The Golden Queen - Chapter 5

[kalinara]

So last time, lots of things happened! As it turns out, the whole lying about the angel/devil thing is probably not going to be all that relevant. But the whole monster attack part pretty much is. And Gallen's going to help Veriasse and Everynne leave free of charge.



This chapter starts us with Everynne's point of view. We discover what she thinks of Gallen...sort of.

Veriasse hung his shoulders as he ran, weary. Everynne herself felt weary to the core of her soul, and she knew she needed more help. She needed a man like Gallen, and she considered taking him for a servant. She studied him as she ran.

After thirty minutes, Gallen reached a hill where a trio of tall stones hid them. Inside this natural fortress, he called a halt. He stood panting and asked Veriasse, "Those vanquishers, will they try to follow our tracks or are there enough of them so that they can beat the brush and force us out of cover?"

I included the second paragraph because I'd have liked to hear a little more of what Everynne actually thinks about the guy, but we just kind of pass over it. Instead, we get a bit where Veriasse shows Gallen his "incendiary rifle", which he explains fairly straightforward:

"It's called an incendiary rifle," Veriasse said. "When you discharge the weapon, it fires chemicals that burn very hot."

"So it's something like a flaming arrow?" Gallen asked.

"Yes, only far hotter. Where we come from, some creatures can only be killed with such a weapon. It has become our weapon of choice."

"How does it work?" Gallen asked. Everynne was surprised at how casually he asked it. She imagined that the young man, being a Backward from such a low-tech world, would find such weapons to be somehow shocking. But Gallen asked in a brusque, businesslike manner.

I actually like this a lot. Both the implied cultural note of calling him a "Backward" with a capital B, and the fact that Gallen is pretty matter of fact about the whole thing. People are people, and being either "primitive" or lacking an education, doesn't necessarily make someone irrational or stupid. Veriasse gave a very reasonable explanation that makes sense with how Gallen understands things.

Gallen asks if the rifle can kill an ogre, and asks how tough they really are. Veriasse gives him a quick update on the three types of "Vanquisher". The one Orick had killed a few chapters ago was a "tracker". The Ogre is part of the infantry. The third type is Dronon. The last gets some backstory:

"You saw one back in town," Veriasse said. "You called him Beelzebub, Lord of the Flies. He is really a dronon, a Lord Vanquisher from another world. Sixty years ago, his people came among us, and they were wise in the ways of war. At first, we tried to help them. But they envied our technology and sought to take it. They captured many worlds. Now, any guardians who were not slain all serve the dronon vanquishers. On some worlds, even humans serve the dronon's Golden Queen and her empire."

Title drop!

Unfortunately, we don't really get much reaction to this. Gallen instead gets immediately to business:

Gallen stood up, seeming to have caught his wind. "We'll need to keep to the trees so that they can't shoot us, and I'll lead them on some trails that will be hard to follow. If we can shake them off our track, we won't have to rush to the gate."

This is the paragraph that directly follows the title drop one. While I do like it as a character beat, I can't help but think that this scene would have been stronger from Gallen's point of view, so we could get some actual reaction to all of this new information. Maybe even something that shows Gallen's a little more awed by the fancy tech shit than he shows outwardly.

And if we absolutely cannot see Gallen in a moment of contemplation/hesitance/awe, then how about Maggie or Orick? They're here too.

There is a pretty good bit here though when Gallen leads them to a cave of Wights, and Everynne and Veriasse are very skeptical.

"Wights?" Veriasse asked. "What is a wight?"

"A spirit. If someone is too curious and breaks the laws of the Tome, the priests give the person to the wights."

"Surely you don't believe in ghosts?" Veriasse said. "There's no such thing. Have you ever seen such a thing?"

Dude, you're on the run from a world spanning insect empire. Maybe you should be a little more open-minded? But to be fair, once Maggie gives more of a description (regarding their "soulfires glowing blue and green"), Everynne and Veriasse identify them as "artefs".

This is a nice bit that works with Gallen's reaction to the gun. Just because he, Maggie, and Orick aren't as technologically advanced doesn't make them stupid. They're just using the language that they know to describe what they observe.

Veriasse and Everynne's reaction has some nice worldbuilding:

But Veriasse asked, incredulous, "What would an artef be doing here?"

"Guarding this world," Everynne said. "Keeping its people in enforced ignorance. That is what their ancestors wanted, a world where their children could hide from the problems of a universe too large to control. I'll bet the original settlers downloaded their intelligences into artefs."

AH. Now it makes sense. This is how we get a fantasy Irish-settled area outside of Ireland proper with talking bears. It's not quite a Stargate scenario, really, since they settled themselves. It's more like Gremayre in Christopher Stasheff's Warlock series: basically SCA Renaissance folk who decided to go back to the old ways.

Speaking of language - Orick mentions the realm of the sidhe as Everynne and Veriasse's origin, and Everynne goes along with it. It's essentially true, after all.

Artef's, we're told, are actually machines that store human thought. The reason why the cave is so dark is because they react to the radio waves from the sun.

This bit, I have to admit, aggravates me a little:

Gallen gulped, obviously still afraid. He led them in through a narrow chasm. He took Everynne's slim hand and pulled her through the dark. She could feel him trembling. She did not know if he feared this place still, or if he simply trembled at her touch. Often, men reacted that way to her. It was a mistake to let him touch her.

I get it, Wolverton. Everynne is hot. Thank you. I'd actually rather hear more of a reaction to the fact that this so far mostly fearless dude is afraid. That's a more important character beat! We know Gallen doesn't scare easily.

Then a ghostly green apparition appears:

It was an old man with muttonchop sideburns and a bushy mustache. He wore a leine without a greatcloak, and short boots. The wight stood quietly, gazing at them in the dark. Its phosphorescent skin let Everynne see the walls of the cave immediately around them, and she was surprised at the jumbles of stone, the numerous stalactites and stalagmites.

It is interesting to see that the wight is aware and sentient. He greets Gallen by name, and then warns him of consorting with strangers from another world. He asks if his mother ever warned him against them, or told him what happens to curious boys.

We revisit the idea of Gallen's fear, and it's still a little annoying:

The group reached the sunlight, and Gallen fell down to the forest floor, gasping. His face was pale, and Everynne realized that entering the cave must have been a great ordeal for the man, being a Backward who believed the wights to be invincible spirits. Soon Orick and Maggie rushed out behind them. Maggie's eyes were wide. Gallen looked up at Maggie, and he burst out laughing.

I'm hopeful that Everynne is due for an arc where she grows to appreciate her "Backward" friends. This shit is pretty annoying.

Gallen does his guiding. He takes routes that are designed to inconvenience/slow down the adversary. Everynne is, of course, impressed. Once they get to the forest, they're exhausted, and they hear the vanquishers coming. Veriasse praises Gallen, but now it's time to run.

Gallen asks to borrow the incendiary rifle. He shoots the tracker in the group. They run. He gets them to a nigh-impenetrable section of woods full of "pine-houses". Happily, Gallen had played here as a child and remembers the way. Unfortunately, he miscalculates a little as he leads them to a bolthole that, as a child, he fit through fine, but as an adult, he, and the others, cannot.

Okay, that's a nice beat. Gallen was getting a LITTLE too flawless here But this is a reasonable mistake that anyone could make, particularly under the stress of the moment. It helps humanize him. He goes out to scout. When he's gone for almost an hour Maggie follows.

Meanwhile, Everynne and Veriasse talk Gallen up, because of course.

"Do you think Gallen could be lost?" Everynne asked Veriasse.

Veriasse shook his head. "No. As he's said, he played here as a child. I suspect he knows exactly where we are. I've been impressed by his competence. For a Backward, he seems to have grasped our predicament well, and he's led the vanquishers on a marvelous chase. He'll come back soon."

Veriasse said it with such certainty, that Everynne suddenly felt more at ease. Yet the older man also seemed to need to fill up the silence. "As a warrior, I find him . . . intriguing."

"In what way?" Everynne asked.

Veriasse smiled, contemplating. "He carries himself with a deadly grace. If I had seen him on any planet, I would have known he was a killer. He moves with caution, a type of confident wariness that one learns to spot quickly. Yet he is different from warriors on most worlds. Our ancestors relied heavily upon armor until the incendiary guns made it useless. Now, we rely upon our guns and upon tactics downloaded from personal intelligences. We fight battles at long distances and seldom look into the faces of our victims. Even more seldom do we purposely expose ourselves to risk. We have, in effect, become chess masters who've memorized too many classic moves. But this young man relies on quick wits for his survival, and his weapon of choice is the knife. It seems an odd choice."

Mmmhmm. Honestly, Wolverton, you don't have to be quite so heavy handed with the shilling. I like Gallen well enough already.

Orick does break in to say Gallen would love a sword, but they're too expensive. Apparently whenever you go through a new country, you pay taxes on it. Veriasse is amused that even on this backward world, people practice arms control.

Not sure what to make of that, but okay. More shilling:

Veriasse sighed. "I feel fortunate. I have not met a man like him in many thousands of years." He stared at Everynne as if to say, "We need him. You could make him follow you." And a chill went through her. She remembered how Gallen had quivered when he touched her hand in the cave, the way he laughed off his fear of the wights. She, too, found herself intrigued.

Orick asks if they know magic that can help find their way out of the wood, but Everynne laughs and explains that they're not magic any more than he is.

...I mean, he IS a talking, intelligent bear? That seems pretty magic.

Gallen comes back, he's found a new trail, Maggie is up ahead.

And...ugh, really.

Everynne was nearly senseless with exhaustion. They climbed ahead, and she found herself blindly grasping for limbs. Smoke crept through the forest like a thin fog. Just before they left the grove, Gallen pulled off his sweaty, soiled greatcoat and threw it into a crevice between two trees. Veriasse watched him and did likewise, and Everynne realized the value of leaving behind something strong of scent. She pulled off her own blue cloak, tossed it back. Everynne looked down, caught Gallen staring at her as she perched on a branch. He did not look away guiltily as some men might have. Instead, he just seemed to admire her. She wondered what he saw—a woman in a blue tunic, perched in a tree, silver ringlets in her dark hair. She realized that she was sitting in the last rays of the dying sun, and perhaps so lit, she looked resplendent. She had been bred to look that way to common humans.

Look, I get that Everynne's beauty is a plot point and it actually DOES have significance. I also get that her preoccupation with it is a character beat that has its own level of importance. I do remember that. But for god's sake, WE GET IT. THE WOMAN IS HOT. OKAY.

So they race to the gate. Everynne has a key - a crystal shaped like a horseshoe. She flips a switch that transmits an electronic code. The crystal glows as the gate transmits an acceptance.

I like this description:

The gate on this world was perhaps the oldest Everynne had ever seen. It was a small thing—taller than a man and two yards wide. It looked like a simple arch made of polished gray stone. On the posts of the arch were carved designs—flowers and vines, images that Everynne could not decipher.

Gallen goes all formal and it doesn't suit him: "My lady," Gallen said, "will you be safe in this next world?"

But anyway, Everynne realizes that with the vanquishers coming, Maggie and Orick will need protection. So she tells him she'll be safe. She's got the only key to the gate, so they'll have to chase her down in "sky ships" instead.

And here's a bit that's actually pretty good, Everynne can tell that Gallen intends to leap after her anyway, so she tricks him into picking up her harp case, and pulls Veriasse through the gate before he can do anything.

I'm still not sure why the woman was carrying a fucking harp while on the run, but okay.

This bit combines some nice description with some oddness.

Instead, Everynne had taken Veriasse's arm and leapt forward. There was a flash of white, and suddenly the lights under the arch snuffed out like a candle. A freezing chill hit the air. The arch itself turned white with frost, and Gallen walked under it, stood a moment looking up at the ancient runes of flowers and animals carved into the stone. As a child he had brought a hammer and chisel to the gate, but had not been able to chip off any of that stone. Instead, his chisel got blunted and bent, and finally the handle to his hammer splintered. It was like no stone in the world. He looked at Maggie, took her hand.

Gallen felt as if his heart had been pulled from him, and he just stood, staring. He heard a shout from the forest behind, and Maggie tugged on his hand, urging, "Come away from here. Take your legs into your shoes. Run!"

The hand-holding just seems really weird here and tonally inconsistent? But okay, fine. They take cover as the vanquishers appear. "Beelzebub" or Lord Hitkani, as the ogre calls him, has his own crystal horseshoe which he uses to determine that the fugitives went to "Fale". He doesn't seem to be able to use his key though.

There's the light of a wight in the woods, and for some bizarre reason, Gallen is certain they're searching for him. Why he thinks this, I'm not sure. He also sees the vanguishers manage to get their key to work. He thinks that Everynne doesn't know they're that close bhind her and makes a plan to rush the gate. He tells Maggie and Orick to lay low and head home in the morning.

Instead, things get chaotic.

Fight scene. Gallen attacks. He can't sneak up on the dronon, who has eyes in the back of his head, but he's able to get close enough that it can't use its own incendiary device. He uses knives to fight the ogres, and gets the key away from one of them. But he's very outnumbered, and that's this happens:

A piercing shriek rose behind them. They halted for half a second, and Maggie rushed between one ogre's legs. Gallen felt Orick's teeth biting into his collar as the bear tried to drag him under the arch.

Gallen scrabbled to his feet enough to kick backward a step, faintly aware of the ghostly lavender light radiating from the arch.

Orick roared in fear and Gallen kicked again and Maggie was with them, dragging Gallen backward. He saw the giants' faces twist in rage, yet suddenly Gallen was swept away through a cold, brilliant light.

Oops. The chapter ends here.

I've been pretty critical of the book, but honestly, I am enjoying it. It's a decent adventure lark, with mostly likeable characters. I just wish Wolverton would tone down the shilling and give the women some actual traits beyond "beautiful" and "love interest".