David Farland - Lords of the Seventh Swarm

As Thomas ran, he saw a large, eyeless beast, like a lizard, quietly clinging to the side of a root below him. It gaped its mouth wide, showing row on row of teeth as pale as quartz.

The air here was richer, somehow more invigorating than anything Thomas had smelled before. It was neither warm nor cool, and carried no scent of the smoke that had choked the corridors of the warrens above.

Everywhere, wild creatures fled at their coming. Eden , Thomas thought, I am in Eden .

Lord Felph kept darting to the side of the trunk now, holding out the light as far as he could, looking down for water. They were still far from the bole of the tree, but suddenly Thomas heard a splash as something plunked into the pool at their approach, almost at their very feet.

“There!” Felph shouted. “Down there!”

He held his light high. The root they stood on was perhaps a dozen meters above water, and it shot wriggling tendrils down.

The light reflecting off the water’s surface showed gleaming patterns of ripples over the dark tree roots. Yet the pool below was clear and dark. Thomas could see minnows darting deep beneath its surface, some larger eel shape wriggling at a leisurely pace farther down-then blackness.

Lord Felph pressed the glow globe into Thomas’s hands. “Hold the light for me as I climb down.”

Thomas did as ordered. Holding the lamp would protect Felph, keep him from slipping. Thomas’s Guide allowed the action.

Felph began scrabbling down the slope of the root. He used the round holes burrowed by creatures as handholds. When he got near the bottom, he called to Thomas. “Throw down the glow globe. I can’t see handholds in this dark.”

Thomas hesitated a moment, unable to move, until he decided Felph would be safer with the light. He tossed the glow globe. Felph caught it deftly.

Felph squeezed the globe to brighten it. The waterlogged roots were dark and slippery. Felph carefully tested each step, and his journey took well over two minutes as he sought a path around various roots, climbing down in one spot, learning he’d found a false trail, then climbing to another.

Thomas began following in Felph’s trail, but in the shadows it was too difficult. He managed only to climb down partway, then crouch in a hollow, holding to a twisted knot.

Felph found a path down to one root that dipped at water’s level, providing a platform so he could reach the clear pools.

Thomas’s heart pounded. Everything had gone silent, the animals around them. No scurrying creatures. No hooting cries. It was the quiet of a forest, when wolves are on the prowl.

Sfuz , Thomas thought. He backed against a root, hid in a dark crevasse. If sfuz were coming, he didn’t want to be standing in the light, in full profile.

So pervasive was the quiet, Thomas found himself glancing up, watching roots above Felph. The globe shone its brilliant light down around the roots of the great tree, but Thomas could not see beyond that paltry circle. Everything else was in the shadows.

Thomas heard Felph grunt, followed by burbling sounds. Felph crouched on a twisted root, and dunked a canteen underwater, letting it fill.

Suddenly in the darkness, on the huge root on the far side of the pool, Thomas spotted movement. Shadows separated from a stump and moved into the light.

Thomas pointed his weapon, expecting trouble.

A young man stepped from behind a wrinkled knob of root. Thomas’s heart was pounding. Thomas considered calling out a warning, but his Guide would not let him. He’d been told to be quiet. Then Orick stepped out of the shadows behind the young man. Was this young man a friend, then? Thomas relaxed his guard.

The young man drew a pulp pistol, aimed at Felph.

Thomas would have opened fire, but his Guide forbade it. If the young man pulled the trigger in his dying throes, then Felph might get shot. Thomas would have failed in his charge to protect Felph.

Holding the pistol forward, the young man said, “Father, don’t touch that.”

Cooharah and Aaw sat in a rock pile in the starlight just before dawn. Cooharah watched a line of thunderheads approach, bringing the grumble of distant thunder, the first rain so far south in a decade. The bone years were ending.

The light of Brightstar was warming the land, melting the great ice floes in the north, as the teach songs said would happen.

It should have been a wonder. This should have inaugurated an age of hope, a new beginning for Cooharah.

Instead, he felt dismay.

Aaw preened her wings, as if discussing some minor thing. She cooed, “We must atone. Two lives for one. This is law.”

Last night, still unsure of the extent of their wrongdoing, it had been relatively easy to deny the voices of the ancestors, easy to flee. But Cooharah and Aaw had lived the laws since they were chicks. To disobey them would have been madness. The ancestors would cry through the spirit masks, over and over, a litany of guilt.

“I will go,” Aaw whistled. “I will take the egg. We shall atone for the oomas.”

“Negative to the fourth degree,” Cooharah whistled. “I will not live without you.”

Aaw quit preening, looked up at him, eyes bright in the starlight. “Then we give three lives for one. Our atonement will be generous.”

It seemed so easy for her to speak of death. Sometimes, Cooharah thought the ancestors spoke more clearly to her than to him. But he knew it was not true. He was the one who had stayed up at night, vainly clawing his spirit mask, trying to silence the voices of the ancestors. If he’d managed to unmask himself, he’d have become outlaw. His life would have been forfeit, should other Qualeewoohs see him.

Now he realized how impetuous he had been. It was true he heard the voices of the ancestors more strongly than Aaw. Such was the make of her spirit mask, that she heard them only distantly. But she had a firmer mind, a more obedient nature.

“Your atonement is generous,” Cooharah whistled. “Mine is not. I give my gift grudgingly.” With that, he flapped his wings, took to the air, heading south, toward the aerie of the oomas. Aaw followed. Behind them, the distant thunder snarled.

Gallen held Maggie tightly, never wanting to let go. Kintiniklintit swept overhead, finishing his great circle over the dronon Swarms, having built up his wingspeed. Gallen had seen dronon do this before, and he didn’t fear attack in these first few seconds.

Maggie was shaking. He’d never seen her show such fear. She trembled like a child who has had a nightmare. She stared into his face.

Everywhere all around them, the swarms of dronon Vanquishers drummed their mouthfingers over their voicedrums, till the sound was a rumbling storm. Six Swarm Lords had gathered to the killing field, each with nearly half a million Vanquishers, workers, and technicians, so that now literally millions of dronon raised their voices in unison, cheering the Lords of the Seventh Swarm.

Gallen knew such meetings must be impossibly rare on dronon. Battles for succession would attract only two pairs of Swarm Lords. But there had never been a battle like this, a battle where the fate of two species hung in the balance.

Above them, Lord Kintiniklintit finished his great circle, veered to attack from far away. Gallen pushed Maggie aside. His head felt clearer. Perhaps it was the nanodocs from Orick’s precious blood, but he felt less dizziness; his wounds were less swollen. Still, his leg was broken, despite Maggie’s binding. Even with a full course of nanodocs, it would have taken days or weeks to heal. Gallen could hardly stand on his one good leg.

“I have to fight,” he told Maggie.