Manx

by Greg Curtis

  Then they reached the entrance to it, and every fibre of his being suddenly told him to stop. He didn't know why. But he knew that what lay ahead of them was dangerous.

  So he had them hold and then walked up to the steel bars on his own, a staff drawn and his shadow close around him.

  The guard was right he realised. There was a smell. Something sharp and unpleasant that tickled the nose. And the closer he got, the stronger it became. But there was more. There was residue on the bars, especially around the lock. Some sort of gum that was hardening in front of him. The man had said that the doors wouldn't open. Suddenly he knew why. This stuff was gumming up the works. Burning the metal and turning it into a slurry.

  Then ten feet from the bars he spotted movement, just as something fell from the end of a flagpole onto him.

  “Shite!” he yelled just as he saw it coming for him. Fortunately it didn't land on him. He had his shadow with him and he somehow twisted aside, letting it fall harmlessly to the ground. Then he stamped on it, crushing it to slime even as his heart beat a thousand times faster than it should.

  But in the very next heartbeat he understood. It was a spider. It was tiny, the size of a simple copper piece, but he knew it wasn't alone. And he also feared that he knew where it had come from, though he didn't want to think about that just then. He just wanted to make sure that there were no more of the little nightmares above him, waiting to jump on him.

  He checked the flagpole very carefully, including the ropes and both sides of the golden ram flapping in the breeze, before he was finally able to breathe freely again.

  “Danvers, fire. Burn everything from the floor to the ceiling and one side to the other.”

  “What?” The sorcerer looked surprised.

  “The spiders are here. Setting up a new nest. And they're on the ceiling as well as the floor, dropping on people.”

  “Oh!” The sorcerer stared at him, then extended his arms and let fire stream from his fingertips into the prison. The light from the fire quickly revealed the rest of the spiders. A score or so of the little green monsters, hiding in the shadows, which thankfully burned quickly. A few more fell from the ceiling, and seeing that Manx knew how the guards had been bitten.

  Soon the entire entrance chamber to the prison was cleared of spiders. It was clear of everything except for ash. But Manx had a horrible fear that they would find more inside. Many more. So he was careful when he had the guards unlock the bars, to walk very slowly and watch every step he took. And to have the sorcerer continue to burn everything in front of them. And, when they made it into the prison proper, the cells on both sides of the corridor as well.

  They went straight to the occupied cell, Manx already guessing what they'd find. But when they did finally reach it, he was still shocked. Sickened in truth.

  The prisoners were dead. Long dead. Their bodies were little more than dried out corpses. But that wasn't what bothered him. It was the holes in their bellies. And the lakes of dried blood they were lying in. It told him everything he'd expected to find out.

  “What did that?” Someone asked as they stared at the corpses.

  “The spiders,” Manx told him, without looking around. “The eggs hatched and they chewed their way out.” He took a deep breath. “Burn them.”

  “There were eggs in them! Spiders don't lay eggs in people,” Styl objected.

  “These ones do! It's part of the way the arrangement worked.” And he'd wondered that when he'd first learned of the connection between the Silver Order and the spiders. How could mere venom connect a man and a distant spider? Not that he knew a lot about magic and how it worked, but it had seemed unlikely. Now though, the answer was in front of him. In front of them all. The Silver Order hadn't just taken the venom of the spiders. They'd let them lay their eggs in them as well! He shuddered at the thought.

  “This is the final lie they were maintaining. The secret they were planning on keeping – literally all the way to their graves.” And why? That was what he didn't understand. Why the endless lies to protect this last secret?

  “Why?” One of the others asked the exact same question.

  Manx thought for a minute about telling her he didn't know. But then as he stared at the dead spider, an answer came to him. A single word. Power. Everything, from the very beginning had been about power. And that included this final lie. The vampyres with the ice blue eyes would have power at any cost. Even if it killed them!

  “Power,” he replied in time. “Everything is about power.” He shook his head sadly.

  “The venom enhanced the magic of the Silver Order,” he continued. “Just as they said. That part's true. But it's only a short term thing. It wears off and they need more venom. But they can only get the venom from the spiders. The spiders make more venom as they live. And so too do their eggs. As long as they have those eggs within them, they're powerful.” But at what price, he had to wonder? What was it like to have living spider eggs inside you? It was just so awful. But he tried not to let his thoughts linger on that.

  “The eggs gave the Silver Order the magic they craved. But they also connected the host to the spider nest and allowed the vital essence to be shared between them. That was the deal they struck.” And how much had the vampyres with the ice blue eyes wanted that power that they had been willing to have live spider eggs placed inside them? Manx couldn't imagine.

  “Deal?”

  “Arrangement.” Manx shrugged. “It was the system they set up four, five hundred years ago. And it went horribly wrong.”

  “They thought, with the spider eggs inside them, they were strong enough to rule the world. To get rid of all those who had once ruled them. Turn them into an eternal larder from which they could dine on. They didn't understand. They were blinded by their hatred.”

  That was the thing that Sorsha and the others had all said. That Lady Marshendale could not stop calling them animals. The woman's hatred had been overwhelming. Finally he understood that. The hatred and the names weren't because the spell-caster looked funny. It had nothing to do with that. The hatred the vampyres felt was because the spell-casters had power. The Silver Order wanted power. And they wanted to overthrow and punish those who had once had power over them. Nothing was more important to them than that.

  “It's like water,” he explained. “Rain falls from the sky and runs down through rivers to the sea. It's how it works. But sometimes there's a lake in the middle. And things change.”

  “You're the rain.” Manx wasn't sure he needed to explain that, but he did anyway. “Your magic falls from the sky and brings life to the world. The Silver Order are the lake. Constantly being filled by the rain, but always in balance. And the spiders are the sea.”

  “But that balance wasn't enough for the vampyres. They wanted to grow. And the venom allowed them to do that. It let them cut more channels into the mountains so that more rivers flowed into their lake. And for a time they were filled with water.”

  “It was everything they'd dreamed of. For a while.”

  “Sadly for them the water wasn't pure. The channels they'd cut into the mountains must have passed through some areas of bad soil. And that too flowed into the lake. So that's the burning you talked about as the magic flowed between worlds. But they could have survived that – maybe.”

  “What they couldn't survive was the connection between the eggs and their spider kin.” He paused for a breathe and to order his thoughts.

  “Everyone keeps telling me one thing over and over again – magic is life. In this case it really is. The eggs are alive. The spiders are alive. And they're all connected. That connection allows the magic to flow. From the eggs to those that laid them. And not the bad magic either. This is the magic from the lake. After the water has settled and the bad stuff has settled out.”

  “So the connection between the eggs and their spider kin has grown stronger over the years. The river leading from the lake to the sea has become a torrent. And the Silver Order has been caught in
the middle. They had to drain more and more water – magic – from you to replace the magic that was flowing from them. And that meant they got sicker. Poisoned by the magic they were stealing.”

  “Meanwhile the lake was emptying out ever faster. There were less and less children. Their order didn't grow, it shrank. Their power waned. And the sea full of spiders, slowly grew. It became an ocean.”

  “But then things grew even worse. Unfortunately for the Silver Order, when they got sick enough, they lost control of the eggs within them. Instead of being able to keep them as eggs, however they did that, the eggs started hatching.”

  “Praise Mya! You're saying they were alive, when the spiders … got out?” Styl sounded horrified.

  “Probably. There's a lot of blood, and that usually means a heart was beating.” He didn't want to think about that though. He really didn't want to think about any of what he was seeing. “And it's not over yet.”

  “You've got oil?” Manx turned to the guards, who were staring at the corpses in horror.

  “Yeah.”

  “Seal up all the entrances to this place. Pour the oil through the roof so it covers the entire prison floor, and then set it alight. We burn this place clean. Anyone who's been stung needs to see the healers. Not the physicians. The funny people with the six fingers. They may have spider eggs in the wounds. And set a watch around the entire prison for any of the little green spiders.”

  The guards stared at him, considering. But then their leader stared back at the bodies on the floor, and his consideration was done. “We can do that.”

  “And Styl, this is going to happen in every other prison where the Silver Order are being held. It's probably already happened in some of them. Word has to be sent. Seal the prisons. And then watch them – for years if not decades. These spiders burrow. They will build new nests in time if they survive.”

  “Why so frightened, monkey face? It was just a little spider,” Whitey mocked him. “I could kill them all by myself!”

  “They're poisonous,” he told the cat. “They'd kill you and eat you and lay their eggs in you.”

  “Huh!” The cat sniffed at him. “Monkey men! Who's afraid of a little spider?!”

  “Anyone with any sense,” Manx told her. Then he turned to the rest of the group.

  “The Silver Order have known that this day was coming for a very long time. Probably from the day they sent you away. They knew their prison would fail. And everything they've done has been to forestall it. And to shape it, when it finally arrived.”

  “There were members of the order in the spider cities. Probably there for hundreds of years. Trying desperately to break the connection between the eggs and those that laid them. There may be more. This has after all been the only thing that has mattered to them for all that time.”

  “Then when you escaped, they wanted the war with the spiders. And they had a plan to bring it about. Or a lie. A whole book of lies. First the spider queen. Not to gain your sympathy, but to give you an enemy to fight. To start the war. They needed the spiders, not dead, but beaten back. Enough that what they drained from them was tolerable. So they could return to their strength but not have to give up the venom. And they needed you beaten down. So weakened that even with their secrets revealed, you could not destroy them. The war would break you both – and they would return victorious.”

  “After that there were more lies. Half truths and denials. All designed to stop you finding out the truth. Because if you learned about the eggs they carried, it would be the end of their power. If you didn't kill them, you'd remove the eggs. No eggs, no venom, no power. As terrible as it must be to carry such things inside them, they will not let them go. Even death is better than being powerless.”

  And wasn't that a strange thing, he thought? He had never wanted power. Magic. He'd always thought it was a curse. Now he was slowly learning to live with it. Even to use it – when he needed to. But he didn't actually want a whole lot more of it. He really just wanted to live his life among his books. And that was the same whether there was magic in the world – funny people as the guard called them – or not. He couldn't even imagine doing what the vampyres had done to themselves.

  “Now it seems, time has run out for them. They left it too long. Their plans are ashes.” Which wasn't to say that there weren't more of the Silver Order still living in the spider cities. Possibly dying as their parasites hatched inside them. He shuddered some more.

  “We should get on with the rest of our day,” Manx changed the subject. With that he started walking back towards the lodging house and let the others follow.

  But inside, as he walked, he was anything but calm. In fact he was practically shaking in his boots though he tried to hide it. It was strange. Once upon a time he'd been a timid creature. Keeping to himself, and never making a commotion. Never doing anything to attract attention. Then these people had come and treated his wounds and shown him a little of his magic, and for a time he'd been almost brave. He'd even fought battles. Maybe that wasn't entirely down to them or him. Maybe it was Freda moving through him somehow. Guiding him. But still he'd run out of fear. Now with one little spider he was all the way back to where he had been at the start.

  Manx sighed quietly. Maybe he just didn't like spiders!

  Chapter Forty

  Sleep was in short supply. But Sorsha didn't begrudge the loss of it as she was shaken awake in her tent. She knew it was important. And when Peth greeted her with those two terrible words, she even forgot that she was exhausted.

  “They're moving.”

  Sorsha didn't need to ask. She knew what he meant. Just as she knew that they had precipitated this. When the message had come from the rescue party as she thought of them, about the spiders hatching inside the prisoners, they had had to act. Seven city gaols had been burned clean when it had been discovered that the little green spiders were running free. Everyone who had been stung had been treated and any eggs found in them, destroyed. And the rest of the Silver Order had been locked away in newly constructed cells that would not allow a single spider to escape. There would be no new nests formed.

  It had had to be done. But it had of course led to the attack. The spiders were already hungry thanks to the necklaces. They had hoped to form new nests in the cities and drain more living essence through them. But that plan had fallen apart. Now they were starving and there was only one source of food remaining to them.

  “Alright, get everyone in position.” Then she looked out through the open flap to see that it was night outside. “And lets get some light!” She didn't want to have to fight the spiders in the dark.

  Peth left her then, all but running out of the tent to give her orders to everyone, while she rolled out of her bedroll and then struggled to pull her boots on. And as she did so she had to wonder yet again, why was she seemingly in charge of this? She was no soldier! But then she remembered, they didn't have any soldiers. What spell-caster would ever take a job as a soldier? They could live much better lives. Instead she was in charge because she had been the first to break free of the prison, and started the long process of freeing the rest. That made her as close to a leader as they had.

  Then she started pulling on her jerkin. Everyone had one of the heavy canvas and leather jackets. They were uncomfortable to wear, but they would hopefully stop a sword – or a spider's fang.

  Sorsha, once she had her clothes on, hurried out of the tent to discover the camp in chaos. People were running around in all directions. They weren't panicking at least. But they weren't following the plan either. And if they were going to have any hope of surviving this battle let alone winning it, they had to stick to the plan.

  But even as she was wondering whether or not she should yell that at them, the sky abruptly lit up as huge balls of light exploded in the darkness, and she and everyone else looked out to the nearest of the spider cities. And there, like everyone else, she saw death approaching. Another raging torrent of green spiders, marching towards them.
But this one was even larger than all the others they'd seen.

  Her heart almost stopped beating as she saw them in the distance, and she felt a distinct loosening in her bowels. Sorsha guessed that everyone else had exactly the same fear coursing through their veins. The terror of being overrun by these nightmares and then ruthlessly dismembered by them. And the understanding that they would consume everything. Their bodies and their very souls. They wanted their magic after all. That was what the green army truly craved.

  But there was nothing to be done save to stick to their plan. And so she yelled that at everyone who could hear her, and then rushed for the gliders.