The Spark

by David Drake

  “He found me here twenty years ago,” Marina said. “He talks in my mind. He kept me to clean for him.”

  “Who else was here when it came?” I said. “You weren’t alone, were you?”

  “He killed all of them,” Marina said in a flat voice. “The lord, his wife and children. All the others. When he comes back and finds I’ve let you in, perhaps he’ll kill me too.”

  Then she said, “That will be better, I suppose.”

  “The Leader sent me to put things right here,” I said. “When the Spider comes back, I’ll deal with it.”

  “You don’t understand,” Marina said. “But you will.”

  My first touch on the wall had directed me to the short iron column in the center of the courtyard. I walked over to it, dropped both shield and weapon into their pockets, and laid my bare hands on top of the column.

  I went into a trance again. This was the heart of the castle—the heart, and the Ancient brain.

  The rock of the castle walls was linked in a crystalline pattern. It prevented plants from growing onto the stone, though it didn’t appear to affect the splotches of bright lichen.

  There was another internal defensive structure also, but it was switched off and I couldn’t understand its purpose anyway. I wished Guntram was here to help me. Perhaps I could get him to visit later. My having a boat would make that easy.

  There were dozens of Ancient artifacts within the big building, each visible as a bright spot on my view. Sometimes I could tell their purpose, sometimes I couldn’t. At least a few of them must have been from Not-Here. I thought about the Spider and wondered if it was from Not-Here, like Marina had said.

  I returned to the present. Buck whined, but he didn’t seem really worried. This was an unfamiliar building, that was all.

  “There’s something on the roof,” I said, “and something down way in the bottom. Are there cellars here?”

  “Leave the dungeon alone,” Marina said. “But on the roof there’s a room that lets you see anywhere. I mean anywhere, not just around the castle.”

  “I’ll take a look,” I said, heading for one of the staircases.

  “There’s a quicker way inside,” Marina said. “You just step in a hole in the wall and you go straight up to the roof. Come this way.”

  There were twelve doorways around the interior of the courtyard. Marina led me in the one opposite to the gate I’d entered by. She seemed to have given up on convincing me to run away.

  Inside, the room was wider than its ten-foot depth. Unless there was another room beyond it, the back—outer—wall must be ten feet thick. That wasn’t surprising. There were cloth hangings on all the walls, but they were so dull with age that the scenes woven into them were just brownish blurs.

  There were also two metal chests, waist high and larger than any clothes-press I’d seen. From the feeling they radiated, they were Ancient artifacts or at least contained artifacts.

  “What’re these?” I said, nodding to the nearest chest.

  “Storage boxes,” Marina said, touching the corner. The lid popped open. On the floor of the chest were a number of outfits similar to the one she was wearing now; they only took up a fraction of the available space. “Nothing decays inside them when they’re closed. I don’t have much need of them now, just keeping the moths away from my woolens, but the lord and his family kept food here.”

  I thought I’d seen a smudge of blood on the back of the chest, but if nothing changed inside, that might be twenty years old.

  “This is a wonderful place,” I said, thinking of Guntram.

  “It was, once,” Marina said.

  There was an alcove in the back wall. There was nothing inside it, literally: it had neither floor nor ceiling, as I saw when I stuck my head in and looked up and down.

  “Step inside and point your index finger up,” Marina said. She did that herself and vanished.

  Grinning, I did the same. If a blast of white fire incinerated me, I could hope I’d die quickly.

  Instead I was on the castle’s roof, just as Marina had said. She was standing beside a curved wall of…shimmering, I guess, higher than I was tall. There wasn’t really anything there, just the air rippling the way it does over a black rock on a sunny day. I couldn’t have stretched out my arm full-length if I’d been standing inside it.

  “This is the seeing place,” Marina said. “The lord called it his belvedere. Just go inside and think of somewhere, that’s all.”

  I stepped in. I didn’t feel anything when I crossed the line of shimmer.

  “Think of what?” I said, but as I spoke I was thinking how Guntram would love this place—and I was viewing the interior of his workroom. It was much as I’d left it, but Guntram was on his couch with the color projector beside him. That was complicated enough to keep even a mind like his occupied for months, maybe longer.

  “Oh!” I said. Guntram’s workroom vanished and I was looking at Marina through the distortion.

  I thought of my house in Beune; I was inside. The door was open, swinging in the breeze because it hadn’t been properly latched. A chair with a broken leg had been moved in since I was last there, and there were three storage baskets in the middle of the floor. Full of Phoebe’s winter clothing, I suspected, but I couldn’t look inside.

  The Consort’s Chamber appeared. I stepped out of the belvedere before I could be sure who the half-dozen people in the room might be. One of them had been a woman with a long-necked banjo.

  “This is like nothing I’ve ever dreamed of,” I said. “Did the Spider build these?”

  “No,” said Marina. “The Spider eats, which you’ll learn because you insist on staying.”

  “Take me down to the dungeon,” I said. “What’s there?”

  “Nothing, less than nothing now,” said Marina.

  “Take me!” I said. Buck in the courtyard heard me and barked.

  “Go yourself, then,” she said. “Stand on the opening—” it was a gap in the roof tiles here “—and point your left index finger down.”

  I did as she said. I was suddenly in darkness.

  Shocked, I took my shield and weapon out. There was no immediate danger, and my eyes adapted to the dimness. Light came from somewhere, but it was spread out as thin as the stars on a foggy night.

  I was in a corridor wide enough for four guys to stand beside each other. I walked forward slowly, listening for anything. There may have been rustling like mice in a dark pantry, but that could’ve been the echoes of my bootsoles on the floor.

  The corridor turned to the right. From shackles on the wall in front of me hung the dried-out corpse of what had been a man. Skin like thin leather had shrunken over the bones, holding them in human shape.

  “Why have you come here, man?” the corpse whispered to me.

  “There are wonderful things in this place,” I said. “The belvedere on the roof and something equally great in the dungeon. I came here from the belvedere.”

  I swallowed. “Sir, who are you?” I said.

  “I was Palin, lord of this place,” the corpse said. “Now I am nothing and less than nothing, neither dead nor alive.”

  I remembered Marina saying that there was nothing and less than nothing in the dungeon. I swallowed again.

  “What can I do for you, Lord Palin?” I said. I didn’t want to touch him, I was afraid to touch him, but I couldn’t back away and do nothing.

  “You could bring me nothing but total death,” Palin said, “and I am afraid to die. I sinned in life, but so long as I hang here in Limbo I delay justice for that sin.”

  “I can bring a priest,” I said. I didn’t see what good that would do, but I really wanted to get out of this place. I should’ve taken the woman’s advice.

  “A priest!” the corpse said, the sneer obvious even in a whisper. “I impregnated a servant and sent her away. Oh, I gave her money, but I didn’t admit the relationship or recognize the child. She came back later and let in the creature from the Waste which
rules here now. It killed my wife and children, it killed all the servants, and it hung me here where you see me. Without life, without death, without hope. My act caused it all.”

  I looked at the wretched thing hanging from the stone wall. He’d knocked up a girl and thrown her out—which was a sin, and giving her money didn’t change that. It happened everywhere; it’d sure happened on Beune.

  But if that was a sin beyond redemption, then few enough men could hope to be redeemed. Palin was blaming himself for the slaughter of everybody close to him, and that wasn’t his doing. What he’d done was just ordinary human weakness. He ought to have been better, but it shouldn’t have brought him to this.

  “Sir,” I said, “this is wrong.”

  “Boy!” Marina shouted behind me. “The Spider’s coming and you have to hide!”

  “The voice…” the corpse said. “Is that Marina?”

  “Yes,” I said. I turned and went back the way I’d come. I was worried about fighting the creature, whatever it was, but really my first thought was that this gave me an excuse to escape from the hanging thing. To escape from Palin.

  I’d have to come back, of course. Well, if I survived.

  Marina waited in front of the shaft. I wondered if the castle had staircases inside.

  “I’ve hidden your man in one of the chests,” she said. “You can hide in the other and I’ll let you out when it’s safe. You can’t go out the gate now.”

  I knew more about Marina now than I had when I met her, but that was a problem for another time. “No,” I said. “I’ll go up to the belvedere where I can watch.”

  “But he’ll find you!” Marina said.

  I didn’t reply, just stepped into the hole and raised my right index finger. It struck me that I might come out in the foyer where I supposed the Spider would enter instead of going up to the roof. If that happened, I guessed it’d save time.

  I stood in bright sunlight and sneezed. That happens when I go from dark to light. The belvedere was beside me, so I stepped into it again. I didn’t know where the creature was, so I thought Show me the Spider and there it was: coming from the direction of the Road just like Baga and me had.

  It was tall, at least twelve feet and maybe higher. I was judging by the height of the men it carried. The Spider wore a bandolier from its right shoulder; two men and a woman were lashed to it by the legs, upside down.

  It walked on two spindly legs, and it had long, spindly arms—at least eight feet long. I never saw more than two arms at a time, but they weren’t always the same two. The body was in two parts, a short cylinder that the arms and legs came out of and a wobbly blob hanging down like the torso of a really fat man.

  Its head was triangular with huge eyes and a beak. There was nothing even vaguely human about the head.

  The Spider reached the castle wall. I expected it to open the gate or maybe to wait for Marina to come out and do that. It couldn’t fit through the little door I’d entered by, I was sure of that.

  Instead of swinging the gate open, the Spider walked through. Straight through the thick iron plate. The people dangling from its bandolier came through with it, jouncing on the cords that tied them to the broad leather strap.

  “I am back, woman,” the Spider said, its words rasping in my mind. It stepped into the central courtyard. I could have looked over the roof parapet and seen it, but I continued to watch through the belvedere. “I’ve brought fresh meat.”

  It took a step deeper into the courtyard and stopped. It said, “What is that?”

  “A dog,” said Marina. “Only a dog. It wandered in from the Road and I’ve kept it for company.”

  “And there is a human,” the Spider said, frozen where it stood. “I smell a human.”

  “You brought fresh meat, you said, Master,” Marina said. “Of course you smell fresh meat.”

  “You are lying, woman!” the Spider said, walking forward again. Its steps were hesitant, picky, but because the legs were so long it crossed the ground quickly. “I will strip off your flesh and then crunch your bones!”

  “Here, Master, here!” Marina shrieked. “I was keeping him as a surprise but you brought fresh meat yourself!”

  She ran back into the building. I couldn’t see her there—the belvedere was showing the courtyard because the Spider was there—but I knew she’d be opening the chest in which Baga hid.

  I walked from the belvedere to the nearest curving staircase, holding my shield and weapon. I switched them live. Marina hadn’t told me how to get from the roof back to the lobby in the shaft, and rather than fool around guessing, I went by the way that I knew worked.

  “Spider!” I shouted. “Is it me you’re looking for?”

  With the shield on I could see all six arms at the same time. They were even longer than I’d thought.

  The Spider turned and waited as I came down the stairs. “More meat!” it said. “Truly this is my best day in decades!”

  When I was six steps from the bottom, the Spider minced forward and reached toward me. I spread my shield to its widest coverage, accepting the reduced resistance at any point, and raised my weapon to strike.

  The Spider’s arms stretched, hovering above me and to both sides. Instead of hands, it had small pincers like on the legs of a crab. I took another step down. The last joint of two arms vanished, just faded away.

  I stepped down again, watching the looming arms. The practice machines hadn’t prepared me for this.

  Pain like jets of molten iron struck me in both shoulder blades. I screamed and bounced down the stone steps on my back. The Spider had attacked me from Not-Here, though most of the creature faced me Here.

  It leaned over me. I hadn’t dropped my shield, and with my weapon I struck for the Spider’s nearer foot. It sprang away, agile as a leaf-hopper. Its roar of fury echoed in my mind.

  I got to my feet. I must have bruised myself on the steps, maybe broken ribs, but I didn’t notice that because of the pain from the Spider’s pincers in my back. I stepped forward because there was no escape except through the monster.

  Buck ran up to me, barking furiously. My view shuddered into shades of gray-blue and gray-brown, but when the Spider’s arms cocked I saw the two pincers lancing toward me through Not-Here.

  I turned and slashed at the one coming from my right: my own shield kept me from striking left. The tip of the limb spun away, squirting liquid.

  The Spider screamed again. I rushed it, though I was afraid that I’d trip over my own feet. The creature’s arms closed on me like the jaws of a spring trap. One of the pincers bit into my neck. I went blind with pain.

  Warm liquid gushed over my right arm. I felt my legs collapsing. I lay on the ground, aware only of a stink like burning pus.

  Then there was nothing but blackness.

  CHAPTER 24

  Cleaning Up

  I woke up, wondering where I was. I opened my eyes and saw nothing but darkness as deep as the sleep I’d come up from. I reached out to the side and hit solid metal.

  I screamed and swung both arms out to the sides, slamming the heels of my hands into the same metal walls. I’ve been buried alive! I’ll—

  The lid above me flew open. Baga and Marina stared down. They looked worried.

  Not as worried as I was a heartbeat ago.

  I sat up and put my hands on the edge of the chest. That’s what I was in, one of the storage chests in the foyer; the place Marina had wanted me to hide.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know where I was and I—”

  I was going to use a gentler word, but instead I told the truth: “I panicked in the dark. How did I get here, anyway?”

  “I put you here because she said to,” said Baga. He glared at the woman, his hands clenching. “Wasn’t it right?”

  “I set it to heal him!” Marina said. “Do you think he’d be talking to us now if it hadn’t worked? He’d have been dead!”

  “Baga, she’s right!” I said. “Thank you, thank you both.”r />
  I swung my right leg out of the chest, then the left. I was standing on the stone floor again. I took a deep breath.

  I checked my tunic pockets as Buck circled beside me, rubbing his shoulders against my knee and whining softly. The shield and weapon were where they ought to be. I rubbed Buck’s ears.

  I dropped into a brief trance to view the chest’s mechanism. I didn’t bother entering the menu to see what the choices were. It was enough to know that there were choices.

  I came back to the present and looked at Marina. I said, “You’re a Maker.”

  She swallowed. “I suppose,” she said. “Not like Lord Palin.”

  “It was by being a Maker that you were able to switch off the defenses in the walls,” I said. “Otherwise the Spider couldn’t have gotten through them.”

  “I suppose,” Marina whispered. Turning, she ran down a hallway and around a corner.

  “Want me to get her?” Baga said, watching the direction Marina had gone.

  “Eventually,” I said. “I guess I’ll take her to Dun Add with us and let the Leader decide what to do with her. Or—I don’t know. I just don’t.”

  “She was going to feed me to that thing,” Baga said, nodding toward the courtyard.

  “She’s done worse in the past,” I said.

  I walked into the courtyard. I’d stabbed the Spider in its pendulous belly and ripped downward. That big sack lay as flat as a woolen blanket now, and the creature’s body lay in a splotch of liquid, tacky now in the sun.

  I was soaked from the waist in the same filth. It stank. I stank. Maybe I wasn’t throwing my guts up because being in the chest had fixed that too.

  “I got to get a bath,” I muttered to Baga. “And new clothes.”

  I looked at him. “You do too,” I added. “From carrying me, I guess.”

  There probably weren’t more clothes here. Well, we could wash what we were wearing.

  The three people the Spider had come back with were still attached to the bandolier. They were dead; the Spider sprawled partly over two of them. I wondered if the creature only took travellers on the Road or if it had sprung from the Waste onto lone settlers in the hinterlands of Catermole and other nearby nodes.