Free Lords of the Seventh Swarm by David Farland

You’re afraid they’ll ruin the deal, talk me out of it.”
    Felph grinned. “Very perceptive. I should have known that a Lord Protector would be so perceptive. To put it candidly, I am unsure of your chances. If I thought the venture fruitless, I wouldn’t even entertain this notion.”
    “You told me that I would find your offer interesting,” Gallen said. “I’m not exactly interested in dying.”
    “Of course not,” Felph said.
    “So what do you offer?” Gallen asked. “I assume the reward justifies the risks?”
    “I would, of course, take precautions before sending you in. I’d clone you, download you memories, so that should you fail, you will have lost nothing. Beyond that …” Felph spread his hands wide, indicating his palace, “whatever you want.”
    Orick gasped, and even Gallen sat back in surprise. Gallen could imagine a lot. As he gazed at the opulence around him, he realized that Felph really would make good on his offer.
    “That’s right,” Felph said. “I am four thousand years old, and in my youth I inherited more money than I could ever spend. That has been invested and accruing interest for ages. I control the economies of fifty worlds. If you acquire the artifact I desire, I will give you,” he shrugged, “half.”
    Gallen’s heart pounded. Maggie reached over, clutched his arm under the table. A warning? Did she want him to jump at the offer, or back away from it? He glanced at her, and her face was set, wary. She was telling him only to be careful, he suspected.
    But he couldn’t be careful. Only days ago she’d begged him to flee the civilized worlds, get her away from the dronon. Government officials, sympathetic to Gallen’s plight, had loaned Gallen a ship.
    “What would be worth so much?” Gallen asked.
    “The Waters of Strength,” Felph said.
    Gallen asked, “What makes them so valuable?”
    Felph shrugged. “I’m not certain that they are. At the very least, they intrigue me. That intrigue has held me here on this planet for six hundred years. But if the legends are true, then it is said that in ancient times the Qualeewoohs brewed the Waters of Strength, and those who drank them made four great conquests.” He raised one hand and counted off on four fingers, “Self. Nature. Time. And Space.”
    Gallen shook his head. “That seems a bit much to expect from a potion. What proof do you have that it exists?”
    “There are many accounts of it in Qualeewooh histories. It was brewed some thirty millennia ago, at the dawn of the Age of Man,” Felph said. “As for evidence of its continued existence, there is ample evidence. What evidence would you have?”
    Gallen shrugged. “A thirty-thousand-year-old Qualeewooh, telling me where to find it.”
    Lord Felph raised a brow. “All right,” he said. “Fair enough. Follow me.”
    He got up from the table, and Gallen followed him out the corridor, back into the great hall, and out another passageway. Maggie followed at Gallen’s back, along with the bears, Felph’s children, and Dooring.
    The passageways led to a road that wound outside the palace itself, and Gallen saw that night was full upon them, but though the stars dusted a cloudless sky, Brightstar outshone them all, more like a brilliant moon than a star. Gallen could see quite well, and indeed felt the heat of the star. He followed Felph through a garden of dahlias in shades of white and black, then down into a great chamber, an ancient chamber carved by the Qualeewoohs.
    Felph reached into his pocket, pulled out a glow globe, and held it aloft. “If you look up here, you can see writing on the walls, most of it in a tempera made from colored clays mixed with pulp from bark.” There was indeed writing on the ceiling, intricate designs of stylized Qualeewoohs painted in vivid reds, blues, yellows, and greens. There was a queer feeling to the place. Strange scenes on the ceiling depicted birdlike creatures in armored helms, who carried knives on their