing grass.

  "Maggie's here, on the left," Orick said, his voice choked from emotion. "And you're on the right."

  Seeing the graves did something to Gallen, filled him with a nameless ache he'd never imagined, an ache too large to either hold or express. He wanted to cry out, but that would change nothing. He wanted to deny it.

  So this is what I come to, he told himself as he knelt above Maggie's grave. He brushed his hand over the new grass, as i it were hair, felt the water tickling his palms. This is what l come to.

  Orick had warned him. Gallen knelt on the grass and sobbed for a long time, until the pain gave way to emptiness, enough emptiness that he could speak again.

  "Maggie doesn't know about this, does she?" Gallen asked.

  Orick shook his head. "No. We checked her memories. She doesn't really want to know-just as you didn't want to know. She wants to go back, for everything to be like it was. She wants to live with you, have the baby you planned together. We can't undo the past. This is the best we could give her. Felph cloned her body. She was wearing your mantle when she died, and she knew her death was coming.

  The mantle downloaded her memories into a crystal. Yours were already stored in Felph's Al. They'd been radioed ahead."

  "How can she not know that she's died?" Gallen asked.

  "In the end, Felph edited her final memories of the battle. He just altered some of them so that Maggie didn't recall her final wound being so serious. The Dronon took holos of the fight. It was easy for Felph to get images of the Qualeewoohs coming to the rescue. Maggie just doesn't know they came too late, that they stood over your corpses and fought like-like dragons."

  "I learned the truth easily enough." Gallen said. "I knew we were dead. In time, Maggie might figure it out, too."

  "How? How could you know?" Orick asked. "Felph duplicated every mole, every scar. He ... he even cloned Maggie's baby from her womb, let it grow inside her. That was a task, mind you!"

  "Oh, I look the same," Gallen. said, "but I don't feel the same. The knife scar on my right wrist-it always used to ache when it grew cold, when the rains came. The scar there now looks much the same, but it doesn't go deep enough. Some scars go too deep."

  "But-you won't tell Maggie?" Orick asked. "We went through so much work!"

  Gallen considered. "It was kind of you," he said at last.

  "I won't tell her. I think she'll be happier not knowing."

  He sighed, reached into his pocket, and pulled out his mantle. It kept a record of every battle that its wearers had ever fought, recorded far more than perhaps Orick knew.

  Gallen had not worn it since reawakening, for he had not been sure he wanted to know how his last battle had ended.

  Now, he donned the mantle, pulled its familiar weight over his head, felt an easy tenseness fill his body, as always happened when the mantle made connection, assuming partial control of his neural system.

  Then, he sat beneath the tree and asked Orick, "Will you excuse me for a few minutes. There's something I must do."

  Beneath the shade of the hawthorns, gazing out over the green valley that had filled with Dronon warships only weeks before, he whispered to his mantle, "Show me my

  death."

  Gallen felt the familiar lurch as his viewpoint shifted, and he saw these fields as they had been, the grass much shorter, less alive, with the Dronon circling in their millions.

  The sight awed him, the Dronon queens beneath their crimson pavilions, the sounds of their cheering, the warships in the background.

  He watched the entire battle from Maggie's eyes, felt her love for him, her burning desire to defend him to the last moment, felt how she craved his kiss and his touch, her horror at watching as the Lord Escort slashed Gallen nearly in two.

  He watched her bravely kick one last time, trying to strike a blow against the Dronon, felt her surprise as Kintiniklintit sliced her nearly in two. For half a second she had looked down, seen her own gut spilling into the grass, and then fainted.

  The mantle fell from her head, disengaged from her consciousness.

  In that last moment, Gallen had crawled to her, looked into her face, his own visage a study in sorrow and despair. He was beaten and bruised, blood running free. A frot
hy red foam boiled from his mouth, and his breath came in shallow pants.

  In the distance, lightning flashed and thunder shook the earth as a great storm rolled in. Gallen had glanced toward the storm, whispering "Angels," and then turned suddenly.

  In that last moment, he grasped the mantle that had fallen to the grass. With one hand he pulled it over Maggie's head and whispered the command: "Save her."

  The recording went blank for several long minutes as the mantle diverted all its energies to downloading Maggie's memories. It was an odd moment, a tremendous wrench in consciousness, for Gallen suddenly saw the world not as himself, but as The mantle saw it. All external sensors were turned off, and the mantle sent electromagnetic pulses through Maggie's brain, firing all neurons.

  Though she lay dying, the mantle was able to draw out her memories, like wispy fragments of vivid dreams, and shoot them through its programs, reconstruct the pathways and scenery of her mind, manipulate it into a sequential tale, till it formed a coherent whole.

  The process should have taken three minutes, but Maggie expired before the second minute finished, and her mantle had to assume some of the autonomic body functions, force her severed lungs to breath, her fibrillating heart to beat, just long enough to finish its download.

  When the mantle completed its duty, it turned its external sensors back on, began recording.

  Kintiniklintit was in the process of defiling Gallen's corpse. The Lord of the Seventh Swarm had decapitated Gallen, chopped him into several pieces, and was parading the headless corpse past cheering Vanquishers.

  And in that moment, the Qualeewoohs landed in the midst of the battlefield, eyeing the Dronon in that stupidlooking way that birds have. Lightning flashed from the advancing storm, and its light reflected from the silver in their spirit masks.

  Even the Dronon recognized that something odd was happening.

  Cooharah and Aaw began bobbing their heads, whistling loudly, and Athena was forced to run into Felph's palace for a bit to fetch a translator. It took nearly half an hour for her to return, for the Qualeewoohs to grasp what was happening, and then to issue their challenge to Lord Kintiniklintit.