Lords of the Seventh Swarm

by David Farland

  “What’s wrong, don’t you want to baptize me?” Tallea asked.

  “Well, like I said, it’s a sign of willingness to keep God’s commandments—”

  “Which ones?” Tallea asked. “To love one another, even as we love ourselves? Or the Ten Commandments? I remember all ten. I don’t lie or steal. I’ve killed a few folks, but I can give that up—”

  “Well, uh—” Orick scrambled for an answer.

  “Won’t you baptize me?” Tallea asked. “Please? I’ll do it—I’ll do whatever you ask!”

  Orick hadn’t anticipated this. He’d sort of thought that he’d have to beg and wheedle and convince Tallea of her need for baptism. Then they’d maybe go back to Tihrglas and find a priest to do it proper. He’d imagined it would take weeks and months—maybe years—before Tallea would develop enough faith to concede to the need for baptism. He hadn’t thought she’d convert in a matter of two days, then come demanding it from him like this. “It’s not so easy. Only some folks have authority to baptize—priests and whatnot.”

  “But you wanted to be a priest!” Tallea said, hopefully. “Don’t you have even a little bit of authority?”

  “Well,” he conceded, “the Tome teaches against it, but then the Tome teaches against a lot of things, and not everyone believes the Tome as much as I do.

  “Back on Tihrglas, in some cases—like when infants are stillborn—an attendant will baptize, then have the act ratified by a priest, later. Some people teach that in an emergency, anyone can baptize—”

  “Isn’t this an emergency, Orick?” Tallea’s eyes were so insistent, so full of hope. “There’s a pond by the cliff. You could do it there.”

  Orick wondered. He felt that God had called him to this work, had made him Missionary to the Cosmos. And if God had called him, didn’t that constitute some authority’?

  Certainly God wouldn’t demand that he take every baptismal candidate back to Tihrglas for a dunking. He’d be so much afoot, he’d never get any work done. No, Taliea was right. She needed baptism, and he needed to do it. Like John the Baptist, crying repentance out in the wilderness.

  The Great Tangle of Ruin would be Orick’s wilderness, and the pond here in these lightless regions would be his River Jordan.

  Why, if only I had some locusts and wild honey to eat, Orick thought, I’d be another John. Certainly, even John the Baptist had never envisioned anything like this.

  “All right,” Orick said, “for thus it becometh us, to fulfill all righteousness.”

  It seemed a very sacred and dignified moment, as Tallea carried her glow globe in her teeth, to the back of this tunnel, and set it beside the still waters, beneath a rock, so that the pressure would make the glow globe stay lit.

  There, they watched the ripples on the pond’s surface, the light reflecting off them, onto the stone cliff above. They listened to the perfect stillness around them, and Orick talked to Tallea about repentance, about her need to continue the struggle to become better with each day of her life. Indeed, he hardly felt she needed the talk. She’d already shown that she would give her life for others, had been adjudged worthy of a second life by the Lords of Tremonthin—a very special tribute to the life she’d lived.

  Orick knew hundreds of baptized scoundrels back on Tihrglas who would never be her equal as a person. For her, the baptism seemed little more than a formality for her entrance into heaven, and Orick felt it a great honor to do this.

  So when he finished speaking to her, he had her offer a brief but heartfelt prayer, then they both climbed into the water, swam about.

  The pond was deep and cool—the clear water disappearing somewhere into the rocks far out of sight. For a moment, Orick feared that some huge creature might infest the pool. Little blind fishes swam in it, along with some of Ruin’s water insects. The water was tinted by bluish green algae, a soft and vibrant color. It smelled of some strange, earthy minerals.

  Orick had never considered how he might baptize someone. He’d seen priests do it—gripping the candidate’s hands and having them lean backward into the water. But neither he nor Tallea had hands, and both of them floated higher in the water than did a human.

  After floundering about for a minute, Orick decided there was nothing for it but to put his paws on Tallea’s back and push her under, so he offered a brief prayer, “Having been commissioned of Jesus Christ, I baptize you in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen.”

  Then he shoved her down with all his weight, until he felt certain she’d been submerged. He let her up, and she splashed about, gasping for air, spattering droplets of water all over him.

  She kissed him, licking his wet muzzle, and Orick kissed her in return, so full of love and gratitude and hope, he could express it no other way.

  Then, something strange and wonderful happened: Orick felt his lips begin to burn, as if they were on fire, and his heart pounded hard.

  Tallea must have felt it too, for she got a panicked look in her eye, and she swam toward shore.

  Then, everywhere, every cell in Orick’s body felt as if it burst into flame at once. It was not an uncomfortable feeling. In fact, Orick felt oddly at peace.

  Yet he was burning.

  He wondered if the water had begun to heat and boil for some inexplicable reason, and he began dog paddling. And the burning grew hotter, flaming.

  The words of John the Baptist came to mind: “I indeed baptize you with water, but one comes after me, whose shoes latchet I am not worthy to unloose, and he shall baptize you with fire, and with the Holy Ghost.”

  Then Orick felt as if he were consumed in flame, and he heard Tallea cry out, as if in pain.

  Never, never in all his years, had Orick had an experience like this. Never had he imagined it.

  He felt his own spirit within him, like some dark force, twisting within his body, seeking escape. He opened his mouth, and cried, “Father, save me!”

  He wondered if this was the judgment of God. He wondered if God would punish him for his temerity in baptizing Tallea without holding the priesthood. He felt—he felt as if he were under the judgment of God, and that any moment he might be burned to a crisp or ripped apart.

  “Father, forgive me!” Orick groaned in fear.

  He looked up above him.

  In the darkness, at the top of the cave, a green light shone. A bird of emerald flames winged overhead in a swift pass. It had emerged from solid rock, and it disappeared into the ceiling. Then reappeared and wheeled, swooping lower.

  And Orick recalled. The bird of light. The Holy Ghost descending upon Jesus in the form of a dove.

  Orick realized that something divine and marvelous was happening. He’d never felt as he did now. He’d never heard of anyone back on Tihrgias having such an experience.

  He was both terrified and grateful at the same time.

  This is my judgment day, Orick realized. This is the end. Any moment, the spirit would either take him to greater heights, or it would destroy him completely.

  There were those at Obhiann Abbey who claimed that one could not look God in the face and live. Yet others argued that it could only be done if one were transformed, made holy.

  Orick gazed upward steadfastly, knowing that such a moment was at hand. “Forgive me, Father,” he whispered. “Transform me. I seek no harm. I will do no evil, now and forever.”

  Then the spirit came, hovering over him on wings of green light, and Orick gazed steadfastly into its eyes for the space of half a heartbeat.

  The fires within him raged, and he felt as if he would melt in the presence of this manifestation.

  The bird of light whispered to Orick’s mind, “So be it.”

  And as feverishly as the burning had begun a moment before, now the moment passed, and the bird of light dissipated, like a mist under the morning skies, and Orick felt a profound peace, like nothing he’d ever experienced in his life.

  Tallea had paddled to the shore, and now she sat in the water, looking upw
ard where the manifestation had been.

  “Does this always happen?” she asked, panting hard, looking to the top of the cave where the bird had been.

  Orick paddled beside her, marveling at the deep and abiding sense of peace he felt.

  “Hardly ever,” he answered, wondering.

  God had forgiven him, he realized. God had allowed him to baptize Tallea, and had sent His messenger to let Orick know that the ordinance was accepted.

  For a long time, neither he nor Tallea spoke. Instead, they rolled about in the pond for several long moments, kissing playfully, gazing into one another’s dark eyes, then climbed back onto the ground and just sat, nuzzling. Orick licked the water from her face, and she did the same for him, until at last they sat, began talking low.

  Tallea told Orick of her childhood, her dark past raised as a Caldurian warrior, trained in a creche of stone with bars of steel by harsh swordsmen, enslaved by her love for her masters.

  She spoke of sleeping in dark towers on nights when the wind whipped the ragged banners, snapping them in the blackness, and told of the cold rains that skittered against the stones of the guard towers where she stood watch, and said how she would gaze down on the village below and see the glow of firelight in some window, and wish desperately for a place inside, a place safe and warm, where people would accept a child who was not quite human as a beloved daughter, not just a tool to be wielded.

  She felt that love now, that acceptance, and Orick did too, more profoundly than he had ever imagined possible.

  Tallea talked of her hopes for the future, her love for Orick that felt so much deeper, so much easier to come by, than the compulsions that drove her to serve her masters, and she thanked him for freeing her.

  So they rested, dripping and cold, speaking words of hope and comfort.

  Yet something nagged at Orick’s mind, something odd. He kept recalling the bird of light, and wondering. It had not looked much at all like a dove.

  It had looked … he decided, like a Qualeewooh.

  Chapter 39

  Maggie opened her eyes. She hadn’t heard the ground shake for a while. She wondered how long it had been since Gallen left. She finally realized she could simply ask her mantle the time; silently she questioned the mantle’s AI.

  “It is 2:2l P.M.,” her mantle answered.

  When did Gallen leave? she asked.

  “At 9:l4 A.M.,” the mantle said.

  Five hours. He’d been gone more than five hours. He’d promised to be back in four, or he would never come back at all. Maggie’s heart began racing. She shook slightly and began to sob.

  She looked about. Off in the deep shadows, at the far end of the tunnel, Zeus appeared to have fallen asleep, head hunched over. His light had gone out. Orick and Tallea were nowhere in sight.

  She got up, called “Zeus?” He didn’t stir.

  She stepped forward, held up her glow globe. What she’d thought was Zeus, leaning forward with head bent over his knees in the shadows, turned out to be only a crimped limb. Zeus had left.

  “Zeus?” she called louder, toward the tunnel leading out.

  An uneasy feeling assailed her. Zeus had gone, following Gallen. She should have known he would, by the way he’d watched longingly after Gallen.

  Orick and Tallea were gone, too. She’d last seen them heading to the back of the tunnel. She followed their trail, found them beside the water, lying asleep, Tallea’s glow globe wedged under a rock so that it maintained enough pressure to keep it lit.

  “Orick, Tallea—Gallen isn’t back yet. And Zeus has gone.”

  “What?” Orick asked, startling awake.

  “Gallen isn’t back, I said. He promised to be back in four hours. He’s late.”

  “And Zeus went after him?” Tallea asked.

  “I don’t know. He crept out while we slept.” Maggie didn’t want to accuse him. She hoped he’d gone in search of Gallen. But she didn’t trust the man. Despite his handsome features, his lordly air, she could not dismiss the way he’d tried to seduce her.

  “He must have been worried,” Orick whispered, as trusting as ever. The big bear lumbered over on all fours, looked up, and nuzzled Maggie’s hand, trying to comfort her. “It will be all right. There’s not a sfuz or a dronon that can stop Gallen. Maybe he just got held up for a bit.”

  “Maybe,” Maggie whispered, trying not to cry. Her voice broke, and she stifled a sob.

  “Maybe we should go find him,” Orick said. “Without his robe, I should be able to track him fine. Would that make you feel better?”

  “Yes,” Maggie said. “Please.” She went back to her pack, fumbled about as she began putting away her food, getting out some weapons. Maggie was so nervous, she could hardly think. A cold chill seemed to dog her. Her thoughts came disjointed. Searching for Gallen would be dangerous. She’d always relied on him to protect her, Gallen with his knives and his swords and guns and mantle. The idea she might be able to help him seemed absurd.

  But even if I can’t help him, she thought, even if I go only to find his body, this is something I have to do.

  She wished Zeus were here. Orick and Tallea had great hearts, and would fight beside her no matter what, but she’d been in one little firefight with the sfuz, and she knew how fast those things could move.

  She wouldn’t be able to pull her trigger fast enough in a concerted attack. Before, she’d had Gallen with his mantle and intelligent pistol and grenades, and she’d had Zeus backing her up when her clip emptied. This time, she’d have nothing to protect her.

  All her defenders were being stripped away.

  When everything was packed, Maggie took her glow globe and squeezed it tight so it would blaze as brightly as possible, then held it aloft in her left hand while gripping her pistol in her right.

  Orick took the lead, and Tallea followed, both of them hurrying along. They went several hundred meters, found where Gallen, followed by Zeus, had departed from their old trail, then taken a new track up a steep incline.

  It was tough climbing, along a narrow ledge of stone cliff, through a chasm where water had once tumbled down from above. Orick could barely squeeze through the opening. They’d seen this little cave before, but Gallen thought they could not get through. Obviously, on the trip in he’d taken the easier trails only out of concern for Maggie.

  Now that need drove him, he’d taken a more precarious track.

  As they hurried along, Maggie crawling on her hands and knees, she tried to still her breathing. After a long and treacherous climb up the narrow tube, it opened into a wider chamber, where the air seemed thick and close: Everywhere she could now smell the scent of smoke and burning detritus.

  Something about this passage frightened her. Partly it was the strong smell of fire ahead. She detected more than the burning of humus—she could also smell cooked flesh. Up ahead, somewhere, there had been a battle, a fight with incendiary rifles unleashing their deadly plasma. Something had died.

  But it was more than the knowledge of the carnage ahead that frightened her. No, the thing that frightened her was this: she had an overwhelming sense that this little passage, this sinkhole where water had once gouged a channel through the forest floor, led someplace she did not want to go.

  It was the sense that as Gallen had kept searching for a passage into the Teeawah, hoping to enter the lair of the sfuz, he’d suddenly found a good tunnel, one that headed precisely where he wanted to go. And she did not want to follow.

  The smell of smoke grew stronger, the charred flesh and burning hair.

  The passage suddenly opened wide into a much larger chamber. At the mouth of this passage, Gallen’s and Zeus’s footprints lay deep in the dirt—a large beetle had fallen into one, and it struggled to climb out.

  Maggie felt frigid, disjointed, as if a stranger were manipulating her own body like a marionette.

  Gallen’s path led through a narrow defile where the sloping timbers of an old tree gradually dropped lower and lower, again fo
rcing them to crawl, until a side passage opened to a larger chamber.

  Here the roiling smoke suddenly became overwhelming. Here the smell of bodies was strong. Orick and Tallea stopped at the mouth of this chamber, wary, but Maggie could not slow, could not stop—ahead, in the dim shadows, she saw lumps on the ground. Her Iight glinted off the carapaces of dead dronon Vanquishers—dozens of them, sprawled on the floor.

  Maggie’s heart pounded. So Gallen had met the dronon at last, down here in the tangle.

  The bears held back, but Maggie had to enter, had to know how Gallen had fared.

  Maggie held her light aloft. She could not see the roof of this chamber, it was so high, but ahead—encircled by dozens of dead Vanquishers, she could see a human figure lying facedown in the dirt. Even as she held the light up, the man raised up feebly, head lolling, and she saw a pale face, bruised and bloody, the golden hair.

  “Gallen!” Orick shouted, and the bear bounded forward, leapt over the corpses of Vanquishers.

  Gallen looked up, his long golden hair falling down around his face. With a start, Maggie saw that his mantle was missing. His eyes were black, his nose and chin covered with dried blood. He struggled to raise his head, to push himself off the ground. His mouth was swollen, teeth knocked out.

  Unsteadily, he gasped, “Or-Or-Go back!”

  Gallen collapsed, and Maggie rushed to him, choking back her horror. Tears streamed from her eyes. As she neared, she looked down at his right leg. It was mangled, covered in blood, and a stout chain held it pegged to the ground.

  Suddenly light blared around her, and Maggie raised her pistol, tried to aim, but the lights blinded her. On the far side of the cavern, a dronon voice clicked, a translator buzzed.

  “Welcome, Maggie Flynn, O great and honored Golden Queen. We bring you greetings and a challenge from Cintkin and Kintiniklintit, Lords of the Seventh Swarm.”