The Golden Queen

Chapter 20

Maggie rushed to Veriasse. The skin of his face was red, burning away. She looked around desperately, then dabbed at his face with the hem of her robe and called to Everynne, “Help me, please!”

Everynne stood alone watching. The dronon were clattering their battle legs in token of surrender. She walked over to Veriasse, with Gallen and Orick in her wake, but Everynne said, “You have to clean him. They call me a Golden now. I cannot be seen doing work.” She looked into Maggie’s eyes, pleading. She could not jeopardize what she had gained thus far.

Gallen pulled a canteen from his backpack, bathed Veriasse’s face. Veriasse knelt on one knee, panting.

“How badly are you hurt?” Everynne asked. She had been surprised at the ferocity of the battle. With his upgraded nervous system, Veriasse was phenomenally quick. In two minutes she had seen him take apart a dronon Lord Escort, his fists and feet blurring. Yet he had done it at great cost. His face was terribly burned, and she’d heard something crack when he’d fallen.

Veriasse pulled the microphone away from his mouth. “My ribs,” he groaned. “I think some are broken.”

“What can we do for you?” Gallen asked.

Panic took Everynne. She could not think. She only knew that if Veriasse failed the next battle, she would die.

“Rest. I need to lie still for awhile. My nanodocs should be able to heal the wounds in a couple of hours.”

Everynne’s mantle told her that he was wrong. It would take days for his nanodocs to heal the breaks. She needed to get him away from here, take him somewhere so they could speak in private.

Everynne turned to the hive queen and said, “We have won the Right of Charn. We now demand that you alter the course of your hive city. Speed us on our way to Queen Tlitkani.”

The hive queen clicked her mouthfingers against her voice drum, and Everynne’s earpiece translated. “She is not on this world. She has moved her hive to another world, to facilitate her use of the human’s mechanical mind.”

“You mean she has taken up residence on the omni-mind?” Everynne asked.

“Yes,” the queen said.

“Where has she taken the omni-mind?”

“It is orbiting our sun.”

Everynne said, “Then take us to the nearest spaceship.”

The queen spoke to one of her Lord Technicians, then turned back to Everynne. “Our technicians will prepare a ship for you immediately. We will send a squadron of our Lord Vanquishers as an honor guard.”

The dronon queen watched Everynne for a moment. “We have received orders from our ruling dronon. She asks that we relieve you of the Terror you have been carrying.”

Everynne reluctantly pulled the ball from her pocket. It had been her insurance, and part of her was loath to give it up. But it had accomplished its purpose.

She held it out for the queen, but a trio of Lord Technicians rushed forward and carried the thing away, presumably to be destroyed. The dronon queen turned her back, began dragging her bloated egg sac away.

When they were alone again, Maggie touched Everynne’s arm. “We can’t leave yet. Veriasse needs time to heal.”

“Neither can we delay,” Veriasse said, pulling on Gallen’s arm as he staggered to his feet. “We have won Right of Charn, but according to dronon order, we must leave in all haste.”

Everynne doubted that Veriasse could fight another battle in his condition.

Gallen stood tall, his hands on his hips. “Veriasse, you’re in no shape to fight. It would be wrong to even try. You can’t take a chance with Everynne’s life this way. Let me fight the next battle.”

Veriasse looked up, his jaw firm. “I wore the mantle of a Lord Protector for six thousand years. You have worn it for less than three days. You are a good man, Gallen, but you’re not a Lord Protector yet. Even though I am injured, you couldn’t beat me. How could you then take my place?”

“I watched you fight,” Gallen said. “I know I could win! Veriasse, you’re all done in.”

“You can’t just take my place, Gallen,” Veriasse said. “I am Everynne’s Lord Escort. By dronon rules of conduct, she can only take another Lord Escort if I die.”

“I could switch clothes with you when we’re alone,” Gallen said. “The dronon would never know.”

Gallen turned to Everynne, pleading. “You decide between us. It’s your life.”

“And yours,” Everynne said. She looked at the two men. Gallen was probably correct. The dronon might never know if the two men switched places. Veriasse was gravely wounded, and Gallen still fresh. Yet Veriasse had proven himself in combat against a dronon.

“Will you, too, hold with my choice?” Everynne asked Veriasse.

He glared at her. His next words seemed to cost him more than the pain of drawing breath. “Gallen is right. You should have a say in this.” By those words alone, Everynne knew he was severely wounded. Veriasse would never relinquish his title if he thought he could still fight.

Everynne turned her back on them, looked out over the arena. Orick ran to the center of the arena, retrieved Veriasse’s goggles. A few meters away, the dronon had circled the corpse of Dinnid and were dismembering it, feeding it to the royal grubs. Everynne could not help but think that within a matter of hours, other dronon might be doing that to her.

She considered her options. Veriasse was sorely wounded, but his nanodocs would ease his discomfort. Within an hour, he should be feeling somewhat better. And Veriasse outweighed Gallen by thirty kilos. When he’d managed to break the carapace around Dinnid’s air holes, she’d found it hard to imagine a human with such strength. Everynne doubted that Gallen could equal the task.

Yet, even with all of Veriasse’s great accomplishments of the past, somehow at this moment, she trusted Gallen more. He was still healthy. And even though he didn’t have an upgraded nervous system, Gallen was fast. Veriasse had been astonished by his strength when they first met. She considered choosing Gallen and wondered at the wisdom of such a move.

Maggie put her arm around Everynne’s shoulder. “You can’t let Veriasse fight anymore!” she whispered. “It would be murder.”

Everynne looked into Maggie’s eyes. They were no longer the eyes of that innocent child she’d met on Tihrglas a few days before. Instead, her eyes were filled with wisdom, the kind of knowledge that comes only through pain.

“You love Gallen, don’t you?” Everynne said.

“Of course,” Maggie answered. And in her mind, Everynne heard Maggie’s accusation of a few days before: You took him, just because you could.

Everynne nodded. She had stolen something from Maggie once before. She determined not to do it again. Even if I die, Everynne thought, I will not steal from her again. She turned to face the two men. “I choose Veriasse as my champion.”

Gallen gasped in astonishment, obviously hurt, and Veriasse breathed deeply, tears of gratitude glistening in his eyes. “I will not disappoint you, my lady. Give me a few moments’ rest. I promise I will not disappoint you.”

The journey to the omni-mind seemed shorter than it was. The dronon technicians took only an hour to remove a spaceship from the bowels of their city, and another hour to alter accommodations so that humans could travel in it. The alterations were limited simply to removing some seats and installing a pallet for Veriasse to lie on.

The old warrior lay on the pallet, put himself in a meditative trance to slow his breathing as they traveled. The ship was light and fast. With its antigrav drives, it moved fluidly between worlds, its rapid acceleration apparent only as one looked out the windows and watched Dronon shrink to a tiny glowing ball, lost between the stars. Forty dronon fighter ships escorted them.

After two hours, they swooped low over the omni-mind, and Everynne got her first glimpse of the great machine. It glowed with a soft silver light. Trillions of computer crystals lay upon its surface, reflecting sunlight like a sea of molten glass. Here and there across the planet, vast tachyon communication towers rose above the plains, pointing like metallic daggers to the heavens. Beyond that, there was no hint of the monolithic processors built into the planet’s interior, no sign of its power supplies.

It was beautiful.

The dronon ships flew in a V to a great city, perhaps thirty kilometers across, ringed with light. Everynne watched from the portals. The city was built under large domes, and parts of it were green with grass, blue with pools of water. She could see hills and forests under the glass, and clear streams.

The dronon ships hissed low over the city, taking nearly half an hour to make their slow procession. Everynne gazed down on small estates that had once belonged to her mother’s Tharrin advisors. Hundreds of thousands of people could easily live there.

The dronon went to the interior of the city, circled the largest central dome. There was a small palace beneath it situated in some woods. Nothing exotic or costly, simply a functional building where her mother had sometimes performed her duties.

The dronon fighters circled this building twice, then dove toward a gray docking portal at the dome’s edge and landed so softly in the docking bay that Everynne never felt them touch down. She went to Veriasse, stroked his cheek and whispered, “Come, Father. We’re here.”

Unaccountably, Veriasse had fallen asleep. They had not really rested much in nearly twenty hours, and Everynne herself was exhausted. She felt a bit dizzy, unconnected from her body, but she could never have fallen asleep with the end of the journey so near. She jostled him again, and Veriasse woke, blinking. “Yes, yes. I’m coming.”

She got him up, and he stretched, walked straight and tall through the ship’s exit. Gallen, Maggie, and Orick followed them down a long glass corridor into one of the domed cities.

The dronon waited at the entrance to the dome. A wall of dronon vanquishers had formed under the clear canopy, and it seemed strange to Everynne to see their black carapaces shining in the pristine daylight.

Everynne breathed deep in amazement at their sheer numbers. She estimated that at least forty thousand vanquishers had gathered to meet them. Their acidic stench filled the dome, overwhelming the scent of the green grass that they trampled. In the distance, beyond the woods, she could see the palace, a building of purple-gray stone with ivy trailing up its sides.

Atop the wall of living dronon stood their leader, a Lord Escort with facial tattoos that looked like white worms strung beneath his eyes. Veriasse had talked of him often. Xim.

Xim shouted insults in dronon, and Veriasse gave his ritual hand signals, shouted insults in return and challenged the vanquisher to ritual combat, so that he and Everynne could take their rightful place as Lords of the Swarm.

Whereas earlier she had been terrified, now Everynne felt some sense of calm. She controlled her breathing. Xim called for the Rite of Examination, flew down and stalked around her. Unlike Dinnid, he was thorough. He used his whiplike sensors, grasped her dress and pulled it up to examine her skin. Xim tasted her scent thoroughly and stopped at the back of her neck, his sensor brushing against her small scar.

“What is this strange substance?” the vanquisher asked, rubbing at the body paint.

“It is a perfumed soap that our Golden uses to clean her skin,” Veriasse said evenly. “Do you not like the scent? We find it quite pleasing.”

Xim rubbed at the paint. “What is this mark?” Behind Everynne, she heard Maggie gasp.

“It is the mark of a Tharrin,” Veriasse said reasonably. “A coloration variance similar to that found on our nipples. It is common to some of our Goldens.” Everynne was not surprised that Veriasse had chosen to lie. The burn would heal in a few days, but it would be difficult to explain its presence now.

Xim hesitated, and Everynne imagined that he would kill them now for the attempt at deception.

He raised on his hind legs, crossed his battle arms and shouted, “I am Xim, Lord of the Swarm. Our larvae shall eat your corpses. Our vanquishers shall claim your domain. Your hive shall submit!”

His wings flashed, and he flew high into the air, buzzed around the ceiling. All around them, the dronon vanquishers beat their battle arms together, and their carapaces rustled as they shifted, creating a tunnel of living bodies for Everynne and the others to walk through.

They stepped into the dark cave. The dronon vanquishers had stacked themselves so that they could watch the procession, and myriads of heads swiveled to follow their progress. Sensors writhed overhead like black snakes, and many a battle arm hung overhead threateningly.

They did not have far to go. A field of grass lay a hundred yards beyond, ringed with countless dronon. The Golden Queen stood on the far side, proud and tall, whip sensors waving above the crowd. She wore the mantle of Semarritte on her head, a silver headdress with long flowing rows of medallions. Everynne looked at the mantle, the icon she had sought across light-years. To win it would mean her death. To lose it would mean her death.

Royal larvae huddled under Tlitkani’s legs. Xim circled her in the air, then landed in front of her protectively, raised his battle arms high and crossed them. He shouted, “Veriasse, Lord Escort of the Golden Everynne. I have watched your battle with Dinnid. I come now to kill a worthy opponent!”

Veriasse raised his own wrists and crossed them. The two proceeded over the field. All around, dronon began their chant. A familiar thrumming filled the air, and the sound of it raised the hair on the back of Everynne’s neck.

When they were ten meters apart, Xim’s wings flashed and he soared into the air. The ceiling was far higher here than it had been on Dronon, and the vanquisher took full advantage of the larger area, sweeping in faster than Dinnid ever had. He flew toward the setting sun, then turned and screamed toward Veriasse, battle arms outstretched.

Veriasse stood tall and proud in his black robes of office, the dark chains of his mantle flowing down his shoulders. He raised his fists as if to strike, but Xim flashed his battle arms in a rolling blur and flew straight at Veriasse.

Veriasse was forced to dodge, roll away.

Xim repeated the tactic four times, each time veering nearer to Veriasse, and each time Veriasse had to retreat. On the fourth pass, Veriasse got up, holding his ribs painfully. He gasped for breath, and Everynne suddenly saw Xim’s plan. The dronon knew of Veriasse’s injury. Xim sought to aggravate it.

Xim circled the room, continued his charges. On the seventh swipe, he swerved near, slashed with a sensor, whipping Veriasse across the forehead, knocking Veriasse’s goggles aside. Veriasse tried to dodge the attack, rolled to his feet and staggered. Jagget’s black mantle fell from his head.

Blood flowed down his face, covering his eyes. Veriasse tried to wipe the blood away, and Xim swerved short of the roof to the glass dome, pressed the attack. He shot low over Veriasse’s head, spat the contents of his stomach. The acid hit the wound, and Veriasse rolled to the ground, writhing. He tried to wipe his face with his robe.

Faster and faster Xim circled the great room with seeming effortlessness, his legs pumping rapidly as he flew.

Veriasse staggered to his feet, got up and spun in a circle, blinking frantically, his eyes a swollen mess. He tried to wipe the acid from his face. “Everynne!” he shouted.

Everynne cried, “I’m here!” She reached into her pocket, pulled out the bottle of Hope that Grandmother had given her on Cyannesse, opened it and sprinkled a drop on the ground.

Veriasse was still blinking, and though he fixed on the sound of her voice, he didn’t seem to see her. Yet he suddenly breathed easier, stood tall. He closed his ravaged eyes, listened for the sound of Xim’s wings.

Xim came screaming in from above, and Veriasse blurred as he leapt high into the air and blindly kicked.

Yet the dronon had anticipated his attack. Xim had come in high, and now he lashed down with the claw of his hind foot. It cut through Veriasse like a knife, and blood spattered darkly across the grass.

Around the arena, the dronon vanquishers’ humming raised to a roar, and thousands of them began beating their battle arms together. The sound was deafening. Some of them rushed into the arena a couple of paces, as if they would tear Veriasse apart and begin feeding now.

Veriasse climbed to his feet, blood streaming from his leg, and he shouted. His voice came to her faintly, “Everynne? Everynne?”

“I’m here,” Everynne called. Xim had swerved back into battle, letting the roar of dronon applause block out the warning sound of his clattering wings.

Everynne shouted, “Watch out!”

But it was too late. The dronon vanquisher dropped to the ground, simultaneously chopping with his battle arms. One huge serrated arm crashed down on Veriasse’s head, slicing him nearly in half. The other fell at an angle, chopping him across the belly.

Xim picked up the mangled corpse, held it overhead and paraded with it a few steps, then tossed it to the ground. All across the great arena, the vanquishers fell silent as Xim turned his attention to Everynne.