Manx

by Greg Curtis

  “Hardly!” Unexpectedly the woman got up off her cot and then started opening her jacket and vest. Then she lifted her undergarments to reveal two big round scars.

  “We never chose this life! Ramora chose this!”

  “Ramora?” Sorsha didn't recognise the name.

  “The spider queen. She stung us. Injected us with her venom. Turned those of us who survived into her feeders.”

  “Feeders?” This was becoming stranger by the moment Sorsha thought. Now they had a spider queen?

  “What we take to sustain our lives, is some of it. But she takes from us. You feed us, we feed her.

  “A spider?” Even seeing the big round scars on the woman's middle, Sorsha wasn't convinced. It sounded too fantastic.

  “A spider queen. Part woman, part spider. She has a nest in the Hammersmith Mountains. But she strikes out from it. Sending her children out to bring her back feeders. And then she injects those she captures with her venom. It's where our magic comes from. And ever after those of us who survive wander the world, feeding, and feeding her.”

  “I didn't choose this. I was a simple farmer's wife. But her children took me and my husband in the dark of night. He died and I became this.” She lowered her undergarments. “Some days, I wish I had died too.”

  “If you truly want to cure us, you'll kill her. Because even now she draws her sustenance from us. That's why we're ageing so fast.” The prisoner abruptly gave up on her attempt at defiance and collapsed back down on to her cot. And then she just sat there, leaning against the stone wall, staring at nothing.

  That left Sorsha standing there, wondering what to say. She hadn't expected this. She wasn't sure that she even believed the woman's story. And she'd certainly never heard of a spider queen. But she had seen the markings. And maybe they could be the result of fangs – giant fangs. But even if they were, did that mean that the Silver Order were blameless? Somehow she doubted it. No spider queen – woman or spider or whatever she was – had come up with their plan to banish all the spell-casters to a prison dimension. The Silver Order had. Even if she was telling the truth, they had chosen to make a bad situation worse.

  But on the other hand Sorsha realised, it made their plan perhaps even more appealing. Send the Silver Order to the same prison dimension, and then the spider queen couldn't drain them. Of course they couldn't do that while their own people were still imprisoned in it. Which had always been the heart of their plan. Get the Silver Order prisoners to show them how to release all their prisoners, and then when it was empty send them into it. It would save their lives. And if by some strange quirk of fate this spider queen could still consume their living vitality across the dimensions, she would suffer the same fate her vampyre subjects had.

  Sorsha paused for a moment to think. And then she stared straight at the prisoner once again. “If what you're saying is true, then our plan will still save you.”

  This was going to be a difficult bargain. It would be like trying to convince someone to eat poison to save their lives. But in the end she realised, the woman in front of her was one thing above all else – a survivor. She could have chosen to die. To let herself be drained and not to kill. But she had chosen to live no matter the cost. This would be the same. Maybe.

  “Killing the spider queen will save us,” the woman snapped at her.

  “Maybe,” Sorsha agreed. “But I don't believe you. And I'm not sending people out hunting spiders to save your worthless hide. Not when there's an easier way.”

  “What way?” Lady Marshendale stared at her with a face full of thunderclouds.

  “You put us in prison. We'll drop you in that same prison.”

  “You inhuman monster!” Finally the woman gave up on trying to remain calm. She yelled at her, all the venom she had, bursting free.

  “A rather twisted irony for you to say that, don't you think?” Sorsha paused for a moment to let her understand. “But no matter, it will save you – and nothing else will.”

  That seemed to hit the woman, hard. Whatever insults and abuse she'd been planning on hurling at Sorsha died on her lips, and she ended up just sitting there, glaring angrily at her. And then finally, she admitted defeat. Sorsha could see it in her eyes even if the words didn't pass her lips.

  “What do you want?”

  Sorsha smiled. Victory!

  Chapter Twenty Five

  Another day, another city and another thousand or so prisoners freed. That was Manx' life of late. But as he sat on the grass and stared at the former prisoners milling around on it, most of them looking confused and half of them collapsed to the ground, he finally had hope that his time on this mission might be coming to an end. He didn't know anything about spider queens living in the Hammersmith Mountains – it sounded like a drunkard's tale – but he did know that the threat of them was apparently enough to get Jayla Marshendale to reveal the secrets of the prisons. Secrets that if they included passwords and spells and enchanted items might mean his services were no longer required.

  Of course it seemed too good to be true, and he was well aware of the old adage that things that seemed like that, usually weren't. So he wasn't going to hold his breath. Instead he was simply going to sit and watch the newly released prisoners being told what had happened and slowly be led away to their new accommodations.

  Maybe it wasn't such a bad thing he was doing. Manx still wasn't sure. But as far as he could tell these spell-casters were strange people but not bad ones. And it was wrong for them to have been locked away in this dimensional prison. And worse that these vampyres – or spider victims as they claimed they truly were – had been feeding off them for four hundred years. Though he still didn't like the idea that there was something like a revolution occurring in Redmond. Even if it hadn't turned violent – yet. Or more violent, that was. The escapes had been disasters. In every city they went to he got to see the destruction that had already been wrought. And it was always terrible.

  “It's late.” Whitey announced unexpectedly from behind him, startling Manx. He hadn't heard her approaching.

  “It's still afternoon,” he told her.

  “But the fat woman with the broomstick on her head has the dinner on. Plump, juicy lamb. “We don't want to be late.” She licked her lips as she walked into view.

  “We won't be late,” he told her. And he wouldn't be, because if he was he would never hear the end of her complaints. Whitey was very fond of her belly and the joy of keeping it full. But he did have to admit that the cat had it right about the landlady's hair. It was a very strange style she wore.

  “We'd better not be,” she admonished him as she jumped into his lap. “Last night it was all dried out when we arrived!”

  “That wasn't my fault,” Manx protested. “I don't drive the wagon!”

  “Monkeys always make excuses!” The cat told him. “Now start with the grooming. And do it nicely this time. Your hands are so rough!”

  Would it really be so wrong to throttle her, Manx wondered as he began work? He'd wondered that a lot. But for some reason he never had. He just kept doing what she told him to. Maybe the damned cat was right. He was soft in the head! And somewhere out there a village really was missing its idiot!

  “Ahh, my two favourite reprobates!” Larissa announced as she approached.

  “Trollop!” Whitey replied, but with only half her normal enthusiasm for the fight. She was too busy purring as Manx petted her, to give the argument her all.

  “I'm not a reprobate,” Manx protested. “I'm a well respected citizen of Winstone.” Though really when he thought about it, he knew he wasn't particularly well respected. But he had a proper, respectable job and a house in good order which he didn't rent. He had a tin full of gold and silver which he hoped no one had pilfered while he'd been away. And he wore decent clothes too. He might not be a noble, but he wasn't a beggar or common labourer either.

  “You're a Smythe and she's a flea ridden stray,” the shaman replied. “Does any more need to be said?
”

  “Cow!” Whitey retorted, quietly, between purrs. “If you ever had a thought it would be lonely!”

  “Would it help if I changed my name?” Manx asked, ignoring the cat. Somehow he doubted it would. Once a Smythe, always a Smythe. It was his curse, it seemed. One of many.

  “Hardly.” Larissa took a seat on the grass beside him. “You've got the magic of a Smythe and the cunning. And everyone knows it. It's too late to hide behind a false name.”

  “That's what I thought,” he replied glumly. He was sick of being thought of as some sort of ne'er-do-well or cut-purse simply because of his family name. But it seemed he had no choice in the matter. “So what did you come for?”

  “These spiders –,” the shaman began.

  “Ew! Spiders!” Whitey interrupted. “Too dry and crunchy and they don't taste very good. Not like that nice, juicy lamb waiting for us!”

  “I don't know anything about them.” Manx ignored the cat. “And I've never heard of this Ramora or any sort of a spider queen. I would say it sounded like a made up story – but so does everything else lately.”

  “And the Hammersmith Mountains?”

  “A region far to the south, barely part of Redmond at all. A wild land, inhabited so they say, by brigands. They flee there because they know there's no law in the mountains. No trains go there. The lines simply don't run that far because the lands too steep and because work parties kept getting attacked when they tried to cut flatter routes through the hills. There aren't even any towns. I don't know anyone whose actually even been there.” And really he suspected, it had probably been much the same four hundred years before. The land was poor, crops didn't grow there and there wasn't enough for sheep and cattle to graze on. And without that there was no coin to be made. Which meant towns had never formed and it had never advanced.

  “And he's not going there!” Whitey interrupted unexpectedly. “I'll rub my arse in your face every night while you sleep if you try and make him!”

  “And I'll bless the worms in your gut to grow strong and bountiful!” she retorted. “But I wasn't going to ask that.”

  “Good!” Whitey relaxed again, and was soon purring once more.

  Could she really do that, Manx wondered? Bless the worms in a cat's gut? He still wasn't completely clear what all the different types of spell-casters did. Druids and walkers were easy enough to understand. So were crakes, not that he'd met many of them. But sorcerers were confusing – he mostly assumed that they were like normal witches and wizards in tales, though he'd never seen one with a wand or a pointy hat. And as for shamans, that was even more uncertain. They carried the blessings of their gods and goddesses? What did that even mean? And was it even magic? Or were they priests with the gifts granted them by their deities? Moreover if they all followed different gods and goddesses, why did they all have the same spear like ears? There was just so much about this magical world that he didn't understand. But what sort of goddess would bless worms?!

  Then a thought occurred to him. “Wouldn't the druids be able to tell you more? I mean spiders are creatures of the world.” Not ones that he particularly liked though.

  “They can't. Not by the blessings of the Mother, Ao.”

  Manx looked at her curiously, wondering what that meant. Clearly she saw the confusion in his face.

  “Ao is the Mother of the Wild. The giver of the magic. And so she was the one who granted all of us our completed forms. She gave the druids their magic and their antlers. The crakes their wings and their storms. And even the Smythes their stealth and their lack of final form. But she is not the most powerful of the gods. She must follow the dictates of the greater gods.”

  “And one of those dictates given to her which she in turn gave to us, was that all gifts of magic must have limits. So the crakes can bring storms. They can call lightning and wind and rain. But only while they fly. When their feet touch the ground their spells fail. And they have only limited powers of flight.”

  “The walkers can see all the worlds there are and summon between them. They can with some effort even bend the space and time of this world. But they cannot summon within this world. They can stretch and shorten time but not stop it. They can do the same with space, but not make it nothing.”

  “And the druids may command the creatures of the world, and summon them as they have need. But neither the fish of the seas nor the many legged creatures of the soil are theirs to rule.”

  “That's … interesting,” Manx commented. Though actually he thought, it sounded like more madness. Why would the gods do such a thing? Give magic with one hand and take it away with the other? It sounded made up.

  “It's wisdom,” she replied.

  “It's balderdash!” Whitey interjected. “The gods didn't choose to limit your magic. You monkeys were simply too flawed to have it all! Like a pail with a hole in it, it just kept spilling out.”

  “You follow Freda, do you not?” Larissa asked Manx, still ignoring the cat. “Would you allow one group of those with the gifts of the gods to have no limitations? So that they might then rule over the rest? And over the mundane and the entire world? There must always be limitations so that a balance may be found.”

  Manx considered that for a moment or two. And he quickly realised the shaman had a point. It was probably best that no single spell-caster or family of them, should have complete power. And as it turned out the same had held true for the vampyres – save that now it seemed they weren't true vampyres at all. They were slaves to a spider queen – if he believed them. But still they could only drain the living vitality from those with magic of their own, and they could only take so much so quickly. Except that they had tried to find a way around that – and it had all gone horribly wrong for everyone.

  So what were this spider queen's limitations, he wondered? Assuming of course that she actually existed and it wasn't all some made up story of the ice blue eyed vampyres. That after all seemed more likely to him.

  “So what did you really come to see me for?” He knew that it wasn't to talk about spider queens and southern mountain ranges. She would have known long before she approached that he knew nothing about the former, and that she could have read everything he knew about the latter in a book.

  “Two things. First we want to hurry the journey a little.”

  “I'm going as fast as I can,” he objected. “And it's not Adern and I who are slowing things down. It's all the travelling we have to do.” She knew that, he thought. When every second day was spent travelling from one city and one dimensional prison to the next, she had to know that. And in any case, there best guess was that with now ten prisons opened up, there were probably only another thirty something left. That was sixty days work. Two months. He hadn't wanted to spend that long away from his home, but every day the end came a little closer.

  “I'm not suggesting otherwise. But it's time to get rid of this smelly steam wagon. We have to move faster. So the sorcerers in Winstone have crafted a different sort of wagon. It should be here in the morning.”

  “A different sort of wagon?” Despite his best intentions to remain dispassionate, he was intrigued.

  “You'll see. But it's smaller so you won't be able to simply sleep in the back with your mangy rat.”

  “Blind as well as dull,” Whitey mumbled at her. But she didn't really care about insults just then as she was nearly asleep.

  “Alright.” Manx wasn't completely happy about that, but if it shortened the amount of time he had to spend travelling, maybe it would be acceptable. “And the other matter?”

  “Hilda wants to spend some time with you.”

  That Manx wasn't so happy with. There was something about the healer that troubled him. And it wasn't just the six fingers she had on each hand. Though the unusual length of them bothered him. But every time he saw her, which thankfully wasn't that often as she travelled back and forth, he saw suspicion in her eyes. She didn't trust him – he didn't know why. But she and the other healers had a lo
t of other patients to deal with.

  “My scars are healing,” he told the shaman.

  “But she says they shouldn't be. That you shouldn't have any scars at all. That you should have died long ago.”

  “Others have said the same thing.” In fact right from the start they had told him, even without knowing it, that he was literally a dead man walking. He'd heard them as they'd whispered among themselves. But he'd long ago put that aside. He was alive and that was all that mattered.

  “She wants to know how you survived, and find out what other injuries you're carrying.”

  “No.” Manx told her that without even having to think about it. It wasn't just that he didn't completely trust the healer. It was that the very thought of having someone studying him so intimately was disturbing. He didn't like being seen let alone being touched.

  “But she can help.”