by Jack Conner
“Do you know what you’re saying?”
She batted her eyes. One of her light, small hands darted out and flattened against his hard stomach, then stroked him up and down. “I have some idea,” she said softly.
He tossed back the rest of his drink. What would Rolenya think? Then again, he might never see her again. She had said as much in her letter. He was no monk, nor was he a martyr.
Suddenly, he wrapped an arm around Liessa and drew her against him. She gasped, then melted. He pressed his lips to hers, and she met his, passionately.
“Yes,” she sighed, when they parted. “Yes, my lord! I have dreamed of this moment.”
She took one of his hands and placed it on a ripe breast. He squeezed, finding her firm and well-shaped.
“Do you like me?” she said.
“I’m starting to.”
He kissed her again. She responded with enthusiasm. She grabbed his hand, hopped off the couch and led him into his bedroom, then turned around, giggling. He kissed her, then trailed his lips down her neck to her bosom. He ripped at her clothes to get at her naked breasts, and she laughed.
“Oh, my lord!”
She threw herself on the bed and he went with her, kissing and touching her. He wanted her badly. He wanted release. He wanted to feel something other than what he’d been feeling. But then shame rose in him, and guilt.
“No,” he breathed. “This isn’t right.”
“What’s not right, my … Baleron?” She was lying in bed, her breasts exposed, pink roses on her freckled cheeks.
“This,” he said, indicating the bed. He stood, which was difficult with the bulge in his crotch, but he managed it. “I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to go.”
“But … Rolenya … it seems like she, well, that she may not be coming back to see you for awhile, if ever. I want you, and I know you want me. Do not make me beg for it.”
He sighed. “I’m sorry, Liessa. My mind is made.”
She stared at him, her expression turning angry. Tears gathered in her eyes. She sniffed and said, “Fine.” Gathering her clothes, she left the bed but hesitated before the front door. She couldn’t close her dress properly, as it had been torn in Baleron’s ardor. “I can’t leave like this, my lord.”
He grimaced. “That’s fine. Here, you take the bed for the night. I’ll take the couch.”
She wiped at her eyes and nodded. “That’s kind of you.”
“I’ll send for new clothes for you on the morrow.”
He took her back to the bedroom and closed the door for her, then undressed and crawled onto the couch. By then his bulge had diminished, and the ache where the hole had been carved out of him by Rolenya’s letter had returned. I once drowned my problems in flesh and spirits. Flesh only achieved duels and infamy. Let’s stick with spirits for the nonce. With that thought, he fell asleep.
He woke up, briefly, to feel someone nibbling on his bare arm. Thinking it was Liessa, he said, “Go away, girl.” The nibbling retreated, and he fell even deeper asleep. His dreams turned black and strange, and pain filtered to him through the dreams, and terror, and when he woke up at last he was hanging from the rafters in a cocoon of white webbing.
* * *
Stark living fear ran through Baleron, chasing the sleep away. This was no dream. He was awake and inside the shroud of a spider’s victim. Caught like a fly in a web! More white spans hung from wall to rafter, creating a network of filaments that glimmered by the moonlight streaming in through a window. He hung like a fly in a giant spider web, right in his own living room.
He tried to speak, but at first he couldn’t. All strength had fled him. At last he managed to croak, “Liessa.”
A sinister hiss from a dark corner of the room answered him:
“Yessss, my dear?”
A great dark form scuttled out onto the webs, huge and bulbous. Darkness seeped out from it, but even so its eight eyes burned like jewels from hell.
“How are you feeling?”
Baleron smacked his lips. His mouth had gone very dry. His mind reeled, drunken and bleary. He had been enshrouded so that his head tilted toward the floor, but not completely vertical, so that he was watching Liessa, or whatever her true name was, approach him partially upside down. He must have been like this for some time, as he had a fierce headache.
“What … what … ?” His thoughts were unfocused, and he had to summon every last bit of will to force out the words. Slumber beckoned him.
Liessa tittered, her mouthparts clacking horribly. “Don’t fall asleep, my dear. I want you to feel it as I drain you. It is Her command.”
“Her …?” Baleron tried to flex his hand, tried to rip at the webs that clung to him, but all strength had deserted him. The bitch’s poison.
“Lady Mogra sends you her greetings, and her farewell,” Liessa said, reaching Baleron. He could smell her rank, bitter odor. Old blood, probably his own, stained the fangs that lurked behind her mandibles. That partly explained his weakness.
“Mogra …” He remembered the Spider Queen well. In her humane form, she was tall and beautiful and terrible. In her arachnid form, she was nightmare incarnate.
“She sent me to end you, but not too quickly. That would take the fun out of it, wouldn’t it? I’m glad you roused yourself. I was instructed to make it painful.”
Without warning, she sank her fangs into his side. He screamed and arched his back, surprised that he could even gather that much strength. She drained him cruelly, then moved back, blood dripping from her mouthparts onto the stone floor as she went. “Mmm, you are delicious. It must be all that tragedy. Or perhaps your forbidden love for the elf-witch.”
Baleron, even weaker now, felt his consciousness ebbing. He concentrated on the hate he felt for this creature, as well as the even greater hate he felt for her mistress.
“So Liessa is dead,” he managed. “The real Liessa.”
“Yessss. I am … Ixa.”
“And … the others? The other refugees? Are they all imposters like you?”
“Do not concern yourself with them, Lord Grothgar. Concern yourself only with readying your soul for the afterlife, if there is one for your people. Consider yourself lucky that I don’t have the time to take you to My Lady. She would throw your soul upon her Inferno.”
Baleron knew that Mogra kept the Third Hell stoked deep inside her being, just as her mighty son Gilgaroth had stored Illistriv, the Second Hell, inside himself. Illistriv was now loosed upon the world, at least in one region of Oslog, but the Third Hell was still bound to Mogra and was ethereal.
“Lucky,” Baleron agreed, hearing the slur in his voice. How long did he have before he passed out? And where was Lord Wymar and his other men? If Baleron had been incapacitated for as long as he thought he had, hours or even days, then surely they would have grown concerned for him. He tried to pose the question but couldn’t find the energy.
Liessa, or the thing that had worn her form, laughed. “Good night, Baleron One-Hand, former king, now duke, soon husk.”
With that, Ixa retreated back into the darkness and was gone.
Darkness claimed Baleron, and for a time he drifted in limbo. Finally he came back to consciousness to hear a stirring in the darkness. A giant arachnid form was spinning a new series of threads on the other side of the room. It wasn’t Liessa/Ixa. Was she still here? Had she gone to sow terror elsewhere?
He tried again to break free of his cocoon. He could barely move. His fingers struggled just to twitch. But if he was awake that meant the poison was retreating, at least for a moment. Until I’m bitten again. He had to act now, right now, before he lost consciousness again.
He moved his other arm, which ended in a gleaming hook. The arm moved sluggishly, yet he could still move it.
He experimented, using the point of the hook to tear a hole in the shroud. Success! A small gash opened. His heart hammered fast, and sweat stung his eyes, rolling downward from his cheeks, as he was still partly upended. He moved
the hook more, then more still, ripping a larger and larger hole. Threads snapped beneath him, the hole widening with the force of his own weight.
Had the spider noticed? Baleron paused, studied the huge multi-legged horror on the other side of the room. It spun on, oblivious.
Baleron breathed out. Resumed widening the hole. He could feel his weight shift, going downward. At any moment he would spill out. Then what? He didn’t think he could stand.
The fireplace stood just a few feet ahead. No fire blazed in the hearth, so he couldn’t use flame to his advantage. But he did see one thing he could use, if only he could summon the strength.
He would have to risk it. There was nothing else for it but to try.
He sawed his hook back and forth, having to move his arm somewhat more. He was heartened that he could manipulate it at all. At last the hole widened enough, and he dropped heavily to the floor. A gasp exploded from his mouth. His mind spun.
The spider wheeled toward him.
“What issss thissss?”
Tingles radiated all throughout Baleron, as the blood that had been denied his extremities flooded back. In moments the pain from it would overwhelm him. He had to act fast, before that happened. Only he had no strength.
Using all his will, he rolled toward the fireplace. He could not stand or even crawl, but he could roll.
The spider swore in Oslogon and scuttled toward him, its putrid smell going before it. Baleron could tell how near it was by its rotten stench.
He reached the fireplace. His hand seized the handle of the fireplace poker, and he awkwardly flopped around to face the spider. The creature was even then dropping on him with its full weight. The poker speared it through the soft belly. Ichor spilled out, steaming on Baleron’s hand and the flesh of his forearm. He barely noticed the pain.
The creature hissed and threw itself backward, off the iron point.
“What have you done …?”
Baleron floundered forward. He thrust the poker through the creature’s head once, then again. The thing’s legs twitched violently, then stilled. It was dead.
Baleron dropped the poker and collapsed, letting the pain of his renewed circulation overcome him. For long minutes the agony coursed through his limbs, and he panted and sweated in a delirium of agony, mixed with the nausea and weakness of the poison. Finally it all retreated and he was able to force himself to his hand and knees, and then, swaying, to his feet. He fell a few times, but he got up each time. His mind spun, and his heart beat erratically.
When the pain retreated, he changed clothes, as he’d been fouling himself for days, and cleaned himself, too. Next he found his armor and donned it, then armed himself with his best sword, enchanted with a green Elvish stone in its pommel.
He hesitated when he reached the front door. What will I find out there? What have the bastards done to my castle, my city? Theslan no longer seemed like a burden to him, a punishment. Now he cherished Theslan more than life itself. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer to his questions.
He reached out, turned the knob, and descended the tower.
Chapter 3
Hairs stood up along Baleron’s arms and the back of his neck as he made his way down the stairs. The air pressed cold clammy hands against him, and from somewhere, far off, screaming reverberated through the stone halls. It was hard to tell how far away it was, as the sound echoed and reechoed down the corridors strangely.
Night gripped all, but that didn’t mean things had slowed down. Indeed, the fell powers thrived in darkness. His leg pained him as he made his way down the stairs, and so did the wounds in his arms and torso where Liessa—Ixa—and possibly others had fed from him. He was sick with their poison and knew it would take days to recover from it. But he didn’t have days to figure this out.
At the base of the tower waited the kitchens reserved for feeding the lord of the castle in his private chambers, and Baleron’s stomach rumbled as he neared it. He hadn’t eaten in days—he was sure it had been days, maybe a week. He hadn’t died of thirst, so perhaps his captors had trickled a bit of water down his throat every now and then. In any case, he needed food badly.
He found no spawn of Mogra in the kitchens, but he did find the dried-out husk of one of the cooks. The woman had been dead for several days, and she had been fastened to one wall by webbing. Senna, Baleron remembered her name was.
“I’m so sorry, Senna,” he said. He reached out with his good hand and closed her eyes. “I wish I had time to bury you. I will see you and all the other victims of this horror buried in honor, though—I vow it.”
He grabbed a hunk of bread and a link of smoked sausage and devoured both. He found some spoiled but drinkable milk and downed it. After a few minutes, he began to feel stronger, better. Strength returned to his limbs. Still shaky and trembling, he pushed into the halls and picked his way through the high dark spaces of the keep. Webs spanned wall and column, and bodies were enmeshed in every one. Most were still and dead, but a few stirred, however feebly. Baleron cut one down, then another, and helped them from their shrouds.
“Help me,” he said. “Find others and free them.”
He gave them the bread and sausage he still had and directed them to weapons. They nodded and carried out his instructions as well as they could—slowly and stiffly, but obediently.
A spider dropped down at him when he was freeing the third person. The creature had been spinning a web high above, and it screeched in fury at Baleron even as it flew down at him. If it hadn’t been so enraged, it might have caught him unawares, but as it was Baleron had time to throw himself back. He raised his sword to defend himself.
The spider landed. With its long, segmented legs, it launched itself at Baleron at great speed. He slashed with his blade, chopping through one leg. Ichor spurted and half the limb dropped to the floor. The spider’s weight carried it forward. It knocked Baleron off his feet.
Baleron hacked at its head, burying his blade deep in two of its eight eyes. The thing shrieked. One of its limbs batted his blade aside, ripping it free from the black flesh. Baleron sliced at it with his hook, and it blubbered in fury. He drew his legs up and planted it on the creature’s front part, then shoved. The thing thrashed and spit, still spraying ichor from its amputated stump. Its mouthparts gnashed. Spittle flew, poison mingled in it.
Baleron coiled his arm and thrust his blade through its head. Its screaming died, and its limbs stilled. With a swear, Baleron hurled the body to the side and stood, trembling only a little.
How much noise had all that made? I’d better expect company.
Quickly he freed the woman he’d come for, instructed her to go to the kitchens and eat something, then flee. She obeyed, thanking him profusely as she went.
He pushed on. He realized that the spiders had secured many captives, perhaps everyone in the castle and its grounds. And if they had bound everyone in the castle, what about the town itself? Had they captured the whole of Theslan? Horror filled him. This was his city. He was the lord of it and its people, tasked with protecting them. Don’t let me have failed them, too.
Scuttling noises ahead. He flattened himself against a wall. Two giant arachnid forms skulked out of a hallway that intersected the corridor Baleron was on, coming from high up on the wall. Of course. Spiders didn’t need the floors. He couldn’t tell if they moved along threads or not. He held his breath, willing them to pass by. They paused, their limbs quivering, then moved toward the spot where Baleron had killed the second spider.
Once they find it, they’ll lock the castle down. Baleron had to hurry. Just how many spiders were there, anyway? The original number of refugees had not been large.
Sweat burning his eyes, he forced himself on. His legs and arms still trembled from weariness and poison, but he had grown used to it and it didn’t slow him much.
He reached the front door. A spider slumbered in its web above the door, but it roused as he neared. He was just passing a rack of spears and grabbed one.
He stabbed the spider through the middle, then again and again before it could launch an attack, and it fell dead to the floor. He spat on it, pushed open the door and stumbled out into the night, now on the castle grounds. Its barracks and various outbuildings surrounded him. He carried his sword in its sheath and the bloody spear in his hand.
Bodies and body parts littered the ground, several days old. It was dark and there were no torches, but the moon and stars shone brightly, well enough for Baleron to make out the remains of people he knew, people under his command, half buried by snow.
The gates sagged open.
He limped out through them, encountering no resistance, but as soon as he stepped out into the city he heard another scream, then another. He moved toward the sounds. No smoke curled up from the chimneys of houses despite the cold, no lights burned in windows. It was night, but a few people should have been up. There was nothing.
The whole city. They’ve taken it all. All gone.
Spiderwebs spanned the spaces between buildings, and bodies hung from them—in the dozens. No, the hundreds. A strong wind blew, shaking the webs and the bodies in them, and frost had gathered to the corpses and glittered like silver on the webs. Dark, multi-legged horrors moved among the threads, occasionally feeding from the few bodies that still lived.
An inhuman scream sounded from behind him, then another. The spiders in their webs froze and spun to the sounds.
Damn. Just as he’d feared, the creatures in the castle had found the body and were raising the alarm. Feeling even sicker, Baleron found an alley and passed down it. Better to keep out of sight.
Dark forms swung through the air overhead as spiders leapt and scuttled throughout the city, fanning out. Hunting for him. He heard their screeches and titters as they called to each other.
He stifled a gasp when he hit the end of the alley and almost stepped right out into a procession of Borchstogs. Shaped much like Men or Elves, but twisted and nightmarish, and in service to the dark powers, the group of Borchstogs herded several ragged-looking people toward some destination ahead. Baleron sucked in his breath and drew back. He hadn’t been seen, thank the gods. The people the ‘stogs were shepherding must have been survivors of the original attack; they’d been in hiding until the Borchstogs found their hiding spot, which must have only just happened.