David Farland - Lords of the Seventh Swarm

As she topped the cliff, she saw it shining among the fields ahead like something from a fairy tale, yet utterly unlike anything so … insignificant. Felph’s palace was enormous-all carved from rose-colored sandstone on three sides of a mountain. The palace gleamed like a moon, for all along the base of it, thousands of brilliant lights shone, illuminating even the dusty skies above. The walls of the palace rose perhaps a thousand meters high, and it was impossible to imagine how thick they might be. The walls weren’t perpendicular, for stone piled so high could not have supported the structure; instead the walls climbed at a steep slope, and every fifty meters would be a small road or trail carved along the exterior of the castle.

An ornate fence made of stone pillars bordered each road. On the walls above each road, gargoyles and angels were carved in bas-relief, engaging in scenes hellish and heavenly. Water cascaded over the walls in dozens of places-from a pot held by a gaggle of demons, from a cloud that served as a stool for a thoughtful angel. The water was captured and reused hundreds of times to utterly astonishing effect, for as the lights shone on the palace, the falling waters cloaked the stone in shimmering wonder.

The beast handler next to her, Dooring, had been talking almost nonstop until a few moments earlier. She almost thought of him as some artificial intelligence, its processors broken, verbally spewing out everything it knew. Maggie realized he had quit speaking so she wouldn’t be distracted by his voice on first sight of Felph’s palace. Now he stood, gesticulating wildly at the pillars and verandas, the glorious towers and the glittering stained windows.

“Look at that! They’ve got the lights on for you-and even the waterfalls. What a treat! Have you ever seen anything like it? Look at that statue! Incredible!”

“How many people live in the palace?” Maggie asked.

She imagined that this palace could easily house a million souls.

“Six,” Dooring shouted. “And a handful of us servants. Felph hardly ever sleeps in the same room twice! Oh, would you just look at that! And here comes Brightstar over the mountains behind it. Incredible!” He slapped his forehead, continuing his monologue.

Indeed, Ruin’s small dark sun was setting, and its twin star, which the locals called Brightstar, was rising gloriously over the hills.

At the base of the mountain Maggie spotted a cloud of dust. Golden worker droids shone among the dust like beetles, scurrying about. Maggie counted hundreds of droids that must have been carving these rocks for centuries.

Dooring the beast handler kicked the creature with his heels, just above its huge central eye. The florafeem thundered down. A single vaulted opening at the base of the mountain provided an entrance hundreds of meters high and at least three hundred wide.

There, in the sky, flapping his wings, was Felph’s handsome son Herm, who had come personally to Maggie’s camp to invite them to dinner, giving vague hints of a possible offer of employment. He hadn’t said what the job would consist of. Apparently to discuss such matters prematurely would flout local customs.

Herm flew just ahead of the florafeem, a brilliant glow globe in hand, and led them through the air.

Maggie felt … annoyed. All this ostentation. All this waste. On the two dozen worlds she’d visited, Maggie had never seen anything like it.

Felph was obviously vain, possibly mad. Dooring had told Maggie that Felph relied almost solely on droids for servants. Though Dooring worked for the old man, he hadn’t personally seen Felph in a dozen years. Instead, Felph’s passions in life seemed to be the study of history, and engineering his own genetically upgraded children.

If Herm, with his wings, was an example of Felph’s handiwork, she wondered at his purposes. Herm, a painfully thin man, had hair of darkest brown that framed a handsome face, and his eyes were like twin pieces of palest green ice. But most curious about him was the enormous wings, sweeping up from his back, all feathered in beer brown with splotches of white. He wore a pair of clean blue tights, and had on a nice white tunic, stiff with embroidery about the neck, cuffs, and waist. Herm seemed bright, energetic, intelligent, and he affected a slightly superior smile. He seemed to be only a slightly altered human.

But from her work with the aberlains of Fale, Maggie knew better. He’d have to be incredibly strong to fly with such mass. His bones would have to be hollow, which meant that his immune system might be vastly different from a human’s. She suspected that Felph would have simply resorted to a nanotech analog for that immune system, but she didn’t know.

More troubling than Felph’s engineering his own children was the fact that Lord Felph made Herm wear a Guide.

Maggie had worn one once, only for a few days; the memory horrified her. The artificial intelligence in the Guide linked directly to the brain, so that when Maggie wore one, she could not control her own muscles. The Guide even controlled her desires, at times, when her master wanted.

Maggie could imagine nothing a father could do that would be more cruel than to enslave his children in their own bodies.

Maggie suspected she would detest Felph. The vanity of such a man.

Yet as they thundered through the first set of walls, then rose up to one of perhaps a hundred gorgeous verandas where the spraying fountains shone, Maggie recognized one important fact: Lord Felph had money, enough money to ensure that she got the best medical help possible when she delivered her child.

So she had to wonder. Could she endure working for a man she would hate?

The florafeem thundered to the ground in a broad veranda, settling next to four other florafeems. Apparently some other guests had already arrived.

Maggie dismounted shakily, walking to the edge of the creature’s broad, gravelly back, then glancing down. It was a good three-foot drop, and in her tender condition she didn’t want to jump. She looked over her shoulder, saw half a dozen other florafeems floating over the valley. They looked like giant flowers blown on the wind, the tall pavilions gleaming like crimson and golden stamens at their centers.

Herm himself walked up and took Maggie’s hand, helped her from the beast.

Herm spoke a gracious welcome and bid the guests enter, waving under the wide stone arches toward a glittering chamber. Enormous tables held piles of food among dozens of candelabras, and several other guests had begun snacking near those tables.

Herm guided Maggie, Gallen, Orick, and Tallea to the center of the great hall, nodding as he walked toward various small knots of people. A ragged foursome of men appeared, from their dirty and tattered tan outfits and numerous weapons, to be soldiers fresh from the tangle. The group looked toward Maggie, and she inwardly cringed. Something about their eyes, their unblinking eyes, unsettled her.

“Poachers,” Herm whispered.

“What do they poach?” Maggie asked.

“Qualeewoohs,” Herm said. Maggie thought it repugnant that anyone would resort to eating a sentient alien species. As if reading her thoughts, Herm whispered. “They kill them for their spirit masks-and for any artifacts they might be carrying.”

He nodded toward a knot of men and women talking at another table, people who looked almost as dirty as the poachers. “Xenobiologists and paleontologists.”

Most of the rest of the people milling about-perhaps a dozen or two-all wore the same black tights and golden tunics that Dooring wore. Maggie recognized it as something of a servant’s uniform.

“How many people on planet?” Gallen asked.

“Maybe a hundred,” Herm answered. “At least it was close to that at last count, though doubtless some have died. Most are like those you see. Lord Felph employs a few workers, and we have some scientists and treasure hunters. Some are just recluses and madmen.”