Veriasse and Semarritte had become trapped here in Semarritte’s judgment hall. Dronon by the hundreds of thousands had surrounded the building, a black wave of warriors clambering over one another’s bodies, until at last they cleared a path so that and her Lord Escort could enter.
In his dream, Gallen struggled fiercely with the Lord Escort-landing blows on the beast’s chitinous body, ripping off one of its feelers, smashing eyes with a leaping kick. But in time he wearied, and the Lord Escort lashed forward a wing-an unprecedented move that would have availed the creature nothing in a battle with one of its own kind. But the dronon’s wing slashed through Veriasse’s belly like a saber, and suddenly he was reeling away from the battle, his entrails spilling across the floor.
The Lord Escort then rattled its wings in a thunderous roar, leapt into the air, and in one swift kick disemboweled Semarritte while Veriasse watched. The dronon vanquishers who encircled the room raised a rattling howl of congratulations. Then the Lord Escort cried to his people that Tlitkani of the dronon had become the new Lord of the Swarm, queen over all peoples both human and dronon.
Afterward, a dronon vanquisher rushed forward with an incendiary rifle, firing into Semarritte’s body. Smoke and the scent of chemical fire rose through the building. Veriasse pulled his intestines in as the world faded to gray, pinching the skin closed, unsure whether the nanodocs in his body could heal such a massive wound.
In the dream, Gallen could not feel Veriasse’s pain. He could discern the man’s thoughts, observe his actions. But the dream carried no emotional weight.
Gallen woke and thought long about the dream, wondered if there were any way that Veriasse could have defeated the dronon, and suddenly images of the planet Dronon filled his mind. He saw a brown world filled with odd plants, where insects had developed interior lungs that allowed them to grow in size far beyond anything on Earth. Dronon was a vast world, and it orbited its sun once each four Earth years. Its axis tilted at a forty-two degree angle, with the result that each year, each polar icecap would melt. During a summer, one hemisphere would bathe in perpetual daylight while the other suffered perpetual night.
As a result, the dronon were forced to migrate over vast continents with each changing season, foraging for shrublike fungi. Each hive continually competed with others for food and space, for the finest nesting sites, for water that became scarce during the dry seasons. The order of their universe was clear: expand your territory or die.
In each hive, as the first few females hatched, they would battle among themselves, fighting in order to remove the exterior ovaries from one another. The female who managed to keep her ovaries established her dominance as a future queen, and soon the others recognized her authority as a princess. She would bide her time until a Lord Escort flew in from another hive, one who would kill the reigning Lord Escort and queen, making the princess the new queen of the hive.
Those poor females who were spayed could never form the secondary sexual characteristics of a queen. They grew only to a small size, and their color remained as white as that of any grublike larvae. Their boundless energy was channeled into work, rather than procreation, and they became the most menial servants of the hive.
Among the males, a similar battle would take place, but only after the larvae had exited their cocoons as adults. Adult male vanquishers, with their flashing wings and huge battle arms, engaged in ritual combat, seeking to remove one another’s testicles, until only six males remained. These six princes would then fly to new hives, hoping to win their own kingdoms, while the neutered vanquishers remained with their hive.
A third sex often hatched without functioning sexual organs-neither male nor female. These had deformed wings and less energy than workers, but often had facile minds, suitable for solving problems. These become the technicians of the hive, the architects, counselors, and artists.
Over the eons, the queens had evolved to become more and more virile-laying more eggs, living longer lives. Only the strongest survived, and it was in the interest of the queens to root out the weak, destroy competing hives.
But among the queens, one great lady ruled each swarm. She could not begin her rule until she reached the age of one hundred and fifty dronon years. At that point, her exoskeleton would change color, bleaching from its pale wheat to a beautiful gold. If the queen survived to this age without injuries-broken appendages or a cracked exoskeleton-her offspring would gather near, carried into ecstasy at the sight of a new Golden Queen.
The Lord Escort of the hive, stricken with adoration, would pilgrimage with his Golden across the continents, seeking out the reigning Golden Queen.
The Lord Escorts for each Golden would then battle for the right to rule a swarm of one thousand hives. When one of the escorts was killed, his foe would attack the opposing queen and maim her, damaging her so that she would lose the adoration of hives. Such a queen was often allowed to cower back to her own hive and continue laying eggs until she died.
But the Lord Escort and the vanquishing Golden Queen became Lords of the Swarm. They would choreograph the great works of the hives-the migration across the vast plains of Dronon and through the reaches of space; they would choreograph battles with legions of the vanquishers as they sought to enlarge the swarm’s territory.
Gallen lay in a half sleep, and the mantle displayed battles that had been filmed between Lord Escorts. Veriasse had made a great study of the battles-had noted the various fighting stances, attack forms, the use of feelers, mandibles, serrated battle arms, and the clawed legs as weapons. He had performed autopsies on dead dronon vanquishers-had determined how much force was necessary to crush their faceted eyes, to pull off the hooked claw of a forearm, to rip out a feeler, to pry off a head. He had measured the thickness of their chitinous exoskeletons, searching for thin spots.
The dronon had few weaknesses. Their exoskeletons offered superb protection for the head, belly, and back. They were most vulnerable on the hind legs, where their respiratory orifices weakened the hip, but reaching those legs was a task-the dronon could protect themselves well from a frontal assault, and with the dronon’s flight and leaping capabilities, it was nearly impossible for a human to attack from behind.
Gallen lay for a long time, thinking about how one could engage a dronon in hand-to-hand combat with the hopes of winning. Sometimes, he would doze and wake to find himself sleepwalking, performing arcane exercises, stretching muscles he did not know that he had, leaping and kicking at imaginary foes in the quiet halls of the temple.
In one such session, Maggie came to him, half asleep herself. “What are you doing up so late?”
“I can’t sleep,” Gallen said. “Veriasse said this damned mantle would teach me when things were quiet, but it’s kept me up all night.”
Maggie simply said, “Have you tried talking to it? Just tell it to let you rest for the night.
Gallen gave the command, and immediately the mantle relinquished its lessons. He went back to bed, found himself compelled to lie next to Maggie, recognized that the mantle was whispering for him to lie beside her. “Why?” he wondered, and the answer flooded into his mind. You are a Lord Protector now. You must have someone to protect.
Over the next few days, Orick became inseparable from Everynne. He would disappear into his room for a few moments, and then while Everynne was speaking in a secret meeting with the masked Lords of Fale, she would suddenly turn and find him lying on the floor near her foot like some great hairy dog.