The Golden Queen (24 page)

Maggie pushed some buttons, and the thrusters roared to life behind his feet. He could feel the heat of the engines, and he feared that his fur would catch fire, but Maggie pressed a throttle and the airbike bucked under their combined weight, then lifted with a kick.

Orick looked back one last time at Grandmother, who stood straight in the darkness and waved good-bye. Maggie applied full acceleration. The airbike whizzed into the night, along the streets of Cyannesse until they reached the winding stair that led down to the beach, then she slowed. Still, the bike seemed to slide down, going faster and faster until they hit the sandy beach, bounced once, and then were off.

They drove straight through the night mists, out over a wide sea. The wind whipped in Orick’s face, and lantern fish with their luminous backs lit the water. In some places, it seemed that Maggie and Orick whisked over a road of green light. Tiny silver fish sometimes jumped toward the headlamps of the bike.

After a while, Maggie relaxed, and the machine carried them on until they reached land near dawn. There, Maggie stopped and they ate a short meal, stretched their legs, then rode the airbike up onto a large island, through some rough terrain.

Soon they spotted a gate gleaming gold in the morning. Maggie pulled out the key, thumbed some buttons. Orick was amazed that she could learn how to work such a thing, but ahead of them the gate began glowing white between the arches.

“Where are we going?” Orick asked.

“The planet Bregnel,” Maggie shouted. She slowed the airbike until they hit the light wall and were swallowed in the mists.

The airbike skated into profound darkness, into a world where the very air burned Orick’s lungs, then lay in them like a clot. The ground was thick with ash, and dead trees raised tortured black branches to claw the sky. Buildings towered above them on every side, like squatting giants, and the buildings too were blackened over every wall.

Maggie coughed, hit the throttle, and the airbike whipped through the night, raising a cloud of ashes as it roared down the empty streets. Here and there on the ground, Orick could see blackened skeletons of small gnome-like humans among the ash, many still wearing their mantles, some holding weapons. It looked as if they had been caught and burned in the midst of a battle. There was no clothing left on the skeletons, no flesh on the ebony bones.

There were no lights in any window, no footprints among the ashes. The world was dead, uninhabited, and by the smell of the air, perhaps uninhabitable.

As bad as the air was, a certain heaviness fell upon Orick as well, as if he weighed more here than he had elsewhere. Upon reflection, he realized that he had felt somehow lighter and stronger upon Cyannesse, but had not noticed it then.

As they hurried forward, Orick saw a corpse on the ground, half covered with ash. Its arms were curled close to its ribs, as if the person had died protecting some great treasure. Orick almost called for Maggie to stop, but as the airbike rushed over the corpse, scattering ashes, Orick looked back. In its hands, the corpse held the bones of an infant.

“What happened here?” Orick bawled, the air burning his lungs.

Maggie shouted back, horror in her voice. “Someone released a Terror on this world.”

“Did you know about this?”

“Veriasse told me that the people here were fighting the dronon.”

“You mean the dronon killed them?”

Maggie shrugged.

The headlights on the air bike cut a grim alley through the darkness, and Maggie soared over winding roads through a maze of stone buildings. Up ahead, the lights shone over a pair of footprints in the ash.

Someone had lived through this catastrophe. Maggie veered to follow the trail a short way. After two blocks, they came to a dead end in an alley. There, lying in a heap on the ground was the corpse of a small man, his mouth open and gasping. Above him on the wall, he had scratched a message in the ash: “We have won freedom, not for ourselves, but for those who shall follow after.”

Maggie stared at the message a moment, then hit the bike’s thrusters and rode away. The airbike raced through the city, left the sprawling wastes. The countryside was no better. Fields and crops had been transformed to blackened ash. On the outskirts of town, they saw a red light up the road ahead, and Orick’s heart lifted a little, hoping that someone perhaps had survived this devastation.

Instead they came upon a vast machine, a walking crablike city with eight legs and hundreds of gun emplacements sprouting from its back and head. In one lonely turret on the head, a red light gleamed like a malevolent eye. The machine reminded Orick of some giant tick, bristling with strange devices, and Orick knew instinctively that the dronon had created the thing—for no human would have built such a monstrosity.

“What is that?” Orick shouted to be heard above the roar of the airbike, hoping that Maggie’s mantle would give them some clue.

“A dronon walking fortress. They built them on their home world to carry their young during their migrations.”

“How long must we endure this?” Orick asked. “I can hardly breathe.”

“We’ll get out fast,” Maggie wheezed.

“Maggie, can the Terror still hurt us?”

“If it were going to burn us up,” Maggie said, “we’d already be dead by now.”

After that, they did not speak. Maggie revved the thrusters, giving the bike its full throttle, and they plowed ahead. It took a great effort to breathe. Orick began gasping; his lungs starved for fresh air. He felt insufferably hot, and the world began to spin. He feared that he might fall from the bike, so he clung to Maggie. She reached up and patted his paw, comforting him. Orick closed his eyes, concentrated only on breathing. He tried holding his breath to save his lungs from the burning air, but then he would become dizzy and have to gasp all over again.

It became a slow torture, and he kept wishing that he would faint, fall from the bike and just die in the ashes.

They crossed a long bridge over a lake, and muddy ash floated on the water, creating a thick black crust. The water bubbled. Dark billowing clouds obscured a pale silver moon, and ahead was a black wall of rain. Orick imagined how the air would be cooler and fresher there in the rain, imagined tasting the water on his tongue. But they hit the wall and found that the sky rained only ash.

An hour later, they reached another gate, and Maggie got out the key, pressed some buttons until the gate glowed a soft orange, the color of sunset, then she gunned the thrusters and the airbike plunged through the white fog found between worlds.

At first Orick wondered if it would stay white forever, for the cool fog gave way only to more white mist, but then they were roaring down a snowy mountain trail through the mist, passing between large pillars of black rock.

As soon as Maggie saw that it was safe, she turned off the thrusters. The bike skidded to a halt. Maggie crawled off, fell to the ground gasping and coughing, trying to clear the foul air of Bregnel from her lungs. Orick climbed off, fell to the ground. Bears rarely get sick to the stomach, but Orick found that the brief trip through Bregnel had left him both wrung out and positively ill.

He lay in the snow and vomited, and though it was freezing, he could not muster the strength to move. After twenty minutes, Maggie got up, rubbed herself.

“Are you all right?” Orick asked.

She shook her head. “That air was too foul. Another few minutes, and I would have fallen off the bike. I’m not sure I could have gotten back up.”

Orick understood. He felt grateful to be alive and offered up a silent prayer of thanks. When he finished, he asked, “Where are we?”

“A planet called Wechaus,” Maggie answered. “I didn’t get time to ask Veriasse about it. He said there was some danger here, but the only gate to Dronon is here, somewhere on Wechaus.”

“Are any towns nearby? Someplace we can get a bite to eat, a beer maybe?” Orick looked about in the fog. If a bear could eat rocks, he’d never fear starvation on this world, that much was certain. But other than the rocks, Orick could not make out any sign of trees here, just a few small bushes.

Maggie shook her head. “I’m not sure. We still have some food in the pack. If my guess is right, we should be four or five days ahead of Gallen and the others. I thought we could find a place to stay, then follow them to the Dronon gate.”

Orick looked around. It was getting darker out, and he could not see far. He wondered about things: right now, back in Tihrglas, he and Gallen were most likely lazing about at John Mahoney’s Inn in Clere, drinking a beer and dreaming about tomorrow, totally ignorant of Everynne or the Maze of Worlds. At the same time, he and Gallen were on the planet Fale, trying to rescue Maggie from Lord Karthenor. In a couple of days, he would reach Cyannesse, and he didn’t know when he’d be on Bregnel. Somehow, the idea that he was simultaneously mucking about on at least three different worlds at once left him shaken, and if they kept walking through the Maze of Worlds, things would get even more confusing.

It all seemed sacrilegious, as if they were playing with powers not meant to be comprehended by either men or bears. It reminded Orick of an incident when he was a cub. He and his mother had gone hunting for nuts and had climbed to the top of Barley Mountain. There, under an evergreen, they sat munching at pine nuts and looking out over mountain peaks that seemed to go on forever, fading to blue in the distance. To a small cub, it seemed as if they were viewing infinity, and Orick had asked his mother, “Do you think I’ll ever get to see what’s on the other side of all of those mountains?”

“No,” his mother had answered.

“How come?” Orick asked, thinking that perhaps this would be his life’s work, to travel far roads and learn about the world.

“Because God won’t allow it. No matter how many mountains you cross, he has always made more.”

“How come?”

His mother rolled her eyes at him and sighed. “Because that is how he stays God. He knows what is on the other side of every mountain, but he doesn’t tell all of his secrets to others.”

“How come?” Orick asked.

“Because if everyone knew the answers, everyone would be gods, even people who are evil. So in order to keep evil people from gaining his power, he hides the answers to the most important questions.”

Orick had gazed out over the purpled hills and felt a rushing sensation of awe and thankfulness. God had willed him to be ignorant, and for that Orick felt profoundly grateful.

Yet now he was trying to help Everynne steal the powers of the gods. It seemed only just that he should be punished. Maggie got a blanket from the pack and wrapped it around herself. A cold wind was stirring.

Orick sniffed the air. “Maggie, child,” he said, “I think we’d best get back on that flying scrap pile and see if we can’t find some shelter. Something tells me this place gets colder than a lawyer’s heart at night, and you shouldn’t be out in such weather.”

She nodded wearily, got back on the bike, and Orick climbed on behind her. They slowly drove down the mountainside through the rocks and mist. After a few hundred yards, the fog cleared and they got their first view of Wechaus: a rocky, barren world for as far as the eye could see. Off in the distance several miles, Orick could make out one of those sidhe highways.

Maggie made her way down a steep canyon, then wound through it until they reached the highway. Once they hit the highway, the airbike seemed to know the path, and Maggie quit steering. By then, the cold and the wind were having their way with Maggie. She wrapped the blanket tighter around her and kept her head low so that the bike’s windscreen protected her somewhat, but within minutes she was shaking fiercely from the chill, sobbing in pain. Orick did not know what to do: should he tell her to stop and try to get warm? It was already so cold that if he stopped, he might never get her going again. On the other hand, the poor little thing could hardly travel farther in her current condition.

So it was that they topped a mountain and looked across the line of the highway to a distant valley and saw a small village. It was an outpost of some kind—a collection of stone huts shaped like domes, well lighted with pale green lights. Orick could discern several emerald pools. Smoke was pouring from them, filling the night air.

Maggie redoubled her speed, and in five minutes they closed in, and Orick saw that it was not smoke filling the night at all, but steam. The buildings sat alongside a natural hot spring, and he could see the dark shapes of people splashing in the waters, swimming in the deep green pools. As they neared, Orick let out a whoop of delight, for among the many swimmers, he saw dozens of bears.  

Chapter 14

Everynne led the others through the gates on the way to Dronon. After making love to Gallen last night, it seemed that everything was ruined. Both Veriasse and Maggie knew of the tryst, and somehow it had all turned into a fiasco. Now, as she drove, she thought that perhaps it would all end. Perhaps today she would die, and thus put to death her guilt.

The vibration of the airbike mirrored her shaking. Her nerves were frayed, jangled, and she found that her teeth chattered even though it was warm.

She drove the thousand kilometers through Cyannesse at top speed, hit the gate and roared through Bregnel into the early afternoon. Veriasse cried out in shock when he saw the devastation, and all of them drove through the place in horror.

In the daylight, everything was gray and foul. Blackened human bones rotted in the streets, and dronon war cities squatted all across the countryside like dead beetles. Everynne counted twenty of them in the distance.

The air was so foul, that Gallen stopped beside a bubbling lake, got a pair of oxygen exchangers from his pack. He gave one to Everynne.

Veriasse gazed out over the countryside. His eyes were glazed with tears. “Look at all the hive cities. The dronon were building a vast military presence here.”

“It looks as if the people of Bregnel decided to wipe them out at any cost,” Everynne said.

Veriasse shook his head sadly. “I feared this was coming. The battle to free Bregnel was not going well. They could not have loosed the Terror more than two or three days ago. If they had only waited, perhaps this could have been avoided.”

“Let’s go,” Everynne said. “Let’s get to Dronon today.” She gunned her thrusters, sped away.

Everynne let her mantle switch through open radio frequencies, trying to catch a clue as to what had happened. She locked onto only one dim channel, far away, probably a transmission beamed from satellite. It broadcast the warning, “Resistance fighters have loosed a Terror. Please take appropriate measures.”

The only appropriate measures were to take flight and leave the planet.

Everynne looked out over the wastes in horror, thinking,
If we go to war against the dronon, this is what it will be like.
Terrors loosed upon hundreds of worlds. Fleets of starships bombarding planets with viral weapons.

Veriasse and Gallen drove side by side, sharing an oxygen exchanger from breath to breath. An afternoon wind kicked up, raising black clouds of ash that swept over the plains. Everynne hurried down the road, passed three skeletons that were half standing, half kneeling, fused together as if they had held each other for comfort in that last moment just as the burning wall of fire swept over them and the invasive nanoware burrowed through to their bones.

Everynne knew that as long as she lived, the images she saw on Bregnel would haunt her.

They broke through the next gate to Wechaus, headed down a snowy trail in the mountains. It was early morning here. They had not gone a hundred meters when they rounded a corner, spotted bloody paw prints in the snow, and Gallen shouted, “Halt!” raising a hand.

He idled his airbike, sat looking at the prints: a bear had rolled on the ground, leaving behind marks of blood and mud, compacting the snow except in one small circle. Within that circle was one firm red print with two scratch marks beneath it.

“Bear tracks,” Gallen said. “Orick’s here! He left a message.”

“Orick?” Veriasse asked. “But I didn’t show them how to get to Wechaus.”

“Maggie’s a smart girl,” Gallen said. “And you spent enough time looking at routes on your map that she could figure it out.” He pointed at the paw print. “The marks are a code. Back home, when I guard clients, Orick walks up ahead. No one ever bothers a bear, and he can smell an ambush better than any human. He leaves a print by the roadside if the path ahead is clear, but he leaves scratch marks under it if I’m to take warning. One scratch means something has him spooked. Two scratch marks means he is certain that an ambush waits ahead.”

Everynne studied the bloody marks, worrying. The poor bear had to be terribly wounded. “But who would be lying in wait?” she asked. “The dronon?”

“Perhaps,” Veriasse said. “When last I was here, their numbers were not great on this world, but after our escapades on Fale, they will be more wary. We should move forward cautiously.” He pulled out his incendiary rifle, and Gallen did the same.

They followed Orick’s footprints down to a small valley; among the snow-covered rocks they found evidence of a great battle—scorch marks from incendiary rifles, bloody tracks.

The torn body of a vanquisher lay in the snow, his naked green flesh ripped by teeth, clawed by strong paws. His incendiary rifle lay nearby, yet Everynne searched the ground with growing discomfort. The signs seemed to indicate that more than one vanquisher had fought here. Everynne could make out tracks of at least three of the giants. But if there had been only one casualty, then it seemed that Orick had fought in vain.

Veriasse looked up at Everynne. His face was rigid, fearful, and Gallen seemed equally disturbed.

Veriasse powered down his airbike, leapt off, and surveyed the site. “The dead vanquisher was taken off guard,” he said after a moment. “Orick ripped out his throat, and the vanquisher pulled his incendiary gun and tried to club the bear off, perhaps fired in hopes of attracting attention. Then the vanquisher pulled a knife and drew blood, but by then it was too late.” Everynne looked at the frozen corpse. There was a certain look of surprise in the creature’s dead face, a blankness in his orange eyes. Veriasse took up the vanquisher’s bloody knife, cut open the creature’s belly, then stuck in his hand. “The corpse is still warm in the bowels. He can’t have been killed more than a few hours ago.”

“These tracks are crisp around the edges,” Gallen said, pointing to the tracks in the snow. “They had to be made last night.” He got off his bike, studied the site.

“It looks as if the vanquishers set an ambush here. They waited several hours, then Orick came up behind, killed this one. The other two ran that way!” He pointed north, shook his head. “But I can’t imagine them running from an unarmed bear.”

“They didn’t,” Veriasse said. “Those tracks are too evenly spaced, too confident. They’re not the tracks of someone sprawling headlong in fear. I think those two left before the battle took place. Perhaps they were drawn off, or were redeployed. In any case, they left their companion alone, and Orick attacked the vanquisher from behind.”

Everynne searched the hills above, scanning for more signs of the enemy; thick snow covered the rocks. The vanquishers could not travel through this terrain without leaving a clear trail, but Everynne could see no other footprints—only the one trail coming up from the road, and the vanquisher prints heading north parallel to the highway.

Gallen said, “After the battle, Orick didn’t bother to follow these other two. Instead he left us his message, then headed back down the trail.”

“Of course,” Veriasse said. “Orick knew he couldn’t win a battle against two vanquishers, but felt he had to leave us a warning.”

“What are these vanquishers doing here? How did they anticipate us?” Gallen shook his head in disgust.

Everynne was not surprised to find the vanquishers so alert. She and Veriasse had used their key to travel to over twenty worlds in the past six months, and many of those worlds had been under dronon control. It had seemed only a matter of time until the dronon caught them.

“You know,” Veriasse said as if to himself. “Maggie stole Gallen’s key and experienced a temporal loss on her travels once again. Given this loss, the vanquishers who met us on Tihrglas can only have come from our own future. Which explains why they are obviously searching for me and Everynne. Somehow, the dronon learned our identities. We will have to be doubly cautious.”

Veriasse wiped his bloody hand on the snow, put his gloves back on. “We’ll have to disguise you,” Veriasse said to Everynne. “On Wechaus, the lords do not wear masks, and this will make it difficult. Unpack your blue cloak, and tie the hood up to cover your face.”

Everynne dutifully pulled the clothes out of her pack, did as Veriasse said, even though with the bright sun the morning was not terribly frigid. When she finished, they started the airbikes, followed Orick’s bloody trail down to the highway and headed north.

They had not gone more than a few hundred meters when they saw bear tracks leave the road again to the east; other tracks showed where vanquishers had pursued Orick across the road from the west.

Gallen shouted when he saw the prints and took off following the trail with Everynne close behind. Not fifty meters from the road, they found the site of the last battle, and Everynne cried out in horror.

A heap of blackened bones was all that the incendiary blasts had left of the bear.