F. Wilson - The Tery

The inhabitant of the lake was gone.

The lights in the cache room dimmed slowly as he exited and were fully extinguished by the time the door clicked shut behind him. He looked down and saw his club where he had dropped it. It was covered with slime — everything was covered with slime. Wiping the handle of the weapon clean against the fur on his leg, he followed the slime trail along the edge of the pool and noted that it wandered off into the passage he had planned on taking back to Tlad.

He changed his plans. Despite the fact that the path in question was the one that had brought him here and the only one he knew, and despite the fact that his greatest fear in the Hole was to become lost, he decided to take another route.

He would trust his sense of direction on a strange path more than he would trust his club against the dark behemoth from the pool.

The new passage was not very much different from the other and he made good time, loping along on his hind legs with the bomb cradled in his left hand against his chest, his club swinging back and forth in his right.

Then trouble.

Rounding a bend in the passage he ran into a pack of nine or ten spider-things.

Without hesitation they were on him with howls of fury, their clawed arms raking at him, their sharp teeth in their all-too-human faces snapping at him. Jon shook them off and backed away, swinging his club sparingly but with telling effect, always keeping it menacingly before him.

After the initial assault, the gang kept its distance, trying to flank him or work one of its members behind him. Jon kept backpedaling, holding them before him, wondering how long he could keep this up.

Suddenly he felt stone against his back and nowhere to go. He had allowed them to corral him into a dead-end branch of the passage. His gut writhed as he glanced around. They had him boxed in. He was trapped.

He looked up and saw the dark mouth of a small cave just out of reach above him. He could climb there easily, but it would mean turning his back on the gang of spider-things, and he didn't dare do that.

Then they attacked in earnest — a suicide charge on three levels with some leaping for his legs, others for his arms, and others for his head. Whirling and swinging his club, kicking when opportunity presented, Jon managed to hold them off for a moment or two, then one of them sank his teeth into his leg.

Jon twisted and lost his balance. He went down on one knee. As the gang swarmed over him, their teeth and claws tearing at him, their loathsome black bodies pressing against him, Jon felt himself start to fall onto his back. He dropped his club and raised his right arm for balance, searching for support, anything to keep him upright. For if they got him down on the ground –

Powerful fingers closed about his wrist.

With a force that threatened to pull his arm from its socket, he was lifted partly free of his attackers. He kicked them off as he was hauled into the air and unceremoniously dumped into the cave above. He whirled, ready to face a threat worse than that below, and was startled to see the mother monster he had aided earlier.

She hissed and pushed him behind her, then returned her attention to the furious spider gang below. As they swarmed up the wall, she sat back and waited. As soon as one poked its head inside the cave mouth, she punched at it with one of her huge fists. Her arms worked like battering rams. She seemed to be enjoying herself.

Jon would have helped her but he had lost his club. With a spasm of shock he realized he’d lost the egg as well. He must have dropped it during the melee. He’d have to go back to the cache for another. He shuddered at the prospect. But he’d worry about that later. Right now he needed a weapon.

As he looked around for something else to use against the attackers, he came across the corpse of one of the spider-things slain earlier. The mother's young were clustered around it, nibbling.

Jon noticed a shaft of light toward the rear of the cave. Curious, he stepped over the younglings’ grisly feast and went to investigate. The tunnel curved sharply upward but the light ahead proved an irresistible lure. He climbed swiftly.

He found a break slightly smaller than his head in the back wall of the cave. Light poured through it — not the sickly phosphorescent glow that permeated the Hole, but a brighter, cleaner, familiar light.

Sunlight.

Jon put his face to the opening and peered through. He found he was looking into a large vertical shaft with sheer, smooth, unblemished walls. From above where the sunlight filtered down, a gong clanged and a man began screaming. By leaning his shoulder against the wall, he found he could twist his neck and see to the top of the shaft. A heavy iron grate covered the opening. Above that was blue sky and a ring of humans.

The grate rose and a naked, struggling, terrified man was brought to the edge. His arms were tied behind him; his screaming had stopped, reduced now to pitiful whimpering. A voice was speaking in measured tones, the words indistinct, perhaps praying, perhaps reading a sentence…

Something unsettlingly familiar about that voice…

When it stopped, the man began screaming again. The two troopers holding him gave a powerful shove and he fell free with wildly flailing legs and a cry of utter despair and terror that followed him all the way down the shaft, ending abruptly in a chorus of growls and scuffles from the waiting Hole dwellers below. Jon could not see the floor of the shaft. He did not want to.

He watched instead the vulpine faces of the troopers as they squinted into the dimness below, trying to catch some of the more grisly details of their ex-prisoner's fate. When another face joined them in peering over the edge, Jon felt his hackles rise.

He knew this man. Ghentren, the captain from Kitru's keep.

Suddenly, all the grief, the anguish, the rage, the pain came rushing back. Not that they had faded away, but somehow his close association with Tlad and the Talents has eased them to the back of his mind, layered them over with a soothing salve, and hidden them under clean dressings. He had thought he was healing, but knew now that nothing had healed. The heat from those festering, suppurating wounds was more intense than ever.

He could hear his teeth grinding of their own accord. He wanted Captain Ghentren's blood as much as ever. The balance craved restoration…

…and would have it!

Jon pulled back from the opening and pondered the situation. He could not get to Ghentren on his own. He would need Tlad's help. But how to get it?

The mother creature awaited him with her brood clustered about her. The spider gang was gone — either driven off or finally and forcefully convinced of the futility of trying to gain entrance to the cave. She pressed back against the wall to let him pass and hissed as he did so.

Jon kept his distance and tensed when he saw her reach for something on the floor. But she was only picking up one of the dead spider-thing's legs. She offered it to him once more.

Jon steeled himself and took it from her.

She bared her teeth at him. If it was a smile, it was a ghastly attempt. But in her eyes he thought he detected a sadness that he had to go. Perhaps loneliness was the greatest horror in the Hole.

Jon waved and quickly made his exit, leaving her alone in her little cave with her brood. As he climbed down the wall toward the floor, he realized that if, as Tlad had said, the Shapers had intended the Hole to be peopled by creatures from who every shred of human decency had been removed, they had failed. The mother creature was proof: A favor had not been forgotten, nor allowed to go unrepaid. Amid all this depravity, a spark of fellowship could still glow.

Reaching the floor, Jon paused to get his bearings and noticed two dead spider gang members at the foot of the wall. His club lay between them, untouched — he guessed the hands of the spider-things were not built to wield such a weapon. He kicked one over and sighed with relief when he saw the death egg.