Soul Stealers

by Andy Remic

  Stupid! His mother told him never to walk behind a horse. The eighteen-hand great horse, or draught horse as they were also known, was a huge and stocky, docile, glossy creature, bay with white stockings, prodigious in strength and used predominantly for pulling the irontipped plough. Jage had been concentrating on little Megan, flying a kite made from an old shirt and yew twigs, and her running, her giggling, the way sunlight glinted in her amber curls… He ran across the field to speak to her, to ask if he, too, could fly the kite and impact threw him across the field like a ragdoll, and for a long time only colours and blackness swirled in his mind. Everything was fuzzy, unfocused, but he remembered Megan's screams. Oh how he remembered those! Now, the copper coin of the sun sank, and bright fear began to creep around the edges of the young boy's reason. What if, he decided, mother and father did not return? What if they were never going to return? How would he drink? How would he crawl to the river? He could not move. Tears wetted his cheeks, and the bitter taste of the herb was strong, and bad, in his desiccated mouth. But more, the bitter taste of a growing realisation festered in his heart. Why had they brought him here? He thought it was to enjoy the sunshine after the cramped interior of their hut, with its smell of herbs and vomit and stale earth.

  And as the moon rose, and stars glimmered, and the river rushed and Jage could hear the stealthy footfalls of creatures in the night, he knew, knew they had left him here to die and he wept for betrayal, body shuddering, tears rolling down his face and tickling him and pitifully he tried to move, teeth gritted, more pain flaring flaring so bad he screamed and writhed a little, twitching in agony and impotence amongst the starlit flowers, their colours bleached, their tiny heads bobbing. Suddenly, somewhere nearby, a wolf howled. Jage froze, fear crawling into his brain like an insect, and his eyes grew wide and he bit his tongue, tasting blood. Wolves. This far south of the Black Pike Mountains? It wasn't unheard, although the people of Crennan were keen to hunt down and massacre any wolves sighted in the vicinity. The mountain wolves were savage indeed, and never stopped at killing a single animal. Their frenzies were legendary. As was their hunger.

  The howl, long and lingering and drifting to silence like smoke, was answered by another howl, off to the east, then a third, to the west. Jage remained frozen, eyes moving from left to right, his immobility a torture in itself, which at this moment in time far outweighed the physical pain of his broken spine.

  If they found him, they would eat him, of this he was sure.

  Eat him alive.

  Jage waited, in the darkness, in the silence, with pain growing inside him, his severed spine pricking him with hot-iron brands of agony, his heart thumping in his ears. I will be safe, he told himself. I will be safe. He repeated the phrase, over and over and over, like a mantra, a prayer-song, and part of him, the childish part, knew that if danger truly approached then his father, brave strong Parellion, would be waiting just out of sight with his mighty wood-cutting axe and he would smash those wolves in two, for surely the village was near enough for them to hear the howls? The villagers would not tolerate such an intrusion by a natural predator! But another part of Jage, a part that was quickly growing up, an accelerated maturity and a consideration to survive told him with savage slaps that he was completely alone, abandoned, and if he did nothing then he would surely die. But what can I do? he thought, fighting against the urge to cry. I cannot move!

  He wanted to scream, then. To release his frustration and pain in one long howl, just like the wolves; but he bit his tongue, for he knew to do so would be to draw them like moth to candle flame.

  Jage waited, tense and filled with an exhaustive fear; he eventually drifted into a fitful sleep. When his eyes opened, slowly, he knew something was immediately wrong despite his sensory apparatus unable to detect any direct threat.

  Then, grass hissed, and Jage's eyes moved to the left and into his field of vision stepped the wolf. It was old, big, heavy, fur ragged and torn in strips from one flank; its fur was a deep grey and black, matted and twisted, and its eyes were yellow, baleful, and glittered with an ancient intelligence. This creature wasn't like the yelping puppies in the village; this wolf was a killer, a survivor, and it knew fresh, stranded meat when it saw it. "Oh no," whispered Jage, eyes transfixed. Like a snake before a charmer, Jage watched the wolf pad close, then look left and right as if expecting a trap and humans waiting with pitchfork and axe. Other wolves edged into Jage's vision, growing in confidence and spreading in a wide arc. The young boy shuddered involuntarily. They were going to eat him. Eat him alive. And there was nothing he could do.

  A snarl came, low and malevolent, and those eyes never left Jage's. There was a connection between the two, between victim and killer, and Jage wasn't sure what it meant, only that he felt like a bound sacrifice on an altar; and felt suddenly, violently sick. The wolf lowered its head, fangs baring, and the snarl elongated into a continuous threatening growl. A paw edged forward, and at the same time Jage felt a tickling across his legs which twitched as if in automatic response, and the tickling moved up over his belly and onto his chest and Jage gaped at the spider there, small, glossy, black, about the size of his hand, so close he could see the many hairs that covered its legs and thorax and he blinked, for this was the highly toxic and very, very deadly Hexel Spider, otherwise known – sweetly, ironically – as a Lupus Spider. Jage allowed a slow breath to escape his fear-frozen throat, and watched the spider turn to face the wolf – which had stopped, one paw extended, eyes narrowed as if in consideration. The spider's two front legs came up, then, poised in the air, and Jage could see long curved chelicerae which he knew, even at this young age, were linked to glands carrying venom.

  The wolf halted, but the growl remained, and the old creature was wise enough to recognise danger in this tiny creature. More growls echoed, and then with a shiver Jage felt more tickles spread across his body like rainfall, and his vision was flooded by a swathe of Hexel Spiders as they ran up him, over him, and poised, a glossy mass of legs and exoskeletons, almost covering his body entirely and certainly covering the ground around him in a bristling carpet. The wolf snarled, turned, and loped away; was gone.

  Jage, however, could not breathe a sigh of relief, and his eyes roved frantically over the spiders which slowly lowered their legs from attack posture and began to move across him, down onto the ground and he was waiting, waiting for that painful bite which would bring about oblivion and this must have been why his parents left him here by a spider nest – certain of a quick, venomous end.

  Jage blinked. One spider remained, on his chest, and he could see its tiny black eyes watching. Then it moved forward, and crawled up his face and he could feel each tiny footfall pressing his flesh and he wanted so desperately to scream but knew any sudden noise would bring about the bite.

  The spider stopped, suspended over his mouth, and Jage gave the tiniest of whimpers.

  From somewhere in the spider, whether it be chelicerae, gland or spinneret, a tiny droplet detached and fell into Jage's throat. It was warm, and slick. More drops followed, and a bitter taste flooded through him, and darkness came in a violent rage and he thought, I have been poisoned, I am dying, I was left for this, and a black swell of raging pain rushed up to meet him and he fell into and through a bottomless pit, and remembered no more.

  Jage awoke face down, staring at rock. An incredible thirst still raged through him, and he had distant memories of motion but everything was blurred and his face felt sticky and he realised his skin was covered, covered with a sheen of silk honey web.

  So they want to eat me, he thought, miserably. They've brought me back to their cave, so that they can eat me one piece at a time. I am a prisoner. I am food. He struggled to move, but could not. However, there was no pain, and Jage frowned. Then he spied a flood of spiders undulating across the rocky floor towards him, each the size of his hand, many with chelicerae clicking. Some carried sacks of eggs, encased in silk, some held them in jaws but others carried their precious ca
rgo on their backs. Jage watched, fascinated for a few moments, until he realised they had come to feed; had come to feed their young. He shuddered, and fresh tears fell, and the surging carpet of spiders stopped and several clambered over him, delicate footfalls teasing his flesh with a terrible, mocking agony. He felt the bite, directly over his broken spine, and he screamed then and would have thrashed if he could have moved… another bite came, and another, and Jage was sobbing uncontrollably as the spiders clicked and injected him with venom, and he waited for the pain to smash through him.

  Instead, only euphoria eased into his veins, and thankfully he slipped into a welcome unconsciousness.

  Jage awoke, propped against rock, seated in the dark, in the cold. A breeze blew, which soothed his feverish skin. He licked dry lips, and his throat throbbed raw from excessive screaming. He turned his head, surveyed the narrow tunnels which led to this small, cramped space. On a rock near his foot, to the right, there was fruit; small berries, some strawberries, several mushrooms and a potato. Jage felt an incredible hunger rush through him, and he reached out, lifting the fruit and eating it, and berry juice ran down his face staining his chin red and he laughed, and his feeding increased in frenzy until the fruit and raw vegetables were gone. He felt stiff, and sore, and only then did realisation dawn. He could move! He could move again.

  The young boy twisted, and his back felt strange, tight and odd and not quite part of him. He frowned, and reached behind himself, his hand groping for his spine. What he found there made him freeze, for there was some kind of thick cord on the outside of his skin, stretching from the base of his spine all the way up to the base of his skull. His fingers traced the strange, smooth, hard substance, and as he moved, and explored, he realised the thick cord was moving with him, flexing with him. It seemed to be integral to his flesh. What have they done to me? Jage thought, dreamlike, drifting, and he saw the spiders moving slowly into his cramped cave, only this time there was something else, another spider, much bigger this time but with exactly the same markings and appearance as the tiny Hexels. Jage fixed on this large arachnid, and its graceful movement of all eight legs in choreographed coordination; it was the same size as Jage, and he realised, at least, that answered the question of how he had been moved to the cave. What was this? A queen? A king? How did it work with spiders?

  The spider eased forward, ducking a little, each leg movement a forced hydraulic step, and it stopped before Jage and he looked into the four black orbs – its eyes – and the spider was watching him and he had absolutely no idea what it wanted. Was it going to eat him? Was it going to poison him? Did it want to be friends? "Hello," said Jage, head tilting. His spine gave a tiny, tiny crackle. "Thank you, for saving me, from the wolves." The gathering of worker spiders did not move. They were a carpet of black, all eyes on him. The large one (which he later discovered was the queen) stepped even closer, and Jage's nostrils twitched, for he could smell acid and hemolymph. He kept his face perfectly straight as chelicerae the size of daggers moved to his face and the spider seemed to be… sniffing him? It moved yet closer, all eight legs surrounding him, encompassing him in a strange spider-limb cocoon, and then against all odds the spider started to sing, a song without words, a high-pitched croon, a lullaby, and Jage sat there, ensnared, and she sang to him and he felt strangely at ease, a part of this family hiding under the ground and inside the rock, feared and reviled and his face formed into a strange grimace which should have had no place on a human mask and he found acceptance for he had been abandoned and left to die but here, here and now, with the spider queen's song soothing through his skull and veins he realised he was a part of this new family; they would look after him, and protect him, and love him, and make him strong again.

  Deep in the caves, there was a river. The water was black, but Jage drank from it often and never suffered ill effects. He moved around the tunnels freely for a while, exploring winding tunnels and caves and caverns, many littered with bones and long, ancient drifts of web. Most of the Hexel Spiders did their hunting outside, and fed mainly on other insects, although sometimes the three larger queens who inhabited the central caves would head out into the night and return, often with rabbits or snakes, once a weasel spitting and snarling in its sack of silk; and once, even, a wolf. Jage watched as the three queens brought the cocooned wolf into the hub of caves and tunnels; it no longer struggled, and Jage reasoned it had been given a moderate bite to sedate it. The massive shaggy beast was wrapped heavily in thick cords of restraining silk, and Jage crawled forward, curious, head tilting to one side as he realised with a start the creature was the wolf that had threatened him all those months earlier, as he lay paralysed and abandoned beside the Hentack River. On hands and knees Jage crawled until his face was only inches from the wolf, and he stared into those old, baleful yellow eyes and the wolf seemed to grin at him, panting in short bursts, and Jage felt some kind of victory and he wondered if this was sheer coincidence, or if his new family had hunted down the wolf and brought it to him.

  Jage turned, and at that moment the wolf lunged, jaws snapping, slicing through his shoulder and making the young boy scream. The wolf locked jaws, and shook him, and Jage flopped to the rock and the spiders rushed over the wolf and the queen was there, small black eyes emotionless as chelicerae swept down and there came a terrible cracking; she snapped the wolf's muzzle in two, then a leg punched out, entering the old creature's skull with pile-driver force and skewering the brain within.

  Jage fell back, weeping, pain flooding him. Gently, the queen gathered him up and a honey liquid oozed from her fangs and into his mouth and the pain eased away, closely followed by wakefulness.

  Jage awoke. His shoulder felt good. It felt more than good. It felt strong. He looked down, and from the midpoint of his chest across his shoulder and down to his elbow, there were panels of black chitin, glossy like spider armour, and woven deep into his flesh, indeed, deep into his very muscle and bone.

  The queen entered, and settled down before him. Then a foreleg reached out and touched Jage's face, and he closed his eyes and he could… he could flow with her thoughts and feel her desperation for she was a Soulkeeper of Species and they were at war and hunted and reviled and the battle had raged for thousands of years with the Trallisk, who came with fire and poison to burn them and sting them, and battles had been fought, huge underground wars in tunnel and cave systems ranging for thousands of leagues to destroy the Sacred, and the Soulkeepers had finally been defeated in a huge bloody scourge, and since that day they moved from cave system to cave system, always running, always hiding, taking the Sacred with them, but one day they would conquer for it was their way, they were a warrior species descended from a warrior species and Jage, Jage was a human exception, a conundrum for he had shown them kindness and a form of understanding and she knew he was different and unique and they needed something unique to beat the Trallisk in war and this, this meant acceptance, for he was young and in him they could find an ally and they would strengthen him and had built him a spine from cuticle containing proteins and chitin built up in layers and fed with long protein strands into his own flesh and own spine and nerves and his body had accepted it as his own. And now. Now, after the incident with the wolf, the Soulkeepers had repaired his shoulder in a similar fashion, building him a new shoulder blade, for the wolf's fangs had torn muscle and powdered bone and they were part of him now, all a part of him, and he was part of them, and they were happy to accept Jage into their family for they knew there was no evil in his body, mind or soul and he could help them, help them protect the Sacred for its purpose was important to the world, and he, Jage, was important to the world… and one day, he would understand why they gave him the Sacred to protect.

  Jage's eyes opened, with a start. He ran his tongue around the inside of his mouth, coughed, and sat up. He flexed his new shoulder experimentally, and pressed at it with his free hand. It felt as strong as steel. On a flat rock by his feet sat a platter of rock, with some fruit,
and vegetables, and a long, slick, grey slab of meat. Jage reached out, picked up the meat, which slithered against his fingers as if trying to escape. He knew what he had to do. He had to get strong. He had to grow, and feed, and become powerful; only then could he repay the kindness of the Hexels and help them with their age-old war against the Trallisk; help them protect the Sacred. Help them deliver it. Jage ate the meat, rubbing absently at his chest which itched, just over his heart, and at that moment knew he needed a new name. Something to reflect his merging with the spiders; his acceptance not just into their society, but into their very genetics.

  From this point, he decided, he would be known as Jageraw.

  General Graal rode the black stallion to the top of the hill and turned, gaze sweeping the snowy wilderness and desolate, crumbling city of Old Skulkra. "I know you," he said, eyes narrowing. "I remember you. I remember you well, Old One.'

  Graal was half vachine, half albino. Accepted by the vachine society and culture because of his age, his prowess in battle, his tactical expertise as a general, and because – although their history no longer recorded it – he was one of the blood of the first vachine to walk the world, under the watchful gaze of the Vampire Warlords, Kuradek, Meshwar and Bhu Vanesh. Graal was ancient. More than a thousand years old. Ancient slave to the Vampire Warlords. And Graal was pissed. He attempted to calm himself, tried to slow the thunder of clockwork in his breast. But he could not. His teeth ground together, and he tasted his own blood-oil.