by Adrian Cole
Grabulic swallowed, preferring no to answer. He had already earned the scorn of too many gods himself. Though the Voidal had pronounced him friend, and did not have the power to kill him, the Songster knew only too well the deceit of the words of gods.
“For now,” said the Voidal, “let me hear you sing and play. Let us put aside the despair of this wretched place and of our purloined destinies. Call back the unfortunate manlings. Bring them all to us and let us drink the forgetfulness your art can give us.”
Grabulic was much pleased by this, hastening to gather his audience. Now that Kulkurakk and his people had been assured that the Voidal was here to intercede with the Spydron for their deliverance (as Grabulic swore by all the other gods that he was) they were charmed to hear more of the incomparable Songs of Life and Death.
In the castle of the Spydron there was no light and day, only the eternal gloom and chill of the convoluted tunnels that wound in manic spirals ever across each other from one far reach to another, like the inside of a monstrous fruit, eaten away. The ratlings had no light save the dim glow of phosphorescence radiated by the moss and mould of the lower pits, while in the remote and lofty vaults, the spiderlings neither had nor needed light. Only the manlings in the middle terraces used torches, old bones soaked in oil that burned slowly. For their artificial night they were content to find an unlit tunnel or hole wherein they snatched what sleep they required.
Grabulic and the Voidal both found a guarded place and sat. Kulkurakk was always near, constantly seeking proof that the two outsiders meant to help his tribe. Since their private talk, he insisted on being present at all times. To appease their impatience, he feigned sleep, but one white orb was only half closed. The Voidal was glad of rest, for his dreams often prompted knowledge.
When darkness had all but blotted everything out, Kulkurakk was alarmed by a slight movement and sound. His ears had long been attuned to the most minor of shufflings and scurryings, for they could easily betoken the prying passage of an enemy, always eager to drag the manlings away to a grisly death. Kulkurakk opened both eyes and watched his two charges with deep trepidation. But they were both silent and unmoving. From the shadow of the Voidal, however, a smaller shadow detached itself, quickly melding in with the pitch of the tunnels.
Kulkurakk leapt up with a hoarse cry, casting his weapon after the retreating thing. Light was struck up at once and guards rushed in, spreading the green glow. In its radiance both the Voidal and the Songster were awake, staring at the cursing Kulkurakk.
“What is wrong?” snapped the Voidal.
“Spiderling! Sneaking through the dark, crawling over you to see what manner of intruder you are!” He searched in vain for the corpse of the tiny spy, for of it there was no sign.
The Voidal nodded as he rose. “I have met the ratlings. Now both your enemies know I am here.” As he spoke, he slipped his right arm inside his nightweb shirt. As he did so, Grabulic turned away to conceal his great surprise, for he had seen that the right hand of the dark man was absent.
Just as the ratlings had their silent methods of communication, adapted over the ages in the insalubrious castle, and just as the manlings had developed vision through eyes that seemed blind, so did the spiderlings have their own ways of communicating, through telepathic impulses. Each tiny spiderling transmitted to the larger overlords, while these sent an endless stream of impulses to the brain of the huge Arachniderm, the Spider Mother, whose web sprawled through each and every tunnel of her kingdom, each strand a road to her terrible door.
In deep gloom the great Arachniderm curled up in a trelliswork of threads, thick, sticky cables that suspended her over the abyss of her kingdom. Around her the spiderling overlords moved gently, anxious for news of all that transpired outside the web, but mindful not to interfere with the dreams of the Spider Mother. They were beginning now to receive messages from the countless tiny spiderlings that made up the minions of the community.
From far below came the word: something harmful approached, some remorseless enemy bent on death. Already the tiny spiderlings told how they were amassing at the lower reaches of their domain, trying to stay the advance of this enemy. It was a spider, yet not a spider. When it became evident that even a great host of tiny spiderlings could not halt the nameless invader, the strongest of the Arachniderm’s guards, he that was known to his kind as Zithadrl, scuttled on his eight thick legs down to meet the challenge.
In a black corridor he came upon the terrible struggle. Here there were countless thousands of spiderlings, a solid wall of them, a veritable sea of crawling, undulating creation; yet they could not halt the steady advance of the enemy. Zithadrl saw it was a single entity, no bigger than the hand of a manling, and as the fat spiderling overlord studied this thing, he saw that it had but five legs, though it moved like a spiderling. Covered in a black leather skin, it clawed and strangled its way through the hundreds of bodies that tried to smother it: behind it stretched a hideous trail of carnage where numerous broken and twitching spiderlings had been smashed aside.
Zithadrl, realising the futility of his minions’ efforts against so irresistible a foe, bade them desist. Then he alone squared up to the intruder, spreading his eight legs across the tunnel. Without halting for a moment, the disembodied hand came on. Zithadrl attacked, but the thing moved with such speed that it could not be checked. Zithadrl felt one of his limbs wrenched and snapped, then another and another. Soon he was upon his back, with this diabolical creature tearing at his vitals, ripping and clawing.
The spiderlings scurried forward en masse, trying again to smother the enemy with sheer numbers, but to no avail. In a few minutes, Zithadrl had been destroyed, his limbs broken and folded in, his carcass leaking fluid from a score of wounds. The frightful Nemesis brushed away the spiderlings easily and advanced, weaving ever upward.
Quickly the word of Zithadrl’s slaughter had reached the mind of the Spider Mother and at once she stirred herself on the swaying fronds of her web. Her other principal guardians had come rushing in to surround her, but she chose to confront this vile intruder herself. In a dream she had seen the eight and the five. Long had it been since she had experienced a real battle and her killing instinct gushed through her veins in anticipation. There in her huge web she waited, fuelled by a rare lust.
The coming of the enemy was heralded by an inrush of spiderlings, for they fled from it now in their multitudes. A boiling tide of the tiny creatures spilled over into the great chamber beneath the web of the Spider Mother, filling it with living matter. She waited patiently, throbbing with ungodly lust. Soon the enemy entered the choked vault.
The Spider Mother tried to analyse the thing. It was a hand, a manling hand, small and puny. How could this ridiculous thing have engendered such mass terror? The hand turned, and a long forefinger pointed upward, directly at the Arachniderm. At once, outraged by such blasphemy, the bloated overlords raced down the cables of web to crush the hand in a single assault, but before they reached it, they pulled up, bristles quivering in indecision.
For as they watched, the hand began to grow, taking on grim proportions.
Terrible, demonic sorcery must be at work, for the wriggling member had reached the size of the Spider Mother herself, dwarfing the overlords. The latter decided that it must be a scion of the Spydron itself, for nowhere else in the castle were there such powers. Thus they held back, for no one defied the Spydron.
Slowly the huge hand reached out for the cables and began to pull itself up towards the Arachniderm. The Spider Mother was still, knowing that this would be no normal contest of power. If this hand was, as her minions believed, a servant of the Spydron, then the outcome was in the hands of the Spydron. But if it were merely an intruder—
Moving quickly to maintain her advantage, the Arachniderm rushed down upon the hand. She had immense legs, bristling with wire-like hair, and her mottled underbelly was thick with fat, creased with sickly folds of skin. She hissed as she scuttled downward, and below
the spiderlings rolled back, afraid of the grim confrontation.
The huge hand rose up and plunged into the attack, both creatures grappling, locking. They rolled to and fro on the cobweb, shaking each other violently in a blur of movement. The whole framework shook to the colossal struggle, and in places the moorings in the stone walls began to tear loose. Into the palm of the hand the Arachniderm thrust her fatal sting, discharging gallons of poison that would have killed a human army, but the hand evinced no sign of injury.
An automaton, it fought on, indestructible, indefatigable and unstoppable. More cables ripped from the shuddering walls as the two titanic forms writhed and hurled to and fro. A rending sound split the cavern and suddenly the whole of the great web burst to cast the two locked antagonists down upon the cold embrace of stone. Four of the Spider Mother’s legs smashed to pulp beneath her. Before she could recover, the hand encircled her grotesquely misshapen body. And squeezed.
The spiderlings and overlords realised the outcome: they could do nothing. The giant hand was crushing the life from the hissing Arachniderm. The awful pressure increased, the power of a blood-crazed god, and the insides of the huge spider queen burst out through her ruptured skin and between the iron fingers. It was soon over, the Spider Mother mangled beyond repair, hideously crushed. The murderous hand drew back from its frightful triumph, beginning at once to shrivel back to its original size.
In the middle terraces, a lone figure stood at the gaping corridor that sloped upwards in the fashion of a hungry maw. The Voidal, cloak wrapped about him, studied the incline. Behind him there was movement: he swung round, ready to meet a challenge. But it was the Songster who materialised from the gloom.
“Not asleep?” he called. Behind him were Kulkurakk and a dozen others. Evidently they had prodded Grabulic here, for Kulkurakk’s club was close to the Songster’s back.
The Voidal shook his head. “I’ve slept enough.”
“They made me come,” spluttered Grabulic. “They won’t wait any longer. You must act soon.”
The Voidal nodded. As he did so, something scurried out of the dark tunnel. Kulkurakk took a step forward and made ready to bludgeon the spiderling that ran for the legs of the Voidal, but the dark man bent down, obscuring his aim. Only Grabulic caught sight of the brief motion as the Voidal snatched up the thing that had come to him.
The Voidal turned, holding out his right arm. Grabulic gasped and stood back, for in the gloved hand were a mass of pulped spiderlings. The hand was again one with the arm.
“The horror above you is no more,” the Voidal told Kulkurakk and his followers. “The spiderlings no longer have a queen. Their Arachniderm is dead.”
Kulkurakk looked at the bloodied hand. “How do you know this?”
“The Spider Mother’s blood is on this hand.”
“He does not lie,” said Grabulic.
But neither Kulkurakk nor his people looked convinced.
“Go to your Chamber of Bone,” the Voidal told them. “Secure your doors and wait for me there. I have other hellish work yet. My dreams were full of terrible things. I understand what I must do. You, Songster, you go with them.”
“The ratlings?” said Grabulic. “But you cannot mean to go alone?”
“I will not be alone. The spiderlings have a new master.”
No sooner had he spoken than there came a whispering from the slope up into darkness. The first of the myriad spiders appeared. At once Kulkurakk, Grabulic and the manlings turned and fled, leaving the Voidal in the swelling flood of the spiderlings. The dark man raised his right hand and pointed to another tunnel, leading downwards.
He led the descent to the realms of the ratlings, his obedient army following.
Xalganash of the Thousand Teeth roared and smote one of his underlings bitterly so that the huge black rat span and crashed into a wall of the lower caverns. The bulk of the master quivered with rage. Where was the promised food from the last raid upon the middle terraces? Where were the succulent corpses of the manlings? Where were the libations of blood? Xalganash’s underlords cowered before his stentorian outcries. They had tried to explain that the ratling host was afraid of something: the grim intruder they had seen, the one who walked without fear. Xalganash had shown his many teeth in a grimace of pathological fury. Very well, since he had fathered a brood of querulous cowards, he would lead them himself. They would rise up from the depths like bile and quaff their hunger upon the manlings, eradicating every last one of them.
Word that Xalganash himself was stirring from his nest to lead them quickly spread to the entire ratling horde, and in excitement and resurrected courage they prepared themselves, their ranks thick, choking the lower tunnels. Xalganash squeezed his huge carcass along the corridors, around him the air filled with squealing and squeaking as the host flowed, red eyes alight like those of devils from a forgotten hell. Up and up ran the living river of rat-flesh, Xalganash roaring, flexing his huge claws, eager to rend and rip.
Barely had this awful army come to the lower end of the middle terrace, when extraordinary sounds reached the alert ears of the front runners. Soon the coming of the amassed spiderlings was apparent. Xalganash received the news without fear: it was time the ratlings and spiderlings confronted each other and contested sovereignty of the castle. When he had killed the Spider Mother, long would he feed on the monstrous carcass!
Rounding a tunnel into a broad, flat-roofed chamber, the ratlings came upon the advancing spiderlings. Without a pause, the two forces rushed together like opposing thunderheads in a storm. They clashed with much noise, ratling teeth snapping, claws slashing, and spiderling poison jetting. A milling carpet of writhing life, feet deep, blocked the chamber. Frightful scramblings and gnawings churned the place into a maelstrom, creatures whirling in a lake of flesh around and around, hundreds smeared up against the black walls. Xalganash was set upon by a trio of stumbling spiderling overlords, all eager to fill him with venom. Yet his many teeth sliced them to strips of ragged flesh before they could do their worst.
As the walls of the chamber rang to the conflict, the incoming hordes raised the level of creatures, the dead and dying squashed under the blind and berserk fury of the battle. A number of tunnels ran from this broad chamber, some up, some down, others to unvisited extremes of the castle where few things stirred. In the mouth of one of these disused corridors stood the Voidal, watching the fantastical heavings of the swell of battle. As Xalganash eviscerated the last of the spiderling overlords, his huge red orbs alighted on the human figure. Instinctively he recognised his true enemy, as though the Spydron had whispered it in his ear. He forced his mighty bulk through the writhing mounds of the interlocked armies.
Seeing the rat monarch coming for him, the Voidal backed into the tunnel. He did not do so out of fear, for he was not without a strategy. Xalganash saw the hated man disappear into the dark chute and quickly reached the edge of the battle. Thousands of tiny spiderlings clung to him, but he ignored them, rushing after the Voidal, knowing the black figure had everything to do with recent events in the castle. A cold vault of night swallowed him. His huge claws scrabbled against stone, his ears picking up the sounds of retreating footfalls. On he plunged, certain of success.
At length he had to pause, coming as he did to the lip of an unfathomable canyon. It may only be yards deep, or plunge to the very bottom of the castle. Of the Voidal there was no sign. The great rat sniffed, but still could not detect the man. Yet there was something here. Strange distant sounds, issuing perhaps from the drop before him. Sucking, gurgling sounds. Water? A lost drain? Xalganash listened for a while, thinking the man must have plunged to his doom. Then he turned, deciding to go back to the battle, the waiting victory.
But behind him rose a black shape, an immense shadow, equal to his own bulk.
Five-legged, a mutated spiderling, it clenched into a fist and pounded at him like a ram, its rock-hard knuckles smashing into the rat’s bloated chest, caving in a dozen ribs and bones, rupturin
g organs. With a squeal of horror, Xalganash twisted backwards, claws raking the lip of the abyss. Then, with a final howl, the great beast plummeted into the eager darkness.
The Voidal abandoned the niche where he had secreted himself and stood above the yawning pit. He could see nothing, but he could hear clearly the smacking, drooling sounds of the Many Mouths as the invisible denizen of this Western Wall feasted on the obese form of the rat monarch. Something scuttled to the Voidal’s feet: he bent as though to retrieve a fallen glove. Then he made his silent, thoughtful way back to the middle terraces of the castle, by-passing the death throes of the two armies.
Kulkurakk opened the doors to the Chamber of Bone and admitted the Voidal. “What has happened?” said the manling, unable to conceal his agitation. Behind him the other manlings rushed forward like children.
“The ground trembled!” said another.
“What of the spiderling tide?” said Kulkurakk.
“They fight the ratlings to a standstill,” said the Voidal. “Neither army has a monarch. The Spider Mother and Xalganash are no more. The armies will soon cease their orgy of destruction and the remnants will scatter to all parts of the castle. I found the one I sought, and his name is Death.”
“What of us?” said Kulkurakk.
The Voidal’s expression was one of sadness. “I have considered your plight. There is a way out, shown to me in a dream.” He pulled his sword from its scabbard, and there came a faint sound, as of distant winds. “This is the Sword of Silence. I used it once to trap the elemental slaves of an evil monarch, so my dream told me. If you listen, you will hear the frustrated cries of the Screamers.”
But Kulkurakk and the others drew back, afraid. Only Grabulic stepped forward, clutching his beloved Layola.
“With this I can free you all,” said the Voidal. “But there will be a price, a reckoning.”
“Name it,” said Kulkurakk. “Already we owe you everything for your part in the scattering of our enemies.” The manlings shouted their agreement.