The Ways of Khrem

by D. Nathan Hilliard

  "Isn't it a bit late in the summer to be relocating outside, Mr. Cargill?"

  "Ah, Captain Drayton! I wasn't expecting you until at least tomorrow. It just so happens I am having a bit of a late night feast tonight, so won't you please join me?"

  The Captain looked tired and a little bit suspicious. I suppose my demeanor had undergone a big change from the last time he had seen me. He hesitated for a second, but the smell of the spiced mutton sizzling over the brazier had a power of its own.

  "Thank you," he said wearily, "I believe I will."

  Drayton eased himself into the high-back chair I had moved to the side of the patio to make room for the desk. He gave an inquiring gesture toward the desk.

  "Research, Captain," I said, "and before this conversation goes a word further, I want to apologize for my behavior in that apartment. I assure you, I am not prone to hysterics, and that kind of thing will not happen again."

  I took a piece of flatbread, used it to slide a couple of chunks of mutton off a skewer, and handed it over Drayton. He accepted and tore off a bite with obvious relish.

  "Mr. Cargill, after hearing of your experience down in that tunnel, your reaction to that body was completely understandable. I can see how something like that could color your perceptions, even all these years down the road."

  I smiled and handed over a plate with a wedge of cheese and a pear.

  "You still don't believe me, do you. I can't blame you, really. I hadn't had time to think it through, and the argument I offered was only superficially convincing. It didn't stand up to scrutiny."

  "Oh, you had me seriously considering it there for a moment, Mr. Cargill. Even as fantastic as it was, your theory had the merit of fitting a lot of the facts. But while it roughly fits the facts at first glance, once you really look at it, it fails to answer some crucial questions."

  "That's where we agree, but our interpretation of that failure differs."

  A night bird trilled somewhere nearby.

  Drayton regarded me with a puzzled frown for a second, and then looked back to the desk and the mounted spyglass. Then his eyebrows rose as he realized what he was looking at.

  "By the gods! You still believe this gigantic roof-crawling spider of yours is out there!"

  "No, Captain, after reexamining the facts and doing some investigating of my own, I know that spider is out there. Now I’m trying to figure out who or what is with it.”

  He stared at me for a moment, and then leaned back with a shrug.

  “Very well, Mr. Cargill. Since I am the recipient of some rather remarkable hospitality on your part, I think it’s only fair to hear you out.”

  I stood and walked over to the desk.

  “When Poole dropped me off yesterday morning, he asked a very pertinent question. Where did it come from? My first instinct was to say the Undercity, but that makes no sense. The thing is far too large. It would be limited in its ability to move down there, and as its victim’s remains demonstrate, this thing has an appetite. The spider I encountered in the Undercity could sustain itself on the dire rats that infest that place; this monster, on the other hand, would starve down there.”

  “Makes sense,” Drayton nodded. It appeared the food had made him more amenable to listening to my theory.

  “So it had to come from somewhere else. That doesn’t leave many options, either. I suppose one night it could have climbed over the Third Wall or along one of the aqueducts and into the city, but then its victims should have been turning up elsewhere. Besides, no creatures like that live anywhere near here.”

  At this point, I picked up the larger tome on my desk.

  “But,” I said, opening the book to a marked page, “according to the third volume of Crewell’s Bestiary, such a beast does stalk the interior plains of the Southern Continent.”

  He took the book I handed to him and stared at an illustration. It was depicted in mid-leap, about to land on some unfortunate bison.

  “Hideous,” he commented dryly, “but we aren’t on the interior plains of the Southern Continent.”

  “No, but at this point, I’m simply establishing that such a creature does exist.”

  “Conceded, but how does this monstrosity end up in our fair city?”

  “By boat. Specifically, by way of the large Tagarr livestock freighter that docked here in the upper harbor five days ago. It unloaded five crates of ivory and a stack of caged songbirds from the Southern Continent, and then it departed the next morning. Quite a large ship for such a small cargo, wouldn’t you agree?”

  I held up a red pebble with a little Tagarr emblem and placed it on the large map where the ship had docked.

  “The next day a drunk, who goes by the name of Wildeye Willet, is going around the docks telling anybody who will listen that last night her companion, another drunk known as Redpot, was eaten by ‘a huge hairy black crab’ in the pilings under the Red Tagarr Warehouse.”

  I placed a white pebble with a small, crude black spider inked on it, where the warehouse stood.

  “That was...” Drayton started.

  “...the day before Half Pint Carew got eaten,” I finished.

  “But wait a minute,” the captain rallied, “how credible is Wildeye Willet?”

  “Not credible at all,” I replied. “She is cross-eyed and constantly drunk. And that brings me to something I want to label as ‘Problem Number One.’ There has not been one single, substantiated sighting of this beast for the entire five days it has been in town. Not one, while it hunts in the largest city known to man. This must be the single luckiest creature on the planet.”

  The captain nodded.

  “Or,” I continued, “something else is going on.”

  He raised an eyebrow and leaned over to grab some more flatbread and mutton.

  “Mr. Cargill, I admit this conjecture is fascinating, but where are you going with it?”

  I raised another spider-marked pebble for emphasis, and placed it on the appropriate house on Silkwinder Street.

  “That brings us to Mr. Half Pint Carew, and what I shall call ‘Problem Number Two.’ Whatever the odds of an old lady leaving her balcony door unbarred on Loomteller Street, I can assure you there is absolutely no chance Half Pint Carew would have done the same thing. And while the spider in question easily has the physical strength to smash through that balcony door, it would have made a lot more noise than the couple of thuds the bouncer reported.”

  “Meaning,” Drayton concluded, “Carew, and therefore Madame Vedure, were killed by something other than a giant tarantula on the rooftops.”

  “No, Captain. It simply means something or somebody else opened the doors for it,” I responded, placing a third spider-marked pebble on Madame Vedure’s flat. “Please read the last paragraph on the page opposite the illustration.”

  He muttered to himself as he held up the book to see better in the lantern light. I opened a jug of pomegranate wine while he read, and filled two copper cups. I almost handed one to him, then thought better of it, and decided to wait until he read the part I wanted him to. It turned out to be a good thing I did.

  “What?” he exclaimed, jumping to his feet. He would have flung wine all over my manuscripts had I handed it to him.” According to this,” he quoted, “some tribesmen in the Karogonitte Hills have been known to tame the spider, and even ride it as a steed in raids.”

  He looked at me.

  “Then you’re saying....”

  “...that this creature has some kind of accomplice,” I finished for him again. “Somebody who opens doors for it and guides it.”

  I gestured to the pebbles on the map. He leaned over and looked at them, then looked back up at me.

  “It’s moving in a straight line.”

  “That’s right, Captain. And I bet you didn’t have any spider victims this morning, did you.”

  He shook his head, looking at me in wonder.

  “That’s because, if it continued on the same path, then it would have spent most
of its time last night trying to cross the Nur River undetected, at the Two Serpents Bridge. And then it would have likely holed up in the old abandoned ferry dock recessed under the bridge on the far shore. If you check,” I said as I placed another spider-marked pebble on the aforementioned bridge, “I’ll wager that none of the street muggers who use that old dock as a night shelter were seen today.”

  Drayton looked up from the map.

  “And when did you come to this conclusion?”

  “About a couple of hours before sundown. Don’t glare, Captain. Anybody who was in there had already been dead since before dawn. And what was I to do? Take the time to hunt you down and tell you the giant roof-hopping tarantula you don’t believe in was sleeping under a bridge down by the river?”

  “So you just did nothing?”

  “No, Captain. I did do something. But I take it from your current outrage that you now believe me about the spider?”

  For a moment, he stared at me as he leaned over the table. Then he exhaled with a short laugh.

  “Well done, Mr. Cargill. The truth is, I’m not sure what to believe at the moment. But I admit you have gone to a lot of trouble, and have done a very good job of supporting what is still essentially an outlandish theory”

  “Thank you, Captain. I shall take that as a complement.”

  “But you have still not answered a crucial question, ‘Problem Number Three,’ if you like. And that question is, ‘why’? What possible reason would anybody have to import a monster such as this and turn it loose in our city?”

  I shrugged.

  “I have no answer to that one, Captain. Nevertheless, that spider is out there. And tonight, I’m going to try and catch it, so to speak.”

  “What?”

  I nodded toward the spyglass.

  “I intend to see it, Captain. Why don’t you spend the evening with me and see if it turns up.”

  “And how do you intend to do this?”

  I pointed to the map.

  “If it continues in its current path, it will have to cross South Caravan Road tonight. Since the caravan road is a lot wider than the other streets, there are only two possible places in the area it can cross without coming down into the street itself. One is at the old Second Wall Gatehouse, the next is at that fancy covered footbridge that joins the two sides of the Imperial Market.”

  Drayton looked up from the map at me in alarm.

  “The City Watch uses that gatehouse for a barracks. There are going to be at least a couple of watchmen on that roof!”

  I nodded.

  “Which is why it will attempt to cross at the Imperial Market footbridge. Remember, Captain, this thing has been trying to avoid detection. It hasn’t had any reason to change tactics. Sometime between the midnight bells and three hours afterwards, that spider is going to show up somewhere. And this time I know where that ‘somewhere’ is going to be.” I tapped the bridge on the map. “And when it arrives, I’m going to have a little surprise waiting for it.”

  ***

  At midnight, the temples of Lucerna, Eddos and the Order of the Silent March all rang their low bells.

  The moon had risen much higher in the sky, and the lights of the city were mostly dark. I lit two large, red paper lanterns and told Drayton the time had come to douse the other patio lanterns.

  With a yawn, he set aside the copy of Vandall’s Defense of the Second Wall and snuffed the two lanterns hanging by the patio door. I rolled up the map, set it with the other two manuscripts, and then put out the last regular lantern. In the dim red light, we settled in and began our watch of the city below us.

  “So, Mr. Cargill, now that it is far too late for me to run down there and undo whatever deviltry you have committed, would you care to enlighten me on what is about to happen?”

  “It’s really nothing all that dramatic, Captain. I merely had a pyrotechnic device that I bought from an alchemist friend placed on the bridge’s roof.”

  “You what?”

  I ignored his outburst and continued.

  “Then I constructed some simple pressure switches and had them placed between the roof of the bridge and some of the support beams, and attached them to the fuse of the device. If anything weighing over an average man gets on that bridge’s roof, it will set off the device.”

  He stared at me in alarm.

  “It’s okay, Captain. The device is merely a very bright flare, which will illuminate the area for about twenty to thirty seconds.”

  “And which watchman gets the job of removing this trap of yours tomorrow?”

  “Captain, if it doesn’t go off tonight, I will remove it myself. Does that satisfy you?”

  Drayton settled back and yawned. “I suppose that will do, Mr. Cargill. It’s the least you could do for keeping me up all night, although I thank you again for an excellent dinner. So, assuming this monstrosity of yours exists, how long do you think this will take?”

  “Well, I’m guessing it doesn’t even start moving until after the midnight bells. Then it probably moves at a slow creep to avoid...”

  Of course, that’s when the trap went off.

  A brief loud whistle and a sudden glow of bright green light caused us to automatically turn and look down toward the town. The alchemist’s flare had worked beautifully, and even at somewhere around a half mile away, it created an easily visible, large green circle of illumination that cast everything into sharp relief.

  And there it was.

  The spider turned out to be even bigger than I had imagined.

  It had its front legs raised and was backing away from the green flare, temporarily blinded. The thing’s size startled me, its leg span easily fifteen to twenty feet in a normal walking position. That span would be much bigger if they were extended. I had a hard time imagining how it managed to fit through Madame Vedure’s door. It must have been a tight squeeze.

  As I stared transfixed, it retreated with surprising delicacy back to the market roof. Once there, to my utter astonishment, the monster turned in our direction and reared in what looked like an attack position. I felt an enormous sense of hateful rage directed at me, causing me to wince and step backwards. Then, in an instant, the thing scuttled along the rooftops beside the road and disappeared into the blackness.

  It moved very, very fast.

  The green light sputtered and died, and the area descended back into darkness.

  Drayton wheeled toward me in the now dim red light. He was grinning from ear to ear.

  “By the Gods! Did you see that! It’s real!” he exclaimed, his voice loud with excitement. “You were right, Mr. Cargill! I absolutely apologize for giving your opinions such short shrift. I was wrong, and you were absolutely right! What do you propose we do next?”

  At another time, I would have marveled at how quickly Drayton’s mood could transform. At the moment, though, I was too busy calculating the expanse of blackness between my house and where the bridge had been illuminated, visualizing how fast that spider had moved.

  This hadn’t worked out at all like I had expected.

  The damn thing had seen me!

  Somehow it had looked across over a half mile of city, ignored thousands of other houses, and seen me!

  And it had been alone.

  No rider, no trainer, nobody leading it along like a domesticated animal. This thing was somehow more than that.

  And it was coming to pay me a visit.

  “I propose we get inside the house—very fast!” I blurted as I gathered up the map and manuscripts.

  “Do you suppose we could spot him with the spy glass even though it’s dark again?”

  I stopped briefly in the door to see Drayton fiddling with the spyglass and trying to train it downhill to see if he could see anything. Even though he had utterly destroyed the life I had built for myself, I could not leave him to this kind of fate. Whoever else this man was, he was no Crayden Cole.

  “Captain, in just a minute or two, you’re going to be able to spot it fa
r too easily for comfort. I don’t know how, but I think it spotted us, too. And it is very, very angry about being exposed. Grab that spyglass and follow me to the basement!”

  “Mr. Cargill...”

  “Now, Captain! It...is...coming!”

  I had done my best for him.

  I ran into the bedroom, grabbed a small sack that appeared to lie discarded in the corner amongst some old clothes, and flew back toward the stairs. A quick check of the mental countdown in my head revealed time was disappearing at a terrifying rate. Then Drayton collided with me as he came in the door from the patio and we both went down in a tangle of limbs.

  Cursing, we struggled back to our feet and launched ourselves down the stairs.

  I raced down to the first floor, skirted through the sitting room, ran through the kitchen, and yanked open the trap door into the cellar. A lifetime of having to be ready to move on a moment’s notice had made me cautious, and I had practiced every escape route in the dark until I knew them like the back of my hand.

  I could hear the captain stumbling and swearing through the dark behind me, struggling with the tripod legs of the spyglass.

  There was a loud noise outside and the entire house shook. The spider had arrived. The thing now crashed around on the upper patio.

  Without saying a word, I strode back to the captain, grabbed his hand and led him to the trap door.

  I cupped my hand over his ear and whispered, “Down!”

  He clambered down the ladder into the dark.

  Through the nearest kitchen window, I saw one of the red lanterns that had been on the patio go flying into the back garden. My new guest was definitely unhappy. Only a couple of seconds later what dim light that came through the window was blacked out as something huge moved over it. Eight feet away, the large double back doors exploded inward.

  The damn thing knew where I was!

  Four black, hairy legs thrust themselves through the door and spread out against the floor and walls. I could have put my hand on the leg braced on the wall nearest me as it started pulling itself through the back door. The door frame creaked and there was a quiet hissing noise as it swiftly slid its furry body into the room. At the same time, it contorted itself to turn toward me and bring its massive fangs to bear.