Gallen got up, struggling to recall where he should strike on a dronon, remember the films of Lord Xim’s previous fights.
His leg felt numb from the blow it had taken, and he shook it, tried to keep limber.
He recalled that Xim was supposed to be a consummate tactician. In his first fight with Veriasse, the dronon had sliced the old man open with a wing, using an appendage that could not serve as a weapon against other dronon.
Now, Xim was fighting a battle of attrition. He had removed both Gallen’s and Veriasse’s mantles, played against their weaknesses.
Gallen stood, sweat streaming down his face. He had plenty of weaknesses. If I were the greatest warrior in the world, he wondered, what would I do now?
He cleared his mind, let the old peace settle over him. He was breathing hard, and his tongue felt dry. The dronon vanquishers were humming loud, and Xim’s wings buzzed above the crowd.
God, I love a fight, he thought. All his senses were alive, and he reveled in the energy that flowed into him.
He watched Xim buzz around the room, and he realized that Xim fought a battle of attrition because with a fully armored dronon opponent that was the only kind of battle there was. Strike at an eye cluster in this pass, rip off a wing on the next.
Xim circled the great dome, gaining speed. Gallen realized that it was a ruse. The dronon knew of Gallen’s bleeding leg, and he was waiting for the loss of blood to weaken the human.
Gallen couldn’t afford to fight this kind of battle. He was already losing.
Gallen closed his eyes, focused, and all of the sounds went away. He tried to ignore the numbness in his leg. Faintly, he tasted the sweet scent of flowers, and energy coursed through him. Maggie had retrieved the bottle of Hope, removed the stopper.
Gallen opened his eyes and looked up. Xim was diving toward him from the top of the dome—sweeping in with the sun behind him.
And suddenly Gallen understood why Veriasse had lost. He’d performed countless tests, trying to discover how much pressure it took to shatter a dronon’s exoskeleton. But he’d performed the tests by striking the skeleton of a stationary body. He’d never calculated how much force a dronon added to a blow when its body slammed into a fist at a hundred and twenty kilometers per hour.
Gallen couldn’t afford to fight a battle of attrition. He stood his ground. At the last moment, he feinted a left dodge.
Xim swerved to intercept, swung a battle arm, and Gallen veered back right, simultaneously dodging a blow and striking at the dronon’s head, putting all his force into the blow. His fist connected with a loud smack, and instantly pain flared up his arm, into his shoulder. Xim’s momentum threw Gallen back, and human and dronon rolled together in a tumult. Gallen’s arm was loose in its socket.
He rolled to his belly, climbed up, blinded by pain. He reeled in a circle, dazed, looking for Xim. Gallen suddenly spotted the dronon lord a dozen meters off, crawling away.
He raced toward the dronon. Xim swung around to meet his attack, and Gallen leapt into the air before the dronon could raise his battle arms. Gallen’s kick landed in Xim’s face, and Gallen fell backward.
He looked up. Xim wobbled feebly, raised on his hind legs, extending his battle arms in the air. There was dirt and grass all over Xim’s face, rubbed into his broken eye clusters. A thin grayish ooze dripped from a crack in Xim’s skull.
Gallen panted, scrabbled backward to get out of Xim’s reach. The dronon dropped his battle arms, rested a second.
Gallen stood up. His shoulder was dislocated, and the bones made a sickly rasping noise as they grated together. His leg was spurting blood.
Xim raised back up on his hind legs, prepared to meet Gallen’s attack. Gallen staggered forward and stopped just out of Xim’s striking range. He stood for a long moment, looking into the dronon’s eyes. Xim waved his single remaining feeler in the air. His head leaked a gray-white fluid; an eye cluster was gone; one of his rear legs was ripped. Gallen had seen a hundred men back down from a fight, and though he didn’t know what might be going on in the monster’s mind, he decided to give it one last chance.
“Beg for mercy,” Gallen said, “and I’ll spare your life.”
“Fight me!” the dronon clicked.
“If you insist.” Gallen leapt in, feinting a strike. Xim swung his battle arms, and Gallen danced back. The creature’s reaction time was slow, terribly slow.
Xim raised his battle arms again. They were wobbling, and Gallen fell back, panting.
Xim stood on his hind legs for a moment, and his battle arms waved feebly. He tired and dropped his arms. The white ooze was running thickly from his skull, and Gallen knew then that the creature was dying.
All around him, dronon vanquishers began thrumming, and the translator in Gallen’s ear whispered, “Kill him. Finish it.”
Gallen shouted at them, “You’re a morbid mob.” And he turned, advanced on the Golden. The small white royal larvae skittered away from beneath her legs.
She raised her battle arms, crossed them in surrender, and put her head to the ground. Behind him, Gallen heard clattering, glanced back. Xim toppled to the grass.
Gallen went to the Golden Queen. She kept her battle arms crossed in token of surrender.
“Under the rules for conquest, you may choose only to maim me,” the Golden said. “If you so choose, I will not fight you.”
Gallen stopped in front of her. She raised her head to look up at him. “Why should I spare you?” Gallen asked. “So you can continue to breed? So your children can challenge me?”
Her mouthfingers clicked over her voice drum. “I have already given birth to many Lord Escorts. My children will hunt you down. You cannot escape your fate.”
Gallen stared at her distantly. He stepped forward and removed Semarritte’s mantle from her head. She really did have a nice golden color.
He slammed a fist into her face.
He discovered that his wrists must have been stronger than Veriasse’s, for instead of merely gouging her, his blow cracked her head open.
All around him, the dronon raised their battle arms and clattered them together, crying, “Behold the Golden! Behold the Lords of the Swarm!”
Gallen raised his hands for silence, looked out over the assembly. The room fell quiet. “You tell them, Maggie. You’re the queen now.”
Maggie glared at the dronon and shouted, “All of you: get off our worlds!”
Gallen turned away from the carnage, wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his left hand. Around the arena, the dronons’ carapaces scraped and rattled as they evacuated the dome.
Maggie hunched over Orick. The bear was badly cut, and he breathed shallowly. Blood soaked much of his fur from groin to chin. Yet her mantle whispered to her that the nanodocs in her pack might still save him, so she forced the seven pills down his throat and waited.
Everynne was lying in a pool of blood, too, but she already had nanodocs working on her. The tiny machines were closing her wounds, had slowed the bleeding. There was nothing more that Maggie could do.
Gallen came and threw Semarritte’s mantle down at Maggie’s feet, then sat and petted Orick’s snout. Maggie picked up the mantle, held it under her arm. All around them the room rustled as dronon fled the premises, and within five minutes, they sat alone on the grass. The sun was setting out on the horizon, and shadows lengthened. From here, she could not see the vast sea of molten glass on the omni-mind’s surface, only the other domes nearby. Overhead the stars shone more fiercely than any she had ever seen.
Gallen went to Veriasse’s pack, got some water, and gave drinks first to Everynne, then to Orick. He bandaged his own leg, and had Maggie pop his shoulder back into its socket. Then he sat beside Maggie and held her hand for a long time, neither of them speaking, except once when Gallen said, “Oh, my, look at that!”
She looked up just in time to see a falling star. A moment later, dronon ships began streaming away in a solid convoy.
After an hou
r, both Everynne and Orick were still breathing deeply. The nanodocs had closed their wounds, and Maggie’s mantle whispered to her that it was a good sign. Both of them would probably survive.
Maggie sat still for a long time, then began crying. Gallen held her for awhile, and said, “I’m really tired. Do you think it gets cold here at night? Should we get some blankets for these two? Build a fire?”
“Och, you’re kidding me, aren’t you Gallen?” Maggie said. “You know this place has to have heaters in it. I’m sure it won’t get cold.”
“Heaters?” Gallen asked. “What’s a heater?”
Maggie slapped him, thinking he must surely be joking, but then she looked deeper into his eyes, and she wasn’t sure. Could he have learned so much in the past week and still never have heard of a heater?
He laughed at her confusion. “So, are you going to put that mantle on, or aren’t you?”
“I don’t know, come to think of it,” Maggie said. “There’s no one here making me wear it. To tell the truth, I sort of like learning slow. I could put it on and learn everything there is to know at once, but it seems to me that that would be sort of like eating all the desserts you would ever want in your life all in one day—if you take my meaning.”
“Aye,” Gallen said. “It does sound nasty.”
“Besides,” Maggie said, “it belongs to Everynne.”
“That it does.” Gallen sighed. “Even if she doesn’t want it.”
He got up, walked away in the darkness, and Maggie thought he’d gone to get his bedroll, but a moment later she heard him digging in the dirt.
Gallen had a wavy-bladed dagger, and he used it to scrape a long, shallow hole in the ground. Then he put Veriasse in, covered him with clumps of grass and a bit of dirt. Maggie went and stood beside Gallen. He gazed down at the grave for a long time and asked, “Do you think there’s a heaven?”
Maggie sighed. “It’s damned possible.”
Gallen said, “If there’s a heaven, I think Veriasse will find himself guarding the gates. You know, keeping out the rabble.”
“Aye, he’d like that job,” Maggie agreed.
Gallen walked over to a good spot of grass, then lay on his back, his hands folded behind his head, and stared up at the stars through the dome. The last of the dronon ships had left.
Gallen looked like some country boy back in Tihrglas.
“Gallen,” Maggie said, “what are you going to do when you get home?” She didn’t ask him to include her in his plans. She didn’t intend to go back, and even though they’d spoken of finding a world together, she didn’t know what he might be thinking now. She wanted him to come with her voluntarily.
“I’ve been thinking. It’s been a long time since I’ve gone fishing, and I’ve got a craving for salmon. I think that first I’ll go fishing in Forrest’s Creek. Then I’m going to travel for a bit, see the world.”
“And when you’re done?”
“Well, I don’t know. Tihrglas is sort of a quiet place. I could grow old there, sit in a rocker …” He looked up into her eyes. “But I don’t think I could be happy for more than a day or two, lazing about like that. Besides, there’s this woman I know, and life would be … dreary without her.”
Maggie smiled, lay down beside him, felt the warmth of his chest against her breasts. He took her face in his hand, kissed her long and deeply. When he finished, he whispered, “You’ve got no family left back in Clere, but I’ve got my mother to take care of. I need to go home, say good-bye, hire someone to watch after her at the very least. And I’ll need to make trips home from time to time, to be sure she’s okay.”
“Of course, you couldn’t leave her there forever alone,” Maggie said. “You can just tell her that you’re working, guarding ships for some merchant. Then you can stop back and see her once in awhile.”
Gallen nodded, closed his eyes. Maggie lay with him for a long time, and he fell asleep. Part of her was angry with him for sleeping, but the more sensible part said, “Ah, poor boy, he needs his sleep. It’s been a long week, and he’s exhausted.”
Yet Maggie could not rest. She checked on Orick and Everynne. Both were resting peacefully, and she washed them off a bit, then sat on the grass, looked at the silver mantle. It had thousands of tiny silver disks woven together in the chain mail. They were smaller than the disks she had seen on any other mantle, and she realized that they were made using a higher technology.
At long last, she could stand the temptation no more, and she put on the mantle, felt the cool weight of the chains running down the length of her back, over her shoulders, and between her breasts.
For an endless moment, she waited, expecting the mantle to take her, ravage her with light as the Guide had. Yet at the same time, she waited in stark terror.
She tried to clear her mind, wipe away that fear, but the knowledge never came. Nothing happened.
At last, when she was ready to throw the mantle away in disgust, a woman came to her in a vision. She had long dark hair and skin as smooth as cream. Every line of her form was perfect. Maggie did not have to beg her name.
“Your brain waves do not match mine,” Semarritte said. “I can bond with you, and you will gain some use of the omni-mind, but like the dronon before you, your ability to control the device will be impaired. Still, I am loath to take you, if you fear me so. What do you want of me?”
“I want a home,” Maggie said. “You know everything about ten thousand worlds. I thought, perhaps I could learn of them.”
Semarritte reached out a finger, touched Maggie between the eyes. She felt a strange dizziness, and Semarritte pulled her finger away. Her demeanor changed. She looked at Maggie with a new understanding. “You would not be satisfied if I taught you all that I know about every world. You will only be happy if you go to each world and learn about it for yourself.”
“That’s right,” Maggie said.
“So you are not searching for a world for yourself. You are searching for a world where you can be happy with your love, Gallen. I am not sure that such a world exists.”
“But where should I start?”
“Tremonthin.” Semarritte laughed softly. “There you can learn much, and Gallen will find his abilities sorely tested.”
“Thank you,” Maggie said, and she removed the mantle. Almost immediately, the vision seemed odd to her, like a dream that is forgotten upon waking, and she wondered if she had imagined it. She went to sleep beside Gallen, and he threw his arm over her protectively.
Chapter 22
For ten days, Gallen and Maggie nursed Orick and Everynne, watching them recover. In that time, many people began to arrive from distant worlds, ambassadors and powerful lords who celebrated the end of dronon rule. The first to come were Tharrin, delegates from distant parts of three galaxies who simply appeared the next morning on the road in front of the palace. They had come through their own gates. There were dozens of them—men and women with an eerie presence, a sense of light and peace that filled the air around them.
Gallen asked several of them to help clean up Everynne and Orick and move them to beds in the palace. Several Tharrin gingerly carried the two inside, and the physicians ministered to their wounds behind closed doors, then said that both would be up and about soon.
Afterward, the Tharrin came before Gallen and Maggie, requesting audience. They retired to a quiet chamber of the palace, and a powerful man named Lord Meron spoke with Maggie soberly. He was a tall man, with a barrel for a chest, long, flowing brown hair, and penetrating green eyes. He took Maggie’s hand, looked into her face.
“You know,” he reasoned, “it is not in the best interests of your people for you to try to claim the omni-mind.”
“I know,” Maggie answered. “I never wanted the thing in the first place. Gallen and I only won it by accident.”
Meron patted her hand. “Still, you won it, and the dronon will hold you accountable.”
“Can’t I just give it away?” Maggie asked. “Give it bac
k to Everynne?”
“The ornni-mind you can give to Everynne,” Meron said, “but the burden of ruling the dronon now belongs to you. They perceive you as their Great Queen, and they will seek counsel from you. If they do not receive guidance, their swarm will be overwhelmed by others.”
Meron did not say it, so Maggie said it for him. “Still, they’ll try to kill me, won’t they?”
Meron nodded slightly in assent. “We can set barriers between them and you, protect you. We’ve already begun moving the omni-mind from orbit, and we’ll hide it so they can’t easily regain control of it. But you, you will need to hide yourself, keep moving from world to world, as Semarritte did.”
“How am I supposed to hide from the dronon and lead them at the same time?” Maggie asked.
“You can appoint a regent, someone to rule in your stead.”
“Everynne?” Maggie asked.
Meron nodded. “She’ll do. In a way, you will be doing her a great favor. The dronon will not perceive her as a target, and she will be free to reign without fear.”
Maggie nodded thoughtfully, and Gallen saw that they had won a mixed bag of goods. Gallen patted Maggie’s shoulder, whispered, “It will be all right. We can make the best of it.”
“Och, sure,” she said. “I wanted to visit other worlds anyway. This will just keep a fire under my toes, give me a little more incentive.”
By that evening, Everynne and Orick were both able to sit up and take a bit of food, and Everynne began directing the withdrawal of dronon hives from the occupied worlds.
Over the next few days, delegates from many worlds continued to gather. The omni-mind soon began to fill with joyous people, and it became as crowded as any inn during the Autumn Fair at Baille Sean.
And in that time, Everynne grieved for Veriasse, and put on Semarritte’s mantle for the first time.
It was on the fourth evening, just after sunset. The dronon had all left, and a few hundred dignitaries had arrived on the omni-mind. But Everynne did not invite them to her investiture. She planned a public ceremony for later, but for the moment she met with Orick, Gallen, and Maggie in private. “You three battled for me across the worlds. You helped me win this moment, and I owe you my life. I want you to come with me now, to witness the death of Everynne and the rebirth of Semarritte.”
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