David Farland - Lords of the Seventh Swarm

“I love your new look,” Arachne called to Zeus. “So … manly.”

There was nothing to do now but try to seem nonchalant. Perhaps most embarrassing was Gallen’s reaction. His jaw had dropped in such a way Zeus knew it went against all his principles to appear naked in public. Ah well, thank the heavens for a bit of body paint. At least he hadn’t come totally nude.

The stranger beside Gallen said, “Well, I must say I don’t care for it at all, Zeus, you’re taking this nudity entirely too far.” Only then did Zeus recognize his father’s clone.

“If you looked as fine as I do,” Zeus told him, “you’d run naked, too. I must say, Father, a young body has not strengthened your appeal.”

“Oh, don’t say that,” Arachne grinned. “He looks very handsome. I’ve thought of nothing but incest all evening.”

Lord Felph smiled appreciatively, and Zeus saw that Arachne was trying to appease the old man. She wanted to head off any arguments before they began.

Felph must have recognized it, too, for he made certain to get in the last word. “At the very least, consider wearing a breechcloth. If you look in the historical archives, you’ll find that they reached the height of fashion under the Beeorso Dominion. You’ll see some tremendous examples of what can be done with a simple piece of cloth.”

“Well, Father,” Zeus said to change the subject, “I see that you had a successful expedition.” He decided then and there that if his father didn’t want him naked, he’d damned well run around naked for the next three hundred years.

“If you call getting eaten by sfuz successful, then, yes, I suppose this was an astonishing triumph. I don’t doubt that at least a hundred of them are sucking the marrow from my bones at this very moment.”

“Successful, I mean, in that Gallen and Athena at least made it home alive, and you did find some sfuz.”

“Oh, yes,” Felph laughed. “Gallen fought gloriously. I do believe that he might actually be capable of making his way down to the bottom.”

“Not likely,” Gallen said, “with so many.”

“Ah but you see their limitations,” Felph said. “They are not very bright.”

Zeus took a seat next to Hera, and she smiled at him, a sweet, confident smile. Perfectly lovely. She reached down and grasped his knee, then massaged his leg.

“Perhaps they are stupid, but we shouldn’t be over confident,” Gallen considered. “Athena said that, considering how long it took a hunting party to find us, she thinks we were at least a dozen kilometers from their nesting site. Who knows how many of them there are? Or what they’re capable of.”

Lord Felph frowned a bit, an old man’s gesture that seemed out of place on his fresh young clone. “Time, space, nature, self. I wonder what the Qualeewoohs discovered that would make them believe they conquered those?”

“Who knows?” Gallen asked. “Certainly, the Waters don’t give the sfuz such power.”

“Perhaps that is only because the sfuz aren’t wise,” Athena cut in. “Whatever transformation the Waters work upon them, it may not change the way the creatures think, nor affect their basic natures. The sfuz are hunters of the deep tangle. They live down in the shadows, and hunt the upper boughs by night. That is their nature. It may be that they could do more-conquer space, leap through time, but just do not desire it.”

“Perhaps they do things we never imagine,” Arachne put in, and every head turned to her. “Imagine that if a sfuz looked up from the tangle on a clear night, and saw the light of a star, and longed to be there. If it had drunk from the Waters and conquered space, it might find itself there in an instant-and in that instant, it would be consumed in fires it had never imagined. Thus ends the sfuz.” Arachne looked pointedly at Zeus. Don’t get burned, she was telling him. No one else seemed to notice.

“So travel between space may be practiced among the sfuz-” Gallen put in, “to their own detriment.”

“It is always a danger to those who do not recognize their limits,” Arachne said.

At that moment, Orick chose to ask a question, one that had always bothered Zeus. “I don’t understand all of this. If the Qualeewoohs are immortal, and if they’ve conquered space, then why don’t they show themselves?”

Felph leaned both elbows on the table, folded his hands, and stared deeply into them. “I believe that the ancient Qualeewoohs live, but not in physical bodies. They’ve abandoned those.

“Some on this planet understand the folklore better than I, but Qualeewooh belief goes something like this: Qualeewoohs say life is something one `flies through.’ That is all that they do, they fly through life toward some distant destination. Their journey, they say, began long before birth, and will continue long after this life. They move toward ‘the Enlightenment,’ a moment in one’s life where light, where pure intelligence and its attendant powers, become infused into them, in that moment when the image of what we desire to become is engraved into our flesh.

“When that moment comes, an exchange will be made, the new body for the old.” Orick said, “It sounds to me like they’re talking about the resurrection.”

“Perhaps it sounds to you as if their doctrine is the same as yours, Orick,” Felph countered, “but only because we are filtering their doctrine first into human terms, then comparing it to something we understand. However, the Qualeewoohs see a thousand shades of differentiation between your concepts and theirs.

“The Qualeewoohs see this life as a time of preparation, a time during which they must ‘soften their bones,’ so when Enlightenment strikes, they will gain the full effect of it.

“Now, this is the most interesting part of their beliefs, as far as I’m concerned: they say ‘The Waters of Strength’ are ‘The Strong Blow’ toward Enlightenment. The Waters were designed to ‘Shape Bone’ toward Enlightenment.”

Felph drew silent for a moment, then sighed. “I do not know if I can explain this any better, but the Waters of Strength quite literally are meant to transform one into Qualeewooh gods.

“And, Orick, while you may take comfort in the thought of resurrection, the Qualeewoohs have no similar concept. For them, the Enlightenment is not a comfort. The act of attaining godhood is destructive. Just as you must destroy a block of wood to carve it into a work of art, even so, the elders of the Qualeewooh believe our hopes, our desires all will be pared away, until we each become equal with the divine image. But what that divine image is, even the Qualeewoohs don’t know.

“But I do know that the Qualeewooh gods aren’t physical beings in the sense that you and I are familiar with.”

“If they are not physical beings, what else could they be?” Orick asked.

Lord Felph shrugged. “A good question. I don’t believe in beings of pure energy-not in the sense that the Qualeewooh gods are spoken of. Energy beings-if they do evolve or exist at all-are too ephemeral. Born on lightning, they would die on lightning, and none of us would be the wiser.

“But there are types of matter that we cannot detect, or that we can detect only dimly. Some theorists believe that as much as ninety percent of all matter is undetectable to mankind through our instruments. The Qualeewooh seem to have a word for it. They call it ‘dim matter,’ and it is in this invisible matter that they say their ancestors yet live.”

“You’re talking about interdimensional travel again,” Maggie said.

“Precisely,” Felph said.

“Wait a minute,” Gallen said. “I don’t see how this is possible, to transmit a body from this dimension to another. I mean, I’m not a technologist, but …”