Lords of the Seventh Swarm

Chapter 48

Over the next eight weeks, everyone took their ease. Gallen found that Orick was serious about his missionary work. Tallea kept her snout in the Scriptures for days on end, sitting at Maggie’s side. But Tallea wasn’t his only convert.

Orick baptized Athena in the fountains outside the palace, and even Lord Felph seemed to listen to the bear with something of an open mind, though he made no formal declarations of conversion.

And Orick began traveling about Ruin, preaching to all who would listen-poachers, scientists, madmen. It didn’t seem to matter. He made a few converts in his first two weeks, and chief among them was Felph’s personal body servant, Dooring, who came in tears and begged Gallen and Maggie for forgiveness. He admitted to being the one who’d notified the authorities as to their location. The dronon had found them because of him.

Gallen frankly forgave the man, and after that, Dooring accompanied Orick on all his trips, flying him about by florafeem. With Felph’s beautiful daughter Athena in his retinue, and Thomas to lead in singing the hymns, Orick “the baptizing bear” got a reputation for putting on quite a show, and he endeared himself to many, though he made few converts.

In his preparations to leave Ruin, he ordained Dooring to the office of High Priest, setting him in charge of all the spiritual affairs on Ruin. There was one woman Orick despaired of converting: Hera.

He spoke to her passionately and often, yet Hera remained distant. She’d asked about the manner of Zeus’s death, had heard the sad tale, and then thanked him, coldly. After that, it was as if she never really listened to a word he spoke.

Hera dared not tell Orick what so disturbed her: it was that she loved Zeus still. Despite his infidelities, despite his greed, she had loved him as a wife for many years. Would always love him.

Orick swore that Zeus had been killed by his own wickedness. And yet, and yet-how could that be? Hera wondered. Zeus was a created being. He was what Lord Felph had made. If Zeus had faults, they were not of his own creation.

It was unfair of the Qualeewooh ancestors to have judged him so harshly.

And there was another secret that Hera dared not speak: the belief that the bear was lying to her. If Orick and his friends were to be believed, then her husband had killed Arachne, had confessed to the deed just before his death.

She couldn’t imagine that. Arachne had been her closest friend, her closest advisor. Zeus had never trusted the woman, thought she was too wise, yet he’d never hated her, either.

No, Hera imagined that someone else had killed Arachne. Gallen, perhaps, or even Orick. She could think of no good reason that they would commit such a murder. She could hardly admit to herself that she harbored such notions. Yet the uneasy feeling would not go away.

So Hera became distant, seldom speaking to the others.

She cleaned out her room, removing all reminders of Zeus, disconsolate. She folded his clothes, pressing her nose into them to catch a trace of his scent, before tossing them into a garbage chute. She got rid of his combs and brush, his razor and lotions. She kept only a sheaf of love poems that he’d written to her, and these she placed in the bottom of her dresser.

And when she’d finished removing all traces of him, she decided to do the same for Herm and Arachne.

Herm’s room was not much of a room-an aerie high in the palace with a door that had been permanently locked from the inside. He’d always entered the room from an ancient cloo hole. He’d even installed a perch outside his room.

It took a service droid nearly half an hour to gain entry, and once Hera opened the room, she wished that she hadn’t. Herm’s room was such a filthy mess, she could never have imagined it. In every comer were twigs and leaves and tufts of grass, a pile of hay to sleep on, loose feathers in everything.

The twigs were often nailed to the wall-as if, as if Herm had been fascinated by their shapes. Indeed, Hera looked at one slender twig on the wall, and it reminded her very much of the stream that flowed beneath the palace, the silver stream with its tributaries running through it. She wondered if this was what had mesmerized Herm, the way the branches must look like rivers from the air.

But no, many of the twigs were just scattered on the floor, thrown into piles, as if, over time, Herm had become careless with his prizes. Here and there among the twigs were other things-bits of a broken blue pot, pieces of shiny metal.

Herm had little in the way of possessions. There were several odd combs-some for hair, some for his feathers. He had a long woodwind flute sitting on pegs on one wall. Hera remembered that, years ago, sometimes, in the evenings, he would play that flute, and the eerie music would drift over the palace.

But he’d never learned to play human songs. His woodwind only echoed the breeze as it sang through rocks and glens, or sighed over a field. Never a tune, just a mournful howling.

And everywhere in the room were the small white-and-brown feathers from his wings. It looked as if Herm had preened in here for years and never cleaned the place. Bits of himself were everywhere.

As Hera surveyed the place she realized that it did not look like a human room at all. It looked like a nest.

The sight of it nearly broke Hera’s heart.

She’d never known that Herm had so much of the bird in him. Never known how truly alien he was. He was not human at all, she considered, looking at the room.

He was my brother, and I never knew him. He must have been so lonely. So lonely.

Yet he’d seemed so normal.

It was the Guide, she realized. He’d never been free to become anything but what his Guide had made of him. If he’d been free, perhaps he would have flown away, made a life for himself in some mountain aerie.

Hera left the room, taking only the woodwind, and ordered the droids to dispose of the remaining junk.

Afterward she hurried down to Arachne’s room. Arachne, her dearest friend and counselor.

The room was much as she’d remembered. A huge wall filled with bobbins of bright thread made from silk and wool, the vast loom filling most of the room, the small bed in a corner, where Arachne hardly ever slept-for she’d worked night and day at the loom.

It was just as Hera recalled from nearly four months ago, on the day of the invasion, when she’d come searching for Arachne at Lord Felph’s request.

Except that on that day, she’d only been looking for Arachne. She hadn’t really studied the room.

Now, Hera gazed down at the loom, at the images that Arachne had been weaving before her death. There, on the last portion of the tapestry, in a lower corner where it was plain to see, Arachne had woven a picture of herself. In her right hand, she held Gallen and Maggie, and a horde of dronon Vanquishers were appearing on the horizon behind. Arachne knelt, hunched, as if shielding Maggie with her body.

Standing over Arachne was Zeus, a bloody knife in hand, making a stabbing motion. On Arachne’s chest was a small, bloody puncture wound.

So it’s true, Hera realized. Zeus murdered her, just as she knew he would.

Hera bit her lower lip. And I was too blind to see it.

Hera spent the rest of the day in her rooms, weeping.

That night, shortly after dinner had passed, Lord Felph came to Hera’s bedroom.

He stood just inside the door, under the cluster of purple lights. The mellow scene of cypresses outside the evening pools went well with his dark green tunic.

“I don’t mean to disturb you, but we missed you at dinner,” Felph said. “I do hope you’ve ordered the droids to bring you something.”

“I’m not hungry, Father,” Hera said, rising from her bed. She turned her back to him, went and looked out the window. It was early evening, and the day, had been mostly clear. But she could see more golden clouds, waiting on the horizon, out above the fields.

Felph’s vineyards and fields looked lush and green. Inviting.

Hera had an odd memory, from when she was a child. She’d often longed to run in those fields outside the palace, to explore the stream, or play hide-and-seek in the hawthorn groves. But in those days, there had been giants in the land: purple giants that each carried a huge club. She remembered them clearly, the rotting furs they wore, the single huge horn in their foreheads.

“Father, whatever happened to the giants?” Hera mused.

“Giants?” Felph asked.

“The ones outside my window, in the fields. I used to see them hunting.”

Felph laughed softly. “Ah, those. They were only images programmed into your Guide. I didn’t want you straying from the palace, you see, so the Guide showed you the giants from time to time, to keep you here.”

“I see,” Hera said. “When I was a child, you used to say that I wore a Guide because I was a princess. You said all princesses wore crowns.”

Felph laughed. “I’d forgotten.”

“Am I still a princess?” Hera asked.

“Of course you are,” Felph said. “You’ll always be my little princess.”

“And when you die, what will I inherit?” Hera asked.

“What would you like?” Felph asked.

Hera just looked away, shook her head. He’s already dead inside, she thought. And all I’ve inherited is … desolation. He wouldn’t let himself pass away permanently.

No, I’ll get nothing from him.

“What do you want?” Felph asked again, more loudly. Freedom. Love. Love. Love. Freedom.

Hera shook her head, unwilling to speak. In consternation she finally answered. “You’re the one who should have died in Teeawah, you know. You’re the one who made us what we are. You should have drunk the Waters of Strength.”

For a long moment, Felph did not say anything.

“You think so?” he asked.

“Yes, I do,” Hera said firmly.

“Then I will, tonight,” Felph pronounced. “And you shall be there to watch.”

So that evening, Lord Felph finally drank the Waters of Strength. He’d wasted most of it, trying to analyze the stuff. He’d found that though it was clear like water, it contained strange amino acids in numbers far too large and in sequences far too complex to be adequately catalogued. Beyond that, he found mixtures of suspended elements, along with nano devices for assembling them into something which he just couldn’t quite grasp.

So it was that he gathered his friends and family in one of the lower plazas of the palace late in the evening. Brightstar shone like a brilliant moon, upon the circle of palms.

Felph had everyone get back, then he unstopped a small flask, and touched only a single crystalline drop to his lips. Hera saw it fall in the night, like a gem, into Felph’s mouth.

Then she watched in fascination and horror as Felph underwent his transformation.

It happened precisely as Orick had described: the purple glowing eyes, the manic exclamations from Felph describing how he felt tremendous power, the dark-winged beast that struggled to emerge from Felph’s mouth, tear free forever.

Then the emerald birds of light appeared, wheeling under the stars, like a whirling, flashing tornado.

They came not in ones or twos, but in dozens and hundreds, until the heavens filled with them.

Then as one they stooped to slaughter the winged beast that was Lord Felph.

He wriggled like a bat, flying through the heavens, seeking escape. Unlike Zeus, he did not try to take shelter in his body once again. Instead, he darted and veered.

But there was no escape. The birds of light caught him, tore into him, by the dozens, fighting for the honor to kill the beast. And high above the tiny group, Felph exploded into a ball of purple light that hung like a glowing cloud for several minutes.

Hera thought it was as pretty as any firework she’d ever seen.

Hours later, a new Lord Felph emerged from the revivification chamber, bearing the recorded memory of how the Qualeewooh ancestors had judged him, unworthy.

This newly born Felph seemed a much more subdued, more thoughtful man.