Just as Mark was about to give up and try the next room, the door clicked and opened. Annika, draped against the door with a glass in her free hand, looked up at him with glowing cheeks and a relaxed smile. “Well, well. Good evening, Marky.” She snickered. “What are you doing calling on me at this—”
“Spinneretta’s gone!” he blurted.
Her jovial demeanor evaporated. “What?”
He pointed toward around the corner of the building, vaguely toward where the fiberglass olive tree stood in the rear parking lot. “She opened a portal to the Web and disappeared, along with Arthr!”
Annika’s lips parted, teeth bared in a wild grimace. Then, she screamed. It was a sound Mark had never heard her make before; it was a crazed, demonic noise that echoed down the hall and rang out in a horrible, discordant wail. In a single motion, she lifted her glass above her head and hurled it into the ground. Amber droplets and shards of glass sprayed all around her. “Herrejävlar!” Glass-hand now curled into a claw begging for a throat to rip out, she stood hunched and panting, waves of malice rolling off her with each breath. “God fucking dammit!”
“What do we do?” Mark asked, ignoring her outburst.
“You’re asking me? You’re the one with magic! What am I supposed to do aside from rue my reluctance to cripple her when I had the chance?”
“No, my magic isn’t enough. I can’t do anything like open portals between worlds. Even if I were to . . . ” He swallowed hard, and the errant thought vanished. But one thought linked unto another, and at once a recollection hit him. “Kara!”
She glared at him. “God, don’t tell me you just realized that this makes three.”
“No. We need Kara.” He stomped away from Annika and into the parking lot around the corner. He took a deep breath and bellowed out into the night air. “Vant’therax! Vant’therax!”
Annika was on his heels a moment later. “What the fuck are you doing?”
They had to be around. There was no chance the three remaining Vant’therax would truly leave them to their own devices. For a moment, silence ruled the night. Then, just as he’d hoped, there came the sound of rushing water. From the pure-black asphalt arose a muddy-yellow shape not ten feet away. He recognized it at once as the creature calling itself Silt.
Mark did not even wait for the black fluid to drip from the yellow robe. “Dammit, we have a problem!” He took a few deep breaths in a vain attempt to calm his raging pulse. “Spinneretta and Arthr are gone. They went through the portal to the Web.”
From the shadows beneath his cowl, Silt considered Mark with an indecipherable expression. “I am aware. I witnessed the event myself.”
“Then why did you do nothing more than watch?”
Silt crossed his arms. “I considered it. However, to speak frankly, Arachne would be safer in the world of her father, at least for the time being. The cult cannot easily reach her there, and that is to say nothing of—”
Mark sputtered. “Safer? She intends to kill the Yellow King! How safe do you think that!?”
The Vant’therax’s mangled mouth fell open in horror. “What did you just say?”
“I said that she intends to murder the Yellow King or die trying!”
Silt’s gaping maw quivered. Anger seeped into his dark eyes, and he violently swept his arm before him. “And you kept this from us? You damned treacherous sorcerer!”
“I did not know until today. And believe you me, I tried to dissuade her from it, but . . . This benefits none of us, thus there is little value in fighting amongst ourselves over it. We need to find Kara.”
The creature was quiet for a moment, as though processing the information. “Faul and Dirge are searching Manix as we speak.”
Mark grabbed his head, fingers curling in frustration. “We must go! All of us. We must find her, right now!”
Annika grabbed his shoulder and gave it a hard tug. “Mark, what the hell are you—”
“Kara’s the only one who can open a portal to the Web now,” Mark said. “We need to find her before Spinny gets herself and Arthr killed!”
Annika’s doubt stood stagnant upon her face for a tense moment before departing. “I see your reasoning. You’re right.”
A growl rumbled up from Silt’s throat. “This is a precarious situation. If she attempts to kill the King, there is little chance of Him abiding such insolence. We must move with haste.” The sound of thunderous waters returned, and Silt melted into a black stream that flowed to the ground and dispersed.
Mark turned around and grabbed Annika’s arm. “We must get to Manix, now! We must find her!”
Annika stumbled a step back and pushed him away from her. “Okay, okay, Jesus. You don’t have to yell at me. I’m drunk, not stupid.”
A pair of deep gasps for air did little to soothe him. “Where’s your car?”
She nodded off toward the left. “That way. I think. But I’m pretty sure I shouldn’t drive right now.”
He started toward where she’d gestured. “Then I’ll drive. I need your help on this, Annika.”
“There’s one thing you seem to be overlooking.”
He paused and looked over his shoulder at her. “And that is?”
“Let’s say you go after Spinzie and drag her back here, perhaps kicking and screaming. What happens then? As soon as you let her out of your sight, she’s just going to run off again. As long as she has this insane goal of defeating the Yellow King, you’re not going to be able to talk her down from the ledge.”
“We’ll worry about that later. Give me your keys and let’s go!”
Annika dropped her chin to her chest and gave him a bored look. “This is an unsustainable situation, Mark. You’re holding an alligator by the tail, and sooner or later you’re either going to let it go or the poor thing is going to starve to death.”
Mark stood there a moment, letting her words brew in his mind. He expelled a cold breath and clenched his fists, sparks of ghostlight scattering and vanishing into the night air. His palms were sweating, fervor burning in his heart. “I won’t let this go on. I’ll kill the Yellow King myself if I must.”
She gave him a knowing nod. “Or die trying.”
“If I must.”
A sad sigh passed through her fragile lips and she reached into her pocket. A muffled jingle sounded, and she tossed her keys to him. “You’re going to be the death of me. Fine. I’ll help you.” She flashed him a drunken grin. “Let’s roll.”
After two hours of walking in near silence, the cobbled plain began to rise at a steeper grade. The mist crawling over the ground became uneven, clumping together in opaque clouds as they drifted down toward the endless fields of stone and rubble. The bloodstone pillars continued on just as below, the only difference being a greater variance in their average height, with most of their jagged tops now breaching fifteen feet.
Down below, the nigh-endless plain of mist and scattered ruins stretched all the way to the horizon, where the white banks of fog blended seamlessly into the gray clouds. And where the ruins of the temple from which they’d emerged lay, Spinneretta thought she could just make out the black specks of some manner of creatures half-hidden by the walls of vapor. Though she’d have been fascinated to get a closer look at them, she knew from experience that the beasts of the Web were dangerous; the last thing she wanted was to run into something that might kill her before she could realize her goal.
“So, I guess this would be a good time to tell me a bit about what the hell’s going on,” Arthr said as they passed the pile of debris at the foot of a pillar.
Spinneretta sighed, legs already aching from the slow ascent toward the peaks. “What do you want to know?”
“You could start with what the hell this place is.”
It was a tedious question. “This is Zigmhen. The World on the Web.”
His still-puffy eyes considered her without a hint of understanding. “Okay. And what does that mean in English?”
She shook her head, al
ready weary. “You know the story of Raxxinoth, don’t you?” She wanted it to sound rhetorical, but she was embarrassed to find that she couldn’t remember if anybody had ever explained it to him.
“All I know is that it was a big-ass spider god or something. And that the spider cults were made in his honor.”
She sighed in relief. Good. Someone explained that much. “Right. Well, this was the world she created. How, I don’t know. But if we can make it above those clouds up there,” she said, gesturing to the heavens, “you’ll be able to see the sky. I don’t recommend looking up.”
“Why?”
“Because you’ll see the other planetary strands.”
“Planetary . . . ? Holy shit, are you saying that—”
“This is a literal web, each strand a world of unimaginable dimensions.”
Arthr stopped and looked back down the hill toward the fog-painted lowlands. The slalom of pillars stretched to the visible horizon like a seam in an endless white garment. As Spinneretta followed his gaze, she found the black specks of life from before had vanished. “That can’t be,” he said. “That doesn’t even make sense.”
“I know it doesn’t. But it’s the truth.” She hastened her steps. The imposing cliffs waited above them, and she wanted to make it to the other side before nightfall.
“Like, how does that work? Scientifically, I mean.”
“You’re asking the wrong girl.”
After a moment, he sped up to catch her. “Okay, so, if I decide I believe you, then what about all these pillars and ruins and shit? What made those? Are those Raxxinoth’s as well?”
“No.” The first traces of some harsh chemical scent burned her nostrils. “They’re the remnants of the Yellow King’s kingdom.”
“Wait, what? I thought he still had his kingdom?”
Her eyes were drawn to the eldritch etchings on a near-complete pillar as they passed it. Her stomach began to quiver uncontrollably. “Long ago, there was a war. Between the King and his followers, and those who worshiped another god in place of Raxxinoth. The war left their civilization desolate and broken. And over the ages that followed, everything that remained fell to ruin. At some point, a seal was cast over the Web to keep him trapped here. By a being of fire.” She shuddered as she recalled the reproductions of the reliefs she’d seen in the Repton Scriptures. “But the seal is only one-sided, for some reason. That’s why I can’t open a portal the other way.”
“But . . . How do you know all this?”
She crossed her arms and rolled her head skyward to the ceiling of clouds. “Everything I know I’ve gleaned from reading the Repton Scriptures.” She’d hoped that by saying it aloud she could convince herself of it; no such luck.
“You know,” he said, “maybe this isn’t so bad.”
She raised her eyebrows at him. “Now who’s being crazy?”
He gave a dismissive shake of his head. “I think I can do something. To finally prove to myself that I have value.” A smile came upon his lips as he looked ahead to the towering mountain range. “Killing a supposed demigod and ending a malicious cult forever. I think I could get behind that.”
“What’s with this self-hating phase you’re going through?”
He grew quiet. “I, uhh . . . Right before we came here, Annika told me I was useless.”
Spinneretta waited for him to continue, and after a few quiet moments, she filled the silence herself. “That’s kind of a messed up thing to say.”
“I thought so, too. But to be honest, I’ve . . . always kinda thought so. And I think I just didn’t want to admit it to myself.”
“Arthr, stop.”
“What?”
“I like you better when you’re a pompous ass.”
He sighed. “So do I.”
She let her focus wander once more to the mountains. A white sliver had emerged from one of the cliff faces; she thought it may have been a mist-filled pass. “You’re so selfish.”
“How do you figure?”
“You think by helping me kill the Yellow King you’re going to suddenly prove to Annika you’re a big man. That’s it, isn’t it? That’s no different than wanting to fight Pat just for your reputation.”
“No,” he said abruptly. “Based on what she said, I don’t think I could ever do anything to make her change her mind. This time, it’s my own mind I want to change.”
Spinneretta again fell quiet, unsure what to say.
“You know, I told her. That I loved her.”
She sighed in irritation. “Moron.”
“Fuck her,” he spat. Surprised, Spinneretta turned to her brother and found a wide grin on his face. “Yeah, I said it. Fuck Annika,” he said again with a small laugh.
It was just about the last thing she’d expected him to say. Her stomach rumbled, and an unexpected laugh burst out. “Yeah, fuck that bitch!”
He giggled, eyes completely mad, and soon he was grabbing his belly and guffawing. The laughter spread like a Bubonic yawn, and their peals of glee echoed across the slopes of the hills and down onto the misty plain as she joined in. Uncontrollable spasms choked tears from both their eyes, and the inanity of their laughter became a furnace that fed its own indulgence. It wasn’t funny, but it felt damn good to laugh. It had been too long, and Spinneretta suspected it would be even longer before she had another chance.
Their walk dragged on up the uneven hillside, along jagged, rolling terraces. If they had once been hewn by intelligent hands, erosion had erased the proof of their design. And yet the broken columns pressed on, silent reminders of the sentience that once walked these lands. Bit by bit, the crack in the mountain became clearer. But the clouds had begun to grow darker, and the subtle halo of the Web’s trapped star neared the horizon behind them.
It took another hour to reach the sheer face of the mountains. The star’s light had nearly vanished completely, leaving only a dull gray glow over them. The light was just enough to make out the most important features of their objective. The crack in the cliff, just as Spinneretta had suspected, was a pass leading deeper into the mountain range. It was just like the one she and Mark had encountered on their own trip to the Web, even down to the suggestion of handworked masonry in the hills leading up to it. The main difference, however, was the megalithic structure that adorned the entrance to the crevasse. In the dark, it was no more than a geometric gap in space.
Spinneretta nudged Arthr, wary of venturing any further. “Hey. Do you have your phone?”
He quickly patted himself down and shoved a hand into his pocket. “Yeah, right here.” He drew it out and passed it to her without question.
She tapped at the screen, and the gleam of the awakened device burned her eyes. Her fingers navigated the application menu until she came to the one marked Flashlight. Another tap ignited a bright beam near the camera on the reverse side. She directed it toward the anomaly, squinting at the afterimages burned on her retinas.
Two gigantic columns of stone were built directly into the cliff, flanking the passage. Their facades were beaten and cracked, but not so worn as to render the serpentine helix-patterns unrecognizable. Across the top lay a thick and ornately carved lintel, whose chalk-white material appeared fluorescent under the light. The color was luminous in contrast to the dull grays and bloody reds of the surrounding stone. Across the surface of that cap were etched complex and showy glyphs that swirled through the remnants of friezes that may have once depicted beasts of impossible origin. All hope abandon ye, the script could very well have read.
She felt Arthr shudder behind her. “Jesus, what is this?”
“It’s a gate.” She stepped closer to the construction, almost afraid it would come to life and devour them. The mist drifting out of the fissure’s mouth carried hints of that same chemical stench from before. “I think it means we’re getting close.”
Arthr stepped up to her. “Close?”
“To Th’ai-ma.”
“To what?”
The name had ro
lled off her tongue like flowing water; it was familiar, comfortable. Exhausted of explanations, she just shook her head. “To the King,” she said, hoping he’d be satisfied with the simple answer.
He just kept staring at the archway. “So . . . If this is a gate, then what was it meant to keep out? Doesn’t look like it would be very effective.”
Entranced by the markings that ran about its circumference, she walked up to the leftmost pillar. “I think it’s supposed to be symbolic. Like a transition. Moving from the secular to the sacred.”
Arthr scoffed. “Shit, you’ve really lost it.”
She gave him a cold stare. “Okay, Arthr. What’s your theory about the decorated megalithic gate in the land of the spider gods?”
He didn’t say anything. Instead, he gave a meaningless grunt that he covered with a cough.
Turning her attention—and the light—back to the pillar, Spinneretta ran her fingers over the engraved marks. A series of vertical and horizontal interlocking scars formed a trellis that stretched across the face of the standing stone. Below the band of lines, a cluster of petroglyphs vaguely suggestive of Asianic pictographs was etched. Somewhere in her mind, she had the crazed idea that she should have been able to read them. Meaningless, formless syllables scraped against the front of her mind as she passed her eyes over the flowing, masonic script.
Ahead lies hope, the strange voice in her head said. It then moved in a sardonic bout of laughter. And yet all that remains is a memory. Ironic, no?
Spinneretta shook the thought from her mind. She brushed her hand off against her pant leg and looked over her shoulder at her brother. “Are you sure you want to come?”
With a terrified glint in his eye, he looked between her and the lintel stretching across the mouth of the unlit crevasse. “Yeah. I think so.”
She frowned, unsatisfied by his answer. “Then let’s go.”
Something has come from the stars. A being of flame, blazing in green and gold. The slaughter, which has continued unimpeded for nine years, here encounters its first break. Though my forces were to march upon the cities of the third strand distant, they instead found the colonies wiped clean, eradicated. And the flame thing, as though embodying some violent aspect of my own psyche, obliterated the army upon its arrival, leaving not even a molecular trace behind.
Tatters of the King (The Warren Brood Book 3) Page 44