David Farland - Lords of the Seventh Swarm

“I’ll … I’ll … Will you listen to me?” Maggie said. “Will you obey me, as if I were your Golden Queen?”

Orick’s jaw trembled. “What? What do you want?”

“Gallen and I, we’ve had good lives. You know that we were both infected by the Inhuman. We remember life. We cherish it. We’ve both lived far longer than any person should rightfully live. It’s time for it to end. You have to let us go.”

“No!” Orick roared.

“But I think I speak for us both,” Maggie added, “when I tell you that of all our lives, this one we’ve spent with you is the one we treasured most. You’ve been a great and good friend.”

“No!” Orick shouted.

“Leave us, now,” Maggie begged.

Tallea came up behind Orick, nuzzled his ear, and whispered. “The Waters of Strength. We could still save him.”

Orick looked up to the dronon who had addressed Maggie, and shouted, “Where will the battle for succession take place?”

“At the great palace, the seat of government for this world,” the dronon answered.

Orick turned to Maggie. He promised. “I’ll get the Waters. I’ll be back. I’ll bring it for you.”

Maggie nodded, biting her lower lip, unbelieving.

Orick and Tallea made their way pass the dronon messenger who stood before them, to pass through the chamber.

“Halt!” the Vanquisher ordered.

Maggie stood, letting her arms hang loose at her side, a pose of dignity under the circumstances. “You will let them pass. I’m still Golden Queen on this world, and you’ll not interfere with my servants on their errand.”

The dronon stood warily, then raised itself up to its full height in a defensive posture, its battle arms poised to strike, and stepped away. Orick scampered past the Vanquisher, then into the darkness beyond, where several more dronon lined the wall.

Tallea held her glow globe in her teeth. In moments they were running together, shadows bobbing in the darkness.

Gallen’s path ahead was easy to follow-trampled by dronon tracks. The dronon had apparently found his trail, taken Gallen from behind in an open chamber. Even a Lord Protector cannot withstand six dozen dronon when he’s outgunned.

Orick came to a broad bog, silent and cold, and had to swim across. After that, Gallen’s tracks became confusing. He’d spent hours exploring various passages, backtracking, climbing up and down tree trunks, looking for the road.

Zeus’s tracks followed Gallen’s. In one place, Gallen had followed a false trial, and Zeus had gone after. Orick imagined that it was under such circumstances that Gallen had returned from his trip, passing Zeus, who had gone chasing a false trail. Indeed, Orick found the precise spot where the dronon had met Gallen’s trail, bypassing Zeus. And Orick followed the false trail a few dozen meters, found Zeus’s tracks in the dirt, plastered around a little side chamber.

Zeus must have hidden here, watching the adjoining tunnel. He must have heard the dronon coming. In fact, Zeus may even have spotted Gallen from this hiding place.

So Zeus was headed to the city, Orick reasoned, not searching for Gallen at all. Zeus had gone questing for the Waters of Strength to suit his own ends.

This information filled Orick with a terrible sadness.

Orick had little choice but to follow Gallen’s trail-a long and winding way through the tangle. For three hours he picked his way, twice losing Gallen’s trail in boggy ground, once taking a false track.

Gallen had returned to one great chamber on three occasions-taking several trails that all, connected, and Orick had to follow each trail to its conclusion, for the scent and footprints in this chamber were so jumbled as to be impossible to read.

At last, he and Tallea found a broad tunnel with timbers shoring the walls in places. At its juncture he found several dead sfuz.

Four times over the next few hundred meters, Orick found dead sfuz and dronon. Gallen’s trek had been neither easy nor uneventful. The hacked bodies, bleeding gore both green and purple, bore evidence of Gallen’s proficiency in swordsmanship. If Gallen had won his way back to camp, this journey would have been the stuff of legend on Tihrglas.

Orick was acutely aware of the fact that he and Tallea were mere bears, without the weapons Gallen had mastered. If they met any sfuz or dronon, they’d not be able to win their way so easily.

Fortunately for Orick the road was quiet. No sfuz whistled through the tunnels.

Yet as Orick proceeded, to his terror he heard marching feet, the clacking of carapaces against the ground.

Ahead, the tunnel curved. The great timbers shoring it up looked for all the world like the ribs of some great fish. Bright lights shone. A dronon war party was marching his way.

He looked to Tallea for suggestions. If a dronon saw two bears down here, what would they do?

They’d fire, never knowing what they’d killed.

“Run!” Orick shouted, and he turned. Together he and Tallea raced back down the tunnel, away from Teeawah.

Maggie followed the dronon in a daze, stumbling through the tangle. It was not a long journey-the dronon guided her to the nearest shuttle, only a thousand meters from where she’d found Gallen, but it was a difficult journey.

Gallen couldn’t walk, even with Maggie’s help, so a single dronon Vanquisher lifted Gallen in its battle claws and carried him, while Maggie walked beside, cradling Gallen’s broken leg. He seemed so light and frail. At times a misstep jostled him, and Gallen would cry out like a child.

Maggie found no weapons beside Gallen, none but his mantle. She wore it now, knowing in all likelihood that it would avail her nothing in the battle to come. She had no hope of beating a dronon, but Maggie would not give up.

Could not give up.

As Gallen had protected her so many times, she’d struggle to protect him now. She wondered how the dronon would react to a Golden Queen who fought, instead of relying on her Lord Escort.

All through the journey, she marveled at the dronon. She saw dozens of their dead, sprawled along the road. One Vanquisher lay headless from a sfuz’s snare, another with a burning hole under his abdomen where, Maggie assumed, he took a hit from friendly fire.

Such a waste of life in this magnificent display of force. The dronon could kill Maggie anytime, could have done so months ago when she and Gallen first defeated the Lords of the Sixth Swarm, but they had to carry on their farce, had to hold to their ancient formulae for succession.

So they marched till they reached a wedge-shaped cruiser deep in the tangle. Inside, the dronon escorted Maggie to a holding bay, a veritable prison with white ceramic walls. The room had no windows; one dim light glowed red as the sun on dronon.

The Vanquisher unceremoniously dropped Gallen to the floor. Gallen landed on his side with a yelp, then curled into a ball.

Maggie knelt over him, took her canteen, and wetted the tips of her long hair, then began cleaning his face. It was a mass of bruises, his nose broken and skewed to the side. In the darkness she’d thought all his teeth missing, but saw that only two of his top teeth were knocked out. The others were darkened by blood.

Gallen winced from her ministrations, opened his eyes, stared at her, pain showing in every line of his face, in the swollen bruises. Maggie bent and tenderly kissed him. “It will all be over soon enough. Don’t worry.”

Gallen shook his head. “No,” he gasped. “It doesn’t end it just goes on without us.”

“Close your eyes,” she begged. “Rest now.”

“I’ll rest when I have to,” Gallen said. “Let me look at you.”

Maggie smiled at him, tears filling her eyes.