by David Benem
“Treason?” Gamghast croaked. His mind whirled and he seized Borel’s collar and pulled him close. “Is it the queen?” he whispered. “Has Alamis discovered her whereabouts?”
“N-no,” Borel stammered. “But he’s discovered we harbored Castor in violation of the banishment. Someone—one of the acolytes, likely—must have revealed the secrets we disclosed. Now every one of us stands accused.”
18
THE HOME OF THE SPIDER KING
Zandrachus Bale squinted skyward, the sun’s blaze burning his eyes. The noon hour set fire to Zyn with a withering heat and blinding brightness. Everything—every sandstone structure, every dusty cobble, every stretch of dirt—seemed colored a fierce yellow hue as though mirroring the sun itself.
“This will prove our finest chance,” A’Sha said from behind him in his deep, ponderous tone. “Now their magic is at its weakest. What is more,” he said, gesturing toward an edge of the sky painted the color of wheat, “a sandstorm is coming. It will grant us cover during the day’s late hours.”
Bale crept ahead, clumsy boots scraping on the ground. He felt stifled beneath his brown robes and fearful of the shadows they’d seen during their last foray onto the city’s streets.
Alisa came alongside him, her green cloak draped across her shoulders. “Well?”
Bale nodded and concentrated upon the seeking stone held in his hand. “West. And south, but mostly west.”
Alisa shaded her wide brown eyes and gazed in that direction. “Toward the city center. Toward the tower. Let’s go. We must discover all we can while the sun is strong. Every day we linger in this accursed city is another day Rune bleeds.”
“A moment,” said A’Sha. He retreated inside his tent but soon returned with several wicker cages filled with chirping, fluttering birds. He set them gently upon the ground, untied their tiny doors and watched in seeming satisfaction as the birds fled their confines. “There,” he said, folding his arms across his chest. “They will find Pastine’s other disciples, and let them know of Cirak.”
Bale watched the birds scatter to the sky and then nodded. He grasped Lorra’s hand then began walking down a narrow street crowded by shanties. His eyes darted about, studying every stubborn shadow that refused to yield to the sun’s brilliance. He watched but they did not deepen and they did not move. He sighed with timid relief.
“Make haste,” A’Sha said, jogging to take the lead. His many-colored robes snapped like pennants behind him. “The daylight is most precious and sandstorms most treacherous! We’ve not much time!”
Alisa strode at the man’s heels, her stride graceful. “Quickly!”
“Move, Bale,” came Lorra’s annoyed voice. She yanked his hand and tugged him forward with surprising force. “Move.”
Bale lurched ahead on creaky knees, trying to manage his way along a street littered with sacks, refuse and the residents of this place. He stumbled more than once, though Lorra was always there to catch him. She loped at his side, hand firm in his own.
He clutched his seeking stone, feeling it shift and pull against his palm as they travelled. Its movements were powerful, now, more powerful than they’d been their entire journey. He sensed—no, knew—that the Sentinel Kressan was near.
Their path zigzagged through the slums but they managed to keep sight of the green stretch of Lorra’s cloak and the rainbow swirl of A’Sha. Bale glanced upward, through the stretched fabrics shading the path, and spied the black peak of Zyn’s great tower, home of the Spider King.
After a time he realized the stone remained fixed in the direction of the obsidian spire. Even at this distance he could see its dull black surface scratched with jagged glyphs. The sight of it nauseated him; it seemed a blasphemous evil given form.
After a weave of tiny streets they came upon a tight passageway. Beyond stood a grand bazaar, an immeasurable tangle of people, tents and wagons. The smell of exotic spices and musky livestock mingled upon the hot air, as did the din of accented voices. It seemed to Bale the whole of some strange world had gathered at this place, here at this dark jewel in the heart of a desolate land.
“Where?” asked Alisa. “Can you tell where the stone points?”
Bale pulled his eyes from the market and drew his fist near his face. He unfurled his fingers and allowed the stone to twitch upon his palm. The stone, an oblong and well-polished thing, pointed due west. Bale traced his eyes across its length, through the bustling market and to the row of tall sandstone buildings beyond. And beyond them, the obsidian home of the Spider King.
“There,” Bale said with a nod. “The tower. It’s held to that direction no matter how many turns we’ve taken.”
Alisa came near and stared at the stone. “Perhaps. Perhaps a Sentinel is there, in or near the tower… But we’ve only made our way through a small corner of the city. It may be the stone points somewhere on its opposite side.” She looked toward the tower. “Either way, the sun stands high, and while it does we are safe from the shadows. Let’s go.”
They squeezed their way through the vast market, through great throngs of people of every shape and shade and past carts and tents displaying goods from across the world. Bale searched for suspicious eyes, though it seemed the many merchants and haggling customers paid mind only to their business.
“Five hundred sheleks!” shouted a sweat-soaked man, shaking a bulging purse of coins near Bale’s ear. “I bid five hundred sheleks!”
“Bah!” spat another. “A sad pittance for this specimen… This is a rare raggaan from Rimgald, one of the last of its breed! Think of the fortune this prize will win you in the fighting pits!”
Bale turned to see a gold-caped Khaldisian standing before a scaled thing tall as a man but almost twice as wide, a thickly-built beast all claws, teeth and muscle. It snarled and snapped its heavy jaw, struggling against many chains and darting gem-like eyes about the crowd.
“A monster,” said Lorra.
A’Sha chuckled grimly. “Alas, Lorra, I fear you are doomed to find Zyn is home to many monsters.”
Bale shuddered and hastened his pace, moving behind Lorra to wedge through a train of sack-laden donkeys. A dung-scented tail smacked him square across the face and showered him with dust and debris. He blinked away painful grit and rubbed at his eyes, his vision blurring. “Wait…” he coughed, slowing.
“No time for that,” grumbled Lorra as she tugged him along.
He staggered along, half-blind. The crowd jostled him and some cursed as he blundered his way amid and against them. He winced at sharp elbows and hard shoulders and apologized to those offended in his wake, yielding to Lorra’s tow and stumbling ahead.
At last the crowd dwindled and Lorra drew them to a stop. Bale rubbed away grime-filled tears and looked about, seeing two-storied buildings of sun-bleached stone—shops and storehouses—that formed the market’s western edge. Beyond them, another half-mile perhaps, loomed the tower, its black surface yielding nothing to the sun above.
Alisa shaded her eyes and looked to the obelisk. “Let’s waste no time. We must do all we can to find Kressan this day.”
A’Sha moved beside her, folding his arms across his chest. “So long as we are off these streets by twilight. We risk capture, or worse, otherwise. What say you, Zandrachus Bale?”
Bale stared at the tower. He had no idea what horrors awaited him within it, though was quite certain they’d prove quite terrifying. He worried this could mean his ending, an awful ending in a fearsome place far from anything that seemed like home. Heat and despair pressed upon him.
I am too weak an instrument…
Lorra gave his shoulder a rough rub. “Bale?”
He looked to her. Her face was dirty, her sharp features caked with crud. Her fierce eyes burned from the slits of their lids and she swept aside clumps of hair matted with sweat. She had seemed coarse and surly to him weeks before, but now…
Now, in this place and in this moment, she inspired him more than ever. She held his shoulder a
nd his heart lifted at her touch. He nodded again, holding his eyes only to hers. “We will see this task through, you and I. The whole world depends upon us, and we will not fail.”
The tower of the Spider King dominated the sky before them. The harsh sun tilted westward as the day wore on, leaving them within the tower’s chilling umbra.
“Still the tower?” asked Alisa, crouched behind a sack of grain at the alley’s mouth.
Bale’s hand shook from trying to contain the seeking stone’s pull. “I’ve never had a seeking stone behave in such a fashion—it’s as though it wants to fly from my hand and it’s taking much of my strength to contain it. It acted nothing like this when I sought the Lector’s remains.” He peered across the crowded promenade, over the dusty passersby and the buildings on its opposite side, to study the tower once more. “The Sentinel is inside. I wish it weren’t so, but the dead gods seem to have no care for the wishes of their creation.”
Alisa stared at him for a moment. “Our task takes us where it does. We serve Illienne, Bale, and only by her grace will we survive.”
“The Spider King still has eyes within it,” A’Sha said from over Alisa’s shoulder. “Though most of his army and foul allies have marched north, some still tend the tower.”
“We are not without some advantages,” Alisa said, rubbing at the black metal of her Coda. She closed her eyes and muttered something.
“Your magic?” A’Sha asked. “Can it protect us there?”
Alisa stood and as she did she changed, assuming once again the appearance of a simple, road-worn pilgrim wearing little more than rags. She looked upward, to the blazing glow of the sun. “I hope for now it will. If it fails, we may need to call upon yours.”
A’Sha grimaced and smoothed his colored robes with ringed hands. “Let us hope it does not come to that.”
Alisa left the alleyway and slinked onto the avenue beyond. They stayed near, shambling about her as she guided them past beggars stretching cupped hands, wild tribesmen with taciturn faces, and zealots chanting in praise of the Spider King. None paid them any regard.
Bale felt a touch of relief though that vanished the moment his gaze returned to the massive obsidian column. He stood far closer to it now than he’d ever been and his heart quaked before it. The structure seemed a malignant evil, a great horn impaling the heavens. Its black stone bled the sun and its unreadable glyphs howled profane curses against all the world.
They crossed the promenade and moved down another street, the tower directly before them. It stood within a circle of bleached tiles, and in that circle bent figures cloaked in white kneeling and murmuring toward the tower in reverence. A smattering of other worshippers gathered, too, bowing while staring wide-eyed upon the edifice.
Alisa slowed as they came to the plaza’s edge. “Do not wander, and do not make a sound.” She entered the ring of stone, shuffling along its outmost edge and bowing occasionally toward the tower in the manner of the worshippers.
He sucked in a breath and looked to the structure’s dark exterior. It seemed a great, swallowing shadow, only the glyphs discernible. All the rest of it remained cloaked in the blackness of night.
At last they came round to the tower’s southern edge—out from beneath its heavy shadow—and walked in sunlight once more. Beneath the sun’s glare the tower’s features became visible. Its exterior—a massive spire of near-seamless blocks resembling basalt—was punctuated by tiny, pinprick windows, all far above the plaza’s bleached stone.
“The main gate is ahead,” whispered Alisa.
They tiptoed around the plaza’s edge and found the tower’s western side, the whole of it bathed in the light of the tilting sun. There, at the center of its base, stood a gate, a decorated archway bearing great thorns of stone. The gate’s giant obsidian doors were thrown open to reveal a darkened passageway. Ragged worshippers neared and walked into that maw, backs bent in what seemed either reverence or terror.
Alisa halted, eyes trained to the gate. “A’Sha? Is it the wisest way?”
A’Sha leaned close. “With the Spider King gone, the tower is more monument than palace, and during the day the gate opens to his faithful. There is no easier path.”
Bale looked to Lorra. She pressed a hand upon his shoulder. “We can do this, Bale.”
Alisa nodded. “Stay close, all of you. My Coda can obscure our presence, but the Necrists’ power will wax as the day wanes. We must hurry.”
The pathway to the gate angled upward to rise above the plaza. They ascended, shuffling upon the sun-drenched tiles toward the impenetrable shadows of the tower’s interior. Rows of guards—tall and sinewy Arranese—stood along the pathway’s sides near the gate, stoically observing the worshippers as they entered.
“You’re certain they’ll not see us?” whispered Bale.
Alisa slowed. “They will see us, but to their eyes we’ll be but a huddle of pilgrims in tatters. Their ears, however, will not be deceived. Speak no more until we’re clear of them.”
She led them onward, up the ramp toward the tower. Bale kept close, bending low like the scattered zealots walking ahead of them. He studied the ragged procession beside and behind him, a sparse parade of beggars with hands upraised and grubby faces lined with tears. They seemed a most desperate lot, causing Bale to wonder what horrors had been wreaked by the Spider King to compel his faithful to regard him so.
He rubbed away a dribble from his large nose and tried to gather what wits he had. Then he looked ahead to the gate and his guts roiled.
Macabre carvings decorated the massive archway of grainy basalt, bodies of black rock with screaming mouths and clawing hands, frozen as though in the midst of trying to escape the tower’s confines. Some clutched the great thorns while others seemed impaled upon them. As Bale watched he was sure the stone shifted and churned, slowly easing bodies aside to allow others to rise from the stone. Some were barely more than infants.
He recalled Alisa’s account of seeing a cartload of children wheeled into the tower and a cartload of small bones wheeled out of it. He wondered if these were whatever else was left of them.
Could we be the tower’s next carvings?
His knees nearly buckled but Lorra held him fast. He felt strength in her embrace and did all he could to summon some semblance of the same.
They moved closer to the tower, between guardsmen clad in oiled leather and hefting long spears and curved swords. Their weapons carried little menace, though, here beneath the tower. Bodies could be poked and cut and bled, but Bale worried the tower held fates far more frightening.
At last they entered, swallowed by the tower’s heavy shadows.
Sweet Illienne please spare your loyal servant…
The gate gave way to terrifying darkness. A cold wind whipped from ahead and carried a foul stench upon it. On either side of them candles flailed against the shadows but appeared no more than rumors of stars on a cloudy night. Wayward pilgrims stumbled ahead, uttering prayers and praises in a muted drone.
They followed the trail of zealots down the wide passageway. Between the sounds of their prayers slithered strange voices, a hissing chitter that made Bale’s ears itch and his stomach churn. The seeking stone twitched madly in his hand, causing his fist to jerk about. He steeled himself as best he could, creeping forward and concentrating on Lorra’s hand upon his shoulder.
There seemed a doorway ahead, a rectangle of light pushing aside the passage’s heavy dark. The zealots drifted inside, into a heavy haze of orange. They seemed ghostlike as they moved into that glow, shifting silhouettes that withered and vanished like parchment put to flame.
They came to the door’s edge and paused, beholding a smoked-filled chamber so vast its boundaries were lost to the eyes. Within stood a ring of iron braziers blazing with fire. Behind those another ring, this of smallish, crucified corpses in varying states of decay. And within that circle a massive column of rounded, ebony stairs ascending to a platform twenty feet from the chamber floor
and cresting just above the smoky haze. Atop it stood a hulking, ivory throne hewn for a giant.
“The throne of the Spider King,” A’Sha whispered. “Built from the bones of all who opposed him.”
“And who are, or were, they?” Bale asked, gesturing to the dangling, crucified remains.
A’Sha’s mouth tightened as he looked upon the dead. “Their children. Some the Spider King had hunted down more recently than others.”
Bale grimaced. The foul scent upon the air was indeed that of death.
Alisa drew near. “Careful now. The eyes of the enemy are upon us all.”
He studied the other figures shuffling about the chamber. Most were pilgrims and zealots, beholding the throne as though it were the very countenance of the Elder God. They shook and stammered and wept, many falling to their knees as they did.
There were others, though. Others at the chamber’s fringes, barely visible figures cloaked in black robes and stalking the deep shadows. Bale did not need to survey their stitched faces to know what they were.
“Here?” he whispered, using both hands to contain the seeking stone. “They are here even during the day?”
Alisa nodded. “Their powers are muted at this hour, though here in their sanctuary they are formidable still. I should be able to conceal us, but we’d be wise to stay clear of them.”
They crept onward. The stone’s draw grew stronger, almost irresistibly so. Bale struggled to hold it and his arms stretched outward. Sweat dripped from his brow. “We must be close,” he wheezed. “I can hardly—”
The pull proved too powerful. The stone slipped from his twitching grasp and flew into the hazy air of the chamber, through the licking flames of a wide brazier before cracking against the second ring of stairs rising toward the Spider King’s throne. It skittered about from there, beginning to round the stair’s ring with a scrape.
