Poison

by Chris Wooding

  When it was gone, Poison emerged again. “Come on,” she said. “That was only the beginning.” She picked up the loose string of silk that Bram had sheared off the main thread, and the others joined her.

  “Where’s Andersen?” Poison asked, keen that the cat would not give them away next time the spider appeared.

  “Over there,” said Bram, thumbing towards the shadows of the crevice. Andersen looked up with a faintly guilty expression, with four spider legs protruding from his mouth, still waving weakly.

  “Stay there,” Poison told him. Andersen didn’t need telling.

  They heaved again. This time the spider bolted out of its cave on the very first tug, and they dropped the string and hurriedly squeezed themselves back into the crevice just in time. The spider once more found itself without prey. As before, it sat motionless over the spot where the disturbance had come from, as if waiting for the phantom moth to reveal itself. Eventually, it gave up and retreated once more.

  It took them a dozen more times before the spider eventually quit. It was Peppercorn that first noticed it was slowing down, proceeding more cautiously on the fifth or sixth time, as if it suspected a trick was being played on it and it did not want to seem foolish. Once, it waited until they had stopped tugging and had decided that it was not going to come, then flashed out at lightning speed. They barely scrambled to safety in time. But after that, the spider had had enough. Whatever was causing the disturbance on that strand of the web, it was not food, and hence the spider was not interested. They tested it six more times after it had stopped emerging altogether, just to be certain. It was impossible to be too careful. Once they were out on the thread, they had nowhere to go; and if the spider came out for them, they would be dead.

  “I think it’s safe,” Poison said, though she was unable to keep a trace of doubt from her voice.

  But Peppercorn was shaking her head, trembling. Her nerves had been shot to pieces by dicing with the spider. “I’m not going!” she said. “I’m not going!”

  Poison laid a hand on her arm with uncharacteristic gentleness. There was something about Peppercorn that she could not place, something that made her feel protective rather than short-tempered. The girl was timid beyond belief, and painfully naïve, and yet instead of annoyance – which would be her usual reaction – Poison felt a sort of sympathy for her. Despite the fact that Peppercorn had done nothing to earn her favour, besides sheltering her from Maeb that first time, she liked the girl. She just couldn’t understand why.

  “You don’t have to go,” Poison said. “You came this far. That’s enough.” She turned her violet gaze on to Bram. “Nor you.” Bram took a breath to protest, but Poison cut him off. “I know what you’re going to say, but this is too dangerous to risk. Where’s the sense in us both getting eaten? Besides, you’re too heavy. On my own, I might be able to get by without attracting that thing’s attention. You’d set alarm bells ringing all over the web.”

  She had expected Bram to argue, but instead he let out a long sigh. He must have been genuinely afraid to allow himself to be persuaded so easily.

  “You do what you have to, Poison,” he rumbled.

  “If I get in trouble, I have the orb from the Phaerie Lord,” she reminded him.

  “And what will that do?” Bram asked. “You can’t trust a phaerie! He’d as soon see you dead as come back with that dagger. The orb could kill you as fast as that spider would! The phaeries are tricksters, Poison! And you’re placing your life in their hands.”

  “Well, I wish I had a choice,” Poison said. “I’ll be careful. I’m not suicidal, Bram.”

  Bram raised an eyebrow and looked towards the sinister edifice of Asinastra’s palace. “That’s open for debate,” he muttered.

  If she thought it had been bad in the house of the Bone Witch, this was worse. Poison had never experienced fear like she did when she first clambered on top of the great thread of webbing that ran from the wall of the mountain bowl to the palace of the Lady of Spiders. The raw helplessness overwhelmed her. She would have to crawl the whole length of the thread, hundreds of feet up, and if at any moment during that time the spider decided to emerge, she would meet a horrible and grisly death. Could she really go through with this, she wondered? Was it worth dying to try and save her sister’s life?

  Yet she found that it was not so much the thought of her baby sister that kept her going, but something else. A sense of something started that she had not finished. She had to keep going forward, because that was the only way left. On that day when she had chosen to leave Gull behind, she had set herself in motion, and nothing could stop her now, not even herself. It was a heady feeling, giddy and reckless, and she clung to it as she clung to the webbing, as a lifeline to stop her falling into despair.

  The thread was as thick as Bram was broad, stout as a young tree. Had it been on the ground, Poison could have walked along it with no problem. But it was hanging in a black-and-purple abyss, and death waited on either side; and so she crawled, clinging to it with her knees and elbows. She had tied up her long black hair and slid it down the back of her collar, to prevent it sticking to the webbing, but it seemed the least of her worries now. The glue sucked at her coarse dress, making every move an effort; each time she jerked an arm or leg free from the adhesive she felt sure that the spider would come.

  She concentrated on nothing but the webbing. She dared not look up at the spider’s cave, nor down at the trees below, nor back at the ledge where Bram and Peppercorn watched her in agonized silence. Every moment passing seemed like the slow draw of a blade. She touched the orb in her pocket, making certain that it was tucked away safe. There was nothing to smash it on up here. Would it break if she squeezed it? And if so, what would it do then?

  Questions, questions, but they were all useless now. For she was far from help, halfway across the gulf, and the palace loomed larger than ever, its web-strewn towers daggering towards the dark sky. She had never felt so alone.

  On and on she went, stopping every few feet after a particularly violent jerk made the web tremble, keeping her eyes fixed on the sticky white silk because she dared not look up to see if the spider was coming. The glue gave her a deceptive sense of security, but she knew that if she fell, it would not hold her to the web.

  “Poison!”

  She heard her name, Peppercorn’s voice, and by her tone she knew it was not going to be good news. She looked back, and saw Peppercorn pointing.

  There was another moth, sailing lazily on the night air over the palace.

  Poison wiped sweat from her lips with the back of one glue-gummed hand. She gauged how far she had to go. Too far. She was perhaps three-quarters of the way to the palace, but that had taken her a long time. The towers rose up tall on either side of her now, close enough so that she could see broken windows and crumbling brickwork. Ahead, other strands of webbing reached out to join with the one she was following. Would it be possible to make it to one of the outlying towers?

  No. She dared not move. For now she looked over to the spider cave in the mountainside, and she saw what she had most feared to see. The creature was crouched in the entrance, its eight eyes of dull red fixed on the moth as it soared closer.

  Closer to Poison.

  She tried to will herself small and invisible, but the moth appeared to have spotted her and was trying to make out what manner of thing she was. Poison had no idea what kind of diet these moths subsisted on, but she suspected that she looked like a particularly fat grub, and that meant trouble if the things were carnivorous. Yet if that thing came too close and got caught in the web, the spider would be on it – and her – in a moment.

  Poison wanted to scream at it, to frighten it away, but it might attract the spider. She could only hold still, and hope.

  The moth fluttered nearer, so that she could feel the wind of its gossamer wings on her skin. Its six legs flexed in a ripple;
its segmented eyes bobbed inquisitively in their sockets. Though it did not appear to have any kind of toothed mouth, Poison was not in the least reassured. It was still big enough to pick her up.

  Then she remembered how feeble the things were, how they were not strong enough to fight their way out of the weak glue of the webbing.

  An idea occurred to her. She pulled a hand free and reached over her shoulder into her pack, and from there drew out the first thing she could find – an apple. The moth hove down in front of her, its antennae bobbing. She flung the apple at it.

  The effect was startling. The apple punched through the moth’s wing like it was a paper screen, and the moth squealed. It launched itself away with a great beat of its wings, and Poison had to cling on to the web to prevent herself from falling. But the moth’s injury seemed to have ruined its ability to fly; it spiralled away crazily, swooping in great arcs and seemed unable to gain any height, until it crashed into the web some distance from Poison. The spider lunged out of its hole, eager not to let this one get away. Poison had to bite back a whimper as she saw the vast, bulbous thing come scuttling out, moving with the horrible gait of its kind. It was upon the moth in moments, biting it again and again with venomous fangs. The moth, after a brief struggle, accepted its fate silently. It did not take long for it to go limp.

  But the spider did not cocoon it as it had the other one. Instead, it adopted that awful posture that it had done when Poison and her companions had tricked it, as if it were listening, or thinking deeply. Splayed across the dead husk of the moth, its legs resting on several individual strands, it remained motionless.

  It knows I’m here, she thought, feeling panic rise. Knows, or suspects at least.

  Could it see her? She doubted that the spider’s vision was very good, as it had never noticed them hiding in the crevice earlier. But did it feel her? Ah, that was another matter. There was something amiss in the web, and the spider sensed it.

  Slowly, the spider rotated, and she felt a sick dread as it came to rest once more, facing her.

  The mandibles worked uncertainly, chewing on air. Its eight eyes glared blankly in Poison’s direction.

  She held herself as still as she could. Something was attracting it. But what?

  The answer came to her with cruel certainty. Her heartbeat. If she could have halted the thumping in her breast, she would have done so at that moment. For the spider was close now, and it felt the dull rhythm through the web. She was betrayed by the beating of her own heart.

  Yet it was an unfamiliar sound, and faint, and there were none of the struggles that usually accompanied prey. Still unsure of the evidence of its own senses, the spider came forward a little way. Poison had to fight to suppress a noise. It was only a few yards from her now, close enough to see the hairs on its bloated abdomen and the edges of its mandibles. She fumbled for the orb in her pocket, but the fear kept her from using it. Aelthar had said only to break it when she had the dagger. Did she dare to go against his instructions when she had no idea what it did?

  “Hoi!” came the distant cry. Bram. “Hoi! Over here!”

  And with that, Bram and Peppercorn began pulling at the web-string that attached them to the great strand that Poison had climbed along. The spider reared up, darting forward. Poison almost screamed as it flashed towards her with lightning speed . . . and then was gone, scuttling away. It had passed over her as she lay trembling.

  She tore herself up from the web, knowing that this would be her one and only chance before the spider returned. To her left and right were two of the crumbling towers of the palace. She began to crawl as fast as she could towards the nearest, caring nothing for stealth any more, heading for a narrow, broken window that lay just above a strand of webbing. She spared a glance towards the spider, who had reached the end of the web strand to discover that it had been duped yet again, and that there was nothing there. But as she floundered along the sticky web, hanging above the abyss, she saw it turn. It sensed her properly this time, struggling like prey.

  “Poison! It’s coming!” Peppercorn yelled.

  With a burst of terror, she pulled herself upright, freeing herself from the glue. The only thing she feared more at this moment than the terrible fall was the jaws of the spider, and so she stood up and ran along the web. The strand sucked at her feet, but it was wide enough so that she did not fall.

  She felt the thrumming of the strand beneath her feet, heard Peppercorn scream, sensed the great black bulk of the spider coming up behind her, fast, faster.

  She jumped towards the window, throwing herself into its glass-toothed maw, and a split-second later there was a crash as the spider collided with the wall of the tower, unable to check its momentum in its eagerness to catch this elusive prey. Poison felt a sickening moment of vertigo, for she did not know whether the other side of the window held an endless drop or a bone-breaking set of stairs; and then she hit the floor with a force that knocked the wind out of her, stars sparkled in front of her eyes, and she blacked out.

  When she awoke, the spider was gone.

  She raised her head from the cold stone floor, pulling out strands of her long black hair that had somehow got into her mouth. Her first reaction was puzzlement; then, as memory reassembled itself, relief. Whatever this room had once been, it was now dark, cobwebbed and empty. Remnants of broken furniture had become convenient anchors for the ubiquitous arachnids of this Realm, though thankfully they appeared to be of the usual size instead of the monster that had very nearly claimed her life a short while ago.

  She winced as she raised herself. How long had she been out, anyway? Her ribs blazed with pain and felt brittle, as if they would snap inwards at the slightest touch. There was a thin trail of dried blood on the floor which she traced to a scabbed-over scratch on her thigh, where a jagged bit of glass from the broken window had scored her. She counted herself lucky that she had not been more badly hurt. A quick check also revealed that the orb in her pocket had managed to escape intact, which was a small miracle in itself.

  She dusted herself down, checking her arms and legs for any further injuries. She tutted at the rip that had been made in her dress. Hard-wearing and unglamorous though it was, like all marsh-clothing, it still pained her to see it damaged.

  Well, she thought stoically to herself, the sooner I get this over with, the sooner I can leave this place.

  She rolled her shoulders to work out the kinks, and then set off to explore.

  It did not take her long to establish that the palace of Asinastra was a ruin, and a deserted ruin at that. For long hours she wandered through the corridors and passageways, finding only crumbling walls, faded tapestries, ancient furniture and cobwebs, cobwebs everywhere. At first she proceeded warily, creeping silently about and peering into every room before daring to enter. As her confidence grew she became more blasé, and gave up trying to sneak past things that clearly weren’t there. Eventually, she began to despair of seeing anyone at all, and it was hard to resist the temptation to call out in the hope of attracting someone.

  But then always there were the spiders: big ones, tiny ones, deadly ones and harmless ones, spiders that hid and spiders that spat. Poison was used to spiders, and even the venomous ones did not concern her much. She had been brought up in the Black Marshes, where virtually everything that moved was poisonous. You just had to know how to avoid them, or deal with them if they got in your way.

  So many spiders. Now where are all the flies? she wondered.

  It was strange. Since leaving Gull, there were just too many things that did not seem to add up. Lamprey’s riddles, uncannily like something out of a phaerie tale? Myrrk, with his cryptic nonsense and the fact that he claimed not to have eaten for a hundred years? Of course, Myrrk could well have been insane, and Lamprey too, but both of them seemed to know things. Both of them had obliquely cautioned her against having ideas above her station; both claimed to be examp
les of what happened if a person overstepped their mark. Yet both seemed reluctant, even uneasy, when faced with a straight question.

  And now, here, in this place with a million spiders but no flies, she found herself wondering what they could possibly be feeding on, and she was reminded of Myrrk’s words about the Hierophant, and how he had not bothered to work out the details of Myrrk’s diet. Who was the Hierophant, and why did Myrrk believe he had such control that he dictated what the strange fisherman ate? Was the spider-and-fly puzzle the same thing, or was she missing the point? And how did any of this apply to her?

  It was too much for the moment. She could barely manage to deal with what was in front of her, with the overwhelming newness of the world she had stepped out into a few short weeks ago. Or had it even been that long? Time did not mean what it used to mean. The fact that her father and Snapdragon might have already died of old age in the hours she had spent in the Realm of Phaerie was just one of many things that threatened to unbalance her sanity if she thought too hard about them.

  No. She dared not dwell on what might be happening at home. What if the message that she had given to the surly girl on her way to Gull had never got through? All she had done was entrust a few words to a stranger. What if her father never knew the reason why his eldest daughter disappeared, never to return, leaving them burdened with a changeling for the rest of their days?

  Azalea. She had only to focus on Azalea. That was her goal, her purpose. To get back her sister.

  She rested for a time and ate an apple from her pack, vaguely regretting the one she had thrown at the moth. The only sound in the vast emptiness of the palace was the noise of her munching, and the occasional echoing squeak or tap as she moved slightly. She might have been alone in the world. She was certainly lost in it.