David Farland - Lords of the Seventh Swarm

“So pretty,” Gallen whispered. “So pretty. The best in all County Morgan, or anywhere else I’ve been, for that matter.”

She kissed him precisely in the center of the forehead. “I needed to be. You wouldn’t settle for less.”

Maggie wondered as she kissed him. The people of Tremonthin bred him to be a Lord Protector, and Ceravanne had said his seed would spread across the galaxy on backward worlds. Maggie wondered if somewhere in a place she’d never imagined, a woman held another Gallen, a man with the same face, and kissed him with such passion as she did now. She hoped so. She hoped he’d live on in some form.

She didn’t want Felph to resurrect him. Gallen wouldn’t want to live without her. But he deserved to be treasured.

The floor of the shuttle began to quiver as it lifted gently from the tangle. Maggie got the vague floating sensation one does at liftoff.

She held Gallen’s hand. “How can I make you comfortable?”

“Escape,” Gallen said.

Maggie laughed softly, not really amused, simply wanting to humor him. “All right, I will, if you’ll come with me.’

Gallen whimpered, and closed his eyes.

“I love you,” Maggie said as he rested. “I want you to know, that lately, when I dream, sometimes I dream of the other lives that the Inhuman showed us. I dream we’re Roamers out on the veldt, squatting in the limbs of some sprawling oak tree, and I remember old mates. But in my dream, every husband I’ve ever had, when I dream of him, it’s you I think of.” Maggie knew she sounded crazy, but she wanted Gallen to know, that of all the loves she remembered, of all the mates whose presence she still craved, she loved Gallen most.

Gallen grinned, a relaxed upturning of the lips. Maggie held his hands for the twenty minutes it took to reach Felph’s palace. He fell asleep, and though Maggie yearned to wake him, she didn’t have the heart to. She merely hunched over him, her face pressed so close she could taste his breath, and she tried to memorize his face, every detail of his face. Some priests back on Tihrglas, those who recognized the Tome as canonical, said men and women could marry for eternity, so in the next life they’d still be one. Maggie wished it were true. If God had any sense of justice, she told herself, if He had the slightest notion of right and wrong, He’d make it so. He’d let them be together in the next life.

As she told herself this, it helped soothe the sting of watching Gallen sleep the last few moments of his life away.

When he was fast asleep, she took off the black robe she wore, the robe of a Lord Protector, and wrapped it around Gallen’s broken leg. Then she ripped strips from her dress, bound the thing. Perhaps it would do some good. Perhaps the robe would protect him one last time, saving him some little jarring pain when they reached the killing fields.

Gallen slept as she bandaged him, and he still slumbered when the cruiser reached Felph’s palace and landed in the great court before the gates.

The Vanquishers came for them; one lifted Gallen in its great claws. Maggie took Gallen’s hand, held it as the dronon carried him from his cell to the top of the gangplank.

Maggie wasn’t prepared for the sight before her: it was just dawn, light beginning to break over the far mountains.

In the fields before the gates of Felph’s magnificent palace of pink sandstone, the dronon warships circled. Black, squat, adorned with armaments, bristling with weapons.

Clinging to every surface of every vehicle, and scattered on every inch of ground, were dronon Vanquishers and technicians, a vast sea of black-and-tan carapaces. In many places, Vanquishers climbed atop one another’s backs creating black walls, forming a great arena made of chitin.

Yet behind them were the glorious towers of Felph’s palace, the thundering waterfalls all backlit by thousands of footlights.

The dronon had set pavilions at seven corners of the arena, pavilions of red, each covered with the evil-looking designs of various dronon Swarms. Beneath these languished the Golden Queens, with countless dwarfish workers attending, white as grubs.

Around the great circle, millions of dronon chanted, mouthfingers clacking over their voicedrums, while Vanquishers shook incendiary rifles in the air. Maggie did not know what they shouted. She was past caring.

Mustering her dignity, Maggie walked down the gangplank beside the Vanquisher who bore her husband’s limp body. Gallen roused enough to crane his neck, surveying the battlefield. When they reached the edge of the open ifeld, the Vanquisher gently set Gallen in the grass.

Maggie looked across the field for humans, anyone at all. Lord Felph was not here, but on the left side of the field, Hera and Athena broke into a run, rushing toward her, tears in their eyes, faces pale.

Athena rushed up and grabbed at Maggie’s left wrist, pawing her, shouting, “What’s happening? What are you doing?”

“Everything will be fine. Go on, now. It’s not you the dronon are after. You’ll be all right,” Maggie found herself trying to calm Athena. She wished the girl would calm herself, not force Maggie to be strong.

Maggie kept pushing at Athena, trying to I get her to leave.

Hera saw the determination in Maggie’s eyes, pulled Athena back, retreated to shadows thrown by the ship behind Maggie.

At the far side of the field, a Golden Queen began to heave herself onto the battleground, her pale attendants struggling beside her, pushing her bloated body forward. For one moment, Maggie saw the dronon queen not as an emissary of her death, but as a huge balloon being pushed and shoved on the shoulders of children, and the image seemed somehow comic and somehow painful.

Beside the Golden Queen strode her Lord Escort, the black chitin of his exoskeleton gleaming in the afternoon light. Lord Kintiniklintit was, frankly, the largest Vanquisher Maggie had ever seen. Good, she thought. At least I’ll be killed by the best.

Beside him, in a dark brown robe, walked a husky man in a golden mask. Lord Karthenor.

Maggie’s right leg shook as she walked. She halted, willed it to stop trembling, tried to show no fear.

Let them come to us, she thought. So she stood and leaned her head back, closed her eyes, trying to excise these images from her mind.

A cool dawn breeze blew; through partly opened eyes she saw clouds on the horizon.

Clouds! Here in the desert where Felph told her it had not rained in ages. Maggie wanted to taste the fresh air, to feel warm rain on her cheeks, to bask in sunlight.

She closed her eyes fully, shutting out the images, inhaled deeply. She knelt and took Gallen’s hand in her right hand, squeezed tight. “Gallen,” she whispered, “if you try, you can smell Felph’s rose gardens from here.” The aroma came, distant and sweet.

In moments, Lord Karthenor and his dronon master stood before her, their shadows falling over her.

“Closing your eyes will not make us go away,” Karthenor said.

Maggie opened her eyes. He was fatter than she remembered. The golden mask he wore, shining with its own wan light, made his face gleam like some round moon. She wished she had a gun. “The avaricious we have with us always. Just because I wish you dead, does not mean I think you will vanish.”

“I’m happy to see you again, too,” Karthenor laughed. “Who would have thought that when I captured a silly girl six months ago, it would lead here, to the green fields where you will die?”

Maggie didn’t want to speak to Karthenor. He wasn’t worth it. She found herself shaking with rage. She knew Gallen had a translator in his pack that would let her speak to the dronon, but she did not want to look foolish, digging it out now.

“Talk to your bugs,” she said, nodding toward the Lord of the Seventh Swarm, just behind Karthenor.