Spiderlight

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  I am of you.

  He sensed their disdain, brought sharply through to him by the tone and tenor of their tapping. You are of Man. We are not fooled.

  Nth paused to think through how to explain his predicament. His mind was full of concepts that he had only human words for and, to his dawning horror, he found that even thinking like his true self was proving difficult. When had his internal train of thought crossed over into something human? Considering now how he might frame these ideas in this spider language, he found himself frustrated with it. How had his people managed for so long with so few concepts they needed to give names to?

  Because, he told himself, that way was simpler, which made it better. He was desperately asserting to himself the moral superiority of the web, the forest, and the cave, over all the filthy scuttlings of the city and the fortress. So the humans hated his true people, because once in a while they dined on the sweet juices of Man? What was that, compared to what they did to each other?

  But he could express none of this. He must slim his dictionary down to the simplest of common themes, or he would get nowhere.

  My Mother dwelt here once. She left and found a new home. So far so good, and there was an expectant stillness to the threads to show that he was, at least, being listened to. The world beyond here is filled with Men. That did not communicate his horror at it, to any satisfactory level, but what more could he say? The Men make war with the dark master that dwells near here. For of course they would be aware of their neighbor Darvezian. The Men follow a thread that will let them attack the dark master. The thread leads through your places. The Men do not mean you harm. The Men will pass through your places.

  By now he felt the thrumming and twitching of their worry. Men passing through their home? Impossible, an unthinkable intrusion to be met only by violence. This was what Nth had been worried about from the start.

  The Men are very powerful, he insisted, striking hard to send his message through the mounting unrest within the caves. They have fire and killing light. I have seen this. Keep away from them or they will slay you in great numbers.

  We will fight! resounded from the caves. Instruct your Men to follow their thread some other way. We will defend our nest from your Men.

  There is no reasoning with Men, Nth told them, with great feeling. They destroy all they touch. They are very strong. They are convinced of their purpose and cannot be swayed. To resist them is death, but if you let them alone then they will pass through and be gone, and leave no mark.

  We will feast on them. We will trap them and drink their juices. We are stronger than Men, and Nth imagined the brood within the caves scuttling and skittering and preparing for battle.

  He went to beg with them and realized that he had no way to say “please” or to entreat. The talk of spiders lacked the concept. Where humans lived lives of confusing feelings that might be swayed back and forth with mere words, his true people valued reason and evidence. Where the spiders felt, they felt with all their bodies: fear, anger, familial loyalty, these were not things to be toyed with by clever argument.

  I have seen these Men kill many, many of us with their fire and light and metal claws, he hammered out on the threads. They hate us. They will use any excuse to kill us. They took me and changed my form into theirs to make me their follower. But I am not . . . I am not . . . I am . . . and his legs were trembling and he could not speak.

  You are of them, the spiders within the cave told him implacably.

  And at the last what could he say, but: I do not want this. I do not want to be a Man. I remember when I was of you and life made sense. But I cannot change what I am now. And you are half-right. I am not of them yet I am not of you. But I am of them enough to know them, and of you enough to know you also. And I am of them enough that I can ask them not to burn you from your home, if you will leave them be. But if you fight them, they will kill you. They will kill your hunters and your broodlings, they will destroy your eggs, and they will kill your Mother. Fight them, and they will leave nothing of you but ash. These things I have seen: their power and their hatred of us. Of you. Of us. But also if they tell me they will not fight, save if they are attacked, then I know this to be true also.

  Nth was trembling, still, trying to put his message across so hard that it was almost lost in the twanging echo. I cannot stop them from entering these caves. I can hold them back from harming you. But only if you stay out of their path.

  He had spoken all he could, and now he just crouched by the cave mouth, feeling odd vibrations as those within debated fiercely. He imagined their Mother, who must have dwelled here as unchallenged sovereign for many generations, now being asked to stand aside. How would his own Mother have reacted, if this band of heroes had made such a demand of her before entering the forest? She would not have listened, certainly. To enter the lair of a spider could invite only one response. It was only the unprecedented devastation wreaked by Penthos and Dion that had forced her to the humiliating negotiations that the humans had opened with her.

  And at last the response came to him, strummed out carefully, a word at a time. Then let them come in.

  Nth let that resonate in the hairs on his legs. They will only fight in self-defense. You must simply be clear of their way, and they will exit to where they can find the dark master.

  Again a pause, and then that same response: Then let them come in.

  Against his will, Nth was forced to consider another difference between the way humans spoke, and the purer communication of his true people. Humans were deceptive. They were born with a lie on their lips. They told untruths to each other every moment, and they lied to themselves just as often. But in the close-knit families of spiders there was less use for deceit, and it was practiced by actions, not words. Their language was a tool for transferring information: warnings, battle plans, commands from Mother.

  Then let them come in, the spiders had told him, and he could sense the quivering subtext through the lines.

  He was left with nothing but to return to the others. To return to the humans. They were waiting for him expectantly, each of them deaf and blind to all that had passed.

  Nth had no doubt that the spiders within intended defiance. They were pretending at acquiescence, but he could imagine himself standing in their place, leg for leg and foot for foot. He and his kin would never have willingly permitted any human to enter their domain and live.

  And yet he tried to find hope. Hope was not a solely human thing; even a spider can dream of tomorrow. What was building a web but a gustatory expression of hope? He hoped that his words to them would bounce and dance about the strings of their nest, vibrant with the desperate sincerity of his message. He hoped that with the sight and feel of the humans—Penthos whose power made all Nth’s hairs stand on end, Dion who reeked of that inimical Light that hurt so much—the denizens of the cave would rethink their plans.

  And he had no option.

  The priestess was speaking to him. His eyes caught the movement of her mouth as it flapped, but her words were the faintest buzzing. He was deaf to her, she to him. He could guess what she was asking him, though: Is it done?

  He had no way to communicate the very many shades of answer, were he to accurately respond. Even with two languages and two modes of speech he might not have been able to do it. Instead he just scuttled back and forth: to them, then back toward the cave; over to them, then back toward the cave. He could almost imagine the response from one of them: I think he wants us to follow him.

  Lief or Cyrene, it would be, who would convince them that he had achieved his goal. They would talk the others into going with him into the dark. Then, whatever would happen would happen.

  He cocked an eye at Penthos. The man’s candle was not in evidence, but burning still, apparently. How long do I have before I am not me anymore?

  By that time he was at the lip of the cave. Undirected currents of motion issued from within as the denizens shifted their positions, drawing back.

/>   Setting their trap. He hoped it was not the case, but he feared, too . . .

  And yet, he found himself indulging in a curious daydream. What if there was an ambush? What if the humans, following confidently along behind their tame spider guide, were caught utterly unawares? He pictured Penthos all strung up in webs, sparks at his fingers’ ends accomplishing nothing. He thought of Dion cocooned in sheets so thick no light—no Light—could penetrate. He pictured the others, saw Harathes borne down by wave after wave of avenging spiders. He imagined his slaughtered kin avenged. He imagined Cyrene, bow useless, trusting to her blade to fend off the righteous hordes. He pictured Lief dragged down, saw fangs dripping venom raised up . . .

  He shuddered, the shiver passing through every limb and joint of him. No, no, it didn’t work. Desperately he took hold of his imagination and did his best to depersonalize them. They were not individuals: they were just Man, as he had seen them first in the forest. They were a single clumped unit of Man, no names, no faces, no identities.

  And he couldn’t do it. He could not rid himself of his knowledge of them. He could not play out that scenario in his mind without touching on the human feelings they had taught him. He could not picture Lief paralyzed, eyes wide with panic, and think, Meat.

  And they were following him, the humans. He was pattering into the dark—into the Dark—and Dion and Penthos had light enough to see their way, and so they followed. True, they had their blades out, but how ready could they be? Surely the tight turns of the caves were even less to their advantage than the forest had been.

  He was agitated, ill. Had they the wit to see it, they could have read his mood precisely in every twitchy movement that he made. Instead they just plodded on with their lumbering tread, one foot in front of the other and how did they not just fall over? Except he knew, now. He understood how it was to walk with those feet, and the improbable magic of human balance, and other human things.

  The caves were lined with webbing, strung with lines. Every step that Nth took connected the delicate hairs of his feet with the furious activity of the nest. He knew that there was a larger cavern ahead—probably an old brood chamber from when the colony had been smaller—and he caught snatches of instruction and report from all around. The dwellers in the caves had chosen a place to make their stand and repel the intruders. They were frantically stringing up webs and traps there even now. Nth could well imagine what that would entail. There would be great webs of strands as strong as metal, as translucent as glass, to catch those who tried to run or to flank. There would be lines tensioned tighter than bowstrings, so that any that stumbled into them would be whipped up toward the ceiling, there to dangle helplessly. There would be thick-laid snarls of webbing to catch feet and limbs. And the ceiling and walls would be dense with the natives, and more would pack out the many tunnels that led to that cavern. The nest’s whole complement of hunters had been mobilized.

  He tried to recapture his daydream: the glorious triumph over the human invaders. He tried to picture it, but he pictured it as human eyes would see it, not as the complex interplay of vibration, scent, and spatial awareness that would be that same scene to a spider.

  And still he led on, and still the humans followed him, ducking and twisting through the passageways, their eyes blinded by their own lights to everything else that transpired around them.

  And he was dreadfully aware of time moving past him: it was a common concern of man and spider, the fine-running sands that led to the perfect moment of attack. He and the nest were linked to the same glass, slaves to that instant of ambush and violence that was coalescing inescapably in their shared future. In leading the humans, he was the attackers’ accomplice.

  And he felt the twist inside him, telling him he needed to do something.

  He tried to ignore it, but it was insistent, a growing clamor that doubled with every few pattering steps. The solid, leaden steps of the humans accused him, thump, thump, thump. Each impact resounded through the organs of his body, betrayer! And he tried not to care, but the feeling grew and grew. He must do something. He could not pretend that he was in some way a spectator to the upcoming clash. He was the fulcrum. He was responsible.

  It’s Penthos’s laws, he told himself. They’re making me care. This is doing them harm, so I’m not allowed to do it. But he could not know if that was true. Did the slipshod constrictions the humans had placed on him stretch to cover this eventuality? He did not know. He would only find out when the pain visited him.

  And he understood, then, that what he was feeling now—what it was pushing him to do—might be magical compulsion, or it might be a choice made of his own free will, and he had no way of knowing which was which. And was it always thus, for man and spider, Ghant and every other creature of the world that believed in the capacity for thought? Were all beings just a thin skin of volition floating on a sea of drives and directives they could not control?

  Abruptly he had stopped, crouching on the floor of the cave. The grand cavern lay ahead, with all its bustle carefully stilled to lull the prey. Nth felt the shallow sensations that were human speech, and could not work out how he could warn them, in any event. He had nothing to say that they would listen to. He could hardly spell it out with his spinnerets.

  They were speaking again, but he spun round suddenly, facing them, shying away from their light. There was a certain body language that most animals shared, designed to warn away an enemy of any shape. With a sudden lunge he reared up before them, legs high, fangs bared.

  He saw the humans flinch back, their expressions shifting fluidly. Lief was talking to him uselessly, refusing to back away even though the threat display should have been followed by a prompt attack. Harathes was advocating kicking Nth out of their path, or something similarly human. Nth reared up again, desperately trying to communicate through the language of an alien body.

  Dion’s light flared brighter, and he cowered back despite himself. They did not understand. He had a single concept in this vocabulary, and they did not know his word for it. Warning! Danger! Beware! But somehow they were too stupid, too human, to know what he meant.

  And Cyrene was pushing past him, heedless of poison or threat, and they were almost within the cave. Another step and she would trigger the traps, and it would all come down.

  They would not understand. Possibly they would kill him. Torn as he was, he would almost have preferred it. He lunged for her, reaching, desperate to drag her back.

  He caught hold of her arm and yanked her from the cavern’s mouth. The next moment, Harathes’s shield had smacked him across the head, sending him reeling into the cave wall.

  “Trap!” he got out. “It’s a trap in there!”

  They were looking at him, and he saw himself reflected in their eyes: a thing almost human, an ill-made mockery of their shape, Penthos’s idle plaything. Had the candle been snuffed; had he broken the enchantment himself?

  Through his feet he felt the faint murmur that must be the raging massed shout of his people: Betrayer!

  Harathes was arguing with Lief, and nobody seemed quite to have understood what he had shouted before. There was no time for breaking matters gently. He knew what must happen now.

  “Now!” he yelled. “They’re coming now!”

  In the echo of that they all heard the massed sussuration of hundreds of chitinous feet, like the sound of the tide.

  The wave of sound made Dion feel queasy. How many of the monsters were there in these tangled halls? Even one is too many was the instant answer.

  “Into the cave ahead!” Penthos commanded. “Let’s have room to fight!”

  “No! There are traps!” Enth started, but then the wizard thrust his hands forward and sent a wall of flame rolling out into the dark, illuminating a chamber whose very walls seethed with hairy, bulbous forms. She saw invisible lines and nets abruptly turned into brief-blazing patterns of fire, flaring and dying like alien glyphs—like whole books of inhuman lore put to the torch. Then she had Arme
s’s disc held out, directed back the way they had come, seeing her holy Light reflected in dozens of glittering eyes.

  She gave out a shout and sent a searing ray of devotion to scorch them, killing a couple and forcing the rest to keep their distance. By that time, Harathes had his shield between her and the enemy, while Lief and Cyrene flanked Penthos’s advance.

  “Up!” Lief was shouting. “Send something up! They’re dropping on us!”

  She shaped the flow of radiant energy from her soul so that it formed a canopy above them. She did it even before she looked, and that was just as well because the sight was nauseating. Scores of spiders had been abseiling down toward them, legs outspread like the fingers of skeletal hands. The nearest dropped straight into her light, and there they thrashed and burned in lurid detail, caught by the solid power that Armes held over all Dark things. Others were reeling themselves hurriedly up, while all around them the ceiling and the cavern sides boiled with the horrible creatures.

  Cyrene was hacking viciously away on one side, while Lief had a spear braced. Harathes was bellowing out a hymn as he cut and stabbed—their party was surrounded already by a scattering of lost limbs, ruptured abdomens, the lifeless orbs of bulbous eyes. Still the monsters came on, heedless of individual survival, driven mad with their lust to sink their fangs into human flesh.

  And Enth . . .

  The man-spider was almost shoulder to shoulder with her. She recoiled with a start, almost losing her grip on Armes’s disc. It was standing there, staring at everything with those ghastly round eyes, which glittered and gleamed with the reflections of Penthos’s fire.

  Then one spider had sprung onto Harathes’s shield and dragged it down, and another took his sword right in the nested cluster of its eyes, and Dion was forced to use her golden power to drive the hustling host back as he reclaimed his feet and his weapon, to prevent him being overrun—and that meant they were descending from above again. There seemed to be no limit to the monsters.