Spiderlight

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  Not helping matters was that one of Dion’s disciples was Harathes, who had been in Artaves’s class at the seminary, and had already attempted to intervene with his “old friend” to get the whole matter expedited. Artaves primarily remembered Harathes as the pompous prig who had been high priest’s pet and self-appointed enforcer of virtue two years running. The “old chum” line would not, therefore, have gone down well under normal circumstances. Except that Harathes had also somehow contrived to remind Artaves of that time Harathes had caught him sneaking a woman of decidedly uncertain virtue into the seminary, which had gone unreported at the time solely so it could be brought up like a bad smell right when it was politically inconvenient.

  Do the right thing, Artaves reminded himself. The right thing for whom, though? He hoped to Armes that the final decision was not going to be his.

  “I was attempting to heal my follower, who had been stabbed by the Brotherhood of the Dawn,” Dion said tiredly.

  “Your follower the thief, who had broken into the sanctum of the Disciples of Gamograth and assaulted some of their number.”

  Dion nodded. She looked half-dead, bag-eyed and hollow-cheeked. Artaves’s own facility with the power of the Light was minimal, but he knew that healing wounds drew deep on the physical endurance of the healer. It was entirely possible to end up saving a life at the cost of one’s own, or even just following the patient into death. The bandage about her head didn’t help matters either.

  “I’ve explained that.”

  “You have.”

  And Artaves was unhappily aware that she had not explained it very well or very fully. There had been one of her followers kidnapped by Abnasio’s crowd, that was for certain—witnesses from the Heathen’s Quarter had been hauled forth to testify. That individual’s identity was something that Dion seemed rather cagey about, and there were all sorts of odd stories coming from the Brotherhood of the Dawn. Those who could be interviewed, that was.

  “And so . . . ,” he prompted.

  “And the monks were making it difficult,” Dion said, with admirable composure. “And I am afraid Abnasio decided that he was going to debate with me again, when I was occupied doing Armes’s work.”

  “He tried to interrupt your healing.”

  “He did interrupt it.” Her voice was flat. “He laid hands on me and dragged me from Lief’s side. He was shouting in my face. A lot of things. One of which concerned Lief, and his opinion on whether saving a life was a fit exercise for my powers.”

  Artaves winced at that, mostly because he knew what was coming from the testimony of the monks.

  “So . . .”

  “I am afraid I suffered a lapse of judgment,” Dion said in dead tones.

  “That’s . . . one way of putting it.”

  “I became very angry very quickly, and I was not able to exercise the appropriate forbearance and restraint,” she went on.

  “And you . . . ?”

  She took a deep breath, mustering the willpower to just say the words. “I struck Abnasio with my mace. With full intent to harm him.”

  “More than once.”

  “Yes.”

  Artaves moistened his lips. You beat the Chief Disciple of Gamograth to death were the words he did not feel the need to say.

  She shivered. “One of his followers got close enough to strike me, then.” An abortive gesture toward her bandaged head. “He knocked me down.”

  “And your own followers . . .”

  “Took it badly, yes. Only . . .”

  “Hmm?”

  She looked him properly in the eye for the first time. “I am not denying my actions. When I struck Abnasio I ceased to do the work of the Light. I will face whatever punishment the authorities demand for my actions. But Penthos . . .”

  “Your magician.”

  “You must understand how it is with him. I had instructed him to hold himself back. I had told him not to exercise the full and lethal extent of his powers.”

  Artaves sighed. “I am sure that will be taken into account when your actions are judged.”

  “No! I am not saying this in my own defense,” she told him forcefully. “How many died, of the monks?”

  “Seventeen.” They had been crushed, flattened, torn apart by invisible forces. For a man used to keeping peace in the most peaceful city in the world it had been an eye-opener.

  “And how many survived?”

  “Twenty-seven, many of whom were injured.”

  “Well, then, don’t you see?” she insisted. “Even seeing me fall, even seeking to protect me, and assailed on all sides, he held himself back obedient to my dictates. Believe me, Lord Commander, if Penthos had unleashed his full powers there would have been no survivors. There would have been no house left, perhaps no street. Please, you must recognize that he held himself back. And that it was all for me. I give myself up for punishment. Imprison me, exile me, strip me of my office. Execute me, if you will. My followers were only doing my bidding.”

  There was a knock, and Artaves rose from the table to answer. One of his subordinates stood there, holding a sealed scroll.

  “From the Potentate himself,” he reported.

  “Praise be to Armes,” Artaves muttered, because that meant he himself was not going to have to make the call.

  It was a shabby little inn, for certain, on a shabby little path through the forest. Cyrene’s informant from the Heathen’s Quarter seemed to have earned his tip. There wasn’t much footfall on this road to Armesion.

  By then she was feeling dead on her feet. Lack of sleep and an impressive collection of bruises and scrapes were ganging up on her and demanding some sort of round-the-table talks about sleep, and soon. Sleep was something she couldn’t afford, though. She had too much to be vigilant against. Perhaps the Brotherhood of the Dawn were already tracking her from Armesion. Perhaps the church itself was involved, with its shining knights galloping hither and yon with her name on their lips—and not, she grimly knew, in a good way. Not that she had any particular ambitions in that direction, having met their good ambassador, Harathes. And then there was Enth.

  She did not want to sleep alone, save for Enth. She knew that Penthos had bound the creature with strong magic, and she knew it was compelled to do what she said. And yet the idea of being in a room with the thing—even in a building with the thing—and none of her fellows present to keep watch, it made her skin crawl. Her dislike of the creature had evolved somewhat, she was forced to admit. No longer was it a simple loathing of spiders: she had ceased to think of the thing as a mere arachnid. It was not a horror of Enth’s hybrid appearance, either. Somehow the edge of that had gone, the initial shock slowly dissipating from long familiarity. It had been that moment in Ening’s Garth, in the tavern there, when she had been drunk and angry, and it had spoken for itself. She had looked into that scrambled visage, those eyes, those teeth, and found that, in her mind, it had made the curious transition from abomination to simple monster.

  Now it was just that she didn’t trust it not to cut her throat. That was a far more straightforward position, and more morally supportable. It was still her enemy, and the enemy of all humanity. It would be the same if she was forced to travel with a sly Ghantishman or one of Darvezian’s Doomsayers or just a wicked human being. That was what she told herself. It was simple.

  There was a nagging little voice inside her that said the situation was still very complex indeed, but she ignored it.

  She pushed into the inn, finding an empty taproom long overdue a sweeping, the light gloomy, the ceiling low, and made lower by the massive beams that formed the building’s robust skeleton.

  “Service!” she called, and banged a fist on the bar, which only reminded her of all the bruises she had accumulated. “Anyone here?” Because Enth was hovering intrusively at her shoulder she pointed at the main table and told him to go sit down.

  At last a thin weasel of a man oiled his way up the cellar stairs and slunk behind the bar. Cyrene trusted fat in
nkeepers, whose bellies tended to mark their success and the quality of their stock in trade. This man seemed hunched around the lack of that paunch, holding his thinness in against his ribs as though it were precious to him. His smile was narrow-lipped and furtive, and his hands trembled. “Good morning, good morning,” he wheezed. “Welcome, welcome to my humble establishment. I am Visler, Visler the Vintner I am. Please, I have rooms, I have board, I have all that you need.” His manner was that of a man flinching from an anticipated blow.

  “You’ll have to do,” Cyrene told him. “Food, for two people. Nothing fancy. And get us something to drink. If you’ve anything to keep a person awake, that’ll get you extra.”

  The innkeeper’s eyes twitched between her and the hooded form of Enth. “Pilgrims? Business in the Holy City, hmm, hmm?”

  “No and no,” she told him, too tired to start spinning stories about who they were or where they were going. “Just travelers. Now, how about that service?”

  “Yes, yes,” and he was bustling away behind the bar, and Enth was staring from his cowl, but only down at his gray, long-fingered hands.

  “I want beer,” said the creature.

  Cyrene stared at it. “You what?”

  “I want beer. Lief gave me beer. I want beer.”

  She opened her mouth to say, “Just because you conned him into it, doesn’t mean that . . . ,” but the words would not come out, and she just looked at him, and wondered if it felt, and, if so, what feelings could survive in that hostile environment. Does it want to raise a tankard in the thief’s memory? It can’t, can it? It can’t have thoughts and feelings like that.

  And then Visler the Vintner was weaseling his way to them again, and he had two mugs of what was probably beer, and his wheedling voice was saying, “. . . and there’s something special, something to perk you up, in it, yes there is, yes there is.”

  Her eyes never left Enth as they both drank. Her suspicion of him was what she later blamed for her lack of caution elsewhere.

  She took one long draft, went to wipe her mouth, and discovered that she could move no part of herself except her eyes.

  For a long time, nothing happened. She was fixed looking at Enth. He was fixed staring at his hands. Then she heard a movement from out of eyeshot, so furtive it could only be Visler.

  “All finished, yes, yes? Mind if I take the empties?” His hands came into her wildly peering view and took the two half-drained mugs, and then the entirety of his stooped form sidled into sight, which was barely an improvement. He was smiling, but it was a yellowed and rodenty thing, that smile, and nothing fit for any wholesome human face. His hands rubbed over each other in obscene congratulation.

  “What’s that? A heady brew, mine host, yes, yes? Quite enough to stop you in your tracks, is it? A pint of the finest, yes, yes. Why, so few take the forest road these days, but I’ll let you in on a secret, our little secret, yes. It’s that even fewer get to the other side. For even here, almost within sight of the Holy City, a little Darkness can grow, a little of the Dark Lord’s power. Shame you weren’t holier, yes? Shame you didn’t take the high road, the open road. But no Light will save you here. Now let’s get a good look at you, my dear, my dear . . .” For a moment she thought that meant he would be leaning in to paw at her, but instead he had slipped a little trinket like a jeweler’s lens from his pocket and was fiddling with it, muttering under his breath. At last he had it to his eye and was staring at her through it, first with that carious grin, then with increasing disquiet.

  “What? What is this? You lied to me, you minx, did you? No pilgrim you, or so you say, but look, I see the traces of the Light on you. Lots of little sparkles, yes, yes. Look at the pretty little blessings you’re carrying. No, no, I’ve seen less on priests and priestesses than on you. The imbecile, the idiot! Go haunt the Heathen’s Quarter, I told him. Give directions only to the profane, I said. We don’t want pilgrims and priests and church knights come knocking for a room, no, no. We want those that nobody’ll miss. What was he thinking, sending someone as sparkling as you.” He hissed in disgust. “And you, lying to me. What’s the world coming to, I ask myself, yes. But, ah well, we’ll just have to dispose of the pieces that much more thoroughly, won’t we? Won’t have anything left for if the church comes looking for you, no, no, no.” And he turned the lens on Enth.

  “What . . . ?” He staggered back as if flinching from a blow. “What is it? What are you, my friend, my friend? What am I . . .” He took the lens from his eye and shook it. “Why can I never get this thing to work properly? Why can’t I . . . ?” He reached out to twitch Enth’s hood back, and the man-spider stood abruptly and batted his hand away.

  There was a frozen moment, with Visler cringing away, hands before his face, and Enth just standing there.

  Kill him! Kill him! But Cyrene’s tongue and mouth remained obstinately shut and silent, while her eyes flicked in anguish between the two of them. And Enth remained still as Visler started to back away.

  “No, no, no,” the vintner was muttering. “Need help, need help. He’ll know. He’ll know what to do. Yes, yes, yes. Emergencies, he said. This is an emergency, yes.” He scuttled back behind the bar frantically, keeping one eye on Enth at all times. “Call him up,” came his fevered voice. “He’ll know.” Then he was back, with a bag in his hand, scattering some rust-colored dust on the ground to make a circle, and then biting savagely at his own finger and flicking a bead of blood into its center.

  There was a tearing sound and a flare of heatless reddish fire, and a man was stood there, caught as though in the middle of a conversation. He was bald, with a ferocious beard, and he wore robes of black stitched with red sigils. The same symbols glowed fitfully on the metal plates of his belt and the spiked pauldrons that capped his shoulders.

  Cyrene did not know the man, but she knew the uniform. Her innards went utterly cold. A Doomsayer, one of Darvezian’s own elite: a true servant of the Dark Lord.

  For a moment the man looked comically puzzled, then he took in Visler and the inn’s dingy interior. “Oh for the Dark Lord’s sake, not again!” he snapped out, rounding on the vintner. “Didn’t I tell you? Emergencies, you filthy vermin. How have you even got any of that blood-dust left?”

  “Feyn, Feyn.” Visler held out his hands appeasingly. “I need your help. It’s all gone wrong, yes, yes. I’ve done something foolish.”

  “Spare me.” Feyn knuckled at his forehead. “I wish I’d never sponsored you, you little tit. You know how much I get laughed at, because of you? I could have had a bandit chief doing evil in my name, or a notorious assassin. Instead I’ve got a coward of an innkeeper who runs the worst fucking inn the world has ever seen. What’s this?” He gestured at Visler’s two guests. “They look under control to me.”

  “She’s a pilgrim!” Visler exploded. “I told them, no pilgrims, no church folk, no, no. People come looking for them when they go missing! She even said she wasn’t, and she is! What’s the world like, Feyn, when you can’t even trust a traveler to say whether they’re holy or not?”

  “You really are the most tedious and miserable servant of evil ever,” Feyn spat disgustedly. He stalked over to examine Cyrene, all the while disparaging his host. “I told you, put the inn on the main road. If you’re going to torture people, if you’re going to chop ’em up and serve ’em as fucking pies then do it to pilgrims, do it to church officials and priests, and do the Dark a real service. Instead of which you’re such a cowardly turd that you only ever pick on the miserable and the weak and those that won’t fight back. You think you’re doing evil? How is it any use to anyone if it isn’t serving the Dark Lord, Visler?” But then he was staring at Cyrene, and he made a few passes in the air before her, as her eyes helplessly stared out at him from her frozen face. “Oh. Oh my Dark Lord, what’s this?”

  “What is it, what is it?” Visler demanded, at his elbow.

  “Visler, you useless streak of piss, you have just made my day,” Feyn said, shaking his hea
d. “I don’t know how, but you’ve been digging shit for so long that somehow you’ve struck gold.”

  “I don’t understand, no, no,” the innkeeper whined.

  “I know this one. She’s on a list. Her and hers killed a Doomsayer in Shogg’s Ford a while back. She’s a disciple of that priestess what’s-her-name.” Feyn laughed delightedly. “Oh my friend, my friend, at last you serve the cause, despite yourself! They’re going to be looking for this one from Armesion to the gates of the Dark Tower!”

  “What?” Visler demanded, appalled. “No, no, no, I’ll let her go, I’ll—”

  “You fucking won’t.” Feyn cuffed him. “You leave her to me, vermin. So who’s this, then?” He frowned at Enth.

  “Him? He’s magic, he’s holy, he’s special, yes, yes,” hissed Visler. “The poison you gave me, it didn’t even work on him, not at all, no.”

  “What, you mean he’s . . .”

  All this time, Enth had not moved, just standing by the table.

  “Yes, yes, he got up, you have to do something about him,” wheedled the innkeeper.

  But Feyn was making passes again, peering at Enth through some magic eye he had conjured. “Well, well, well,” he said at last.

  “What is it? Tell me, Feyn, tell me.”

  “No wonder the stuff didn’t touch him,” Feyn murmured wonderingly. “He’s one of ours. The Dark magics won’t harm him.”

  “What? No, no.” Visler wrung his hands. “You said it would work, you said it would do what I wanted.”

  “Seriously, vermin, you think we just make that stuff out of squeezed chucklefuck berries or something? To work the way you wanted, you need actual magic, Dark magic. And it’s keyed to work against the Light in humanity. Mostly because I didn’t trust you not to serve it to me eventually, because you’re just that sort of treacherous slime. But this fine fellow here, he’s Dark as Dark, isn’t he? I mean, what is he, even? There’s all sorts of magic, here. And . . . You have a name, my friend?”