He glanced up to Herm, waiting for the winged man to make a more formal introduction. “Rame is an itinerant cave dweller-cum-philosopher,” Herm said, “who lives in the ruins out near, the Yesterday Hills.”
Rame was suitably attired in a hooded robe of moldy blue hair. His narrow hatchet face was covered with a beard and grime. His teeth were more orange than yellow. “So pleased to meet you,” Rame said, now pumping her hand vigorously. “So pleased to meet such a beautiful, beautiful woman. You’d … you’d certainly make a fine decoration for any man’s cave Miss, uh Miss …”
“Maggie O’Day,” Maggie answered, trying to pull her hand away.
“Ah! A beautiful name,” Rame said, then glanced toward Gallen and the bears. “So tell me, Maggie, what brings you to Ruin?”
Rame stood close and peered into her eyes, unblinking, as if trying to peer beneath any layers of deceit, and Maggie tried to pull her hand back. Suddenly, a memory but two weeks old flashed through her mind, terrifying her.
Never before had Maggie heard a war band of Vanquishers in flight: now she understood why men called these aliens dronon.
The falling sun of Avendon lay on the ragged gray hills, creating a cold silver blade of light on the horizon. In that blade of light, Vanquishers flew in such vast numbers they looked like a row of thunderheads stretching over the hills, their black carapaces glinting in the dying sun. Their flashing amber wings limned the clouds with a sickly yellow hue; even kilometers away, the beating of their wings created a deep moaning that was not quite song, not quite a sound of pain. Almost mechanical.
Machines. They were as mindless and unyielding as machines.
The Lords of Seventh Swarm. Maggie took one last glance at the dronon over her shoulder. The cloud of warriors sped forward. So close. So close. Out over the prairie, wind stirred clouds of pollen from the purple sage.
Maggie ducked into a gully, gasping, the scent of sage and dust thick in her throat. She put a hand on her swollen belly, holding the son who waited to be born. Behind her, Gallen stopped. He raised a hand to shade his eyes, half clutched it into a fist, shielding his eyes, then just held it for several seconds, so it became a gesture of denial, as if with one hand he could hope to hold the swarm at bay.
Sweat streamed down Maggie’s face. Her heart pounded. Her mind was numb from too many sleepless nights, from hours of running. Maggie couldn’t imagine the Vanquishers being more than ten kilometers out, flying fast. Maybe closer.
After months of nightmares in which the dronon caught her in darkness, then tore off her arms, it looked as if Maggie’s worst fears would come to pass. She fought her panic, but she was too battered to be tough anymore. She looked frantically for a place to hide.
“Hurry, my love,” Gallen urged, trying to steer her downhill. Maggie stumbled with weariness. “The gate must be here. The map says we’re right on top of it.” He clutched a map in one hand.
In the shadows of a creosote bush, a sparrow peeped querulously.
A whining sound approached overhead, the hum of a dronon antigravity drive. Maggie glanced up. A bullet-shaped vessel hurtled over the rise, its fore-end cluttered with sensor arrays. It was a dronon Seeker, a machine that hunted by scent.
A Vanquisher straddled the Seeker, hugging the vessel. The dronon’s wings were folded back, its head low against the frame of the Seeker.
It was the demon that haunted Maggie’s dreams, hurtling ‘toward them in the darkness like the angel of death. Its huge front arms, its battle arms with their serrated edges, were poised above its head, ready to chop down. The Vanquisher shouted in its own language. Maggie could not understand it, but dozens of mouthfingers beneath its jaws thumped loudly over the thin membrane of its voicedrum; the banging of its voice echoed over the gully, a sound of warning. Maggie looked for her reflection in its faceted eyes. Its translucent wings buzzed in a blur.
Beside her, there was a movement and a flash as Gallen spun and fired his pulp pistol.…
Maggie pulled her hand from Rame’s, lurched back, blinking tears, trying to recall what question the madman had asked her. The fear of the dronon weighed heavily on her, as heavily as it had two weeks earlier when they’d finally escaped Avedon only to find that the world gate they’d walked through led to a planet in the Carina Galaxy. The Lords of the Seventh Swarm had been so close on Maggie’s trail, had come so close to blocking all their exits, that Maggie convinced Gallen to borrow a space cruiser from the Tharrin governors on Certes, fly off into the frontier worlds of the Carina Galaxy, where Maggie hoped to give birth to her child in safety. Out here, there were no world gates. Travel between worlds might be more difficult, but at least, Maggie hoped, the dronon would not be able to track her so easily.
Indeed, they’d come to Ruin at the behest of the governors of Certes. The planet was not listed on any official star charts.
“I, uh, I uh, didn’t mean to frighten you,” Rame said as Maggie backed away. “I’m sorry.”
“We’re just here for a visit,” Gallen interrupted the two, taking Maggie’s hand, holding it, so that Rame would quit pawing at her. “We wanted to see the ruins.”
But Rame looked at the fear on Maggie’s face, and it seemed that he knew better.
“I’d take care of you,” Rame said. “If you were my woman, I’d take care of you.” He reached up with one grubby hand, as if to run his fingers over the smooth skin at the hollow of her throat. “Come see my cave,” he whispered urgently. “You’ll like my cave. It’s peaceful there. Got a waterfall in the back of it. There, in the dark places, I could teach you the secrets of the Qualeewoohs.” He stared at her, unblinking.
Gallen edged forward, almost blocking Rame with his own body. Maggie was not afraid of the man, not really.
There was a look of … peace in Rame’s dark eyes. A look of total contentment and surrender. Almost, Maggie wanted to fall forward into those eyes to feel what Rame felt. She caught herself and pulled away, wondering if Rame had some odd power, wondering if he’d purposely triggered those dark memories in her.
But she couldn’t imagine such a thing. No. She’d been having anxiety attacks like this for the past several weeks. It was the stress that caused her agitated state. The constant fear and running.
Herm pushed himself between Rame and Maggie, disposed of the man by saying, “Rame, would you be so kind as to wait on the veranda? The High Confab is coming, and we need someone to offer the proper greetings when she lands.”
“The High Confab? Here? Tonight?” Rame asked, his eyes growing impossibly more and more huge under his hooded cloak.
Herm said, “Yes, her attendants said she would come tonight, and she’ll need a proper escort.”
With a throaty cry of astonishment, Rame turned and trundled toward the veranda, to a set of stone perches where visiting Qualeewoohs might land.
“Who is this High Confab?” Orick the bear asked. For the past several minutes, he’d been sniffing around, watching the folks. No one had spoken to him, and he’d seemed more interested in food than conversation anyway.
“A figment of Rame’s hallucinations,” Herm told Orick, “a Qualeewooh who visits him in his dreams. Like many of the mad folks around here, Rame sleeps with a Qualeewooh’s spirit mask over his face. If you aren’t mad already, such things will drive you that way soon enough.”
A moment later, a beautiful woman appeared through the crowd, as brilliant and extraordinary in her brown silks and diamonds as the other folk were plain.
She must be one of Felph’s children, Maggie realized. No one else looked a thousandth so elegant. She appeared to be no more than twenty, yet her eyes spoke of wisdom beyond her years. Auburn hair cascaded down her back to her waist, and her eyes were clear light brown.
Maggie realized that Herm had disposed of the madman just in time for this woman to make her appearance. Herm introduced her, with a slight, mocking smile, “May I present Hera, Felph’s fourth.”