Lords of the Seventh Swarm

Chapter 3

Lord Felph found himself muttering under his breath as he made his way down a long stone staircase to a tiny room on the lower levels of his palace.

Felph’s heavy robes dragged behind him on the staircase as he walked, and the cool air here in the tunnels chilled the bald spot on his head and his long, pale fingers. The dark sun shone thin and red through the oval, open windows along the staircase, windows that had long ago been carved by Qualeewoohs while digging their cloo holes.

Indeed, the lower lip of each window was worn from the feet of Qualeewoohs who had nested here over the millennia, wearing the oval portals into irregular shapes. Felph had had his droids clear away all the old nesting sites centuries ago, convert the nesting cells into passageways and chambers for his citadel. Most of the palace now showed no sign that Qualeewoohs had ever lived in this mountain. Only here, in the very western wing, did the anachronistic sites still exist.

Felph hated the old reminders. Perhaps that is why his daughter chose to live down here.

Once, Felph stopped to rest, breathing raggedly from exertion, and stared out one crumbled window to the sheer cliffs of the redrock mountains stretching out around him. The sky above held no clouds, yet the distant dark sun gave only muted light. In the valleys far below, at the base of the slopes, peculiar oily gray trees grew in an impenetrable tangle, and, as Felph watched, a flock of a dozen black-winged skogs leapt from the brush and began winging their way with bulletlike speed toward one of the garden ponds on the palace grounds.

Felph finished resting, but his heart still raced as he reached the bottom of the stairs, then knocked timidly at a wooden door which swung halfway open at his touch.

The weaver woman was inside, as usual, sitting before her great loom in a rocking chair that tilted away from the window. The frame of the loom was massive, spanning floor to ceiling along the far wall. The left wall was covered with bobbins of narrow yarn in a thousand colors of the rainbow, each in its place, each in a hue so subtly different that Felph could hardly distinguish one bobbin’s shade from its neighbor’s. The beveled glass from the window, which was cut in a starburst pattern, cast fractured rays of red light over the room, limning the weaver’s silver hair, illuminating her work. She wore her hair in small braids that cascaded casually down her back. A twisted net of gold chains, like a crown, gleamed dully on her brow, and she wore a simple but elegant shift of purest white. Over her bosom was a small vest of twisted wheat-colored fiber, a pretty thing woven by her own strong fingers.

Her back was turned to him, and she sat at her loom working the treadle with eyes closed, as always, weaving colorful scenes into a great tapestry. Her hands moved reverently through the wool as she worked a reed, beating the filling yarns into place to create her tapestry, yet the tapestry lay sprawled upon the floor near her feet, as if discarded. It was the making of the thing, not the completed product, that the woman enjoyed, for she was weaving images of things that would shortly come to pass, and the tapestry held the only record she kept of her prophecies.

Felph’s mouth felt dry; his hands trembled as he held the door to keep it from swinging all the way inward, and he did not want to look at the tapestry, did not want to be here speaking to the weaver now, but the sunlight shone upon the scarlet scene she was creating, and woven onto a colorful background patina of stones was an image of Felph himself, lying in a puddle of his own gore, his throat slashed, while over him stood his glorious son Zeus-a young man of stocky build and gray, brooding eyes-exultant as he held a bloodied knife up toward the dark sun.

Arachne tensed, listening to Felph without glancing. “What is it, Lord Felph?” she asked. He did not answer. Instead, Felph stared at the scene of his own murder and wondered at the weaver’s prophetic abilities. If you are as wise as I think you are, then you already will know why I have come, he told himself.

“You test me?” Arachne asked when he didn’t reply. “All right, then.” She took a deep breath, stopped as if listening to the air.…“There has been a change in the population,” she guessed, or seemed to guess, but she said the last word with conviction. Could someone have told her? Was she playing with him? Not likely, though his children enjoyed such mind games. Still, he could not fathom how she’d guessed. “Not a birth-Shira is not due yet for two weeks. A death?” she hazarded. Felph knew she wasn’t prophetic, that she was taking subtle clues from him, from the way he breathed, the intonation of his words, the position of his body relative to hers. She had sensitive hearing, could probably measure the beats of his heart. He wanted to give her no clues, so he tried to control his breathing perfectly, to maintain a steady rhythm, say nothing. “No … not a death, then.” She turned to him suddenly; a smile warmed her black eyes that stared through him. She knew he did not like gazing into her eyes-they were too wise, too probing-and he glanced away. “Visitors!” she said with delight. “We have visitors to our world. Tell me, Felph, who are they?”

“They’re landing now, out near Devil’s Bunghole. Four people, according to the ship’s logs, milady,” Felph said, smiling broadly in spite of his nervousness. Though he was her lord and her creator, Felph stood in awe of Arachne. The weaver woman had been made for this purpose, to comprehend mankind better than they comprehended themselves, to sift through subtle clues to the motivations and desires of others, then predict what they would do. Yet even as he’d designed her mind, trained and nurtured his creation, Felph had never imagined that Arachne would become what she had become. Felph felt immensely gratified with his creation. At the same time, he was humbled by her, frightened of her abilities. “Two-two of them are humans, a young man and a pregnant woman. The other two are genetically enhanced bears.”

“What class of starship do they command?” she asked.

“A TechKing Fleet Courier.”

“A fast ship. Expensive …” the waver mumbled. “They must be rich. But why would they come to Ruin? You say they’re landing at Devil’s Bunghole?”

She thought a moment. If they were tourists, they’d land at the salt pillars of Kloowee, or at the twelve towers of Sandomoon Breeze, or perhaps at the opal plains. If they were here to study Qualeewooh ruins, they’d have contacted Felph before landing. He was the foremost authority on such ruins.

Felph wondered what the weaver might be thinking. He enjoyed watching Arachne solve puzzles. “They are fugitives,” she said with finality. Turning back to her loom.

“I don’t know. They could be so many things-explorers, entrepreneurs, settlers,” Felph said. “Why do you imagine them fugitives?”

She did not bother to reply. She absently gazed at the tapestry taking shape on her loom. “There is something you’re not telling me?” she accused.

Had she heard an unusual silence after his last question, an expectant undertone?

“There is one thing,” Felph admitted. “According to his ship’s log, the man is a Lord Protector, and his wife is a Lord Technologist. I’m thinking of hiring them. The Lord Protector could teach Herm and Zeus a few things-tactics and self-defense-”

“-And you hope he can find the Waters for you …”

“Well, yes,” Felph said. “I’d thought of that.”

“And little else,” Arachne said. “Certainly you’ve considered little else.” The damning tone of her voice said that she was already considering ramifications that were far beyond Felph’s ability to comprehend.

“I–I thought the woman might help in my creations,” Felph said, to prove that he’d indeed been considering the possibilities. “Hephaestus is coming along fine.”

“It’s Aphrodite you want to make next. Why don’t you just finish her?” It was not really a question. The weaver’s tone suggested dismissal. Felph stood, stroking his short gray beard. Arachne was lost in her own thoughts, but mumbled, “So, a Lord Protector.…We have powerful refugees then. Running from the dronon.”

“I doubt it. The dronon have been vanquished-”

“Temporarily!” Arachne sighed, as if weary of Felph’s stupidity. I must seem simpleminded to her, Felph thought for the thousandth time. She turned at her work. “Have you considered the danger of bringing them here?”

“Danger?” Felph asked. “What danger? They won’t harm us.”

“I’m not afraid of what they’d do to us. It’s what we’ll do to them.”

Arachne turned to Felph, head cocked toward the sunlight, as if straining to hear distant music from outside the window. Suddenly she grunted in surprise at a thought that occurred to her. “I want to meet them, immediately,” she said, ordering him to fetch the off-worlders.

“Well, uh, yes. Of course,” Felph said. “I’ll plan a dinner party, tonight. I’ll invite the whole planet.”

The whole planet wasn’t many. A few odd hermits, a couple of xenobiologists, five dozen ill-bred refugees who performed various odd jobs for Felph.

“Perfect.” The weaver woman took a small pick from the workbench beside her chair and began plucking yarn from her tapestry, destroying the image of Felph’s murder. She muttered under her breath, “New people on the planet. This changes the weave, this changes everything.…”

It annoyed Felph that Arachne prophesied his demise. If he were to be murdered, it would be a nuisance-having his memories downloaded into a new body, making all those minor adjustments that come with your unanticipated death.

But somehow it annoyed him that the murder was off. “Wait,” Felph shook a finger at her. “Are you telling me that a dinner party is all it will take to win this reprieve? You think Zeus won’t kill me, if I arrange a party?”

“At least for now,” she said. “Zeus is easily distracted. A young woman to ogle, especially a pregnant one, will intrigue him. I assume she is pretty-a Lord Protector would not likely marry an ugly woman. Go tell Zeus to help prepare for the party, and it will drive all thoughts of murder from his mind-for two or three days, at least.”

Felph chuckled softly, shaking his head. “So, Zeus plots against me, and you would do nothing to stop him?”

“Zeus takes no counsel from me-or anyone else,” Arachne said. “He’s stubborn.”

Felph considered. His son, Zeus, was a brilliant young man, prone to ruthlessness. The young man wore a Guide that was supposed to control him, keep him from acting on his violent impulses. But Zeus had managed to remove the Guide three years past, and might do so once again. On that occasion, Zeus had tried to murder Felph. He’d first crept into the revivification chamber and tried to erase all records of Felph’s genetic mapping, along with certain other security programs. Only a minor error had kept Zeus’s plot from reaching fruition.

Felph nodded slightly to Arachne, thinking, Well, if my son plots against me, perhaps I need a Lord Protector at my side.