The Golden Queen

by David Farland

  By evening, Maggie’s work allowed her to isolate a defective gene and thus learn the gene’s purpose in the great act of controlling the development of dronons.

  The dronon technicians congratulated her and rewarded her by letting her work late. Her Guide fed her a sense of rapture, and she felt thrilled to be engaged in such a great and noble cause. Thus it was that she finally stumbled to her cubicle.

  She opened the window, smelled the fresh night air, listened to the sound of the river lapping against the living walls of the city. A hundred thousand stars filled the night sky like white sand, and she looked up at a great swirling galaxy, wondering at its beauty.

  She set the temperature of her bed higher, took a quick shower, then put on a thin robe and lay down to sleep. Out in the hall, she could hear the comforting sound of a dronon vanquisher’s feet clicking as it patrolled the hallways of her sleeping quarters.

  In the middle of the night, Maggie woke to a consuming lust that rolled over her in waves. She knew Avik was coming, and she did not think she could fight the Guide’s commands anymore.

  She was lying on her stomach, and the air stirred behind her. She realized that Avik must already have entered the room; the light did not go on, but she felt the weight of his body as he climbed on the bed. He moved quickly. She could hear his heavy breathing, and feel his weight as he straddled her back.

  She whimpered softly. He pulled at the Guide on her head, thrust what felt like a chisel against the base of her neck. There was a searing pain, and hot blood spurted down her neck, and suddenly she was free from the Guide.

  Maggie’s only thought was that Avik had decided to kill her. She screamed, twisted to her side so that she could wrestle the knife away.

  Gallen sat atop her, knife in hand, lit only by the starlight shining from the window. He thrust the Guide in a sack, then hit the sack sharply against the wall so that it made a sickly crunching sound, like breaking bones.

  Maggie’s head was reeling from fatigue, from a sudden overwhelming sadness. She couldn’t think what was happening. “Get out,” she whispered. “Avik is coming.”

  “Who is Avik?” Gallen whispered.

  “A rapist,” Maggie said, and behind Gallen the door whispered open. Light from the corridor shone in. Gallen surged from the bed so quickly that Maggie hardly saw him move. He seemed almost to fly across the room, a black shadow in his robes, a gleaming silver knife in his hand.

  Gallen’s knife fell just as Avik began to cry out. Gallen tossed the body to the floor with a thud.

  In the corridor outside her door, the dronon guard shouted and scrabbled to come to Maggie’s rescue.

  Gallen slammed the door and locked it, saying, “Quick! Out the window! Jump in the water!”

  Maggie staggered off the bed; horror overwhelmed her—not just horror at the thought of the dronon guard racing to the door, but a horror at all that had happened here.

  In one instant, she realized what kind of work she had been engaged in, and an image flashed in her mind—a vision of the bloated sacklike mothers she had helped engineer, the remembered smell of dronon body parts stacked like cordwood in bins.

  Her hands felt filthy; her entire skin felt filthy, and Maggie dropped to her knees and simultaneously cried from the core of her soul and tried to keep from retching up her dinner.

  With a squeal of rending metal, the dronon guard hit the door, peeled it back with one chitinous claw, tearing it from its hinges. It held its black incendiary rod forward, pushed it through the door, and Maggie could see the wicked serrated edges on its forward battle arms. Gallen and the beast were dancing shadows in the light thrown from the corridor. As Gallen rushed to the torn door, the dronon’s wings buzzed in anticipation.

  Gallen grabbed the dronon’s incendiary rod, twisted it away and spun, firing through the rent door. He was far too close to shoot the weapon, and Maggie hoped that the thin metal door would shield them from the heat.

  The chitinous black flesh of the guard squealed as its body temperature rose above boiling, and smoke roiled from its carapace and crawled along the ceiling. It became a blazing pillar of white fire. Intense heat filled the room, and the broken door caught flame. Gallen threw up his arms and staggered back to her.

  Somewhere in the building, an alarm sounded. Gallen threw his robe over Maggie’s face. She struggled up, thinking that they would die any moment, but Gallen scooped her into his arms and staggered to the window.

  “I can’t …” Maggie cried, weeping bitterly.

  Gallen pushed her out. The building was sloped, and for a moment she slid out in the darkness through air that felt pleasantly icy, then hit the black water. It was far colder than she would have guessed. She thrashed vigorously and floundered for a moment, found herself underwater. She bobbed to the surface again and called for help. She looked up. Gallen was clinging precariously to the windowsill like a spider, and she wondered if he had somehow gotten stuck, then he splashed into the water ten feet away. Maggie thrashed her legs, went under again. A moment later, Gallen grasped her neck.

  He pulled her to the surface, holding her head up from behind. She kept struggling and tried to spin, grab him. “Help! I can’t swim!”

  “Can’t swim?” Gallen asked. “Your father and brothers all drowned. I’d think you’d learn to swim.”

  Maggie gasped, part from the cold, part from the fear that she would slip under again. Gallen reached around, put something in her mouth. It felt like the mouthpiece to a flute, but it was attached to two small bottles.

  “Breath in and out through this,” Gallen panted. “It’s an oxygen exchanger. It recycles air. As long as you breathe through this, it doesn’t matter if your head goes underwater. In a minute, I’ll start pulling you to shore. We will have to dive underwater. Don’t fight me.” Maggie tried breathing through the machine. She had to exert extra force to inhale, as if she were breathing through heavy cloth.

  Gallen fumbled to put on his own oxygen exchanger, then dove and began pulling her toward shore. He did not try to hurry, just made a leisurely swim of it, so that by the time they came up, they were far downstream from Toohkansay and had rounded a bend in the river. The lights from the city gleamed over the water, and a lighted barge sailed past them, heading downriver. Gallen swam to the mouth of a small creek, and they waded upstream till they reached a bridge that arched above them darkly, shutting out the powdered light of the stars.

  Under the bridge, Gallen stepped from the water, pulling Maggie after him. He bent and opened a cloth sack that was lying in some tall grass, pulled out a single blanket. Maggie was shivering vigorously, shaking from more than the chill night air. Everything that had happened to her over the past few days slammed into her like a giant fist.

  “I’m sorry,” she cried, feeling ill to the core of her soul. “I’m so sorry.” She wanted to explain why she was so sorry but did not know where to begin. She was so cold, she could not feel her fingers. Gallen wrapped the blanket around her; he was shivering violently. She wrapped her arms around him so they could share the blanket.

  “You—you had this planned?” she asked between chattering teeth. His golden hair gleamed in the starlight, and she could make out little of his features. The brackish odor of the river was heavy on them both.

  “Aye,” Gallen said. “I’ve got some food in the pack, dry clothes. I found a trail along this creek. We can follow it up into the hills, then circle back north of town to where Orick and I set camp. I think we should stay off the road.”

  The blackness still hung over Maggie, and every few moments the images of her work over the past few days would flash in her mind. The demented gleam in Avik’s eye. Sorting the tagged feelers of the dead dronons, the images of the twisted people she had built.

  There were no signs of pursuit, but she was sure that the dronons would come after them soon.

  The cold, the fear, the darkness of it all was too much for Maggie, and she sank to her knees. Wild vetch grew in a tangled ma
ss here in the shadow of the bridge.

  Gallen knelt, hugging her to keep her warm.

  “Everynne?” Maggie stammered, and it seemed to her that her thoughts were now unnaturally clear, bright and well-defined, like the chemical fire from an incendiary rifle.

  “We found her this morning,” Gallen said. “She was heading north for another gate. The dronons were on her trail. She plans to fight them. She asked us to come with her, but …”

  Maggie looked up, studied his face. It caught only the slightest touch of starlight, and she could not see his eyes. But one thing was clear: he could have gone with Everynne, but Gallen had chosen to stay and rescue Maggie.

  She leaned her shivering body against Gallen, felt the firm muscles beneath his wet shirt. His breath warmed her neck. She realized he’d planned the escape in every detail: two sets of dry clothes, two oxygen exchangers. But only one blanket. He’d planned to share this moment with her.

  The residual emotions stimulated by the Guide were still affecting her somewhat. The night before, she’d staved off Avik’s advances by fantasizing about Gallen, and now she found that an edge of lust still lingered.

  Maggie was painfully aware of her thin nightgown, her nipples tight, protruding against the hairs of Gallen’s chest. He shivered. She wrapped both hands around his neck, kissed him firmly on the mouth. Gallen pulled away slightly, gasped as if surprised by her action.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked, aware that he was shaking harder. She recognized it for what it was. He was shaking with desire. “Don’t you want this?”

  “You’re still too young,” Gallen said, his voice husky.

  She grew so angry, she wanted to hit him. “We don’t all age at the same rate, and some things make you old before your time,” she said. “Watching your family die, that ages you! Working—working day and night just to stay alive, that ages you. Wearing a Guide—hell, Gallen, I, I can’t even begin to tell you what that thing did to me. It’s like a vice, crushing you. It teaches you and it rapes you all at the same time, because the things it teaches you shatter all of your deepest hopes—and if it didn’t play games with you and make you feel like you were in heaven, you would gladly cut your own head off to be rid of it!”

  Maggie began sobbing and trembling. She imagined that she could feel the dronons’ black sensor whips on her arms, cold and rough like cornstalks, fouling her. “Gallen, you don’t even begin to understand what kind of place we live in—”

  “I know—” Gallen said. “I put on a teaching machine in the city. It taught me.”

  “Did it teach you about the dronon, about their plans?”

  “No,” Gallen admitted. “The teacher only showed me how the dronon conquered this world.”

  “In other words, this teacher taught you only what the dronon want you to know!”

  Maggie was shivering and angry. Gallen put his arm around her, and she desperately wanted to be loved, to be comforted, for at that moment, it seemed that love was the only token that could be put on the scale that might balance out all the pain and despair that threatened to overwhelm her. Even then, she wasn’t certain that love would be quite enough.

  At that moment, something touched her back, and Maggie realized that Gallen held something long and hard in his hand. She reached around with her palm and touched the incendiary rod. Amazingly, he had managed to carry both it and her through the water.

  And in that moment, she knew what else she needed to balance out her pain. Revenge.

  “You said Everynne plans to overthrow the dronon,” Maggie whispered. “Do you have any idea what her plans are?”

  “No,” Gallen admitted, “but I know where her gate is.”

  Maggie nodded softly and whispered, “Let’s go.”

  But at that moment, a great circle of light shone on the bridge above them. The bridge rumbled and shook, so that bits of dirt rained down.

  In horror, Galled clapped a hand over Maggie’s mouth. She could think only one thing: they found us!

  Overhead, a voice sounded from the sky. “You there: put up your hands!”

  Chapter 10

  The light shined all around the bridge, bathing every grass blade in a brilliant glow. Gravity waves shook the bridge, making it thunder and vibrate so that bits of dirt and paint rained down. Maggie hugged Gallen. Overhead, Gallen heard someone shout, “I’m not armed! I’m not armed!”

  Someone’s up there, Gallen realized.

  “I was only out for some exercise,” a man called. “There is no harm in that.” Gallen recognized the voice. Veriasse.

  The flier hovered nearer. “Citizen, have you seen anyone pass you on the road?”

  “Indeed,” Veriasse said. “A magcar flashed past me not five minutes ago.”

  “Can you describe its occupants?”

  “It carried only two—one was a woman. I cannot be sure of the sex of the driver.”

  Without another word, the flier darted south. Gallen peeked out and saw a second white, saucer-shaped flier that had been zigzagging over the far side of the river do likewise.

  Veriasse whispered, “Gallen? Maggie?”

  “Down here.” Gallen started to climb up. “What are you doing back? I thought you were gone?”

  “Shhh … talk softer. The gate we sought was guarded, so Everynne and I were forced to retreat. Don’t climb up here. The night scopes on the vanquisher’s flier can spot a man at forty miles. It is likely that I am being watched. Stay hidden and speak softly. The fliers can discern loud sounds, but softer sounds are masked by the fluctuation of air molecules that are disturbed by the fliers’ gravity waves. I’ll meet you at your camp at dawn. For now, follow the creek, keeping under heavy cover, then circle back through the woods. As an information manager for Fale, I’ve taken the liberty of issuing you false identifications. If you are captured, feign innocence. You will not be harmed.”

  “I wondered how I got credits on that empty chip,” Gallen whispered. “I knew I had a hidden ally.”

  “Good luck,” Veriasse whispered, and he hurried away.

  Gallen led Maggie through the ravine into the hills. They crept under the starlight, more anxious to keep under cover than make good time. They reached camp before dawn, so they took shelter in a deep grotto to sleep.

  At dawn, Veriasse woke them with a whistle. He stood at the top of a small rise, holding three bundles tied with string. He was gazing north. It took Gallen a second to realize that Veriasse was calling to Everynne and Orick. Gallen got up and stretched. In the distance, he could discern Everynne and Orick making their way through the woods. He wondered at the old man’s uncanny ability to walk softly in such heavy growth, to find them no matter where they hid.

  Gallen shook Maggie awake, then walked up the rise. “Thank you again for your help last night, Veriasse. How did you know we were under the bridge?”

  “I watched you from a distance,” Veriasse said. “I saw you enter Maggie’s room and effect her escape. I was impressed at the last, when you closed her window as you leapt out. I’m sure that it confused the guards, forcing them to search for you within the compound. In fact, they are probably still concentrating their main search inside. Anyway, I saw you leap into the river, and by gauging the flow of the current was able to guess where you would exit. I would say that you planned your escape fairly well, although your lack of education was almost your undoing.”

  “In what way?” Gallen asked, perplexed.

  “You didn’t know about the capabilities of modern pursuit vehicles. That was my fault, for not warning you. But you also tried to beat the motion detectors. I suspected you would, so I went to Maggie’s window and put jammers down before you arrived.”

  “You mean you were there?”

  “Just for a moment.”

  “Why didn’t you rescue Maggie yourself?”

  “And expose myself to unnecessary hazards? As long as you were willing to take the major risk, it seemed reasonable to let you. Besides, if you had failed, you w
ould have needed me to rescue you both.”

  Gallen stared at the ground, annoyed. Veriasse’s argument made sense, but an hour ago Gallen had felt like a hero. Now he felt like a child who had been caught doing something stupid. The older man must have guessed what he was thinking. “You are a talented and courageous young man. I’d like to imagine that I was as good when I was your age, but I was not. I have trained many guardians in my time. Would you like to be one of them?”

  Gallen nodded.

  Veriasse began unwrapping his bundles. He had brought a black cloak for Gallen, with black boots and gloves and a lavender mask. The outfit bore two scabbards, one for an incendiary rifle. Gallen stared at them in awe, for it was the attire he had seen worn not five nights ago by a man he had thought to be a sidhe.

  “Those are the clothes of a Lord of Fale, but who wears these colors?” Gallen asked.

  “I wore these colors when I was young,” Veriasse said. “They were my colors as Lord Protector. Lord Oboforron purchased them from me a few years back, but he was executed by the dronon recently, so I bought the title back last night. I told you I had issued you a new identity. You will need clothes to match the part. Put on the robe.”

  Gallen put on the outfit. The boots shrunk around his feet as soon as he pulled them on, and he robe seemed massive, thick enough to foil a dagger blow, but was actually very light and comfortable. There was some type of metal padding in the gloves on the knuckles and at the palm and edge of the hand. Gallen imagined that if he landed a blow while wearing the gloves, it would be devastating. He strapped on the weapons.

  With the outfit was a personal intelligence, a fine net with many triangles of silver. Gallen hesitated to put it on, for he had never worn a mantle. He was becoming familiar enough with personal intelligences that he did not know if he wanted to trust this one, but Veriasse urged, “Go ahead. It will whisper the intricacies of the protector’s art for you, and it can teach you much that will be of value.”