David Farland - Lords of the Seventh Swarm

“And you will know, you will know all your life, that I told you it would happen. You will be forced to watch for it, to prepare. You will die the thousand deaths of cowardice before that one last one takes you by surprise.”

Zeus sat back and folded his arms. He’d always believed Arachne had more prescience than this, that she somehow saw what would happen an hour from now. In his heart he knew she really only understood people. Her knowledge was frightening, but more general than specific. She didn’t really know he would die by violence. Her theories were based only on some general beliefs about human nature and her own vain hopes for his demise.

But I won’t walk that path , Zeus told himself. When I am a leader, I will be kind. People will love me and protect me. They’ll keep my memories on file, my genome available on a hundred planets. They’ll build replicas of me for a hundred thousand years, until I am wearied by mortality, and even then, my consciousness will be stored in the Omni mind, so I’ll live as long as I desire .

He stepped back, wondering once again what to do about Arachne. He couldn’t let her go tell everyone he’d been beating information out of her.

“You said I don’t have to kill you?” Zeus asked.

“Yes, please, let me go!” she whispered. “I won’t tell what happened here. I’ll say I fell down the stairwell outside my room. You know how steep it is. No one will doubt me.”

Zeus nodded thoughtfully. “All right,” he said, as, if the matter were settled. He turned away.

Abruptly he spun back, kicking with all his might at where her head had been. Surprisingly, she had moved, just a bit, so her chin was lifted to connect precisely with his heel. She’d relaxed her neck enough so it snapped cleanly.

She pitched sideways onto the floor, her neck twisted at an exotic angle, blood pooling on the stone floor by her nose.

Zeus stood, astonished, confused. She’d known at that last moment he would spin, deliver the death blow. She hadn’t tried to run from it. She’d embraced it.

Indeed, she knew Zeus so well, she must have come to meet him this morning, knowing she would die.

If that were true, she’d sacrificed her life. But why? To deliver a message? To tell him that Gallen was Lord of the Sixth Swarm? No, she hadn’t wanted to tell him that.

No, her message had been simple: walk away. Walk away from power. You are too imperfect to hold it. It will lead you to destruction, and will bring misery to others. Felph created you by mistake. You are a mistake.

It was a hard message to hear. Obviously, Arachne held Zeus in low regard. Certainly, it had been a hard message for her to deliver, considering what it cost her.

If she bore the message knowing the consequences, then should I not listen? Zeus asked himself.

Too late. Too late to ask that question. I’ve killed my sister. I am committed to a course of action. I must move forward.

Yet Zeus knew that he wasn’t committed. Arachne had given him the answer. Live in the desert. Hide. You don’t have to kill Gallen, you can try to hide from what you are.

Am I so ugly , Zeus wondered, I must remain hidden, covered? Zeus looked for a place to hide Arachne. He couldn’t let her corpse be found. The solution turned out to be obvious. Down the corridor from him were recycling chutes where droids disposed of excess food, which was ground into compost.

Arachne always liked the gardens, Zeus thought. Now she would feed the flowers. He pulled her down the hall and slid her into a chute. She would stay in the gardens forever.

Zeus used a strip of cloth from Arachne’s dress to wipe her blood from the floor, tossed it after the body, then went to begin the hunt.

Gallen looked through one of the Nightswift’s viewers for signs of a Qualeewooh flying over the red desert. He was searching the sky, one square kilometer at a time, scanning images of the rim rock, and the yellow-and-orange sands below. The ship’s long-range sensors could give good visuals on any Qualeewooh within fifty kilometers.

The ship hovered twenty kilometers in the air, and as Gallen conducted a visual search, the Seeker Maggie had made circled Felph’s palace on a wide trajectory.

They had been hunting for two hours. Gallen had asked the ship’s AI to display anything with a wingspan of more than four feet. So far the AI had shown nothing, but suddenly Maggie’s Seeker picked up a scent and rocketed north on a zigzag course.

Gallen could see nothing in that direction; he ordered the ship to watch for him while he rested his eyes.

Gallen let the sensors on his mantle show him the scene behind his back. Orick, Maggie, Tallea, and Zeus all sat on the bridge behind him.

Orick had been teaching Tallea. He said, “‘Then the disciples went to Jesus, and asked, Lord, if a man sins; then repenteth afterward, and sins. again, how many times shall we forgive him? ‘Til seven times?’

“Jesus answered, ‘I say unto you, not seven times, but ‘til seventy times seven.’ “

Tallea asked, “Four hundred and ninety times? Why that number?”

Orick sighed in exasperation. His lesson on repentance and forgiveness seemed taxing for the bear. Orick’s Christian concepts seemed almost beyond Tallea’s grasp, but Orick had understood these concepts since he was a cub. The knowledge of such things was in the air back on Tihrgias.

“It’s not the number of times you forgive that’s important,” Orick answered Tallea. “It’s just a metaphor. What Jesus really meant was that we should continue to forgive offenses, even when we’ve tired of it.”

Zeus asked Orick, “This god of yours, Orick, why does he care what we do?”

“He is the father of our spirits,” Orick answered. “If you had a child, and I harmed it, you would rightfully take offense. In the same way, if you harm God’s child, He takes offense.”

Zeus said, “You say your god is forgiving. But who will he forgive? And what?”

“He will forgive you,” Orick said boldly. “He has said ‘Though your sins be as, scarlet, yet shall they be white as snow.’”

Zeus looked away. His long black hair was mussed, his dark brown eyes intense, brooding. His jaw quivered, as if in anger or fear. This talk of sin seemed to aggravate him.

Zeus suddenly whirled back toward Orick. “Quit staring at me, bear! I don’t need your repentance!”

“I … I’m sorry,” Orick said. “But you look-agitated. I thought maybe I could help.”

“I don’t need your help,” Zeus said.

“Perhaps you need God’s help,” Orick answered.

Zeus stood abruptly, turned his back to Orick, and gazed into the monitors above Maggie’s chair. He said, “There’s our quarry!”

Maggie had aimed her monitor well north of the Seeker, where two lonely Qualeewoohs flapped their wings slowly in the morning light. The picture was grainy, but Gallen could clearly make out the dark feathers.

Gallen said, “Ship, send, the Seeker north at six hundred kilometers per hour until it intersects those Qualeewoohs. I want to see how they smell before we go in.”

“Affirmative,” the Al said.

Gallen’s mantle whispered a warning, flashed an image of Zeus standing behind him, slightly crouched, as if ready to spring. Zeus’s hand strayed to the. pistol holstered on his right hip.

The bears crowded near to look at the screen, unaware of Zeus. Gallen could see from Zeus’s shaking hand, from the quivering jaw, he wanted to draw his weapon and fire. Yet he was afraid-for good reason. Gallen realized, Zeus doesn’t know the powers of a Lord Protector.

Go ahead, draw , Gallen silently urged. Gallen would spin and shoot before Zeus knew what hit him.