The Eyes of Sarsis

by Andrew J Offutt

  “Because she’s entertaining an aristocrat.”

  “Dung.”

  “We can wait,” the man said quietly; a burly one he was, shining as if cut from basalt. Not tall, with a bit of gray in his tightly curly black hair. He’d enough chest and arm to give pause to a bear, Misnavella thought, in her aerie. She smiled at him. He paid her no mind.

  “No,” the redhead snapped. “Time’s fleeting, father. In we go!”

  Misnavella blinked. Father ! The only way such a man could have fathered such a woman was — well, there wasn’t a way! Those two were — Misnavella blinked, and swallowed again. By the Cud of the Great Cow! Those two … those were the pirates, Caranga and his foster daughter Tiana Highrider, captain of Vixen and called pirate queen! She craned to see their attempt at entry.

  An ex-Guardsman dealt with unruly visitors to the House of Seven Delights; at sight of the two sea-wolves he wilted even more than the breasty beauty who swung above. Rushing in and upstairs, Caranga and Tiana commenced kicking in doors with their square-toed seaman’s boots. The first four employments of this profoundly rude entry interrupted only sluts with common sailors. One Tiana recognized, and she smiled and winked.

  The man behind the fifth door sat straight up, belly wobbling. “I demand to know the meaning of this incredible and unconscionable impertinence!”

  “Oh my good lord,” Tiana said, and bowed, and Caranga walked past her and knocked his lordship quite unconscious. Tiana straightened to face the cowering young woman who’d been entertaining his lordship, who obviously liked companions who appeared barely nubile. Had a fancy for his daughter, mayhap.

  “Tell me, whore,” Tiana snapped, “during the Hour of the Rat while you swung outside in your gilded cage of tin … saw you a man in a long-sea-green cloak, and him tall, thin, hawk-faced, forehead back to here, and with a gap just at his chin to separate his sideburns?”

  Anger and fear even unto terror flashed across Irinda’s girlish face.

  “Answer Captain Tiana, you silly slut,” a rumbly voice ordered her, “or by Susha’s circumcision I’ll shave you bald as your loins.”

  After a brief bout of blinking and shuddering at Caranga’s words, Irinda replied. “Aye, C-C-Cap — aye, Captain T-Ti-anna, he frightened me. I saw him. He looked at me, and what awful eyes that one had! He — he appeared to have come from the old warehouse district — Wharf-rat Street.”

  Tiana nodded. The street was in truth named Wortrav, but everyone who knew anything — meaning all but the nobles of Reme — called it Wharf Rat.

  “You’re a good girl, Irinda, for a girl. When that old piece of dung wakes up, tell him we’re agents of the king and he can check with Hower himself! As for you — once you grow up and start looking for woman’s work, come see me.”

  Irinda stared wide-eyed, looked around the ornately appointed room, at the noble lord’s discarded clothing, at her silken bedsheets; again at Tiana.

  “Give up this for the bunks on a pirate ship?”

  “Irinda,” Tiana said with regal austerity, “you’ll be a girl all your life. Father?”

  Tiana paid the girl and the pirates departed. The old warehouse district was more than half deserted and few of the buildings had watchmen. Tiana laughed as she saw the face of the one they found.

  “Allato, you old thief! What are you doing here?”

  “Earning an honest living.”

  She laughed. “More likely you’re casing the district to find something worth stealing. Have you seen a tall, slender man who walked oddly tonight?”

  “No, I did not,” the watchman replied, with heat.

  “Allato, I’ve known you since I was a child. Remember when we burgled the high priest’s wine cellar? You couldn’t lie to me then and you can’t lie to me now.”

  “Tiana, let the matter be. Oh, I saw him all right, and I knew he was one of the walking dead. You’ve been at sea and don’t know the evil flowers that have growed in Reme. There’s a big building at the end of this street. Black stone. I seen the dead man walk out of there. It was only the latest of a lot of unnatural events having to do with that building. It was abandoned for years, full of rats and spiders. Then two months ago it started. Late at night sounds come out of it. Screams of agony. Insane laughter. Chanting and obscene music. Strangers come and go from that building, but no native Ilani has entered and come out.”

  “Who has entered and not returned?”

  “Two good thieves. They’d heard rumors of treasure there. They went in, one by a door, and one by a window. No more’s known of them.”

  Tiana turned to Caranga. “It’s clear we need to attack in force. Fortunately we can get the King’s Own to help us. I’ll stay here and watch the building, while you fetch the soldiery.”

  Caranga looked sharply at his foster daughter. The plan was quite reasonable, but he knew Tiana. Would she be content to wait or would she become impatient and launch some foolhardy singlehanded attack? It had always been useless to forbid Tiana to do anything. He sighed.

  “Well … maybe I can get back before you get yourself into trouble.” And he left before she could reply.

  Tiana was annoyed. Caranga had spoken to her as if she were a foolish child. Of course, she’d prove him wrong. She had lots of patience. She moved silently through the shadows and found a good vantage point. From here she could sit in fair comfort and watch the front door of the mysterious building.

  She did.

  However, the front door just stood there. It did nothing interesting. A bored Tiana decided to circle the building. The rear door and windows she found all boarded up, but three quarters of the way around she noticed a high window. Open, radiating a faint light.

  Oh well, then. Child’s play! No use waiting.

  And with her padded grapnel and silken rope, it was. The hook caught the high sill on her second throw. The padding stilled the sound of steel against stone. She went up the wall light as a cat.

  Natural with time and most appropriate, cobwebs laced the window. She could hardly see within. Besides, it was dark. She could cut through these webs and lower herself … Cobwebs ? Tiana goosefleshed. Ever had Caranga been at her to see things not as they were expected to be, but as they truly were. For that reason, she was alive. This, she realized was no ordinary web that nigh filled the window space. Each strand was thick — too thick. And the interstices were too wide.

  Whatever spun this web , she thought, planned to catch something a lot bigger than fleas!

  Watchful waiting was forgotten. This was a challenge and a problem to be solved, by the highly skilled thief Tiana was. Hmm … the slightest touch to this web should bring a very large spider indeed. If she was to enter, it must be fought. Fighting on its own territory was absurd. She frowned, pushing her lower lip in and out while she pondered. In this web, a human would be as a fly in a normal one. She considered. As an alarm, the web was only half clever. Regardless of size, a spider was a silent and solitary hunter. Why, they’re almost as patient as I am!

  An attack by it would bring no other spiders or human guards, surely; it would move silently and without warning to assault, immobilize, and devour.

  Tiana was debating whether to summon the thing and slay it or attempt to slip in, when beneath her, within the darkened building, she noted faint movement. She saw nothing … stared … and slowly, the shifting shadow resolved into a definite shape: presumably black, and large as a hunting hound. Lots of legs. Its compound eyes seemed impossibly large topazes — cracked. They did not focus, so as to give her possible hint of the thoughts this dark thing had. If it thought.

  Of course it didn’t think. Not thoughts: intentions. Intentions required no thought, any more than the webspinning of a creature directed by instinct.

  Yet — Tiana considered. There was a big difference between planning to slay an overgrown bug, and facing this eight-legged monster! She watched it climb until it was a few feet below her. It stopped. Instinct warned it not to leave its web, she assum
ed, however tantalizing the prey just beyond web’s edge. Human and spider stared at each other in a long, long moment of fragile truce.

  She saw that its huge jaws were equipped with big fangs, which drooled a yellow-green slime. The monster must deliver enough venom to kill an elephant, Tiana mused cheerlessly.

  Too, it did not walk on eight legs like its smaller cousins. This outsized arachnid’s two forelegs, thicker and more powerful, were permanently raised for combat. Anything caught by those “arms” would never escape the envenomed jaws. It was armored too; it wore its skeleton outside the squishy body within, like plate mail.

  Surely a good thrust from a blade as slim as mine will pierce that carapace , Tiana mused, but … where to strike a mortal blow? Where were its heart and lungs — did it have such organs? Behind those staring eyes … was there a brain she might pierce and destroy? She remembered once having completely beheaded a wasp, which she picked up to carry triumphantly to Caranga. It had stung her painfully, just as if it were alive. And when she tried to fling it away, the legs and feet clung.

  Tiana not only refused to admit fear even to herself, she never remembered terror once she had whelmed its source. Now — now it moved, and her arm quivered with gooseflesh. That settled that.

  Since this ugly huge thing frightened her, she must kill it.

  A glance at her grapnel showed it firmly in place. Her rope of silk was coiled about her left hand. Using a fold of her cloak as glove, she could quickly slide to the ground without getting rope burns. That was swift retreat, after …

  She shifted position slightly and her rapier flicked out and down. Its needle point slashed across the spider’s antennae. The thing lunged up at her, and she braced and thrust: straight and true. Her rapier plunged in between the great cracked-yolk eyes. The armor snapped. The slender blade went in. Tiana held her arm, steady; the beast continued coming; a foot and then two feet and then nigh the rest of her sword vanished into the creature’s body. Because of the angle of spider and its stabber, the blade’s tip emerged, dripping, from its lower body — and for Tiana it was let go the hilt or lose her arm.

  Tiana let go and swung back, squatting with most of her body outside the window so that anyone below would have had a most fascinating view. She stared at the spider, which had stopped. Good, then. Surely such a transpiercing wound would swiftly prove fatal.

  It did not. With great speed the spider lunged. Tiana dropped, barely evading the grasp of its hairy forelegs. She slid swiftly down her rope, back into the alley, while the spider gained the windowsill. A thread of pallid white dropped from its body and Tiana felt a cold, sticky touch on her right arm. A few feet from the ground, her downward slide was arrested with an abrupt jerk. It hurt. And that was not all.

  Her right arm was twisted above her head — and she was being pulled steadily upward. The spider had ejected webbing, snared her, and was … reeling in, or something like. Did spiders do that? Tiana didn’t know. Nor did she care; this one did, and was!

  Now that her weight was on the spider’s line, her own rope had gone slack. Desperately giving it a flip, she tugged hard. The grapnel hopped free of the sill and tried to fall on her. A great spider-leg was in the way. The beast was toppled forward to plunge past Tiana. She groaned, trying to hang onto her own rope and being pulled by webbing and —

  She hit the ground hard, and rolled. The webbing that had snared her had been scraped loose. Her arm, abraded on the hard-packed earth of the alley, oozed blood. She threw herself up, whipping out her dagger, and — where was the accursed beastie ?

  It should have fallen near her. Yet it was nowhere in sight. She glanced around again, her heart pounding, and then came the slight sound and she hurled herself flat. The black monster shot through the air above her. Apparently a hastily-extruded strand of webbing had prevented its falling all the way. Now it was swinging back and forth in the alley, a pendulum of death. She had no place to go. The narrow alley ended a few feet behind her, and the old temple’s rear door was barred from within.

  The spider whooshed past again.

  Fighting down panic, Tiana tried to think her way out of the trap. If she moved to the end of the alley, she would be trapped. The enemy need only drop on her. Just now, it was at the top of its arc; now it was falling toward her … She ran toward it, and at the last moment dived to the ground. More pain, but. she hardly noticed, hearing those venom-drooling jaws snap within a hand’s breadth of her body. She was clear, already up and running. Her abraded leg tried to buckle, and held. The thump behind her was shocking, as the creature landed on the ground, six-legged, and pursued her. She heard the point of her rapier scrape the ground, still thrusting from the monster’s lower body. The thing was gaining on her!

  Why did the fates decide that I, with only two legs, must race a fiend that runs on six? What disadvantage does the Drood-sent thing suffer to pay for its four extra legs?

  She stumbled, and had her answer: balance.

  It was too late to worry whether her flash of idea was good or no. In another instant the dog-sized spider would run her down. She swerved leftward, stopped, and sprang to the right even as she whirled around. The spider’s headlong rush carried it past her; it too had swerved to its left. As it scuttled by, Tiana slashed, but her dagger glanced harmlessly off an armored leg.

  Stopping almost instantly a few feet beyond her, the spider started to turn.

  In an act that would have looked insane to any observer, she pounced — at the beast. Before it could come around to face her, she struck again, and this time with force and accuracy. Tiana was accustomed to thrusting; she was swift and could never be so strong as many male warriors. Therefore she had long ago chosen the swift, light rapier — and now, with her dagger, she made a rapier-like thrust.

  Just as a mailed knight might be stabbed in the joints of his armor, so the spider’s armored leg possessed vulnerable joints. Into one of these spots her steel bit deeply. Feeling triumphant but trying to backpedal too rapidly, Tiana sprawled, and the spider was now facing her. Big multifaceted eyes gleamed. The monster lunged — and toppled over in mid-stride. Before it could regain its footing and compensate for its one useless leg, she swiveled on her backside and stabbed another leg joint. Then she rolled, with all her might.

  A filthy pirate stared at her wounded enemy.

  Though the spider struggled, it could no longer stand up. Tiana grinned. Rising, she moved about it. Calmly and carefully she destroyed the use of another leg, and then one “arm,” and then, though barbs brought blood from her own arm, she daggered its other arm-like leg.

  The spider was helpless. Not without some difficulty, Tiana regained her rapier. Arachnid blood gushed.

  Her own legs made it emphatically clear that they wanted a rest. Rather suddenly, Tiana sat. The hard earth felt fine. Her heart was pounding furiously and her lungs burned. Little shudders came and went.

  In retrospect, she was surprised that she had not sooner perceived the solution. The spider walked with a gait like that of a horse’s trot: the right front and rear legs moved forward along with the left center leg, while the other three remained down, and then the left front and rear legs and middle right, and so on. Since the creature was always propped on three legs even when rushing, it never had need for a sense of balance. Losing the use of a single leg proved a fatal disadvantage for a creature without balance.

  Rested and rearmed, Tiana stared up to the lighted window. Now that the way into this building was clear and unguarded, she remembered her resolve to stay out of trouble. Still, there were several good reasons for entering, now that she considered the matter. If whoever sent the map was a friend, he must be prisoner inside this building. In that case when the King’s Own broke in the front door, the prisoner’s guards might slay him. On the other hand if the map’s sender was an enemy, he might lock himself up and pretend to have been a prisoner. On balance, Tiana thought, the occasion called for some discreet spying.

  Again her grapple f
lew. It dropped silently onto the windowsill and Tiana went up. The spider web was an advantage, now. If a human guard heard some slight noise he would not dare come to investigate. A few moments’ dagger work and a path was clear for her to lower herself to the floor. She slid down.

  The warehouse was a single great room. Around its dingy walls were scattered large bales and packing crates, behind one of which she now hid. A check of a few crates showed Tiana that they contained a variety of valuable merchandise. The rumors of treasure are at least partially true, she thought, with a pirate’s interest. The front door was invisible; that portion of the room had been curtained off. The center of the floor was bare of goods. A large number of small cushions lay before a carven dais of black stone.

  Tiana stared. An altar!

  Sight of what stood behind the altar gave her the sensation of her heart’s skipping a beat. A single up-reaching arm, ending in a hideous taloned hand in the act of clutching.

  Drood ! she thought with a shudder. It’s a cult devoted to Drood of the Thousand Arms, dread Lord of Death … and patron of murderers! Oh this is charming; Tiana m’dear, you are in the den of those creatures calling themselves Arms of Drood — I thought this mischief had been stamped out of the city about the time I was born!

  She had known the Arms had been more active in Reme of late. It had not occurred to her that the creatures would dare establish a shrine for their bloodthirsty rites here in the capital!

  Still Tiana had yet to see the most sinister aspect of the … shrine. While much of the warehouse was filled with dark shadows, the blackness in one area did not result from lack of light. To the left of the altar, numerous lamps had been placed on the floor. Each burned with a cheerful bright glow. At first glance the lights appeared to be votaries arranged in a circle around some black object. Such, Tiana soon realized, was not the case. There was no object within the ring of lamps. There was simply blackness. A total blackness that admitted no light whatever. Tiana stared at the impossible and eerie.