At the gate, Felph commanded the palace AI to open the doors; silently they swung outward.
Felph studied the Vanquishers. Each dronon rode a bike like nothing ever built by humans. The sleek silver machines reflected the dull red morning sun. The Vanquishers straddling them were more repulsive than Felph imagined they would be. Their black carapaces and amber wings appeared regal, but the clusters of eyes, along with the sensor whips protruding above the strikingly cruel mandibles, made them look too much like insects.
For all that, their appearance did not shake Felph so much as the casual way they held their weapons. The huge battle arms of each Vanquisher, with their serrated lower edges, looked crablike. Each arm cradled a dronon pulp pistol or incendiary rifle. The Vanquishers held the weapons as if they intended to use them.
One dronon pulled within a few meters of Felph; dozens of mouthfingers under its mandibles began clicking. A small device that seemed to be mounted to the exterior of the dronon’s skull, just above the mandibles, translated, “We seek the Lords of the Sixth Swarm, Gallen O’Day, and his Golden Queen, Maggie. Our Seekers detect her scent on your premises.”
Felph suddenly became aware of how fiercely his heart pounded. “Maggie, the Golden Queen?”
It suddenly made sense-a Lord Protector and his wife, here on the far edge of nowhere. Arachne must have known. Perhaps she’d said as much to Gallen, and in order to keep his secret, he’d murdered her.
As Felph recognized who Gallen was and why he’d come, a fierce hope began to burn within him.
I created Zeus to beat the Lords of the Swarms, Felph wanted to tell the dronon. He should be here now, to challenge your lords to Right of Charn.
But Zeus was with Gallen.
Felph looked to Hera, who stared at the Vanquishers, wonder and fear warring in her eyes. She was so beautiful, so flawless. She would make a fine Golden Queen. If only Zeus were here to fight beside her.
“Gallen and Maggie left, this morning, to work in the desert. They disappeared when you showed up.”
“They are hiding,” the dronon’s voice drummed out. “It is madness to hide from us. They dishonor their species. They will be destroyed.”
Not madness to hide, Felph wanted to say. Wisdom.
A plan began to blossom, taking solid form in his head. If the dronon found Gallen, they’d find Zeus, too.
“I think I know where they will hide. I’ll help you find them,” Felph whispered, “in exchange for a promise.”
“What do you require?” the dronon Vanquisher clicked.
“When the Lords of the Swarms challenge Gallen and Maggie to battle, I want to be there.”
In answer, the dronon Vanquisher did an unexpected thing. He put his head forward, crossing his battle arms in front of him, and bowed to Lord Felph.
“It is agreed.”
Chapter 29
Two days earlier, when Lord Felph had piloted Gallen down into the tangle, he’d simply plummeted, letting the ship use phased gravity pulses to pond the tangle beneath into pulp.
The technique had a certain brutish simplicity to it, but Gallen opted now to pilot his ship down by skill, diving into crevasses, following side tunnels as far as possible before battering through the deepest layers of growth, using his antigrav only as a last resort before skirting sideways into some new pocket. By doing this he hoped that he would not leave a visible trace as to the path he took into the tangle.
Certainly, a ship flying overhead would not be able to see where he’d landed. But the tactic also allowed him to deive far deeper into the tangle than he had on his first little excursion, taking him closer to the city, with its legendary Waters of Strength.
And by penetrating farther into the tangle, he hoped the vegetation might permanently shield his ship from dronon sensors.
He hoped it would be safe to travel in the morning. The sfuz should be sleeping, and Gallen suspected that his ship could descend into their territory faster than he could ever go on foot.
When he got five hundred meters beneath the tangle’s canopy, Gallen felt confident that his exhaust would no longer show up on infrared scanner. He stopped the craft let it hover a moment.
He addressed the others. “I think before I go any farther, I should let you know: I won’t force anyone to come with me. It’s Maggie and me the dronon want. I’m going into the tangle, but I’m willing to go alone. The rest of you can stay on the ship.”
“Och, what are you saying, Gallen?” Orick asked “Don’t try to get noble on me, you’ll just muck it up. I’m coming with you.”
“I’ll follow Orick, wherever he goes,” Tallea said.
Gallen said, “Zeus there’s no reason for you to come.…”
Zeus said nothing merely watched the bears, brow furrowed. Gallen expected Zeus to leave, despite Orick’s bold facade. If he wanted to return to Felph’s luxuries, he had only to ask. Gallen was fully prepared to give him control of the ship.
Zeus smiled wanly. “I couldn’t leave you out there alone. I don’t know much about the tangle, aside from what Athena has told me, but I should be of some help.”
Gallen hadn’t anticipated this. Half an hour earlier, Zeus had seemed ready to attack them almost without reason. Now, he wanted to help? “You really don’t need to come” Gallen said.
Zeus laughed nervously. “My friend, if anyone else were going into this tangle intent on reaching the bottom, I’d part company in a most decisive manner. But you’re a Lord Protector, seeking the Waters of Strength. You believe if you don’t find them, you’ll die. While others have sought the Waters from greed or fascination, your motives are purer. I think … you could make it. I want to be there if you do.”
Gallen said, “You’re taking a great risk.”
“Smaller than you take,” Zeus said. “The life of your wife, your child, your friends all hang in the balance.” Zeus’s eyes went unfocused, though his lips held a smile.
Gallen was forced to wonder. He went back to the pilot’s seat, began talking with the ship’s Al, letting it help pilot them down into the weave of bizarre trees, cluttered with odd growths-vines and parasitic flowers that would soon fail so far from light. Still, here in the upper branches of the tangle, life flourished-strange batlike creatures fluttered about the ship’s lights on translucent wings, eating insects, while other creatures danced away, racing along vines, leaping from one branch to another. They feared the ship.
And everywhere was water. Up above there had been rain, but the water from it ran down narrow leaves or along vines till it collected in streams or pooled in strange scallop shaped bowls-some type of parasitic plant-that grew along some of the larger tree trunks. With so much water streaming down, waterfalls cascaded through the tangle, punching holes to the realms below.
Though in places the detritus collected, creating false floors in the tangle, Gallen found that if he followed some larger rivers, he did not need to use his gravity drives topuncture holes through the ground. Nature had done the job for him.
Gallen piloted the ship for hours, picking a path deeper into the tangle, till the living plants and vines faded. The ship’s lights began to display creatures of darkness-blind animals clinging to trees, living off debris that fell from above. In spots, when Gallen’s lights brushed the path ahead, hordes of dark insects shaped like the halves of a walnut shell would die, dropping from tree limbs as if torn away; apparently they were so sensitive to light, his lanterns shocked their nervous systems.
Gallen took a torturous path down, and at five hundred meters, discovered the detritus had become so thick, he couldn’t find any more holes the size of his ship. He would either have to break through, or they would walk.
He asked Maggie’s opinion on how to proceed, and was surprised when Zeus answered, “Don’t try to take the ship any farther. The mistwives sleep down here. They might feel the struggles of the ship.”