David Farland - Lords of the Seventh Swarm

So for Aaw to leave this useless Vanquisher alive was the ultimate insult.

When at last Aaw struck the final Golden Queen, the dronon Swarms fell silent. Indeed, they were more than silent. They were unmoving, statuesque. Gallen wondered if they had died. He’d never seen a dronon in shock.

But now the entire dronon worlds stood astonished, as Cooharah and Aaw landed in the midst of the field, growing muddy from the pounding rain, and sat panting, preening their feathers.

Through all this, Orick did not arrive.

And when Maggie’s body had grown cold, and at last the dronon swarms had begun to recover from their shock enough to prostrate themselves and offer obeisance to the Qualeewoohs, then Orick’s shuttle came, through the pounding rains, and the poor bear rushed out onto the battlefield, checked Maggie’s body, sorrowed over Gallen, then bore a canteen of water to the two bedraggled birds.

Gallen took readings from the clock in his mantle. Two hours. Orick had come to the rescue two hours too late.

When Gallen removed his mantle, he sat for a long moment and rubbed his eyes.

So, there was truth to Orick’s tale. The dronon were defeated. Perhaps forever.

Gallen talked with Orick for a long while, until clouds blew in and it began to rain anew. In the shelter of the hawthorns, Orick related much of what had happened. He had gone into the tangle, retrieved the Waters of Strength, and escaped back into the tangle with Thomas, fleeing to the ship that Karthenor had loaned Felph.

Cooharah had at first rejected the Waters. “This life is not given to us for our own use,” he had said. “We exist to serve one another, nothing more. You cannot purchase my life. I give it freely.”

Yet in the end, he had agreed to accept immortality, commune more deeply with his ancestors.

“But why didn’t you drink the Waters yourself?” Gallen asked. “It could have been you fighting the dronon.”

“Och, man, after what happened to Zeus?” Orick said. “You couldn’t have paid me! Besides, I’m not one to spend eternity lording it over a bunch of dronon. I’ve got better things to do, thank you.”

Gallen asked, “What of the canteen, the one filled with the Waters? Surely the birds did not drink it all?”

“No,” Orick said. “They didn’t. I sold it to Felph. He didn’t have a recording of what had happened when Zeus drank, so he wanted to try it himself. I sold it to him cheap. I just asked him to give you and Maggie the rebirth, pretend that nothing had ever happened.”

“And what happened to Felph when he drank?” Gallen asked.

“He hasn’t, yet,” Onck answered. “He’s just held on to it.”

“For seven weeks?” Gallen said.

“l think he’s debating.” Orick grumbled. “If he drinks it, he won’t have a sample left to analyze, see if we can duplicate it. But if he keeps testing the stuff, he soon won’t have anything left to drink …”

“I see,” Gallen said, satisfied. He got up from under the tree, stood thinking for a long time. “Orick, you once told me that l should not fight, that I should cease to struggle. You said I could run from the dronon, or hide. In effect, you said that if I quit fighting, God would fight my battles. The world would go on without me.”

“I did?”

“You did,” Gallen said, grateful that he remembered anything at all from the past. “Maybe your god didn’t fight for me, but the Qualeewoohs fought in his place. Maybe you were right.”

“Are you certain it wasn’t God who fought for you?”Orick asked.

“I’ve been thinking on it. Maybe the Qualeewoohs were just His tools, in the same way that David and Joshua were His tools.”

“You think?” Gallen asked.

“And if that’s true, maybe you were right to fight, Gallen. Maybe God needs people like you.”

Gallen shook his head, uncertain. He affected his old brogue accent, putting it on now as if it were an old, favorite cloak. “Orick-right now, I don’t think I ever want to fight again. It’s a long rest I’m wanting. Certain I am, I don’t want to expose Maggie to more dangers.”

“Och.” Orick sighed. “Well, if anyone ever deserved a rest it’s you.”

“But I doubt I’ll rest easy,” Gallen said. “In a few months, maybe a year, I’ll hear of some outrage, and I’ll want to go right to it. The Lords of Tremonthin made me that way. It’s in my blood. We are our bodies. I can’t be any different. I’m afraid that sometime in the future, you’ll just be burying me again.”

“Maybe,” Orick said, “maybe not. You say you are your body, but I’ve a feeling there’s more to you than the Lords of Tremonthin know. I’d say that you’re also your body. You’re a being of spirit, too.

“Gallen, you and Maggie are good friends. I managed to win you back from the, grave once, but I don’t want to see you there again. I want you to live forever. If not here, then in the Kingdom of God.

“And if it’s a fight you’re craving, then fight the pull of your flesh, Gallen. You’ll find a sweeter victory than you’ll ever win out here in the killing fields.”

Gallen gazed down to the circle below, where the grass lay untrampled, where his body had finally succumbed, and felt that perhaps Orick was right.

He whispered, “Damn, you’ll make a handy priest someday, Orick.”

“Not a priest,” Orick said. “Just a missionary.”

They went home then, walking to Felph’s palace in a miserable, pouring rain. Gallen leaned his head back, caught droplets in his mouth, while Orick sermonized to him.

Over the next eight weeks, everyone took their ease. Gallen found that Orick was serious about his missionary work. Tallea kept her snout in the Scriptures for days on end, sitting at Maggie’s side. But Tallea wasn’t his only convert.

Orick baptized Athena in the fountains outside the palace, and even Lord Felph seemed to listen to the bear with something of an open mind, though he made no formal declarations of conversion.

And Orick began traveling about Ruin, preaching to all who would listen-poachers, scientists, madmen. It didn’t seem to matter. He made a few converts in his first two weeks, and chief among them was Felph’s personal body servant, Dooring, who came in tears and begged Gallen and Maggie for forgiveness. He admitted to being the one who’d notified the authorities as to their location. The dronon had found them because of him.

Gallen frankly forgave the man, and after that, Dooring accompanied Orick on all his trips, flying him about by florafeem. With Felph’s beautiful daughter Athena in his retinue, and Thomas to lead in singing the hymns, Orick “the baptizing bear” got a reputation for putting on quite a show, and he endeared himself to many, though he made few converts.

In his preparations to leave Ruin, he ordained Dooring to the office of High Priest, setting him in charge of all the spiritual affairs on Ruin. There was one woman Orick despaired of converting: Hera.

He spoke to her passionately and often, yet Hera remained distant. She’d asked about the manner of Zeus’s death, had heard the sad tale, and then thanked him, coldly. After that, it was as if she never really listened to a word he spoke.

Hera dared not tell Orick what so disturbed her: it was that she loved Zeus still. Despite his infidelities, despite his greed, she had loved him as a wife for many years. Would always love him.

Orick swore that Zeus had been killed by his own wickedness. And yet, and yet-how could that be? Hera wondered. Zeus was a created being. He was what Lord Felph had made. If Zeus had faults, they were not of his own creation.

It was unfair of the Qualeewooh ancestors to have judged him so harshly.