David Drake - Mistress of the Catacombs

Sharina marveled at the easy way the king handled the question: saying nothing but hinting that he was offering a great secret. Her fingers gently rubbed the boy’s back as though she were calming a nervous hound.

The commander shook his head in wonder. “Stars, then,” he said. “Come on, boys; we’ll crack this thing open enough that our loony friends can get out.”

The gate was of green wood, boles cut to length but not squared; it was enormously heavy and probably strong as well. Six guardsmen, one of them leaning on a crowbar to lift the end, dragged it narrowly ajar.

“You first, milady,” Carus said in a low voice. Sharina didn’t argue; she squeezed through at once.

Carus stood behind Lerdain, bracing his hands on the gate leaf and the jamb. He shoved hard, spreading the opening enough for the boy to climb through without having a notch pull his cape off. What would happen then was anybody’s guess.

The people outside the gate were all women, old enough that they were probably trying to sell something other than themselves. They backed away when Sharina came through, then stood staring at her.

Carus followed the boy out. He tipped his helmet in salute to the guards, then grinned at his companions.

“Let’s go,” he said. “There’ll be a patrol with horses waiting for us, but if we miss them in the dark, we’ve got a long walk ahead of us.”

He tousled Lerdain’s hair under the cowl. “Cheer up, lad,” Carus said. “You’ve saved a lot of lives tonight, not least your own.”

They started eastward, feeling the eyes of the camp followers on them as long as the moon allowed. Before that, Carus started whistling again.

There were no Blaise patrols out, so Sharina sang in a cool, clear voice to the king’s accompaniment, “ Only time can heal my woe, my true love’s gone for a soldier .”

Ilna’s fingers played idly with her cords as she sat on the bare basalt. Occasionally she raised her head toward the barrier in the sky, but her mind already had the information it needed.

She smiled faintly. Which is as much as to say that I have a loom and a roomful of thread, so the only problem is placing the individual strands where they belong . What else was there to weaving, after all?

This world was oddly silent. The wind sighed through branches, and she could hear trees creak as they swayed. There were no birds and no animals except the spiders themselves. Were there streams with fish in them? Ilna doubted it, because that wouldn’t fit the pattern she was forming of this world.

The spiders watched her. They didn’t interfere, they didn’t even move for the most part. Occasionally a long, hairy leg adjusted a strand of silk. In the far distance, a green-and-gold monster was decorating her web with a fine silk ribbon midway between the hub and the rim.

Ilna didn’t ask herself what purpose the ribbon might have. Everything had a purpose, everything fit into the pattern.

The thought made her pause, then smile wryly. She’d thought—she’d said—that she didn’t belong in this world, but of course she did. That was as surely true as every thread in her own simpler patterns belonged where she’d placed it.

She didn’t believe in the Great Gods, but she believed in craftsmanship and she knew craftsmanship. The pattern someone, Someone—perhaps the cosmos itself, Ilna neither knew nor cared—wove with human threads couldn’t be chance.

Ilna looked down at the answer her fingers had drawn in cords. The knotted pattern didn’t tell her that something was wrong—she already knew this world was wrong—but it told her where.

Ilna rose with her usual sudden grace and started toward the other side of the Mound. From where she’d sat on the barren rock, she could see only the distant slopes of the valley which the basalt divided. Across the plug she’d be able to view the whole of it.

ILNA OS-KENSET! thundered the mental voice of her black-and-silver guide. DO NOT GO THAT WAY! IT WILL BE FATAL FOR YOU IF YOU LOOK INTO THAT VALLEY!

Ilna strode on, tight-faced. Her fingers were unpicking the knots that had led her to do this. She might—she would— need the cords for other purposes shortly.

SHE MUST NOT LOOK! sang the chorus of thousands. IF SHE LOOKS, WE MUST ACT!

Ilna reached the edge of the plug and looked over. The basalt formed an equally sheer wall on this side.

The floor of the valley below seethed with giant spiders. These had left their webs to crawl into a ring surrounding two sheep and an aged man holding a crooked staff. The sheep blatted and bucked, kicking their forehooves into the air. They turned and turned again, looking for a way out. There was no way out.

The man fell to his knees and prayed to the Shepherd; fragments of his words, shouted in a cracked voice, reached Ilna on the Mound above. There was no way out for him either.

SHE HAS SEEN! cried the chorus. WE MUST SLAY HER BEFORE SHE ESCAPES!

The spiders had a facility with patterns second only to the skills Ilna had learned in Hell. Even here at the point of weakness beneath the Mound they couldn’t open the barrier some ancient wizard had set around them, but they could almost breach it. The combined strength of hundreds of spiders could loosen the mesh of wizardry enough that occasionally they could draw a victim into their world. Then—

The spiders rushed awkwardly forward. Their great legs weren’t made for walking on the ground, so the creatures jerked and stumbled as they jostled one another. They were mad with the need for blood. The few victims cowering below weren’t enough to slake the thirst of one of the giants, let alone all of them.

Ilna looked up at the barrier where the sky should be, then again into the valley. She couldn’t see the sheep in the maelstrom of fat bodies and long, hairy legs, but two of the largest spiders had risen belly to belly onto their hind legs, struggling for the shepherd’s corpse. The frail old body was already flaccid, but the spiders’ mandibles chewed on what remained to crush out the last juices.

KILL HER! ordered the black-and-silver monster. SUCK HER BODY DRY!

Spiders who’d missed a share of the three victims below were already climbing the valley sides to reach Ilna on the rock above them. If she went back to where the guide had first displayed the weakness in the barrier, she would see a similar flood of living feculence crawling toward her: huge, colorful bellies dragging, legs like jointed trees feeling their way across the ground.

There was no escape in this world from the spiders’ rending, dripping fangs. So—

Ilna seated herself and began to knot her pattern. It was complex, and she doubted whether she’d have time to complete it, but certainty on that point could wait on the event.

SUCK ILNA’S BODY DRY! shouted the chorus of minds maddened with bloodlust.

Sharina was glad they were going to walk, not ride, to the parley with Count Lerdoc. Though…

She smiled at herself. She wasn’t a good rider, so the struggle to control her horse would’ve been something near and common to worry about instead of the formless fears now dancing about her like flies over a sheepfold.

“Your highness…” said Attaper. The commander of the Blood Eagles spoke facing Carus with his back to the Blaise army half a mile distant. “I won’t let you do this! I must come with you—at least me if not the whole regiment.”

A moment before, Carus had joked with Sharina about whether the Pewle knife would pass unremarked if she wore it in place of one of the pins in her formal coiffeur. With a harshness that didn’t seem to come from the same mouth, the king snarled, “Lord Attaper, you’re a good man; but if you insist on risking the safety of the kingdom so everything fits your sense of propriety, I’ll cut you down where you stand.”