Spiderlight

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  “That right?” Cyrene’s gaze flicked from face to face, seeing that, whatever the matter was, it was only Dion who was overly weighed by it.

  “Do you still have the creature?” Harathes demanded of her.

  “He’s here. He’s fine,” she confirmed. A moment later, Enth lurched from the trees and ended up standing before Penthos’s horse like a prisoner awaiting sentencing. “I said he’s fine,” Cyrene repeated. “We got into some bother with a Doomsayer, but that’s all taken care of.”

  She wasn’t sure what Dion or Penthos could discover of what had gone on, with their particular abilities. Certainly the magician had that constipated look that suggested he was contemplating arcane matters—either that or being on a horse truly did not agree with him. Dion just asked sharply, “A Doomsayer?”

  “Enth killed him,” Cyrene confirmed, and Lief whistled appreciatively.

  “Two for two,” he noted. “Nice work.” And, when Harathes snorted, “So what’s your score, eh? A number between nought and one?”

  The warrior of the church scowled, and split his glower between the thief and the man-spider.

  “We will ride with all speed to Cad Nereg,” Dion told them. “We cross into the Dark lands and find the Shadow Canyons. The creature shows us our path, and then we take the fight to Darvezian. Then we are done.” She sounded almost sick for it. “Get the creature mounted.”

  It turned out that horses did not like Enth, and the feeling was plainly reciprocated. It was known that, like dogs, horses had a little of the Light in them, making them fit servants for men. Enough of the Light, plainly, to recognize Darkness. It did not help that, after the first refusal, Penthos tried to take direct charge of the situation and force Enth onto the luckless beast by sheer willpower. As Penthos, too, had no real affinity with horses, this just resulted in more and more rearing and bucking and complaints from the horse until Cyrene stepped in.

  She, of all of them, knew horses. She was the only one of them truly at home on the road or in the wilds. She calmed the creature, speaking to it gently, putting her hand to its head, letting a bond between them grow, until it stood still and steady.

  “Now,” she told Enth, and with admirable care he got into the saddle, his movements a close copy of the way he had seen humans do it before. He sat a horse almost as badly as Penthos, but he had that stillness to him, that went some way toward reassuring the animal, and when the other beasts set off at the chiding of their human riders, his steed plodded along behind, the need to keep with its fellows overriding its uneasiness over what was on its back.

  Toward the north, the great swathe of contested land between the dominion of the Light and the Dark Lord’s holdings tapered and narrowed until they were separated by only the width of a jagged and inhospitable mountain range. There was one pass across this range that any significant number of feet could cross, a handful of miles of high road to stand between Light and Dark. This choke point was known—by both sides—as the Bone Vice, for no other stretch of land had been so fought over. On the far side loomed the haunted fortress of Cad Usgath, where an army of Ghants dwelt beneath the cold tyranny of ghastly necrotic wardens. On the side of the Light was the stronghold of Cad Nereg.

  When the great tide of Darkness came, here was the anvil for its hammer. Cad Nereg was a nest of fortifications, rings of walls, emplaced engines, killing zones, and deadfalls. It had been besieged before, by Darvezian’s forces and by the hosts of those Dark Lords who had come before him. Never had it fallen, though often it had come close. More than once it had been the actions of a band of heroes such as Dion’s people who had cast down the Dark Lord just as his forces had been on the very point of triumph. Dion fervently hoped matters would not run so close to the wire this time round, but it seemed certain that the forces at Cad Nereg were on high alert, anticipating a grand assault in the near future.

  They were held in the gatehouse when they arrived, while the commander was sent for. Travelers seeking access to the lands of the Dark were seldom and suspect, after all. Lord Commandership of the Order of the Guardians of Dawn currently fell to a heavyset, crease-faced woman who gave her name as Estellan the Fair.

  Seeing the looks on at least some of their faces, her eyes narrowed. “Yes, well, no doubt when Lord Commander Barench gifted me with such a coveted title he was expecting me to die nobly and young, and not be so awkward as to live to replace him,” she snapped. “Forgive me for being competent. What do you want?” Her gaze twitched to Enth’s hooded shape, standing at the back like someone burlesquing an evil magician.

  “We need passage through the gates,” Dion told her. “We are about the business of the Light.” Hearing her own voice, she sounded as though she were trying to convince herself, desperately unsure.

  “That right?” Estellan shrugged. “It’s a hornet’s nest out there right now. We’re sending scouts out all the time. Some of them even come back. Same for the enemy. Place is lousy with weaselly little Ghants and enchanted Mire Bats and Spectral Eyes. But you just want to march out and, what? Knock at the door of Cad Usgath?”

  Harathes was already opening his mouth to rebut that presumption, probably by way of giving away all the covert details of their plan, and Dion surprised herself by treading hard on his foot.

  “We are about the Light’s work,” she insisted. “I put myself forward to be examined by your own priests or magicians, who will surely see the Light within me.” And again she heard her voice falter over that “surely.” Her own reserves of certainty had run dry.

  “We’ve had a bevy of diviners looking the lot of you over,” Estellan said matter-of-factly. “So, mixed bag, isn’t it?” And she looked again at Enth and Dion’s heart sank.

  And yet the Lord Commander turned and marched out, beckoning them to follow. It would have seemed a complete victory if not for the score of knights who were keeping pace with them.

  They broke out into a broad courtyard overhung with crenellations, crowded with the busyness of military preparation. Here were archers and crossbowmen practicing their aim, smiths beating out repairs or sharpening blades. Here soldiers were being fitted with armor in one corner, while in another a handful of warhorses were being put through their paces by the grooms. And elsewhere—

  “Ghants!” Cyrene spat out, hand going to sword, and there they were—at least two score of the gray-faced near-human creatures, unmolested and armed in the stronghold of the Light.

  “Hold!” Estellan stated, and there was enough authority in her voice to rein in the lot of them. “They’re turncoats, come over here to fight against Darvezian.”

  “That makes no sense!” Harathes protested, and the Lord Commander fixed him with a metal stare.

  “There are thousands of Ghantishmen on the far side of the Bone Vice, young knight,” she told him, “and they are slaves to the Dark Lord, his playthings, to be cast against walls like these and spent, and bred for more. Small wonder they hate him more than we ever could, though for most of them, they fear him even more, and do his bidding for that reason. But always some few will break away and come to us, and we make a regiment of them, and they fight.”

  “You trust them?” Cyrene demanded.

  “They have proved themselves to me, and to all of us,” Estellan said sternly. “And you’re in no position to point fingers, now, are you?” She shook her head. “You’ve come with letters from the Potentate. If you have some mad plan to go piss on Darvezian’s doorstep then I don’t care enough to stop you. Perhaps you’ll even do some good. For now, you may rest and equip here and I’ll let you out with my next detachment of scouts. And then you’re your own problem. I’m not responsible for you, nor will I risk the lives of my soldiers to recover your bodies.”

  Dion found that she was smiling, because abruptly she did not feel judged. Here was a champion of the Light who cared about ends more than means. It felt weirdly refreshing to come here to the blood-slicked gears and workings of the war between Light and Dark, where strict
adherence to dogma was a luxury they could not afford.

  Perhaps I will retire here, when this is done. In the unlikely event that is an option.

  There was a mess room they were taken to, a windowless chamber where a mob of off-duty soldiers were drinking beer, singing, fighting, and exchanging lewd propositions. They were living, Cyrene thought. They might be dead in a few days, they would very likely be dead within a month. Here, away from the walls and the Bone Vice and the threat of the Dark, they were doing their best to wring a little more joy from this grim and desperate posting.

  She found a table tenanted only by a couple of soldiers whose drinking had carried them past consciousness, nudging the occupants until they slid away to the floor. Dion was not with them, needless to say—she had gone to their chambers to meditate after giving them all stern instructions to keep an eye on Enth. Penthos, whose eye that should have been, had stated he was going to cast mighty divinations to determine the disposition of the enemy but, as far as Cyrene could tell, was actually just mooning moodily about the battlements, no doubt trying to pluck up the courage to go and see if Dion knew any meditations made for two. The rest of them had repaired for a drink. After all, if anyone was facing almost certain death in the very near future, it was them.

  Cyrene sat herself down gingerly, hoping that the damp was at least mostly spilled beer rather than body fluids. Enth perched himself on a stool, flinching from the roar and bustle of the place, hood still defiantly up.

  “We’ll head out with their scouts tomorrow at dusk, they say,” Harathes said, pushing in beside her. “They’ve seen some new musters outside the walls of Cad Usgath, and they need to go take a look. This could be it, they think.”

  Cyrene nodded. “Probably, the way our luck’s gone.”

  Lief arrived then, cutting through the press by using his elbows as crowbars. “Beer for the heroes!” he announced, his hands full of mugs. “And blimey, but I feel like I’ve arm-wrestled Darvezian just getting this to you.” He slid the mugs out.

  All around them, the defenders of Cad Nereg drank and danced and punched each other in the face in a comradely way, and Cyrene was content to sit back and watch it, save that Harathes would keep coming out with pronouncements about how doomed they were, usually after finishing a mug.

  “If the forces of Darkness are marching, we might not even get to try this shortcut business,” Harathes would try portentously. “It’ll be too late then for anything other than sword-work.”

  She nodded glumly.

  “Darvezian has tens of thousands of Ghants, Ost-men, Bone-Constructs and even a handful of Claw-Behemoths, they say,” he put in later. “Not to mention whatever nameless abominations he’s been breeding in the vats beneath his lair.” Then he sent Lief off for more beer.

  “Mmm.”

  “I’ve been speaking to some of the defenders,” Harathes announced, still in that rather boding tone of voice. “They do not feel the walls will hold this time, against the might of the Dark Lord’s magics.”

  He had been looking pointedly at Cyrene as he said it, but it was Lief who answered, returning with another round.

  “Oh well, that’s jolly. Almost makes you glad we’ll be out on the wrong side of the gates then. No point worrying about the walls if we’re not inside ’em.”

  “But it could be the end for the Light,” Harathes pressed. “If Cad Nereg falls, that is the end of everything.”

  At last she looked at him. “And . . . ?”

  Harathes bolted his beer and reached for her hand, which she made sure was nowhere near him. “Come with me, Cyrene.”

  “What?”

  “I have a chamber prepared. This could be our last night of life and freedom, for tomorrow we brave the Dark. My heart is yours, enslaved by your beauty. Pray, grant me this one boon before we step into Darvezian’s shadow.”

  She stared at him levelly. “You are invoking the Dark Lord as a way to get into my britches.”

  “No, but surely this is our last chance. Before the Dark . . .”

  Cyrene stood, clutching at the wall for balance. “Harathes, this is the last chance for a great many things ‘before the Dark.’ It’s the last chance for me to streak naked through the halls of Cad Nereg or to eat human flesh or to lift up Penthos’s robe and see what he wears underneath it, none of which I have any inclination to do. It is also the last chance ‘before the Dark’ for me to kick you repeatedly in the groin until your balls merge with your brain physically as well as metaphorically. So piss off.”

  Harathes kicked over his chair as he bolted upright, which would have been a threatening moment had he not then fallen over it. “I am a knight of the church!” he insisted from the floor.

  “Then go seek forgiveness from Dion for your lustful thoughts,” she suggested.

  “Lust? It is not lust!” He was on his feet again, kicking to get free of the wreckage of the chair. “I love you, woman!” And there he was, the big, bluff, handsome knight, broad as a barn door and shallow as a puddle. So consumed by lust that there was virtually a heat haze coming off him.

  “Love from afar then,” she told him. “I’m not sleeping with you.”

  His expression was all hurt bafflement. “But . . . love . . .”

  “If that worked as a magic word to unlock every woman’s legs, don’t you think Penthos would have got lucky by now?” she said sourly. “Enough, Harathes. Just sit down and we’ll forget this. We’ll just say it was a bit of evil in the beer.”

  And she would happily have forgotten it, but it was plain Harathes could not see past all the words he had said, and after staring and stammering at her for a while he stormed off.

  “Awkward,” muttered Lief, shaking his head. “At the end there his groin was running the show so much I thought he’d turn it on me in sheer disappointment. I mean, we all know I’m the pretty one. What?” because Cyrene was staring at him.

  She felt a grin come to her face spontaneously. She had not realized how Harathes, with his patently obvious intentions, had been oppressing her, or how free she felt with him gone. “I’m glad you’re still with us, little man.”

  He raised his eyebrows at that. “Seriously?”

  “Very. And I’m not the only one.”

  “Don’t think the Groinlord would notice either way,” the thief muttered, nodding after Harathes.

  “Enth was asking.”

  Lief’s attention skidded over to the man-spider, who was lapping at his beer. The round, black eyes came up, glinting.

  “Seriously?”

  “When we were lying low, he wanted to know what had happened to you. He was worried.”

  “That so? You’ve been rumbled have you?” Lief asked the creature wryly. “Lost your evil credentials somewhere?”

  Enth did not speak, but his lips parted a couple of times, flashing his sharp teeth. For once it was not his normal sullen silence, but the silence of anyone who simply could not find the words.

  “He likes you,” Cyrene told the thief.

  Lief’s look was embarrassed. “Feed a stray dog and it’ll follow you home. Doesn’t mean much.”

  “And you like him, don’t you?”

  “Feel sorry for the poor bastard, certainly. And you?”

  “We’ve reached an accommodation.” And she clapped a hand to Enth’s shoulder. For a moment they were all very still, save that she felt the hard firmness of muscle move under her fingers. But then something happened to Enth’s mouth, a weird tugging at its corners. Not really a smile, not honestly, but he obviously knew what was expected of him and was trying very sincerely to fake it. The tide of the beer rose in her, and brought in the pallid, bobbing forms of a lot of memories: the wood of the spiders, cutting a swathe through the hairy mass of the creatures; that first horrifying look at the remade Enth; in the taproom at Ening’s Garth where she had wanted to hurt the creature, to make it grovel and crawl. Like the monster he is, she had thought. And of course there was that horribly prolonged moment of enfor
ced stillness in Visler’s inn, when Enth had been weighing the possibilities of his briefly acquired freedom.

  “He’s no hero. He’s no champion of the Light,” she clarified.

  “Who is, seriously?” the thief pointed out. “’Cept Dion, of course.”

  “He’s not like us at all,” she explained, “except that, being yoked to us, we’re rubbing off on him. But he’s no servant of the Dark, either. He’s just him.”

  “Not an it, then?” Lief inquired.

  “We made him a him. We made him a lot of things. And we have to see him unmade, turned back, if that’s what he wants. Penthos has to do it.”

  “Well, good luck with that,” was Lief’s opinion. “But yeah, we can try.” He grinned at Enth, who had been following the conversation intently. “And if not, I can find a place for you, a purpose, something to keep you busy. Make the best of it, eh? Fellow that can climb up the side of a house like you needn’t go hungry.” He lifted his mug, and Enth completed the motion with his own, with a dull clunk of wood.

  Cyrene laughed at that. “Oh, the two of you’ll be stealing the Potentate’s back teeth together.”

  “Only if they’re gold.” And Lief lurched to his feet, on a valiant quest in the name of more beer. And Cyrene squeezed Enth’s shoulder and shook her head.

  “You shouldn’t let yourself be led into wickedness,” she told those wide, dark eyes, seeing her own face sunk deep within them.

  Dion was trying to meditate, but the walls around her thrummed with the bustle of soldiers, on and off duty. Their clatter and scuff and jabber constantly intruded on her. Cad Nereg was a bastion of the Light, and she had expected everyone here to have nothing more on their minds than contemplation of the power that they were seeking to preserve, or that they were relying on to preserve them. Instead, they all seemed to have their minds on far earthier things, and it leaked through the walls. Fierce, gallant, passionate, wild, merry, melancholy, duplicitous, sincere: all the facets of men and women facing a great tumult, each borrowing bravery from the others and lending it back with interest. Through the storm of their emotions she tried to ascend to the Light, to bask in the serene adoration of Armes, and she failed and failed again.