The Golden Queen (19 page)

It was getting darker. Orick glanced up at the huge skylights, saw that they had descended below the ocean. Schools of fish swam in the green waters above them.

Far from the gates of the city, Veriasse halted the car in front of a building whose strange facade attracted Orick. The building displayed no markings to explain its purpose to passersby. Lampposts in front had glow globes attached, but the muted lights gave the place a somber appearance. To heighten the solemn atmosphere, Orick saw that there were no businesses nearby for hundreds of yards. The building was silent. A few people hurried in, some away, but all of them kept their heads low, as if to hide their identities. The building’s facade showed in bas-relief an image of a woman standing with arms outstretched. Behind her glittered a field of gold stars. The handiwork was astonishing, beautiful, but something more attracted Orick: the woman herself.

“Hey, that’s a picture of Everynne,” Orick said.

“Shhh,” Veriasse muttered. “It’s not Everynne. That is an image of Semarritte, Everynne’s mother, who was once our great judge. This is her tomb.”

Now Orick understood why the place was so quiet, so solemn.

“Why are the lights so low?” Everynne asked. “It looks as if the building is closed.” Indeed, beside the doors were two burly vanquishers, watching the entrance like ogres.

“The dronon would close the tomb, if they dared,” Veriasse said. “They want the memory of Semarritte to die with her. But too many remember her still. Too many revere her, and this confuses the dronon. Reverence for the vanquished is a concept that is alien to them.”

Orick didn’t say anything, but he doubted that anyone would revere a mere woman as much as the old man said. Semarritte was, after all, only human, but Veriasse spoke of her with an awe that Orick reserved only for God and his servants.

They got out of the car. Both Everynne and Veriasse refused to slouch and scurry to the entrance as others had. Instead, they walked tall and proud up the broad steps, toward a large ornate door. The green-skinned ogres stood silently, but when they saw Gallen, one of them reached out a hand to Gallen’s shoulder, stopping him. The guardian said, “There was a time when I served one who wore those colors.”

Gallen turned, looked up from beneath his black hood, and his lavender mask of starlight twisted in rage at being stopped, as if the ogre were some gnat that Gallen would squash. “Many things are changing,” Gallen said. “I hope you served him as well as you do your new lord.”

The ogre removed his hand from Gallen’s shoulder, and the group passed through the doors into what Orick recognized as a cathedral. The room was silent, heavily carpeted with red fabric, and the sound of a muttered word or cough did not echo back from the ceiling. They walked up an aisle between rows of pews, where a few mourners sat quietly. Most of the mourners were lords, with their glowing masks and somber robes, and Orick wondered at this. Apparently, the inside of this building was off limits to common folk. Or perhaps commoners feared to worship here.

Ahead was a great stone pulpit with what looked to be an image of the stricken Christ carved upon it. Upon the stone pulpit stood a ghostly apparition of Semarritte, speaking softly to the crowd. Her clear voice seemed to issue from her lips, saying, “The rightful duty of one who would be your leader is to become the Servant of All. We Tharrin believe that those who serve must do so in both thought and deed, subjugating all selfish desires. Any leader who does less is not worthy of either position or honor.…”

Orick listened enrapt, for the Lady Semarritte’s teachings were not like those he had ever heard from any puffed-up mayor or clan chieftain back in County Morgan. These words recalled to Orick’s mind the teachings of Christ to his disciples when they argued about who would become the greatest in the kingdom of heaven: “Let him who would be greatest among you, become the servant of all.” The hair began rising on the back of Orick’s neck, for here among the sidhe, this was indeed their church, and the Lady Semarritte had been their god.

As Orick got closer, he saw that it was not Christ at all carved upon the pulpit but a blackened skeleton fused against the stone. Here were the remains of Everynne’s mother. The flesh had burned from her bones and turned into a black, oily substance, but the whole skeleton was intact, hands clawed out protectively as if the dead woman had raised them to ward off a blow, legs tilted askew. Bits of dark hair and the chainmail netting of her mantle were fused into the stone, along with a necklace and other metal items.

This is what someone looks like after getting shot with an incendiary rifle, Orick realized. He’d seen Father Heany go down in flames back in Clere, but he had not realized the full magnitude of what the weapon could do.

The five of them lingered before the blasted remains. Veriasse knelt on one knee, and Everynne got down on both knees and wept softly over her mother’s body. Above them on the pulpit, the image of the dead queen continued her sermon for several minutes, detailing the rightful duties of a judge, pledging to fulfill those duties for as long as her people wanted her. When she finished, the image faded, and a voice floated through the hall, saying that the dead woman’s oration would be repeated in five minutes.

Veriasse touched Everynne’s shoulder and whispered, “It’s time, my daughter, my lord.” Several people got up to leave, but Veriasse walked to the back of the room, closed the inner doors to the chapel while Everynne went to the podium. When she reached the top, she pulled back her robe to expose her face, peeled away the pale blue mask.

She began speaking, reciting what Orick was sure must have been the beginning of Semarritte’s oration. “Through all the heavens, at all times, among all peoples, the greatest treasure of a nation has always been the quality and number of its good leaders. No abundance of wealth can quell the rapaciousness of a tyrant. No nation can count itself fortunate while groaning under the iron foot of war. No people can afford to tolerate corruption at the hands of a governor, whether that governor was chosen in free election or has maneuvered himself into position through influence.”

Orick’s hair bristled, and he wondered that Everynne would dare to speak so with the vanquishers out at the gates of the cathedral, but Everynne did not shrink from her duty. Instead, as she spoke she seemed to grow in size and power and majesty. She pulled off her outer robe, and beneath it she wore a pale blue gown. The light that had been shining upon the skeletal remains of Everynne’s dead mother now shone fully on her, and Everynne stood in the darkness, shining like a bolt of lightning.

Orick looked back at the pews, and these handful of mourners who had come to pay homage to the dead Semarritte now all stood, mouths agape, to see their great judge standing before them, as one raised from the dead. Some of them wept openly, and Orick watched one woman put her hand to her mouth and repeatedly cry out in astonishment.

Everynne continued. “And so you have fashioned us Tharrin to keep the peace among you, to establish order and ensure that every person is granted the right to life, liberty, and the freedom to prosper according to their best abilities.

“The rightful duty of one who would be your leader is to become the Servant of All. We Tharrin believe that those who serve must do so in both thought and deed, subjugating all selfish desires. Any leader who does less is not worthy of either position or honor.” At this point she cut the oration short, and said, “I stand before you, offering to become the leader you have sought. I am Everynne, the daughter to Semarritte, and I was born Tharrin. I seek to cast the dronon from the midst of our realm, but I cannot do it alone. Who among you will come to my aid?”

From every corner of the room, the people erupted with shouts of “I! I! I will help you!” and the proud lords in their gleaming masks rushed forward, weeping in glee like children to fall at Everynne’s knees. They knelt at her feet, reaching up their hands in adoration so that she could touch them, not daring to touch her on their own, and Everynne grasped each person’s hand firmly and thanked each lord.

And somehow, Orick the bear, who had always believed that he would become a servant of God, found himself rushing forward into the small crowd. He sat down and raised his paw, and Everynne smiled at him in surprise, tears filling her pale blue eyes. “Orick!” She laughed. “Even you?”

“I will aid you, lady, though I be the humblest of your servants,” he said firmly.

“No doubt you shall be among the most valiant,” Everynne said as she knelt to kiss his paw. And even though she had not asked it, Orick felt as if he ought to take his priestly vows of poverty and chastity.  

Chapter 11

That night, Gallen could not sleep. All night long he lay in a fever, waking in a sweat. For a time he worried about his health, but then he lay back calmly, realizing that the mantle had begun its instruction. He had been dreaming, and the dreams were memories of things that had happened to Veriasse.

He dreamed first of Fale. He had been escorting Semarritte on this world when the dronon warships fell from the sky in dark clouds. The dronon came in vast numbers, sealing off Guianne so that its residents were trapped in tunnels beneath the ocean. Guardians tried to fend them off, but the dronon were too numerous; like dark grains of sand they swept over the land.

Veriasse and Semarritte had become trapped here in Semarritte’s judgment hall. Dronon by the hundreds of thousands had surrounded the building, a black wave of warriors clambering over one another’s bodies, until at last they cleared a path so that and her Lord Escort could enter.

In his dream, Gallen struggled fiercely with the Lord Escort—landing blows on the beast’s chitinous body, ripping off one of its feelers, smashing eyes with a leaping kick. But in time he wearied, and the Lord Escort lashed forward a wing—an unprecedented move that would have availed the creature nothing in a battle with one of its own kind. But the dronon’s wing slashed through Veriasse’s belly like a saber, and suddenly he was reeling away from the battle, his entrails spilling across the floor.

The Lord Escort then rattled its wings in a thunderous roar, leapt into the air, and in one swift kick disemboweled Semarritte while Veriasse watched. The dronon vanquishers who encircled the room raised a rattling howl of congratulations. Then the Lord Escort cried to his people that Tlitkani of the dronon had become the new Lord of the Swarm, queen over all peoples both human and dronon.

Afterward, a dronon vanquisher rushed forward with an incendiary rifle, firing into Semarritte’s body. Smoke and the scent of chemical fire rose through the building. Veriasse pulled his intestines in as the world faded to gray, pinching the skin closed, unsure whether the nanodocs in his body could heal such a massive wound.

In the dream, Gallen could not feel Veriasse’s pain. He could discern the man’s thoughts, observe his actions. But the dream carried no emotional weight.

Gallen woke and thought long about the dream, wondered if there were any way that Veriasse could have defeated the dronon, and suddenly images of the planet Dronon filled his mind. He saw a brown world filled with odd plants, where insects had developed interior lungs that allowed them to grow in size far beyond anything on Earth. Dronon was a vast world, and it orbited its sun once each four Earth years. Its axis tilted at a forty-two degree angle, with the result that each year, each polar icecap would melt. During a summer, one hemisphere would bathe in perpetual daylight while the other suffered perpetual night.

As a result, the dronon were forced to migrate over vast continents with each changing season, foraging for shrublike fungi. Each hive continually competed with others for food and space, for the finest nesting sites, for water that became scarce during the dry seasons. The order of their universe was clear: expand your territory or die.

In each hive, as the first few females hatched, they would battle among themselves, fighting in order to remove the exterior ovaries from one another. The female who managed to keep her ovaries established her dominance as a future queen, and soon the others recognized her authority as a princess. She would bide her time until a Lord Escort flew in from another hive, one who would kill the reigning Lord Escort and queen, making the princess the new queen of the hive.

Those poor females who were spayed could never form the secondary sexual characteristics of a queen. They grew only to a small size, and their color remained as white as that of any grublike larvae. Their boundless energy was channeled into work, rather than procreation, and they became the most menial servants of the hive.

Among the males, a similar battle would take place, but only after the larvae had exited their cocoons as adults. Adult male vanquishers, with their flashing wings and huge battle arms, engaged in ritual combat, seeking to remove one another’s testicles, until only six males remained. These six princes would then fly to new hives, hoping to win their own kingdoms, while the neutered vanquishers remained with their hive.

A third sex often hatched without functioning sexual organs—neither male nor female. These had deformed wings and less energy than workers, but often had facile minds, suitable for solving problems. These become the technicians of the hive, the architects, counselors, and artists.

Over the eons, the queens had evolved to become more and more virile—laying more eggs, living longer lives. Only the strongest survived, and it was in the interest of the queens to root out the weak, destroy competing hives.

But among the queens, one great lady ruled each swarm. She could not begin her rule until she reached the age of one hundred and fifty dronon years. At that point, her exoskeleton would change color, bleaching from its pale wheat to a beautiful gold. If the queen survived to this age without injuries—broken appendages or a cracked exoskeleton—her offspring would gather near, carried into ecstasy at the sight of a new Golden Queen.

The Lord Escort of the hive, stricken with adoration, would pilgrimage with his Golden across the continents, seeking out the reigning Golden Queen.

The Lord Escorts for each Golden would then battle for the right to rule a swarm of one thousand hives. When one of the escorts was killed, his foe would attack the opposing queen and maim her, damaging her so that she would lose the adoration of hives. Such a queen was often allowed to cower back to her own hive and continue laying eggs until she died.

But the Lord Escort and the vanquishing Golden Queen became Lords of the Swarm. They would choreograph the great works of the hives—the migration across the vast plains of Dronon and through the reaches of space; they would choreograph battles with legions of the vanquishers as they sought to enlarge the swarm’s territory.

Gallen lay in a half sleep, and the mantle displayed battles that had been filmed between Lord Escorts. Veriasse had made a great study of the battles—had noted the various fighting stances, attack forms, the use of feelers, mandibles, serrated battle arms, and the clawed legs as weapons. He had performed autopsies on dead dronon vanquishers—had determined how much force was necessary to crush their faceted eyes, to pull off the hooked claw of a forearm, to rip out a feeler, to pry off a head. He had measured the thickness of their chitinous exoskeletons, searching for thin spots.

The dronon had few weaknesses. Their exoskeletons offered superb protection for the head, belly, and back. They were most vulnerable on the hind legs, where their respiratory orifices weakened the hip, but reaching those legs was a task—the dronon could protect themselves well from a frontal assault, and with the dronon’s flight and leaping capabilities, it was nearly impossible for a human to attack from behind.

Gallen lay for a long time, thinking about how one could engage a dronon in hand-to-hand combat with the hopes of winning. Sometimes, he would doze and wake to find himself sleepwalking, performing arcane exercises, stretching muscles he did not know that he had, leaping and kicking at imaginary foes in the quiet halls of the temple.

In one such session, Maggie came to him, half asleep herself. “What are you doing up so late?”

“I can’t sleep,” Gallen said. “Veriasse said this damned mantle would teach me when things were quiet, but it’s kept me up all night.”

Maggie simply said, “Have you tried talking to it? Just tell it to let you rest for the night.

Gallen gave the command, and immediately the mantle relinquished its lessons. He went back to bed, found himself compelled to lie next to Maggie, recognized that the mantle was whispering for him to lie beside her. “Why?” he wondered, and the answer flooded into his mind.
You are a Lord Protector now. You must have someone to protect
.

Over the next few days, Orick became inseparable from Everynne. He would disappear into his room for a few moments, and then while Everynne was speaking in a secret meeting with the masked Lords of Fale, she would suddenly turn and find him lying on the floor near her foot like some great hairy dog.

She did not mind his attentions. Few men could best a vanquisher in single battle, and she did not forget that the bear had already saved her life once. More than that, she found his presence somehow morally calming. Everynne was acutely conscious of the fact that she had been born to lead, that every facet of her appearance, even the chemical combination of her pheromones, had been designed to make her appealing to other humans.

From childhood she had been keenly aware of how easily she could manipulate people through a thousand seemingly insignificant things—by sitting when making a request of a man, she could appear more helpless and in greater need. By standing with head erect and back straight, she could more easily seem in control of any situation. By holding eye contact and softly making requests when someone hesitated to give allegiance, she could force the person to make a choice. By taking great care of her clothing and her appearance, she could make herself more desirable to men. By emphasizing the things she held in common with other women, she could convince a woman that they were sisters rather than competitors. The list was endless, and Everynne knew that her very ability to learn the art of manipulation was bred into her. Billions of people had none of her talent and as a result were born destined to become socially inept.

Orick, by not being human, should have been immune to her charms. Yet he stayed at her side, seemingly for his own purposes. Everynne wondered at his motives. Perhaps it was only the crowd. In the past two days, each of the Lords of Fale had come to her, detailing some startling atrocity committed by the dronon. A merchant told of vast assets the dronon had seized for war efforts, so that now he was poor. A mother told of a son who had disappeared. A builder told of a mass grave he’d discovered, filled with the corpses of handicapped children, or “defectives,” as the dronon called them. The tales of horror were far-reaching and personal, and Orick listened in startled silence, then would listen even more keenly as the lords told of their fondness for Everynne’s mother, told how they dreamed of her return. And though Everynne knew that her mother had never been a perfect governor, she had truly sought to be a Servant of All. There had been peace in the land, honest strivings for justice. But the dronon did not value peace or justice. Their biological imperative told them to vanquish all, then reap the spoils. To them, human lives were simply merchandise for the taking.

And if the tales that Orick heard were his motive for staying by her side, then she worried what he would think when he discovered her inadequacies.

On their first day in Guianne, Everynne collected her confidantes, and together they had devised a plan to escape from Fale. The dronon had been systematically sealing off the planet. Guards were at every gate to the Maze of Worlds, and warships were being diverted to block the skies above.

Right now, the beleaguered vanquishers were spread too thin. They could hinder Everynne from escaping, but they lacked the manpower to effectively search for her. But once their warships arrived, they would form a picket, reinforce the troops, and begin searching Fale in earnest. Everynne had to leave now.

In order to escape, Veriasse had designed a system of thrusts and parries that included three attacks: first, they would feint at another gate, forcing the dronon to send for reinforcements. Everynne’s forces would then attempt to hijack a starship. If the starship made it to hyperspace, the dronon would think she had escaped the planet. If it was destroyed, the dronon would believe she had died in the attack. In either case, they would be off their guard.

While the dronon had their support drawn off and were reeling from the belief that Everynne was on a spaceship, her forces would begin an aerial assault against the gate that led to Cyannesse. If that attack succeeded as it should, Everynne could leave.

Now, the morning of the assault, Veriasse drove up the highway in an ancient hoverbus. It was an old model—a long aluminum cab suitable for ten people, with flaring wings where the exhaust vented.

Beneath them, the highway rolled flat and smooth. For the moment, they simply looked like tourists, floating along the highway. Everynne glanced at her chronometer. It was nine in the morning, and three hundred kilometers to the south, the Lords of Fale had mobilized their workers in a ground assault at the gate to Bilung. The gate served well as a diversion, being close both to the city of Guianne and to the gate to Cyannesse.

Everynne closed her eyes and let her mantle connect to Lord Shunn’s personal intelligence via telelink. She watched his attack progress—silver fliers swept through the sky in a wedge, shooting low over the forest toward the gate, dropping a barrage of explosives along with canisters of chlorine gas, which was particularly toxic to dronon. As soon as the fireballs began erupting over the treetops, Lord Shunn’s attack force moved in.

Under cover of the trees, long-range laser weapons were nearly useless, so Shunn’s forces all wielded only incendiary rifles. No human could bear the weight of the armor needed to ward off an incendiary blast, so Shunn’s men were protected only by gas masks and lightweight heat-resistant combat fatigues. The men ran forward in loose formation, moving cautiously. Since the battle was meant only as a diversion, they were not in a hurry to engage the vanquishers.

Lord Shunn himself flew in behind on his hovercar, with its hood down, observing the battle. He glided through the trees, and only the distant smell of smoke signified that a battle had been launched. For fifteen minutes, Everynne watched the battle progress, until Lord Shunn’s troops met several dozen vanquishers. Suddenly the woods filled with fire as incendiary rifles began discharging. Flaming balls of sulfurous white whipped through the air with incredible speed.