Foster, Dean - Spellsinger 02 - The Hour of the Gate

mused as his eyes opened confusedly on a still dark sky.

He rolled over, and for a moment memory lagged shockingly

behind reality. He started violently at the sight of the furry,

fanged, many-eyed countenance bending over him.

"i am sorry," said Ananthos softly, "did i waken you too

sharply?"

Jon-Tom couldn't decide if the Weaver was being polite

and offering a diplomatic way out or if it was an honest

question. In either case, he was grateful for the understanding

it allowed him.

"No. No, not too sharply, Ananthos." He squinted into the

sky. A few stars were still visible. "But why so early?"

Bribbens' voice sounded behind him. As usual, the boat-

man was first awake and at his duties before the others had

risen from beneath their warm blankets. "Because we're

nearing their city, man."

Something in the frog's voice made Jon-Tom sit up fast. It

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was not fear, not even worry, but a new quality usually absent

from the boatman's plebian monotone.

Pushing aside his blanket, he turned to look over the bow,

matching Bribbens' gaze. Then he understood the strange

new quality he'd detected in the boatman's voice: wonderment.

The first rays of the sun were arriving, having mounted the

mountain shield soaring ahead of the boat. In the distance lay

a range of immense peaks more massive than Zaryt's Teeth.

Several crags vanished into the clouds, only to reappear

above them. Jon-Tom was no surveyor, but if the Teeth

contained several mountains higher than twenty thousand feet

then the range ahead had to average twenty-five.

More modest escarpments dominated the north and south.

Swathed in glaciers and clouds, the colossal eastern range

also displayed an additional quality: dark smoke and occa-

sional liquid red flares rose from several of the peaks. The

towering range was still alive, still growing.

The sparks and smoke that drifted overhead came from a

massif much closer than the eastern horizon, however. Quite

close a black caldera rose from surrounding foothills to a

height a good ten thousand feet above me river, which banked

to the south before it. Ice and snow crowned the fiery

summit. --

Snow gave way to conifers and hardwoods, they in turn

surrendered to the climax vegetation of the variety which

flanked the river, and that at last to a city which crept up and

clung to the volcano's flanks. Small docks spread thin wooden

fingers out into the river.

"my home," said Ananthos, "capital and ancestral settle-

ment from which the first weavers laid claim to the scuttleteau

and all the lands that abut it." He spread four forearms, "i

welcome you all to gossameringue-on-the-breath."

The city was a marvel, like the scarf. The similarities did

not end there, for like the scarf it was woven of fine silk.

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Morning dew adhered to struts and suspensions and flying

buttresses of webwork. Roofs were hung from supports strung

lacily above instead of being supported by pillars from be-

neath. Millions of thick, silvery cables supported buildings

several stories high, all agleam with jewels of dew.

Other cables as thick as a man's body, spun from the

spinnerets of dozens of spiders, secured the larger structures

to the ground.

On the lower, nearer levels they could discern dozens of

moving forms. It was clear the city was heavily populated.

Spreading as it did around the base of the huge volcano and

climbing thousands of feet up its sides, it appeared capable of

housing a population in the tens of thousands.

There was enough spider silk in that single city, if it could

be unwrapped to its seminal strands, to cocoon the Earth.

Once Jon-Tom had spent an hour marveling at a single

small web woven by one spider on an ocean coast. It had

been speckled with dew from the morning fog.

Here the dew seemed almost choreographed. As the first

rising rays of the sun struck the city, it suddenly turned to a

labyrinth of platinum wires and diamond dust. It was too

bright to look at, but the effect faded quickly as the dew

evaporated. The sun rose higher, the enchanting effect dissi-

pating as rapidly as the sting fro.m a clash of cymbals. Left

behind was a spectacle of suspended structures only slightly

less impressive.

Gossameringue was all spheres and ellipses, arches and

domes. Jon-Tom could not find a sharp angle anywhere in the

design. Everything was smooth and rounded. It gave the

city a soft feeling which its inhabitants might or might not

reflect.

As the sun worked its way up into the morning sky, the

little boat put in at the nearest vacant dock. A few early

morning workers turned curious multiple eyes on the unique

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cargo of warmlanders. They did not interfere. They only

stared. As befitted their historical preference for privacy,

these few Weavers soon turned to their assigned tasks and

ignored the arrivals. It troubled Clothahump. A people fanatic

about minding its own business does not make a ready ally.

Under Ananthos' escort they left the boat and crossed the

docks. Soon they had entered a silk and silver world.

"This mission had best be successful," said Caz as they

began to climb. He placed his broad feet carefully. The

roadway was composed of a fine checkerboard of silk cables.

They were stronger than steel and did not quiver even when

Jon-Tom experimentally jumped up and down on one, but if

one missed a rung of the gigantic rope ladder and fell

through, a broken leg was a real possibility.

After a while caution gave way to confidence and the party

was able to make faster progress up the side of the mountain.

"I'll settle for just getting out of here alive," Talea

whispered to the rabbit.

"Precisely my meaning," said Caz. He gestured back the

way they'd come. The river and docks had long since been

swallowed up by twisting, contorting bands of silk and silken

buildings. "Because we'd never find our way out of here

without assistance."

It was not all silk. Some of the buildings boasted sculp-

tured stone or wood, and there was some use of metalwork.

Windows were made of fine glass, and there was evidence of

vegetable matter being employed in sofas and other furniture.

Though the Weavers were not arboreal creatures, their

construction ignored the demands of gravity. The whole city

was an exercise in the aesthetic applications of geometry. It

was difficult to tell up from down.

Caz was right, Jon-Tom thought worriedly. Without Weav-

er help they would never find their way back to the river.

They climbed steadily. Wherever they passed, daily rou-

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tines ground to a halt as the populace stared dumbfoundedly

at creatures they knew only from legend. Ananthos and his

two fellow guards took an aggressive attitude toward those

few citizens who tried to touch me warmlanders.

The only ones who weren't shoved aside were the curious

hordes of spiderlings who swarmed in fascination around the

visitors' legs. Most of these infants had bodies a foot or more

across. They were a riot of color underfoot; red, yellow,

orange, puce, black, and more in metallic, dull, or iridescent

shades. They displayed stripes and spots, intricate patterns

and simple solids.

It was difficult to make sense of the extraordinary variety