David Farland - Lords of the Seventh Swarm

Felph let his guests eat their repast in silence, careful to avoid any talk of business, for to do so was taboo in many cultures. It was an odd and eerie meal, for Felph talked casually of many things-the great drought which would end in a few weeks as Ruin neared Brightstar and the polar caps began to melt, the commercial value of various relics found on Ruin, the outrageous excesses of the governor in a nearby star system who wanted to annex Ruin, and so on. But it was not Felph’s choice of topics that Gallen found to be eerie, it was simply that his children did not speak. Obviously, Lord Felph had forbidden them.

Gallen felt suspicious of his motives.

When the last dessert was finished an hour later, Felph pushed his chair from the table a foot, a formal sign that dinner had ended. Gallen did the same.

“Now to business,” Felph said, folding his hands over his belly, “unless you are still hungry?”

“No,” everyone said in unison, including Orick. It was a rare meal that served enough even for that bear.

“Good, good.” Felph nodded thoughtfully. He stared at Gallen. “As you may have noticed, I keep very few human retainers. My droids handle the vast bulk of my work-cultivating the fields, mining the hills. They work as technicians and factory workers, servants and cleaners-all here in the depths, under the palace. I reserve humans only because of their versatility. It is rare that I seek to hire a human. The palace is self-sufficient. I even export some small items. Yet-I need your services, Gallen O’Day.”

Gallen nodded. “Is it a criminal you want to apprehend? If so, this fine dinner, thought much appreciated, was hardly necessary. Tracking criminals is what I do.”

Felph smiled and shook his head. “It is not a criminal I seek. It is a deed I want done, an artifact-an ancient Qualeewooh artifact-that I would like you to acquire.” Felph folded his hands and raised them to his chin, watching Gallen’s face. “You have seen the jungles of Ruin from space? We call them the tangles , for the trees of Ruin become tangled together into such strange and impenetrable masses, that the word `jungle’ somehow does not do them justice. At the base of every tangle is a lake or sea, and the native dew trees float on these waters, spreading broad floating leaves that cover the water completely. The dew trees themselves are enormous, sometimes fifty meters wide, and their roots may anchor a thousand meters deep into the ocean, while the trunks rise fifteen hundred meters in the air. On these dew trees, parasitic plants grow-ribbon trees and fire brush and a thousand forms of fungus, until all of them twist into an impenetrable mass.”

“I’ve seen them from space, but not close up,” Gallen said. Indeed, when Gallen had landed, it seemed that he had little choice of spots to set camp. The land that was not desert on Ruin seemed to be the impenetrable tangle, and so Gallen had landed in a clear desert, where native predators might not prove too bothersome.

“The tangles are filled with wildlife. Florafeems, like the ones you rode here, feed in the foliage at the top, and thousands of other species of animals live in the canopy, some of them hundreds of meters into the growth, where perpetual darkness reigns.

“The predators in the tangle are-unusually nasty, let us say. Evolution has given them certain advantages over the human form. Their nervous systems give them superior reflexes-which let them react about twice as fast as humans do, and their muscles process energy at a more rapid rate.”

Gallen smiled wryly. “So they are nasty enough to keep you from your artifact?”

“Other men have gone searching for it. I’ve sent killer droids into the tangle, trying to recover the object of my desires-I’ve even sent in a dozen of my own clones. No one has managed to retrieve it for me.”

“So, you are saying it’s dangerous?” Gallen asked.

“For normal men. Perhaps even for you. No Lord Protector has ever tried the deed. I would, of course, provide droid escorts, the finest military weaponry “

“Yet even then, you don’t expect me to succeed.”

“Why would you say that?” Felph asked.

Gallen nodded toward Felph’s children-to Arachne and Hera, Athena. “You don’t let them speak. You’re afraid they’ll ruin the deal, talk me out of it.”

Felph grinned. “Very perceptive. I should have known that a Lord Protector would be so perceptive. To put it candidly, I am unsure of your chances. If I thought the venture fruitless, I wouldn’t even entertain this notion.”

“You told me that I would find your offer interesting,” Gallen said. “I’m not exactly interested in dying.”

“Of course not,” Felph said.

“So what do you offer?” Gallen asked. “I assume the reward justifies the risks?”

“I would, of course, take precautions before sending you in. I’d clone you, download you memories, so that should you fail, you will have lost nothing. Beyond that …” Felph spread his hands wide, indicating his palace, “whatever you want.”

Orick gasped, and even Gallen sat back in surprise. Gallen could imagine a lot. As he gazed at the opulence around him, he realized that Felph really would make good on his offer.

“That’s right,” Felph said. “I am four thousand years old, and in my youth I inherited more money than I could ever spend. That has been invested and accruing interest for ages. I control the economies of fifty worlds. If you acquire the artifact I desire, I will give you,” he shrugged, “half.”

Gallen’s heart pounded. Maggie reached over, clutched his arm under the table. A warning? Did she want him to jump at the offer, or back away from it? He glanced at her, and her face was set, wary. She was telling him only to be careful, he suspected.

But he couldn’t be careful. Only days ago she’d begged him to flee the civilized worlds, get her away from the dronon. Government officials, sympathetic to Gallen’s plight, had loaned Gallen a ship.

“What would be worth so much?” Gallen asked.

“The Waters of Strength,” Felph said.

Gallen asked, “What makes them so valuable?”

Felph shrugged. “I’m not certain that they are. At the very least, they intrigue me. That intrigue has held me here on this planet for six hundred years. But if the legends are true, then it is said that in ancient times the Qualeewoohs brewed the Waters of Strength, and those who drank them made four great conquests.” He raised one hand and counted off on four fingers, “Self. Nature. Time. And Space.”

Gallen shook his head. “That seems a bit much to expect from a potion. What proof do you have that it exists?”

“There are many accounts of it in Qualeewooh histories. It was brewed some thirty millennia ago, at the dawn of the Age of Man,” Felph said. “As for evidence of its continued existence, there is ample evidence. What evidence would you have?”

Gallen shrugged. “A thirty-thousand-year-old Qualeewooh, telling me where to find it.”

Lord Felph raised a brow. “All right,” he said. “Fair enough. Follow me.”

He got up from the table, and Gallen followed him out the corridor, back into the great hall, and out another passageway. Maggie followed at Gallen’s back, along with the bears, Felph’s children, and Dooring.

The passageways led to a road that wound outside the palace itself, and Gallen saw that night was full upon them, but though the stars dusted a cloudless sky, Brightstar outshone them all, more like a brilliant moon than a star. Gallen could see quite well, and indeed felt the heat of the star. He followed Felph through a garden of dahlias in shades of white and black, then down into a great chamber, an ancient chamber carved by the Qualeewoohs.