Rise of the Spider Goddess

by Jim Hines

  I use the word “suddenly” 37 times in this manuscript. I’d have to re-read to be certain, but I suspect that’s 37 times more than I needed.

  Then he began to see scenes from his original exploration of the temple. He remembered in astonishing detail what had happened the night that he had helped to free Olara. He watched again as she casually stabbed one of her priests.

  In an instant, he remembered meeting friends, and watching them die. He saw all of the mistakes he had ever made displayed before him. The image of every person he had ever been forced to kill flashed through his mind.

  Then it was over. Averlon drew back his hand, and Nakor collapsed onto his knees. Tears were racing down his face. For a moment, neither spoke.

  After taking a moment to regain his composure, Nakor looked up. “You saw?” he asked.

  Averlon nodded. “I saw what I needed to see.” He rested a hand gently on the side of Nakor’s face. “You have endured much pain, and much anger.”

  So. Much. Elf-pain.

  Nakor closed his eyes and didn’t respond.

  “You still have much to learn, Morelain,” Averlon said.

  “Morelain?” Nakor asked, looking up.

  “It is the name given to you by your true parents, Nakor. It was there, buried in your memory where you could not find it.”

  “But if I can’t remember it,” Nakor began.

  “I could not afford to be limited by what you can and can not remember,” Averlon explained. “I had to know everything. Only then could I be sure.”

  Tip for writers: “can not” is not the same as “cannot.”

  He studied Nakor for a moment. “Go in peace, Nakor Morelain.”

  Nakor blinked, finding himself in darkness. He was standing before the crystal, grasping it with both hands.

  “What exactly are you trying to do?” Pynne asked curiously.

  He pulled away from the crystal, wincing at the stiffness in his arms. He paused for a moment, focussing the energy needed to create the small flame in his left hand.

  Seeing Pynne standing curiously before him, Nakor smiled.

  Yay! It was all just a dream, and Pynne’s still alive! That wasn’t a cheap or overused writer trick AT ALL.

  “Are you okay?” Whoo asked.

  For an answer, Nakor simply held up the scroll in his right hand.

  * * *

  They sat around waiting while Nakor studied the spell. There was no evidence of his ever having been gone. The statue of the spider still stood atop the crystal. Whoo still had three unused arrows in his quiver.

  Upon asking, Nakor had discovered that no time had elapsed while he endured Averlon’s trial. The others had been shocked to hear Nakor’s description of what had occurred. Pynne, especially, had seemed rather disconcerted by the description of her death.

  “So what does it do?” Jenn demanded impatiently.

  Nakor looked up from the scroll. “I don’t know,” he answered, a puzzled look on his face. “It’s a very simple spell, but it doesn’t look like it does anything.”

  “In his journal, Averlon said it was a masterpiece of subtlety,” Pynne commented.

  Nakor looked back down at the scroll. “It’s beyond my understanding,” he commented. A few minutes later, he sighed and stood up.

  “Are you ready to go?” Nakor asked.

  “Shouldn’t you study that some more?” Pynne asked.

  Wordlessly, Nakor turned the scroll so that she could see it. Only four lines of writing spanned the top part of the page. The rest was taken up by an elaborate drawing of a spider sitting upon a jewelled throne.

  “I memorized it,” Nakor said.

  “Four lines?” Pynne demanded incredulously. Even the simplest of spells took up most of a page when written down. It was not possible to put a spell on paper in so brief a space.

  Nakor shrugged. Rolling up the scroll, he tucked it into his backpack.

  “Don’t worry,” he said with a grin, “It will either work or it won’t.”

  Pynne groaned softly.

  A more somber mood slowly settled over the group as they turned and began to make their way back out of the temple.

  As they passed out of the dwarven tunnels, Nakor suddenly cried out in pain and grabbed his hand. The flame went out, and they were in darkness once more.

  “Ouch,” Nakor whispered.

  “What happened?” Jenn demanded.

  “My magic stopped working when we passed through that door,” he answered. “I burnt my hand.”

  Whoo laughed quietly as he pulled the secret door shut behind them. “Next time just grab an extra torch.”

  Together, Whoo and Nakor led them back down the corridors, to where the trap door still hung open above them. The faint glow given off by the fungus on the walls allowed them to make their way without incident.

  Once there, Whoo and Pynne flew up, carrying the rope Nakor had brought. Then they lowered one end and leaned back, bracing themselves as well as they could.

  Jenn went first, as she was lighter than Nakor. The pixies flapped their wings, struggling to support her weight. Whoo gave a sigh of relief as she grabbed one edge of the hole and pulled herself through.

  There was a loud flutter of wings, and Flame emerged. He hopped away from the others and peered curiously down at Nakor.

  With Jenn helping, Nakor was able to climb up through the trap door. Then he recoiled his rope and replaced it in his backpack.

  “Let’s go find Galadrion and get out of here,” Nakor said, walking back toward the octagonal room where they had last seen her. “She must have taken a different tunnel,” he mused. “But eventually she’ll have to come back to that room. We can hide and wait for her there.”

  “What if another of those priests find us?” Jenn asked.

  Nakor glanced at her. “We’ll just have to hide really well.”

  As it turned out, they didn’t have to hide at all. Galadrion was waiting for them when they entered the room. She wasn’t alone.

  Her arms were held by two men who stood to either side of her. A little ways away, a black-robed priest motioned for them to come closer.

  “Welcome back, Nakor,” the priest said in a mocking voice. “We’ve been waiting for you.”

  He looked over at Galadrion in confusion. She stared back at him and shook her head slightly.

  “Please toss your weapons into a pile,” the priest continued.

  Still watching Galadrion, Nakor slowly drew his rapier. He looked back at the priest, remembering the earlier fight in this room. Galadrion’s clothing still had burn marks from that fight. Wordlessly, he dropped the rapier on the ground.

  Soon, Whoo’s bow joined it, followed by Jenn’s newly acquired dagger. Within moments, a small pile of weapons lay on the floor before them.

  The priest raised an eyebrow and pointed at Jenn. With an angry glare, she reached inside her shirt and tossed her other dagger into the pile.

  Raised eyebrow count: 20

  “Thank you,” the priest said. Then he snapped his fingers, as if suddenly remembering something.

  “Oh yes,” he said, “I’ll need Olatha-shyre as well, if you don’t mind.”

  Nakor looked at him curiously. “Olatha-shyre?”

  “If you wish to play games, we can,” the priest said. “However, the consequences will not be pleasant.” He pointed a finger, and a beam of energy shot into the wall above Jenn’s head. She jumped aside and looked back, seeing a scorched black mark where the beam had hit the stone.

  “I have a finger-laser! Pew, pew, pew!”

  Nakor nodded slowly. He slid his pack off his shoulders and reached inside.

  “Nakor,” Pynne hissed.

  He looked sadly at her. “I know.”

  Then he took the scroll from the pack showed it to the priest. With a laugh, the priest sent another bolt of energy at the scroll. It crumbled into ashes.

  If I was a bad guy, I’d want to make sure I was actually destroying the real scroll,
as opposed to, say, an old scrap of elven pornography Nakor picked up in the woods or something. But what do I know?

  Nakor cried out, grabbing his hand. Whoo and Pynne looked at each other in despair.

  “Now,” the priest said with a smile, “You will come with me.”

  As they were led out of the temple, Nakor looked back at Galadrion. He wondered how they had captured her, and how these two men were able to hold her prisoner. Then he looked closer, studying them by the light of the torch the priest carried.

  Neither of the men were breathing. Galadrion had been captured by a pair of vampires.

  Chapter 11

  Galadrion had smiled as Nakor and Whoo escaped through one of the doors. She hoped they would be able to find the spell they were looking for. Or perhaps Pynne and Jenn would find it. At least they had gotten away, she thought to herself. Then she turned back to look at the priest who knelt beside her.

  “I’m sorry about this, I really am. But you shouldn’t have come here.” The priest grabbed Galadrion’s hair and wrenched her head back. Making a clucking noise with his tongue, he brought the knife up under her chin.

  “Maybe you’re right,” Galadrion said quietly, closing her eyes.

  Then he drew the blade across her throat.

  The priest’s eyes widened, seeing that his knife had no effect. Galadrion reached up and grabbed him by the front of his cloak. Then he was hurled through the air and crashed against the altar. The knife clattered to the ground.

  Oh sure, I could have written, “Galadrion hurled him through the air.” But why use active voice for an action scene when I can use passive voice and make it 158% less exciting?

  “Maybe not.”

  Wincing, Galadrion got to her feet. Her wounds weren’t healing properly, she noted. Looking around, she tried to remember which door Jenn and Pynne had gone through. Picking one, she limped over and grabbed a torch from the wall next to the door. Then she opened the door and began walking down the tunnel.

  Almost immediately, she came to a set of poorly carved stairs that circled downward. Where they ended, two different tunnels led off into the darkness.

  Galadrion stopped at the bottom of the stairs and peered down the tunnels. There didn’t seem to be any difference between the two. With a mental sigh, she began walking down the right tunnel.

  She studied the corridor as she walked. It was obviously well-used, for the floor was free of dirt. The walls were covered with some sort of gray-blue fungus that clung tenaciously to the stone.

  Cobwebs filled the uneven cracks and spaces in the ceiling. Absently, Galadrion raised her torch up until the flame licked at one of the webs. She watched as the web curled away from the torch, burning into nothingness. A spider fell, landing next to her foot.

  Smokey the Owlbear says, “Only you can prevent dungeon fires!”

  She crushed it with her boot.

  “If only it were that easy,” she whispered to herself. Then she froze, hearing voices from ahead.

  It was too far away to make out what was being said. All she could tell was that they were male voices. Perhaps this tunnel connected to the one Whoo and Nakor escaped through.

  Confident in her ability to protect herself, Galadrion raised her torch and began walking toward the voices.

  As she got closer, the voices suddenly stopped. Galadrion began to feel a faint buzzing in her mind. It was painless, and familiar for some reason. She stopped and waited.

  Soon she could see a light approaching. Two men walked into view. One man held an oil-burning lantern in, while the other had a sword drawn.

  He held an oil-burning lantern in WHAT? Don’t leave me in suspense. His hand? His mouth? His boxer shorts?

  The one carrying the lantern stepped forward to study Galadrion. He was dressed all in black, with a sword strapped to his side. His sleek brown hair was tied into a ponytail, and a neatly trimmed goatee decorated his chin. Deep brown eyes stared past a hooked nose as he contemplated Galadrion.

  “We weren’t informed of your arrival,” he said at last.

  Suddenly Galadrion realized why the buzzing in her mind was familiar. It was a sensation she hadn’t felt for nearly thirty years.

  After being bitten by a vampire, Galadrion had fled from her home. She had dug herself a shelter deep in the forest. There, she was able to escape from the rest of the world, covering the entrance with sticks and leaves. Then, a few weeks later, he had come back.

  He had been ready to receive Galadrion’s gratitude for the gift he had bestowed on her. Instead, she had tried futilely to kill him, repeatedly stabbing him with her dagger. After a while, she stopped, realizing the hopelessness of it. He had laughed, bowed courteously to her, and departed.

  All the while they had been together, Galadrion had felt that same sensation in the back of her mind. She had been too enraged at the time to think anything of it, but now it made sense.

  All the while they were together? They spent what, five minutes together after she was turned?

  A feeling of dread came over Galadrion then, as she realized that she faced her own kind. She was still weak from the priest’s attack.

  The second vampire sheathed his sword and stepped forward. He was slightly taller and more muscular than his companion. His blond hair was tied in a similar ponytail, but he was cleanshaven. Like the other, he was dressed in black. The only exception was a deep blue sash tied around his waist.

  The bad guys all wear black. I guess I should be grateful I didn’t give them all evil moustaches to twirl.

  “I am Gavin,” he said, “this is Derek.”

  The other vampire nodded.

  “I’m Galadrion,” she answered.

  “Why did Olara send you?” asked Gavin.

  Hope filled her heart. They thought she had been sent down here to join them!

  “I was sent to look for the intruders,” she answered, thinking quickly.

  They looked at each other. “Intruders?” Derek asked.

  Galadrion cursed silently. She had assumed they were down here looking for her and her companions. Now, it looked like she had just put Nakor and the others in greater danger.

  “They found a dead priest up above,” Galadrion explained. “Olara wants whoever killed him found and brought to her.”

  Gavin nodded. “Olara has been paranoid about outsiders ever since she got a hold of that prophesy.”

  “Prophesy?” Galadrion inquired politely.

  “You haven’t heard?” Derek asked.

  She shook her head.

  “Apparently some old priestess predicted that Olara would be killed by that elf who helped resurrect her,” he said. “To make things worse, he disappeared right after she found out.”

  Vampires are rather chatty, aren’t they?

  “So, now she’s got us patrolling the tunnels down here, just to be safe,” Gavin added. He rolled his eyes. “We’ve been down here for two straight days.”

  Galadrion was relieved. It was obvious that these two hadn’t heard the rumors about Nakor’s vampiress companion. That was probably a result of being alone in the temple for so long.

  “Do you think it’s him?” Galadrion asked cautiously.

  “Nakor,” Derek said. “The elf’s name is Nakor.”

  “It takes a lot to kill one of Olara’s priests inside the temple,” Gavin said with a frown. “From what I’ve heard, Nakor doesn’t have that kind of power. Especially without his magic.”

  “Maybe he figured out how to get his magic back,” Galadrion ventured.

  “I doubt it,” said Gavin. “Olara has to do a special ceremony for a priest before he can cast spells in here. She only goes to that effort for a few of the exceptionally gifted ones.”

  “He could have had help,” Derek offered.

  “Does it really matter who the intruder is?” Galadrion asked, avoiding that topic.

  “Galadrion’s right,” Gavin said, “we should just find whoever it is and take them to Olara.”


  They began to walk down the tunnel.

  “You okay?” Gavin asked, noticing Galadrion’s limp.

  She snorted in disgust. “I mouthed off to one of those exceptionally gifted priests.” She pointed to the scorches on her shirt and trousers. “This is what I got for it.”

  Derek clapped a hand on her shoulder. “We all get that from time to time. One of these days I’m going to teach some priests what happens when you annoy a vampire.”

  “Shut your mouth,” Gavin said in disgust. “If anyone catches you talking like that, you’re going to get burned just like her.”

  Up ahead, a door was built into the left wall. They stopped there, and Derek took a small key from around his neck to unlock it.

  “You new?” he asked Galadrion.

  “Yeah,” she replied.

  “Then you’ve probably never been in here.” She shook her head, and he continued. “This here is where we make our base while we’re living in the lower levels.”

  He swung the door inside and set his lantern on a round wooden table. It was a small, cramped room filled with various weapons, tools, and several barrels.

  “Extra oil,” Gavin commented, pointing at the barrels.

  Galadrion nodded, staring at a large map that on one wall. It was obviously a map of the temple. She could see the octagonal room they had found, with eight tunnels twisting out in different directions.

  I’m sad to say I don’t think I have my map of this dungeon anymore. Otherwise, I could have a fancy front-of-the-book map, just like all the real fantasy novels!

  The temple was larger than she had expected. Corridors twisted around each other, forming a complex labyrinth. The occasional room broke the maze of tunnels.

  “What’s this?” she asked, pointing to a tunnel that stopped abruptly at one side of the map.

  Derek glanced over. “That one opens up into a huge cavern. It’s a dead end, nobody’s been there for years.”

  “Nice place to end it all, though,” Gavin said dryly. “There’s a molten river at the bottom of the cavern,” he added for Galadrion’s benefit.