by Deck Davis
“It’s okay,” said Jake. “We’re not with them. The spiders. We’re not here to hurt you.”
“Just who in G’ydor’s hairy-brown-smile are you?” asked Faei, with more than a trace of hostility in her voice.
“Easy,” Jake told her. He didn’t want to cause a panic. “Don’t scare them.”
“Sorry,” said Faei. She corrected herself into a whisper, then leaned toward the prisoners. “Is that better? Okay. Just who in G’ydor’s hairy-brown-smile are you?”
It was the teenage boy who stepped forward as far as his cobweb chain would allow. He looked Jake’s age. Although Jake was a lean guy, this boy made him look bulky. He wore a long shirt that was once white but was now covered in dirt, and the sleeves sagged. Maybe it had fit him once, but he’d lost so much weight that he looked like he was wearing his father’s old shirt.
His physical condition was bad, but it was his face that stuck out. There was something familiar about it…did Jake recognize him? Had he met him before? It was impossible, but he just couldn’t shake the feeling.
The other adults and the child stayed against the wall, fear stricken and mute. Joke couldn’t help but feel bad for them.
“Do we have any rations left?” he asked Solly.
“A few strips of dried byzant meat.”
“Give it to them, will you?”
“That’s all our food,” said Faei.
“They need it a damn sight more than us.”
As Solly went to give their last remaining rations to the family, Jake eyed the teenager. The feeling of familiarity was burning in him now. It was like watching a movie and recognizing the actor, but not having the slightest clue what he’d been in. No matter how much he racked his brain, the answer eluded him. Unfortunately, Google couldn’t come to the rescue this time.
He decided to take a chance.
“Are you from earth?” he asked him.
The teenager, who had been mute like the rest of his family, found his voice.
“Earth? Is that on the mainland? We’re from Twin Spires,” he said. His voice was weak, as if he wasn’t used to speaking aloud.
Then, Jake noticed something. On the wall, next to the row of five metal loops that fixed their cobwebs chains in position, there was a sixth loop. This one was empty. The remnants of cobweb stuck to the metal indicated that until recently, someone else had been tied up here.
Something struck home. The glimmer of an answer. He looked at the teenager.
“What’s your name?” he asked him.
“Jendak,” answered the boy.
That was it. Of course! How could he have forgotten?
“And is your sister called Esmelda?” he asked.
At this he heard the ring of metal loops, and the three adults walked forward, their fear seeming forgotten.
“You know Esmelda?” asked the oldest of them, a man with pale, wrinkled skin and a beard that looked like it made his head too heavy for his malnourished neck to support.
“I met her,” said Jake. “She wanted me to tell you something. Well, the message was for you, actually, Jendak.”
The teen stepped forward eagerly, but the cobweb lashed him back. “What did she say? Where was she? Is she okay? Is she-”
“She got away,” said Jake. “Miles away from here. She seemed okay. Better than you guys, if I’m honest.”
“Had she eaten?” asked the old man.
“Was she wrapped up warm?” asked a woman, evidently the mother.
“She was a little skinny, but not too much. And she seemed okay. She told me that I had to tell you, something Jendak. I had to tell you that she made it. Esmelda made it.”
Tears welled on the Jendak’s face. He turned away from Jake, as if it was wrong to show his emotions, only to face his family. He turned away from them too, so that he was looking at the wall. In such a cramped cell, privacy was a rare thing.
“You better tell me what’s going on,” said Faei.
“I met a girl on the dead plains,” said Jake. “She looked like she’d been running. She told me that if ever met her brother, I had to tell him that she was okay. She must have escaped from here.”
They heard footsteps echo from way down the tunnel. Instinctively, Faei extinguished the flame on her bolt and plunged them into darkness.
“Stay quiet,” Jake said.
For a few seconds, all they heard were Jendak’s silent breaths. He was crying, Jake could tell that much. He wouldn’t make a show of pointing out by telling him to shut up, though. If they were quiet, they’d be okay.
The steps got louder. Eight of them tip-tapping along the dirt tunnel. That meant it was either four humans walking in perfect unison, or one spider. Not great either way.
The nearer they got to the room, the slower they walked. Were they heading here? Maybe it was time to check on the prisoners, or something. Or maybe they were just passing down the tunnel.
Jake moved back against the side wall and kept his dagger handy. Faei and Solly did the same. If anyone came in, they’d be able to ambush them.
The sounds were right outside now. He held his breath. Jendak breathed his sharp, crying breaths.
The steps stopped right outside the room. There was silence.
Jake’s heart pounded so loud he thought it would give them all away.
He swallowed and got ready to fight.
And then the footsteps started again. Soon, they trailed away.
When he was sure that they were alone, Jake stepped away from the wall. He heard Faei and Solly do the same.
“We need to get you guys out of here. How did Esmelda get free?” asked Jake.
The father answered. “They fed us on gruel. Not much, but enough to live on, even if we were dropping weight every day. Esmelda was always the clever little bugger. She realized that if you molded the girl together with spit and left it to dry out, it became tough as bone. So, every day, we gave her a portion of our gruel, and she made a tool. She used the wall to sharpen one of the edges, then sawed herself free. It took two days, but she managed it.”
“And why haven’t you guys tried that?” asked Jake.
“Since Esmelda escaped, they halved our rations as punishment. We get barely enough to live on.”
“Esmelda was going to come back for us,” said Jendak. “She went out to scout the tunnel, but then I heard her scream. That was the last we heard of her. All this time we thought…”
“We thought she was dead,” said the mother.
“She’s very much alive. Trust me,” said Jake.
Nobody said anything for a minute. Jake tried to imagine how scared they were. How terrified Esmelda must have been after she escaped from here, fleeing across Reaching Crest with the spider-people pursuing her. Everything about this was wrong. Why was the Watcher bringing people here? What did he want with them?
“I often wonder what happened to the lass,” said a voice behind them. It didn’t come from the prisoners, but Jake recognized it. “She’s the only one to ever escape, you know.”
The hairs on his arms stood up. He turned around to see Thotl stood in the tunnel beyond the room. The orange flicker of a lantern lit half his face, and left the other half in shadow. He still wore his smile, but it wasn’t friendly or infectious any more. Instead, it seemed mocking.
He looked behind him, made a clicking sound with his tongue, then nodded at Jake. Three spiders crawled into the room, one after the other, each as tall as Jake’s chest and half as wide, with long, spindly legs. Their faces were a freakish mix of human and arachnid.
Jake raised his dagger. As soon as he did, one of the spiders turned around and then shot cobwebs out of its behind. The webs wrapped around his wrist, getting tighter and tighter with each lashing. Soon, the pain was so much that he dropped his blade. Another web hit him in the chest, this time with enough force that he smashed into the wall behind him.
While he gasped for air, he could do nothing as the other spiders scuttled toward Faei and So
lly. Rather than shoot them with their webs, they did something else.
The spiders suddenly leapt on to Faei and Solly. Jake watched with horror as they opened their jaws around his friends’ necks, and then clamped them shut. Solly let out a scream that chilled Jake deep to his stomach; it was an inhuman sound, like it wasn’t the mage’s voice making it.
After one bite, the spiders scuttled away from Faei and Solly. Jake’s friends lay on the floor, limp and motionless. He willed them to get up, but they wouldn’t.
“Poison,” said Thotl. “The buggers carry a nasty batch of it in their venom sacks. Come on, kiddo. It’s time for you to meet the Watcher.”
Jake tried to move, but the webs held him in place. He was helpless as all three spiders turned to him and shot their webs at him, coating in more and more of the silk strands until he was completely cocooned. He started to feel faint. The webs squeezed his lungs and made it hard to breath. He dug with his fingers, but his arms were tight against his body.
He shouted, but the cobwebs muffled his voice.
There was nothing he could do. Everything was turning black. He felt dizzy. As much as he fought it, he lost consciousness.
Chapter Thirty-Three
He opened his eyes and found himself staring deep into a sea of darkness. This sense of utter black was different than that of the tunnels; there was something about it.
He realized that it was the tight webbing pressing against his face. He remembered seeing Thotl, and the spiders weaving their webs around him.
Claustrophobia began to worm its way into his thoughts. His chest tightened. His lungs struggled for air, even though he knew that he could breathe. If he couldn’t, he’d be dead. Despite the fog in his head, that logic seemed sound enough. He just needed to calm himself.
He heard noises from beyond his cocoon. The pattering of dozens of feet. Then even more, too many to count. It was coming from all around him, as if things were crawling over the walls, floors and roof. Then he heard voices.
“What do we do with him?”
“We? There’s no we now, Thotl. Your part is almost done. We have the blood, what else is there? Cut him loose.”
Boots thumped on the floor, getting louder as they approached him. His instincts told him to move, to get into a defensive position, but the web around him offered no freedom. There was nothing he could do but wait.
He heard a snapping sound. A man breathing just inches away from him. The cocoon slackened until parts of it fell away.
He saw lights. Orange, yellow and red torches glowing against cavern walls. He was in large, oval room. Spider-humanoids scuttled along the walls, jet black and looking like shadows until they crossed close to torches, where the flames illuminated their spider bodies. There were so many that the walls seemed to be wriggling.
Faei and Solly were against the wall way over on the far side of the room, bound by their wrists and ankles with spiderwebs. Faei’s face was pale and her eyes were shut. Solly was the same. What was wrong with them?
He remembered the spiders leaping on them and biting. The sickening clack of their teeth, following by the sounds of them puncturing soft skin. They’d been poisoned. Or in Solly’s case, poisoned again.
Two men were in the room with him. One of them, stood in front of him but backing away, was Thotl. He had a knife in his hand, and stray webs hung from the blade. Even now he wore a friendly smile on his face.
In the centre of the room was someone he’d never met before, but who he recognized all too well.
It was the man from the orb. The Watcher. He was old; older than Cason, even. He had leathery skin and black eyes. Little pits of darkness that absorbed the light. His hair was flat against his scalp, either by sweat or by grease. This was contrasted by the mutton chops on the side of his face, which were thick and curly. He had a horrible face; one that was hard to look at for too long.
Stood next to Thotl, the Watcher seemed tiny, and couldn’t have been over five feet tall. He had a round belly that boasted of lots of lavish dinners, which couldn’t have been further away from the gruel he fed his prisoners. He wore a flannel shirt and brown trousers. Not regular wizard garb, and definitely not the clothing of a man who cared about his appearance. He had a necklace around his neck, and various objects were threaded along the string; the dried foot of a small animal, a pentagon-shaped opal gem, teeth of various shapes and sizes.
“Welcome, my boy,” he said, and gave Jake a beaming smile. “I am Isaac Shackleton, the Watcher, the Spider Father. You’re no doubt wondering why I wished us to meet? Why our paths must cross thusly, two shadows meeting in the darkest cave under the blackest night, our destinies straying into a web sewn by fate?”
He paused for an answer. Everyone was silent; even the spiders stopped scuttling along the walls.
Jake cleared his throat.
“Nah,” he said.
“Thotl warned me about your attitude, boy,” said the Watcher. “You see my children on the walls? I have hundreds, little one. And some have attitudes like yours. I am well versed in dealing with upstart youths.”
“I heard you were a bit of an upstart yourself, Isaac. Didn’t you get thrown out of mage college for summoning a sex demon?”
Isaac gritted his teeth. “That is a vicious, and untrue, rumor.”
“You want to watch yourself,” said Thotl, “Isaac is sensitive about his expulsion.”
“I wasn’t expelled. I left.”
“Yeah, after you summoned a sex demon,” said Jake.
Jake cast his glance over to Faei and Solly. Neither of them had moved. He needed a plan, but what could he do? Well, he could move his arms and legs now, at least, since Thotl had cut him free. He wouldn’t get far if he attacked the Watcher. He needed a plan that didn’t result in his death.
“I’m guessing you want to go into a long speech about your plans,” he said. “But I’m not really interested. If you wanna tell me, go ahead, but get to the point, will you? I don’t have all day.”
The Watcher grinned. “I like a dagger-sharp attitude. Now we can talk like men. It is simple, young alchemist. I have learned how to open portals into the Land Beyond. Your land, actually. Though I don’t know what you call it.”
Jake remembered what Cason had tried to trick him into thinking Reaching Crest was called. “Cock Flaps, we call it.”
“A silly name, but nevertheless, I have opened portals to bridge our worlds. It is a matter of the most powerful magery to open one, even more so to keep it open. And beyond that, are more difficulties; once I open a portal, I have no idea where in Reaching Crest it has spawned, nor where exactly it leads.”
“You can make portals to earth…Cock Flaps, I mean… but you don’t know where they appear in Reaching Crest, or where they lead to after that?”
“That was my problem. No longer.”
Jake thought back to the portal he and Faei had found, the one that had opened into the middle of the ocean, and where a blue whale had slid out of. That must have been the Watcher’s doing. He could open portals back to earth, but he had no control over them.
Hang on…was that why a portal had opened in the warehouse he and Elliot were exploring? Seeing the griefer creature and following it down to the portal had made Jake think that this was some kind of destiny because of him losing his parents, but maybe that was wrong. Perhaps there was no higher plan for him, no good reason for him to be in Sarametis. He was only here because this orb stalking, spider-loving mage had been screwing around.
“This is why you are here,” said the Watcher. “With Cason’s alchemy and your blood, mixed with my rather tremendous magery, if I do say so myself, I can open portals here, in my house. Now, I can finally lead my children into another world. One where we will be accepted, where we won’t live in fear of being hunted.”
“Your children?”
“The spiders,” said Thotl, with resignation in his voice. “Keep up, will you?”
“The arachnid freaks are your chi
ldren? How? Did you bang a spider?”
“Love is fickle and offers no reasonings when it strikes,” said the Watcher. “My wife and I met and fell in love, and my magery allowed us to breed. But the people of Sarametis, those close-minded fools, won’t accept us.”
Jake took a step out of his cocoon. He did so warily, keeping an eye on Thotl. The tall man didn’t make a move against him. He chanced one more, small step, just enough to hear the rattle of potion vials in his pocket.
Good. They hadn’t searched him. He guessed there hadn’t been chance; the spiders had cocooned him, and the brought him here. Now, he needed to keep the Watcher talking while he thought of a plan.