by A. Attanasio
"The charmways here only connect with other places on Irth." As she flitted through the shadows, her dusky face appeared even darker with dread. "If we remain on this world, Asofel is certain to find us. I tell you, we must go to the Well of Spiders."
"Won't he find us there as easily?"
"I don't believe so." Her memory lay in tatters amid her pain, and she rummaged for the threads that could convince him. "I came down the Well of Spiders, and they did not follow."
"Why would they, Lara?" He whistled at a glaring dog and sent it scampering away in fright through the twisted trees. "You said Asofel wants me."
"Yes, I know." A troubled frown flickered between her eyes. "I wear a crystal prism from the Necklace of Souls that the gnome carries. Old Ric can sense me in his crystals as surely as I am aware of him in mine."
"Then he knows you are with me," Reece finished her thought. "So why have they not come for me as directly as you did?"
"The Well of Spiders is a fearful charmway," she reasoned. "Old Ric himself has no effective magic to ward spiders. The Necklace of Souls will not protect against that threat. So perhaps he fears losing himself in the Well."
"And my magic is strong enough for us to climb through the Well of Spiders to other worlds—is that it?"
"Yes." She passed cleanly through a wall of razor shrubs as they talked. "We can elude them forever that way—or at least until the Radiant One dims and goes away."
"If he ever does, Lara." He shrugged his hands and sighed. "All this is speculation, dear one. We know too little to stake our lives on that perilous charmway. Trust me to find a better way."
She spun gracefully to his side. "What is that better way, young master?"
"Let me use the crystal prism to speak with Old Ric and Asofel."
"You could be ensorcelled!" She placed both hands over the gem. "Asofel is powerful. He could well cast a spell through the prism if you reach through it too strongly. We must use it only to glance at them."
He frowned sadly. "Your fear limits us."
"I have seen the Radiant One kill." Her earnest gaze appealed to him. "Please, come away with me. There must be some way we can flee Irth."
"The charmway to Gabagalus," he answered with deliberate certainty. "Do you know of Gabagalus?"
"No."
"It is a continent on the far side of Irth." The cavern he sought appeared ahead, and he stopped momentarily to face his spectral companion. "It sinks into the sea each night and rises by day. Or so I am told by those who know. Gabagalus is independent of the dominions, a separate realm all to itself on Irth. Yet, apparently, this mysterious continent participates in a trade empire that connects the worlds. From there, we can escape Irth and travel by ether ship across the Bright Shore."
"Forgive me, master, but that sounds more like rumor," she protested instantly. "The Well of Spiders, on the other hand, is real. I've journeyed through it myself, and I'm certain we can as well."
Reece sat down on a rock of orange rust. His jaw tensed, then he sighed, and said slowly, "I'll not deceive you anymore, Lara." He shook his head sadly. "I'm not going to spend what's left of my life running away."
"You must." Her expression, heartbreaking in its sincerity, widened with alarm. "Or you will surely die."
His eyebrows bent kindly. "We all die. This is not a question of death but of life and how I will live."
"You have magic." She knelt before him, and the sand did not dimple under her weightless form. "You can live long and know joy, much joy."
"The joy you never had?" He reached out to cosset her careworn face. "I can't, Lara. That is not my nature."
She placed her transparent hands upon his knees. "I came to Irth to help you, young master. As you and Master Caval came to my rescue once when I was a small child, so might I return that life-favor to you now."
Reece shook his head, then placed his hands over hers and yearned to feel her warmth once again, yet not even his magic could accomplish that.
"There is nothing more I need." She stared into the back of his eyes, wanting to reach his heart. "I am a ghost."
"You are a ghost, and that is why you need help." He tried to touch her with the care in his voice. "Lara, listen to me. You don't belong here among the living. That is why you must carry that evil thing about your throat to remain with me. You are in jeopardy of losing your soul to the Gulf. I won't let that happen."
She stood up and stepped away. "You're taking me back to the Abiding Star, aren't you?"
"I want you to know peace. Your mission is done here." He gestured toward the silver threads of light in the needling branches. "There is peace in the Abiding Star, isn't there?"
"Oh yes." The tautness of her mouth relaxed. "There is fierce peace there. It seizes souls and draws them into its radiance."
"And from there?"
"Who knows?"
Reece held her fretful stare with a gentle smile. "The Sisterhood of Witches claims that souls delivered to the Abiding Star are healed, made whole, and reborn with knowledge of their past life."
"Perhaps." She seemed to fade a little at the thought of rebirth. "I did not stay long enough. Caval placed me there only to be healed of my trauma. And then he called me forth. We must consider that. The old master has called me forth."
"That I don't understand." Reece watched mites small as sand grains swarming around his ankle-strapped boots as he tried to think through what Lara claimed. "Souls that are swept into the Gulf lose sentience. They forsake all identity and blur away into the frenzy of unconscious rebirth. That is known. We are from the Dark Shore, and we know that cycle well."
"Then why did the old master summon me?"
"Are you sure it was the old master?"
"Now I don't know." Pain thrashed in her as she strove to think back to her first memories as a wraith. "In the Abiding Star, everything was clear. I knew so much more then. I have forgotten so much." Her eyes winced closed around an ugliness of hurt. "So much is lost."
Reece stood up and moved toward Lara. For the first time since she appeared to him, he recognized the obvious anguish in her face, her tightened posture. The revelation stunned him to exclaim, "Lara—you're suffering!"
"It is not so bad, young master." She stepped into a sheet of day bright as a wing of an angel, trying to hide her torment. "I—I'm fine."
"No you're not." He placed himself before her and framed her face with his hands, using the shadows to read the depth of hurt in her. "You're in pain. How blind could I have been not to see! Why didn't you tell me, child?"
"What is there to tell, young master?" She edged away. "It is you I came for, not me."
"For godsake stop it!" he shouted, feigning anger, wanting to reach past her selfless devotion to him. "You know I care for you. Don't hurt yourself for my sake."
"Master, I'm sorry." She curled about herself among the wind-varnished stones. "I'm not here to bring you my pain. I want to protect you and save you."
"Lara, please—" He crouched beside her, put a hand in her emptiness, reaching to feel the depth of her suffering. But his magic offered no disclosure. "Just tell me—how bad is it?"
"Not bad."
"Liar." He tried to reach her eyes with his, but she kept her head low, ashamed that her secret had been revealed. "You died on the Dark Shore in my care. Your pain is mine."
"I would not have come to you if I hadn't thought I could help." A sob caught her voice, and she added more quietly, "But when the old master called me, I knew that was different. He told me about the danger you are in. I had to warn you."
"You did well, child." The void of her defied all his attempts to reassure her. "But now, Lara, it's no use staying here, you know."
She lifted her face in supplication, almost blue with sweat.
"Before we do anything, we must heal you," he told her resolutely.
"I don't want to go back to the Abiding Star," she protested again.
"Don't worry about that. I'm going to heal you here, right
now."
She shook her head. "There's no time, master! Forget about me. I beg you."
He paid her no heed. Instead, he stood and with the heel of one boot traced a circle around the wraith. "Now just sit still. I'm going to focus my power on you."
"I'm a ghost," she interrupted, and ducked again beneath the dark veil of her hair. "How can your magic touch me?"
"Are we not both from the Dark Shore, you and I?" He stood back from the circle. "If I focus strongly enough..." He brought his magic quickly to bear on her before she changed her mind. As he suspected, his power connected instantly with her, bonding with the same strength that had guided her to him.
Shadows quivered, though no breeze stirred. The circle enclosing the wraith glimmered as though a brighter shaft of day had found its way through the trees.
Pain peeled away from Lara. For the first time since descending the Well of Spiders, the stifling hurt abated. A smile widened through her, and she gazed happily at Reece who stood at the circle's edge taller, head thrown back, eyes upturned to white.
The pain that entered him hurt like nothing he had ever experienced before. At first, he observed her bedecked in her wounds, as he had seen her that last time on the Dark Shore, with the splattered blood welded in rays across her naked body.
Then, her image vanished—and the pain became his.
His teeth gnashed tightly. Death-hurt pierced cold into his marrows and invisible fire whirled from each wound, inflaming all of him, consuming his mind, his strength, even his magic.
Reece had not expected such violence. His love for Lara had betrayed him to a miscalculation. Only briefly did he perceive his error: Lara's pain overwhelmed him.
In a moment, his magic would drain away and his life force extinguish. He would die—unless he used the last of his magic to create a protective skin of light about himself.
He willed this with all his available strength before the afflicting onslaught cut his mind to darkness.
He collapsed as though pulled violently from behind, and then he thrashed ferociously in the sand.
Lara screamed and leaped toward him. She crossed the circle, and in that instant the shaft of pearled light illuminating the sand dimmed and became once again daylight's mosaic among the branches.
The yellow dust settled—and Reece had disappeared.
In his place, a beastmarked man lay among the rocks. He wore Reece's boots, gray pants, and shreds of his denim shirt that had torn open around a thicker torso—a body of blue fur.
The ghost knelt beside the beastman, and he sat up, passing right through her.
Ripcat blinked alert, green eyes sharp with surprise. "Where am I?" he mouthed aloud. Stinging bites pushed him to his feet, and he brusquely dusted away the spider mites invading his pelt. He stomped a dance, kicking himself free of the tiny predators. "The Spiderlands!"
"Young master!" Lara swung close, her hands blurring through him.
Ripcat did not see her.
"Young master!" she screamed again, and tried to give back his magic. Her frantic motions offered nothing. Is this truly my master? The clothes alone assured her that somehow Reece had transformed into this outlandish creature. She gaped at him, trying to find some semblance of the man she knew.
His round head looked entirely unfamiliar, with its tight pelage marked by rosettes of darker fur and topped at the cope of his skull by cub ears.
"Reece!" she cried. "Reece Morgan!"
Ripcat walked through her, oblivious to her presence, and stared about in alarm. He could not remember coming here. His last memory touched on seeking the Dark Lord with Jyoti. What am I doing in the Spiderlands?
In desperation, Lara removed her crystal prism and held it before him.
The sudden appearance of the shining gem floating in midair startled Ripcat, and he bounded away with a snarl. "What is this wicked charmwork?" he shouted. "Who is there?"
He hunkered like an animal, keen eyes fixed on the floating gem. His peripheral sight searched for cacodemons and the Dark Lord.
Lara noted the fright in his beastmarked face and put the gem away.
The gem's disappearance startled Ripcat, and he dashed away from where it had hovered. Convinced that the Dark Lord had worked some evil magic to exile him to the Spiderlands, he resolved to escape.
He recognized the caverns ahead, the charmways he had traveled once before to find his way across Irth. He would lose the cacodemons there. Dust flew with his swift footfalls, and in a moment he vanished into a rime-crusted cave.
Lara floated after him. In the dark of the caverns, she could not see him. He no longer existed as Reece, and the bond that had led her to him down the Well of Spiders had vanished. Despair ripped screams from her—cries that made no echoes.
The Well of Spiders
“He’s gone!” Old Ric sat up startled in the basket seat of the airfoil that Asofel piloted. "The magus has disappeared!"
Asofel's fiery look made the eldern gnome cringe.
"I felt him until but a moment ago," the gnome added quickly. He twisted about to press his face against the bubble canopy, wanting to see where they were. The shaft of the arrow lancing his torso caught on the seat and impeded him. Below, he glimpsed the scabrous badlands of the Qaf.
"How can he be gone?" Asofel spoke to the cuff of gray hair at the back of Ric's bald pate. "Our lady has given you the sense of him. You can find him wherever he goes within her dream."
"He is not in her dream anymore." Old Ric sat back in his seat, baffled, having seen nothing in the wasteland below that could possibly interfere with the gravid lady's vision entrusted to him.
He did not know what he had expected to see outside the canopy. The only power strong enough to subvert her would be another Nameless One, and such a being would not be found in a dream.
"The magus has left our lady's dream—gone entirely."
"That's not possible," Asofel hissed.
"I tell you, I do not feel his presence anymore." Old Ric pressed both hands to his wrinkled brow and squinted with concentration. "He has vanished."
"What of the witch?"
"Yes—yes, the witch." The gnome held up the Necklace of Souls. "I see her!" His leathern face brightened briefly, then closed again. "But she is alone."
Asofel's baleful expression inspired terror in the eldern gnome.
"Are we too late?" Old Ric asked in a frightened voice. "Has our lady awakened the father of the child?"
"These worlds would be no more if that were true." The Radiant One's dusky blue complexion breathed pink from within as though the fire inside him had risen closer to the surface. "Our work is not yet done. There is time remaining. We must strive harder."
“Harder?" Old Ric closed his eyes and reached deeper into himself but found only darkness. "Hard as I try, I find no clue of the shadow thing whatsoever. What are we going to do, Asofel?"
The Radiant One said nothing. The long hair that floated like pink cobwebs about his faceted skull crawled with tiny sparks. Momentarily, he spoke in a cold voice, "I need more light from the dream."
"More lives to be taken?" The eldern gnome crossed arms over his chest so that the barbed arrow stuck between his wrists. "How will that help us?"
"I need the strength to leave the dream," he answered, "to return to our lady. Perhaps the threat is ended. Perhaps the child in her moves again. Our task here in these depths may already be accomplished."
"How can that be?" Old Ric's lower lip covered his upper as he considered this. "No, Asofel. Her strength must be reserved for her child. She would not have sent anyone else to do our work."
"Tell me then, eldern gnome, why the dream?" Asofel's long jaw pointed out the canopy at the cloudless blue sky where Nemora floated like a piece of skull. "Why has she created these worlds?"
At first, Ric thought that the Radiant One taunted him. But his fiery stare remained level and rigorously intent. "You do not know?" the gnome asked, surprised.
"I am a sentinel." As
ofe! squared his shoulders proudly. "I have been set upon the palace to watch over her. I myself am a dream dreamt by those who want our lady protected from all harm. I know nothing of her, her child, or her magic."
"Who then dreams you, Asofel?"
"Does the dream know the dreamer?"
"I know our lady."
Asofel shrugged. "As you say, you alone have been selected. Something terrible has gone awry with our lady's magic, and she needs someone from within her dream to set it right. You have a privilege I do not. And it is a privilege that has cost her dearly. Dreams are no easy thing to control." Not removing his hot gaze from the saw-toothed land below, he asked, "Do you know why you have been selected?"
"Of course," the gnome replied at once. "I have studied gnomish magic for a long lifetime—a magic more ancient and more subtle than Charm. More importantly, I am old and belong to no one. My family gone, my wives and my beloved Amara dead, all others moved far away and as good as dead to my aged bones, I am alone. No one would believe what I have known in the Lady’s presence—and so her dream is safe with me. Her dreamers remain blissfully unaware of her and her child, whom they serve unwittingly and so most faithfully."
"You have not yet told me, why this dream?" With a long-fingered hand he gestured again to the barren land and the shell of Nemora hung in the blue void. "Why has she created these worlds?"
"This dream is her hope of warmth, light, and love for her child," the gnome told him. His eyes slimmed with remembering. "When the babe is born, these worlds will be its school, where the young one will learn the lessons of compassion, caring, and the dangers of vanity to which all conscious life is heir." His lids closed sadly. "None of this reflection helps with the problem facing us."
"Perhaps." His small lips twisted in a curious flash of a pout.
"You must see that this is a problem of the dream and the dreamer. Release me from my promise to take no more light for myself, and I will return to the palace and speak with our lady. You may come along, as well. Together we will determine if she is whole again and the child well."
