Daniel Abraham - The Tyrant's Law

“Killing your old friend,” Marcus said.

Kit nodded, then shook his head.

“We weren’t close. I think he’d have been just as pleased to kill us. And look.”

Marcus turned to the body. At first he didn’t see anything, just an old man in a pool of blood that seemed to echo the burning oil. Then, as the flame brightened for a moment, the tiny spiders that boiled up out of the old man’s wound were visible. Tiny black bodies whirling in mad distress, pulling hair-thin legs tight to pinpoint bodies. Dying. Marcus handed the still-lit lamp to Kit, took the sword by its hilt, and pulled it free. The blade glittered green and red and a black as dark as a starless sky.

“Good to know it works,” Marcus said. “We should hurry.”

The temple reached deeper into the mountain than Marcus had imagined. The great carved arches drank in the light from their little lantern and spat it back in the browns of sand. Marcus followed along after Kit, his blade ready. The old actor’s steps rarely faltered, and when they did, only briefly. Once, they heard distant voices lifted in song, the echoes making any sense of direction impossible. But the voices faded, and Kit motioned him forward.

There was something else, something eerie, about the place that for a time Marcus couldn’t quite put his hand to. At first he thought that there was something off about the angles of the spaces, as if the stones were set in some subtly wrong way. But in truth it was only that he had never seen anything so ancient that had no dragon’s jade to it at all.

The great chamber was a vast darkness that swallowed the light. Marcus could only judge by the hushed echoes of their footsteps that the space was vast. As they moved quickly, almost silently, between two huge pillars of beaten gold, Marcus looked up to see the vast, shining body of a spider above him, the pillars its legs.

“Come along,” Kit hissed, and Marcus realized he’d stopped in his tracks, overwhelmed by the size of the thing above him. As he followed Kit’s silhouette down the dark passages, the fear grew in his belly and thickened his throat. He didn’t let himself think, only willed the numbing terror to be exhilaration instead. This was no different than charging into battle or holding a wall against a hundred siege ladders. At worst, it was death.

Kit stopped at a wide black door. The black wood shone in the madly flickering light. A wide bar in iron brackets as thick as Marcus’s leg kept it closed.

“Here,” Kit said, and the dread in his voice was unmistakable. And behind that, a deeper sound like a vast, rolling exhalation. The breath of the goddess. Marcus smiled.

“Well then,” he said. “Help me with this bar.”

It took both of them to lift it, and Marcus was sure that the noise would bring the priesthood running in alarm or startle the beast on the far side of the door. But no one came, and the vast sound of the goddess didn’t alter. Marcus steadied himself. The blade was longer than he usually liked, but nicely balanced. He didn’t have any armor, not even a thick jacket. Speed and surprise were his only hope. And the poison of the blade.

He closed his eyes. He knew any number of men who made peace with their God before they went on the field. He thought of his family. Merian and Alys were waiting there, cut into his memory like scars. He felt the old love and the old pain again, the way he always did. Maybe this time , he thought. Maybe this time it’ll be the last. For a moment, Cithrin was there too. Cithrin who might be alive or dead. Cithrin, who wasn’t his daughter, but could have been. He opened his eyes. Master Kit was looking at him nervously.

“It’s been good working with you, Kit. I’ve enjoyed your company.”

“I’ve also enjoyed traveling with you. I think you are a genuinely good man.”

“You think a lot of strange things. Open the door.”

Kit pulled on the bracket. The door inched open, a ruddy light spilled out, and the sound grew louder. Marcus steeled himself, then ran through, knees bent and body low. The chamber had high stone walls with a dozen braziers of low, smoky flame. The beast stood perfectly still in the center of the room, a massive spider twice the height of a man. A low stone altar squatted before it. The light glittered from eight massive eyes and mandibles long as a man’s forearm.

Marcus leaped forward, vaulting over the altar, and swung the blade at the closest leg. The impact numbed his finger, and he let the force of his charge carry him forward, under the massive body. Both hands on the hilt, he thrust up into the vast belly. The blade rang with the force of the blow and skittered off the spider’s carapace. With a cry of despair, Marcus pulled back for another strike, ready to feel the hooked claws grabbing at him, the knives of its mouth ripping his flesh.

The spider goddess hadn’t moved. Marcus swung again twice, before the oddness of it sank through, and he stopped. Tentatively, he reached out the sword, poking at the joint of the nearest leg. The clack was of metal against stone. He lowered the blade. The rushing of air filled the room, but the beast’s abdomen didn’t shift. Carefully, sword at the ready, Marcus stepped to the great, many-eyed head. The fire of the braziers reflected in each eye.

“Kit?” Marcus called.

For a long moment, there was no answer.

“Marcus?”

“This isn’t going quite as I’d pictured it.”

Kit stepped through the door, his eyes wide and filled with barely controlled terror. Marcus pointed to the spider’s great leg and hit it with the flat of the blade.

“This is a statue.”

“Be on your guard,” Kit said. “It may come to life.”

“It also may not,” Marcus said, but a twinge of anxiety passed through him all the same. He moved away from the vicious mouth. Kit stepped closer. He was trembling so badly Marcus could see it.

“She’s petrified? Turned to stone?”

“I don’t think so. Look here, where the feet meet the floor. You can see the chisel marks.”

“Where … where is the goddess? There must be a deeper chamber. A secret path. She must be close. Her breath—”

“That’s not breath, Kit. That’s air moving. There’s been wind running through these caves since we got here, or all the fires would have suffocated all these priests years ago and saved us the trouble. No offense.”

“None taken,” Kit said by reflex. He put his hand on the spider’s leg where Marcus’s first strike had chipped it. The fresh stone was white and grey. The actor licked his lips, his gaze flickering over the massive beast as if searching for some hidden meaning. When he spoke, his voice was weaker. “They may have taken her. Moved her to some—”

“Kit, has it occurred to you that this goddess might not be real?”

“But her gifts, the power she gives. You’ve seen it.”

“Have. And those little bastards in your blood too. Those I won’t deny. But that’s all I’ve seen. I don’t know what’s giving it power.”

“There must be a central force. A will to direct it. There has to be—”

“Why? Why does there have to be?”

Kit sat on the empty altar, staring up at the many-eyed face. Tears welled up in his eyes, streaked down his cheek to disappear into the thick grey brush of his beard. He coughed out a single, painful laugh. Marcus sheathed the blade and sat at his side. The statue looked down on them, motionless and blind.

“There is no goddess, is there?”

“Might be, but no. Probably not.”

“It seems I’m an idiot,” Kit said. “I thought I had overcome her madness. I thought I had questioned everything , but …”

“Well, there may have been madness to overcome. Just maybe it wasn’t a goddess. Plenty of crazy to go around if all you have are priests.”