David Farland - Lords of the Seventh Swarm

It seemed an odd sensation, an almost paranoid fear. But the Qualeewooh’s spirit mask had shown him he was dealing with powers he couldn’t comprehend.

And if the sfuz were drinking from the Waters of Strength, did the sfuz’s ancestors speak to them? Could they be warning their descendants of Gallen’s plans? Did the sfuz wear their own spirit masks, deep in their chambers, dreaming disturbing visions of Gallen’s descent?

And if they did, how could Gallen fight such creatures? He looked through his arsenal again and again, the creepy sensation hounding him.

He wondered. If I drink from the Waters of Strength, what becomes of me? The Qualeewoohs say they defeated space and time, self and nature. What does that mean? Will I speak to my ancestors, whispering my child’s name as I walk between the stars?

At twelve hundred hours, Gallen went to Maggie’s room, kissed her awake, roused the others. He felt he should give them some warning before they departed, but there was little to say.

He, Zeus, Orick, and Tallea bore the heaviest packs, while Gallen gave Maggie an intelligent pistol and a glow globe. Let her be the lightbearer here in the darkness.

Gallen said, “I want to avoid the sfuz at all costs. We can’t let them know we’re here. So we’ll travel in silence. No talking until we strike camp, and I can put up some buffers. If we’re discovered by even one sfuz, kill it before it can warn others. Use an intelligent pistol. They’re quiet and accurate.

“If we do find ourselves in a pitched battle, we’ll need to win swiftly, then retreat from the sfuz, circle into their lair.

“Right now, the sfuz should be asleep. We’re out over a valley, about four hundred meters above it. I suspect there’s water beneath us, so the sfuz won’t come out here.

“The cliffs are to the north of us, about five kilometers. I don’t know how far we’ll have to go to find Teeawah itself, or how well guarded it might be.”

Zeus’s face was pale, and Maggie stood holding her belly, her expression thoughtful.

“Now, here is the hard part,” Gallen said. “When we near the city, we should find sfuz tracks. That’s how we’ll know we’re close. We should be able to follow some kind of trail. But first, we have to wait for the sfuz to leave for the night. I … don’t know how we can manage that. We need to wait for them to leave, and at the same time, we can’t let them see us or catch our scent. We’ll have to go in while they’re on the hunt.”

Gallen,” Maggie said as if he’d forgotten something, “they won’t all leave.”

“No,” Gallen said, “their young will be in the city, I guess. Maybe the old and the weak.” He didn’t want to mention the guards he suspected might be there.

Maggie frowned in shame. “We’ll be slaughtering families.”

“We have no choice!” Gallen told Maggie. He knew what she was feeling. She didn’t want to slaughter the sfuz.

They’d both been infected by the Inhuman; they both knew how passionate, how beautiful a life could be, even if it was not a human life.

Despite Felph’s protests to the contrary, Gallen recognized that the sfuz were smarter than mere animals: they used tools. They created fortresses. They domesticated other animals. They were self-aware, and valued their own lives as much as Gallen valued his own.

What right do I have to kill them? Gallen asked himself. What right do any of us have? The Waters of Strength, if they exist, are not mine, any more than they belong to the sfuz.

The dronon, Gallen saw, recognized but two classes of human-those that opposed them, and those who could be used as tools. Am I to the sfuz what the dronon are to man?

He wondered if he should tell the others about the itching that filled his head, warn them. He didn’t want to frighten them. Sfuz that revived after death were bad enough. He didn’t want to tell of creatures invading his mind.

“Maybe we can sneak into Teeawah,” Gallen said at last. “We’ll find a way. Let’s go.” He hit the switch to open the ship’s doors. The others filed into darkness by the light thrown from the interior of the ship. Gallen closed the doors. Darkness folded around them.

Maggie held the glow globes up, squeezed so that a spark breathed into flame in her hand.

Gallen led. The sensors in his mantle could read magnetic north, tell his elevation, and store an image of the sonar maps of this region. Gallen knew exactly where he was headed.

He took off through the thick humus.

The ground beneath his feet had built up from rotted limbs and detritus. Only the ancient boles of fallen trees held the soil, so all around were sinkholes. But the trees, hundreds of meters long, created paths of a sort, roads they could travel. So long as they kept finding such paths that led toward their destination, they would be fine.

It was a strange journey. Above them were false roofs at various levels where trees had collapsed, so that always they were in odd chambers where a roof might drop low or block the path altogether, while in other places a roof would rise a hundred meters in the air, and Gallen would find himself in a huge cavern.

Bits of fallen leaves and trees had filled nooks all around them. Gallen led the way through strange and twisted tunnels, creeping along beneath huge fallen beams.

Sometimes, back home, Gallen had traveled up to the headwaters of the Morgan River. In the winter, floods would wash trees and bracken downstream, and these would gather at the river bends, sticks and dirt forming huge piles. In summer, his father’s hounds would chase mice or squirrels through those piles of drift for hours. Now, Gallen was discovering how the mice must have felt, groping through such a mess.

Once, Gallen passed a huge circle just on the right side of the path, a place where the ground seemed to have been dug away. The circle was too round, too perfectly symmetrical to have formed naturally. It looked like a mine shaft. Maggie held up her light. The hole dropped far into the darkness. Gallen looked up. It continued above as far as the eye could see.

Not a mine shaft, he decided. A tunnel. Something a mistwife could climb up through.

Suddenly Gallen feared to breathe, to move. He wondered if the vibrations caused by their walking would call a mistwife.

Orick stepped to the edge of the pit and looked down. Gallen dared not speak, dared not warn him. The bear nosed around, then turned, knocking a clod of dirt into the pit.

From far down below, Gallen heard the echo of a splash, followed by a wondrous thrashing sound, waves beating against one another as something enormous moved in the water.

Orick opened his mouth wide in terror, backed from the pit as if bitten. Gallen gave a curt gesture, urging everyone to flee. He didn’t know if the light would attract the mistwife, what the beast might be capable of.

Maggie and Tallea rushed past Gallen.

A horrible groaning escaped the pit, a sound like a tree makes in the deep forest as it collapses under the weight of snow. Then Gallen heard rushing water.

The ground beneath his feet trembled, and Orick scrambled past. A hissing erupted from the pit. Something was rising, rushing through the hole.

Gallen reached for his weapons belt, unsure what to grab. None of his weapons would defend him against something this big.

An enormous form gushed up through the hole, water tumbling from it, propelled by no means Gallen could distinguish. Enormous worms, pinkish gray in color, dozens of meters long, shot up above him, writhing to find purchase in the next layer of the tangle. Suddenly the worms each broadened, and Gallen saw fluke-shaped webbing holding them all together at the base, followed at last by a broad head that sported an enormous white eye.