David Farland - Lords of the Seventh Swarm

When the mistwife’s eye passed Gallen’s level, the creature jerked to a halt. It gazed at the glow globe Maggie held.

Gallen ran. He couldn’t force the others to retreat without light, yet the mistwife had seen them. He needed a barrier of some kind between them and the creature. He pulled out a small canister of Black Fog-the only one he had-and tossed it behind. It hissed and spurted darkness, spinning under the pressure of escaping gas.

Darkness wouldn’t stop the creature. The ground rumbled as a tentacle snaked toward Gallen.

Gallen retreated as the tentacle burst through the rising Black Fog. Gallen ripped a heat grenade from his hip pouch and tossed it into the humus, knowing it would be far too small to kill the mistwife, hoping it might sting the beast.

Gallen spun, ran after the others as fast as he could. The grenade exploded into light and thunder, its searing blast filling the cave with smoke. For a moment the ground quit rumbling. Gallen had gone a hundred meters or more before he heard a terrible shriek that caused the earth to tremble. It was a high, thin sound, a squeal of consummate power and wrath.

Then the mistwife advanced. The ground beneath Gallen shook, as if the mistwife were trying to tear the world apart. Behind Gallen, Black Fog filled the tunnel so much that he could not make out the flames thrown by the heat grenade.

The sudden movement of the creature made a wall of Black Fog billow toward him. Gallen sprinted to keep ahead of it.

Maggie and the others had been running on a trail made by a fallen tree. Now they’d reached the end of this particular tree. The passage ahead was blocked. But above them was an opening to another passage.

Tallea scampered up the sheer, muddy cliff, but Orick couldn’t follow. He clawed at the mud, but it wouldn’t hold his weight. Maggie stood at the bottom of the cliff, helpless to advance farther, Zeus at her side.

Behind Gallen, a second tentacle whipped into the light. It bore no scars or burn marks from the grenade.

Gallen spun and hurled a second heat grenade as far back as he could. It blazed like the sun; the smell of smoke filled the narrow chamber, overwhelming.

Again the mistwife shrieked; the ground shook furiously. The mistwife was grappling with the bole of the tree that they stood on, twisting it.

Gallen grabbed Maggie to keep her from falling. The tentacle withdrew from them, but the smoke that filled the passage was choking them all.

Suddenly, the end of the log Gallen stood on pulled away; a pit opened beneath them, perhaps six meters down, and Zeus tumbled in. It led to a small tunnel. Gallen and Maggie couldn’t go up to Tallea. They could only go down to Zeus.

“Come down with us!” Gallen shouted to the she-bear: he grabbed Maggie, helped her slide down into the tunnel.

In moments the bears scampered behind him, and Gallen ran. He didn’t want to wait and see if the mistwife would try for them again.

Here a path led down an ancient highway of worm vine. The road was broad and smooth, the roof above them higher than before.

Behind, Gallen could hear the mistwife thrashing. The crash of giant trees being ripped apart, the creature’s horrible shrieking cries.

Gallen wondered if the mistwife’s cries of pain would attract sfuz.

No , he decided. If I were a sfuz, I wouldn’t go to investigate something that caused a mistwife to shriek.

Yet as they passed one wide chamber, Gallen could clearly hear the mistwife above him, shrieking in rage. And he realized that the mistwife was eeling ahead of them, going north and climbing upward.

Gallen got a cold feeling in his stomach. “I think the mistwife is heading toward the cliffs,” he whispered.

Zeus said, “She’s angry. Maybe she thinks the sfuz are to blame.”

Of course-of course , Gallen realized. She is the huntress here, and the sfuz are her prey. She knows where to find them.

He’d imagined hunting for days or weeks to find Teeawah, but now he saw that he would only have to follow the mistwife through her hunting passage. It would lead to the sfuz.

“We have to go up higher, and go north,” Gallen whispered, gazing ahead. Nearby, a jumble of trees had collapsed into a pile, and the cave forked.

One route appeared to head in the direction he desired. “That way!”

Abroad the dronon starship Acquiescence , Thomas stood thoughtfully gazing down onto the bridge.

The dronon starship seemed unthinkable by human standards: the deck, though clean, was much like the birthing chamber on one of the great walking hive ships. A bevy of dronon technicians clung to the sides of the dome-shaped walls like insects.

The technicians, with their twisted vestigial wings, their tan bodies and strange green facial tatoos, reminded Thomas of mantises, waiting to strike. Yet the technicians had no prey but the monitors and various switches they guarded.

Higher on the walls, in a great circle, were viewscreens that displayed images from on planet. Dronon hunting teams showed their Lords images captured as warships swept through a strange alien jungle, beneath a terrible storm.

The ships were diving into the woods, lights blazing through a nearly impenetrable gloom of foliage and mist, flying thousands of meters down into this vast and bizarre wood.

From here aboard the Acquiescence , the dronon would coordinate the work of the thirty-six hunting teams. Thomas watched the spectacle of the pursuit in horrid fascination.

Lord Karthenor had retrieved several people from the surface of Ruin-the dictator Felph and his two beautiful daughters. Karthenor spoke to Felph as if he were a “guest,” enjoying dronon hospitality, but Thomas knew Felph and his daughters were hostages. If they lied about Maggie’s whereabouts, if they tried to deceive the dronon, they’d pay dearly.

But Felph, a young man with glittering eyes that said he knew far more than a young man should, aided the dronon to the best of his abilities.

Thomas didn’t know whether to pity Felph, or to hate him. With his Guide on, Thomas could only stare, bearing silent witness to his treachery.

Karthenor said to Felph, in discussing the dronon invasion, “This is a rather unprecedented move of solidarity. to fly all the hive ships of the Golden Queens here in unison. But the dronon see the wisdom of combining their strength. Once they conquer mankind, they’ll share human technology equally. With both our species working together, we will begin a new era of prosperity.”

Felph looked out through the central viewport near the ceiling, where Ruin seemed to float above their heads, a ball of red sand blotched with hazy purple seas. Hundreds of brilliant objects floated around the planet, but Thomas could see they weren’t stars-they were dronon warships, along with technical support crews.

Nearby several technical support crews had already begun creating a passive ring of black metal in space, a new gate that would let the dronon fly their ships back to their ships back to their own home worlds once they’d found Gallen and Maggie.

“Marvelous, marvelous.” Felph mouthed the words without enthusiasm as he studied the construction of this massive Gate to All Worlds. “But I have to wonder, Lord Karthenor. Wouldn’t the golden age you speak of be just as grand if humans stood at the helm? What if we took control, discovered the secrets of dronon technology?”

Karthenor studied Felph with an appreciative smile. “The Tharrin would never do that,” Karthenor said. “The notion of dominating another species would offend their principles.”

Felph shrugged. “Well, the Tharrin aren’t human, are they? I ask you again, what if humans took control?”