Mistress of the Catacombs

20

“You are staying at the Hyacinth,” one of the Nine said to Cashel in a voice no more human than the speaker. The smell of rotting flesh puffed from its beak in time with the words. “You should not have come here.”

“I couldn’t let you eat my friend!” Cashel said. The spray had hardened on his neck and right cheek; his skin strained painfully when he spoke.

The Nine were right when they said Cashel shouldn’t have come here. By Duzi! they were. There was nothing else he could’ve done, though; and even now, Cashel guessed he’d do it all over again if the only choice was that or doing nothing. He hadn’t made any difference, but at least he wasn’t going to have to live remembering that he didn’t try.

A creature brought its abdomen close to Cashel’s right hand. A pore opened. Cashel braced himself mentally for a gush of fluid that would harden over his mouth and nose.

Instead there was a stench of ammonia and the glue holding the quarterstaff to his hand dissolved. Cashel sneezed violently.

The creature tugged. There was still a hardened loop attaching the staff to Cashel’s ribs. He couldn’t turn his head to watch, but another of the Nine touched its body there and sprayed more ammonia till the staff slipped free.

“Your friend was the woman from the Hyacinth,” a creature said.

“The woman from the Hyacinth was entranced, but she was not dead,” said another. Their bodies and their voices were identical. Cashel could easily have called every sheep in Barca’s Hamlet by name, but the Nine were indistinguishable.

“Our business is with the dead,” a third creature said. “We would not harm your friend. We will turn her loose when she has recovered.”

The creatures passed the quarterstaff from one to another. Each ran a delicately pincered “hand” along the hickory before giving it to the next. Fresh ammonia bit as one cleaned a last daub of glue from the shaft.

“She has recovered now,” said the first of the Nine to speak. “We will turn her loose with you, man from the Hyacinth. But you both must go away.”

“What?” said Cashel, trying to understand what he’d just heard. He didn’t suppose he ought to be complaining, but…

He said, “But you eat people!”

The Nine bobbed back and forth on their two pairs of walking legs, looking for all the world like a set of children’s dipper toys. They rubbed their beaks sideways, back and forth, to make scraping sounds.

Cashel thought for a moment the Nine were laughing. On reflection, he decided he didn’t believe they understood humor.

“We do not eat people, man from the Hyacinth,” said a creature who hadn’t spoken before. “We eat dead flesh.”

Two of the Nine moved away. Trussed as he was, Cashel couldn’t see what they were doing. He tried to roll and look back the way he’d come, but he couldn’t shift his torso quite enough to overbalance.

“Hold still and we will release you,” a creature said. It twisted its abdomen up, brushing Cashel’s wrist. The touch was dry and scaly like a snake’s skin, not hard.

A cool mist settled over Cashel’s arms and torso. He closed his eyes but the ammonia odor set him sneezing again. The glue loosened. When Cashel twisted, chunks of it dropped away like ice from slates in the sunshine.

On either side of the passage were open-fronted alcoves. Stone couches complete with carven pillows were built into all three sides of each. The corpse of an old man lay across the left-hand alcove. Two of the Nine were helping Tilphosa up from a side couch. She wore a dazed expression and kept trying to wipe her eyes with the back of her wrist.

“Well, who…?” Cashel said. He glanced at the meal he’d heard the Nine devouring when he burst in.

The creature who’d first spoken sprayed Cashel’s fettered feet tinglingly. He closed his eyes in reflex, but he’d seen more than he wanted to already. The corpse on the floor had been a man; the beard on the half of his face remaining proved that. His body had been emptied, but uneaten coils of intestine lay beside him spotted with attached blobs of yellow fat.

“You will go from Soong, will you not, stranger?” said one of the Nine. “It is better that you should.”

“We’ll go,” Cashel said. “Duzi help me, you bet we’ll go!”

He wondered if Tilphosa was really fit to travel, then decided that he didn’t care. He’d carry the girl on his back if that’s what it took to get away from this city and its charnel house.

Cashel stood. His eyes watered from the ammonia, and his stomach was turning. It wasn’t just death in the air; he thought the glue was doing something to his lungs also, though the smell of dead meat was bad enough.

Tilphosa stood, wobbly and still supported by the Nine. “Can I…?” Cashel asked, starting toward the girl before he had an answer.

“Of course,” said the creature who’d first spoken. His two fellows stepped aside for Cashel to take their place.

“Cashel, is that you?” the girl said. She clung to him like a spar in a shipwreck. Her flesh still felt cool, but she wasn’t a statue of ice as she’d been when he lifted her from the bed this morning.

“Yes,” he said. “We’re going to leave in just a moment, when you’re feeling up to it. I’ve got a boat. We’ll cross the river and then walk a ways to the east.”

He looked at the creature who’d spoken first and raised an eyebrow. Did the Nine recognize human facial expressions?

“That is a good plan,” said the creature. “We wish you well on your way, but please do not return to Soong.”

Cashel’s quarterstaff had made it all the way around the Nine. The last to examine the wood held it out horizontally to Cashel. His pincers gripped the staff so gently that they didn’t mark the hickory.

With the staff upright in his left hand and his right arm supporting Tilphosa, Cashel felt his stomach settle. Maybe it hadn’t been the smell that was bothering him after all.

“Ah, thanks,” he said, walking slowly toward the passage. Turning his back on the creatures worried him, though that was pretty silly given the way they’d handled him face on when he’d charged.

One of the Nine stepped out the passage ahead of the humans. He seemed to move by rocking his four clawed feet forward in a motion that reminded Cashel of gears in the millhouse rather than that of any animal he’d seen before walking. The legs scarcely moved at all.

Tilphosa’s mind or vision must have cleared enough for her to take in the figure ahead of them. She stiffened, but she continued forward with Cashel’s left hand lightly touching her shoulder.

“I thought I was dreaming,” she whispered. “I thought I was having a nightmare, Cashel.”

“We’re fine,” he said, words to soothe her. They were probably true, but Cashel himself wouldn’t really believe what he’d said till they were across the river and going away.

A breeze had swung the outside door nearly closed. The creature leading them opened it fully and stepped through, holding the panel for Cashel and his companion. The remainder of the Nine followed slowly.

“Sir?” he said to the creature. It rotated its narrow, sharp-edged skull to face him.

“Sir,” Cashel went on, “how is it that this…I mean, doesn’t anybody guess what you’re doing here? There’s only the few of you. If as many people as there are in the city wanted to come into your temple, you couldn’t stop them.”

“We were here before humans came to Soong, stranger,” the creature said. His voice seemed to come from the center of his chest; it had a buzzing undertone, sort of like a whole chorus of crickets were singing harmony to make the words. “The first settlers knew who we were; they built the temple we live in.”

He paused. “Their children, the people of Soong, know also, but they prefer not to think about our necessities and theirs. It is better that you go rather than stay to tell a story that others do not wish to hear.”

“But why did they agree to, to feed you this way?” Tilphosa said. As she spoke, her right hand tightened on Cashel’s left biceps. He tensed the muscle, because otherwise her pinching was going to hurt. “Did you threaten…?”

The creature scraped his beak again. That had to be laughter.

“Woman stranger,” he said, “look about you. This valley is marsh up to the ridges. The wood here burns poorly, and every year a flood would float out the contents of the graves.”

Cashel nodded. The only real choice for burial was the river. There fish would dispose of corpses in much the same way as the Nine were doing…but with the likelihood of bloated, half-eaten bodies bobbing to the surface frequently. Cashel could understand the logic, though that last thought reminded him of the corpse on the floor of the main hall.

“We gave up our fish weirs,” the creature said, “and the human settlers gave us privacy to deal with their needs.”

“Right,” said Cashel. No part of him felt it was right, but it was no more his business than some of the things old widowers in the borough got up to with their ewes. He wasn’t going to be staying in this region; that was the only important thing. “I guess we’d best be getting on.”

The creature nodded like he knew what Cashel was thinking; as he probably did. The Nine were pretty clear about understanding the locals, after all.

He and Tilphosa set out down the path, the creature walking ahead like a pull toy on wheels. As they neared the center of the garden, Cashel heard a woman cry, “Is somebody there? Help me!”

He put his head down and slanted his staff before him, then charged through the hanging branches like a plow furrowing thin soil. The nuts his rush shook off scattered all around.

Leemay was in the bog. Only her head and the tops of her shoulders still showed. “Help me!” she said. “Pull me up!”

Cashel stretched out his quarterstaff. Something gripped it from behind and pulled it back.

He turned. Their guide released the ferrule it had gripped with its deceptively delicate-looking pincers.

“This is not your affair, stranger,” the creature said. “Let us go to your boat.”

“Help me!” Leemay screamed. “Don’t listen to that demon!”

“The Nine aren’t demons,” Tilphosa said. Her voice was as cold as her flesh had been when her scream roused Cashel this morning. “The Nine saved my life when a human sent me to die.”

“Sir,” said Cashel, looking from Leemay to the impassive creature, “I can’t just…”

“We have no business with the living, stranger,” the creature said. “But this one will be our business soon, and that is justice.”

The rest of the Nine had followed them. They stood now on the path, unmoving and silent. There was no threat in their posture, but Cashel already knew he had no chance if he tried to fight them.

Tilphosa put her hand on his arm. “Come on, Cashel,” she said quietly. “I’d like to get away from here.”

“Yeah, I guess,” Cashel agreed. He followed their guide. There was a path that took them around the bog with just a single screen of branches to brush aside.

Leemay shouted again, then began to scream. When Cashel glanced over his shoulder, he saw the Nine waiting around the bog. They were as motionless as buzzards on a branch.

Cashel was glad to close the courtyard gate behind him and Tilphosa, but Leemay had already stopped screaming.

“Ready?” said Carus, hunching in the shadow of the boats.

“Yes,” said Sharina. She grinned. “And honored to accompany such a distinguished young officer as yourself.”

Sharina felt as though she was racing down a steep hill. If she ever paused, she’d stumble and maybe break her neck, but for now it felt exhilarating. Running had always been a talent and a delight for her, so the emotions that came with the fancy were good ones.

Carus chuckled, though tightly. His mind would view this risky piece of acting in terms of battle, not of a race. He might laugh in the midst of slaughter, but it wouldn’t be the same carefree humor as Sharina’s when she ran.

Carus donned the bronze helmet he’d carried in his bundle. He’d clipped on a crest of feathers dyed red and white, the colors of Blaise.

“Let’s go,” he said, rising to his feet with a smooth motion. His left hand rested on the pommel of his long sword to keep it from swinging as he walked. He strode out of the scatter of boats and up the beach. Sharina, covered head to ankles with a caped cloak of blue silk, matched the king stride for stride on his left.

Sharina expected a shout, but nobody noticed them appear. The moon lit only one side of a figure, and beyond a short distance firelight glittered from fittings and equipment rather than illuminating the whole person. Two paces on from where they’d hidden, she and Carus were part of the confusion of a military camp in darkness.

“Watch out!” Carus said as his heel brushed a sagging guy rope that he hadn’t noticed till he touched it. “I swear I’m tempted to launch a night attack after all. If nothing else, half these idiots’ll break their necks running around the mare’s nest they call a camp!”

He chuckled at the thought. Sharina smiled also, though she was glad the king hadn’t burst into caroling laughter that would’ve drawn the attention their appearance did not. She’d never met anyone else who laughed with full-throated humor the way Carus did—except for her brother, even before Garric began sharing his mind with his ancient ancestor.

They tramped on, making their way through the litter and filth. Count Lerdoc’s forces hadn’t bothered to dig latrines, let alone garbage pits.

“Not here a day and look at the state of this pigsty!” Carus fumed. He wasn’t shouting, but neither did it seem to Sharina that he was aware—or that he cared—that they were in the middle of a hostile army. “If I threw siege lines around them, they’d be dying of disease inside a week…”

He sighed. “Which would spread to our troops,” he added. “And anyway, we’re not going to do it that way.”

The mess disturbed Sharina in a different way. Where she grew up, organic waste was composted to become next year’s fertilizer. The Blaise camp’s disregard for any future beyond the next moment was a metaphor for war itself.

She smiled faintly, wondering if the Old Kingdom historian Tincer had said something like that. It would fit his tersely judgmental prose well enough. If she’d really been with her brother, she’d have asked if he remembered the line; but King Carus hadn’t had the time or the inclination for scholarship.

They passed close to a fire. The men drinking around it hunched away from Carus’ presence and averted their eyes.

When he was a few steps beyond, Carus murmured in an amused tone, “They think I’m one of their officers, all right. Every common soldier learns that his own officers are going to give him more trouble most of the time than the enemy ever thought of doing.”

Besides the helmet, the king wore a waist-length red cloak and a molded cuirass with silver-filled engraving. The cuirass, borrowed from a subcaptain in a regiment of heavy infantry, didn’t quite fit him—he’d had to replace the original side laces with longer ones—but junior officers often made do with hand-me-downs. The king’s tunic was of good quality wool, and on his feet were an infantryman’s heavy sandals instead of high cavalry boots.

They were nearing the camp’s central gate. The Blaise forces hadn’t thrown up a proper rampart and fighting step the way the royal army had, but a combination of ditches, stockades made from farm buildings and fences, and piled baggage, formed a boundary to the camp. The entrances were angled passages closed with looted carts tilted up on end. It struck Sharina that Count Lerdoc’s troops were doing about as much damage to the local countryside as the royal forces were.

A detachment of heavy infantry guarded the entrance. The men didn’t seem especially alert, but they were wearing sword belts and full armor; they’d tilted their eight-foot spears against the wall beside them.

“Ready?” Carus said, but it was a warning rather than a question. He strode forward, just as he would’ve done had Sharina cried, “No!” instead of murmuring, “Ready,” as she did.

“Officer of the Guard!” Carus said, not shouting but with a whipcrack in his voice. A youth Garric’s age was already rising from the section of tree trunk where he’d sat beneath the lantern.

“Just who are you?” the youth said, trying to sound belligerent. His voice broke on the second syllable.

His men watched without concern. Sharina noticed that most of the interest was for her rather than Carus. She’d have grinned, but that would be out of character; instead she threw her head slightly back so that she could look down her nose.

One of the soldiers, a grizzled fellow with dragons tattooed the length of both forearms, put his fists on his hips and laughed at her. The young officer gave him an angry glance but didn’t try to push his authority.

“Carus bor-Rasial,” Carus said briskly. “I’m part of the Haft contingent. I’m supposed to escort this lady back to Donelle and return, but that means I’ll need the password and countersign to get back through. What is it tonight?”

“Well, I don’t know if I should….” said the officer, blurting the truth because he couldn’t invent a statement that would make his confusion look any better.

“What’s she going to Donelle for?” the grizzled soldier asked. “The king’s got siege lines around the city, right?”

“The business of a Child of the Mistress is not your business, soldier,” Sharina said. In a more appraising tone she added, “If you wish to learn the Moon Wisdom, I can arrange for you to be taught. The Mistress has uses for strong backs.”

Unexpectedly the soldier turned his head away and muttered a prayer to the Shepherd. The Blaise army had heard things about Moon Wisdom also, and they must not like the rumors any better than the royal forces did.

“Yes, all right,” the officer said. He was standing straighter and speaking in a firm voice after seeing Sharina cow his subordinate. “The password is ‘moon’ and the countersign is ‘stars.’ Got that?”

“Right,” Carus said, giving a hitch to his sword belt. “Well, I’ll be back—”

“Lord Carus,” Sharina said, picking up her cue. “I have to return to the count at once.”

“What?” said Carus in feigned surprise. “Look, if we don’t start now, there isn’t going to be enough time for me to get you into Donelle and come back before dawn!”

“Then you’ll have to stay in Donelle, won’t you?” Sharina said, mimicking an upper-class sneer. It wasn’t hard to do: her mother Lora had the temperament—if not the breeding—of the aristocrats she’d once served in the palace at Carcosa.

She turned on her heel, and added, “Come along, sir!”

Carus grimaced. “Yes, milady,” he muttered. He followed Sharina toward the heart of the camp, lengthening his stride to catch up. Sharina expected to hear laughter from the guards, but none came. What did they know of Moon Wisdom?

“Nicely played, girl,” Carus murmured in her ear. “Now, let’s see what kind of act you can put on for Lord Lerdain of Blaise!”

Garric knelt in the graveyard, eyeing an entrance set into a granite ramp that was almost flush with the ground. The bronze doors had warped when the jamb shifted in some past age. Through the crack Garric could see spiderwebs and the glint of eyes.

“He’s still…” said Thalemos, eyeing Metron with a worried frown. “Still asleep, that is.”

Garric translated: Still unconscious. Still comatose. Still breathing but no more than that. Aloud he said, “He’ll be all right, Thalemos. But staring at him won’t make him come around any sooner.”

The young nobleman walked around the slab toward his companions, looking unhappy. He may have felt more affection toward the wizard than Garric and Vascay did, but regardless of personal opinion they all wanted him to awaken. Metron was the only person who knew why they were here in Wikedun.

“What do you think?” Vascay said, using his javelin butt to trace the design molded into the doors’ surface. “My bet is that it’s the catacombs where the priests were buried. Likely there’d be grave goods like you wouldn’t believe down there.”

The door’s decoration was a moon in the grip of a spider whose web spread across the lower portions of both valves. Even distorted, it was artwork of the highest order.

Garric’s personal feeling was that melting the cursed thing or throwing it into the sea would be the proper response to it, however.

One of the gang hooted cheerfully. The Brethren were scattered across the plain, though everyone was in sight of the others except when he crawled into a tomb.

“It wouldn’t do any good,” Garric said. He pointed to the overgrown depression in the ground just behind the entrance. “The passage is blocked just beyond, even if we could get through the door.”

He stood. His own guess was that there’d been a small earthquake; the rigid granite block had focused the shocks on the softer limestone through which the catacombs were carved. It’d be hard to open the twisted doors with the tools the Brethren had available, and removing wedged slabs of rock would be next to impossible.

“How would we carry gold back with us?” Lord Thalemos asked. He bent to peer through the opening. Changing the subject, he added, “There do seem to be a great number of spiders here, don’t there?”

“Yeah,” said Vascay as he turned away with a grimace. He’d been irritated when Thalemos mentioned the difficulty of men on foot carrying any quantity of gold. That was a rich man’s point, but the bandit chief knew it was a valid one nonetheless.

Vascay tapped the bronze again with his javelin. “Maybe that’s why they worshipped spiders, do you think?”

“No,” said Garric. He didn’t like the subject. “I think it’s the other way around. And Vascay, I think we ought to get out of here. Quickly.”

He’d noticed holes in the cliff face; either Vascay hadn’t, or he hadn’t understood their significance. The chief of the Brethren was both learned and clever, but he hadn’t been born and raised a countryman.

Those weren’t natural caves: they marked where the sea had sheared back the cliff face and opened tunnels which had been well inland. They’d provide an easy way into the catacombs—and if Vascay didn’t realize that, Garric didn’t intend to tell him.

An animal squealed. Garric jerked his head around, wondering if a hawk had stooped on a vole when his back was turned.

The victim was a vole, all right, a plump one as long as Garric’s outstretched hand, but it was in a spiderweb instead of a hawk’s talons. The vole’s hind legs and stubby tail flailed furiously, stretching but not breaking the sticky silk holding its forequarters.

The spider, her orange-and-black body the size of a woman’s fist, sidled toward the vole, holding a further loop of silk in her hind legs. She was preparing to bind her victim securely before stabbing her fangs into the warm body.

“Have any of you seen a lizard since we’ve been here?” Garric asked, watching the spider. Part of him wanted to crush her and free the vole, but nobody who’d kept a garden had much affection for voles, gophers, or any other rodent.

Besides, there were way too many spiders in this sunlit city of the dead for him to kill them all.

“Lizards?” said Vascay. “No, nor any snakes, praise the Lady. I didn’t want to show it on Serpent’s Isle when we were searching for your ring”—he nodded to Thalemos—“but I’d rather just about anything than deal with a snake.”

Garric looked at Vascay sharply. “You didn’t show it,” he said. “I didn’t have any idea you felt anything about snakes except not wanting one to bite you.”

Vascay smiled faintly. “Couldn’t let it show,” he said. “The Brethren were spooked enough as it was. If I’d let on I was scared…”

He shrugged. It struck Garric, not for the first time, that heroes were people who went on no matter how frightened they were; and that everybody was afraid of something.

Metron gave a racking cough and sat up, much as he had after Garric dragged him from the bottom of the pond. Thalemos was closest to the wizard, but Garric and Vascay reached him before the youth did.

Garric put an arm around Metron’s shoulders for support. The wizard tried to stand.

“Maybe you’d better rest for a moment, Master Metron,” Garric said.

“There’s no time for that!” Metron said peevishly. He braced his hands in the coarse soil and pushed, rising to all fours. “The Mistress has been speaking to me. We have very little time, maybe not enough time.”

He rose, wobbling and suddenly white-faced. Garric helped him get up, since that was what the wizard was determined to do.

“This is Wikedun?” Metron said. He gazed around the plain. “It is, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” said Thalemos. “I’ve read enough of the stones to be sure.”

“It’s Wikedun,” said Vascay, “but I want to know why we’re here, wizard. And how you propose to get us someplace else that we might want to be.”

“I said there was no time!” Metron snapped. “Here, there should be a number of animals caught in spiderwebs nearby. Gather up as many as you can find—”

As he spoke, he noticed the vole that’d been trapped moments before. The little mammal was swathed like a corpse for burial, but it still scratched vainly against the silk. The spider had backed to the center of its web without poisoning the helpless prisoner.

Metron bent and scooped up the vole in his left hand, tearing the broad web. The spider watched impassively.

“—and bring them to me,” he continued. “I’ll be on the edge of the cliff since there’s no beach here.”

Vascay didn’t react, but Garric felt his forehead furrow. Metron hadn’t looked over the escarpment to see whether there was a beach or not, but he was quite correct.

Metron walked with quick, mincing steps toward the edge, pausing once to snatch up another victim bound in spider silk. Thalemos started looking around; Vascay did also, though he put his javelin point through a fat-bodied spider before he robbed her web of what was probably a shrew from its small size.

“What’re you going to do with the animals, Master Metron?” Garric called. He already knew, knew what the wizard must have in mind. Garric knew also that he would have no part of it.

“I’m going to save our lives!” Metron said. “Get on with it! I’ll need many more.”

“Metron, there’s no good that ever came from blood magic!” Garric said.

The wizard ignored him, instead walking to the cliff edge and settling there. He held the vole in his left hand as he scribed on the soil with the athame in his right. The sapphire winked on his middle finger.

“Brethren!” Vascay bellowed. “Brethren!”

The nearer bandits paused in their activities and turned. Halophus put the horn to his lips and blew, then pointed toward the chieftain when the more distant men looked around.

“Search spiderwebs for animals!” Vascay said. “Bring them to the wizard alive! Fast!”

He met Garric’s eyes. “Gar,” he said, “you live your way, and I respect you for it. For myself, I’m not enough of a philosopher that I won’t cut the throats of a few mice if that’s what it takes to save my life.”

Garric gave him a nod of understanding; his lips were tight. He didn’t try to argue.

Vascay stumped off toward Metron. Thalemos gave Garric a shamefaced glance and followed, carrying a silk-wrapped packet in his left hand.

Garric took a deep breath. His throat was dry as sand, and he hadn’t seen any water on this plain. “Duzi, help me,” he whispered.

He hadn’t been alone since he began wearing the medallion of King Carus a seeming lifetime ago. His fingers closed on the breast of his tunic, where the image hung when he was in his own body. Gar had nothing of the sort.

The Brethren were drifting toward Metron, some of them carrying loot they’d found in the tombs. Ademos had been particularly lucky: he had a gold brassard around either arm and a jeweled gold gorget bouncing from a neck chain.

Vascay had delivered his sacrifice and was casting around for more. His eyes met Garric’s momentarily, then resumed their quest for prey. The foliage was festooned with silk; sometimes a single coarse bush anchored as many as three webs.

What would Carus do? Not sit around here moping, that was certain. Garric was already convinced they shouldn’t stay in Wikedun any longer than necessary; watching Metron begin to pour the blood of little animals over his words of power only reinforced his conviction.

Garric laughed. Fine. If there were swamps on the other side of the hills, then there was water there. It might not be the best water, but the way his throat felt now he wouldn’t quarrel with pond scum or even a floating corpse.

Giving his sword belt a hitch to settle it more comfortably, Garric started southward. He’d scout the terrain, get a drink, and then return. Metron’s business would’ve concluded one way or another; hunger and especially thirst would’ve brought the Brethren into a more reasonable frame of mind than the euphoria at gold and their escape from the millipede had left them.

He turned, and called, “Vascay? I’m going to check the hills. I’ll be back, as the Shepherd grants.”

The chieftain looked up. He waved his javelin in acknowledgment.

There was a blast of crimson wizardlight. Metron’s robes and flesh became momentarily transparent; his bones were eerie shadows against the sunlit horizon.

Grimacing, Garric started walking again. The flash had stopped the Brethren in their tracks. Vascay called in a snarl, “Come on, you fools! Are you going to let a little light scare you out of saving your lives?”

Garric didn’t believe Metron’s blood magic would save them. He’d seen wizards use the power that came from letting lives out, and every time the result had been a bad one for the wizards and those who’d put their trust in the wizards.

He hiked on, heading for the notch in the center of the arc of hills. He’d reach it in half an hour. He wasn’t running away from Metron and Metron’s magic, but he couldn’t stay and watch what he knew was evil. Garric wouldn’t try to stop Thalemos and the Brethren from making their own choice, but neither would he be a party to it.

Wizardlight continued to flare like sheet lightning, casting its vivid scarlet across the landscape even in this bright sun. Garric’s shadow shivered ahead of him, an unstained blur framed by the ruddy touch of evil.

A trumpeter blew a long, silvery note. Garric thought it was Halophus, his call echoing from the hills. He turned his head and saw the Brethren looking south in amazement.

The trumpet sounded again; Halophus hadn’t raised his own curved horn to his lips.

In the notch of the hills appeared the first elements of an army. The soldiers were on foot. Their commander hung in a litter between two huge monsters. He was anonymous at this distance, but the dragon banner fluttering above him was the standard of the Intercessor.

The soldiers pouring past into the plain in increasing numbers were lizards. They walked upright and carried bronze weapons, but they weren’t men. Their trumpeter called again.

Garric turned back toward his fellows. He held his scabbard with his left hand to keep it from jouncing against his legs as he jogged. It didn’t matter now what Metron was doing: Garric’s place was with the other humans trapped in this ancient graveyard.

Wizardlight pulsed from Metron’s circle of power, leaving afterimages of itself in Garric’s eyes between flashes. Most of the Brethren ran east or west, trying to escape from between the lizardmen’s hammer and the anvil of the sea. They couldn’t possibly succeed.

“Vascay!” Garric called. The peg-legged chieftain wasn’t running, and Lord Thalemos stood at his side with his arms crossed in aristocratic disregard for danger. The boy wasn’t much use in some ways, but Garric hadn’t seen any reason to fault his courage. “Hold where you are! There’s a way out!”

He wasn’t sure that the catacombs would save them, but a few armed men in a tunnel could hold off a thousand…for a time. Garric laughed as Carus would have laughed. That’s all life was, after all, time added to time until there was no more to add.

Ademos had ducked over the corniche, perhaps hoping to hide among the broken rocks below. He reappeared, flailing his arms in his panic. He’d lost the golden brassards already, and as he stumbled onto the plain he flung away the looted gorget.

Behind Ademos, climbing the cliff like ants making their way up a step, came a score of Archai chittering in metallic voices. They marched past Metron, ignoring Vascay and Thalemos as well, and began to form a line facing the oncoming lizardmen.

The Archai raised their saw-edged forearms, waiting. More of their fellows followed; Metron was raising a whole army of insectile monsters to battle the Intercessor’s forces.

Garric drew his sword and ran past the Archai, braced for them to slash at him with their poised arms. They didn’t even turn their heads.

“Come on!” Garric shouted. “We’ve got to get out of here!”

The appearance of Metron’s allies hadn’t changed Garric’s mind about that. He grinned coldly. In fact, that had made him even more sure that this was no place for humans to remain.

Ilna hung in a sea of pearly light. She felt a wrench and found herself lying on a bed of rock like that of the cave.

Like, but not the same. She was in a shallow valley lighted by soft sunlight which something in the sky diffused. The barrier wasn’t the solid rock ceiling she’d watched while Alecto chanted, but neither was it the kind of overcast Ilna had seen in normal skies. There was a pattern to these thin streaks and whorls; she thought she could grasp it if she bent her mind to the task in just the right way….

The valley was sparsely forested. Pines and the smaller hardwoods like dogwood and hornbeam had managed to lodge their roots in the thin soil. There were tufts and hummocks of grass, sufficient to keep goats if not sheep like those used to the lush pastures of Barca’s Hamlet. At the far end a sheer basalt escarpment closed a trough in the softer limestone.

From the trees and on outcrops of rock hung the webs of spiders whose bodies were as big as a hog’s. They stared at Ilna with multiple glittering eyes.

Ilna had come—she’d been brought—to the spider-swathed hellworld which Tenoctris had found in the brain of the dead Echeus. She didn’t know how she’d gotten here, and it seemed very unlikely that she’d have time to find a way out.

Ilna stood because it seemed undignified to die lying down. A silver-and-black spider the size of a bull had left its web and was walking toward her on legs as thick as Ilna’s own. The tree which anchored one side of the structure of wrist-thick silk was a hundred and fifty feet high, but it swayed to be free of the spider’s weight. Her steps had a mincing precision like those of a crab underwater.

Ilna took out her hank of cords. It was her pride that she could control any living creature which had eyes to read her patterns; were this spider alone, she could hold it till sundown.

It wasn’t alone. The valley held more of the creatures than there were people in a Valles tenement. The smallest of them was as big as a dog, and even without poison their fangs could tear her apart.

This wasn’t the way Ilna would have chosen to die. She smiled coldly. Well, that was all right; she hadn’t chosen it.

GREETINGS AND HONOR, ILNA OS-KENSET, said a voice in her mind. WE TO WHOM WEAVING IS LIFE BOW TO YOU, WHO ARE A GREATER WEAVER YET.

SHE FEARS US, said another mental voice. SHE HAS NO REASON TO FEAR. WE ARE HER FRIENDS AND HER DISCIPLES.

WE ARE YOUR FRIENDS AND DISCIPLES, ILNA, agreed a chorus, each tone different but the thoughts all the same.

“You’re the spiders,” Ilna said. Her gut didn’t believe it, but she kept her voice flat because her intellect knew beyond a doubt that she was right.

WE ARE SPIDERS, the first voice said. The black-and-silver giant facing Ilna nodded her fused head and thorax to punctuate the statement. HAVE YOU COME TO OUR WORLD TO TEACH US?

Ilna frowned at the idea. “I didn’t mean to come here,” she said. “I don’t know why I’m here, I don’t even know where I am.”

She’d started to say, “Perhaps I’m here by accident,” but before the words came out she realized they were absurd. She didn’t know why she was in the place that Echeus had feared, but it couldn’t reasonably have been the result of coincidence. You didn’t have to read patterns the way Ilna did to see that.

The giant bowed again, and said, WHATEVER THE CAUSE, WE ARE PLEASED AT YOUR PRESENCE. WOULD YOU VIEW THIS PLACE, ILNA? WE CATCH GLIMPSES OF YOUR WORLD WHERE THE BARRIER IS THIN, BUT WE RARELY HAVE VISITORS LIKE YOU.

“Yes, show me….” Ilna said. She rubbed her eyes; she hated spiders. Opening her eyes again and facing the huge spider, she went on, “Where are we? It’s not my world, you say; what is it, then?”

TAKE HER TO THE MOUND, said another voice.

TAKE HER TO THE MOUND, the chorus echoed, AND LET HER SEE HER OWN WORLD.

WILL YOU COME WITH ME TO THE MOUND, ILNA? asked the black-and-silver giant. She pointed to the nearby wall of black basalt; all joints of her foreleg sprouted tufts of silver hair. YOU CAN SEE YOUR WORLD AS WE DO.

“Yes, all right,” said Ilna. She had to fight an urge to fall to the ground and wrap her arms about herself, moaning. That wouldn’t do any good. “Can I return to my world from there?”

The great spider set out, climbing the gentle side slope instead of heading directly toward the vertical escarpment. Despite her size, the spider moved with the care of someone to whom walking is not a natural activity; Ilna had no difficulty keeping pace.

I REGRET THAT THERE IS NO WAY TO GO FROM OUR WORLD TO YOURS, ILNA, the spider said. THE ONE WHO EXILED US HERE MADE CERTAIN OF THAT, THOUGH HIS BARRIER OCCASIONALLY ALLOWS HUMANS LIKE YOURSELF TO VISIT US.

Ilna’s diaphragm tightened at the words. The spasm forced a gasp from her; she frowned like an angry hawk, embarrassed by the hint of weakness.

Her face still angry, she looked up at the sky. The barrier that dimmed the sun remained there, streaked and twisted. It was as surely a pattern as anything that came from Ilna’s loom. More complex, perhaps—

Ilna caught herself and grimaced at the arrogance she’d allowed into her thoughts. More complex certainly; but that was only a matter of degree. Given a little time and a certain amount of experimentation, she was sure she could solve the puzzle which the hazy sky set her.

“I don’t believe that,” she said flatly. “I think there’s a way out as surely as my presence here proves there’s a way in.”

PERHAPS FOR YOU, ILNA, the spider said. There was agreement and an odd satisfaction to the voice in Ilna’s mind. WE ARE NOT AS SKILLED AS YOU, SO WE DO NOT SEE THE PATH.

The other spiders were watching her. Sometimes one of the spectators shifted slightly in her web, turning so that she could stare at Ilna with her bank of simple eyes.

“I…” Ilna said. “You said you’d been exiled here. How is that?”

The question that most puzzled—and concerned—her was what the spiders ate, but even her willingness to believe the worst didn’t compel her to say, “Are you going to devour me?” to a hulking giant like her guide. For the moment she was willing to assume they were as friendly as they appeared to be.

MANY AGES BEFORE YOUR RACE AROSE, the spider said, YOUR WORLD WAS RULED BY A RACE OF MEN SPRUNG FROM REPTILES. WE AND THE LIZARDMEN LIVED IN PEACE FOR COUNTLESS YEARS, BUT AT LAST A WIZARD OF THAT RACE SET HIMSELF AGAINST US. THOUGH HIS POWER WAS GREAT, HE COULD NOT DESTROY US UTTERLY. INSTEAD HE FORCED US INTO THIS PLACE, AN ENCLAVE IN THE COSMOS, WHERE WE HAVE NO COMPANY BUT OURSELVES AND THE PLANTS ON WHOM WE LIVE.

Ilna felt her chest loosen. She believed—and had said—that she didn’t care whether she lived or died, but it appeared that death from the fangs of giant spiders wasn’t an experience she could manage to look forward to. She grinned in wry amusement at herself.

“I didn’t realize spiders ate plants,” she said. They were nearing the top of the escarpment. The shallow downslope beyond was more heavily forested than the valley in which she’d arrived. Many of the trees were hardwoods—oaks, hickories, and not far away a black walnut. The webs of huge spiders hung from all of them.

WE DRINK PLANT JUICES, ILNA, said her guide. THERE IS NOTHING HERE BUT THE PLANTS AND OURSELVES. WE ARE NOT AS OUR LESSER SISTERS WHO REMAIN IN YOUR WORLD.

They’d reached the bald dome of basalt that blocked the head of the valley. It was the core of an ancient volcano, frozen into a dense plug that remained when the softer surrounding rock weathered away. No trees or lesser vegetation had found a roothold in the black stone, though where windblown grit had collected in hollows it supported occasional clumps of grass.

Ilna stood, wondering why her guide had chosen this location. The spider climbed to the smooth top of the dome and said, WATCH THE BARRIER, ILNA. WATCH THE SKY.

The spider elevated her rear body and raised her hindmost pair of legs. Spinnerets at the tip of the abdomen writhed, squirting an almost transparent fluid which the hind legs teased into growing coils of silk. The strands wove in and around themselves in a pattern that drew Ilna’s eyes.

The creature repeated, WATCH THE SKY!

Ilna looked up. The streaks of haze, never more than hints in the pearly sheen, drew themselves into an imposed pattern less complex than the original: they were forming an analogue of the shape the spider wove in her silk. Instead of a uniform light-struck blur, Ilna saw—

“Garric!” she cried; and in the instant she spoke the word, she knew that she was wrong. She saw Garric’s body in the clothes and armor of a common soldier as he walked toward the guards at the entrance of a silk-walled tent, but the woman at his side was Sharina. The man wasn’t Ilna’s childhood friend, but rather the hardhanded warrior who wore Garric’s flesh until his soul could be retrieved.

Ilna curled her lips. Tenoctris had sent her to look for reasons and enemies. She’d found some of both; but she hadn’t reported back. She’d failed her friends.

WE WATCHED YOU OFTEN, ILNA, said her guide. THERE IS NONE LIKE YOU IN ALL THE COSMOS. WE BOW TO YOUR SKILL. THERE IS NO PATTERN THAT YOUR WISDOM CANNOT DISCERN.

Ilna sniffed. She knew her own skills, but she knew also what they had cost her to acquire. She had walked in Hell, and on her return to the waking world she’d done more harm than she could repay in a lifetime. She didn’t like to hear others praise the things she was capable of, because she knew well what she might do when anger or envy led her.

“You can view any part of our world from here?” she asked.

The spider twisted the pattern in her hind legs. THIS LOCATION IS A WEAK POINT IN THE BARRIER, she said. IS THERE A THING YOU WOULD ESPECIALLY LIKE TO SEE, ILNA?

Other spiders, hanging in webs that could have held a trireme, watched with the rigid patience that Ilna had seen so often among spiders in her garden. Instinct told her they were malevolent, but she had no reason to believe that save her own hatred.

The pearly sky flowed across the view of Carus and Sharina, then cleared again. Her heart caught again, but this time she didn’t speak.

The setting was one she recognized, the sanctum of Moon Wisdom’s temple in Donelle. The rites hadn’t begun, but several Children of the Mistress made preparations for what was to come.

This time they weren’t going to cut the throats of rabbits. The sacrificial animal was trussed and gagged at the edge of the pool. She was a black-haired young girl, naked and trembling from more than the touch of the cold marble on which she lay.

One of the cowled priests was bending over her. When he straightened, Ilna saw the child’s face.

This time the victim was Merota.

The spider’s legs worked the silk. The image in the sky shimmered, momentarily mirroring the earth below. Ilna frowned. In the reflection she’d seen many long, hairy legs waving skyward in a rhythm that she almost understood.

The image was momentary; the sky re-formed as a window onto her brother Cashel, who stood with a girl Ilna didn’t know. They were in a maze formed partly by the braided streams of a river and partly by the stone walls of the city they approached through the fog.

Ilna sensed what her eyes couldn’t show her, the danger at the heart of pattern. There was a thing at the center of the maze, but outside that—hovering beyond not only sight but the cosmos, unknown even to the one who waited to trap Cashel—was the Pack. Moon Wisdom had loosed them; but as Alecto had warned, the Pack would not stay on any wizard’s leash for long.

The spider crossed her hind legs, unmaking the silken pattern and closing the image in the sky. HE WAS YOUR BROTHER, WAS HE NOT, ILNA? she said in Ilna’s mind.

“Yes,” said Ilna tightly. “That was Cashel. I—”

She’d been about to ask to be left alone to study the sky—study the barrier—without distraction. Before she got the words out, her guide had opened another window onto the world Ilna had left. She saw the real Garric clambering through torchlit gloom with his sword lifted. Ahead of him—

Ahead of Garric was whirling blackness, not the thing itself but a cloak which concealed the thing from Ilna’s eyes. All she could be sure of was that the creature was powerful, and that it was hostile to Garric and to all life except its own.

Her guide’s legs moved, closing the barrier again. This time the closure was permanent: she bent a hind leg forward, carrying the wad of silk to her mouth. Her jaw-plates chewed the silk methodically before she swallowed it again.

YOUR FRIENDS NEED HELP, ILNA, said the voice in her mind.

“Yes,” she said grimly. She held her hank of cords, but her fingers were knotting and unknotting them to settle her mind rather than with any considered purpose. Purpose would come.

“Mistress,” she said. What do you call a giant spider? “I’d appreciate it if you’d leave me to my own devices for a time. I think it’s possible to open the barrier from this side, but it’s going to require some thought. Is that agreeable to you?”

WHATEVER YOU WISH, ILNA, said her guide. YOUR SKILL IS GREATER THAN OURS.

Ilna seated herself on the basalt, looking up at the sky. The black-and-silver giant stepped away, picking her path down toward her web.

WE ARE YOUR DISCIPLES, chorused the denizens of this world. WE WILL LEARN FROM YOU.