The Black Reckoning

by John Stephens

  “Or food,” Emma muttered.

  Michael’s eyes seemed to have doubled in size, and his voice shook. “None of this was in the Countess’s memories.”

  “No,” Gabriel said. “They would have come after. Where do we go?”

  Michael didn’t respond, so Emma took his hand and stepped in front of him, forcing him to look at her. “Michael, we can’t stay here. Where do we go?”

  Michael took a deep breath, then pointed his flashlight at the base of the cavern, the trembling beam illuminating the mouth of a large tunnel that wormed its way deeper into the black rock. “There.”

  “Good,” Emma said. “Now come on. I’ll hold your hand.”

  And the two of them led Gabriel and Kate down a rough pathway that snaked along the wall to the bottom of the cavern. It was slow going avoiding the webs, and once Michael’s foot caught on a strand and it twanged like piano wire, setting the entire structure humming and the spiders’ bodies quivering and shaking. The children and Gabriel, his sword out and ready, all froze, hardly breathing, watching….

  But the quivering finally ceased, and the spiders did not stir.

  Shortly afterward, they reached the base of the cavern. The spiders were now all above them, their shadows wavering in the torchlight.

  “Don’t look at them,” Emma whispered to her brother.

  Michael held her hand even more tightly and nodded at the mouth of the tunnel. “The portal’s just down at the end. Not far.”

  There was more webbing in the tunnel, but no more spiders. The children and Gabriel moved slowly, careful to avoid the strands, now getting down on their hands and knees to crawl under a web, now having to step over a cable. The floor of the tunnel was littered with old bones, mostly, the children hoped, of sheep. Here and there they saw the mouths of other tunnels, all of them latticed with webs, but Michael kept them going straight.

  Emma waited to feel that pull in her chest that Michael and Kate had spoken of, but still she felt nothing.

  The tunnel doglegged to the left, and as they rounded the corner, Michael said, “We’re almost there. I have to tell you something—”

  But then, for the second time, Gabriel stopped them.

  “Do not move.”

  The end of the tunnel was perhaps twenty yards farther on, and as Emma looked up, she finally did feel something in her chest. Only it was not the pull of the missing book. It was panic, utter and complete panic. Covering the end of the tunnel was a web, and in the middle of the web was by far the biggest spider they had yet encountered. Its body was made of two enormous segmented pods. Its legs were spread out like the buttresses of a cathedral. It had not one set of fangs but three, each tusk at least a yard long.

  “But that’s”—Michael’s voice rose to the point of hysteria—“where the opening to the portal is!”

  Gabriel grunted, as if to say, “Of course.”

  “You mean,” Kate said, “we have to go through that…thing to get to the portal?”

  “Not ‘we’…,” Michael said, turning to face his sisters. “That’s what I was going to tell you. Emma, you have to go. Alone.”

  “What?!” Kate’s voice echoed off the tunnel walls.

  Michael spoke hurriedly. “It’s like Wilamena told me. The living can’t pass into the world of the dead. But the Keeper of the Book of Death can. The Countess knew that. That’s how she knew she was hiding the book somewhere only Emma could get to it, how she knew it’d be safe!” He looked at Emma and his eyes were filled with regret. “I’m so sorry. I wish there was some other way. I wish we could all go, or that I could go! I would! You have to believe me!”

  Emma said nothing. From the moment Michael had said that she would have to go into the world of the dead alone, she’d felt the strongest sense of déjà vu, as if she had been here before, had known this was going to happen. She wasn’t even upset.

  Not surprisingly, it was Kate who objected.

  “No! That doesn’t make any sense!”

  “Kate,” Michael said, glancing nervously at the spider, “could you maybe keep your voice down….”

  “How did the Countess hide the book in the world of the dead if she couldn’t take it there herself? Explain that.”

  “She went as far as she could,” Michael said, “to the edge of the portal, and summoned a spirit from that world. She gave it the book, then went back to the throne room, lay down, and died.”

  “Why didn’t she get the book back after she died?” Emma asked.

  “I don’t know,” Michael said. “I only have her memories from when she was alive.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Kate said, and Emma could see she was becoming more and more set and determined. “It’s obvious the Countess is trying to split us up. Emma’s not going anywhere alone. How can you even suggest it?”

  “Honestly?” Michael said, growing agitated himself. “How can you be against it? I was in the Countess’s memories. I’ve seen what the Reckoning can do! You’ve seen it too. The Dire Magnus showed you on the boat in Cambridge Falls. He showed you the world on fire! That’s what he’ll do if he gets the book! We have to stop him!”

  “That doesn’t—”

  “I don’t want Emma to go any more than you do! I wish I could go in her place! But this is the only way!”

  “No. I made a promise to Mom to protect you both. I can’t let her go.”

  Then Michael said, “Really, Kate, it’s not up to you, is it?”

  Kate opened her mouth to respond, but nothing came out. It was a strange moment to happen in that place, but Emma had been noticing how much older Michael had seemed, how the balance of power between him and Kate had become more equal in the past days. It had been a subtle, gradual change. Now he was saying definitely that Kate no longer had to, or got to, make all the decisions. At the same time, Emma understood that she was not yet a part of their club of adulthood, that Michael was simply supporting her in this one thing. He was stepping up beside Kate, while Emma remained where she was.

  Still, it mattered that he believed she could do this.

  Michael pulled his dwarfish knife from his belt and handed it to her. “You might need this.”

  “Thank you.” As she took it, she looked directly at him, not worrying about the tears she could feel gathering in her eyes, letting him know what his words had meant.

  He nodded, and Emma turned to her sister.

  “I’m sorry, Kate. Michael’s right; I have to go.”

  “Emma…” Kate reached for her hand. “There has to be another way. Give us some time to think. Please.”

  Emma shook her head. “It’s too late. Some of the Reckoning is already in me. I have to see this through.”

  Before Kate could say anything more, there was a sound, something between a shout and a roar echoing down the tunnel. All four of them turned.

  “What…was that?” Michael said.

  “Quiet,” Gabriel said.

  Then they heard it, faint but steadily building, a clicking and snapping and hissing, and they looked up and saw the silvery-gray webbing that stretched above them vibrating furiously. The children and Gabriel turned back, following the trembling to the end of the tunnel. They turned almost slowly, as if knowing what they would see but wanting to delay the moment of seeing it as long as possible. The great spider’s head was raised, and it was staring down at them with huge, glittering eyes. Three sets of fangs opened wide.

  Gabriel shouted, “Run!”

  They bolted toward the main cavern, making no attempt now to avoid the webs, the old strands ripping from the walls, clinging to their arms and legs. They ran toward the cries and yells and clicking and hissing, while behind them, the giant spider charged forward, its approach heralded by the pounding of its legs on the rock, the snapping of its jaws. Kate shouted that she could use the Atlas, she could take them away—and knowing what that would mean, Emma realized what she had to do.

  —

  Gabriel had charged ahead, cutting a path
through the webs with his sword, perhaps not hearing Kate’s cry about the Atlas. “This way!” he shouted. “Quickly!” And he led them down smaller, twisting side tunnels, clearly hoping the great spider would be unable to follow. Then, with no warning, they emerged from a tunnel and found themselves at the edge of the main cavern. They were covered in strands and wisps of old webbing, so that they looked like ghouls that had escaped from their graves, but they paid that no mind. They simply stopped and stared.

  In the middle of the cavern, screaming and flailing about and tangled up in webs, were three giants. The children recognized Sall, Willy’s sister, waving about a torch—which was not so much a torch as an entire uprooted tree, the branches of which had been lit on fire—and vainly trying to stomp on and kill the dozen or so spiders that were crawling all over her. And there were two other giants as well, both of whom Kate recognized from Big Rog’s feast, a red-faced, googly-eyed giant and a squat, bald giant. They too had burning trees, but they also had clubs and were using both trees and clubs to swat at the spiders as they were attacked and swarmed, all the time screaming at the tops of their lungs.

  Just then, an enormous spider landed on top of the bald giant’s head, and the giant shrieked, “Get it off! Get it off!” and the other, somewhat goofy-looking giant lifted his club and smashed the spider, and the other giant’s head in the process. The bald giant dropped senseless to the floor and was immediately covered by spiders, who began wrapping him in webs even as the other giant went on clubbing both the spiders and the body of his friend.

  Then Michael said, “It’s not following us.”

  “What?” Kate said.

  “The big spider, it’s not following us anymore.”

  He was shining his light down the tunnel, and Kate looked back the way they had come and saw that the tunnel was empty.

  “Wait—” Kate said, suddenly frantic. “Where’s Emma?”

  For Emma, it was now apparent, was not with them.

  “She must have dropped back,” Gabriel said. “I did not see.”

  But before Kate could do or say anything else, Michael was lifted into the air. Gabriel leapt for him, but Michael was already too high, raised aloft by the forelegs of a gigantic spider. Michael screamed, and Kate was reaching into herself for the magic to stop time, when something smashed down on the spider from above, crushing it into a wet glob. Released, Michael fell to the ground. Kate ran to him; he was shaking with fear and shock.

  “Michael!”

  “I’m…I’m…” was all he could get out.

  A voice boomed, “You two all right, then?”

  Willy stood above them, holding a flaming tree in one hand and what looked like a mace in the other. He had blood on the side of his head, but looked otherwise unharmed.

  “Where’s the wee-est one?”

  “Down…the tunnel,” Kate said. “She…”

  Behind Willy, a dozen giants carrying torches and clubs were thundering into the cavern, leaping down to crush the spiders as they landed, rescuing Sall and the red-faced giant, both of whom were almost completely covered in a scrambling mass of legs and fangs. And the spiders seemed to sense the danger and made to flee, but the giants were after them, hitting them—and frequently hitting each other—with enormous blows from their clubs.

  “Seems Big Rog don’t hold to the traditions of single combat,” Willy said. “All four of ’em ganged up on me and whacked me on the head. And they must’ve seen me moving the dais back ’cause when I came to, I seen they’d scuttered down here. Sorry about that.”

  “But—who’re all these other giants?” Michael said.

  “Oh yeah. Turned out that hearing how Big Rog was coming to beat my brains in, everyone else had one a’ them epiphany things. Decided it was time to get back to some a’ what we giants used to be. Reclaim our lost dignity. They found me on the floor a’ the throne room. Now we’re clearing these spiders out of our city, ain’t we?”

  As he said this, he swung his mace and obliterated a spider that was escaping along the cavern wall.

  Kate didn’t wait to hear any more. Without saying anything to Michael, she turned and ran back down the tunnel, following the path Gabriel had cleared, while behind her Willy said:

  “Where’s Big Rog, then? I owe him a lump.”

  —

  Michael’s knife sliced easily through the web at the back of the cave, but Emma found that the web gummed the edge and she had to keep stopping to pull off the gooey, prickly strands.

  In truth, she was amazed she was still alive.

  When she and her brother and sister and Gabriel had rounded the corner, she’d thrown herself onto the ground, turned off her flashlight, and covered her head. As the footsteps of the others had sped away, every part of her body had screamed for her to get up, but then it was already too late. She’d heard the spider coming closer, and she pressed herself into the rock, her face in a pool of dank, foul-smelling water, and closed her eyes. It had been a terrifying few moments, lying there as the great spider had passed over her, its metallic legs striking the rock floor only inches from her head. But then she’d looked up to see its silhouette disappear around the bend, and she’d risen and raced back the other way.

  Now, little by little, she cut away the webbing, revealing a smaller, person-sized tunnel going back into the rock wall. She shone the flashlight into it, but the beam couldn’t penetrate the darkness. She had the oddest sense that the tunnel had been waiting for her. That the entire reason it had come into being was so she could pass through. She took a step forward and gasped.

  It was that sudden: one step and there it was, just as Michael had said, a hook in her chest, pulling her forward. Any doubts she’d had that this was the right course, the only course, vanished. But she hesitated. She sensed that she was on the cusp of something irrevocable, that if she took just one step farther, she would be leaving behind not just her brother and sister, not just the world of the living, but in some fundamental way, she would be leaving behind her own self, that if she managed to get the book and make it back to the other side, she would be different than she now was.

  That, as much as anything else, scared her.

  “Well, well, well. Look what we have here!”

  Emma turned. Big Rog stood behind her, holding a burning tree in a thumbless hand that was wrapped in a dirty, bloody bandage. His other hand held an iron-studded club. His eyes were wild and murderous.

  “Knew I’d catch you. No one gets away from Big Rog! Least of all ’is dinner. So what’s so special down here? What’s it you’re all looking for? Gold? Treasure? What?”

  “Nothing like that.” Emma heard her own voice, calm, even cold. “There’s a portal here. It takes you to the world of the dead.”

  “How very NOT interesting! But the only place you’re going is in me mouth! And we’ll see if you can go predicting a fella’s death then, eh?!”

  “I don’t have to predict your death.”

  “And why’s that?”

  “ ’Cause you’re gonna die right now.”

  “Oh, and who’s gonna kill me? You?”

  “No.” And Emma pointed over the giant’s shoulder. “She is.”

  Big Rog turned, and when he did, the great spider, which had been clinging to the ceiling just behind him, landed full on the giant’s face. Big Rog fell over backward, screaming, dropping his torch and club, scrabbling to pull off the spider as it plunged its fangs into his throat again and again. Emma thought the creature’s fangs must’ve been coated in poison, for she could see the giant growing weaker by the second as the spider’s legs locked fast around his face.

  When he was still, the spider neatly lifted Big Rog up off the floor and spun her silk around and around him, encasing him in silvery-gray thread. In a moment, Big Rog was wrapped up neatly in a cocoon, and the spider dragged him off down a side tunnel.

  Emma watched it all without moving. Then, as she began to turn:

  “Emma!”

  Ka
te appeared around the corner, Michael just behind her, her torch and his flashlight bobbing in the darkness.

  “Stop!”

  But Emma had to go—she had to find the book. And she could feel it still, pulling her onward. She wanted to tell Kate and Michael that she loved them, that she would see them again, but there was no time. She took three steps into the tunnel and stopped. She looked back. The cavern, Kate, and her brother were gone. There was only a rock wall. The portal had done what it had been built for. The Keeper had passed through. “Okay,” Emma said quietly. And she turned back around, to where the tunnel still stretched away into darkness, and walked on, into the world of the dead.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Refugees

  “Come,” Gabriel said, and led them close to the wall of the throne room.

  The thick layer of dust that had blanketed the floor had been stirred up by the stomping of the giants, but Gabriel pointed to a set of human-sized footprints that proceeded through an untouched section.

  “Those belong to the Secretary. I would know his tread anywhere.”

  Kate looked at the footprints and thought of the sniveling, scraggly-haired, utterly ruthless, deeply unhygienic servant of the Countess. Kate had done her best not to think about the man at all in the past year—even his memory was unpleasant—but she forced herself to do so now, though all she really wanted was to go back into the cavern, past the giants who were chasing down the last of the spiders, and to the tunnel where Emma had walked into the world of the dead. But she knew that she would find only a solid rock wall.

  Emma was gone.

  “No doubt it was he who placed the rose petals and candles around the body of the Countess,” Gabriel went on. “I believe he was here in the past forty-eight hours.”

  Willy had sent several giants out to clear the cobwebs from the palace windows, and sunlight now streamed into the throne room, transforming the gloom and revealing the stark, awesome beauty of the chamber.

  Kate saw none of it.

  “So where did he go?” Michael asked.