Spiderlight
Author: Adrian Tchaikovsky
Date: 2016-08-02 04:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Fantasy; Fiction; Epic Fantasy; High Fantasy; Science Fiction; Magic; Science Fiction Fantasy; Humor; Novella; Role Playing Games
Description: The Church of Armes of the Light has battled the forces of Darkness for as long as anyone can remember. The great prophecy has foretold that a band of misfits, led by a high priestess will defeat the Dark Lord Darvezian, armed with their wits, the blessing of the Light and an artifact stolen from the merciless Spider Queen. Their journey will be long, hard and fraught with danger. Allies will become enemies; enemies will become allies. And the Dark Lord will be waiting, always waiting… Spiderlight is an exhilarating fantasy quest from Adrian Tchaikovsky, the author of Guns at Dawn and the Shad
Publisher: Tor.com

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1: Mirkwood Blues

THE WORDS THAT TWANGED and thrummed their way to Nth said, New food coming, and he stirred, resettling his legs to take the measure of the message: how far, what direction, who originated it. Mother’s Brood was large. Some of her children were more reliable than others.

New food. Different food. That had everyone’s interest. Across the span of the web, that was strung in mistlike sheets from tree to tree across their forest, he felt the others rousing, rising from their torpor. There was always food, even for so many bodies as Mother’s Brood ran to, but variety was welcome.

In the dark wood, the deer ran in their many herds, feeding in the clearings under the shadow of the webs, and being fed upon in turn. Mother saw to it that there were always clearings, where the great trees had been poisoned and weakened. There would always be deer aplenty.

In the trees there were monkeys, and they were clever and often escaped the hunt or the web, but this, too, was Mother’s plan. The monkeys were just clever enough that there would always be enough monkeys. They were aware enough to realize their fate, when they were caught, and that gave their juices an extra savor.

There were no wolves, no stalking cats. It was not that the flesh of these things was unpalatable, but they were wasteful. They consumed too many deer and monkeys for their presence to be tolerated.

New food, though. Nth waited for the words of the web to tell him that this prize was taken, so that he could beg Mother for a taste.

More speech came from the hunters, a constant commentary as they shadowed the intruders into the dark wood, hurrying above them while their siblings wove traps and barriers to channel them and funnel them.

New food. Man.

Men sometimes strayed into the wood. Nth had an understanding that there were places beyond the wood that were Man places. Those of the Brood that strayed beyond the wood frequently did not return, and this was placed at the door of Man. Those Men who strayed in the wood were served similarly. As now.

Nth felt the trap primed, a score of the best hunters of Mother’s Brood hiding among the branches, ready for the ambush. The weavers were already retreating, broadcasting that they had done their work well.

Then the web was ringing, dancing, and he could not find words in it, just a roaring of undifferentiated noise coming to him through his belly and his feet, so that he scuttled from roost to roost, trying to rid himself of the cacophony, trying to understand.

Fire! came a word that stopped him. Fire was friend to Man, no friend to Mother’s Brood. Then another sibling had found a secure post to speak from and the message jumped and bounced to Nth: We die! They come to prey on us! Protect Mother!

Instantly Nth was moving, by web and branch, surefooted and swift, scurrying toward the source of the disturbance. His very tread told those nearest him, I am coming, and the same words came from all around. Mother’s Brood was mobilizing to crush these intruders, these Men.

As he ran he felt the quick, fierce words rattle beneath him:

They have severed the web. They have destroyed the trees.

Many?

Few. But they have much Fire, and a light that burns worse than the sun. They can strike from afar.

Destroy them! Protect Mother!

Protect Mother!

And a dawning horror even as Nth crept and reached from tree to tree, stop-start, stop-start, because the Men were pressing deeper into the forest; because they were slaying many of the Brood. Because they were headed straight for Mother.

Ahead of him another swathe of web crackled and parted, shriveling to nothing in a sudden burst of heat. His clustered eyes caught the glare of it, little more, but he changed course. The Men were traveling faster than word could keep up, leaving the Brood constantly off-balance. Every time their fire flared they were striking Nth’s siblings dumb by destroying the lines and nets that they spoke through.

Then he was close to them, seeing only the pattern of their movement, the knot of Men like a single many-limbed entity to his weak eyes. At the fore it had metal claws, and those of the Brood that attacked them, mad with their fear for Mother, were pierced and cut, limbs hacked from their bodies, innards spilled and strewn and trampled as the Man-creature moved on.

There was a tremble in the ground that spoke to Nth, and a wave of his siblings caught up, a tide of gray-haired, bulbous bodies and arching legs, fangs gaping, furious at the deaths of their kin, at the damage to their home, at the sheer temerity of these trespassers. Fire roared from the Men—not one of their small fires that guarded them as they slept, nor the smaller ones they held by hand, but a great deluge of it that seared across the Brood, boiling them in their skins, setting them briefly ablaze before they broke open from the heat, writhing and twitching in momentary agony that the ground took straight to Nth and all the others.

Together! one of his siblings drummed, and they were all rushing—more of the Brood in once place than Nth had ever known, drawn from all over the wood. He braced himself for the fire, telling himself, It cannot kill us all, and that if he died for Mother it would be worth it.

He had forgotten the light they had spoken of. From the center of the Men there issued a golden radiance—not heat, not force, but pure light, so bright that his poor eyes were blind instantly, but more than that. There was a mind behind that light, and it despised him. It punished him. He felt its vast and potent displeasure crush him to the ground, sweep him away, so that he was running, they were all running, and the Men pushed on, horrible, unstoppable, unbearable in their desecration of his home.

The Brood rallied, and now he was among that wave running after the Men, catching up—and there was another gout of flame that crisped the hair on his legs, and another half-dozen of his siblings died screaming.

And Mother.

The Men had broken into her lair, a clearing in the heart of the wood that was so hung with centuries of webs that it was like a cave, and there they faced her, and the Brood had come from all around, thronging the trees, blackening the ground behind them, to either side, climbing the webs overhead, ready to descend and sacrifice everything to have some hope of saving she who had given them life.

She had raised herself on her limbs, a giant ten times the size of the largest of her Brood, her largest eyes bigger than the head of a Man, her fangs as long as their metal claws.

But the Men had fire and light, and so many of the Brood were dead to prove it. They could kill Mother. They could end it all. Nestled amid his siblings, Nth trembled, hearing the messages of fear and confusion and anger from all around him.

Then Mother spoke to them, even as she took a few careful, stalking steps forward. Be still, my children. Hold your fangs. They speak.

* * *

“Steady!” Dion called. The disc of Armes in her upraised hand bathed them in radiant light that brought confusion to the great host of spiders all around them. She could see its purity burning the monsters’ eyes, driving back their Dark nature. In her white tabard over the bronzed scales of her mail, she positively glowed with reflected light: a figure from legend, indomitable. But there were so many of them.

There were five who had braved the forest. Dion led them, infused with the radiant power of her faith. Each of them had sworn to her cause to bring down the blight on the world that was the man-god Darvezian but they were a disparate lot who followed for their own reasons. Cunning Lief thought there would be profit in it. Vengeful Harathes the shieldman loathed all creatures of the Dark with a passion, while the archer Cyrene served to expiate some long-hidden guilt, some action or inaction of hers that had driven her to this bloody and dangerous atonement. Of Penthos, the fifth member of their desperate band, whose hands even now crackled and roared with ethereal fire, Dion had no idea why he had come. Right now she was only glad he had.

“We’ve been in worse places than this!” she reminded her fellows.

“Penthos, what’s a word for something that’s all over covered with spiders?” Lief asked, crouching virtually at her feet. He held his spear close to him as though loath to get it filthier with spider ichor. His dark leathers were crusted with the blackish residue, his bare arms coated to the elbows with it where he had been forced to resort to his daggers.

“Arachnidous, probably.” Parts of Penthos’s robe were smouldering from his own flames, but he plainly cared not at all. No doubt his magic would mend everything, when this was done. His small, steely eyes were constantly roving about the great host that surrounded them. He had that mad little grin on, which always meant trouble. At least this time it was trouble they had all sought out.

“Well, then we’ve not been in more arachnidous places than this,” Lief said hotly. “Look at the bastards! There must be thousands of them.”

“Hundreds, possibly,” Dion considered, but that was still a great many giant spiders. And they were never still, none of them, constantly crawling over one another, heaping up, running up and down the trees and skittering over the vast sheets of webbing there as if they weighed nothing. And before them . . .

Before them was the reason they had risked all this.

The other two participants in this suicidal venture had their swords outstretched. Red-haired Cyrene gripped her long, narrow-bladed weapon in both hands, almost rigid with tension. Her bow was holstered at her back, her quiver empty. On the far side of Dion, big-framed Harathes crouched a little behind his shield, obviously working himself up to charging the colossal monstrosity before them.

Yet that great host of spiders was holding back, and Dion knew that Penthos’s fire was not achieving that, nor was the sacred symbol of Armes she bore. If the things descended now then many of them would die, but sheer numbers would overwhelm Dion’s little band. But their matriarch, that great, bloated monster, she would surely die as well.

“Come on,” Harathes spat. “Now’s our chance. We’re looking straight at what we’ve come here for.”

“We’re here for more than that. Hold fast,” Dion ordered. This was a dark, terrible place, a mass grave of all the luckless fools who had trod this path before them and whose bones now cracked underfoot, but there was nowhere that the Light of Armes could not penetrate.

“Sod me, to think I offered to come here alone and just steal the fucking things. I didn’t think the prophecy was so literal,” Lief complained.

“Quiet now,” Dion told him, laying a hand on his shoulder. “It speaks.”

“What do you mean, it speaks?” Harathes demanded. “They can’t speak. They’re animals.”

“Anything that grows old and large enough must approach wisdom,” Penthos intoned. “And approach evil too, often enough, but time suffices to bring wit even to such creatures as this, and Madam Spinner here is many centuries old.”

“Then killing it will do the world a great service,” Harathes snapped, but he held back at Dion’s order, grinding his teeth in frustration.

And she heard it in her mind, opened by Armes’s wisdom.

What do you want? A resonant, female voice, but that was just her imagination gifting humanity and character where there was none.

“We are here because we are sworn to destroy a man—a magician who has styled himself a god, and done much evil,” Dion declared, staring down her companions until they understood that she had not just been speaking rhetoric for them. She guessed that their cause would mean nothing to this creature, though. She doubted that “evil” meant much to a spider. The spinners of webs kept no mirrors, after all.

“Darvezian, he calls himself, a wielder of Dark power, a man given over entirely to that Darkness.” The same Darkness that this spider matriarch was born of, but everyone knew that the things of the Dark fought among themselves. “Darvezian, who has inherited the works of those Dark Lords who came before him, to become a terror to the world.”

I know of him. A cautious answer, but of course this creature knew Darvezian. The tales told of their meeting, two products of the same ancient evils. There had been a time, decades before, when the man-god had amused himself by sending his enemies into these woods as offerings to the matriarch and her host, but he was a thing of whims, and had moved on to other punishments.

“Then you will have heard of the prophecy,” Dion forged on. “Many have sought to bring Darvezian low. All have failed. But there is a prophecy, conditions and requirements to pass his wards and protections, and to slay him. Particularly to slay him.” None knew from where those precious words had come, but with each Dark Lord who gathered the powers of the Dark to himself, somehow there was always a prophecy to bring about his ruin. Dion took it as a sign of Armes moving subtly to bring Light to the world.

The great old matriarch of the spiders was silent, shifting its footing. Around them, the boiling, scuttling host continued to seethe. They held back for fear that their queen would be harmed, and Dion’s friends held back because to strike a blow here would see all of them dead. An impasse.

“A tooth of the great mother, the prophecy says,” Dion said carefully. “And those who would come to Darvezian must do so by the spider’s path. So we are here, because Darvezian swallows souls and corrupts minds and twists the very land, and we must brave any chance to bring him down. A fang, and a map. Do you understand me?”

Those fangs flexed as Dion watched, sword-long, curved, and filled with venom. This monster was older even than Darvezian, as was its poison. Even the man-god was not proof against its foulness. It was hardly the path of Armes, but other, holier methods had failed to even break the man’s skin.

What will you do?

“I will have one of your two fangs, and your bound word that we shall leave unmolested, and for this, we shall let you live, and continue to fill this place with your brood.”

You have slain my children.

“I cannot bring myself to be sorry,” Dion stated flatly. “Armes guards his mercy for those that deserve it. But we shall depart without harming more if you let us take what we need. Or otherwise, we shall content ourselves with ridding the world of you, even if some other must fulfill the prophecy. Once you are slain, your teeth shall lie here until another comes to claim them.”

The great spider shuffled again, agitated, lifting and lowering those deadly fangs, and Dion tensed, wondering how much this beast truly understood what she said, whether it was close enough to human, in its mind, to even grasp what was being offered.

But then it was quite still, clearly the moment that would mean life or death for a great many, and the voice came. Take it.

“Your bound word first,” Dion reminded the creature. “And Armes’s Light shall consume you if you break it. Your word that, once we have what we wish, we shall depart untouched by you or your host.”

You have it. Take what you have come for and go! At last something relatably human: frustration and anger seething in the words.

“Lief, go take a fang,” Dion said.

“Sod off,” came his quick reply.

“Do it.”

Swearing under his breath, the man moved forward, laying down his spear and drawing one of his big knives. He crept almost on all fours, constantly flinching back from the matriarch’s slightest movement. The colossal spider reared up, front four limbs outstretched, fangs displayed, and Lief fell back with a yell.

All the spiders shuddered at it, and for a moment Dion thought that they would attack despite it all, but although they redoubled their agitated, bustling movement they held back.

“Lief, go!” she instructed.

The thief stared up at the matriarch, the great spread fan of her crooked legs. “I can’t . . . ,” he whispered, edging backward. “I’m sorry. I really can’t.”

“Oh you fool.” Cyrene spat. The warrior-woman strode forward, sword in hand, kicking at Lief to drive him back to Dion’s feet. The matriarch remained motionless, although her offspring were working themselves up into a frenzy.

“If this hits the latrine, it will be when she strikes,” Penthos observed with detached amusement. “I’ll set everything on fire. Doesn’t that sound like a fine plan?”

“It sounds like the plan you usually try for,” Lief got out raggedly.

Cyrene took a wide-legged stance and lined up her blade, swallowing. The eyes of every living thing there were fixed upon her.

She struck, and the great spider recoiled, staggering and weaving on its eight legs. Dion winced, hand to her head, trying to fight away the sound of its scream, which could almost have been human.

One fang was severed from that monstrous visage, and Lief, newly bold, lunged forward and grabbed for the raw and ragged end, holding it high and keeping the hollow tip as far from himself as possible.

The matriarch was limping sideways and backward, waves of its pain washing over Dion.

You have what you wanted. Now go.

“We have part of what we sought,” Dion stated. “We have the fang to strike the blow. But we need the path, the spider’s path by which to approach Darvezian. We need the map so that we can reach him without having to fight our way through his armies, his fortresses, and his traps.”

* * *

“It says there’s no map,” the priestess declared.

“It lies. The prophecy’s clear,” Harathes returned. The cretin. Dion was one thing, but how Penthos loathed having to deal with his inferiors, the merely prosaic and human. Except Lief had a sense of humor, so he would be worth keeping perhaps . . . And there I go drifting off topic again.

“There’s no such thing as a clear prophecy,” Penthos decided to point out. “And it’s not as if spiders are natural cartographers.” There was an interesting thought. Perhaps they were, at that. Had anyone ever looked into it? Perhaps if I fed one of these beasts purely on maps and map-makers for a year . . . ? Distraction, once more, but this standoff was boring him. Raising this much power and then just standing around with it always resulted in headaches and sometimes vomiting later. I need to do something with all this. In truth he had expected a bigger fight, and probably for some of the others to die. It had been a bit of an anticlimax, honestly. Not that he bore Cyrene, Harathes, and Lief any ill will, but stumbling out of the forest carrying Dion in his arms, barely victorious and mourning their comrades . . . well that was proper legend material, wasn’t it?

And there I go again, always letting my thoughts run away with me . . .

“So what’s the spider’s path?” Cyrene was asking—at least quicker on the pertinent questions than her male counterparts. “Is it a place? A pass? A tavern?”

“A drug, maybe,” Lief suggested. “Maybe you have to be stoned out of your mind to go fight him. Makes sense to me.”

“Quiet, Lief,” Dion told him. “The spider says . . . it says it knows things, paths, ways. It can hardly write them down for us, though.”

“Can we take its brain or something?” Cyrene suggested. Thankfully it was only Dion’s words that the matriarch could understand, or that might have snapped the stalemate.

“Just have her come with us?” Penthos suggested. The expected laughter didn’t come, reminding him that his elevated sense of humor was not shared by most others. And it was true, he did tend to catch them off guard with some of his more innovative solutions.

“Shut up, Penthos,” Harathes snapped at him, which would earn the man another week of impotence once they got back to civilization, not that he’d ever suspect who was behind his intermittent problem. Oh it’s good to be a magus.

“It says . . .” Dion wrinkled her nose, and Penthos sighed for her silently. How was it that such a gifted and beautiful young woman ever ended up in the service of such a dull religion? “It says it will send one of its brood. She will impart her knowledge to it. Penthos, is that even possible?”

“Easily—her link to her offspring should be very strong. Good idea, actually.”

“Whoa, whoa, do you remember just how much ground we need to cover from here to Dervazian?” Lief complained. “How many, you know, towns, and people, we have to go by. How do you think they’re going to react if we’ve got a sodding giant spider with us? It’s not as if we could put a leash on it and disguise it as a dog!”

“Of course not, it wouldn’t have a neck,” Penthos said. Again, not a chortle. Some people just would not see the funny side of a situation. Everyone was so tense and angsty all of a sudden.

“If we need this knowledge, then I can’t see that we have a choice,” Dion told them. “We will have to rely on my assurance that the creature is performing the will of Armes.”

Lief’s thoughts on that: “That doesn’t even work for Penthos, let alone one of these buggers.”

Now that was funny, and the magus barked out a rich laugh at it, only to find from the ensuing silence that apparently it hadn’t been meant as humor at all.

He could see that nobody was going anywhere with this, and his earlier words about a spider not having a neck were rattling around in his head demanding his attention, and he thought, Could I . . . ? Abruptly the challenge had hold of him, because while he had heard of similar tricks being pulled before, none of them would be as interesting and audacious as this.

“Let’s give it a neck. Then we can put a leash on it,” he declared.

“’The hell are you talking about?” Harathes demanded.

“I don’t think a leash is going to . . .” Cyrene’s voice tailed off. “No, he’s right. What are you talking about?”

“Penthos?” Dion prompted.

“Let’s take one of the little vermin with us,” the magus declared grandly. “I’ll disguise it.”

“As fucking what?” Lief eyed the crawling host of hairy, round-bodied monsters. “A novelty candelabra?”

“As our new best friend. I’ll transform it into the very semblance of a man. I can even splinter off a little of my mind for it, so it can speak to us and know enough to go behind the bushes to shit. I see no downside to this plan.”

“You . . . that will work?” Dion sounded pleasantly impressed. Or horrified. Always hard to distinguish, those.

“By my reckoning it will be a better human than Harathes by the time I’m done,” Penthos declared. Lief snorted, which was annoying as this time he hadn’t meant it as a joke. What is it about this “humor” business I keep getting wrong?

Dion held up her free hand for his attention. “No, seriously, Penthos, will this work? Because a great deal is resting on this. This isn’t just an opportunity for you to play little gods with the world.”

“You wound me.” He tried to make his genuine hurt sound in his voice, but he suspected that it was just his usual sardonic drawl. “I can do it. It will be my pleasure, Dion. Not here, though: some place of crossed power—” He almost suggested her temple but thought better of it, for all that those leaden monstrosities hogged magical nexii wherever the priests of Armes were permitted to build them. “There is a set of the old stones not a mile beyond the wood. We can do it there.”

The face she made did not betoken confidence, but she shrugged. “Well, I see no other option, and my arm’s getting tired.” Her next words were for the matriarch of the spiders alone.

* * *

Nth crouched amid his brethren. He understood that the Men were talking with Mother somehow. He could feel the faint tremors through his belly as they made their sounds, but it was beyond him how such vague sensations could possibly convey anything. Still, Mother was wise.

When they had taken her fang he had been about to launch himself at them, and so had all his siblings, every one. Only a great shout from Mother had stopped them. It was a humiliation, a bitter shame to bear, but she wished to spare her poor children more harm, and a new barb would grow back in time. Hold, she had said, and despite their frantic, fevered rushing back and forth, they had held.

More muted buzzings from the Men now, and he had the sense that they were speaking to each other, but they were such a homogenous group that he could barely tell even how many of them there were, clustered close like that.

Then Mother spoke to him.

Nth, what would you do for me?

For you, Mother, anything. Let me fight these Men. I would die if it would serve you. The answer was automatic, needing no thought.

I have a task that will be harder than dying, Mother said. I will give you some of my wisdom and understanding, and then you must leave me. You must leave the wood for the wide world, and go with the Men where they bid. This is their price, that no others must be harmed by their fire and light and claws. Will you do this for me?

Nth crouched low, knowing only that the Brood who left the forest were as good as dead. This was their place. They had made it their own. The world beyond was the domain of Men and worse things.

I moved in the world once. There are other colonies of my children where I have dwelt. Once I dealt with magi and demon-callers and forgotten, dark gods. And each word brought with it a knowledge, a merest hint of meaning to enlighten him. I do not ask this lightly of you, Nth, but one must go, if these Men are to leave without more cost.

And he saw that part of the cost, if the Men could not be induced to go, would be a risk of harm to Mother herself, and he danced with fear and dread and beat out, Of course I will go. I know I will never return, but I will go, for you.

Then step forward from the Brood. Show yourself to the Men, and I shall give you what understanding I can.

He crept cautiously from among his siblings, seeing the knot of Men edge back a little. He braced his legs against their fire, expecting the worst. There was more of that maddeningly meaningless sound to wash over him; he waited, and waited.

Then came Mother’s gift, a great, clogging mass of images and thoughts and memories, her former haunts, her careful travels at the edges of the world of Men: battles, meals, curious bargains. He could not take it in. It sat within him, an indigestible lump, and only over time would it dissolve to piece out its secrets to him. It was enough, though. He was committed. He waited for the Men to go, knowing that he would have to follow in their wake.

I am sorry, came Mother’s comforting voice. You will suffer, but there is no better choice.

Then the blot of Men was retreating, and the Brood cleared a path for it, and Nth followed, reluctantly, fearfully, the caustic clot of Mother’s knowledge burning a hole in his innards.

* * *

The Dark promised power, Dion knew. When Armes had returned from the divine realms he had the message that mankind was meant for the Light, saved from oblivion to claim the world for the forces of good. There would always be those who would cast away that priceless gift, though. There would be those who would wilfully seek their own corruption and reach out for what the Dark could offer. Worse than spiders or ghoul-men or any of the things that sprang native from the Darkness were those who were born to inherit the Light, and betrayed their own kind.

Such a man was Darvezian.

In an ideal world Dion would simply have gathered together some heroes of the church, tracked down Darvezian, and destroyed him for the abominable traitor he was, all using the tools of righteousness. There was a simple reason, though, that she was forced to countenance such tools and methods as the prophecy spoke of. The Dark kept its promises. Darvezian had power enough to make good his claim to be halfway to godhood.

Since he came to power, the armies of his creatures, the slaves of the Dark, had spread and conquered, corrupted and suborned. Some kingdoms had fallen to his hordes, their gallant armies smashed. Others had bowed the knee, their rulers bought or tempted or threatened, or replaced by evil doppelgängers. The world that Dion had once known was fast being overturned, the lights extinguished, the temples of Armes sacked and despoiled.

She would never have chosen this path: not the spiders, not the deal with their matriarch, that shameful accommodation with Darkness. Others before her had tried and failed to bring down Darvezian, though. It pained her to admit it, even to herself, but the Light of Armes did not seem to be enough.

The old stones that Penthos had mentioned were almost all fallen, just mounds of mossy earth atop a hill, save for two that leant drunkenly together as though for mutual support. The hill was a lone hunched heap of higher ground, some barrow raised by ancients to wicked powers long before the coming of Armes and the message of the Light. Those ancients had known power, though. Their time-lost feet had tracked the lines of the world’s magic, and they had raised hills and forts and monuments wherever they had crossed one another.

Beyond the hill, the country was uneven and broken moor, boggy in the low places, rocky where the earth’s weathered bones had torn through the matting of grass and scrub. The forest of the spiders was a shadow at their back.

“This is grand magic,” Penthos announced. “This is high magic.” He was doing his pompous face, Dion noted, as he usually did when he had wrestled for the center of attention. She worried about Penthos. Mostly it was the unleashed power and the setting things on fire, but at the moment it was more that his desire to show off could compromise their quest. There was no denying that he was a notably powerful magus, and given that breed’s notorious disinterest in the affairs of men she was lucky to get him, but he had the attention span of a five-year-old. Worse, she had a strong suspicion that he wasn’t particularly committed to their task, which raised the question of why he was here at all. The possibility that he was a pawn of Darvezian plagued her thoughts, and though she sought relief in prayer the worries always returned.

“If someone would prod our experimental subject into the middle?” Penthos asked, adjusting the sleeves of his shimmering robe with great ceremony. Lief directed his spear at the spider, which had followed them from the forest with a sullen, forced obedience. Looking on the loathsome thing, Dion was struck again by doubts about the whole enterprise.

“Penthos . . . ,” she murmured.

“My dear?” His troublemaking grin was out in force.

“This plan . . . I am not convinced that it is the proper course. This is a thing of Darkness. I fear we will taint ourselves, our venture, in making use of it.”

Penthos tutted. “Magic knows not light or darkness. It is the Power Elemental, that predates any such concerns,” he told her archly, somewhat sabotaged by the smug smirk that always crept onto his face when he was pontificating. “Besides, what need we fear the Dark, when we have you to show us the way to the Light?” For a moment he was trying on a new expression as he looked on her, that was something almost as grotesque as his experimental subject, and that she could not in any way read.

“Well . . .” She was ashamed of her doubts. A priestess of Armes should just know the right path. Look for the brightest light, her teachers used to say to her. Well, it was night, now, and the forest had been dark, and this battered old clutter of stones was dark, and the spider was very dark indeed, but . . . but the prophecy was sufficiently unambiguous to show that these horrible creatures were the key to Darvezian’s defeat. And she believed in the prophecy, didn’t she? Or what had it all been for?

“Now, my own focus will be most entirely upon the vast works of magic that I shall enact,” Penthos explained airily. “Moreover, this magic shall not go unnoticed across the world. For miles around those who are sensitive to the powers elemental shall know some great work is afoot. Hedge wizards and wise women shall wake with splitting headaches. Necromancers shall dream ill dreams. Sages and sorcerers shall look anxiously at the stars, or whatever it is those amateurs do when they know they’re outmatched. Moreover, the things of the enemy will take note, and I think it rather likely we shall be disturbed. To you, my companions, I give the task of ensuring that nothing disturbs my all-important concentration.”

Lief, Harathes, and Cyrene looked less than enthusiastic about this, but Dion nodded. “Fear not,” she told the magus. “We will defend you, just do your work.”

By now the increasingly agitated spider had been corralled and herded until it crouched in center of the jumble of stones, and Penthos turned to it. “This is going to hurt,” he told the creature, although Dion suspected it could not understand him. “However, you’ll be paralyzed almost immediately, so . . . that’s . . . something.” Penthos, rhetoric stumbling, scowled a little. “Let’s just get to it, shall we?”

“If you would,” Dion confirmed, and then winced and staggered, because the magus had taken hold of the native power around them and just yanked on it, gathering swathes of it into his hands, tearing it from the earth. She was used to the exercise of his power—coarse, unsubtle, but staggeringly strong—but this was Penthos giving his all. Some small part of her was awed that all that almost brutal might was actually on her side. A rather larger part of her simply marked up one more reason to fear his betrayal. Magi had never seen eye to eye with the church of Armes. Oh certainly, the world was full of men and women of ambition, but magi sought to place themselves on a level beyond human—a level, therefore, that approached that of the divine Armes himself. Neither Armes nor powerful magi much liked the competition. History was full of men like Penthos who had been brought down by the justice of Armes before they could become something like Darvezian.

And yet the Dark Lords keep rising up. We always miss a few. Perhaps Penthos will be next to take that mantle and cast his lot entirely in with the Dark.

She turned away as the magic began snapping and sizzling about the magus’s hands. Seconds later it must have begun its work on the spider, because she heard a thin shrieking from it, a hissing and a rattling of its chitinous body, all too reminiscent of those hectic minutes within the forest.

She wondered if spiders actually felt pain, or anything that a human might conceive as pain, or any finer feeling. It seemed unlikely. What, then, would they get from this ritual? Some puppet or echo of Penthos with the spider’s vital knowledge seemed the best they could hope for.

The others had their weapons to hand, all facing away from the searing flashes of greenish light and gouts of flame that accompanied almost all of Penthos’s major works. When Dion considered the world, her chief question was, Is this of Light or Dark? Penthos’s main interest was usually, Is this flammable?

She wished she’d asked how long this was going to take. For all she knew it could be days. Men like Penthos tended to lack a human frame of reference for things like time.

Clutching the disc of Armes to her for comfort, she lowered herself to her knees and prepared herself for a long vigil.

The night was well advanced when Cyrene of the keen eyes called out an alarm. As Penthos had warned, works like this attracted attention, and one would hardly need to be magically sensitive to spot the visible display of power that the magus was lighting up the hilltop with.

“What have we got?” Harathes demanded.

“I think it’s Ghantishmen. A warband, raiders maybe.” Still out of arrows, Cyrene readied her sword. “Dion. Light, please.”

“My pleasure.” Dion opened herself to the power of Armes, holding the disc high to spread a golden radiance over the stones and beyond. By that time, the Ghantishmen had reached the foot of the hill.

They were much like men in many respects. The color of their skin was unnaturally grayish and pale, and she knew they could see in the dark like a cat. They wore hauberks of yellow-white scales, bone treated somehow to become metal-hard, and they had axes and maces each made from a single piece of the same material. Their faces were manlike, though. They could and had disguised themselves to seem human, but Dion would never be fooled. Man, after all and despite so many faults, was a race of the Light, blessed by Armes and destined for great works. The Ghantishmen, as with so many other things that had a man’s shape without a man’s soul, were of the Dark. If they were not minions of Darvezian then they did his evil work anyway, beasts in human form.

When the Light reached them they eddied back a little, shielding their sensitive eyes and baring long teeth. There were a dozen of them come to see what the lights were, and one at the back held a long bone staff and must have been one of their dark priest-magicians.

For a moment it seemed that they might not come and brave the Light of Armes, caught in indecision. Harathes took matters into his own hands, then, seizing the initiative before the Ghantishmen could rally. Shield to the fore, he was charging down the hill with his keening battlecry, Cyrene was after him, sword raised to the shoulder preceding her into the fray.

Dion advanced, seeing the lead three Ghantishmen go down before the assault, caught off guard. Their mage-priest raised his staff, and she felt the Dark power gather there. He was not her equal, though, and she hurled the Light of Armes at him. As with the spiders, the Ghants’ fellows in Darkness, the searing purity of her power tore through them. There was a brief moment when their magician held her, staff directed outward, fighting to contain her strength, but then she had broken him, blasted him down with sheer righteousness.

The two warriors were holding their ground now, the momentum of their charge spent. Lief would be skulking at the edges, looking for somewhere tender to insert a spear or a dagger. Dion advanced, the Light springing from her fingers, seeking out the Dark wherever it could be found, demoralizing and blinding the enemy, making openings for her companions’ steel.

Half the Ghants were down before the rest fled gibbering into the darkness. In the aftermath of the fight, Dion realized that all was quiet on the hill above them.

“Penthos?” she asked. For a terrible moment she thought that one of the Ghants might have crept past them to put a knife in the magus’s back.

But no: there he was, standing between those two leaning stones, arms outstretched as though inviting applause.

“Penthos?” she asked again.

“It is done,” he crowed. “Am I not the most magnificent of all magicians?” He kept trying to catch her eye, and she swore he waggled his eyebrows at her. Surely he was sometimes one of the most disturbing of all magicians.

“With what result?” Dion demanded.

“Only come and see.” Penthos made a flowing gesture with his hands, the sleeves of his robe trailing after. “Witness what my power has made.” And then, because that was apparently insufficiently magnificent, “Wrought, rather.”

The four of them trailed up the hill, Dion letting the Light of Armes subside until it was only a soft glow.

Something was crouched atop the hill, something that seemed like a man. It lifted its head.

2: Fear and Loathing in Shogg’s Ford

DION MADE A SOUND. It was not quite a word, or anything fit to come from the throat of a priestess of Armes. The two warriors, Harathes and Cyrene, followed suit. Lief was the only one able to articulate their collective reaction.

“What the fucking arses is that?”

Penthos frowned, still very much in his pose as Ringmaster of the Marvelous. “What do you think it is? I have transmogrified the invertebrate arachnid into the semblance of a man.”

“What man looks like that?” Harathes demanded. “It’s hideous.”

“More so than its native form? I think no—” Penthos started grandly, but Cyrene cut him off.

“It is. Gods help us, but it is. Halfway is worse, Penthos.” Her voice shook.

Dion coughed, still fighting down the shock and revulsion. “Penthos,” she said quietly, diplomatically, “this is the extent of what you can achieve?”

It—he, she supposed, for there was enough evidence to give it a gender—squatted atop the hill, and Cyrene was right that it was the near-miss, that so-closeness that turned the stomach with its almost-familiarity. The skin was grayish in the moonlight, like a Ghantishman’s, and the body seemed close to human, hirsute about the chest and groin, long-limbed but not unnaturally so. He would be tall, when he stood, Dion guessed. There was a lithe strength in that frame, no wasted flesh but not skinny, either. His hands were long-fingered—and definitely a little too long, there. They had no nails, but that was hardly the issue.

The face: the problem was the face, which now stared out at them, and would stare right back into their nightmares later, no doubt. It was not the shape, because Penthos had wrought well there—the basic clay of that visage was well molded, and might have been handsome if all the rest of it had followed something more exactingly human. The marring of that regular perfection was part of what made it so horrible. There was a mouth there, and the teeth it bared were sharp and predatory, with canines like little daggers, elongated enough that Dion could only suppose the creature’s lower jaw had slots to scabbard them. There was a nose, small and sharp. There were eyes, but the eyes . . . There were too many of them, to start with. Two little buttons on his brow glinted back the Light of Armes, and she thought she saw another two pinpoint orbs a little ahead of his ears. She might have taken them for spots or marks or even tattoos, had it not been for those two main orbs that dominated the creature’s blank regard.

They were huge, and they were absolutely round, and featureless—no iris, no white, just great wells of darkness goggling out from that slack visage.

It was hunched, all elbows and knees, looking at—at them, at the world? There was no way to know quite where that all-consuming attention was focused. Now a shudder passed through it, a ripple of muscles that seemed weirdly boneless. Its lips moved over those jagged teeth.

It screamed, throwing its head high and giving off a dreadful, keening wail, and that, at least, sounded almost human. A human in unimaginable torment, but whatever was behind that sound had a visceral connection to them all that spiders lacked. Except it went on and on, until Dion wondered where the breath could be coming from, to power such an unbroken sound of pain and terror and self-loathing.

“What’s wrong with it?” she demanded of Penthos, who was looking entirely unruffled.

“My dear, give it a moment to acquaint itself with its new, ah, surroundings,” the magus suggested. “The wretched monster has undergone a journey that none of you can imagine.”

“Then send the thing back and we’ll dispatch it and find some other way,” Harathes snapped.

Penthos glowered. “Is this it? The thanks I receive for such an unprecedented work of magic? Where would your vaunted quest be without me? Would you even have survived the wood of the spiders without my fire? And a hundred other tribulations upon the road—?”

“Some of which only happened because of you!” Cyrene pointed out hotly.

“I, Penthos!” The magician stabbed a finger at the heavens, and the crack of thunder that followed was too well timed to be coincidental. “I, one of the great masters of the Power Elemental, have reworked the fabric of the world to your bidding, and you presume to complain?”

“We cannot take that anywhere!” Harathes yelled at him. “The spider we could have stuck in a crate, in a cage. That thing looks like a demon. What sort of a—!”

“Harathes!” Dion silenced him with a gesture. “Penthos, listen to me, can your magic, your Power Elemental, not bring the thing that one step closer to human?”

The wizard’s furious expression sagged. “You too?” he asked her. “When I have done this vast act of magic for you, only at your behest?”

“We all know you have done this at least in part because it amused you to make the attempt,” Dion told him firmly. “So tell me, can you . . . refine this magic you have made?”

Penthos spluttered. “It is done. It is irreversible. I, Penthos, set my seal on this. Just . . . buy it a hat or something.”

“It’s stopped screaming,” Lief observed, into the appalled silence that followed the mage’s remark.

They turned to see the thing in the circle observing them. Its lips were moving again, as though imitating their own speech. Their twitching, flabby progress, every minute on the verge of slicing themselves open against the creature’s fangs, exerted a horrifying fascination.

Then the sounds began: choking sounds, yowls like a dying cat, spitting, guttural croaks, each one closer to something that might be called speech, until it slobbered and grunted out a recognizable phrase: “What—what have—what have you done—done to me?”

Penthos crowed with delight, argument forgotten. “And speech as well! I admit I was not sure the faculty would take. Yes, they communicate among their own kind, but you cannot imagine the differences, in the senses, in the mind, and yet it speaks?”

“What have you done to me?” the thing in the circle demanded, more clearly. Its voice was accentless, strangely resonant, raw from screaming.

“You are reborn,” Penthos told it, “rejoice, therefore.”

They all saw it bunch to spring, but it seemed to be having difficulties with its limbs, awkward as a newborn faun in those early moments after its transformation. Penthos held up a hand, and the creature recoiled as though slapped.

“It may not cross me, nor may it flee,” he declared. “I am its maker, and it is bound to do as I say. And the Light of Armes will compel it, you may be sure. Its base nature is not altered. You will have to resort to threat and punishment if it seeks to cause mischief or returns to its bestial ways or eats someone, but you shall have governance of it. Stand, monster!”

The spider-creature twitched at the command, and another fluid shudder passed through it, but then it seemed to suddenly come to an understanding of its legs—no doubt rather fewer than it was expecting—and unfolded itself in a smooth motion. It was a match in height for Penthos, and a little taller than Harathes, though not so broad in the shoulders. Now it stood like a man, feet planted firmly on the earth of the mound, Dion felt that there was a fearful strength in that long-boned frame. The creature is dangerous, she thought, and it remained a thing of Darkness, a thing of the enemy. She feared it, because she feared that being its master might corrupt her somehow. But now it stood, it was plain that Penthos had done well to get it even this far, and as he said . . .

“Buy it a hat,” Lief put in, mirroring her thoughts. “Or a blindfold. Eye patches. Maybe some of those darkened glass lenses alchemists use.” He was studying the thing thoughtfully, more recovered than the rest from the initial shock. “You want my pence-worth? I’ve seen worse downing a pint in most cities. There are always magician’s experiments and those touched by some sort of corrupting dark, even in the brightest of places. I mean, yes, we know what the thing is—we know that it’s not some near-human mistake but something brought all the way from being a spider. Others . . . they’ll think it’s a curse, maybe, or maybe a half-spawn of one of the dark races. It happens. We’ll be fine.” He grinned, and Dion hoped that he had not thought of some way to monetize their monster.

“Well done, Penthos,” she said quietly. “Forgive me for criticizing you. As Lief says, we will have to adapt.”

The magician beamed, all ire forgotten.

“What’s his name then, our new friend?” Lief prompted.

“I have no idea,” and truly Penthos was someone who seldom bothered about trivial things like the names of others. “Monster, speak!”

The thing’s throat worked, and it made noises, feet and hands shifting as though it was trying to give voice to a thought that had nothing of the human about it, but in the end it came out with a stammering sound that was something like “nth.”

“Enth?” approximated Lief. “Nerth? Urnuth?”

“Enth,” Dion decided. “From now on you are Enth, creature. Do you understand?” She lifted the disc of Armes a little, and the monster shied away from the divine Light. “Now, follow us. But first . . . someone find it a cloak or something.”

* * *

What precisely the “spider’s path” was, the creature had yet to reveal, but Darvezian was a long way off, and Dion reckoned that their unwelcome companion’s knowledge would be relevant only as they neared his lair.

They had been hoping to take the pass to the border town of Isinglas, which for decades had stood as a bastion against what might come across the uncertain and contested territory they now occupied. Travel via Isinglas would be the long road to Darvezian, but the safer for it, through territories where the Light and the church for Armes were still strong.

Within a day from the stone circle, however, word came to them from fugitive travelers and woodsmen that the Ghantish were abroad in great numbers, stirred up from their holes and haunts, and that Isinglas was as good as under siege. There followed a hurried conference of war, with Harathes arguing that they should go to the aid of the embattled town, and Cyrene and Lief urging the importance of their mission and the importance of avoiding large battles respectively. Penthos ventured no opinion, and the creature, Enth, was not consulted.

It had slowed their progress at first. Walking had not come naturally to it, so that for the first few miles the abomination had lurched about like a drunkard, falling over, staggering, hissing in rage at its own ineptitude. Penthos had tried to aid it, but his idea of teaching the thing to walk had revolved around exerting a magical dominance and forcibly shunting forward one leg and then the other, resulting in a weird, stiff-legged stilt-walking where it was obvious the monster would topple the moment the mage left off. Lief finding every second of the business hilarious had not helped.

Then they had broken their fast, leaving the thing squatting, shackled by the invisible chains of Penthos’s magic and mercifully clad in one of the magician’s spare robes. Left to its own devices it had apparently experienced some sort of grotesque epiphany. Dion had seen it stretching its limbs in turn, staring at them as though attempting to divine their purpose from first principles. When they set off, it had found a loping, easy pace beside them, more bestial than human but undeniably fast. Dion had the disturbing impression that, if it had been free to, it could have been off and away at the sort of speed it would take a good horse to match. She could hardly say that she had begun to worry about the creature, because that worry had been present even before its transfiguration, but certainly her worries increased.

She was constantly tempted to draw forth the disc of Armes and expose the monster to her faith’s holy Light, just to reassure herself that she had power over it. Its very presence was exerting a fearful fascination over her, as would a venomous serpent coiled beside her foot. It was all too easy to envisage those hands about her throat, those razor teeth buried in her flesh . . .

But she conquered herself, because fear was a weapon of the Dark. If she allowed herself to be led by her fear, how could she know the righteousness of her actions?

Still, she worried. Still, she feared.

“Shogg’s Ford, then,” Lief suggested. They had been poring over what maps they had, drawing forth recollections of the territory, trying to work out a route that did not involve the busy ground between here and Isinglas.

“Remind me . . .” Dragged from her ruminations, Dion leant over his shoulder and tried to work out where the place was.

“Shogg’s Ford is a place of darkness,” Harathes objected.

“Shogg’s Ford is mostly a place of small-minded vice and bad beer,” Lief replied cheerfully. “Yes, it’s on this side of the line. It’s in the uncertain lands, and we’ll likely find all sorts there. But they won’t be looking for a fight and, frankly, we’ll have more of a chance giving Muggins his civilized debut in Shogg’s Ford than we would have had in Isinglas. They’re used to freaks there, they are.”

“Well, that’s true enough,” Cyrene agreed slowly. Her narrowed eyes strayed over to Enth. “And a lot of trade goes through there. We could certainly get enough to disguise what . . . it is.”

He, it, Dion had already fought over the pronouns. “We will have to be careful, there,” she put in.

“When are we not?” Lief said easily.

* * *

Shogg’s Ford.

Memory accreted within Nth’s brain, pieced together from the gift of his Mother. She had been there when Man had not claimed that place. Long ago, she remembered the bellowing, stinking shoggs as they braved the water. Gone now, hunted first by her and then by Man, and now no more than a name without a memory, even in a world that seemed written and overwritten with ancient history: Darvezian, Armes, Light and Dark.

At first the new body they had imprisoned him within had dominated his attention. The world had become a shrieking, blinding whirl of unfamiliar senses. He was denied the voice of the ground, that had spoken to him of every twitch and motion within his world, and carried the speech of his people as well. Instead there was a raucous cacophony of sound that battered in through his unwanted ears, out of which, somehow, he could still parse the gibbering that was the way that these Men communicated among themselves. Of all the new abilities that had been forced on him, that comprehension was the one he would most do without. He had never wanted to discover that Men, the destroyers and the prey, could speak, even if their speech was such a painful din.

And his eyes! His eyes had been pleasantly dim things, that could tell day from night, and movement from stillness. Now they were his world, gaping holes that let all of reality in, raw and bright-colored. He wanted to shut them, but they would not shut—they lacked even the fleshy covers that the true Men had, to blot out the searing, garish world. Instead he was forced to stare and stare and stare, to know his surroundings by the uncompromising medium of light and not the comforting subtlety of vibration.

After that, once whatever they had done to him had forced him to come to terms with his sensorium, there had been the body. No more the comfortable scuttle of many legs, secure and low to the ground. Instead, every step these Men took was ridiculously precarious, a prelude to a fall that never came. Nth fell many times at first, until he learned to listen to the alien demands of his new frame. He was bruised and battered at the leg-joints just trying to find his too-few feet. And that was another thing—how tender and raw his skin was now! Gone the armored exoskeleton, so that all of him was one great wound waiting to be opened. He hardly dared touch anything lest he be laid open, innards exposed to the painfully bright sun.

Being human was horrible.

But they drove him and they drove him, and the terrifying fire-handed Man who had remade him gave him sharp commands, and he could only stagger on and on to their mad plan. Terrified, chained by magic, tormented. Mother, for you, he told himself, but it wore thin. He could not have known the agonies and the horrors he would be subjected to. He might even have defied Mother, faced with this.

For a long time he let their babble wash over him, his attention only on the misery of his new being, but eventually he found sufficient equilibrium that the words started falling into place, no matter how much he resented it. His ears were as perpetually open as his eyes, and he wondered if true Men could close those as well. Surely they must be able to. Nobody could live happily with such chaos continually intruding into their skulls.

A moment after that thought, he was struck with a wave of nausea at his own changed self, because the word “skull” had come naturally to his mind, and it had no place there. He did not want to own a skull.

He was just finding a tenuous balance within himself when they reached the place called Shogg’s Ford.

He had no idea. Perhaps even Mother had not known. She had not been abroad in the world for a long time, after all.

It was a nest, a crawling nest of Man. Here they had grown filthy fungal-looking excrescences in profusion, and then they had bred and festered until the entire hideous hole of a place was overrun with a scurrying tide of four-limbed, flabby-skinned Man-creatures.

Words burrowed into his mind, all-unsought: hovels, huts, houses, a village.

“So many.” The voice was strange to him. It was not from any of the Men he traveled with. He realized they were looking at him with those arrangements of articles on their faces that were expressions. Expressions were used to show the attitudes of Man toward the things their eyes rested on, he discovered. The “expressions” of his jailers and tormentors—which he would rather have remained a mystery—were uniformly hostile.

He realized the voice had been his.

One of them looked less fierce than the others. “It’s just a village,” the small male Man said. “You should try a city.”

The meaning of the word “city” followed unbidden a moment later, and the concept horrified Nth beyond any bounds, simply because of what it said about just how many of these Men there must be.

The female Man who commanded the agonizing light, and seemed to be like a Mother to this little brood of them, broke in. “Lief, go on ahead and find something to disguise . . . that as best you can.”

That, Nth realized, was he himself. He was beginning to think more clearly now, and to disentangle something of the net of dealings within the world of Men, and between that world and its newest and most unwilling immigrant. That they had made him into this form, and were now sufficiently chagrined over it that they wished to hide him introduced him to another new word. Hypocrite.

But Lief, the smallest male, was already nodding and heading off, while the rest settled down off the track, within sight of the village.

He had been trying to think of his captors as just “Man,” the homogenous mass he had perceived in the forest, but part of his transformation was a forcible induction to humanity, with all that entailed. They were individuals, each with different things to fear and loathe about them.

The one who had just gone was Lief, and he seemed least offensive. There was a furtive nature to him that was at least comprehensible to Nth, who had crept through his share of shadows in his time. The others were even less pleasant than he.

Two were plainly of greater power and authority. The male who had contorted Nth into this shape was Penthos, and it was his mind that had granted an understanding of human speech and the human world. At first he had seemed the very acme and exemplar of what it was to be human—a God-Man perfect in every line and motion. Nth had been in awe of him to start with, but as soon as he had begun to follow the speech of his captors he had realized that this worship was not in any way universal. Indeed, the expressions of the other Men when gazing upon Penthos could be read as annoyance and exasperation rather than adulation. With that realization, something had fallen from Nth, and he had understood that the awe he himself had felt was an artificial construct, something given to him by Penthos along with everything else. It was a trick played by creator upon creation. However resistant Nth might be to understanding the world of Man, it was that revelation—of the fallibility of even powerful Men—that made him realize how important it was that he make the effort to comprehend.

The other Man of Power was the female, their Mother. She was Dion, he understood, and her power was far more terrifying: that light inimical to his very nature, so that every look she cast his way could bring with it pain and unmaking if she chose. It was her task that had resulted in Nth being subjugated like this, he knew, and he was entirely certain that, when he had done what she needed him to do, she would have him destroyed. Despite the relative balance of power between them, she seemed to view him as some threat that must be wiped out the moment expedience allowed her to do so.

Of the other pair, they were of the same hatred, but of lesser ability to put it into practice. They were a male and a female, a distinction that Nth had no wish to make among Men, as it seemed inappropriate and somehow obscene, and yet it was obviously important enough to Penthos that it had carried over into his reworking. Cyrene was the female Man, and she simply regarded him with loathing and disgust, which for Nth was entirely mutual. Harathes was the other, and his hatred was more active, so that he was constantly finding excuses to shove or trip Nth on the road, when the Men of Power were not looking. That, at least, was honesty in him. Nth could almost appreciate the lack of masks. Almost.

Then the small Man, Lief, was back, his expression betokening great satisfaction.

“Am I not the most resourceful of all thieves?” he declared, then appeared to regret it because Dion had turned a stern gaze on him.

“I gave you money.”

Nth tried to follow the exchange, grasping for concepts that Penthos had gifted him with only loosely.

“I, ah, mean, in general, as a sort of wide-ranging assessment of my abilities,” Lief said awkwardly. “Obviously, I bought most of it. Look, here’s some proper clothes, so he doesn’t look like a wizard—”

“Oh, of course, we can’t have him looking like a wizard,” Penthos snapped with what even Nth recognized as sarcasm. “How terrible that would be!”

Lief’s expression shifted to “aggrieved.” “Seriously, he looks like a freak to start with. Have him look like a freak wizard and we’ll have a mob after us with torches and pitchforks. Let him at least look like some everyday sort of freak.”

“I am not a freak.”

They froze, staring at Nth. He had not exactly decided to speak—in fact, had he been able to, he would have chosen to stay silent and live a few more moments being ignored, but something in him—the native spider or the transplated Man—had piped up.

Their expressions were shifting and hard to read, but at last Harathes spat out, “Shut up, freak,” and that was apparently the end of it.

Lief still looked a little unhappy, and his eyes strayed to Nth a couple of times. “Anyway, some decent clothes for the road, a nice leather cuirass so he at least looks fit to travel.”

“A knife,” Cyrene observed.

“Everyone has a knife,” Lief said defensively. “I thought you wanted him to blend in?”

“We’re not giving it a knife,” she told him.

The small Man spread his hands, a gesture with complex connotations. “Fine. Anyway. All of that ate all your money, so be very thankful I was able to find these in the gutter.”

He held something up. Round, dark discs of glass on a wire frame.

“They’ll hide those . . . eyes of his, and if he wears his hood, the little ones on his forehead’ll get covered too. Smoked glass spectacles. Amazing what people don’t realize they’ve dropped, eh?”

Dion was still looking at him unhappily, but he told her, “It’s for the quest, right? For the Light? I’m sure whoever, ah, lost these would have given them willingly to the cause if we’d only been able to ask, eh?”

* * *

Shogg’s Ford had more inns and tavernas than most places twice its size. It was somewhere to pass through, not somewhere to live. Here, in the uncertain territories not yet claimed by Darvezian’s Darkness, nor actively protected by the Light of Armes, the doors were open to travelers of all inclinations. A place for dark deals, for traitors and turncoats and mercenaries, thieves and opportunists, adventurers and prodigies. Left to her own devices Dion would never have come to Shogg’s Ford save at the head of a cleansing crusade, but she was unhappily aware that Lief, and probably Cyrene, would have been regulars at places like this, had she not given them a higher purpose. Just as she was aware that Lief had stolen some priceless eyeglasses from an alchemist or black market merchant to disguise their new companion. Compromises. Everything in this quest had become an exercise in compromise, and every compromise eroded the vaunted purity of her status as a priestess of Armes. And yet the quest was worth it, wasn’t it? One could compromise a great deal if it meant putting an end to Darvezian, surely?

Ends and means. Dion had known fellow servants of Armes who had followed that road one compromise too far. She had even brought some of them to justice herself.

I feel I lose my way. She could confide in nobody, seek reassurance from nowhere. Until they found themselves somewhere with a proper temple, she must be strong and certain to the others, no matter how sullied and unsure she felt in her heart.

Shogg’s Ford was a bustling den of villainy. The streets were alive with a mixture of men and Ghants, the slimy, greenish skins of the Arghul-born, the ratlike features of Reshers. The writ of Armes, brought back from the Divine Planes after the prophet’s ascension and return, had confirmed that only humanity was fit for the Light, and that those other manlike races were creatures of the Dark. Here, though, everything was gray. There were debased men and women who neither knew nor wanted Armes’s grace, and there were Ghants and others who, though vile, were not actively in the service of the Dark Lord. It was a hive of opportunism and vice.

Cyrene had secured them a room in a leaning shack of a place with a lower floor that was almost entirely given over to a thronging taproom, or possibly brothel or smoke den, or all three. Dion was bitterly tempted to simply turn in, blot out the horrors of the place with sleep, and hope for dreams of Light. Her work was not done, though. It seemed her work would never be done.

“We need intelligence about the movements of Darvezian’s forces,” she told the others. “With Isinglas under siege it sounds as though the armies of Darkness are starting the new stage of the war in earnest.”

“What is our road, anyway?” Cyrene interrupted. “What’s this spider’s path business?”

“Well, we can take the opportunity to quiz the creature now we’re here, as well,” Dion decided. She tugged at the bridge of her nose, feeling a headache coming on. The sheer exuberant amorality of the place was already getting to her. “Cyrene, do you know this place at all?”

“I know some people to talk to, who’ll tell me most of the truth,” the other woman confirmed. “The Light isn’t entirely forgotten here.”

Dion had planned to hole up in their room while her less sanctified companions did the legwork, but Cyrene’s words gave her other ideas. “Truly? Even in this place?”

The bow-woman nodded cautiously.

“Then I will accompany you to them.” Because I could dearly use some indication that the Light is not simply to pass out of the world, unheeded and unmourned. I have been too long in dark places.

“Then I go too,” Harathes told her. “This place is a pit. You’ll be marked by every thing of Darkness on the streets.”

“If you must. Penthos, you have magical means of gathering information, I know. Do what you can.”

“It shall be as you command,” the mage said grandly.

“What about me? I’ll go talk to some less enlightened sources, shall I?”

Dion gave Lief a level stare. “You stay with the creature here in the room. One of us must.”

The little man looked outraged—no, that was just for show, Dion saw. He was just bitter that he wouldn’t get to go whoring and stealing while her back was turned, no doubt. She was immediately nagged by uncertainty. Surely Lief was a good man to have out gathering information—and wasn’t that what she needed? Didn’t that serve their quest? One more compromise, ends and means?

No. Consider it a punishment for his thieving ways. “You stay with the monster,” she told him severely, already knowing that she was the basest hypocrite, and that she was punishing him when in truth she should be punishing herself. For a moment she felt as though she were going to lose it, all her composure, all at once, just burst into tears before them and confess that, no, she was not sure at all, and that this entire venture was seeming more and more a lost dream.

But she had to be strong. They looked to her for their moral guidance. She must be firm, because there was no other anchor in the world for them, if not she.

Lief looked less than delighted to be anchored to the creature, Enth, but she had made her decision, and now she had to stick with it. That was how leadership worked.

* * *

There were small chambers built above, and Lief and Penthos repaired to one, with Nth following numbly in their way, squinting behind the dark lenses the thief had procured for him. Once there, the magician settled himself down on the floor, and Nth sensed by the prickling of his hairs that some manner of magic was afoot, or would be if Lief would only let the mage get on with it.

“Penthos . . .”

The magician cocked an eyebrow. “What is it?”

“I’m just going to . . . can I leave you with it . . . him . . . ? Only . . .”

“You cannot. I shall be in a trance. I can’t be expected to look after it.”

“But it’s your thing,” Lief pointed out. “You made it . . . turned it into . . . did whatever with it.”

“Dion said you had to look after it,” Penthos told him smugly. Human emotions were a new and unpleasant book to Nth, but Penthos had enough smug that even a spider was able to recognize it.

“Oh, right, fine then.” Lief folded his arms. “Well, will it do what I tell it?”

The magician gave him a level stare. “No, in which predilection it shall follow the grand majority of creation. Why should it?”

“So I get to be responsible for it but not actually get any power over it?” Lief demanded.

“Life is seldom fair. Now shut up, I need to concentrate.”

Nth, the it of their discussion, looked from one to the other, seeing Penthos close his eyes, and Lief adopt an expression of low cunning.

“What if it attacks me? No—what if it attacks you? What if Dion walks in and it attacks her, because you’re dead to the world meditating? What if it throttles you the moment you drop off, or whatever it is you do? It’s not as if I could do much to stop it—look at the thing, it must be twice as strong as me.”

Penthos rolled his eyes. “Very well. Creature, do what Lief tells you. There, happy?”

“Happier.” Lief appeared to settle down, watching Penthos ease himself into his trance, or whatever he was doing. Nth watched Lief, aware that this gambit of his was not played out, but having no idea where it was going.

Eventually, and presumably taking his cue from some familiar sign undetected by Nth, Lief stood up. “Away with the fairies, at last,” he declared. “Right, monster, you hear me?” After a pause, he added, “Answer me, will you?”

Nth judged that a nod here would be appropriate.

“Right, follow me, then. We’re going downstairs. I don’t care what Dion says, I’m not pitching up at even this approximation of civilization and not getting a drink. How fair would that be? Problem with that woman is, she’s too damn holy for her own good. She forgets that the rest of us are just a bit more human.” Lief eyed his charge. “Some of us, anyway. You drink, monster? Answer me—look, just take it as truth that if I ask a question, you answer, right? You know what a question is?”

Nth nodded.

“And the drinking part?”

Nth nodded again. He felt very afraid of this energetic little man. Downstairs was full of humans and others that might as well be humans. There was noise, and inexplicable things were done with liquids and discs of metal and the bodies of other humans.

“Come on then.” Lief opened the door, then looked back, his face twisted awkwardly. “I’ve had better drinking buddies. There was a time when people actually wanted to share a jar with me, and I didn’t have to resort to coercing magic monster spider people by secondhand duress.” A pause, in which Nth searched wildly for some appropriate response and found none, before the little man added, “So I guess that means I’m buying the round, eh?” His mouth turned up at the corners, but in a rather forced way. He did not seem happy, even now he had got what he wanted.

The big room below was a seething maggots’ nest of humans and Ghantishmen and other things, most of them armed and almost all of them bigger than Lief, but the man shouldered and elbowed his way to where a makeshift barricade of barrels had apparently been built by a very fat woman. Nth felt such a measure eminently sensible, and would have liked to shelter behind it too, as protection from the surging tide of the crowd. Every moment he was being touched, some spongy-skinned human creature jostling him, leaning into him, or brushing against him. The feel of their pliable hides was profoundly uncomfortable, a horrible and unsought intimacy.

Lief addressed the vast woman and made some request of her, sliding over some pieces of metal—no, coins, came the unwanted knowledge. This was commerce, where the metal served as a memory for past services in some way, so that Lief’s historical actions were somehow remembered to the woman, to be rewarded with the two wooden mugs of Something Suspect that he had now been given. Nth struggled with the concept, trying to understand why it worked and whether anyone wanted the metal for itself, or just for what it represented. The thought reminded him irresistibly of his own predicament: a thing that had value to these humans without them finding in him any inherent worth. He was a cipher, a means to an end, to be spent and forgotten.

“Cheer up, may never happen,” Lief told him, raising a mug. “Here, this is beer. You drink it.” He spoke slowly, as if to a child.

Nth searched his secondhand memories and discovered that Penthos had not had much to do with beer. Holding the mug in both hands, he sipped gingerly at the fluid, finding it thin and uninspiring, then losing himself in revulsion at the motion of his own lips.

“Stop making faces,” Lief advised him, glancing about. “I’d say, ‘People will stare,’ but hell, in a place like this, why would they? Just keep the glasses on and you’re not the third weirdest thing within these four walls.” He drained his mug and waved at the woman for a refill. “I guess this isn’t what you wanted to be when you grew up, eh?”

Nth looked at him blankly, feeling an urge to answer and yet not understanding the question. He drank more beer instead.

“Me neither,” Lief confirmed, as though he had. “Missions? Quests? The service of Armes? Not my business. It’s true, though—Darvezian’s bad for anyone’s business. There used to be more places like this—ignored by Dark and Light alike. Then he started pushing, and his soldiers were suddenly everywhere, and everyone started taking sides. And a few of my friends tried to turn his offers down, and never lived to regret it, so naturally I decided I had to do the right thing, and take a stand against him. Also I got caught stealing from Dion’s temple, and so it was either this or the mines. So I guess we’re not so different, eh? You and me?” Again that strained smile, searching for commonality in Nth’s newly inherited face. “Or not. I guess not.”

“I don’t want to be here.” The words came out barely loud enough to hear over the hubbub, and still Lief flinched.

“Damn me, I forget you can actually talk,” he said. “Maybe you shouldn’t do that, so much. You do weird things with your mouth when you do. I guess you’re still learning.”

His last three words rang out into a sudden silence that descended on the taproom like nightfall.

Lief turned around, saw something he plainly didn’t like and turned back again, eyes fixed on the wall behind the bar.

“Don’t look.”

Nth twitched, given an instruction but with no idea what not to observe. Something of his quandry must have communicated itself to Lief because the little man hissed, “It’s a Doomsayer; one of Darvezian’s elite. Bad guys, real bastards. Don’t look.”

The sound of heavy metal footsteps rang across the room like sword-blows.

“Where is she?” A hollow, steel voice to match the feet.

Nobody answered. Every human that Nth could see seemed to find their drinks, the tabletop, or the backs of their hands endlessly fascinating.

“There was a priestess of Armes here,” the harsh voice went on. “I want her. If someone tells me where she is before I count to five, there will be a shiny coin for them. If someone tells me before I count to ten, there will be a lack of a stabbing for them. After that, I shall be liberal with the stabbing. Tell me, where is she?”

There were no words, but the silence behind Lief and Nth changed character distinctly. Lief looked round, face twisting, and Nth took that as implied permission to at last see what was going on.

The first thing he noted was the enormous armored man dominating the entire taproom. His helmed head brushed the low ceiling, and his shoulders were wide enough to make two Liefs side by side. The iron slabs of his mail were black, chased with red sigils that spat and glowered with power. He had a sword at his belt that looked heavy enough to split rocks with, but the weapon seemed to be gilding the lily, given the raw strength that virtually radiated from the man’s gauntleted hands.

After that, Nth could not help noting that at least a dozen patrons were pointing directly at Lief and himself.

“Fuck,” Lief decided. Then the ogrish figure was stomping over.

“Where is she?” the Doomsayer demanded. “Speak!”

3: The Third Rule of Arachnophobics

“WHERE IS SHE?” the Doomsayer demanded. “Speak!”

“I don’t know!” squeaked Lief, just before the mailed hands caught him up by the collar, lifting him effortlessly into the air.

“Where is she? Or there will be a stabbing,” the huge man promised. “Possibly more than one.” He was ignoring Nth, perhaps because Darkness knew Darkness, and the Doomsayer had assumed that nothing like the transformed spider could possibly be associated with his blessed quarry.

“Gone,” Lief got out, choking around his own twisted collar. “Don’t . . .”

“Where!”

The little man’s eyes flicked sidelong at his drinking companion. “Help!”

Nth stood.

The Doomsayer finally noticed him, the helm tilting toward him without much curiosity as he continued to throttle Lief. “Don’t get involved, brother. This isn’t your business.”

Nth took a step back. Lief exploded into what was probably intended as a tirade of profanity, but came out as little more than a gasp.

The Doomsayer nodded, approving Nth’s discretion. “Now, where—?”

Nth sprang at him. In that moment he knew he was compelled by Lief’s order, by Penthos’s magic, and yet at the same time he wanted to do it. There was no particular loyalty to his enforced companions in him, but he was angry and frustrated and tormented, and he finally had a chance to give rein to his utter disgust at his situation.

His long-limbed frame slammed into the Doomsayer, staggering him, so that Lief ended up cartwheeling behind the bar with a whoop. Then Nth was clinging to the armored frame with hands and feet as the huge man tried to peel him off.

Nth pried, opposing limb against limb, fingers creeping between the metal plates and pulling with all his strength. It was his first chance to see what this monstrous body could do.

A curved shoulder-guard ripped free almost effortlessly, rivets popping from sockets and leather straps parting. The Doomsayer struck at him, a mailed fist bouncing from Nth’s ribs with a flare of pain. This human body felt pain differently, though. It lacked any of the immediacy of the real hurt Nth had been expecting. With a spasmodic twitch of his limbs he wrenched the man’s breastplate partway off, starting with the exposed shoulder, and then went for the throat. His jaw gaped wide—rather wider than human, had he only known—and his shark-ranks of curved teeth ravaged for his victim’s neck.

The Doomsayer had his huge sword out now, but he had no way of bringing it effectively to bear against his clinging enemy. Nth’s teeth latched onto him—not his throat but the lip of his helm.

The taste of steel and Dark magic was in Nth’s mouth, and he twisted his neck, prying with unnatural strength, feeling his fangs dent the metal most satisfactorily and peel the helmet from the flesh beneath. Then the chinstrap gave way with a shuddering snap, and he had a brief glimpse of a pallid, terrified face, a fringe of wiry beard, fear-maddened eyes.

He bit, tasting fierce, salt blood in an exultant rush, and the sheer visceral pleasure of that loosened his grip, so that the Doomsayer was able to throw him off at last, leaving Nth crouching poised atop the row of barrels that made up the bar, and the armored man pawing frantically at his gushing neck with one hand.

The other held that monolithic sword and, with a swift motion, Nth took it from him. He had a glimpse of Lief staring up at him, fascinated and horrified, as he brought the weapon down with all his strength. Penthos did not understand swords, therefore neither did Nth, and so the clubbing blow hacked through the Doomsayer’s upraised arm without skill or finesse, a display of brute force sufficient to dismay any number of master fencers. The force continued down, crumpling blade and mail, and hacking Darvezian’s elite to the floor.

In the resultant appalled silence, Lief stood up shakily.

“I think we’ve gone past last orders,” he said. “Let’s go get Penthos and have him track down the others, ’cos word of this is going to be everywhere from here to the Dark Lord by this time tomorrow.”

* * *

“You weren’t there,” Lief said. “You didn’t see. It was bloody terrifying, I can tell you.”

They were some distance from Shogg’s Ford now, holed up in a stand of tangled trees and supposedly cloaked from hostile divination by Penthos’s magic. Free of any pursuit, their gaze had turned to Enth.

There was still a little blood about his mouth, Dion saw. The creature stared back at them, those owlish, freakish eyes thankfully masked by its dark lenses. It seemed to have a defiant, mulish expression on its face, although she appreciated that might just be her preferred interpretation. Probably the thing was not human enough to have true expressions.

“It’s dangerous,” Harathes stated, glowering at the hateful thing.

“We knew that,” Lief told him.

“We didn’t know just how much,” the warrior insisted. “That could have been any one of us. It could have ripped Dion’s head off before we could stop it, at any time.”

“Penthos, you can control it,” the priestess observed.

“Well, of course,” the magician agreed. “Alas, I was meditating when the incident occurred, but in my presence a mere thought would suffice to stay its hand.” He cast a withering look at Harathes. “For some of us, that means ‘quite fast.’”

“We need to bind it,” the swordsman insisted. “Cage it, maybe.” He looked to Cyrene, seeking support, and she nodded.

“And transport it how?” Lief asked. “And if we parade him around tied up, someone’s going to decide to take him off us, just to see why. And we’d be slowed down. Look—”

“Penthos.” Dion’s voice silenced them all.

The magician regarded her, uncertain whether he was about to be told off.

“Can you give it commands, instructions it must abide by? Laws to live by, in fact.”

“Of course, a simple matter. In fact I achieved as much when I gave Lief the—”

“Yes, right, well,” the small man interrupted hastily. “Let’s not rake up ancient history.”

“What laws?” Cyrene asked.

“Well, that is what we must decide,” Dion told her. “We must be safe from it, now we’ve seen how . . . well Penthos has wrought, in giving it this form.” She sent a pained glance at the magician, whose proud beam immediately dissolved into bafflement.

“Please, more complaint, even now?” the mage whined plaintively. “I—seriously, you don’t understand the sheer artifice of what I’ve done—”

“You didn’t have to make it into a murderous killing machine,” Cyrene told him hotly.

“My dear, it was already a . . .” Penthos looked from her to Dion. “I really don’t understand how this is my fault.”

“Tell it, it must not kill or harm anyone ever again,” Dion stated.

“Very well,” Penthos began, drawing a great sigh, but then Lief spoke up.

“Hold on, what if we want him to? If we need this thing, he’s going to have to defend himself, at least, if we get attacked. We’ll get ourselves killed just as easily if we’re nursemaiding him. And besides, like I say, you weren’t there. Yes, it was bloody scary seeing him in action, but he tore a Doomsayer apart. That’s the sort of party trick we could use some time.”

Dion ground her teeth. She wanted to deny it, to enforce her original will, but Lief was too good at making sense. The thought of actually needing the monstrous creature to fight was abhorrent, but perhaps no more abhorrent than the thought of anything else about it. And there would be a great many enemies between them and Darvezian. Having lost the original struggle with her conscience over using the thing at all, this new battle seemed doomed to failure.

“Well, then, it can’t harm any of us. Give it that law to live by. Or anyone of the Light.”

Penthos grimaced. “I don’t really think it has the capability to look into the hearts of men, alas. I can have it not harm us, and . . . not anyone without our express instruction, or unless it’s attacked itself?”

Dion nodded grudgingly. “And it needs to do what it’s told, by any one of us.”

Penthos nodded equably. “It shall be done. So, and to summarize, it mustn’t harm us. It mustn’t harm anything else unless defending itself, or unless we tell it to. And it must do what it’s told. By these laws it shall live.”

“It will have to do,” Dion agreed unhappily, aware that any human system of laws would have loopholes to exploit. “So let us hope we do not need it for long. Which brings us to the subject of the spider’s path. Creature, attend me.”

She had the full blessing of that dark gaze.

“You are here at our service because of knowledge that the chief of your brood gave you. We need to reach Darvezian by some means that avoids his armies, his demons, and his traps. Your progenitor knew how, for she is ancient and knows many evil secrets and Dark ways. You must tell us, now, where this path is—where we must go to walk it.”

* * *

Nth stared at the female Man, feeling the new restrictions on his behavior close about his mind like hot wires. He would never know his limits, now, until he brushed against the razor bars of his cage and was forced to flinch back.

He opened his mouth—he had been given an instruction and could only obey it—and yet no words came out. He was aware of that great undigested knot of memory that his Mother had given him sitting like a stone in his mind. Somewhere in there was what he wanted, and yet he could not search for it. He had no idea of the shape of what he wanted.

“Speak!” Dion insisted, and something clenched nauseously within him, so that he gagged forward, jaw almost disarticulating to vomit out—just sounds, no words.

“Give him a chance,” Lief argued. “He’s thinking.”

“It,” the other female Man, Cyrene, corrected. “You keep calling it ‘him.’”

“It’s a him,” Lief said, then rolled his eyes. “He, he is a him.”

“I always was unsure about you,” Harathes stepped up to Cyrene’s shoulder, the two of them looming over him.

“Piss off,” Lief said. “I don’t answer to either of you.”

“Little man,” Harathes rumbled, but Lief pointedly turned his back on the pair of them. “Dion,” he said, “listen, how did the spider give directions?”

The priestess blinked at him. “Is this . . . are you trying to tell a joke?”

“So Mummy Spider knew where to go. So how’s Enth supposed to communicate it to us? I bet it—he doesn’t even know where we are. At least give the poor bastard some frame of reference. Can he read a map?”

“He should have some concept of maps, from all I gave him,” Penthos said thoughtfully. “The creature may have the makings of a good idea.”

“Show him a map, then,” Dion agreed.

“Hold on,” Lief objected, “did you just call me a creature?”

Penthos frowned. “I may have done. Is it important?”

“You are very pally with the monster, all of a sudden,” Cyrene pointed out.

“You can piss off too.”

“We live in unsure times,” the mage declared. “I can’t be expected to remember who’s a creature and who isn’t. Now, the map. I want to see how much the creature understands.”

“Which creature?” Lief asked sourly, but he got the map out, unfolding it for Nth’s benefit.

For a long while it was just a piece of paper with marks on, untidy and abstract. There was understanding there, though, buried in Nth’s mind—not what he had been gifted with by his Mother, but the human knowledge that Penthos had violated his brain with. For a moment he actively fought it off, clinging to ignorance with the desperation of a drowning swimmer, but then it unfolded itself within his head and he could relate the scrawl before him with the mental images that Mother had passed on: landmarks and trails, forests for hiding in, settlements to be avoided.

“Speak, monster,” Dion prompted. “Where is this path, this secret way to Darvezian?”

His long-fingered hand quivered over the map that Lief held out for him. Nth let the borrowed knowledge flow within him, welling up like pus in a wound until his fingers brushed the paper. “S . . .” The human words welled up, the cumbersome and imprecise means of communication that he hated to have to use. “Somewhere here. When we are here, I will know it.”

“That’s . . .” Cyrene squinted. “That’s the Shadow Canyons?”

“There’s nothing there,” Harathes spat. “Nothing except monsters like this one. It’s a trap.”

“Well, amazingly we didn’t get the map with all the secret Dark paths marked on it,” Lief remarked acidly. “I must have a word with my cartographer.”

“If there was some way through the barrier mountains, it would indeed be a short step to Darvezian’s tower, and from an unexpected direction—avoiding his entire gauntlet of fortresses and followers,” Penthos mused. “Well, this is what we wanted, is it not?”

From the assembled expressions, Nth judged it not to have been what any of them particularly wanted, but Dion nodded tiredly.

“We’ve come this far,” she agreed, and even Nth could sense that she did not speak so much of physical distance, but of compromises made. “We will follow this path, and trust to prophecy.”

“There’s a lot of Dark territory between us and the Shadow Canyons,” Lief pointed out unhappily. “Ghants and blight-wolves and Murgl-wyrms and all sorts.” His finger traced a line from Shogg’s Ford, showing the route. “Not convinced that the power of prophecy’s going to get us through all that.”

“It will be an epic journey,” Harathes said potentiously. “A worthy quest, through monsters and the servants of the Dark one, past evil forests, marshes, and jagged rocks . . .”

“Mm.” Lief grimaced. “You’re not selling it to me.”

“Prophecy is silent as to how we get to where the spider’s path begins,” Dion said slowly, considering the map. “Yes, the direct route is across the darkest of Dark territory, through all manner of hazards, ill country, and the lairs of vile things. So let us not take it.” She smiled, a brittle expression. “Here, we will go past Shogg’s Ford through the Eningsmire and there pass into the lands of the Light at Ening’s Garth. A greater distance, yes, but better roads and little to oppose us. We shall travel north in safety, and cross the border once more at the fortress of Cad Nereg, which stands closest of all the Light’s bastions to Darvezian’s lair. From there, we turn aside from the path and meet the Shadow Canyons. All agreed?”

“And this?” Cyrene prompted, indicating Nth. “We travel through all the lands of the Light with him, do we?” A moment later she plainly heard her own choice of pronoun, but did not take it back, merely regarded Nth doubtfully.

Dion toyed with the disc of Armes as though wondering how far her status would take them, if questioned. “We must have faith,” she told them faintly, doubt leaking out between the words.

* * *

Ening’s Garth, their first port of call, was not exactly a bastion of righteousness, Penthos knew. He had been given cause to visit the place before, two or three times, arriving in one of those guises that wizards traditionally adopted in such circumstances, but which he gloomily suspected fooled nobody. After all, while an aged wanderer with a staff and a hat should have been a relatively innocuous thing, the roads were so dangerous these days that any genuine old fool just pottering about on his own between cities would find his possessions in a bandit’s pack and the rest of him inside a bear before he completed the first leg of his journey. Any aged wayfarer turning up at the gates of Ening’s Garth was almost de facto a wizard, and the guards had met Penthos with the sort of exaggerated and fearful courtesy he suspected they would not have reserved for someone’s dotty grandfather out after curfew.

He had been hunting magic, of course. Ening’s Garth straddled the borders: here the Dark-minded smuggled things of value out of the lands of the Light, and the adventurous brought them back. The shadow markets of Ening’s Garth might hold anything.

Unfortunately, the same basic failure of disguise that got him through the gates also tipped off any sellers, so that Penthos had never been to Ening’s Garth without being thoroughly ripped off by various merchants of the obscure. He had no warm feelings for the place.

Getting to Ening’s Garth would be another matter, of course. There was plenty of disputed territory between there and Shogg’s Ford. The Eningsmire was treacherous, ruin-haunted terrain where the roads shifted daily and were watched over by unpleasant eyes. Darvezian had many spies, but most of them were sadly lacking in imagination. Because they searched hawkishly for travelers on the road, cross country was usually the sounder trail despite the bogs, dark woods, and a miscellany of beasts. After all, now that their party had a dead Doomsayer to their credit, the agents of the Dark Lord would surely be seeking for them on all the usual paths.

Penthos, personally, would rather have taken the road and answered force with force when the opportunity presented itself. There were magicians among the Doomsayers who would be quite the challenge, and he would be able to show off his power and finesse to Dion. He had even suggested as much, but she had talked at some length about collateral damage and innocent lives, and so apparently he had got it wrong again. His comment about there being no innocents having any business traveling between Shogg’s Ford and Ening’s Garth also failed to go down well, and he had made matters worse by trying to pass it off as a joke after rather too much of a strained pause.

All in all, Penthos was feeling at a low ebb, exacerbated by the fact that his usual recourse—to set things on fire—seemed likely to make things worse. He trudged along at the back of their party as they headed over the rugged gorse and briar-ridden terrain, feeling sorry for himself. Is there any creature in the world more woebegotten than I?

He spared a glance for his creation, the man-spider Enth. Probably it was in even worse straits. No doubt it would complain, if its nature was sophisticated enough to allow it to do so. For a moment, Penthos toyed with the idea of making the monster attack his fellows so that he could rescue them. But no. Doubtless any rescue, however magnificent, would be obscured by their casting blame on him for not managing his monster, and besides, his rescues tended to be a source of collateral damage in and of themselves.

Life was hard. Life was complicated. That was what these people did not understand. Everyone assumed that genius-level wizards such as he were all for complex schemes and plots of surpassing intricacy, but Penthos longed only for simplicity. Simplicity and Dion, anyway.

Cyrene had been scouting ahead, an arrow to her bow. Penthos had considered volunteering for the duty, perhaps with an eye to manufacturing some sort of ambush or emergency that would allow him to show his worth. However, he was uncomfortably aware that, without constantly drawing on his magic, his sense of direction was notoriously poor. The one time he had tried to lead the fellowship across country, long before the Wood of the Spiders, he had managed to guide them into the same nest of troll-men three times, to the exasperation of all concerned, not least the troll-men, who had grown increasingly jaded about being set on fire and having their limbs hacked off.

Now Cyrene was coming back, he saw, and not alone. For a moment he had the optimistic thought that this newcomer was a threat of some sort, and that, for once, setting the man on fire would turn out to be the proper course of action. He reluctantly had to concede, though, that Cyrene seemed easy in his company, and there was no suggestion of coercion or enchantment. Still, he glowered at the stranger, purely for form’s sake.

He was a tall, lean, weathered man in a gray-green cloak, with a longbow slung over his shoulder, and he bowed respectfully before Dion.

“This is Lothern,” Cyrene introduced him. “He’s a Ranger of Elwer.”

They were some wandering order of Dark-hunters, Penthos recalled vaguely: not followers of Armes, but border skirmishers constantly on the watch for incursions of evil. The odds of being allowed to incinerate the man were receding swiftly.

“You know him?” Dion pressed.

“We’ve worked together before.” Cyrene put a companionable hand on Lothern’s shoulder, and Penthos noted with interest that Harathes was instantly standing differently, making himself look bigger, muscling closer to the man. In a rare moment of insight the mage wondered if there was some manner of jealousy at work.

“Lothern has been abroad in the mire this last month,” Cyrene told them. “He’s agreed to lead us on the best hidden paths to Ening’s Garth.”

“You told him what we’re about?” Harathes growled.

Cyrene frowned at his tone. “Just where we need to get to.”

“I have faith that Armes guides you.” Lothern’s voice was musical. “I shall but play my small part in your venture, and aid you in any way I can.” His arm slipped about Cyrene’s waist rather familiarly, and she smiled at him—perhaps a little fixedly—and disentangled herself.

“Well, then, your help would be welcome,” Dion pronounced, sparking a fresh scowl from Harathes.

“Moreover,” Lothern went on, almost speaking over her, “I am so fortunate as to carry a blessed lodestone that glows when agents of Darkness are near. So, we may be forewarned of any ambush!” He looked terribly pleased about that. Penthos, for whom that sort of thing was a parlor trick at best—albeit one he seldom remembered to perform—found himself siding with Harathes in his apparent assessment of the woodsman as an annoyingly smug prick.

But now there was nothing for it but that Lothern must get out his magical lodestone and show them it, and . . .

The ranger’s eyes went wide. “Beware!” he hissed. “Evil is near!” for the lodestone was glowing with an eerie greenish light, such as was known to Penthos as “ghostlight number seven,” a favorite with the magical artificers and gimickers of Ening’s Garth who so overcharged him on every visit.

Needless to say, the lodestone did not actually point to any evil, but just hung there, spinning and glowing. “We must be away from this place, and travel with caution,” Lothern announced pregnantly. “Follow me.”

Amazingly, nobody else seemed to realize what was going on, and Penthos trailed at the back, waiting for the other shoe to drop, as they crept and sneaked through the uneven, damp countryside. Then Lothern bid them halt, and produced his talisman once more, and gasped.

“The Darkness is still close!” he whispered hoarsely, eyes boggling about him. “We are beset!” Harathes, Cyrene, and even Dion had their weapons out, ready to fight off the hordes of Darvezian whenever they should appear. Now, though, Lief had twigged, and nudged Penthos with an elbow, eyes flicking to Enth.

The mage nodded, dreading the inevitable announcement. Would this count as some sort of black mark with Dion? Should he have found a way to hide the Darkness in the transformed spider? Was that even possible?

They moved on, at a painfully cautious pace. Every half-mile, Lothern would pull out his lodestone, more and more agitated each time as it glowed and danced at the end of its string. “The evil must be all around us!” he declared, horrified.

By now they had all worked it out, but it seemed not to have become one of those all-too-common “it’s the wizard’s fault” situations. Instead Dion and Cyrene were exchanging embarrassed looks, ever more so as Lothern grew almost feverish with alarm at each new indication of the presence of the Dark powers.

Lief appeared to be choking, Penthos noted. Or at least, every time that talisman came out, the little man put his hands over his mouth and turned away, shoulders shaking helplessly. Was he ill, or . . . ?

He met the mage’s eyes, and abruptly his feelings communicated themselves. It was a revelation for Penthos, to find himself sharing a joke, wordless and silent, with another human being.

His lips quirked, as he watched Lothern panicking, dashing off into the reeds with bow in hand to look for tracks, dashing back, babbling about invisible monsters, flying enemies . . .

“Can we not tell him,” Lief got out during one of his brief absences, “that we’ll just go on without him?”

“He’ll want to track the evil down,” Dion said out of the side of her mouth. “And if we leave him, he’ll track it to us. He’ll know we’re escorting a thing of Darkness.”

“No he won’t,” Lief told her. “Because he’s a moron.”

“How dare you!” Cyrene hissed. “He’s a brave man, a hero.”

“A moron,” echoed Harathes with some satisfaction.

“You . . . !” Cyrene glared at him. “Dion, tell him—!”

But at that moment Lothern was back, leaping into their midst with his great heroic strides and declaring, “My friends, alack, the Darkness is still nigh, but hidden from me! I swear my eyes are sharper than any man’s, but no trace of it can I find!” He looked so terribly earnest and desperate to please, or at least to please Cyrene, to whom his eyes kept drifting.

Dion raised a hand, as if in benediction, and then she sat down, turning away from him to hide her expression.

“Alack,” said Lothern bewilderedly. “I have failed in my service . . . ?”

“Aha,” Dion got out. “Oh Armes help me.” Her voice trembled, and to Penthos’s delight she was plainly on the very edge of giving in to hysterical laughter. “Lothern, pray just . . . take us to Ening’s Garth, right now, forget the evil, no more stops, and that will be enough . . . service from you.” And although her voice wavered perilously on the brink, she was able to finish her sentence without laughing in the man’s well-meaning face.

The sight of Dion letting go of her holy authority enough to actually smile—and for once at a joke that Penthos himself was able to understand—brought a moment’s much-needed levity to the magician. A moment later, he caught sight of Enth again, standing dumb and oblivious in the midst of all this confusion that he was, all unwittingly, the cause of. Something about that blankly hostile face soured his enjoyment of the moment. The creature was plainly aware that something was going on, but would never be able to comprehend what it was. There was a hole in Enth where humor was supposed to sit, and Penthos wondered glumly whether that was due to the thing’s essential dour nature, or whether it reflected some similar failure of his own.

From that point on they began to make respectable progress toward Ening’s Garth, although Lothern kept feeling frettishly for his talisman. Penthos was able to observe a peculiar dance between him, Harathes, and Cyrene, as the big warrior constantly tried to walk between the other two, or at least uncomfortably close to them, while Cyrene was constantly moving off, frequently with Lothern tagging after her. In the end, the cumulative delay caused by all that maneuvering was, Penthos reckoned, a greater drag on their time than any spurious evil-detection.

When the pass of Ening’s Garth was visible, Cyrene stopped their progress altogether, dragged Harathes off, and had a muted but furious argument with him behind a rock, giving the rest of them the chance to rest their feet. Although the two of them strove to keep their voices low, it was plain that Harathes was demanding that she banish Lothern, and that Cyrene was telling him that it was no business whatsoever of his. Listening, the ranger’s face darkened incrementally, while Dion and Lief looked anywhere but at him, and tried desperately to pretend that they could hear none of it.

When they did finally reach Ening’s Garth, they were all glad of it. The walled town squatted in its rock-walled pass like a toad, and under normal circumstances even those who lived there were not particularly keen to see it. Their journey had become, for various reasons, a training ground for awkward silences, however, and the chance for various of their band to avoid one anothers’ company for a short while obviously outweighed the generally insalubrious nature of their surroundings.

* * *

The chief difference for Nth between Shogg’s Ford, of unfond memory, and this new place, was that Ening’s Garth was mostly built of stone, was larger, and contained far more humans, all of which contributed to his feeling even less welcome there. It was an unnatural place, and he had no sense that a single inhabitant particularly wanted to be there. They were all packed inside the grasp of those high walls for incomprehensible reasons relating to commerce, or so he gathered from the conversation of Lief and the others. Ening’s Garth was a means to an end.

Penthos had announced himself as an intimate of the place and located, after a few false starts, an inn he lauded as not being too filthy, and catering to discerning magical visitors such as himself. Nobody else found this description overtly endearing, but they filed into the place nonetheless. It was built into the side of the pass, with the majority of its rooms entirely windowless and illuminated by pale orbs that floated unsupported near the ceiling.

“Like a bloody cave,” was Lief’s assessment, “and it stinks of magic.”

Penthos gave him an arch look. “And you’d have a sensitivity for magic?”

“It has floating lights, and that bloke over in the corner is wearing a crown of glowing ice, and his mate’s got the head of a parrot. I don’t think you need to be Grand Archmage Woddleflot to pick up the delicate scent of magic.”

The magician stared at him for slightly too long for any spontaneity, and then came back lamely with, “And are you implying that there is something disagreeable with the smell of magic? I’d warrant it’s practically fragrant compared to some.”

“Enough,” the priestess, Dion, said, shutting them both up. She seemed weary and short-tempered, which made Nth nervous because, of all of them, she could cause him the most pain and harm. “Penthos, secure some rooms, at least three. I need to go and lie down. And try not to mention our quest.” She rubbed at her forehead. “Lothern . . .”

The bowman, who was still engaged in some incomprehensible jostling contest with Harathes, stepped forward. “Yes, Priestess?”

“Thank you for your assistance. You have aided the cause of Armes, and you have my thanks.” Dion plainly expected the man to take off at that point, but Lothern bobbed and smiled and went nowhere, despite pointed looks from Harathes. Nth could not parse what was going on, or whether this was perfectly normal for humans, or some peculiar ritual. For himself, he discovered that the magic Lief had alluded to was entirely evident to him, making every hair on his body prickle uncomfortably. He found himself wondering if that was a natural facility he had always possessed, or whether it was an unwanted gift of the process that had reworked him.

“This must be just like home for you.” Lief jogged his elbow, gesturing at the passageways that fell away into the depths of the rock. “Just like a cave, eh?”

Standing there, in that oppressive, human-filled-up place, cut so unnaturally out of stone and severed from the sky and the trees, and bristling with enchantment to boot, Nth could only stare at him.

Lief seemed to recognize something of his expression. “Let me get you a drink,” he offered. “Poor sod, you don’t fit in anywhere, do you?”

The words were just a throwaway remark, and Lief had turned and was gesturing at the brooding, birthmarked fat man who seemed to have control over comestibles there, but Nth found himself suddenly weak with self-pity, bitterly missing his home and his kin and his Mother. No, he didn’t fit anywhere. No, he never would. He knew full well that Penthos would not spare the effort to restore him to his true shape, nor would these questing heroes care to return him to his forest home. They would use him, and cast him off or kill him, and probably the latter. The only place in the world he knew was lost to him, and if he was somehow transported there, right then, his own people would not know him, and would take him for prey.

He collapsed onto one of the precarious platforms on stilts—stools, Penthos’s memories informed him—and let Lief press a wooden mug into his hands. The little man’s expression was—well, it was ugly and alien, just like every human face in any configuration Nth could imagine, but it seemed sympathetic, too.

“You listen,” Lief murmured, after glancing around and seeing that the rest were out of earshot, Dion especially, “you did good by me, back at the Ford. You saved my arse, and then some. I don’t exactly get much say in this little venture, but I’ll do what I can. I’ll buy the beer, anyway.”

From Shogg’s Ford Nth knew perfectly well that he didn’t like beer. After the first mug, though, he found that the second was, at least, merely objectionable. Possibly it was different, better beer, or possibly this was some sort of beer magic. It was just one of those human things that Penthos knew nothing of, and so Nth was doomed to know even less.

By that time Dion had absented herself to lie down, and Penthos had declared his intention to go trolling the sellers of arcane trinkets, on the basis that there was no reason to waste a visit here, leaving Lief and Nth at the bar. It was around that time that Harathes and Cyrene renewed their shouting. Nth recalled that something similar had happened on the road, but here, in this populated place, the two of them were apparently not even finding somewhere secluded. With the beer within him providing a buffer against the unpleasantness of the sound, and his surroundings, and indeed his own physical shape, he watched with some interest as the two of them yelled at each other across the room. At first he took it for just some aspect of usual human communication unfamiliar to him, and then perhaps as a form of discordant entertainment, but at the last he realized that it constituted a disagreement. Not that his forced traveling companions were exactly short of internal conflict, but this was their sniping and backbiting taken to quite a new level.

It was exceedingly hard for him to understand precisely what the issue between the two of them was. Nth was not even sure he should care. They were both people who plainly disliked his very existence, and yet they lacked the potency of Penthos or Dion and so were less to be feared. Hence they were arguably the least relevant or important of those he traveled with. At the same time, the spectacle was so fierce and flamboyant he found he could not ignore it.

Apparently Harathes was only concerned with Cyrene’s well-being and intended to keep her from making unwise decisions, while Cyrene was insistent that she was in no way possessed or controlled by Harathes nor under his jurisdiction. Understanding that much, and no more, Nth explained this to Lief, in case the little man had missed the subtleties.

The thief covered his face with his hands for a moment. It took Nth a moment to understand that this was, for some reason, mirth rather than despair. It was true that despair was something he himself was more familiar with.

Cyrene had very pointedly approached the ranger Lothern and, apparently after ensuring that Harathes was aware of it, had gone off with him to some sort of alcove or booth. The big warrior began drinking considerable quantities of beer, after which he stormed out himself.

Lief sighed. “You see, this is precisely why I don’t get involved with people I work with. Unprofessional, I call it. Another?”

Nth understood that this meant more beer. To his surprise, his mouth opened and words came out. “I like beer.”

Lief’s expression lit up. “Good for you.”

“I like you, too. You make beer happen.” The words came out in fits and starts, and not very clearly, and Nth was not entirely sure why he was saying them, but they were just welling up inside him without much volition. If this was a human thing, it was not something Penthos had prepared him for.

“Well, maybe we better slow down on the beer a bit. Savor it, you know?”

Nth didn’t know, but he felt that nodding was important. A moment later he felt that it had been unwise.

They sat in companionable quiet for a short time, while around them the babble of flapping human tongues built up again, filling the silence left by the exit of Harathes and Cyrene. Shortly thereafter, Lief jogged Nth’s elbow, indicating Lothern, who was returning to the taproom and not looking happy. Some encounter had left a striking bruise across half his face, and his nose was crooked and bloodied. Weaving slightly, he stumbled away and left the inn entirely.

Cyrene reentered too, a moment later, a particularly belligerent expression on her face. She approached the barkeep, and then caught sight of Lief and Nth staring at her.

“Funny, is it?” she demanded.

“Somewhat,” Lief said. “Have a drink.”

“If I won’t ‘have a drink’ with Harathes and I won’t ‘have a drink’ with Lothern, what makes you think you’re any better?” she snarled.

“Because I actually just meant—” Lief started, but she spoke over him.

“Is it too much to ask?” she snapped. “Is it too much, just to . . . have some company, a conversation, without . . .”—she slammed her fist down on the top of the bar—“being someone’s fucking . . . or having to . . . ?”

“Look, just have a drink. It’s not always about you,” Lief told her, without much sympathy.

“And you’re different, are you?” she demanded.

“Love, you’re not my type.” The thief shrugged. “Personally I like them domestic, pleasant natured, and not bugnuts crazy, none of which locks you have the key for.”

Abruptly Cyrene was sitting down, head in her hands. “I just wanted . . . I mean, is it too much to ask . . . ? That there might be people who think that just because I take up a bow and fight, and don’t just sit in a kitchen with my hair bundled up, that I might not actually be a fucking whore as a sideline? That I have to be giving it away?”

“Yeah, well, exactly, whatever,” said Lief as noncommittally as possible.

“I mean . . .” Cyrene drained a mug, and Nth guessed it was by no means her first of the evening. “It’s not as if I don’t . . . but does it have to make me someone’s exclusive possession if I . . . ?”

“Don’t ask me, I’m not the one who slept with Harathes that time.”

Abruptly she was standing again, albeit somewhat unsteadily. “Is that . . . ? You’re asking to take your teeth home in a bag, you little weasel!”

“Enough, enough.” Lief raised his hands, and then realized that Nth had stood as well, and was looming protectively at his shoulder. Nth realized the fact at about the same time.

“Oh crap,” the thief got out, and then Cyrene had a knife out, locking eyes with her own reflection in the the round, dark lenses of Nth’s spectacles.

“And you, you monster, what are you looking at?” Cyrene demanded.

“Now wait, hold it, hold it.” Lief tried to step between them, and she took him by the shoulder and threw him onto the floor without any obvious effort. Nth twitched forward, and then stopped, held by invisible bands of iron.

Cyrene stared at him. “You can’t, can you?” she murmured. The knife wove in her hand. “Look at you, monster in human shape, eater of men, and you’re completely helpless. I could kill you. I could just kill you.”

4: The Light Stuff

“I COULD JUST KILL YOU.” And Cyrene’s gaze was becoming more and more intense, almost hungry.

It was true. Nth was fighting his own alien body, but the restrictions that Penthos had set over him were unbreakable.

“Kneel down,” Cyrene told him.

His knees folded. Everyone in the taproom was staring, but the woman was too angry and too drunk to care.

“Lower, head to the floor,” she told him. “If I kill you, you won’t even see it coming, not with any of your eyes. How about that, creature?”

He stared at the stone flags of the taproom floor, seeing them in minute detail, waiting.

“This is unworthy,” came Lief’s quiet voice. “You think Dion would like this, if she saw it?”

“She wouldn’t care.”

“I seriously hope that’s not true. Cyrene, look at yourself.”

There was a scrape of wood as she sat down again. Nth remained bowed, feeling abruptly ill as all the beer he had consumed turned into something malevolent within him.

A moment later there was a curious noise from the woman, which Nth tentatively identified as indicating unhappiness.

“I’m sorry,” she said indistinctly. “It’s just . . . I’ve known Lothern for years, and I always thought he was . . . decent, a good man, and he was just . . . he was just waiting for his fucking chance to get me on my own. I just want . . .”

“You want to have a lie down, probably,” Lief suggested. “Nth, get up, why don’t you.”

Apparently the little man’s authority was on a par with Cyrene’s, because Nth could abruptly uncurl and clamber to his feet, feeling very unsteady and somewhat ill.

Cyrene stared at him blankly and then, after a pause had stretched out between them, said, “What? You think I’m going to apologize to it?”

Lief shrugged. “I try to think as little as possible. Why don’t you go and have a rest. We’ve raised enough eyebrows around here, eh?”

She kept staring, though, and then she had reached out and twitched the dark glasses from Nth’s face, heedless of the current of revulsion that passed through the taproom. “Look at it,” she said quietly. “I mean, look at the thing.” In her eyes, Nth could see his own face reflected. In all honesty he had to agree with her.

“Blame Penthos. Blame us,” Lief said, and then he had abstracted the spectacles from her and put them back in place, as smooth a piece of legerdemain as any magician might manage.

“It makes me sick,” Cyrene remarked, but almost sadly, and then she was up and stumbling away.

“Wonder how long it’ll take for word of this to reach Darvezian,” Lief remarked. “Well, with luck he’ll die laughing and save us a trip.”

* * *

“It’ll just be a quiet visit,” Dion explained. “No fanfare. And it’s on the way. We’d actually have to go out of our way not to visit Armesion.”

The name obviously meant something significant to all of the others, but if Penthos knew much about it, he had not cared to gift the knowledge to Nth. The transformed spider just watched them all blankly, as most of them looked from Dion to him. The only inevitability seemed to be that, whatever was going on, he would not like it.

“With that,” Cyrene clarified, nodding at him with her usual venom. “You want to go to the Holy City with that.”

“Won’t it be like that stupid ranger’s little stone, only a whole city of it?” Harathes backed her up.

“Actually,” Penthos put in, “you’d be surprised at how little people in Armesion actually think about the powers of Darkness. Being at the heart of the Light, they are remarkably lax at checking for corruption. It’s amazing what you can get away with.” In the silence that followed his words he looked up sharply, and then added, “Or so I’ve heard,” with a strained smile.

They were gathered around a campfire, on the road out of Ening’s Garth.

“Even so,” Cyrene put in, “what are you going to do? Parade the thing past the Potentate? Ask his blessing.”

“Not a word of what we are about will pass my lips, save that we are fighting against the Dark,” Dion told them all. “But I . . . I need the reassurance that will come—must come—from returning to Armesion. We will shortly pass into the worst darkness, and the greatest weapon of the dark has always been our own doubts. And I . . . since we set ourselves upon this course, I have doubted. I have doubted myself.” She glowered angrily at Nth, as though this were his fault. “Every consecrated priest may ask to stand once in the presence of the Potentate and seek his blessing. I need not sully his holy office with the details of our plan.”

Dion had always been something supernatural to Nth’s senses, a terrible blazing threat just in her mere being. Now, for just a moment, she seemed merely human, a woman worn down by the tasks forced upon her. For a few heartbeats he almost did not hate and fear her, or not as much.

“Well, then,” Harathes decided, “we’ll go there. Cyrene and I will accompany you to the halls of the Potentate. Perhaps he will bless us as well.”

Cyrene’s expression suggested that she was less than keen on this development, but she said nothing.

“As shall I,” Penthos declared. Nth found he could predict the awkward pause that followed.

“It might be best if you did not,” Dion said carefully. “Magicians of power are not much loved, among the priesthood of Armes.” Seeing his expression, she frowned. “You must know, surely . . . it is just that many of my brethren are wary of such strength when it is not given over entirely to the Light . . .”

“Is doing your bidding and being your follower not enough?” demanded Penthos, strongly enough that he drew frowning glances from the others.

“Please, Penthos. I don’t doubt your dedication, but . . . I will need you to keep your creature under tight control. And you will need to stay in the . . .” She mumbled quickly over something.

“In the what?” the magician asked suspiciously.

“The Heathen’s Quarter,” Lief supplied caustically. “Oh yes,” he added, at Dion’s stare, “I know Armesion. You’d be surprised at what goes on there. I won’t say Enth will blend in, but there’s a lot of people who make a good living there satisfying needs that the holy and the laudable aren’t supposed to have.”

For a moment Dion was about to argue with him, but then her shoulders sagged. “Probably you’re right. The Light is a lantern forever ready to gutter, if we do not keep it fed with virtue. But it is hard, sometimes.”

“Just a quiet visit, then,” Cyrene pressed.

“Just that, to settle my soul. No fanfare,” Dion promised.

* * *

Armesion was a walled city, and one Lief was not overly fond of. Living in lands shielded by the church of Armes was a grand thing, he supposed, given that it kept him generally safe—safer anyway—from the depredations of the Dark, and provided him with a ready source of prosperous merchants and townsfolk to bilk and burgle. On the downside, it did entail a great deal of being looked down on. Those with a mandate from the church—its priests, knights, servants, and any interfering freelancer who decided that they were divinely inspired—did tend to view everyone else with a sort of paternal condescension: children in want of correction. Lief—who had lived a life very much in want of correction up until the point that they caught him and corrected him by fobbing him off on Dion—looked at the walls of Armesion with a sense of general resigned gloom. Even a flying visit to allow Dion to take the weight off her moral bladder would be a constant round of patronizing and do-goodery that would set his teeth on edge.

For a city, it was a compact place, he recalled: the houses were clustered together as though in terror of an unscheduled appearance by the Dark Lord of the moment. As the strength of the church grew, the walls had become less a defense against the Dark and more an architectural corset, hemming in growth and strangling change. The streets within were all narrow and overshadowed by outward-leaning upper stories—not that this didn’t offer advantages for the light-footed larcenist—save for the grand central avenue that led to the High Temple, seat of the Potentate of Armes. That was the sight that greeted most visitors to Armesion, when the huge bronze-clad gates were finally opened to allow them in: the white-flagged boulevard of the Holy City running straight to the opalescent spires of the heart of the Light.

When Dion’s party arrived, however, and the gates were hauled open by guards whose expressions were curiously expectant, a different spectacle awaited them. The broad path to salvation was almost entirely obscured by what appeared to be the entire population of Armesion. Lief had never seen so many people in one place before. There were hundreds of priests, entire orders of templars, holy warriors, mystics, savants, authorized merchants of holy water, crafters of religious iconnery, psalmists, summoners, freelance salvationers, and several thousand pilgrims. The impressive—no, the inconceivable—thing was that they had been standing there, in complete and communal silence, waiting for the gates to open. Whereupon a cheer went up that probably rattled the windows of Darvezian in his Dark Tower miles away.

It was like someone’s surprise birthday party, although, given the scale and demographics of the crowd, it would have to have been God’s.

“Sod me,” said Lief. Nobody heard him. There in the center of the vast assemblage of priestly hangers-on was a white-robed figure visibly radiating a gentle golden light, holding out his arms in benediction. Even Lief, who had never left a church without fuller pockets than when he had gone in, recognized the Potentate himself.

At that point, when the triumphant roar of the crowd began to die down, there was an actual fanfare.

“Approach, my child!” the Potentate boomed, his voice coming to them unchallenged through the sounds of so many. “Come forward, that we may see the savior of the world!”

Lief would long treasure Dion’s aghast expression, ashen to the point of death. Unlike many of her profession she had never been one to seek temporal power or recognition, he knew. He reckoned that, if he were to stare into her wide, horrified eyes enough, he would be able to look right back to some introverted church-school girl forever hiding at the back and not wanting to be singled out by teacher. Aside from her still having clothes on, this was probably her nightmare made flesh.

Let me get somewhere away from the others, Lief thought, and I will laugh until I burst a lung.

With trembling steps, Dion approached the entire assembled clergy of Armesion as though she were about to be caned and had forgotten to slip the holy book down her britches to cushion the blow. When she was within grabbing range the Potentate unfurled a surprisingly long arm and hooked her closer.

“My child, the Light blesses you,” he announced. “Long has it been prophesied that one shall rise who will free us from the tyranny of Darvezian. And here you are.” He put a hand to her forehead in benediction and nearly poked her in the eye as she flinched. Lief saw her say something—too far for him to hear—and the Potentate smiled benignly, “Why know, child, that the greatest diviners of the church have sought to know when Armes’s champion will arise. We have long known, to the moment, when you would pass through our gates.”

“Now that is some impressive divination,” Penthos said, genuinely impressed by someone else for a change.

Lief himself said nothing, because he was thinking about all those powerful men and women of the Light sitting on their hands for decades, knowing that Darvezian was out there, and defeatable, but feeling no particular inclination to go do it, because they knew that someone else would eventually take up the slack. Which is exactly the problem with prophesies.

Now the Potentate was turning around, the entire complex clerical machine rearranging itself around him to escort him to the High Temple, and there was a space beside him plainly meant for Dion. She glanced desperately back at her fellows, naked panic on her face, and Lief elbowed Cyrene in the hip.

“Don’t you have somewhere to be?” he prompted.

Cyrene’s expression was not one of particular eagerness. The scale of the spectacle had plainly daunted her. A moment later, Harathes was striding forward, though, and with a slump of her shoulders, the woman was sloping off to catch up with him. Lief reckoned that she’d probably have preferred it in the Heathen’s Quarter, but he was hoping for a quiet night without much in the way of executive oversight, so getting Cyrene out of the way was a bonus.

“Right,” he said. The clergy had all swept off with their various hangers on, leaving only a big mob of pilgrims, artisans, and opportunistic beggars, who were eyeing Lief, Penthos, and Nth as though wondering if they would put on some sort of show. In Lief’s experience, it was the sort of idle attention that could turn ugly quite quickly given provocation, and Nth was essentially provocation on legs.

“Keep your hood up and your spectacles on,” he cautioned. “Penthos, I reckon we need to get out of sight. I know a place.”

The wizard regarded the massed congregation of the faithful, who were plainly coming to the conclusion that the three of them were not particularly holy or important, but were not sure whether that meant they should be ignored or persecuted. “Lead on,” he agreed.

* * *

The private chambers of the Potentate were appointed tastefully, but not opulently. Dion was someone who strove to believe that consecration to the Light was in itself a shield against vice. As all humanity was born to the Light, and must fall away into Darkness by evil choices, so all the clergy were, according to doctrine, under the direct scrutiny of Armes, and therefore constantly guided to do the right thing. In practice she was miserably aware that a corrupt priest was not only possible but documented, for all the church tried to keep such matters as internal problems. She could only try to believe that it was that much harder for a priest to stray than one of the flock.

She had, therefore, been dreading the vast riches surely on display in the heart of the Light. The relatively spare and plain environs encouraged her no end.

The Potentate had seen her quick appraisal, and he nodded. “It’s a difficult line to walk, child,” he agreed sadly. “Too rich, and how are we different from any tinpot noble or king in the abuse of our influence? And yet too impoverished, and we have no respect. People equate wealth with success, no matter how we instruct them.” He was an old man, but not frail. If he had not been beaming so much at her, in a proudly paternal way, he would probably have looked tired. The Potentate was master of two score separate sects, orders, and factions within the church, each of which had profoundly different ideas about the interpretation of doctrine and the role of the church. The office brought with it all the responsibility one might expect, but perhaps very little of the power and freedom. Potentates could be challenged and replaced if sufficient of the clergy believed they had ceased to receive inspiration direct from Armes.

“Everything made simply, therefore, but of the finest materials. Even here, life is compromise.” His table was of marble, exactly as he described in its solid workmanship, and he seated himself behind it. Standing before him, she felt very much as though she were about to be punished for something, and wished Harathes and Cyrene had been let in with her. Instead, her bodyguards were kicking their heels in an antechamber, being insufficiently holy to enter the Potentate’s personal chambers.

“Your Potence,” she addressed him respectfully.

“No need for such formality. A simple ‘Father’ will suffice,” he assured her.

Some part of her wondered if that was, in fact, particularly less formal, but she had been schooled to obey her superiors, and so: “Father, how has this all happened? How could you have known?”

“That you could come to fulfill the prophecy?” he asked her. “Well, I won’t say we knew it would be you. It was known that someone of the faith would come, who is so destined, though. The diviners were accurate to the very minute. And just as well—you try holding a crowd together for very long, if the chosen one turns out to be late.” He chuckled a little at his own words. “But it’s you. You’re the one. You will destroy Darvezian. Armes blesses your venture, believe it.”

This had been what she wanted, of course, but the words seemed to fall emptily between them. She should let him flick some blessed water on her forehead and be very grateful and basically just go, really, but instead she felt her lips move, and out came the words, “Does he?” almost plaintively.

She was horrified at her own ingratitude, but the Potentate seemed to understand. “Child,” he said, “sit, please. You’re giving me a pain in the neck looking at you.”

She found a chair—not marble, thankfully—and dragged it over. Not even servants were allowed in the Potentate’s chambers unless they were also ranking priests, and apparently none of the man’s staff felt that rearranging the furniture or serving drinks was sufficiently holy for them.

“Armes blesses you,” he told her. “I say he does, anyway. I’m the Potentate, who’s to argue? A thousand years ago, the divine Armes saw that mankind lived in sin and suffering and without hope, and he went into the Higher Realms and returned with his gift. Since then we are born to the Light, though often we stray; we are able to recognize the Dark for what it is, though often we are tempted and fall.” He sighed and rubbed at his face. “How lucky we are compared to the Ghantishmen or those others born to the Dark, eh? At least we are given the hope of salvation.”

“Yes, Father,” because some sort of confirmation was presumably in order.

“And we feel the Light, we priests, and we draw upon it, and its power against the Dark is undeniable. At least we have that, eh? Can you imagine if all we had was Armes’s assurance, without proof of the might that backed up his promise? Would there even be a church, if it was all based on faith?”

“But I have faith—!” she burst out.

“Yes, but at least you have proof that there’s something to have faith in.” The Potentate shrugged. “Even if we still find a thousand things to argue about, in the details. But I am chosen head of the church, as close as any living person can come to Armes, who left our realm as a mortal man and returned a Divine Being. I feel the Light, and I have faith that the Dark must be fought, and Darvezian is the champion of the Dark, and that you will fight him.” His smile was beatific. “As you are here, I am sure you have already found the truth of the prophecy. You have the weapons and the tools required to perform the task.”

Her heart lurched. “I—yes, I have, Father.” Then there were more words forcing themselves up her throat like vomit: all the sordid details, Penthos’s unspeakable ritual, Enth, her monster.

But there was his hand, lifted to forestall her. “Do not tell me,” he insisted. “This secret is your own.”

And although she had sworn to the others that she would keep it close—although she could not have imagined confessing to what she had countenanced before sitting down here—she was suddenly filled with a terrible need to blurt it all out. If only she could tell the Potentate, and he would nod, and agree that, yes, it would all be for the best. If only she had that absolute reassurance of the righteousness of her cause, then she could cast out doubt, and do what need be done, no matter what . . . “Father, I fear . . . some means of mine may not justify the ends.” She found she was shaking. “I cannot see, sometimes, which way the Light is. I cannot tell if I am yet on the path of virtue. It is hard.”

And she choked the words off, terrified that already she had lost his approval, and indeed his eyes had gone wide with alarm, but not for the reason she was prepared for.

“No, no,” he said hurriedly. “It can’t be hard for you. For me, yes! For all of us, trying to keep the candle of the Light burning under the constant shadow of the Dark. But you are the one who will fulfill the prophecy and rid the world of the Dark’s great champion, Darvezian. You must surely be certain. Your every action and thought is pure, I know it.”

She felt something twist and freeze within her. “But you . . .”

“I am but a man. I am not immune to temptation. Stand however close to the Light you will, a man can still turn his back on it.” His face creased unhappily. “I have waited so long for you, the paragon of our faith. I thank Armes that I have lived to see a genuine prophesied hero of the church, irreproachable and destined, standing before me.” There was a hurried, desperate tone to his voice, and she felt she was not the person he was at heart trying to convince.

“But you are the Potentate . . . ,” she said in a small voice. “Armes stands beside you,” she ventured. “He guides your hand so you can be sure . . .”

“I try, child, I do.” He was looking past her, perhaps into a reflection of his own soul. “Every day I fight my own failings and strive to do what Armes would have wished, and I fight the predilections of those beneath me too—their tendencies to pride, bias, preference, and ambition. Did you think the power given to us as priests could not itself lead us from the Light? I have read the secret histories of my predecessors. Even Potentates have died in Darkness. Champions of the Light cast deep shadows. And such shadows! I have rooted out evils from within the very church that even Darvezian might blink at, and the work is eternal. I know that Armes is at my elbow, and that he guides me, but even then he must fight the nest of worms that are my own desires! And I cannot know, when my hand moves, whether it is he or my base urges that truly govern it.” His eyes were tortured as he stared at her. “But you, you are the Light’s champion.” His expression desperately invited agreement. “You are destined, the sword that will cut the heart out of the Dark. How could you have got so far, without divine guidance? If there is someone in this room that Armes stands beside, it is you.”

Dion by now wanted to be anywhere but in that room. Here was where priests came, once in their lives, to know that they were right. She did not want to stand before the Potentate and have to weather the storm of his own anguished doubts.

Abruptly the rush of his confession had ceased, his words lying between them like stones. “But please, you wanted to speak,” he said heavily, seeming exhausted by his outburst.

Of course she wanted to speak. She had been about to tell him just how she was going about her oh-so-very-holy mission.

And he was an old man, older than she had thought, and smaller than she had thought, in this big, barren office. He was doing his best. That was the true and honest impression she had. He could have been a venal monster and given her every assurance in the world, touching her forehead on the way in and groping her backside on the way out. But he was trying, as he said. All the power of the church at his command, and his time was spent fighting off his own crude humanity.

He was looking brightly at her now, smiling a brave smile, and she realized that he was waiting for her to go into detail about her quest. It weighed on her heart, the whole business with the spider creature, but she found she could not unburden herself now. She could not load the weight onto him, to tell him that his prophesied savior was already walking a treacherous path, and might plummet from grace at any moment.

“Thank you for your blessing,” she whispered. “It means a lot to me.” She felt very empty.

* * *

Cyrene was staring moodily out of the window, elbows on the sill. Harathes studied the curve of her back, the elegant lines of her legs. He was a man who could hold two thoughts in his head simultaneously, sometimes contradictory ones. He was currently admiring his view of her, and simultaneously thinking that, as a respectable woman in the heart of the Light, she should not just be slouching around. She should carry herself with more dignity. He himself was practically standing at attention.

That sounded wrong, to him, and actually, as his eyes were drawn inexorably down Cyrene’s body, with those leggings she would always wear, he became pointedly aware of the possibility that he might actually find himself standing to attention, here in the Potentate’s antechamber. Quickly he turned away. It was always the problem with Cyrene. She was such a well-made woman, and yet so immodest! She should have more respect for men’s passions. No wonder she was constantly attracting the wrong sort!

Harathes himself was a deeply devout man. He had been raised from an early age to know that he was of the Light, and that his actions were to defend the Light. Without his sword, countless things of the Dark would still be crawling and shambling in the world, that he had put an end to. Without his shield, there would be many of the Light who would have fallen victim to their depredations. He was a champion, the man who would stand between Dion and Darvezian when the time came for that epic confrontation.

It was reasonable enough, therefore, that he was entitled to a little consideration from the world, a little payment ahead of time. Virtue, after all, conferred a kind of entitlement. It was infuriating that Cyrene didn’t see it that way. After all, she was notably less virtuous than he, having led a far more shadowy life before deciding to seek revenge on the Dark by signing on with Dion. Surely she could see that she should be seeking not vengeance but redemption. She needed to step into the embrace of the Light and learn to be happy there.

Instead of which she was maddeningly unpredictable. She had come to him once, and Harathes had thought that was the end of it, but the moment he had tried to demonstrate that they were together, that she was safe and could allow herself to be shielded from the worst of the world, then she had pulled away from him again. And that louse-ridden ranger was not the first that she had hooked on to, either. Harathes knew, with his heart’s simple certainty, that such licentious behavior was aimed at increasing his ardor. Of course she was not really interested in those others, not since she had been his.

Still, she was too wild. It was an attractive wildness, and it had drawn him to her, but at the same time the woman needed to let herself be guided a little.

And here they were in the heart of the Light.

Harathes glanced about them. The Potentate’s antechamber was simply appointed, which had surprised him. He had expected fountains of wine and scripture written in letters of gold and all that, but perhaps they had been taken out for cleaning or something.

There were some guards at the door they had come in with, fellow warriors in the cause of the Light in gleaming armor. There was also a string of junior priests sitting on a stone bench waiting for Dion to come out so that they could bother the Potentate with some piece of tedious bureaucracy, but they all looked far too menial for Harathes’s purposes. The woman who obviously controlled access to the Potentate was a more interesting prospect. She sat at a table beside his door, poring over a sheaf of papers that one of the little clerks had passed her. She looked to be close to sixty, her gray hair cut short like all these clerical types, with a lean and compact build. Her face had a distinct authority. Harathes wandered over.

“So tell me, you’re His Potence’s secretary?” he asked respectfully.

She cocked an eye at him, and he had the awkward feeling that his question had been somewhat unnecessary.

“I am a servant of the destined one, the priestess Dion,” he pointed out, in case the woman was unaware of his importance.

She nodded patiently, papers held in her thin-fingered hands, pointedly waiting.

“My companion and I will shortly venture into deepest Darkness on behalf of blessed Armes and his church,” Harathes elaborated, sticking his chest out. “I was hoping that, while our mistress seeks a blessing from the Potentate, we might also receive the benediction of the church. Is there any chance you could send one of these for a priest—a senior priest?”

Her hard expression might have softened a little. “I understand,” she told him. “I am myself the head of the Ordo Scriptian, as the Potentate’s secretary always is. I suspect I will be quite senior enough for you.” There was a hint of a smile there, although Harathes suspected it was about as much smile as she ever allowed herself. She had a formidable presence to her.

Some words about whether a merely clerical priest would suffice or whether he wanted one of the warrior orders bubbled about in his head, but his common sense jumped them and kicked them down again, because plainly this woman was very important indeed. Of course those who served the Potentate were themselves senior in the church. It made perfect sense to Harathes that one way of showing importance was to have other important people performing menial or tedious tasks for you. Perhaps that said more than all the gilded archways in the world.

“Cyrene,” he called. The archer looked over from the window, glanced to see if Dion had made a reappearance, and then stared at him blankly.

“We are to be blessed,” Harathes told her. “We need all the help we can get, after all, given where we’re going.” And what we’re having to do, to get there, he added silently.

She looked briefly surprised, but then nodded. “That’s good thinking,” she agreed. He knew she was no congregation regular, but they, all of them, for their own reasons, were doing Armes’s will and were reliant on his protection. Dion’s radiant power had saved them more than once, and where they were going it would be the only light in a very dark place. Having the approval of the church personally vouchsafed to them by a powerful priest would be an added measure of protection.

“So,” Cyrene said, striding over, “how does this work?”

“Well . . . ,” the secretary started, but Harathes coughed to draw her attention, and put in, “Actually, given the unprecedented nature of our mission, I was hoping for something specifically tailored for us.”

“Hm.” The old woman did not seem approving, but at the same time was not discounting the possibility. “Do you want me to send someone to the archives to find an appropriate form, or . . . ?”

“I’ve given it some thought,” he explained, and it was true, although that thought had very much been concentrated in the last few minutes. “We are to travel to a very terrible place, where the slightest hint of division between we fellow warriors of the Light will surely spell our doom.” It all sounded properly portentous, which was what he had been aiming for. “It is the bonds of comradeship that must be strengthened between us, so that the weaker of us do not stray.”

“You want me to fetch Lief and Penthos, then, or what?” Cyrene broke in, regarding him doubtfully.

“No, no,” Harathes replied hurriedly. “Seriously, can you imagine any of them being fit for the blessing of Armes?”

“Any may be touched by the Light if they are willing—” the secretary started mildly.

“Yes. They’re not,” Harathes told her. “Just the two of us, and we will have to set a good example for our less morally upright fellows, right? A good example. No straying from righteousness, no wandering off.”

“Now hold on,” Cyrene started, but her voice came out too loud, echoing in the bare chamber, and Harathes saw the attention of all those junior priests focus on her, clamping down on her words.

“We need a blessing that can bind us together,” he explained hurriedly to the secretary. “We need the hand of Armes on both of our shoulders, holding us close.”

“Harathes—!” Cyrene spat, but he held an admonitory finger up to her.

“Remember where we are,” he instructed, relying on the awe of the High Temple to deal with any objections. Indeed, she seemed hardly able to speak, so he returned his attention to the secretary. “We need to be as one, in our divine mission. And where the one of us is the stronger vessel, the more perfect in his service to the Light, then the weaker must take strength and guidance. That’s the sort of blessing we need, exactly. You can do that, right?”

She gazed into his face, perhaps his soul, and at last she seemed satisfied. “Draw closer,” she advised him. “I shall enjoin your vow from you.” She levered herself to her feet, leaning across the table so that he inclined himself to her automatically. “You are a warrior of the Light,” she said softly, almost too quiet for him to hear. “You go about a grand task that will result in the destruction of a monstrous evil. The footsteps you follow are of the heroes of old, who also risked all in order to defeat masters of Darkness like Darvezian. You have risked much, suffered much, and no doubt there is far more suffering in store for you and your companions.” Her voice was the merest breath, almost mesmerizing in its rhythms. “For this reason, I lay on you the blessings of the church, which must often work through those vessels, weak or strong, that it finds. Let Armes give strength to your sword and your shield, and let him lead you on a straight path through crooked places. Most of all, though, let him gift you with wisdom, because if you try that sort of trick near me again I will have you hung by one thumb, and anyway, all this has given your companion ample time to get out of the room, and probably the temple.”

“What?” Harathes exploded, jerking back from her and casting about for Cyrene, who was indeed conspicuous by her absence. “Why, you . . . !” He choked himself off, abruptly aware of all the eyes that were upon him. “I’ll just . . .”

“No doubt the priestess Dion will be with you shortly,” the secretary told him, her voice brooking no disagreement. “After that, no doubt you will be good enough to escort her to her chambers and keep watch outside the door while she rests. It is a great honor to serve so, ask anyone here.”

* * *

There was a statue of Armes in the center of the Heathen’s Quarter, in form and pose identical to every other representation of the demigod hero who had heralded the coming of the Light. He had been a handsome, square-jawed man, according to the makers of icons, with a warrior’s strong frame, robed but with a sword at his side, and his arms outstretched in blessing in that particular palms-down stance that the priests all mimicked.

Lief, Penthos, and Enth stood before it, feeling that stone regard condemn them, each for his own reasons.

“I must say,” the wizard declared eventually, “there is a distressing lack of imagination in whoever makes images of Armes. All very uniform.”

“There’s a whole group of priests specifically to make sure they’re identical, every representation of him to scale,” Lief explained. “It’s very important, apparently, to preserve the divine likeness.” He didn’t elaborate that he knew this because of a fake holy icon scam that had gone very badly wrong. “Well, welcome to the Heathen’s Quarter. There’s an inn, and I mean just the one inn. We’d better go and twiddle our disgustingly pagan thumbs there until someone comes to fetch us.”

“The Heathen’s Quarter. Everyone says it like that,” Penthos muttered. “As if there’s only one heathen allowed in the place at once.”

Lief blinked at him, thought back, then nodded enthusiastically. “You’re right. Or, it’s more like there’s just one entity that’s ‘the Heathen,’ and we’re all just bits of it. Heathen’s Quarter,” he let the words roll off his tongue. “Yeah, never thought of that before.”

“People are staring at me,” Enth observed calmly.

Lief glanced about, seeing that it was true. “Oh this isn’t going to go well. Seriously it’s not. Let’s get under cover at least. Enough sight-seeing.”

There was no sign for the quarter’s single inn, because the Armesians had no other dive to distinguish it from. There was a taproom, and it was the most dispirited that Lief had ever seen. Travelers there were drinking something from small mugs in humble silence, as though if they started to enjoy themselves then Armes himself would turn up and slap them.

“Sod this,” he muttered to himself, but no other alternatives occurred to him. “Three of your best,” he instructed the dour, judgemental-looking man who appeared to be the proprietor. The expression he received in response rather suggested that the man wouldn’t waste his best on the likes of Lief, but a boy was sent away to the cellar, and came back with little mugs of what Lief hoped was at least his mediocre.

There were tables and chairs there. Someone had gone to some lengths to make the latter uncomfortable and the former too low, so that Penthos was constantly banging his knees. They were nailed to the floor, which said a lot about the locals’ beliefs concerning the virtue of outsiders.

“Well, cheers,” Lief said. He sipped. Mediocre was probably over-egging it.

Enth was not touching his, and Lief nudged him. “It’s beer. You like beer now, remember.”

The creature shook his head. “Can’t,” he said, staring at the mug as though it contained a . . . well, not a venomous spider, Lief considered. Whatever it was that spiders didn’t like. One of those parasitic wasps or something.

“This is the heart of the Light,” Penthos said quietly. “Such power does not respect the boundaries of the Heathen’s Quarter. It bleeds through, even into the beer.”

Lief blinked. “Seriously?”

The magician nodded, long-faced. “It tastes foxed even to me. To our monster it would probably be like drinking vitriol.”

“Can you not call him that?”

“He’s my monster,” the wizard said petulantly. “I’ll call him what I like.”

“I’m not a monster.”

The two humans stared at Enth in silence.

“You’re what I call you—” started Penthos, but Lief broke in.

“Shut up.”

“How dare you—!” but something in the little man’s expression, incredibly, was enough to make the magician subside.

“Besides, you know all the stories,” the thief added unkindly, “who do they like less, the monsters or those that make them? Better for you if he’s not such a monster, eh?”

Penthos opened his mouth, then shut it, and to Lief’s surprise a mournful expression came over his face. “You’re right, of course,” he bemoaned. “I was only trying to help. I was only trying to make this quest nonsense work. And it’s made things worse, somehow. It’s made her unhappy. Why does everything I do end up like that?”

Lief’s eyebrows had gone past his hairline, and he tried to exchange an alarmed look with Enth, who had no equivalent look to pass back to him. “Er, right . . . ,” he ventured. “We all know you’re trying . . .” But no, enough was enough. “Look, I am not playing shoulder-to-cry-on for a man who can make whole villages explode. Just drink.”

“It’s horrible,” Penthos said, close to tears.

“It gets better.” Enth had not touched his but plainly he was drawing on memories of beers past. Looking at him, Lief wondered if there was something more human about him now, crept into that awkward posture and behind those nightmare eyes.

* * *

Later on, and they had at last found a way to amuse themselves and take out their frustrations on Armesion at the same time. They were renaming the Heathen’s Quarter’s sole inn.

“The Abomination’s Rest,” put in Penthos, giggling a little.

“The Pit of Iniquity,” Lief decided.

“Vice’s Last Stand.”

“That’s a good one.” The thief considered. “The Tavern of Lost Souls? No wait, how about Archbishop Prurient’s Home for Hopeless Moral Rejects?”

Penthos almost fell off his chair.

“Come on, Enth, you can do one,” Lief encouraged.

Abruptly the monster stood, and for a moment Lief thought he was going to declaim some joke name across the entire room, but then he was pointing. Cyrene had just walked in with a face like thunder. It was all rather déjà vu.

“Is she ready? Can we leave?” Penthos demanded.

“I can’t imagine how you found us,” Lief added sardonically.

“Mostly from the inn sign,” she snapped.

He frowned. “There isn’t a sign.”

“There is now, and it’s changing every half-minute into something even less tasteful.”

Penthos spread his hands at Lief’s interrogative glance. “What? That was the game, wasn’t it?”

Mid-rebuke, Lief gave up. “Yes, yes it was,” he agreed. “Now—”

But the wizard had issues of his own. “You are supposed to be guarding Dion,” he snapped at Cyrene.

“Tell that turd Harathes,” she shot back.

“You’ve left her defenseless?”

She goggled at him. “In the heart of the Holy City, Penthos. And with Harathes.”

“That sounds like defenseless to me.”

To Lief’s surprise she actually smirked at that. “Yeah, you’re right. In fact, if I were you, I’d go over there right now to protect her from Harathes. If you must set fire to him, start with the groin. I reckon it’s just dry tinder waiting to ignite.”

“I’m going,” Penthos announced. He frowned at Lief. “Am I going?”

“Be calm and don’t explode anything,” Lief told him. “But why not? If nothing else it’s likely to mean Dion gets moving all the sooner.”

Penthos was plainly not sure how to take that, but he left anyway.

“Not sure why it’s us three that keep getting lumped together,” Lief said easily, “but pull up a horrible chair.”

“Firstly, it’s not ‘us three,’ it’s us two and that,” Cyrene told him. “Secondly, I am sitting somewhere else, very definitely on my own.”

“I am not a that,” Nth stated.

Cyrene’s eyes flicked between the two of them. “Did you teach it that? Have you been getting it drunk again?”

“It—he won’t drink the beer here,” Lief told her. “Although he’s not missing much on that score.”

Cyrene stared into the smoky lenses of Nth’s spectacles, and the creature stared right back at her, refusing to be cowed. Lief saw her lips twitch a couple of times, perhaps to give some order to it, but she said nothing, and at last sloped off to find her separate seat.

Shortly afterward, they arrived. There were at least a dozen of them, heavily robed figures that trooped in with the divine certainty of people who knew that they were not part of the Heathen.

The other drinkers got up and got out, as quickly as they possibly could. Lief would very happily have joined them, save that the newcomers were surrounding his table.

“Hello,” he said uncertainly.

The central figure cast back its cowl, revealing an impressively bearded face, craggy with authority, steel-eyed beneath beetling brows.

“I am Abnasio, Supreme Prelate of the Brotherhood of the Dawn,” he announced conversationally.

Lief was pointedly not looking at where Cyrene was, across the room, because this had suddenly become the sort of situation where a hidden ally might be rather useful. “It’s an honor, your Prelat’ryness,” he said cheerily. “How can we help you?”

“We have no business with you, my child,” Abnasio said gently. “We know you are a man of the Light, despite many temptations. You have done the world a great service.”

Lief wondered if this would turn out to be some bizarre anti-mugging, where he would get forcibly congratulated and rewarded against his will. “Ah, well, thanks.”

“We will take matters from here,” Abnasio explained pleasantly. “Bring the creature.”

Immediately, three or four of them had laid hands on Nth, lunging to try to pin him to his chair. The creature slapped them away—Lief heard at least one bone break—but then Abnasio had a disc of Armes flaming golden in his hand, and Nth recoiled away from it, strength gone from him, covering his face.

“No, wait!” Lief shouted. “This isn’t what it looks like! We’re with Dion, you know, what all that business at the gates was for? This is all part of it—!”

“We know, my child,” Abnasio told him. “We have long awaited the fulfilling of the prophecy. Our founding father, the prophet Gamograth, foresaw that one blessed by the Light would bring to the heart of Armes’s power the means to destroy Darvezian. It only remains for us to complete the ritual and extract the means of defeating the Dark One.”

“No, wait, we did that—” Lief started, but one of Abnasio’s heavier followers backhanded him hard enough to spill him to the floor.

“Bring the sacrifice,” Abnasio instructed, eyes gleaming with reflected Light. “Praise be to the Light of Armes, the battle will soon be won.”

5: Dueling Dogmas

CYRENE HURRIED OVER TO Lief even as the last of the Brotherhood heavies were bundling Enth out of the door. She hauled him to his feet, and dragged him out of the inn, to see the regimented mob that was the followers of Gamograth disappearing around a corner. Above them, the new sign proclaiming “Archbishop Prurient’s Home for Hopeless Moral Rejects” swung disconsolately.

“We go after them,” Cyrene decided.

“You go get Dion,” Lief corrected.

“And then what? First find where they go, then one of us gets Dion.”

The purposeful monks were marching quick-time to get clear of the moral quagmire that was the Heathen’s Quarter. Cyrene and Lief set off, keeping a turn behind, always in time to catch the last trailing cassock as it passed around a corner, using the night and the shadows, here in the heart of the Light.

Lief had to admit that Cyrene was good at this. He wasn’t entirely sure what she had spent her early life doing, but he had never before met a wilderness runner who was much good in a city. She had it, though, that indefinable ease that let a professional like Lief pass through the still waters of a built-up place without leaving so much as a ripple. Still crazy, though. Let Harathes lust after the poor woman all he liked, Lief was happy just to know he could rely on her skills.

“When we get there,” he murmured, “I’m going in.”

“Are you?” Plainly she had other ideas. They padded down another street: Armesion was a dead town at night, and surprisingly poorly lit. The locals simply did not care to be abroad after dark. I should do a stint here again, have the run of the place? Lief considered, but he had never liked the city. The sheer reek of righteousness about it meant that even lifting a fat purse from a fatter archprelate brought unwanted pangs of guilt.

“You’re going to fetch Dion and the others. I’m going in to try and spring Enth.”

“Really?” Still unconvinced.

“Yes,” he hissed. “And for two good reasons. Firstly, I don’t wish to be kicking my Heathen boots in some minor cleric’s waiting room for three hours because they decide that any business brought by me must be too profane to be urgent. Secondly . . .”

Abnasio and his Brotherhood of the Dawn were slowing, becoming more confident. They had been failing roundly at “spot the pursuers” before, but apparently they were on their home turf now and barely even glancing behind them. Possibly there were other watchers, but Lief and Cyrene were flitting from darkness to darkness like ghosts.

“Secondly what?” Cyrene demanded.

“I don’t trust you,” he said.

She almost broke cover, with the outrage of that. “You slimy little turd,” she told him, sotto voce, “I’m a true servant of Dion, an enemy of Darkness, and you’re just a shabby little thief rubbish enough that you got caught with your hand in the poor-box. You don’t trust me?”

“Yeah, don’t know why, maybe it’s that lovely judgmental streak.”

This time she grabbed his shoulder and pushed him into a doorway. At the end of the narrow street, the Brotherhood were filing into a two-tier building.

“Talk fast, before I send you to Dion with a split lip,” she warned him.

“I don’t trust you to keep Enth alive,” he told her flatly, not giving an inch.

“We need the monster for our quest. Hence it lives that long.” And only that long, was the unspoken implication.

“And if Big-Nose in there gives you some holy spiel about how his plan’s better, you know what, I think you might just go for it. Because his plan involves killing Enth, and you’ve been spoiling for that since there was an Enth.”

She stared at him and a couple of retorts died on her lips. “What, are you buggering the thing now, that you’re so in love with it?”

“Please, save the cheap shots, you’re bad at them.” And she was: the venom in the words was forced.

“You seriously think I’d compromise our mission just to spill the monster’s blood?”

“Wouldn’t you?”

Again the halted answer, and it came to Lief that she didn’t know, exactly, and that she had not anticipated being uncertain about her own motives. Presumably she had thought the answer—the one in her head, rather than whatever guff she gave to him—would have been a flat “yes.”

“If the creature does its part, and takes us to Darvezian so we can end his evil, then I don’t care what happens to it after,” she stated. Even that was said with reluctance, but Lief guessed it counted as a major volte-face.

“Fine, good. I’m still going in and you’re going back, and I don’t care how Harathes has pissed you off.” Although I can guess. “Because I’m better at breaking into people’s houses than you are.”

Something of her anger had drained from her, through the crack she had found when she looked for her certainty. “Fine,” she snapped. “If you get yourself killed I am going to laugh.”

“How very Light of you.”

“Don’t get yourself killed.”

“Never have and don’t intend to start now.”

* * *

After Cyrene had run off to the High Temple, Lief studied the building before him. It was, like most of Armesion’s housing, a great box of heavy stone squeezed between its neighbors. Normally there would be several families in such a place, but right now Lief was willing to bet it contained just a single cult. How many of the Brotherhood of the Dawn were there? No way of knowing. If Abnasio was a genuine prelate, that placed him with a decent rank in the church, hence access to a fair flock of followers. On the other hand he might just be a heretical loon with a handful of nutters and an exaggerated idea of his own importance. And who had Gamograth been, for that matter, and what were the terms of his prophecy?

All this went through Lief’s head as he scaled a building three away from the Brotherhood’s hideout. The walls of Armesion were smooth and short on handholds, but he had been a second-story man for long enough that he barely felt challenged.

Once up, he trotted lightly across the roofs until he was over his target. He was also wondering how much time he had. If Abnasio had just cut Enth’s throat the moment they got indoors then he was absolutely too late, but he didn’t reckon it would be like that. Religion, prophecy, and secret brotherhoods all said ritual to him. They had been waiting a long time for this foretold moment, surely they would want to do it properly.

He scaled down to one of the small windows and secured himself until he was hanging upside down over it. It was a simple matter to lift the bar of the shutters and peer in. The room revealed was a dormitory, the floor crowded with mattresses: he counted twenty-four of them, crammed in just like Armesion’s buildings were crushed within its restrictive walls. That gave him some idea of the size of this pack of jokers, anyway. Seven of the beds were occupied, robed forms sprawled there. More reassurance, that: no doubt everyone would want to be awake when the actual doings were being done. Still, not the best entry point. Lief moved crabwise along the wall.

The next window gave onto a darkened room, but he could make out some furniture: a desk maybe, a chair, some sort of assemblage along one wall. It seemed unoccupied, and that was good enough for Lief.

He closed the shutters after himself, the blotting out of the moon leaving him in almost complete darkness. He had a good idea of where the door was, nonetheless, and crept to it, listening: voices, but distant, nothing right outside. There was a keyhole, too: a little star shining in the dark night of the room. Peering through it gave him an enlightening view of a small section of the far wall.

If there was a guard outside, then he was in trouble. Only one way to find out, though. He plotted a mental course back to the window, in case of mishap, and tried the door.

Not locked, and no guard when he drew it slightly open. Of course the Brotherhood were all terribly faithful, and who would expect an intruder here in their sanctum?

He let the slice of light he had admitted lead his eyes back to the room he was in. The business against one wall was an altar, perhaps this was Abnasio’s private chapel. Certainly there was a rather fine rayed disc set up there, with gems at the cardinal points, and some exquisite filigree at its center. Lief’s hands twitched.

Moments later, and with one of his conveniently capacious pockets rather heavier than before, he crept from the room, ears pricked for footsteps and voices.

He quickly worked out that the fashionable place to be for slavering fanatics was down below. Aside from the sleepers, the upper story was deserted, the ground floor little better. There were a handful of monks cooking, black robes and all, and Lief had to dodge a few more who were bustling purposefully from place to place, often carrying various odds and sods of regalia. Everything had a ghoulishly festive feel to it, and all the Brotherhood were in obvious high spirits, practically buzzing with energy and joy. The time had come for their dour existences to have meaning, Lief guessed. He had no idea how long ago this Gamograth had made his pronouncements, but he had the feeling that waiting out the years had been a rather unfulfilling task. He wondered what most of the Brotherhood intended to do, when they had finished with Enth. Go home? Take up a trade? Or would they all crusade out of Armesion and ablate themselves against the armies of Darkness that stood between them and Darvezian, having killed the only creature who could possibly have led them past?

Lief located the stairs down to the cellar swiftly enough, as this was the bottleneck for most of the activity going on in the house. From below he could hear some rather tuneless chanting that was probably intended to be triumphant, and he could not help but notice the character of the material that was being taken down there. There was wood, lots of wood—of some fragrant and expensive kind—and there were plenty of sharp implements of a variety of shapes, and most with gold handles and gleamingly polished blades. His hands twitched again, but his gut did too. He didn’t like the look of any of it, save for its resale value.

He had, in his career, gone into many dangerous places, and come out of them too. Sometimes he had only just made it out, and sometimes he had only got out by talking very fast, or running very fast, or on one occasion taking an extremely foul potion and pretending to be dead. He did not much want to go into that cellar, though. No thief relishes somewhere with just the one exit.

So: improvise, and there was one major advantage to dealing with creepy cults. Infiltrating a bandit hideout or a noble’s castle or a townhouse crawling with servants, these tasks had their pros and cons, and the pro of the Brotherhood was that their flair for drama mandated nice concealing robes.

It was easy enough to retreat back into the body of the house until a lone monk ambled past. It was only slightly more taxing to cosh the luckless votary over the head, and then a couple more times for good measure, strip him, and bung him in the private chapel. As an added twist of the screw, it was out with the lockpicks so that Lief could secure the door, and let Abnasio boggle about that one.

Lief was well aware that there was a clock ticking on the whole venture now: the missing devotee would be noticed, or located, or Abnasio would realize he had forgotten his sacred disemboweling fork and head back to his chambers for it. Lief needed to get in, get Enth, and get out.

Properly be-robed, he headed back for the cellar stairs, uncomfortably aware that if the Brotherhood had some sort of ritual greeting or signal so far hidden to him, then this little plan was going to unravel very fast indeed.

He passed three of them on his way without anyone calling him out. He made sure that he moved with the same eager, purposeful tread as they. That seemed to suffice, for now.

Descending the stairs, he entered a world reeking of incense, the air stale and dry and hot with the fires that the Brotherhood were banking up. He had to force himself not to stop and gawk: there was a big chamber here, surely larger than any legitimate cellar needed to be, the ceiling propped up on what looked to be far too few pillars. At one end, the radiant visage of Armes cast back the flames, that same heroic countenance that Lief had seen all over the city that bore his name. Here, a life-size effigy of the man-god was officiating over a pair of high fires, and between them . . .

Lief swallowed. Between them was a great big slab on which something close to a hundred different knives and saws and other implements had been arrayed, no doubt each one with its own purpose and significance. It was all golden and gleaming, and the monks were singing happily about it, and everyone was grinning almost blissfully at the thought of what it was all for. It was one of the most skin-crawling sights in Lief’s shadowy life.

No Enth though. The guest of honor had yet to be brought forward.

He made a circuit of the room, head bowed as if in prayer but sneaking every glimpse he could past his cowl. There were more monks in here than before. The place was filling up, but still fairly aimlessly, as though these were early arrivals who simply had nothing better to do than wait.

Still a little time, then . . .

He walked from the room, playing the role of a man who knew where he was going, and started to unobtrusively find out what else the cellar held.

It held Enth.

He had expected a rather longer search, but there were only a handful of other chambers there. The Brotherhood had no dedicated cells, which at least suggested that they didn’t make a habit of this sort of thing. Instead, there were just alcoves, and some held monks doing monastery to each other—Lief was rather vague on what monks actually did—and others were stores, and one, the grandest, held Abnasio midway through being adorned in robes of red and gold that shone like fire, so that Lief retreated hurriedly. And the next one, when he drew the curtain aside, had Enth in it, lying miserably on the stone floor with his hands chained before him, shaking.

He crept close, wondering if the man-spider would just go berserk and attack him: perhaps simply being removed from the company of Dion’s people would have plunged Enth back into something monstrous.

“Enth,” he hissed, poised to flee. There was no response at the first call, but on the second those black disc eyes were turned toward him, lips drawn back from fang teeth. The expression there was terrifying, feral and snarling, and a stranger might have taken it for the epitome of savage evil. Lief had learned to read that book, though, and what he read there was pain, dreadful pain. Enth’s hands were crooked into claws, and the manacles they had put about his wrists seemed to glimmer and shine.

Lief understood. It made him sick, but he understood. These shackles were made here in Armesion, by priest-smiths. Just as the beer would have turned Enth’s stomach, simply for where it had been brewed, so these chains must scorch and sear his skin by their very touch.

And it took him aback. It made him stop and think about precisely what he was doing. Even he, a creature of sin as he no doubt was, had never thought of himself as having gone to the Darkness. He had never quite committed such an irredeemable act of cruelty or madness or willful ambition so as to take that step. Unlike Dion he could never claim to know the wiles of evil, nor to own to the piercing sight of one who wore the mantle of the Light. For all that Abnasio had seemed a self-important thug, he was also a man who wielded that golden power. He was, in that great cosmic war, a force for good. And Enth . . .

Enth was a creature of Darkness. There was no getting round it. And what if Dion is wrong and Abnasio is right? Am I really about to rescue a monstrous servant of evil from the hands of the righteous?

Enth whimpered. It was a human sound. Lief knew it: he himself had once or twice been beaten and broken just enough to make that sound.

Fuck the righteous.

He bent over the manacles, seeing how they fastened. There was something like a keyhole there, though it wasn’t quite anything he had seen before. Holy locks were something he had a passing familiarity with, however, to the despair and fury of a dozen separate church treasurers. He tucked a finger into his belt and winkled out one of his sets of picks.

Luck was with him then, for there was a scuff of sandaled feet behind him before a voice challenged him.

“Brother, what do you do?” Surprised, but not suspicious yet.

Lief stood hurried, making sure his hood was up and shadowing his face. “I checked on the monster. It seemed to be working free of its bonds,” he reported.

There was one of those awkward do I know you? sort of pauses that had screwed Lief over in similar capers, but then the monk was pushing past him.

“That should be impossible,” he announced briskly. “Our Lord Abnasio set those chains himself. This beast has no power to break them, certainly not here in the heart of the Light.” And yet he went to see for himself, as people always did. He knelt before Enth without fear and bent his head to scrutinize the shackles. Really, he could not have obliged Lief more unless he had divested himself of his robe first.

Thwock! went the sap, and Lief gave him another quick pair of thwocks as he went down, because he had cast his lot in temporarily with the monsters of the Dark, apparently, and so a little pettiness seemed appropriate.

“Right,” he said quietly, as he crouched by Enth again. “Now we’re definitely on the bloody clock, so let’s get this off you, and get a robe on you, and then hope that the Li—that something’s smiling on us enough to get you out.” He had his picks into service now, feeling out the contours of the lock, using his handful of little charms and tricks to cut through the holiness of them to get to the physical components behind. Even as he spoke, he felt a heaviness in his stomach that spoke of long odds and bad consequences if he failed. And where the hell’s Cyrene then? If she’s still sitting in some prelate’s waiting room I am not going to be happy.

Enth whimpered again, holding his hands very still to let Lief work. The sound was pitiful. I wonder if feeling pain is something Penthos gave him? Spiders don’t experience it, I’d have thought. Those parts of Lief’s mind unnecessary for lockpicking drifted about, trying not to get in the way. Or perhaps pain’s the enemy no matter which side you’re on, and surely Ghantishmen and the like are close to us, and bleed, and scream. But there’s a line somewhere. Surely spiders are on the far side of it.

The lock was proving challenging, far more so than he had thought. The gleam of it seemed to dazzle his hands as much as his eyes. Right here, in the Holy City, in the Brotherhood’s sanctum. I think I might not be good enough. A bitter thought, because he had always been a good third-story man, that rare thief who would take on a temple or a wizard’s tower or a cursed tomb.

“Enth,” he said softly. “Listen to me. I don’t think I can get these off you.”

A ragged exhalation from the man-spider.

“I know, and I’m sorry, but let’s get you out of here first. I reckon Dion could probably just touch these and they’d spring off.” And Lief was thinking unhappy thoughts now, about whether Dion would in fact care to, or whether a chained and agonized spider might be entirely within her ability to live with, now someone else had done the hard part. But what choice do I have? “I’m going to get the robe off Sleepy Joe here and onto you, and you’re going to have to walk out of here. Can you—can you actually stand up and walk? Please tell me you can walk.”

He saw Enth’s muscles bunch—all of them rippling like a carpet of gray rats’ backs—and then he thrust himself up, stiff-legged, until he was standing before Lief with the manacles before him, away from his chest. His face spasmed and twitched, and Lief couldn’t understand why he was not screaming.

Unless he had been screaming before, perhaps, and Abnasio had come in and made him regret it.

Lief got onto the sapped cultist and fought the robe off the man’s unresisting body, always a more awkward job than you’d think. After that, there was the difficulty of getting it onto a man who had his hands linked together. Lief solved that one with some industrious knife work, slitting the sleeves and chest and then just slipping the whole garment over Enth’s head, until the hands held locked before the man-spider appeared something close to an attitude of prayer or supplication.

“Going to have to do,” Lief decided, and turned round to come face to face with Abnasio and at least a dozen hefty monks.

“Balls,” was his critique of that particular development. A more dashing or courageous hero might have gone for the high priest with the knife he was holding, and thereafter much regretted it, but Lief was not that man. Instead, he let the small blade clatter to the ground.

Abnasio regarded him solemnly, letting the silence build before stating, “You see, my brothers, how the seductive wiles of the Dark can affect the weak of mind. This poor man is a servant of the Light, sworn to the cause of Dion, and yet in such a brief span of contact with the beast he has been corrupted, and works to free it, against his better nature. If ever we looked for a reason to take up arms against evil, here it is.”

Lief, who was not pleased at being used as an object lesson in comparative morality, shuffled his feet. “Look, you’ve got it all wrong,” he said without much hope. “Dion’s all over this prophecy business. We need him to make it work.” He cocked his head at Enth’s suffering form. “Seriously, come along with us if you want, the more the holier. We’ll all go kick Darvezian together.”

“You see,” Abnasio said, ever more mournful at the state of Lief’s soul, “how evil twists the minds of those infected with it. This poor sinner still thinks he serves the Light, despite the dreadful act of Darkness he was about to commit. Take heed, my brothers.”

Lief felt that this was a mirror more properly turned to face its owner. “Seriously?” he demanded. “I’ve seen the kit you’ve got laid out there. I’ve known priests of the blood god who would have been oohing and aahing over some of those toys, and asking who your torturer was so they could book him for parties. So honestly, who’s the one doing bad stuff and claiming to be good, exactly?”

“And now the confessions start,” came Abnasio’s inexorable rejoinder. “Already he has fallen from the path enough to become a devotee of vile temples.”

“Hey! Excuse me! I was robbing them at the time!” Lief returned hotly.

“And the sin of larceny, also.”

“Yes, but . . . look . . .” The whole situation was starting to feel rather familiar, speaking as a man who’d had to try and explain himself to the authorities—temporal and spiritual—before.

“Do not fear, my son,” Abnasio said, not very reassuringly. “You are safe now. When our ritual is complete, the source of corruption will be removed. I know that you seek the Light. I know that, as all men, you find the path hard to follow. But you will be saved. We will not let you succumb to the Dark.”

Lief was beginning to wish he’d kept the knife. “Come on then,” he challenged vaguely. Even as he said it, he realized that he didn’t know whether he wanted them to come on, or not. “Do it, whatever you’ll do. Come and take me.” He raised his little fists.

“You will be held, until we are done,” Abnasio informed him. “After that, some period of correctional penance may be required but, as we will be on our journey to defeat Darvezian, armed with Tyrant’s Bane, our Weapon of Righteousness, that will not be our task. We will hand you to the staff of the Potentate before we leave. You are not an evil man, merely misguided.”

Then they swamped him, three or four monks grabbing him, tearing the borrowed robe from him—none too gently—and then frog-marching him out back into the main ritual area, where he was searched thoroughly and set down close to the altar and bound. No sacred shackles for Lief, it seemed, so perhaps they were in short supply, but the rope they used was plenty strong enough, and they seemed suspiciously good at tying knots. Lief let himself speculate about intramonastic fun and games after lights out in the dormitory. It wasn’t much, but he wasn’t really in a position to strike any more significant blow against them.

Worse, the ritual was beginning, with a host of monks coming in to chant and wave around smelly censers and generally line up to be counted. Shortly thereafter, Enth was hauled out, and Lief winced to see them dragging him by his chains, while he scraped and scrambled to keep his feet. Once he fell, and when they hauled him up he let out a thin keening sound of grief and agony that belonged to neither man nor beast.

He was dragged before the altar, and Lief thought, Well, crap, this is it. He had kept a hopeful eye out for a quartet of figures in purloined robes sneaking in at the back, but he was sourly aware that none of his companions were likely to be able to pull off the come-as-a-monk trick in any event, nor would they likely even think of it. The lack of any visible presence from Dion and company did not lend itself to the idea that they had a secret master plan about to be put into action.

After that, with Enth crouched shuddering before the altar of Armes, the ritual continued to go on, with stern sermons, some rather tuneless singing, and a number of sonorous invocations. Despite the overall feeling of peril, Lief felt his eyelids drooping with the raw and unadulterated tedium of it.

And then it was all quiet, and Abnasio had in his hand a long two-pronged blade, and Lief could not help but notice that a couple of monks had a fire going in a little stone-walled forge that was swiftly making the air stifling and hot. They had pots there, such as might be used for the boiling of glue.

“Know, brethren,” the high priest declared, because apparently he reserved “brethren” for formal occasions, “that before you is no man, but a spider, of all the things of Darkness the most loathed. Know that the fall of Darvezian, as prophesied, shall come by the spider’s path and with the spider’s fang. And we have long known, by the words of the seer Gamograth, that one would come who would bring us the makings of such a weapon, in this age, at this time. So it was foretold, and so it has come to pass.”

“So it has come to pass,” murmured his followers.

“Know then, that the spider-creature was formed into this shape for us to use, so that the very substance of its being shall go to make the body of our weapon: bones, skin, sinew, teeth, all shall be extracted with full ceremony to become the blade that shall rid the world of the Dark Tyrant Darvezian! So it shall come to pass!”

“So it shall come to pass.”

And, in the moment’s silence that came after, Lief burst out, “You’re all fucking insane!”

The monk behind him cautioned him to stay out of ecumenical matters by way of a kick to the kidneys, but he gabbled on, “Look at yourselves! You’re going to make a weapon out of a hu—a living body? You’re going to make it out of bones and teeth? You’re going to scrimshaw Darvezian to death? You—stop kicking me, you turd!—you think this is holy? You’re going to cut him open slowly and lever the poor bastard apart because you think the Light wants that? Torture is the way of virtue now, is it?”

Abnasio’s smile was so kindly you could shave with it. “My child, you know not what you say. You cannot torture a thing of the Dark. It has not the sensibilities of those raised to the Light.”

Lief stared at him, and all he had left, the last shot in his quiver, was: “But look at him. He’s hurting. Even with those things you put on him, he’s hurting.”

“Those born to the Dark cannot know pain, as you or I,” Abnasio said simply. “The true source of pain is the soul’s agony when confronted with the imperfection of the world, and all physical pain is a mere reflection of that. There is no soul to a creature of Darkness. At its heart is only a vessel of black wickedness that festers, and seeks to spread its malignity to others. Your pity for this beast is admirable, and yet misplaced.”

At a gesture, Enth was hauled up until he had his back hard against the edge of the altar, arms twisted until they lay flat along it—an experience as painful as the touch of the chains from the way he writhed—and his head dragged back by the hair. For a moment Lief thought they would cut his throat first, which might at least have been merciful. Mercy was not part of Abnasio’s dogma when it came to things of the Dark, however, and he touched the points of his blade to somewhere south of Enth’s ribs.

Then a clear voice rang out, “Hold!” and they were clattering down the stairs: Dion and the rest, all four of them, and Lief exploded with, “About fucking time!”

Abnasio stepped from the altar, shaking his sleeves—perhaps unconsciously—to free his arms, as though he and Dion were about to settle this by wrestling. “Welcome,” he boomed in that authoritative voice of his, although Lief thought he detected just a little strain there. Yes, that’s right, now there are two of you with the Light, so you’ll have to share it. Play nicely now.

“Stop this abomination at once.” You had to give Dion credit. She just stormed through the ranks of the monks as though they weren’t there, and they drew back from her. She was a priestess of Armes, and they were good little votaries. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Armes’s will,” Abnasio rejoined. “All honor to you, for you have brought to Armesion the means by which Darvezian may be defeated, but it is for the followers of Gamograth to take this raw material you have supplied, and forge the mighty weapon Tyrant’s Bane from it, so that Darkness may be purged forever from the land.”

“That is not a true reading of the prophecy,” Dion snapped. Harathes and Cyrene had heavy staves in their hands, and they were watching the crowd nervously because their mistress was right there in the middle of it. Behind them all, Penthos stood with the utterly serene expression of a man who will set things on fire the moment the word is given.

Lief thought about being in an enclosed space full of monks on fire. It seemed to offer few advantages to the nonincendiary version, and several drawbacks. He hoped that Dion was keeping the magician on a tight leash.

“The prophecy says that Darvezian shall be brought low by spider’s fang and by spider’s path,” Dion declared. “We have hunted out the mother of spiders, an obscenity that makes this creature seem a mere catcher of flies in contrast, and we have wrested from it the venomous fang that I intend to drive into Darvezian’s Dark chest, but this creature is needed to guide us by secret ways that will let us reach the Dark Lord without trying conclusions with every monster and Doomsayer and Ghantishman between here and his tower.”

Abnasio actually chuckled at that. “I applaud your fervor, my sister. I give you all tribute, as she who has made our work possible. You must know, however, that the spider’s path is merely a reinforcement of the fact that by the spider’s fang shall Darvezian die. It is not a separate requirement. Gamograth himself has said this, and in doing so he was following Innazi’s On Prophecies and the teachings of Meflo the Bright.”

Dion’s face took on an odd look not before seen by Lief, although he guessed that this was because he had never happened across her when she was at debating class in the seminary. It was a rather arch and patronizing look, but one very specific to the face of a person of education about to show another person of education how wrong they are. “It is, however, written in the Divinatory Epistles of Chalcy that every word of prophecy is like a rare pearl with its own import, and Blessed Armes would not lower himself to merely repeat in one line a message already given in another. It is therefore for us to correctly interpret every intention of the divine. As you are failing to do.”

Abnasio drew breath in through his nose, an audible dismissal. “You will be familiar with the Edicts of Fargalon where the sage Nieth recounts that Armes is well aware of the frailties of human comprehension”—and somehow he had turned that phrase into a direct attack on Dion’s intelligence—“so that oft times, when the message is as vital as in this case, the truth must be repeated twice or even more. Alas, for more general comprehension, Armes did not give us a third repetition, that even you could not argue with.”

There was the sort of murmur among the monks that Lief would have expected after a particularly vicious blow in a bar fight. For his part, though, while this was presumably the theological grudge match of the century and he could probably have sold tickets to it across Armesion, he had never really taken to settling arguments by way of three falls and an inarguable philosophical truth. Instead he had been working for some time on the ropes, using a peculiar flexibility inherent in his joints and the benefits of long hours of practice. Already he was mostly out of them.

“Ah, well, but,” Dion led with, “Dorthric says that, while the power of the Light can make the blind see and the deaf hear, no amount of repetition will bring the willfully ignorant to true knowledge.”

Ba-dum cha! thought Lief, and with that his arms were free, and nobody was looking at him.

“Litho of the Northern Wastes was quite specific—” Abnasio began, but Dion jumped on him, verbally at least.

“Litho is a corrupted secondary source—!”

“My own tutelary deacon swore by Litho—!”

“Well, my tutelary deacon at least knew about the veracity of ancient Boralian texts!”

“Your deacon’s a corrupted secondary source!” Abnasio spat.

“How dare you denigrate the good name of Aloysius the Pure!” Dion demanded, which was apparently a name to conjure by if you were a churchgoing type, and therefore made for good ammunition.

Abnasio seemed caught on some sort of philosophical fork at that point, stuck between trying to attack Dion and yet at the same time not get down to mud-wrestling with the sacred memory of whoever Aloysius the Pure had been. Lief, who was inching toward Enth right then, wondered what cunning piece of sophistry he would dredge up in his time of need.

“Take the heretics!” he shouted.

“Oh thank you!” Lief hissed to himself, because abruptly the monks were bundling forward toward Dion and the rest, and he could close the remaining distance to Enth. He could hear Dion shouting out, “Kill none of them! Beat them down only! They are all servants of the Light, however—” And then her voice cut off for a second, and Lief spared a panicked glance in case she had been brought down already. However, she had her mace out, and apparently “beat them down only” was by no means inconsistent with breaking bones with a blunt object, and Dion was throwing herself into it with a will.

Lief had his hands on the manacles now, and he had retrieved that other set of picks that the monks hadn’t found. Yes, he had given up on them before, but he felt that a fully ambulatory fighting Enth would be a far more useful fellow fugitive than a crippled Enth. Swiftly, hunched about the manacles, he got to work, letting his hands inform him while his eyes raked the melee.

The monks were burly and well exercised, but not fighters by nature, nor armed. Their first wave had been battered into the ground by Cyrene and Harathes’s staff work, Lief saw, but now it was down to fists, elbows, and feet. Cyrene had always been a good close-in fighter and, be they ever so chaste, monks still had genitals just like other men. Harathes himself was mostly relying on sheer brute strength and armored gloves.

Behind them, Penthos was apparently carrying on a running argument with Dion, having surrounded himself with a glittering and impenetrable shield. Lief caught brief snatches of it as he worked, and it was apparent that the wizard was dying to argue the case for a mass auto-da-fé of the followers of Gamograth, and was getting nowhere with it.

“Just do some magic, Penthos!” Dion shouted at him at last. “No fire! No killing! Just do some magic to them and make yourself useful, you fraud!”

Lief actually got to see that one hit home, and the resultant betrayed expression that passed briefly over the wizard’s saturnine features. Then he had dropped to one knee, with such determination that Lief thought he’d been cold cocked. A second later, though, an invisible eruption of force ripped through a crowd of the monks who had been trying to get through his magical barrier, hurling them about the room like dolls. Lief reckoned that it was about as nonfatal as serious internal bleeding by mace, and therefore that it counted as a point for Penthos.

And still the manacles were stubborn, and would not unlock, and in his extremity Lief found that he had only one option left to him: the thing he had sworn never to do on many occasions, the compromise of his rogue’s honor, the last resort of any man of crime.

“Armes,” he whispered. “Come on, man. Your work, eh? Come on, give me a break!”

“Lief!”

His head jerked up at the sound of his name, concentration utterly lost, but his eyes met those of Dion’s across the busy room. She was clouting monks with fierce abandon, unable to get close to him, but some connection passed between them, dodging about all those flailing limbs. A blessing. A blessing of Armes just for him.

The manacles sprang open and Enth, creature of Darkness, was free.

“Let’s go!” Lief snapped, but the prisoner was quailing back against the altar, hands shielding his face, and Lief turned . . .

Abnasio was there, disc of Armes presented strongly, and a handful of still intact monks with him.

“Seize them both!” he roared, purple-faced with fury.

Lief punched him, really quite hard, and then slapped at the disc of Armes, trying to get it away so that Enth could join the fray.

A moment later he felt a shock of pain, and he sat down on the altar, abruptly weak. There was something new around his midriff level, and although he could identify it as a dagger hilt, he could not quite work out how it had got there. The monk who had donated that item to his private internal collection was looking shocked and pasty. Well, how do you think I feel, eh? Then the urgency of the situation came to him and Lief cried out, “I’m hurt! For fuck’s sake, help!” before falling backward across the altar in a welter of blood and torture implements.

6: Old-Fashioned Hospitality

CYRENE WAS THE CLOSEST. She saw Lief sagging, and the spider-creature Enth cowering at the altar. For a moment she thought that the monster had attacked the thief—it would be the confirmation she had wanted, the thing she wished to believe. Even as she barreled in, she saw that it was the monks who had crossed the line: Enth was pinned back by Abnasio’s symbol of Armes, incapable of anything. At that point, she had not spotted the dagger hilt or the spreading stain of darkness that was growing about it. She did not register how serious the wound was.

“Take the creature!” the lead disciple of Gamograth roared. “Take the creature and clear the room of these heretics!”

“What have you done!” Dion cried, and there was another thunderous detonation of Penthos’s magics. It was not yet clear whether the balance of power would allow Abnasio to clear the room of them or not. Cyrene decided she could not wait to find out.

A monk tried to get in her way just as she was pressing forward, and she put his nose to the test with her elbow and found it wanting. Even as he was reeling back, sneezing blood, she hooked a foot behind his knee and then stamped on the closest part of him as she trampled over him. It was only the shoulder, far from ideal, but it kept him out of the way. There were another couple of monks in between her and Abnasio, but they were moving in on Harathes, who was making his own inroads. Cyrene stepped behind them neatly and punched one in the back of the neck. When the other one turned to see what had befallen his comrade, she had already stepped into his shadow, keeping at his back like some sort of slapstick routine, and she put a knuckle in his ear with considerable force. Then she turned back for the main event and saw at last that Lief had been stabbed.

Her own dagger was out on the instant, and it was very much within her mind to find out whether the chosen of Gamograth had the same arrangement of internal organs as other men. In a life colored by a number of wicked acts that she was trying to atone for, she had never yet killed one of the clergy of Armes. Right then she fully intended to remedy that score.

She lunged in, and an acolyte blundered into her way, knocking aside her thrust and getting viciously backhanded across the face for his pains. Abnasio only noticed her at that late stage, and his eyes were wide as he raised his hands to stay her.

“You fools! We do the work of Armes—!” he got out, and then her next slash hacked across the palm of one hand and knocked the golden disc out of the other.

It occurred to her belatedly that the disc might have been doing them all a service, for Enth was abruptly moving, sinuous as a serpent, and had his hands about Abnasio’s throat in an instant, shockingly quick. Cyrene opened her mouth to stop the monster—because it was a monster, and because Abnasio was still a man, and of the Light, despite everything—but something in her rebelled. Something wanted to see the man-spider pop the priest’s head right off his shoulders.

Then Dion was there, her own holy device searing with radiance, and Enth dropped away with a wretched sound of pain and frustration. Abnasio scrambled away, shouting, “To me! To me!” in a hoarse voice.

Dion dropped to one knee beside Lief, fumbling for his hand. “Armes is with you,” she said fiercely.

“Where was he . . . a minute ago?” came the thief’s croak.

“The power of Armes will let me absorb your pain and hurt. Armes will let my strength heal your flesh.” Dion looked up. “Harathes, keep them off me. Penthos, clear a way to the stairs. Cyrene, take the creature out of here. Take it out of the city. We will find you when we’re done here.”

Cyrene opened her mouth to object, because if there was fighting to be done she wanted to do it, and if there was nursemaiding of monsters, then she wanted no part of it. Then she saw Dion’s face, set into hard, stern lines: not a woman to be crossed, not at all.

In the next moment, Abnasio’s people had regrouped, those that remained ambulatory and conscious, and were rushing for Dion’s little band. This also cut off the sole means of exit. Cyrene leant close to Enth and made herself say very clearly, “Just follow me,” knowing that it would have no option but to obey her.

She already knew it was hopeless, that the monks would have plenty of opportunity to get between her and the stairs, and that they would overwhelm her in the end, but then Penthos gave a whoop—a child’s gleeful cry—and a line of fire seared its way across the floor of the cellar, drawing a wall of flame that drove the monks back and gave her a clear run at the way out.

She cast one glance back as she got to the foot of the steps. Harathes was neck-deep in monks, and she saw Penthos summon his powers and start twitching his fingers contemptuously at them as though flicking drops of water, save that each flick struck the monks like a strong man’s punch. Even so, he was looking drawn, burning through his reserves of energy, exhausting himself not by excess but by the restraint that Dion had imposed on him.

And Dion herself was still kneeling by Lief, giving of herself to try and save his life.

Cyrene desperately wanted to go back and pitch in. More than anything else she did not want to leave here and not know how it ended. Neither did she particularly want to leave in the company of Enth: the creature was right there at her shoulder, where terrifying monsters traditionally lurked.

Yet it was obedient to her commands and nominally on her side. Her brief glance took in that lean gray physique, laid bare ready for Abnasio’s ministrations. Its eyes glittered in the lamplight.

Then a pair of late monks turned up from who knew where, clattering down the stairs eager not to miss the party, and ran straight into her.

She had been going up, and the sudden impact sent her skittering back down the steps just far enough that the two new arrivals realized that a fight was going on inside their holy of holies. They caught on fast and one of them was practically on top of her, a fist cracking across her cheekbone—more by luck than judgment—that rang the back of her head against the stone.

The other sat on her legs, and got a knee to the crotch when he failed to do it very well. She was halfway back onto her feet when she got another fist in the face, which seemed to unlock some secret bolt that had held the world in place, because abruptly everything was wheeling around her. Except Enth. Enth was just standing there.

She focused on the monster, even as her hands and the monk’s hands were fighting for possession of her throat. It was tense, straining, but held back by . . .

“Just follow me,” she had said.

“Fight them, you moron!” she got out past the clutching fingers, and the sudden release reminded her of flying a hawk from the glove. The second monk, still slightly doubled over, had a cudgel out from within his robes and even managed to get in a solid swing as Enth came in. The monster thrust an arm out that served at once to deflect the blow and to plant a palm in the man’s chest with enough force to spill him halfway back up the stairs. Then Cyrene had forced the hands of her own assailant away, throwing him off her neatly into Enth’s grip.

She saw his jaws gape, the monster’s. She saw exactly what was about to happen, which vital parts of the monk’s anatomy were about to get torn out by the roots. The words “No killing!” came out of her in a convulsive spasm, and Enth was left there, hands purpling the monk’s body with the strength of their grip, fangs bared, staring at her. It was not that she cared about the monk’s life, she realized. It was that death by Enth was a foul end not fit for anyone.

And yet there was a part of her that told her otherwise, that Lief’s shed blood meant the gloves were off. She fought it down, but only after a moment’s wrestling with the conscience she had been trying to grow since meeting Dion.

“Just . . .” But she didn’t have the words. Instead she took out her frustration with a vicious hooking punch under the monk’s ribs, and then a smack of her dagger pommel across his head, and if he was still conscious after that then he was at least unlikely to come after her to complain.

“Drop him. Follow me. Defend me or yourself if necessary. No killing.” It was like trying to manage a child, she thought: a grotesque and murderous child of superhuman speed and strength.

The other monk, the one who was now most of the way up the stairs, saw the pair of them ascending and fled. Cyrene didn’t feel she had the energy to chase him down, and she didn’t want to let Enth off the leash either. Instead she just made a straight line for the front door.

It was locked. Some conscientious monk had come across it standing open and, no doubt, tutted over the carelessness of his peers. And closed off her easiest escape route. She looked around for a window, or . . .

“Can you break this down?”

Enth regarded her stiffly, his hands twitching. Perhaps he was looking from her to the door and back, but his black button eyes had no movement in them: they just stared.

“Break it down,” she instructed, because she was running short of a lot of things, and patience was one of them. Enth gave a businesslike nod—it was Lief’s nod, she recognized, which the creature had somehow come to adopt—and then took hold of the door. She was about to explain that, no, one broke down a door by charging at it, but then his fingers dug in, splintering the wood. Across his back and arms, the smooth interplay of his almost-human musculature convulsed, and then the door was out of its frame, still with the jagged stumps of lock and hinges dangling from it. Only then did she think what a picture this thing would make, naked and on the streets of Armesion.

She had always felt ambiguous about divine providence, but when the fled monk reappeared at that precise moment, wielding a wood-axe over his head in exactly the sort of way that a warrior wouldn’t, it seemed a fairly plain sign that Armes had sent his servant to her aid. Or at least his servant’s clothes. She moved to duck under his stroke, but the axe-blade had already embedded itself in a ceiling beam, leaving the jarred monk utterly open for the punch to the throat that she gave him. That didn’t exactly shut him up, and so she hit him a few more times, and then eventually just shook him out of his robe as he struggled and yelled and cursed her, because her hands were swollen and sore from the rigors of monastic life, and knocking someone out was far more difficult than people always thought.

Getting Enth into the robe was almost as difficult. He did not seem to understand what it was for, or why she wanted him dressed in it. She had to order him, and even then his ability to dress himself would have been risible under any other circumstances. All the time, though, Cyrene was wondering how many people were in the neighboring houses, and who had sent for the no-doubt-efficient watch. Too much to hope for, surely, that the activities of the Brotherhood of the Dawn regularly included screaming and breaking things.

Then the two of them were out and on the streets of the holiest city in the world: a man-monster and a woman who punched monks.

She got them away from the house first, and then the locality, until they were holed up in the Heathen’s Quarter, crouched in the darkest alleyway they could find. Even there, even in night’s most moonless pocket, Cyrene felt the presence of the Light against her skin like bright sun. It was as though Armes himself was casting an eye over the city to look for them.

“Stay here,” she told the creature. “Hide yourself as best you can.”

A human would have demanded to know what she was about, but Enth just hunkered down in the darkness, contracting into as small a space as it could, elbows and knees jabbing out at sharp angles.

What Cyrene was doing was an attempt to plan ahead. All very well to say “we’ll find you,” but she didn’t know the country around Armesion so well, and she reckoned that if Dion could track her—or Enth—then so could Abnasio should he come off better. And what then, eh? Do I drag this monster all over the country with me? What am I supposed to do if we lose? She couldn’t just traipse along all the roads that led from the Heart of the Light and blithely assume that Dion would just be there at her fire one morning.

She was trying not to think about the suggestion that Dion could simply track her down—especially if it was indeed Enth, that blot of Darkness, that the priestess would be locating. Because that would mean that she and Lief had never needed to trail the monks to their lair before fetching help. That meant there had been no need for Lief to go in alone.

So she went to the sole tavern that the Heathen’s Quarter boasted, or at least confessed to under questioning, and she talked to people. She was aware that an air of desperation must cling to her, and that a heathen in Armesion was probably still holier than a priest anywhere else, but she needed a destination—close and potentially defensible.

She picked out the lousiest and shabbiest drinkers she could find, men and women who looked as though they still had the dust of the trail on them. Gathering information had never been her strong point—Lief, again—but she forced herself to smile and to banter and to seem terribly, terribly unconcerned by it all.

The man who finally gave up what she wanted had an assaying air to him, a stare that weighed and valued, but didn’t judge. She didn’t like him on principle, but the whole point of the exercise was to avoid the eye of the virtuous. Beggars couldn’t be choosers.

“There’s an inn,” he told her. “Out of the city on the north road, left takes you into a wood, an old wood, you know?” His gaze assessed her again, checking its figures. “Not much traffic, but there’s an inn. Quiet, there. Not a road that many pilgrims take, you know?”

Taking his advice made her skin crawl and her hand itch for a knife, but going somewhere that Enth would not draw too much horrified attention, somewhere they didn’t ask questions, that seemed the best place to hole up and await . . . await whatever might come.

But first she had to get out of the city.

* * *

Cyrene had considered briefly the gates of Armesion: big, obvious, guarded. And yes, perhaps she might be able to talk her way out: companion of Dion the Savior and all that. But could she talk Enth’s way out? It seemed unlikely, and the creature was plainly ill-suited to perform the task itself.

“We need out of here,” she hissed. “Any bright ideas? Penthos give you any useful magic powers?”

“Out of here?” the creature hissed.

“Out of this city.”

New life jerked in his corded limbs. “Yes, yes.” Then a pause. Its head was lowered, although it was still presumably watching her with at least one eye. It was thinking, though—genuinely engaging in a recognizable human activity.

“We climb,” it declared.

She stopped herself just asking, “Can you climb?” because it had been a spider: surely it thought it could. But . . . “I’m not sure you climb as well as you think.”

For a moment all its eyes stared at her, uncomprehending. Then her meaning bit in, and its shoulders sagged, forlorn. But the jut of its chin remained defiant: “I will try.”

They found the nearest stretch of Armesion’s wall: rising high above them, its stones smooth. Cyrene could probably have made it with spikes and rope and a lot of time and noise. Time was something they didn’t have, and noise they could not afford.

She had some rope on her, silk for minimum bulk and weight. At least, she thought wildly, letting down a line of silk was something the creature must be used to.

Enth flexed its long fingers and wriggled its toes. For a moment it regarded her with that stare. She had taken it for an expressionless mask when she saw it first, but by now she knew that it held all manner of expressions, just not ones she could read, or perhaps not even ones she had names for.

“Go,” she told it, and it reached out for the walls of the holy city and began to ascend.

She had half been expecting just a flurry of skittering speed that would take the creature all the way to the top, but Enth climbed more like a man, albeit a man who seemed to need no handholds. His movements were measured, careful, limb after limb. She wondered at it: Penthos never taught it how to use its human body thus, and so somehow it had converted its innate talents into something its changed form could use.

She shook her head: no doubt it was something that magical theorists could spend a pleasant evening wrangling about, but not her.

Still, and despite herself, it was an impressive sight. It was hideous in its form, frightening in its speed and power. Past those things, it had a strength to it, and now even a kind of grace. If she tried hard, then familiarity meant she could observe it almost dispassionately.

Him. Could she think of it as him? Lief had managed, but then Lief was used to all kinds of lowlife in his line of work. Perhaps he didn’t draw much distinction between metaphorical and literal vermin.

Enth paused, and Cyrene watched a couple of guards pass by on the walkway at the top, taking their time. The man-spider just hung there, seemingly tireless, utterly still, until they had gone.

A minute later and it had gained the top and let her rope down in a cascade of pale silk. She had to pause to muster her courage before trusting her weight to it, with only the hold of the creature above to keep her from falling: apparently something that spiders and Penthos had in common was a lack of facility with knots.

Penthos’s strictures meant that Enth could not harm her. She could only hope that he could also not assist the ground in harming her, by the simple expedient of letting go. I would, the thought came to her with unwelcome clarity, about halfway up. If I was trapped and forced into service, I’d take any chance to turn on my captors. But perhaps Enth lacked the imagination for that, or perhaps Penthos had wrought better than she feared; either way she reached the top of the wall without incident, and the descent down the other side was quicker.

Because the good people of Armesion were all tucked up by nightfall, there was little nocturnal traffic on the roads leading from it. She located the north road readily enough and, with her hood up, and with Enth’s purloined robe, the two of them could just about pass for a brace of pilgrims heading home so long as nobody examined them too closely. All it would have taken was one overvigilant knight of the church or suspicious priest—or even a well-meaning vigilante with a magic lodestone like Lothern—and they would have been lost. Enth must practically reek of the Dark, after all: a real and actual monster of evil, within spitting distance of the Heart of the Light.

And yet, for that very reason, nobody noticed. Had they been trying to sneak about near the borders, or in the disputed lands where they had found Enth, then any traveler might have had cause to fall back on trinkets and divination to check up on his companions of the road. People assumed, this close to Armesion, that those they met were not owned heart and soul by the Dark.

When the man in the tavern had mentioned a wood, somehow she had expected something like Enth’s home, dark and close-grown and haunted. Instead it was just a forest, thinned by the axe but still expansive. If the road through it was not favored by pilgrims, then that was presumably because it was a rutted track, and winding, and there were better, straighter paths for most to take.

So Cyrene set off into the trees, wondering fitfully what had happened to the others, Enth trailing unwillingly in her wake.

* * *

“So, perhaps you should explain what happened next?” Artaves was a man who had been a strong warrior in his youth, but had gone somewhat to fat since becoming the Lord Commander of the Order of the Sacred and Vigilant Shield, also known as the Armesion city watch.

This was an awkward position for him to be in. He knew there were precious few ways that he was going to come out of it looking good. On the one hand, the woman across the table from him, nominally under both guard and arrest, was the chosen savior of Armes whom he—and everyone else in the city, just about—had turned up to cheer just the day before. On the other hand, there had been an incident of shocking violence involving an attack on one of the minor holy orders, and Dion had been at the heart of it.

Not helping matters was that one of Dion’s disciples was Harathes, who had been in Artaves’s class at the seminary, and had already attempted to intervene with his “old friend” to get the whole matter expedited. Artaves primarily remembered Harathes as the pompous prig who had been high priest’s pet and self-appointed enforcer of virtue two years running. The “old chum” line would not, therefore, have gone down well under normal circumstances. Except that Harathes had also somehow contrived to remind Artaves of that time Harathes had caught him sneaking a woman of decidedly uncertain virtue into the seminary, which had gone unreported at the time solely so it could be brought up like a bad smell right when it was politically inconvenient.

Do the right thing, Artaves reminded himself. The right thing for whom, though? He hoped to Armes that the final decision was not going to be his.

“I was attempting to heal my follower, who had been stabbed by the Brotherhood of the Dawn,” Dion said tiredly.

“Your follower the thief, who had broken into the sanctum of the Disciples of Gamograth and assaulted some of their number.”

Dion nodded. She looked half-dead, bag-eyed and hollow-cheeked. Artaves’s own facility with the power of the Light was minimal, but he knew that healing wounds drew deep on the physical endurance of the healer. It was entirely possible to end up saving a life at the cost of one’s own, or even just following the patient into death. The bandage about her head didn’t help matters either.

“I’ve explained that.”

“You have.”

And Artaves was unhappily aware that she had not explained it very well or very fully. There had been one of her followers kidnapped by Abnasio’s crowd, that was for certain—witnesses from the Heathen’s Quarter had been hauled forth to testify. That individual’s identity was something that Dion seemed rather cagey about, and there were all sorts of odd stories coming from the Brotherhood of the Dawn. Those who could be interviewed, that was.

“And so . . . ,” he prompted.

“And the monks were making it difficult,” Dion said, with admirable composure. “And I am afraid Abnasio decided that he was going to debate with me again, when I was occupied doing Armes’s work.”

“He tried to interrupt your healing.”

“He did interrupt it.” Her voice was flat. “He laid hands on me and dragged me from Lief’s side. He was shouting in my face. A lot of things. One of which concerned Lief, and his opinion on whether saving a life was a fit exercise for my powers.”

Artaves winced at that, mostly because he knew what was coming from the testimony of the monks.

“So . . .”

“I am afraid I suffered a lapse of judgment,” Dion said in dead tones.

“That’s . . . one way of putting it.”

“I became very angry very quickly, and I was not able to exercise the appropriate forbearance and restraint,” she went on.

“And you . . . ?”

She took a deep breath, mustering the willpower to just say the words. “I struck Abnasio with my mace. With full intent to harm him.”

“More than once.”

“Yes.”

Artaves moistened his lips. You beat the Chief Disciple of Gamograth to death were the words he did not feel the need to say.

She shivered. “One of his followers got close enough to strike me, then.” An abortive gesture toward her bandaged head. “He knocked me down.”

“And your own followers . . .”

“Took it badly, yes. Only . . .”

“Hmm?”

She looked him properly in the eye for the first time. “I am not denying my actions. When I struck Abnasio I ceased to do the work of the Light. I will face whatever punishment the authorities demand for my actions. But Penthos . . .”

“Your magician.”

“You must understand how it is with him. I had instructed him to hold himself back. I had told him not to exercise the full and lethal extent of his powers.”

Artaves sighed. “I am sure that will be taken into account when your actions are judged.”

“No! I am not saying this in my own defense,” she told him forcefully. “How many died, of the monks?”

“Seventeen.” They had been crushed, flattened, torn apart by invisible forces. For a man used to keeping peace in the most peaceful city in the world it had been an eye-opener.

“And how many survived?”

“Twenty-seven, many of whom were injured.”

“Well, then, don’t you see?” she insisted. “Even seeing me fall, even seeking to protect me, and assailed on all sides, he held himself back obedient to my dictates. Believe me, Lord Commander, if Penthos had unleashed his full powers there would have been no survivors. There would have been no house left, perhaps no street. Please, you must recognize that he held himself back. And that it was all for me. I give myself up for punishment. Imprison me, exile me, strip me of my office. Execute me, if you will. My followers were only doing my bidding.”

There was a knock, and Artaves rose from the table to answer. One of his subordinates stood there, holding a sealed scroll.

“From the Potentate himself,” he reported.

“Praise be to Armes,” Artaves muttered, because that meant he himself was not going to have to make the call.

* * *

It was a shabby little inn, for certain, on a shabby little path through the forest. Cyrene’s informant from the Heathen’s Quarter seemed to have earned his tip. There wasn’t much footfall on this road to Armesion.

By then she was feeling dead on her feet. Lack of sleep and an impressive collection of bruises and scrapes were ganging up on her and demanding some sort of round-the-table talks about sleep, and soon. Sleep was something she couldn’t afford, though. She had too much to be vigilant against. Perhaps the Brotherhood of the Dawn were already tracking her from Armesion. Perhaps the church itself was involved, with its shining knights galloping hither and yon with her name on their lips—and not, she grimly knew, in a good way. Not that she had any particular ambitions in that direction, having met their good ambassador, Harathes. And then there was Enth.

She did not want to sleep alone, save for Enth. She knew that Penthos had bound the creature with strong magic, and she knew it was compelled to do what she said. And yet the idea of being in a room with the thing—even in a building with the thing—and none of her fellows present to keep watch, it made her skin crawl. Her dislike of the creature had evolved somewhat, she was forced to admit. No longer was it a simple loathing of spiders: she had ceased to think of the thing as a mere arachnid. It was not a horror of Enth’s hybrid appearance, either. Somehow the edge of that had gone, the initial shock slowly dissipating from long familiarity. It had been that moment in Ening’s Garth, in the tavern there, when she had been drunk and angry, and it had spoken for itself. She had looked into that scrambled visage, those eyes, those teeth, and found that, in her mind, it had made the curious transition from abomination to simple monster.

Now it was just that she didn’t trust it not to cut her throat. That was a far more straightforward position, and more morally supportable. It was still her enemy, and the enemy of all humanity. It would be the same if she was forced to travel with a sly Ghantishman or one of Darvezian’s Doomsayers or just a wicked human being. That was what she told herself. It was simple.

There was a nagging little voice inside her that said the situation was still very complex indeed, but she ignored it.

She pushed into the inn, finding an empty taproom long overdue a sweeping, the light gloomy, the ceiling low, and made lower by the massive beams that formed the building’s robust skeleton.

“Service!” she called, and banged a fist on the bar, which only reminded her of all the bruises she had accumulated. “Anyone here?” Because Enth was hovering intrusively at her shoulder she pointed at the main table and told him to go sit down.

At last a thin weasel of a man oiled his way up the cellar stairs and slunk behind the bar. Cyrene trusted fat innkeepers, whose bellies tended to mark their success and the quality of their stock in trade. This man seemed hunched around the lack of that paunch, holding his thinness in against his ribs as though it were precious to him. His smile was narrow-lipped and furtive, and his hands trembled. “Good morning, good morning,” he wheezed. “Welcome, welcome to my humble establishment. I am Visler, Visler the Vintner I am. Please, I have rooms, I have board, I have all that you need.” His manner was that of a man flinching from an anticipated blow.

“You’ll have to do,” Cyrene told him. “Food, for two people. Nothing fancy. And get us something to drink. If you’ve anything to keep a person awake, that’ll get you extra.”

The innkeeper’s eyes twitched between her and the hooded form of Enth. “Pilgrims? Business in the Holy City, hmm, hmm?”

“No and no,” she told him, too tired to start spinning stories about who they were or where they were going. “Just travelers. Now, how about that service?”

“Yes, yes,” and he was bustling away behind the bar, and Enth was staring from his cowl, but only down at his gray, long-fingered hands.

“I want beer,” said the creature.

Cyrene stared at it. “You what?”

“I want beer. Lief gave me beer. I want beer.”

She opened her mouth to say, “Just because you conned him into it, doesn’t mean that . . . ,” but the words would not come out, and she just looked at him, and wondered if it felt, and, if so, what feelings could survive in that hostile environment. Does it want to raise a tankard in the thief’s memory? It can’t, can it? It can’t have thoughts and feelings like that.

And then Visler the Vintner was weaseling his way to them again, and he had two mugs of what was probably beer, and his wheedling voice was saying, “. . . and there’s something special, something to perk you up, in it, yes there is, yes there is.”

Her eyes never left Enth as they both drank. Her suspicion of him was what she later blamed for her lack of caution elsewhere.

She took one long draft, went to wipe her mouth, and discovered that she could move no part of herself except her eyes.

For a long time, nothing happened. She was fixed looking at Enth. He was fixed staring at his hands. Then she heard a movement from out of eyeshot, so furtive it could only be Visler.

“All finished, yes, yes? Mind if I take the empties?” His hands came into her wildly peering view and took the two half-drained mugs, and then the entirety of his stooped form sidled into sight, which was barely an improvement. He was smiling, but it was a yellowed and rodenty thing, that smile, and nothing fit for any wholesome human face. His hands rubbed over each other in obscene congratulation.

“What’s that? A heady brew, mine host, yes, yes? Quite enough to stop you in your tracks, is it? A pint of the finest, yes, yes. Why, so few take the forest road these days, but I’ll let you in on a secret, our little secret, yes. It’s that even fewer get to the other side. For even here, almost within sight of the Holy City, a little Darkness can grow, a little of the Dark Lord’s power. Shame you weren’t holier, yes? Shame you didn’t take the high road, the open road. But no Light will save you here. Now let’s get a good look at you, my dear, my dear . . .” For a moment she thought that meant he would be leaning in to paw at her, but instead he had slipped a little trinket like a jeweler’s lens from his pocket and was fiddling with it, muttering under his breath. At last he had it to his eye and was staring at her through it, first with that carious grin, then with increasing disquiet.

“What? What is this? You lied to me, you minx, did you? No pilgrim you, or so you say, but look, I see the traces of the Light on you. Lots of little sparkles, yes, yes. Look at the pretty little blessings you’re carrying. No, no, I’ve seen less on priests and priestesses than on you. The imbecile, the idiot! Go haunt the Heathen’s Quarter, I told him. Give directions only to the profane, I said. We don’t want pilgrims and priests and church knights come knocking for a room, no, no. We want those that nobody’ll miss. What was he thinking, sending someone as sparkling as you.” He hissed in disgust. “And you, lying to me. What’s the world coming to, I ask myself, yes. But, ah well, we’ll just have to dispose of the pieces that much more thoroughly, won’t we? Won’t have anything left for if the church comes looking for you, no, no, no.” And he turned the lens on Enth.

“What . . . ?” He staggered back as if flinching from a blow. “What is it? What are you, my friend, my friend? What am I . . .” He took the lens from his eye and shook it. “Why can I never get this thing to work properly? Why can’t I . . . ?” He reached out to twitch Enth’s hood back, and the man-spider stood abruptly and batted his hand away.

There was a frozen moment, with Visler cringing away, hands before his face, and Enth just standing there.

Kill him! Kill him! But Cyrene’s tongue and mouth remained obstinately shut and silent, while her eyes flicked in anguish between the two of them. And Enth remained still as Visler started to back away.

“No, no, no,” the vintner was muttering. “Need help, need help. He’ll know. He’ll know what to do. Yes, yes, yes. Emergencies, he said. This is an emergency, yes.” He scuttled back behind the bar frantically, keeping one eye on Enth at all times. “Call him up,” came his fevered voice. “He’ll know.” Then he was back, with a bag in his hand, scattering some rust-colored dust on the ground to make a circle, and then biting savagely at his own finger and flicking a bead of blood into its center.

There was a tearing sound and a flare of heatless reddish fire, and a man was stood there, caught as though in the middle of a conversation. He was bald, with a ferocious beard, and he wore robes of black stitched with red sigils. The same symbols glowed fitfully on the metal plates of his belt and the spiked pauldrons that capped his shoulders.

Cyrene did not know the man, but she knew the uniform. Her innards went utterly cold. A Doomsayer, one of Darvezian’s own elite: a true servant of the Dark Lord.

For a moment the man looked comically puzzled, then he took in Visler and the inn’s dingy interior. “Oh for the Dark Lord’s sake, not again!” he snapped out, rounding on the vintner. “Didn’t I tell you? Emergencies, you filthy vermin. How have you even got any of that blood-dust left?”

“Feyn, Feyn.” Visler held out his hands appeasingly. “I need your help. It’s all gone wrong, yes, yes. I’ve done something foolish.”

“Spare me.” Feyn knuckled at his forehead. “I wish I’d never sponsored you, you little tit. You know how much I get laughed at, because of you? I could have had a bandit chief doing evil in my name, or a notorious assassin. Instead I’ve got a coward of an innkeeper who runs the worst fucking inn the world has ever seen. What’s this?” He gestured at Visler’s two guests. “They look under control to me.”

“She’s a pilgrim!” Visler exploded. “I told them, no pilgrims, no church folk, no, no. People come looking for them when they go missing! She even said she wasn’t, and she is! What’s the world like, Feyn, when you can’t even trust a traveler to say whether they’re holy or not?”

“You really are the most tedious and miserable servant of evil ever,” Feyn spat disgustedly. He stalked over to examine Cyrene, all the while disparaging his host. “I told you, put the inn on the main road. If you’re going to torture people, if you’re going to chop ’em up and serve ’em as fucking pies then do it to pilgrims, do it to church officials and priests, and do the Dark a real service. Instead of which you’re such a cowardly turd that you only ever pick on the miserable and the weak and those that won’t fight back. You think you’re doing evil? How is it any use to anyone if it isn’t serving the Dark Lord, Visler?” But then he was staring at Cyrene, and he made a few passes in the air before her, as her eyes helplessly stared out at him from her frozen face. “Oh. Oh my Dark Lord, what’s this?”

“What is it, what is it?” Visler demanded, at his elbow.

“Visler, you useless streak of piss, you have just made my day,” Feyn said, shaking his head. “I don’t know how, but you’ve been digging shit for so long that somehow you’ve struck gold.”

“I don’t understand, no, no,” the innkeeper whined.

“I know this one. She’s on a list. Her and hers killed a Doomsayer in Shogg’s Ford a while back. She’s a disciple of that priestess what’s-her-name.” Feyn laughed delightedly. “Oh my friend, my friend, at last you serve the cause, despite yourself! They’re going to be looking for this one from Armesion to the gates of the Dark Tower!”

“What?” Visler demanded, appalled. “No, no, no, I’ll let her go, I’ll—”

“You fucking won’t.” Feyn cuffed him. “You leave her to me, vermin. So who’s this, then?” He frowned at Enth.

“Him? He’s magic, he’s holy, he’s special, yes, yes,” hissed Visler. “The poison you gave me, it didn’t even work on him, not at all, no.”

“What, you mean he’s . . .”

All this time, Enth had not moved, just standing by the table.

“Yes, yes, he got up, you have to do something about him,” wheedled the innkeeper.

But Feyn was making passes again, peering at Enth through some magic eye he had conjured. “Well, well, well,” he said at last.

“What is it? Tell me, Feyn, tell me.”

“No wonder the stuff didn’t touch him,” Feyn murmured wonderingly. “He’s one of ours. The Dark magics won’t harm him.”

“What? No, no.” Visler wrung his hands. “You said it would work, you said it would do what I wanted.”

“Seriously, vermin, you think we just make that stuff out of squeezed chucklefuck berries or something? To work the way you wanted, you need actual magic, Dark magic. And it’s keyed to work against the Light in humanity. Mostly because I didn’t trust you not to serve it to me eventually, because you’re just that sort of treacherous slime. But this fine fellow here, he’s Dark as Dark, isn’t he? I mean, what is he, even? There’s all sorts of magic, here. And . . . You have a name, my friend?”

“Nth.” It was the same mangled sound that Cyrene had first heard, the spider trying to transliterate his native appellation into human speech.

“And you’re with her, are you? You’re, what, eloping? How sweet.”

Enth just stared. It was oddly reassuring to see that his sullen, silent treatment was not just reserved for servants of the Light.

“This is weird. Something funny’s going on. Hey, friend, you want to be here with her, do you? You’re a pal of hers?”

Enth shook his head wordlessly.

“You brought her here, maybe. Bit of rapine in the world’s least salubrious guesthouse? You like her, eh?”

Another shake. Cyrene, still utterly locked in place, had the sense that the man-spider didn’t understand much that was being said.

Feyn frowned and called up his magic eye again. “Ah,” he noted. “There’s something binding you, isn’t there, my friend? You’re compelled. Why would a servant of the Light be trolling around with a creature of the Dark on a leash?”

“Ask her, ask her, yes, yes,” suggested Visler.

Feyn rounded on him. “Well, I would, you moronic twat, only your poor sensitive stomach can’t take all the screaming and shrieking when you carve them up alive, so you wanted the poison to shut them up as well as paralyze them. So until it wears off, he’s the only one doing the talking.” His shoulders sagged. “I swear, I am going with barbarian warlords next time. You are the worst decision I ever made in my life.” Feyn took a deep breath. “Anyway,” he said pleasantly to Enth, “you can tell us, can’t you?”

For a moment there was only more silence from that direction, but then Enth gave a shuddering sigh, perhaps finding that the laws placed on him did not prevent a frank confession. “They took me. They changed me. They bound me.” There was a misery in his voice that cut. Cyrene found the raw sincerity there surprising: perhaps it was that she had no choice but to sit and listen to it.

Feyn was grinning. “Yeah, they’re mean like that. But you could come home with me, couldn’t you? You could come and meet Uncle Dark Lord Darvezian. He’d be all over you. He loves new toys. We’d get you some neat robes like mine. You like that?”

Enth squirmed and glanced toward Cyrene.

“Her? Oh, don’t mind her. I guess I should let Visler turn her into sausages the hard way. He’s due a pat on the head for coming through for me, however inadvertently.”

“No . . .” Enth’s body twisted unnaturally, as though trying to break away from Cyrene but failing.

“Oh, I see.” Feyn grinned unpleasantly. “Yeah, all those compulsions. Hard to know what you’re allowed to do, with those bars fencing you in. Don’t want to get bit by them, eh? I imagine that would hurt.” His nasty smile widened. “Let you into a secret, though. I’d take them off you, if I could, but it looks as though they’re top-notch strong—not neat or well laid, but strong. But you know what? I do have a little trick up my sleeve, just a tiny little loophole.”

He reached into a pouch and came out with a misshapen yellow candle stub that he slapped down on the table. “Had this for a while, just on the off chance,” he explained. “A little spell for all those souls who want to be free to break oaths and commit evil deeds no matter what’s weighing ’em down.” There was a spark that flashed between his fingers and the candle was lit. “Now, I reckon there’s a couple minutes of the good stuff left in that. And while that’s going, you know what? Sky’s the limit, friend. Whatever they bound you with, it’s off your mind for just as long as that fire’s going. And then when it’s out, well, if she’s not here to be your moral compass, then what’s keeping you from having a fine old time with me, eh?”

Feyn had a dagger out and threw it point first into the table before Enth.

“Go on, friend. Be free,” he encouraged.

Enth’s soulless black eyes found Cyrene.

He reached out and grasped the hilt, levering the blade out, staring at her.

7: Border Crossings

“I HAVE DELIBERATED,” the Potentate stated solemnly, “on what to do with you and your followers, Dion.”

“I am prepared to meet whatever punishment or penance is decreed,” she replied. She knelt before him in his chambers, wearing nothing but a plain robe: a priestess stripped of all office.

“And your followers?”

“If I ask them to, but I have—”

“Pleaded for clemency, taken the burden upon yourself, yes, I know.” The Potentate sighed. “I’ve made my decision. I will not be argued with.”

That snapped her head up, shocked. “I would never—”

“Silence. You will leave Armesion. You will recover the balance of your followers. You will go to confront Darvezian and, if possible, you will destroy him. That is all.”

“But this is what we were—”

“That is my decision.”

“But that is no punishment!” Dion exclaimed.

“I have said I will not be argued with,” the Potentate stated sharply. “This is my judgment. If you wish to feel bad about what you’ve done, then it seems to be the simple lack of a formal penance is going to eat at you like nothing else.”

“Your Potence, I killed—”

“Please believe that I am well aware of your actions. And yes, they are deserving of all manner of punishment, probably even your being cast from the service of the church, stripped of the powers of the Light. As though that hasn’t been the preeminent way of manufacturing evil magicians for the last century. But we need you, Dion. It’s that simple. We need hope, and you’re it. I’m going to put it about that Abnasio was corrupted by the Dark.”

“But that’s not true. He was misguided, surely, but he was—”

“No doubt when the time comes I shall do such penance as you cannot imagine for abusing my office, but nonetheless. Now get out of my city and do your job.”

* * *

There was still something of a crowd willing to pitch up and cheer them out of the gates of Armesion, seeing the heroes on their way. It was all Dion could do not to scream at them, to try and hammer the truth into their heads like a fistful of nails. Their faces were so open and worshipful, full of faith and trust. She was a criminal, and still they cheered. Perhaps they cheered all the more.

Even the horse beneath her seemed to chide her with its presence, a gift of the church for its least deserving daughter.

Penthos seemed happy, anyway. He never had understood the vicissitudes of a conscience, and Harathes had the smug look of a schoolboy who has escaped a whipping. She took no consolation from either of them.

Then Lief kicked his mount until it was close beside her, and leant in to tell her, “I just wanted to thank you.”

“There’s no need.”

“You saved my life.”

She should take some solace from that, she knew. If she had not acted as she had, he would be dead now. But he was a thief and a reprobate, and Abnasio had been a servant of the Light.

“Dion . . .”—Lief shifted awkwardly in the saddle—“tell me what it cost.”

“You don’t want to know.”

“I always want to know what I owe. Doesn’t mean I ever pay it back, but I like to keep score.” He mustered the ghost of a smile.

She gave him a look so frank and without masks that he flinched back from it. “To bring you back from the jaws of death, Lief? Perhaps ten years of my life. And more: when I look on the world, now, something is gone from it, some joy in its colors and wonders that was burned from me when I caught your life and hauled it from the brink. I will not savor tastes as much as I once did. Some sounds or sights or thoughts that once made me smile will cease to connect with my soul in the same way, and leave me cold. If I had it in me to love, to truly love, then perhaps that is blunted too. In every way, in some small measure, I am lessened.” She almost finished with, “Add that to your score,” but she was enough herself to know how that would hurt him, and to hold the words back.

Lief opened his mouth a few times, no doubt trying to find a flippant answer to all that, but even his powers of invention failed him, and he let his horse drop back behind.

* * *

Enth stared at the dagger in his hands. Everyone else stared at Enth.

His gray lips moved. “And you will take me from here.”

Feyn grinned. “Oh, Uncle Darvezian is going to be all over you like a fungal infection, never you mind,” he confirmed. “You’re going to be the favorite son of the Dark Tower. He’ll never have seen anything like you before.”

“I am sure,” Enth agreed. Those round, dark eyes seemed to Cyrene to be fixed on her, but as always it was impossible to tell where he was really focusing.

“Come on, candle’s burning,” the Doomsayer prompted. “We need to be gone from here before anyone turns up looking for the pair of you, eh?”

Visler the Vintner shifted uncomfortably. “Feyn, you need to do something about that. Yes, yes. I need protecting—”

“Don’t get me started on what you need, you shit,” Feyn snarled. “But mostly, you need to face the music when we’re gone. I’m done with you.”

It came to Cyrene in that split instant that Enth didn’t really know what to do with a dagger. He had never needed weapons to kill before. The finesse of using them was alien to him. When he moved, it was the sort of awkward, amateurish stroke that she would have laughed to scorn if she had not been too paralyzed to either laugh or defend herself. And, of course, had it not been delivered with Enth’s formidable speed and strength.

He struck with the dagger held underhand, and while there were circumstances when that could be advisable, for him it was just the standard beginner’s error, that any weapons trainer would have corrected. He swung the weapon sideways, just as if he were striking with the blade of his hand, a clumsy, bludgeoning stroke that drove the point into Feyn’s leer at around nose level and ripped most of the lower half of his face away with the sheer force of its impact.

There was a second’s appalled realization in the Doomsayer’s eyes, though the rest of his expression was all over the tabletop and spattered across Cyrene. Then he was down and Enth had followed him silently, striking and striking and striking. She saw only the raised blade, over and over, but Feyn’s awful sounds cut off very quickly. Still Enth raked away at him with the dagger until she heard the clear, sharp sound of the blade breaking from the hilt as he drove it through the brutalized corpse and into the flags of the floor.

Visler had frozen in utter astonished horror but, when Enth arose gore-slicked and terrible, he bolted for his cellar and Cyrene heard him bolt the hatch after him. As though that would help.

But Enth did not pursue. He just sat calmly at the table, where he had been before, and stared at the candle flame as it guttered and danced. It sparked kindred reflections in his several eyes. She could try to read all manner of thoughts there: whether he was considering taking off while Penthos’s conditioning no longer bound him; whether he was agonizing over his lot, what he had been and what he had become; whether he was simply staring vacantly at the flame without a thought in his head. She tried to read him and failed, because she could not read that face, not the human parts of it, nor the rest.

She found that the only conclusion she had come to was that he was not going to kill her, though the opportunity was still there.

The candle had burned out, the flame attempting one last despairing leap for freedom before drowning in the hungry pool of wax that it had created, and he sighed. A small sound; such a human sound.

There was a noise, a croaking and wordless sound. She realized it came from her own throat, forced through stiff lips. The poison was beginning to wear off. She fought and fought, trying to reconnect with muscles that had been severed from her, and at last she managed to force out the word, “Why?”

Enth stared at her mournfully. “I listen. You all think I am stupid, like an animal. I know what is said. I know what I am.” And then, because apparently he understood that was no answer, “There is a prophecy. I am part of it. Your leader and the other one both agreed, though in different ways. The prophecy is to destroy this Darvezian. Do you think the Dark Lord would not know? He would kill me, to be safe from me.”

Cyrene had not considered that logic, but she could not refute it. She even managed an infinitesimal nod.

“And he would not give me back what I was,” Enth added. “I do not know what you will do, when you have made use of me, but I must think Penthos can do it. Turn me back. Take me back.”

She made an encouraging noise.

“And it hurts.”

An iron hand, that had been gripping her so hard she had not been able to feel it, released her in a rush, and abruptly every joint was burning, shrilly insisting that she relieve it from its enforced stillness. And she couldn’t move much, although every part of her was trembling, but she had already been working at her tongue and lips, and she was able to say, “What?”

“What has been laid on me. The oath, the bonds. When I come close to breaking it, it burns like fire. And I don’t know what will make it burn, until it is too late. I am afraid.”

With a choked sound, Cyrene was on her feet, pins and needles searing across every part of her. For a moment she could only stamp and rub at her limbs and curse, while Enth watched her blankly.

“I—” she started, and then cursed and stamped some more. “I will argue your case, I swear. I will get Penthos to turn you back, if that is what you want. When we’re done. I’ll take you back to that forest you came from myself, if need be. I owe you.”

His expression suggested the concept was meaningless to him, but she felt it was important to make him understand.

“Look, you could have killed me. Maybe you’d have suffered for it later, from the geas, maybe not. But you could have done me instead of the Doomsayer. Or as well, even. You could be a mile away from here, right now. And I admit, I’ve never been fond of you, and I’ve never trusted you, and I . . .” She stared into that face, trying to see it other than it was: human; monster; monster; human, until she found some squinting way of looking at him that did not make her stomach curdle. He could never pass for human, and it was trying to see him as that—as something as human as a Ghantishman even—that caused the queasy disconnect. If she looked at him as something entirely other, then he was still alien but a layer of horror was taken from him. As a singular thing unto himself there was a completeness to him, a sureness of movement, a comfort in his own frame that surely had not been there a few days ago. He had the lean and admirable lines of a hunting creature, a thing well made. Not a man; not a monster; just Enth.

“I will try,” she finished lamely. “I swear to the L—I will try. And now we must leave.”

He stood again, willing to follow her lead without questions because that was what he had been doing all along.

“A Doomsayer has been killed,” she told him, though. “Other agents of the Dark Lord will know. They will come here for vengeance.”

A nod from Enth. He understood. Then he spoke, of his own accord and just as though he were a companion engaged on a common mission. “What about the other one?” His hands were still, head cocking to indicate the hatch to the cellar. No doubt he could haul it from its fittings without straining.

“You want to kill him?”

“He is not threatening you. I am not defending myself.” He spoke precisely, hunting through the maze that Penthos had set about his mind. “Are you instructing me to kill him?”

It would, she considered sourly, set a poor precedent. “I’ve a better idea,” she decided. “Because, like I say, the Dark One’s servants will be all over this place soon enough.” She was pitching her voice loud enough for Visler to hear. “And they know just who runs it. Or the agents of the Light will come, ’cos I’m sure as anything telling them over at Armesion what’s been going on here.” And she took up one of the tables, and without being asked Enth had the other end, and then had turned it over onto the cellar hatch between them. She had wondered if the little weasel had another way out, but from his horrified shout at the sound she guessed he did not. “So we’ll leave him to his vintning for now, let him take stock of the contents of his cellar. Until they come for him. Until whoever comes for him. Sweet dreams, Visler.”

They left, then, and Cyrene set off into the woods, close enough to watch the roads, but far enough that they could hide themselves among the trees. Enth kept his own counsel, mostly, although he had one question that she could not answer, but filed away for later use. When he intruded into the edge of her vision unexpectedly he still made her skin crawl, but it was old habit. When she caught the reins of her feelings, she could look on his silent, crouching form and see something more of a blank slate, perhaps even someone with virtues as a traveling companion. He was quiet, after all, and he was obedient, and he was strong. She had known dogs who had no more to recommend them. And that meant he was already a step up from Harathes.

She laughed at that, unable to stop herself, sensing those baffled eyes on her, like dark reflecting pools.

* * *

Dion found them soon after, following after Penthos as though the magician were a tracking hound, able to sniff out the reek of his own magics no matter what the distance. They came down the forest path, and Cyrene saw that there were four of them, and two spare horses, and felt a quiet joy.

“What kept you?” she called out, emerging from the trees. She was grinning, but Dion’s expression took some of the edge off that. “What happened?” She had to glance once more at Lief, because the priestess’s looks suggested someone had died.

“We’re fine,” Harathes told her, though she hadn’t been asking him. “We thought we were in trouble, back at Armesion, but they saw the necessity of our quest, and let us go.”

“That right?” Cyrene’s gaze flicked from face to face, seeing that, whatever the matter was, it was only Dion who was overly weighed by it.

“Do you still have the creature?” Harathes demanded of her.

“He’s here. He’s fine,” she confirmed. A moment later, Enth lurched from the trees and ended up standing before Penthos’s horse like a prisoner awaiting sentencing. “I said he’s fine,” Cyrene repeated. “We got into some bother with a Doomsayer, but that’s all taken care of.”

She wasn’t sure what Dion or Penthos could discover of what had gone on, with their particular abilities. Certainly the magician had that constipated look that suggested he was contemplating arcane matters—either that or being on a horse truly did not agree with him. Dion just asked sharply, “A Doomsayer?”

“Enth killed him,” Cyrene confirmed, and Lief whistled appreciatively.

“Two for two,” he noted. “Nice work.” And, when Harathes snorted, “So what’s your score, eh? A number between nought and one?”

The warrior of the church scowled, and split his glower between the thief and the man-spider.

“We will ride with all speed to Cad Nereg,” Dion told them. “We cross into the Dark lands and find the Shadow Canyons. The creature shows us our path, and then we take the fight to Darvezian. Then we are done.” She sounded almost sick for it. “Get the creature mounted.”

It turned out that horses did not like Enth, and the feeling was plainly reciprocated. It was known that, like dogs, horses had a little of the Light in them, making them fit servants for men. Enough of the Light, plainly, to recognize Darkness. It did not help that, after the first refusal, Penthos tried to take direct charge of the situation and force Enth onto the luckless beast by sheer willpower. As Penthos, too, had no real affinity with horses, this just resulted in more and more rearing and bucking and complaints from the horse until Cyrene stepped in.

She, of all of them, knew horses. She was the only one of them truly at home on the road or in the wilds. She calmed the creature, speaking to it gently, putting her hand to its head, letting a bond between them grow, until it stood still and steady.

“Now,” she told Enth, and with admirable care he got into the saddle, his movements a close copy of the way he had seen humans do it before. He sat a horse almost as badly as Penthos, but he had that stillness to him, that went some way toward reassuring the animal, and when the other beasts set off at the chiding of their human riders, his steed plodded along behind, the need to keep with its fellows overriding its uneasiness over what was on its back.

* * *

Toward the north, the great swathe of contested land between the dominion of the Light and the Dark Lord’s holdings tapered and narrowed until they were separated by only the width of a jagged and inhospitable mountain range. There was one pass across this range that any significant number of feet could cross, a handful of miles of high road to stand between Light and Dark. This choke point was known—by both sides—as the Bone Vice, for no other stretch of land had been so fought over. On the far side loomed the haunted fortress of Cad Usgath, where an army of Ghants dwelt beneath the cold tyranny of ghastly necrotic wardens. On the side of the Light was the stronghold of Cad Nereg.

When the great tide of Darkness came, here was the anvil for its hammer. Cad Nereg was a nest of fortifications, rings of walls, emplaced engines, killing zones, and deadfalls. It had been besieged before, by Darvezian’s forces and by the hosts of those Dark Lords who had come before him. Never had it fallen, though often it had come close. More than once it had been the actions of a band of heroes such as Dion’s people who had cast down the Dark Lord just as his forces had been on the very point of triumph. Dion fervently hoped matters would not run so close to the wire this time round, but it seemed certain that the forces at Cad Nereg were on high alert, anticipating a grand assault in the near future.

They were held in the gatehouse when they arrived, while the commander was sent for. Travelers seeking access to the lands of the Dark were seldom and suspect, after all. Lord Commandership of the Order of the Guardians of Dawn currently fell to a heavyset, crease-faced woman who gave her name as Estellan the Fair.

Seeing the looks on at least some of their faces, her eyes narrowed. “Yes, well, no doubt when Lord Commander Barench gifted me with such a coveted title he was expecting me to die nobly and young, and not be so awkward as to live to replace him,” she snapped. “Forgive me for being competent. What do you want?” Her gaze twitched to Enth’s hooded shape, standing at the back like someone burlesquing an evil magician.

“We need passage through the gates,” Dion told her. “We are about the business of the Light.” Hearing her own voice, she sounded as though she were trying to convince herself, desperately unsure.

“That right?” Estellan shrugged. “It’s a hornet’s nest out there right now. We’re sending scouts out all the time. Some of them even come back. Same for the enemy. Place is lousy with weaselly little Ghants and enchanted Mire Bats and Spectral Eyes. But you just want to march out and, what? Knock at the door of Cad Usgath?”

Harathes was already opening his mouth to rebut that presumption, probably by way of giving away all the covert details of their plan, and Dion surprised herself by treading hard on his foot.

“We are about the Light’s work,” she insisted. “I put myself forward to be examined by your own priests or magicians, who will surely see the Light within me.” And again she heard her voice falter over that “surely.” Her own reserves of certainty had run dry.

“We’ve had a bevy of diviners looking the lot of you over,” Estellan said matter-of-factly. “So, mixed bag, isn’t it?” And she looked again at Enth and Dion’s heart sank.

And yet the Lord Commander turned and marched out, beckoning them to follow. It would have seemed a complete victory if not for the score of knights who were keeping pace with them.

They broke out into a broad courtyard overhung with crenellations, crowded with the busyness of military preparation. Here were archers and crossbowmen practicing their aim, smiths beating out repairs or sharpening blades. Here soldiers were being fitted with armor in one corner, while in another a handful of warhorses were being put through their paces by the grooms. And elsewhere—

“Ghants!” Cyrene spat out, hand going to sword, and there they were—at least two score of the gray-faced near-human creatures, unmolested and armed in the stronghold of the Light.

“Hold!” Estellan stated, and there was enough authority in her voice to rein in the lot of them. “They’re turncoats, come over here to fight against Darvezian.”

“That makes no sense!” Harathes protested, and the Lord Commander fixed him with a metal stare.

“There are thousands of Ghantishmen on the far side of the Bone Vice, young knight,” she told him, “and they are slaves to the Dark Lord, his playthings, to be cast against walls like these and spent, and bred for more. Small wonder they hate him more than we ever could, though for most of them, they fear him even more, and do his bidding for that reason. But always some few will break away and come to us, and we make a regiment of them, and they fight.”

“You trust them?” Cyrene demanded.

“They have proved themselves to me, and to all of us,” Estellan said sternly. “And you’re in no position to point fingers, now, are you?” She shook her head. “You’ve come with letters from the Potentate. If you have some mad plan to go piss on Darvezian’s doorstep then I don’t care enough to stop you. Perhaps you’ll even do some good. For now, you may rest and equip here and I’ll let you out with my next detachment of scouts. And then you’re your own problem. I’m not responsible for you, nor will I risk the lives of my soldiers to recover your bodies.”

Dion found that she was smiling, because abruptly she did not feel judged. Here was a champion of the Light who cared about ends more than means. It felt weirdly refreshing to come here to the blood-slicked gears and workings of the war between Light and Dark, where strict adherence to dogma was a luxury they could not afford.

Perhaps I will retire here, when this is done. In the unlikely event that is an option.

* * *

There was a mess room they were taken to, a windowless chamber where a mob of off-duty soldiers were drinking beer, singing, fighting, and exchanging lewd propositions. They were living, Cyrene thought. They might be dead in a few days, they would very likely be dead within a month. Here, away from the walls and the Bone Vice and the threat of the Dark, they were doing their best to wring a little more joy from this grim and desperate posting.

She found a table tenanted only by a couple of soldiers whose drinking had carried them past consciousness, nudging the occupants until they slid away to the floor. Dion was not with them, needless to say—she had gone to their chambers to meditate after giving them all stern instructions to keep an eye on Enth. Penthos, whose eye that should have been, had stated he was going to cast mighty divinations to determine the disposition of the enemy but, as far as Cyrene could tell, was actually just mooning moodily about the battlements, no doubt trying to pluck up the courage to go and see if Dion knew any meditations made for two. The rest of them had repaired for a drink. After all, if anyone was facing almost certain death in the very near future, it was them.

Cyrene sat herself down gingerly, hoping that the damp was at least mostly spilled beer rather than body fluids. Enth perched himself on a stool, flinching from the roar and bustle of the place, hood still defiantly up.

“We’ll head out with their scouts tomorrow at dusk, they say,” Harathes said, pushing in beside her. “They’ve seen some new musters outside the walls of Cad Usgath, and they need to go take a look. This could be it, they think.”

Cyrene nodded. “Probably, the way our luck’s gone.”

Lief arrived then, cutting through the press by using his elbows as crowbars. “Beer for the heroes!” he announced, his hands full of mugs. “And blimey, but I feel like I’ve arm-wrestled Darvezian just getting this to you.” He slid the mugs out.

All around them, the defenders of Cad Nereg drank and danced and punched each other in the face in a comradely way, and Cyrene was content to sit back and watch it, save that Harathes would keep coming out with pronouncements about how doomed they were, usually after finishing a mug.

“If the forces of Darkness are marching, we might not even get to try this shortcut business,” Harathes would try portentously. “It’ll be too late then for anything other than sword-work.”

She nodded glumly.

“Darvezian has tens of thousands of Ghants, Ost-men, Bone-Constructs and even a handful of Claw-Behemoths, they say,” he put in later. “Not to mention whatever nameless abominations he’s been breeding in the vats beneath his lair.” Then he sent Lief off for more beer.

“Mmm.”

“I’ve been speaking to some of the defenders,” Harathes announced, still in that rather boding tone of voice. “They do not feel the walls will hold this time, against the might of the Dark Lord’s magics.”

He had been looking pointedly at Cyrene as he said it, but it was Lief who answered, returning with another round.

“Oh well, that’s jolly. Almost makes you glad we’ll be out on the wrong side of the gates then. No point worrying about the walls if we’re not inside ’em.”

“But it could be the end for the Light,” Harathes pressed. “If Cad Nereg falls, that is the end of everything.”

At last she looked at him. “And . . . ?”

Harathes bolted his beer and reached for her hand, which she made sure was nowhere near him. “Come with me, Cyrene.”

“What?”

“I have a chamber prepared. This could be our last night of life and freedom, for tomorrow we brave the Dark. My heart is yours, enslaved by your beauty. Pray, grant me this one boon before we step into Darvezian’s shadow.”

She stared at him levelly. “You are invoking the Dark Lord as a way to get into my britches.”

“No, but surely this is our last chance. Before the Dark . . .”

Cyrene stood, clutching at the wall for balance. “Harathes, this is the last chance for a great many things ‘before the Dark.’ It’s the last chance for me to streak naked through the halls of Cad Nereg or to eat human flesh or to lift up Penthos’s robe and see what he wears underneath it, none of which I have any inclination to do. It is also the last chance ‘before the Dark’ for me to kick you repeatedly in the groin until your balls merge with your brain physically as well as metaphorically. So piss off.”

Harathes kicked over his chair as he bolted upright, which would have been a threatening moment had he not then fallen over it. “I am a knight of the church!” he insisted from the floor.

“Then go seek forgiveness from Dion for your lustful thoughts,” she suggested.

“Lust? It is not lust!” He was on his feet again, kicking to get free of the wreckage of the chair. “I love you, woman!” And there he was, the big, bluff, handsome knight, broad as a barn door and shallow as a puddle. So consumed by lust that there was virtually a heat haze coming off him.

“Love from afar then,” she told him. “I’m not sleeping with you.”

His expression was all hurt bafflement. “But . . . love . . .”

“If that worked as a magic word to unlock every woman’s legs, don’t you think Penthos would have got lucky by now?” she said sourly. “Enough, Harathes. Just sit down and we’ll forget this. We’ll just say it was a bit of evil in the beer.”

And she would happily have forgotten it, but it was plain Harathes could not see past all the words he had said, and after staring and stammering at her for a while he stormed off.

“Awkward,” muttered Lief, shaking his head. “At the end there his groin was running the show so much I thought he’d turn it on me in sheer disappointment. I mean, we all know I’m the pretty one. What?” because Cyrene was staring at him.

She felt a grin come to her face spontaneously. She had not realized how Harathes, with his patently obvious intentions, had been oppressing her, or how free she felt with him gone. “I’m glad you’re still with us, little man.”

He raised his eyebrows at that. “Seriously?”

“Very. And I’m not the only one.”

“Don’t think the Groinlord would notice either way,” the thief muttered, nodding after Harathes.

“Enth was asking.”

Lief’s attention skidded over to the man-spider, who was lapping at his beer. The round, black eyes came up, glinting.

“Seriously?”

“When we were lying low, he wanted to know what had happened to you. He was worried.”

“That so? You’ve been rumbled have you?” Lief asked the creature wryly. “Lost your evil credentials somewhere?”

Enth did not speak, but his lips parted a couple of times, flashing his sharp teeth. For once it was not his normal sullen silence, but the silence of anyone who simply could not find the words.

“He likes you,” Cyrene told the thief.

Lief’s look was embarrassed. “Feed a stray dog and it’ll follow you home. Doesn’t mean much.”

“And you like him, don’t you?”

“Feel sorry for the poor bastard, certainly. And you?”

“We’ve reached an accommodation.” And she clapped a hand to Enth’s shoulder. For a moment they were all very still, save that she felt the hard firmness of muscle move under her fingers. But then something happened to Enth’s mouth, a weird tugging at its corners. Not really a smile, not honestly, but he obviously knew what was expected of him and was trying very sincerely to fake it. The tide of the beer rose in her, and brought in the pallid, bobbing forms of a lot of memories: the wood of the spiders, cutting a swathe through the hairy mass of the creatures; that first horrifying look at the remade Enth; in the taproom at Ening’s Garth where she had wanted to hurt the creature, to make it grovel and crawl. Like the monster he is, she had thought. And of course there was that horribly prolonged moment of enforced stillness in Visler’s inn, when Enth had been weighing the possibilities of his briefly acquired freedom.

“He’s no hero. He’s no champion of the Light,” she clarified.

“Who is, seriously?” the thief pointed out. “’Cept Dion, of course.”

“He’s not like us at all,” she explained, “except that, being yoked to us, we’re rubbing off on him. But he’s no servant of the Dark, either. He’s just him.”

“Not an it, then?” Lief inquired.

“We made him a him. We made him a lot of things. And we have to see him unmade, turned back, if that’s what he wants. Penthos has to do it.”

“Well, good luck with that,” was Lief’s opinion. “But yeah, we can try.” He grinned at Enth, who had been following the conversation intently. “And if not, I can find a place for you, a purpose, something to keep you busy. Make the best of it, eh? Fellow that can climb up the side of a house like you needn’t go hungry.” He lifted his mug, and Enth completed the motion with his own, with a dull clunk of wood.

Cyrene laughed at that. “Oh, the two of you’ll be stealing the Potentate’s back teeth together.”

“Only if they’re gold.” And Lief lurched to his feet, on a valiant quest in the name of more beer. And Cyrene squeezed Enth’s shoulder and shook her head.

“You shouldn’t let yourself be led into wickedness,” she told those wide, dark eyes, seeing her own face sunk deep within them.

* * *

Dion was trying to meditate, but the walls around her thrummed with the bustle of soldiers, on and off duty. Their clatter and scuff and jabber constantly intruded on her. Cad Nereg was a bastion of the Light, and she had expected everyone here to have nothing more on their minds than contemplation of the power that they were seeking to preserve, or that they were relying on to preserve them. Instead, they all seemed to have their minds on far earthier things, and it leaked through the walls. Fierce, gallant, passionate, wild, merry, melancholy, duplicitous, sincere: all the facets of men and women facing a great tumult, each borrowing bravery from the others and lending it back with interest. Through the storm of their emotions she tried to ascend to the Light, to bask in the serene adoration of Armes, and she failed and failed again.

Then she heard the door of the next room slam, and a commotion start up, of thumping and banging, and groans and snarls, so that it seemed to her that one of her fellows must be struggling with a Ghantish assassin sent to murder them all. She burst through, and found only Harathes, who had been rather ineffectually kicking the furniture about and slamming his fists on the walls. He looked drunk and angry, but he had the grace to look shamefaced before her.

“What is it?” she demanded. In all honesty she was sufficiently worldly to be able to guess, but she left it to him to speak or hold his peace.

He stared at her, confessions boiling beneath the surface of his face, but at last he said, “Nothing,” and, “I’m going to find solace elsewhere in the fortress. Lots of solace.” He plucked a coin purse out and actually shook it at her, as though daring her to disapprove. She knew exactly what he meant, and could not find it in her to castigate him. He was not a priest, after all, and the rules for church knights were laxer. The odd foible was practically expected. What was atonement for, after all?

After he had gone, she went back to her prayer, trying to fight her way up to the Light, as though the turbulence around her was a tangled briar thicket, and her devotion was the occluded moon above. And she did wonder, even then, what was wrong with the world, and her faith, that these riotous and exuberant and, above all, honest emotions were a bar to her. Were they not also part of the world?

Then the door opened softly, and she looked up with a foreknowledge of dread. In truth she might have more welcomed a Ghantishman with a poisoned dagger.

“Dion.” Penthos stood there stiffly in the doorway. His expression was one of arch superiority, but she knew that those were essentially the lines that his face fell back into when he wasn’t bothering with expressions. There was a tightness to his jaw beyond it all, though, a slight tremble about his eyes.

“Penthos,” she said, her voice as light as she could make it. “Was there something you wished to discuss?”

He put a finger up, indicating she should wait, and then he bowed his head, frowning with ferocious concentration. One hand came up, crooked into a claw, and for a long while he just stood there, shaking somewhat, his fierce frown deepening and deepening. His breath hissed from his nose, and his teeth were bared with effort. She could feel power drawing in like sheets of invisible fire from all around them, all spiraling in toward the point where Penthos’s fingers met.

Something appeared there, leaping like a candle flame, and she put a hand up to try and ward off what was surely about to be a colossal explosion.

But then Penthos let his breath out slowly, and there in his hand was a flower. It was no worldly bloom she had ever seen, and it glowed translucently like a precious stone. The magician met her eyes and assayed a strained rictus of a smile, an undertaker’s idea of joviality.

“For you,” he said, thrusting it at her.

“I . . .” Her heart, which had been low for some time, had a way to sink yet, it seemed. “That’s very kind.”

She could read him far too well. He was sieving her words and stance for signs of hope, trying to work out if she was encouraging him, but of all the lore he was a master of, that language he had never learned.

“Kind, yes,” he agreed at last. “I can be kind. I know I am feared by many—and with good reason!—who think that being a grand master of the Power Elemental divorces me from mundane human concerns. And in many cases they are exactly right, for such as I—such as we—have higher matters in mind than the minutiae of everyday humdrum existence, do we not?”

“. . . ,” she managed, which he took as encouragement.

“Yes, you have your faith, your role as chosen of Armes. I see how it keeps you from the general run of the herd, makes you separate, raises you up. But I understand, Dion. It is lonely, to be so separate. I feel it too.”

“Penthos . . .” But she could not complete the sentence. She was too horrified by his assessment. Was he right? Was she like him, cut off from humanity by office and the burden of power? When had that happened? How could it be undone?

“I knew of you for many years before you asked me to join you in this crusade,” Penthos told her awkwardly. He was still holding out the little flower, she realized, and she could not make herself take it. “We people of power, we keep track of our peers, do we not? Dion, watching you, your deeds, your triumphs, I began to . . . slowly there was a . . . I started to think that . . . I haven’t . . . I need to . . .” His face twisted into a savage snarl, but it was directed entirely inward, at his own sudden lack of articulation. “What I’m saying, trying to say, what I’m, it’s . . . you’re . . . to me, you’re . . . I . . .” And abruptly there was a flare of fire about the flower in his hand, and he was blowing at it frantically, muttering, “No, no, no,” and trying to rescue the creation he had forced such effort into. But it was gone, gone to cinders in the heat of his frustration, and there was nothing left of it at all.

“Penthos.”

His look to her was agonized.

“I have vows,” she told him.

He let that echo for a long while before taking a deep breath and saying, “I had thought . . . these might be unusual times, given the significance of what we are about.” He could not have known he was making the shadow of an argument already tried and fumbled by Harathes earlier that night.

“Then my vows are all the more important,” she told him gently. “If ever we might need Armes’s grace and favor, then it is when we enter the country of our enemy.”

She saw him framing arguments in his mind, each one swimming up close enough for it to move his lips, his hands, and then sink away unspoken. Some five or six times he was on the point of trying to tackle her. She could not guess what case he might have made: demands of recompense for his services, perhaps; guilt; recriminations for leading him on; tantric mystic nonsense about acts required to boost his magic. Surely they were all turned up as he stirred the pool of his invention, and were revealed to be so much silt.

He straightened up, drawing his dignity about him like a cloak. “I had to try,” he whispered, and that nearly broke her. She felt tears come to her eyes suddenly: the greatest magician of the age, perhaps, his heart raw and exposed like a lovestruck schoolboy’s, and yet from somewhere had come this self-possession, this knowledge of when to admit defeat.

She should say nothing; just let him go. That would be honest of her. She did not find herself drawn to him in the least, though she had spent so long fighting against the flesh that she was not sure she even had such feelings in her anymore. And in truth, she had surely known that the great fire-mage had been holding a torch for her, and she had not put him straight, and so perhaps she had led him on, in some way. Now was the time to let that go, so that they could face the Dark as comrades and professionals, and nothing more.

But abruptly there was a rush of sentiment in her, a burst dam of it that surged through her: not love, not even affection, but she felt sorry for him. She felt so sorry for him, for aiming his dart at someone as unfit and wretched as her.

“When our work is done,” she told him, even though the wiser part of her was fighting to trammel the words up, “who knows what may happen? I may not even be allowed to hold my office then. I am a murderer, and I have struck down another priest of the Light. When this is done, who knows?”

She saw him take it as the ray of hope it was not, and she wanted to call it back, the stupid thing she had just said. And it came to her, This is my penance: if the Potentate would not punish her, then she would punish herself, and by extension those around her.

“Yes,” he said, and again, “yes, of course,” and he was turning in the doorway, almost skipping away, the happiness practically leaping about his frame. He looked back, that same awful focus building in him as had birthed the flower, and he took hold of himself with all the fierce fervor of his power, and forced himself to say, “Because I love you,” and then he was gone.

Dion cried then, because she was sick: sick of being a devotee of the Light and all its rules, and sick of not even being good at that, so that she would tell mortal lies over something as trivial as a magician’s feelings. Sick of being herself, she left their chambers and crept cloaked through Cad Nereg until she found a storeroom that was quiet and deep in the earth and away from all the intolerable life that hurt her so much, and there she slept.

* * *

Cyrene woke slowly, odd fragments of information trickling into her mind. Yes, today was the day they sallied forth from Cad Nereg. Yes, it wasn’t until dusk, so for the moment she could lie here listening to the quiet activity of the fortress that never slept. For once, her companions weren’t carrying on already, bickering and muttering magic nonsense and clattering about with armor.

Oh, and yes, she had got into another spat with Harathes, hadn’t she? That had gone badly in the past, mostly because he had been able to get her to apologize, or consent to things in lieu of apology, after sufficient application of beer and guilt. Never again, she decided. Once they had somehow pulled off the feat of defeating the Dark Lord, she would give the man the slip and never have to worry about his leering and his ogling and his occasional attempts to trick her into bed or marriage.

There was a nagging feeling that she might have given in, though. It was being communicated by the presence of a warm body beside her, over which one of her arms was draped.

Oh sod it, did I? No doubt she had. Bloody Harathes and his whining and his One Hundred Righteous Reasons that all seemed to end up with him trying to talk her into bed. And apparently he had . . .

Actually, she wasn’t sure it was Harathes. The figure lacked his broadness of body. More telling still, it wasn’t snoring. Beer and Harathes’s sinuses never did make good bedfellows, as everyone in the company was painfully aware.

Dion would hardly approve, but a liaison with one of the many soldiers of Cad Nereg, no looking back and no baggage, was surely preferable. Except that there was always baggage, somehow. One poke and they thought they’d bought a controlling interest in you.

Time to face the music. Please, please don’t be Harathes. She opened her eyes.

The thing she always forgot, most especially when these sorts of situations were concerned, was that all too often there were no good outcomes, just different bad ones. She stared at the back, at the shoulders she was curled into. They were gray as a Ghantishman’s, ridged with muscle in a way that seemed slightly awry—awry for human, anyway. His breathing was very soft, and she wondered if, in fact, he was asleep at all, or whether he had slept all night, or ever slept. Certainly he never closed his eyes.

She was frozen, horrified, trapped in the morning after as shards of the night before clicked into place, her memories trailing in late and disheveled.

I didn’t. I—we—didn’t, surely. It was just . . .

Each memory, like a little knife.

We did.

She sat bolt upright, all of it coming back to her in a convulsive heave. She felt ill, sweaty, hungover, and all the blissful blurring of alcohol was banished.

How could I—? But she knew. No plea of ignorance for her. Oh this is it. This is when I go too far.

But somehow the rest of them weren’t there—well, of course they weren’t there. She’d hardly have . . . with an audience. But Harathes had stormed off somewhere, and Dion and Penthos were doing their respective mystical errands, and even Lief had apparently found someone else to shack up with, and so . . .

Nobody need know. Perhaps even Enth would not remember. And if he did, well . . . She could tell him to say nothing, and he would have no choice. That was how it worked, after all.

The thought made her wince.

And then Harathes blundered in, pasty-faced and red-eyed.

8: Unnatural Relations

HARATHES LET OUT A ROAR that was equal parts rage, righteousness, horror, and frustrated passion. What words there were within it resolved themselves into, “Get away from her, you monster!” He threw himself in, slamming his boot into Enth’s supine body hard, three times. The first, ill aimed, glanced off Cyrene herself, knocking her sprawling, and then Harathes was at work. He hauled Enth up, saw the creature in his full naked glory and hurled him aside with a shriek of disgust. Enth struck the wall hard enough to shudder dust from between the beams of the ceiling. He slid down to crouch there, staring up at Harathes with his alien eyes.

“Get out!” Cyrene shouted. Trying to hold a blanket to her, she groped for Harathes’s shoulder with the other hand. “Just get out!”

He turned on her briefly, and the black anger in his face made her back off.

“Whatever it did to you, I will avenge it,” he swore. His eyes and ears seemed to be receiving information from some close but separate reality where things were more to his liking: he was the rescuing hero, Enth the despoiling monster, she the damsel in distress.

She lunged for him, and he threw her back easily before turning for his main prey. Enth was standing now, hunched a little, arms by his sides and hands twitching, but waiting patiently as Harathes pawed a knife from his belt.

“Once and for all,” the big man declared, some highlight of his inner monologue. “It all went wrong when this thing came to us. It was a mistake. It was always a mistake.”

Cyrene, who had tripped back over the mattress, was struggling to her feet. Why wasn’t Enth reacting, as Harathes and the knife neared him? A jolt of understanding shook her: the strictures that Penthos had put in place.

“Enth!” she shouted. “Defend yourself!”

Something spasmed through Enth’s body: her words or the claws of Penthos’s forbiddings. Harathes lunged for him, one hand out to grip the man-spider’s shoulder for a steady aim. If he had been his sober self, with a warrior’s command of the situation, that would have been it. He was half-drunk and half-hungover, though, and all consumed by bitter rage. Enth twisted aside from the blow, taking a long rake down his gray flank, and then slapped Harathes off him. It was a tentative gesture, with barely any force behind it. The warrior took a step back, reevaluating. For a second, the two of them stared at each other, blue eyes to black pools.

Enth had struck Harathes, no matter how lightly. No doom had fallen on him. He was forbidden to hurt any of the company. He was permitted to defend himself. He must obey when given instructions. As Cyrene had instructed him.

Cyrene found other words coming to her mouth, even as she lurched forward. They were all manner of cluttered, confused words, drawn from her own frustrations just as Harathes was being ridden by his.

She did not say, “Kill him.” She caught and strangled the utterance at the border of speech.

Harathes lashed out with the knife, taking a line that would open Enth’s throat and leaving him almost nowhere to move. Enth moved. He thrust out his hands and straight-armed Harathes in the chest hard enough to catapult him back out of the door. There was the sound of smashing furniture from the room beyond, better than any cockcrow to wake men up and draw them in.

“Enth—” Cyrene began, but the creature was already after his quarry, stark naked and running into the realms of men. As she followed, she knew exactly how it would all look. But what could she do? To restrain Enth would be to kill him. To keep him off the leash might be to kill Harathes. To hang back would be to miss what happened.

Enth dropped onto Harathes in a swift pounce, but the warrior had a chair leg in hand and got a solid blow into his chest in mid-jump, sending him tumbling to the side. He landed on his hands and feet, skidding a little on the cluttered floor, with three servants and an off-duty soldier getting well out of the way.

Then the two combatants clashed again, Enth clawing and reaching, trying to bring his strength to bear, Harathes the better warrior, holding distance and landing blows that seemed mostly to bounce from that gray, dense flesh. Cyrene had ceased to shout at them. It was not doing any good.

Enth got the other end of the chair leg, nipping it from the air in mid-swing, and Harathes made the mistake of contesting possession of it. In that moment, with his enemy’s position fixed through their mutual hold on the weapon, Enth dragged the man to him and got his gray strangler’s hands on Harathes’s throat.

Cyrene opened her mouth, although she could not have foretold who she would be addressing nor what she might have said, when Dion arrived.

She entered in an explosion of golden light, disc of Armes upraised. The impact spun Harathes across the floor hard enough to grind through the back of his shirt, and slammed Enth all the way across the room, leaving him an angular bundle shrieking and cringing away from the holy radiance.

Dion’s face was fixed in an expression of horror. She ignored the groaning Harathes and advanced on Enth, the flame of her faith burning him with every step.

“Hold! Dion, enough!” Cyrene told her.

The priestess bared her teeth, and it was plain that the desire to smite Enth to the fullest extent of her faith was very strong in her, if not for justice then as a salve for all the frustrations and disappointments that she had waded through to get this far. But she held: at Cyrene’s call, she held.

“Kill it!” Harathes roared. “It raped Cyrene, for the Light’s sake! Destroy it.”

Dion was not taking her eyes off the crouched form of Enth. “Get Penthos,” she snapped, and then, “Harathes, find Penthos, now.”

The warrior spluttered a little, but then stumbled off to do her bidding.

“Well?” Dion prompted.

There was no real way round the question that would raise Cyrene in the eyes of her companions. “There was no rape.”

Dion let her glance flick from Enth to Cyrene and back, the one stark naked, the other with only a blanket clutched to her for modesty. “Tell me nothing happened. Tell me this is something other than what it seems. Tell me it’s a plot of Darvezian, even,” and then, into the deepening silence, “Tell me something.”

“I . . .” Cyrene had no lies for her.

Harathes burst back into the room, as though he expected to find some villainy part-performed, and with a rather worn-down-looking Penthos at his back.

“What needs burning?” the wizard demanded. “This joker tells me there’s an emergency.” It was plain that being hauled from his sleep by Harathes had not found favor with him.

“Do your strictures on the creature Enth still hold?” Dion asked him.

Penthos looked around the room blearily, seeing the various states of undress and drawing no conclusions whatsoever. “Of course,” he said, mildly insulted. “And will do for all time, unless I undo ’em. Was that it?”

“Yes. No.” Dion knuckled at her forehead. “This has gone far enough. Get everyone together. We will talk this out, like the old days.” She meant: before Enth had come. “We need to decide what to do with this creature.”

At that moment Lief wandered in, cockily cheerful from a night spent in the welcome company of strangers. “What’s this? I miss anything?” he remarked, and then took in the tableau, turned around, and would have absented himself entirely had Dion not called him back with an iron voice.

* * *

“Now, let’s not be hasty here,” was Lief’s considered opinion. “Obviously some things got said, some things were done, but still . . .”

“You knew,” Dion told him. The five of them had commandeered a soldiers’ dormitory. Enth was locked in one of the cells of Cad Nereg.

Lief looked shifty. “Look, we were all a bit drunk last night . . .”

“You knew,” Dion repeated. “You could have stopped this thing before it started.”

“Technically you can’t stop something before—” began Penthos, under the sincere impression that he was being helpful, then wished he hadn’t.

“What do you want me to say?” Lief demanded. “That I should have been the beacon of moral probity, to whom all the wayward souls of the world look for guidance? Because I thought that was you. Where were you, exactly, when all this was going on? Closeted away, being holier than us.”

“How dare you cast aspersions at the Light’s chosen?” thundered Harathes, clashing with Penthos’s grand “Speak not of things of which you know naught!”

“Enough!” Dion shouted them down. “I don’t need defending. But you’re right, Lief. You’re no man’s moral compass. You’ve consorted with this creature from the start, spoken for it, defended it, made it a part of your schemes.”

“I thought ‘making it a part of our schemes’ was what we were all doing!” the thief snapped back.

“You have merely shown,” Dion continued without appearing to hear him, “that your opinion is tainted.” There was a heavy burden in her voice, that reminded them all of what coinage she had spent on Lief’s behalf.

“We have followed a twisted path, since the wood of the spiders,” Dion told them. “I have been too convinced of the rightness of my own judgment. I have led us awry.”

“We have no other plan to defeat Darvezian,” Cyrene pointed out. “Even if you were right about Enth—which you’re not—that hasn’t changed.”

“We could just attack!” Harathes insisted. “We get Penthos all charged up and we go in with a pack of Cad Nereg’s best. We fight, like we’re supposed to, and rightness triumphs, like it’s supposed to.”

“Then we die, and nobody defeats Darvezian,” Lief said flatly.

“We don’t die. We have faith.” Harathes looked to Dion. “Don’t we? If we have faith in the Light, then we’ll win against the odds, surely.”

“And everyone else who ever fought him was, what, secretly consumed with doubts?” Cyrene asked, throwing her hands up in the air. “We can’t do it without Enth.”

“Maybe it is better to fail, and be pure, than to succeed by such means,” Dion said.

She let the silence of that remark spread out across the room. Even Harathes didn’t seem that taken with it. Because, most of all, Harathes wanted to win. Win the fight, win the holiness contest, win Cyrene. “Penthos, you are a magician of noted power. You are the most powerful magician I have ever met. How would you stand, against all the armies of Darvezian?”

Penthos’s lip trembled a bit. She thought it was fear at first, but then she realized that her compliment had reduced him close to tears. At last he said, “You flatter me. Not without cause, admittedly. I would inflict dreadful harm on the forces of the Dark Lord. Thousands would burn at my behest. For you, I would tear down his fastnesses and fortresses, exterminate his Doomsayers, lay waste to his works. But defeat him, with all of his servants together? That would be beyond me, or any magician. I am truly sorry.”

“That’s all right.” She spared him a small smile of thanks. “Then . . . then I don’t know what we do. I fear that, if we go onward with the creature, we will be irrevocably lost to virtue. If indeed that has not already happened.”

“We have to destroy it,” Harathes decided.

“No!” Cyrene insisted.

“Do you have any idea of how much work I put into reworking that creature?” Penthos complained. “An unparalleled work of wizardy, and you’re just, ‘We have to destroy it.’”

“For Dion,” Harathes said.

“Oh, ah.” Penthos’s eyes darted to the priestess. “Well, for Dion . . .”

“It would have killed me,” Harathes pointed out. “Despite all Penthos’s strictures, it would have killed me if it could.”

“You would have killed it!” Cyrene spat.

“And what of that?” Harathes spread his hands, appealing directly to Dion. “It is not a person. It is a thing, an animal at best, a monster at worst, a creature touched by the Dark. It is ours to destroy or use as we see fit. I am a man, a child of the Light. It is my right to destroy this abomination if it poses a danger to me, or to any other human being. It has no such rights to life.”

“Will you just listen to yourself?” came Lief’s halfhearted rejoinder.

“It would have killed me,” Harathes insisted, locking eyes with Dion. “It violated Cyrene. It must be destroyed.”

“It—!” Cyrene started, then stumbled to a halt with all eyes on her. “It wasn’t like that.”

“Yes it was!” Harathes shouted in her face. “It must have been like that. What else could it have been like? It bewitched you or it forced you, because it is a thing, Cyrene! A disgusting, inhuman thing that had you! How can you even sit there and face us—!”

“Enough!” Dion bellowed, the sheer volume forcing Harathes back into his seat. Cyrene was looking shocked and shaken, far more so than Dion had ever seen her.

“I will talk with Cyrene,” she decided. “Alone, I will talk with her. And then I will give my judgment.”

* * *

“Tell me,” Dion suggested.

With the men gone, the room seemed cavernous. Two mugs of hot nutmeg steamed between them, which Dion hoped Cyrene would see as a peace offering of sorts, a sign that this was not the inquisition but just two women talking together. Like old times, Dion reflected. They had talked, once, when Cyrene had first sworn to the quest. They had spoken of all manner of things. Then the quest had grown larger and larger in Dion’s mind, and she had stopped talking to anyone.

“As a priestess of Armes, tell me,” she tried again. “I will listen.”

“It wasn’t rape,” Cyrene said, not looking at her.

“Then . . . help me understand, Cyrene. Because I don’t. All I see is . . . something terrible.”

“Something that offends you.” The warrior woman’s voice was dead.

“Yes,” Dion admitted.

“Something disgusting. Something that sickens you.”

“I’m . . . afraid so.”

“And if I’d slept with Harathes instead?”

“Then that would probably have disappointed me, but it’s the lesser of two evils.” The words came out without vetting, a sign of just how tired Dion felt.

“So it is carnal relations you disapprove of? Or just Harathes? Or just monsters?” Cyrene was staring at the table.

“The church has a variety of opinions, from sect to sect,” Dion said, taking refuge in pedantry, but then, “but either of the last two. I’m a realist. I know what people do.”

“A realist? You? The Lady of the Ivory Tower? You don’t even live in the same world as the rest of us.”

“That’s unfair. And not true.”

“You don’t feel like we feel,” Cyrene accused her. “You’re holy, chosen by the Light. What would you know of it?”

“We’re not talking about me,” Dion said somewhat hurriedly. “I just . . . I need to make a decision, you know that. So help me, Cyrene. Tell me what the creature did.”

“Nothing.”

“Very evidently not true.”

“It’s just . . .” Cyrene put her head in her hands. “It’s just . . . he was there.”

Dion frowned at her.

“We go to face the Dark, and it was late, and I was . . . I wanted . . . You won’t understand. You can’t understand. I was lonely, Dion. I was lonely and I wanted to reach out to someone. And he was there, and he’s . . . there’s none of the complications that there would be with . . . well, you know how Harathes is. One ride and you’re in his stable, as far as he’s concerned.”

“He’s a knight of the church.”

“He’s a prick. He’s an insufferable, scheming prick. And it’s always the same. You’re all right. You’re a priestess. That means people don’t think of you the same way. But believe me, most of us basically can’t talk to a man without him looking us over and deciding whether or not he wants to give us the shaft. And if he does then, whatever else we are, whatever else we do, it’s always there, somewhere in his mind. And if he doesn’t fancy us, then that’s a judgment too, writing us off as a thing without value. You can’t get rid of it. And either way it means you’re always a woman, first. You’re not a warrior, or an archer, or even just a friend to drink with. You’re a woman, and that means you’ve got a place, and a use.” She spat the taste of the words from her mouth. “And you know what? With Enth, it’s not there.”

“It’s not there because he’s not human!” Dion said sharply. “He’s a creature of Darkness. He’s a spider, for the Light’s sake.”

“But he’s not, not anymore,” Cyrene told her soberly. “What Penthos started, we’ve all continued. When you look at him now, you see all the pieces of human that we’ve sewn onto him.”

It was, Dion thought, a profoundly horrible metaphor. “Then he’s like one of those insect things, that builds itself a house of stones and leaves to hide in. But it’s still the insect underneath. It’s just a blind, so that it can fool its prey.”

“And I’m his prey, am I?”

“What am I supposed to think?”

“At least think that I’m able to steer my own course. At least think that if there’s trouble, and I’m there, then I might not need rescuing. That I can make up my own mind once in a while. Stop thinking like Harathes, in short.”

Dion took a deep breath. “You’re saying that you did this . . . thing of your own free will.”

“Yes.”

“Because you were drunk.”

“Because I wanted to. Drunk, yes, but I wanted . . . warmth. Contact. Shelter from the world and all its fucking stupidities. And he was human enough that . . .” She paused, considering. “He’s strong, you know? His arms? But delicate, almost. He’s . . .”

“I don’t want to hear this.”

“And he was there, and he was . . . he listened to me. And he couldn’t hurt me. He couldn’t . . .” Cyrene looked up, a spasm of angst passing across her face. “It might . . . it might have been rape.”

Dion stood up so quickly she almost upset the table. “Then it will have to be destroyed. We’ll take our chances without it.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

The priestess stared at her for a long while before understanding found her. “Oh.”

“Because . . . I can’t remember exactly how it all happened, how we got to . . . but I wasn’t thinking that . . . I wasn’t thinking that he couldn’t say no.”

“Oh,” Dion repeated. She found she was gripping the table edge. “Oh, but . . .”

“But what? Or are you going to take Harathes’s line now, Dion? That it’s a monster. It has no rights? I can rape the fucker as much as I like, command it to do all those things that so offend you? And it’s still to blame, for somehow . . . what, leading me on? And I’m a creature of the Light, so I’m innocent no matter what?”

“That’s not . . . what I’m saying. That’s not necessarily doctrine.”

Cyrene gave her a hard, strained grin. “So what I’m saying is, you don’t have to decide what to do with Enth, you have to decide what to do with me.”

“No, you know I’d . . .”

“What? You wouldn’t? No matter what? Because I thought that wasn’t ‘necessarily doctrine.’ Or are you special? You get to say, do you?”

“Cyrene, please.” To her embarrassment, Dion felt that she was about to lose control and start to cry.

“Enth lives. Enth goes with us, unbound and free. And when we’re done, he gets his shape back and we take him home.”

Dion sagged, but at the same time a weight seemed to lift from her. It was a treacherous feeling, though. It was just that she had shirked her responsibilities yet again. She had taken the easy route, avoided confrontation.

How can we ever succeed, when we are so mired in wrong? But she nodded, abominably weary though the morning was still young. “No needling Harathes.”

“I won’t need to. He does that all on his own.”

* * *

After a tense day cooped up in Cad Nereg, during which they mostly avoided each other, one of the scouts came to inform Dion that they would be heading out at nightfall. It fell to Cyrene to fetch Enth from his imprisonment.

She approached the locked door with trepidation, turning over her fragmented memories of the previous night. How much had she forced on him? How much had he become her victim? She could not pry apart right and wrong: they were entwined like lovers.

Enth might hate her now. She found the thought painful. The only retreat from that pain would be to take up the ground that Harathes had prepared: that Enth was a thing, a monster; that what Enth might feel—if Enth could feel—was too trivial for Light-blessed humans to concern themselves with. Eschewing that convenient philosophy, she exposed herself to the emotional consequences of her actions.

When she opened the door, he was there, standing on the other side as though he had been waiting like that through all the hours of the day. She tried to find meaning in his gray face, in the liquid black discs of his eyes, letting the moment stretch out. In her own self, something moved: uncertain but undeniable. Pieces of last night kept filtering back into her recollection. The confusion, the tentative motions, his fear of something unknown and unknowable; then the physicalities, the rhythms and the clutch of her arms against the hard muscle of his back; his own fierce grip that was strong enough to crush her, and yet could never do so. And she had lain beside him, after, and felt nothing of the guilt and shame and disgust that usually came to her, with that unwelcome postcoital clarity. Because what she had pressed herself against was not the smudged and overwritten story of some lothario, that would leave her marked and dirty with its expectations and its baggage. Enth was tabula rasa, and she had come away from him unsullied. Or so she had felt. Lying beside him, still comfortably drunk and feeling sleep steal upon her, she had felt at peace.

“We’re leaving here,” she blurted out awkwardly. “We . . .” Last night, I need to talk about last night, I need to ask if I’ve wronged you. But she did not have the words, and more than likely Enth did not have the ability to understand the question. No doubt he saw what had gone on as just an extension of the general way he had been treated ever since they had taken him from his home. The thought was hard-edged and ugly.

She wanted to say that she was sorry, but even that might be more than he could understand, and what did that ever solve, anyway? She’d had enough empty apologies made to her, in her life.

“Thank you for not killing me,” Enth came out with, apparently after his own struggle for vocabulary.

“I, yes, I spoke for you. Lief spoke for you. You’re not going to be killed.” She felt a rush of relief that the talk had gone so quickly onto comprehensible things.

But Enth’s head twitched sideways twice, a weird tic until she realized he was shaking it, disagreeing with her. “After the union,” he said.

It was a moment before she could work it out. “You mean after we . . . ? Why would I kill you . . . ?” She thought he meant that she would have been horrified at what she had done, perhaps, or . . . No, she didn’t know what he meant at all.

“That is what happens. That is what I thought would happen,” Enth told her, speaking carefully. “Where I was, when I was . . . myself, that is how it would be.”

And she thought, spiders, and put a hand to her mouth. It was horrific. Worse, if he had been expecting that, the previous night, and still . . . and at the same time part of her wanted to start laughing hysterically.

Oh, I’ve been worrying. I’ve been worrying about how he felt. And he was worrying about being killed and . . . what?

“You thought I was going to eat you?” she managed.

He nodded, quite matter-of-factly. “I do not know how it is, with humans.”

“Well, now you know.” She closed her eyes, rubbed at the lids. “And I suppose that puts a lot of things in perspective. But I’m sorry. I’m sorry that . . .” She couldn’t quite say it. “I’m sorry I used you. I’m sorry.”

There was the lightest touch on her arm, and she opened her eyes to see the tips of his fingers resting here, before being pulled hurriedly back. His eyes were on her, his face not currently hung with any of the manufactured expressions he had learned. He said nothing, though, just waited for her to lead on.

* * *

The leader of their band of scouts was a squat, hirsute man who obviously thought them too doomed to bother with names. He chewed constantly, some herbal business or other, and spoke only when he had to. He had a very expressive face, which he dedicated in its entirety to showing just how little he thought of Dion and her followers.

They passed out of Cad Nereg at dusk, that blind hour when the shadows hid more than plain darkness ever could, and even night-adapted Ghantish eyes were at their worst. The scouts were a dozen in number, cloaked in mottled gray and carrying little recurved bows and short swords, every bit of metal on them blackened and muffled. Out there in the gathering gloom their opposite numbers were probably mirroring them unknowingly. The Dark Lord was profligate with the lives of his servants—Ghantish spies tended to come in numbers, and without much subtlety. The Light could not afford to be so cheap with its adherents. And yet they died, still, those scouts. Every scrap of news about the mustering of Darvezian’s forces was won in blood.

Dion and her band had no intention of skulking about in the shadow of Cad Usgath. Now was where Nth must prove himself. There was little doubt what Harathes would press for, if he could not.

“You must guide us now,” Dion told him, soft but firm. “This is where we must trust your lead, and I swear that if you—”

He held a long-fingered hand up, stilling her words with the shock of his presumption. “I know,” said Nth. No more than that, and certainly he did not go on to point out how close they had come to killing him, betrayal or no. Looking into their faces, though, he found the thought written there, in that language he had been painstakingly learning ever since they took him from his home.

“Well, then, we are where you indicated. From here your Spider’s Path must lead, to take us past the defenses of Cad Usgath and the great host that Darvezian is gathering. For now we travel with the scouts, but you must tell us—”

“Here.” Nth stopped abruptly, crouching. He was not looking around him, but within, his hands feeling out the hard stone of the Bone Vice. Knowledge was trickling into his head, as though a great frozen block of it were gradually melting, as though this place put out a heat only he could feel. “We are close now.” He could not have said to what.

“There’s nothing here,” the scout leader objected.

“It is supposed to be a secret way,” Lief pointed out.

“If there was some way the enemy could creep in here, we’d know it. His spies come from the side gates of Cad Usgath.”

“Unless there are spies you don’t catch,” Cyrene pointed out.

The scout leader looked unhappy at that, and equally unhappily at Nth. “This stinks,” he opined.

“Tell me about it,” grunted Harathes, but Dion shushed him.

“This is not a path of the Dark Lord,” Nth said, forehead furrowed. In his mind that undigested lump of his Mother’s memories shifted and uncurled its legs a little. “This is what my Mother found—made?—in another age, when she dwelled here. Before Darvezian, before the Dark Lord who came before him. Before she went abroad, here she dwelled, in a crack in the rock, in a cave, in a maze of caves. Here she supped on the blood of Ghants, the juices of men, of eyeless tunellers, of . . .” He realized that they were looking at him in that way they had, even Lief and Cyrene, and brought the litany to an end. Not long ago and that would have been all he had to say, but now he could read too much of them. Now he was moved to add wretchedly, “This is how it was, when she was here. I am just—”

“Enough,” Dion said sharply, making him flinch. “I don’t care. Just lead us.”

She let the scouts go on with their own mission, blessing them with a touch of the Light, and Nth felt a spark of pain in him every time she did it. It raised in him all his scrabbling, resentful fear of her—of all of them, their entire kind and their vaunted Armes, too. And yet, it hurt him more now. Because it was another wall just like all the walls that Penthos had placed about him. It was a boundary he could not cross. It marked him out as unclean, filthy vermin, and nothing he could ever do would rub that out. He was starting to see himself through their eyes. He wished, he devoutly wished, that he could unlearn everything they had ever taught him. It had been simpler when he had just been their prisoner.

And yet: drinking, discovering what a joke was, the company of Lief, Cyrene. Surely he would give these things over as well, in a heartbeat, to be cleansed and returned to his former self. He would give them all up. He would turn on them in a moment. He was not like them.

They were making him weak. Not their hate, but all their other welter of emotions and thoughts and ideas. They were making him weak and they were making him want to be weak.

He realized that Dion had spoken to him twice since the scouts left, and his head jerked up hurriedly. The memories had thawed now, all the annals of a long life spent in predatory darkness, the inner ways of the mountains. The path that even Darvezian did not know.

“Yes,” and he stood. I will do their bidding. I can do nothing else. These bonds they put on me are a blessing. Otherwise I would have to choose, and what would I choose? And these were human thoughts, and he hated them, but they were his; they were him. Give him the keenest blade in the world, he could not have cut them out of himself. And since when did I need blades?

In his mind was a path, but it was harder to follow than he had anticipated: a path for a creeping thing for which a sheer wall was no obstacle, not a path for this fumbling near-human form. Still, he could climb better than the rest, a coil of rope slung over his shoulder. He scaled and he scrambled, hauled and scuffed, knowing only that, in ages past, his Mother had passed this way, had left this place to seek a new home. Why? The why was not within his mind yet. Only that the path still existed.

He saw ahead of him the crack within the rocks that she had emerged from those generations before. She must have been young, then, half the size of her present bulk, to fit through that opening. He waited for the others to catch him up: four of them sweating and straining, with Harathes in his armor little more than a weight at the rope’s end. Penthos had simply ascended, floating into the air like dandelion seed.

“There,” he told them. “Your path is there.”

“And inside? Does it branch? Are there many caves?” Dion asked him, getting her breath back.

He nodded. “The way is known to me.” In saying the words he made it so.

“What’s in there?” Lief asked, and when Nth shrugged he put in, “Want me to take a poke then?”

“Go,” Dion agreed, and the thief began closing the last distance toward the cave mouth, the movement of each hand or foot a careful study in silence, plotting a curving course to bring him unobserved to the opening.

Nth moved before his mind had quite registered what his eyes had seen. Afterward, crouched over Lief with the thief’s terrified eyes staring into him, he identified it only as that instinctive prey-lunge he had once known, in another form. When the lines had been tripped, when the sense of struggle had come to him through his feet along the web, it was almost impossible not to follow that twanging lure and strike.

He had stuck, even in this shape. His mind had been transported back to that simpler age, and he had lunged for Lief and slammed him back against the rock. The others were shouting. Dion was commanding him to back away. For a moment he lacked sufficient control of his body to obey, but then he crept back, with Lief still staring, utterly bewildered.

“What happened?” Cyrene was asking one of them, and: “I told you,” from Harathes. Nth was asking himself what it was, why he had . . .

“Do not move,” he said, loud enough for them all to hear. Loud enough, because stealth would not work here, and sound would not be heard.

“If you hurt Lief we’ll—” Harathes started and Cyrene told him to shut up.

“What, Enth?” she asked.

He reached out one arm, with Lief’s eyes following his every move in horrified fascination. He touched the thread. Moving it, plucking it like a string, made it visible to them. And spoke to those inside, though in a language his body could not form true thoughts in anymore.

Lief had been about to trip the line, to cry out to the denizens of the Dark that he was there—that he was prey—springing the trap of wire-strong strands that would have caught him up. They were laced everywhere between the rocks before the cave mouth, gleaming in Nth’s sight, seemingly invisible to the humans. And, seeing that line, that trap, Nth had struck. But his old pure instinct was corrupted. He had struck to push Lief back from the brink.

He felt a confusion of reactions. He was glad he had saved Lief. He was bitterly disappointed in himself.

“When your—when she left here,” Cyrene said softly, “she left something behind, then?”

It had become crowded. Now the knowledge came to him. And these lines were fresh. No doubt some of the scouts from either fortress had fallen victim to something other than the enemy.

“Simple enough,” Lief put in suddenly. “We just happen to have brought our own native.”

Nth found that all eyes were on him. “I am no native to this place,” he told them uncertainly.

“More so than any of us,” Dion stated. “Go to the—” She visibly restrained her speech. “Go to your people. Tell them we do not come to make war. Tell them to let us pass, and they shall not be harmed.”

Nth stared into her serene, terrible face. “It is an intrusion. An invasion of their territory.” He had to reach to find each word, supplementing his vocabulary with deep-buried ideas that had come from Penthos. The concepts were light-swift and obvious to him, but humans had so many words, which all together amounted to so little.

“And we are capable of driving our way in with faith and fire,” Dion said calmly. “You know this. So: you will convince them.”

Nth looked from face to face, but even those who might be his allies were obviously in favor of this plan. At the last, he turned back to the cave mouth.

He caught movement there, and could imagine the rounded bodies, the clutching legs: at least he was being sent somewhere cleaner and more wholesome than a festering human town.

He approached carefully, stepping over or hunching under each trip-line, not ready to enter the world of their speech until he was closer. Their eyes were on him, though. Perhaps they were wondering what he was.

When he was close—enough to sense the ratcheting tension from within, he reached his long fingers down to the closest threads, those that fed directly into the shadows of the cave. He touched them lightly, holding Dion’s words in his mind, trying to find a translation of them that would be true enough to the original to comply with Penthos’s strictures of obedience. His hands hovered there, like a man with his mouth open but nothing to say.

He touched; he plucked.

Noise. Just noise.

He tried to still the twanging threads hurriedly. The idea was in his mind, of how to put his ideas to them, but between brain and fingers those thoughts became nothing but the moanings and gibberings of an idiot.

He hissed between the teeth they had given him, and tried again, blundering and fumbling, broadcasting nonsense. Then he saw a sudden shift from within and practically fell backward as a large spider rushed at him, raising its front four legs high in the air, brandishing its fangs like hooked daggers. He retreated hurriedly, feeling many eyes on him—the clean and gleaming orbs from the cave, and the pale, narrow regard of the humans.

“What was that?”Lief demanded. “Or is that just a really aggressive way of saying how’d you do?”

“I cannot speak.” Nth stared at his hands, feeling a trembling shock course through him. “I could not make the words.” His recent life had been a study in estrangement but now he felt it all again.

“Well, that’s just great,” Harathes spat. “So what good is he, then?”

“If that is the way forward,” Dion said grimly, “then that is the way we must take. If the denizens will not allow us passage, then we must show them they cannot obstruct the servants of the Light. It will be as it was in the forest. We will have to kill them until they learn to avoid us, as with any beasts.”

“No!” Nth got out. He remembered the forest all too well. Except, now he tried to picture it, he found himself within the circle of burning light watching his own people as they fled and burned. He could not imagine himself as one of the forest-dwellers. He felt his heart speed, panic running through him, and even that sensation was uniquely human, distinct from its spider equivalent. The very organs by which his body talked to him were wrong.

“Then speak to them again,” Dion told him, and not for the first time, from her exasperated tone.

“I can’t,” he said desperately. “This—body, these,” he held up his hands as though they were dead meat. “I—cannot talk anymore. You took it from me!”

Dion’s face darkened, and Nth was already quailing back from whatever verdict she would pass, when Penthos put in, “Well, I suppose I could just give him his shape back for a bit. Would that help?”

Everyone was staring at the wizard, Nth included.

“That . . . ,” Lief started. “That’s a thing you can do, is it?”

Penthos looked exasperated. “Am I not the grand master of the—”

“Power Elemental, yes, yes. But you can—”

“Do it,” Nth said. He had not realized, until he saw them staring at him, how forcefully he had spat the words out. “Do it. I will do whatever you wish.”

Dion nodded guardedly. “If it is safe.”

“Safe?” twinkled Penthos as though it were ever the watchword of his magic, as opposed to “incendiary.” “Now, creature, hearken to me.”

Nth hearkened. Every ounce of his concentration was bent on the wizard.

“I shall transfigure you back into the semblance of the creeping thing that once you were,” Penthos said grandly. At the sound of the others grinding their teeth in frustration, or perhaps at the audible sound of the night wasting away, he hurried himself. “Well, you shall negotiate with your foul siblings truly and loyally, and argue our cause, that we may get through this benighted passage and to Darvezian. Are you ready?”

“Yes!” Nth got out even before the man had finished. He braced himself, feeling acutely the lumpen weight of his human flesh on him. Yes, yes, to be free, to be myself once more . . .

And he stared on, stony-faced, as Penthos pulled out a candle from within his robes. It was greater than the stub that the Doomsayer used, but it was a candle nonetheless.

“While this flame burns,” Penthos exposited, though Nth knew it already, “you shall hold the form I give you. After that, you shall be like this once more, so be quick about your business.”

Nth did not trust himself to speak. To his surprise, Cyrene did it for him.

“Why not just break your spell and make him a spider. That’s what he wants.” She seemed to have difficulty with the words, but got them out anyway.

“You have no concept of the higher magics,” Penthos said dismissively. “Such would require a grand ritual as did his creation, a place of power to draw from, a night’s work. And besides, the bonds placed on his mind might not survive such a thorough reversion, leaving him free to indulge in inevitable betrayal. This is but a temporary transformation. I could do it to Harathes just as easily but he wouldn’t know what to do with all the legs.”

And with that, he turned and thrust his hands out at Nth as though trying to shoo him away. The man-spider jerked back in shock, and then—

Agony. Utter agony. Hearing the thin, squalling sound that came from a throat being reworked in blood and searing pain. Feeling every limb, each muscle, sinew, and organ melted in a furnace and cast anew: cast into maddeningly familiar shapes, and yet not his. None of it was truly his. What the magician made him into was a travesty, for all a human would never have known the difference. It was a flimsy shambles of a work of magic.

But he was close to the ground now, as he was used to, and he had the legs he remembered, the number and the articulation. He had his fangs rather than the clutter of feeble human teeth. He had his senses again. The humans were speaking to him, and he could barely feel their words in his belly, but the world’s language was plain: every footfall, every shuffle coming to him clearly.

He turned on them, seeing them dimly, seeing them all take a step away, consciously or not, save for Penthos. Nth’s many eyes made out Harathes’s disgust, and a tightening of Dion’s features. He saw Lief and Cyrene eyeing him unhappily. Then the thief lifted a hand and waved, just a little flourish of the fingers. His lips moved, and the sensation came to Nth through his feet: “You in there?”

He still had their words. He was still human inside, or as much human as Penthos had made him. He wished heartily he did not have their language to anchor him to their world.

And at the same time, he felt a shiver of loss, at the thought that he might one day escape from that world altogether, and return to this shape for real. All those complexities and stupidities the humans practiced . . . he would not miss them, no. The very thought was . . . was human. And yet his.

He turned from them and scuttled up to the cave mouth. He gave his attention to the matter at hand because confusion and wreck lay in letting his mind chew over such ideas.

Within the cave mouth they were waiting, many of them. He could feel them massing, ready to strike or to repel an incursion, and for a moment the thought of those bodies pressed together in there made him feel strange, uncomfortable.

But he was at the strings, and he must play. He reached forward with his first limbs and stroked them gently. He felt as though he were starting up a dialogue with another side of himself.

9: Trailblazing

HEAR ME, for I have words for your Mother, he strummed, and he knew that they would tap and pluck his words back and back into the dark until they reached the inner chambers, the brood caverns where the eggs and their layer rested.

Wear the shape all you wish, the answer came back, we know what you are, Man.

I am of you.

He sensed their disdain, brought sharply through to him by the tone and tenor of their tapping. You are of Man. We are not fooled.

Nth paused to think through how to explain his predicament. His mind was full of concepts that he had only human words for and, to his dawning horror, he found that even thinking like his true self was proving difficult. When had his internal train of thought crossed over into something human? Considering now how he might frame these ideas in this spider language, he found himself frustrated with it. How had his people managed for so long with so few concepts they needed to give names to?

Because, he told himself, that way was simpler, which made it better. He was desperately asserting to himself the moral superiority of the web, the forest, and the cave, over all the filthy scuttlings of the city and the fortress. So the humans hated his true people, because once in a while they dined on the sweet juices of Man? What was that, compared to what they did to each other?

But he could express none of this. He must slim his dictionary down to the simplest of common themes, or he would get nowhere.

My Mother dwelt here once. She left and found a new home. So far so good, and there was an expectant stillness to the threads to show that he was, at least, being listened to. The world beyond here is filled with Men. That did not communicate his horror at it, to any satisfactory level, but what more could he say? The Men make war with the dark master that dwells near here. For of course they would be aware of their neighbor Darvezian. The Men follow a thread that will let them attack the dark master. The thread leads through your places. The Men do not mean you harm. The Men will pass through your places.

By now he felt the thrumming and twitching of their worry. Men passing through their home? Impossible, an unthinkable intrusion to be met only by violence. This was what Nth had been worried about from the start.

The Men are very powerful, he insisted, striking hard to send his message through the mounting unrest within the caves. They have fire and killing light. I have seen this. Keep away from them or they will slay you in great numbers.

We will fight! resounded from the caves. Instruct your Men to follow their thread some other way. We will defend our nest from your Men.

There is no reasoning with Men, Nth told them, with great feeling. They destroy all they touch. They are very strong. They are convinced of their purpose and cannot be swayed. To resist them is death, but if you let them alone then they will pass through and be gone, and leave no mark.

We will feast on them. We will trap them and drink their juices. We are stronger than Men, and Nth imagined the brood within the caves scuttling and skittering and preparing for battle.

He went to beg with them and realized that he had no way to say “please” or to entreat. The talk of spiders lacked the concept. Where humans lived lives of confusing feelings that might be swayed back and forth with mere words, his true people valued reason and evidence. Where the spiders felt, they felt with all their bodies: fear, anger, familial loyalty, these were not things to be toyed with by clever argument.

I have seen these Men kill many, many of us with their fire and light and metal claws, he hammered out on the threads. They hate us. They will use any excuse to kill us. They took me and changed my form into theirs to make me their follower. But I am not . . . I am not . . . I am . . . and his legs were trembling and he could not speak.

You are of them, the spiders within the cave told him implacably.

And at the last what could he say, but: I do not want this. I do not want to be a Man. I remember when I was of you and life made sense. But I cannot change what I am now. And you are half-right. I am not of them yet I am not of you. But I am of them enough to know them, and of you enough to know you also. And I am of them enough that I can ask them not to burn you from your home, if you will leave them be. But if you fight them, they will kill you. They will kill your hunters and your broodlings, they will destroy your eggs, and they will kill your Mother. Fight them, and they will leave nothing of you but ash. These things I have seen: their power and their hatred of us. Of you. Of us. But also if they tell me they will not fight, save if they are attacked, then I know this to be true also.

Nth was trembling, still, trying to put his message across so hard that it was almost lost in the twanging echo. I cannot stop them from entering these caves. I can hold them back from harming you. But only if you stay out of their path.

He had spoken all he could, and now he just crouched by the cave mouth, feeling odd vibrations as those within debated fiercely. He imagined their Mother, who must have dwelled here as unchallenged sovereign for many generations, now being asked to stand aside. How would his own Mother have reacted, if this band of heroes had made such a demand of her before entering the forest? She would not have listened, certainly. To enter the lair of a spider could invite only one response. It was only the unprecedented devastation wreaked by Penthos and Dion that had forced her to the humiliating negotiations that the humans had opened with her.

And at last the response came to him, strummed out carefully, a word at a time. Then let them come in.

Nth let that resonate in the hairs on his legs. They will only fight in self-defense. You must simply be clear of their way, and they will exit to where they can find the dark master.

Again a pause, and then that same response: Then let them come in.

Against his will, Nth was forced to consider another difference between the way humans spoke, and the purer communication of his true people. Humans were deceptive. They were born with a lie on their lips. They told untruths to each other every moment, and they lied to themselves just as often. But in the close-knit families of spiders there was less use for deceit, and it was practiced by actions, not words. Their language was a tool for transferring information: warnings, battle plans, commands from Mother.

Then let them come in, the spiders had told him, and he could sense the quivering subtext through the lines.

He was left with nothing but to return to the others. To return to the humans. They were waiting for him expectantly, each of them deaf and blind to all that had passed.

Nth had no doubt that the spiders within intended defiance. They were pretending at acquiescence, but he could imagine himself standing in their place, leg for leg and foot for foot. He and his kin would never have willingly permitted any human to enter their domain and live.

And yet he tried to find hope. Hope was not a solely human thing; even a spider can dream of tomorrow. What was building a web but a gustatory expression of hope? He hoped that his words to them would bounce and dance about the strings of their nest, vibrant with the desperate sincerity of his message. He hoped that with the sight and feel of the humans—Penthos whose power made all Nth’s hairs stand on end, Dion who reeked of that inimical Light that hurt so much—the denizens of the cave would rethink their plans.

And he had no option.

The priestess was speaking to him. His eyes caught the movement of her mouth as it flapped, but her words were the faintest buzzing. He was deaf to her, she to him. He could guess what she was asking him, though: Is it done?

He had no way to communicate the very many shades of answer, were he to accurately respond. Even with two languages and two modes of speech he might not have been able to do it. Instead he just scuttled back and forth: to them, then back toward the cave; over to them, then back toward the cave. He could almost imagine the response from one of them: I think he wants us to follow him.

Lief or Cyrene, it would be, who would convince them that he had achieved his goal. They would talk the others into going with him into the dark. Then, whatever would happen would happen.

He cocked an eye at Penthos. The man’s candle was not in evidence, but burning still, apparently. How long do I have before I am not me anymore?

By that time he was at the lip of the cave. Undirected currents of motion issued from within as the denizens shifted their positions, drawing back.

Setting their trap. He hoped it was not the case, but he feared, too . . .

And yet, he found himself indulging in a curious daydream. What if there was an ambush? What if the humans, following confidently along behind their tame spider guide, were caught utterly unawares? He pictured Penthos all strung up in webs, sparks at his fingers’ ends accomplishing nothing. He thought of Dion cocooned in sheets so thick no light—no Light—could penetrate. He pictured the others, saw Harathes borne down by wave after wave of avenging spiders. He imagined his slaughtered kin avenged. He imagined Cyrene, bow useless, trusting to her blade to fend off the righteous hordes. He pictured Lief dragged down, saw fangs dripping venom raised up . . .

He shuddered, the shiver passing through every limb and joint of him. No, no, it didn’t work. Desperately he took hold of his imagination and did his best to depersonalize them. They were not individuals: they were just Man, as he had seen them first in the forest. They were a single clumped unit of Man, no names, no faces, no identities.

And he couldn’t do it. He could not rid himself of his knowledge of them. He could not play out that scenario in his mind without touching on the human feelings they had taught him. He could not picture Lief paralyzed, eyes wide with panic, and think, Meat.

And they were following him, the humans. He was pattering into the dark—into the Dark—and Dion and Penthos had light enough to see their way, and so they followed. True, they had their blades out, but how ready could they be? Surely the tight turns of the caves were even less to their advantage than the forest had been.

He was agitated, ill. Had they the wit to see it, they could have read his mood precisely in every twitchy movement that he made. Instead they just plodded on with their lumbering tread, one foot in front of the other and how did they not just fall over? Except he knew, now. He understood how it was to walk with those feet, and the improbable magic of human balance, and other human things.

The caves were lined with webbing, strung with lines. Every step that Nth took connected the delicate hairs of his feet with the furious activity of the nest. He knew that there was a larger cavern ahead—probably an old brood chamber from when the colony had been smaller—and he caught snatches of instruction and report from all around. The dwellers in the caves had chosen a place to make their stand and repel the intruders. They were frantically stringing up webs and traps there even now. Nth could well imagine what that would entail. There would be great webs of strands as strong as metal, as translucent as glass, to catch those who tried to run or to flank. There would be lines tensioned tighter than bowstrings, so that any that stumbled into them would be whipped up toward the ceiling, there to dangle helplessly. There would be thick-laid snarls of webbing to catch feet and limbs. And the ceiling and walls would be dense with the natives, and more would pack out the many tunnels that led to that cavern. The nest’s whole complement of hunters had been mobilized.

He tried to recapture his daydream: the glorious triumph over the human invaders. He tried to picture it, but he pictured it as human eyes would see it, not as the complex interplay of vibration, scent, and spatial awareness that would be that same scene to a spider.

And still he led on, and still the humans followed him, ducking and twisting through the passageways, their eyes blinded by their own lights to everything else that transpired around them.

And he was dreadfully aware of time moving past him: it was a common concern of man and spider, the fine-running sands that led to the perfect moment of attack. He and the nest were linked to the same glass, slaves to that instant of ambush and violence that was coalescing inescapably in their shared future. In leading the humans, he was the attackers’ accomplice.

And he felt the twist inside him, telling him he needed to do something.

He tried to ignore it, but it was insistent, a growing clamor that doubled with every few pattering steps. The solid, leaden steps of the humans accused him, thump, thump, thump. Each impact resounded through the organs of his body, betrayer! And he tried not to care, but the feeling grew and grew. He must do something. He could not pretend that he was in some way a spectator to the upcoming clash. He was the fulcrum. He was responsible.

It’s Penthos’s laws, he told himself. They’re making me care. This is doing them harm, so I’m not allowed to do it. But he could not know if that was true. Did the slipshod constrictions the humans had placed on him stretch to cover this eventuality? He did not know. He would only find out when the pain visited him.

And he understood, then, that what he was feeling now—what it was pushing him to do—might be magical compulsion, or it might be a choice made of his own free will, and he had no way of knowing which was which. And was it always thus, for man and spider, Ghant and every other creature of the world that believed in the capacity for thought? Were all beings just a thin skin of volition floating on a sea of drives and directives they could not control?

Abruptly he had stopped, crouching on the floor of the cave. The grand cavern lay ahead, with all its bustle carefully stilled to lull the prey. Nth felt the shallow sensations that were human speech, and could not work out how he could warn them, in any event. He had nothing to say that they would listen to. He could hardly spell it out with his spinnerets.

They were speaking again, but he spun round suddenly, facing them, shying away from their light. There was a certain body language that most animals shared, designed to warn away an enemy of any shape. With a sudden lunge he reared up before them, legs high, fangs bared.

He saw the humans flinch back, their expressions shifting fluidly. Lief was talking to him uselessly, refusing to back away even though the threat display should have been followed by a prompt attack. Harathes was advocating kicking Nth out of their path, or something similarly human. Nth reared up again, desperately trying to communicate through the language of an alien body.

Dion’s light flared brighter, and he cowered back despite himself. They did not understand. He had a single concept in this vocabulary, and they did not know his word for it. Warning! Danger! Beware! But somehow they were too stupid, too human, to know what he meant.

And Cyrene was pushing past him, heedless of poison or threat, and they were almost within the cave. Another step and she would trigger the traps, and it would all come down.

They would not understand. Possibly they would kill him. Torn as he was, he would almost have preferred it. He lunged for her, reaching, desperate to drag her back.

He caught hold of her arm and yanked her from the cavern’s mouth. The next moment, Harathes’s shield had smacked him across the head, sending him reeling into the cave wall.

“Trap!” he got out. “It’s a trap in there!”

They were looking at him, and he saw himself reflected in their eyes: a thing almost human, an ill-made mockery of their shape, Penthos’s idle plaything. Had the candle been snuffed; had he broken the enchantment himself?

Through his feet he felt the faint murmur that must be the raging massed shout of his people: Betrayer!

Harathes was arguing with Lief, and nobody seemed quite to have understood what he had shouted before. There was no time for breaking matters gently. He knew what must happen now.

“Now!” he yelled. “They’re coming now!”

In the echo of that they all heard the massed sussuration of hundreds of chitinous feet, like the sound of the tide.

* * *

The wave of sound made Dion feel queasy. How many of the monsters were there in these tangled halls? Even one is too many was the instant answer.

“Into the cave ahead!” Penthos commanded. “Let’s have room to fight!”

“No! There are traps!” Enth started, but then the wizard thrust his hands forward and sent a wall of flame rolling out into the dark, illuminating a chamber whose very walls seethed with hairy, bulbous forms. She saw invisible lines and nets abruptly turned into brief-blazing patterns of fire, flaring and dying like alien glyphs—like whole books of inhuman lore put to the torch. Then she had Armes’s disc held out, directed back the way they had come, seeing her holy Light reflected in dozens of glittering eyes.

She gave out a shout and sent a searing ray of devotion to scorch them, killing a couple and forcing the rest to keep their distance. By that time, Harathes had his shield between her and the enemy, while Lief and Cyrene flanked Penthos’s advance.

“Up!” Lief was shouting. “Send something up! They’re dropping on us!”

She shaped the flow of radiant energy from her soul so that it formed a canopy above them. She did it even before she looked, and that was just as well because the sight was nauseating. Scores of spiders had been abseiling down toward them, legs outspread like the fingers of skeletal hands. The nearest dropped straight into her light, and there they thrashed and burned in lurid detail, caught by the solid power that Armes held over all Dark things. Others were reeling themselves hurriedly up, while all around them the ceiling and the cavern sides boiled with the horrible creatures.

Cyrene was hacking viciously away on one side, while Lief had a spear braced. Harathes was bellowing out a hymn as he cut and stabbed—their party was surrounded already by a scattering of lost limbs, ruptured abdomens, the lifeless orbs of bulbous eyes. Still the monsters came on, heedless of individual survival, driven mad with their lust to sink their fangs into human flesh.

And Enth . . .

The man-spider was almost shoulder to shoulder with her. She recoiled with a start, almost losing her grip on Armes’s disc. It was standing there, staring at everything with those ghastly round eyes, which glittered and gleamed with the reflections of Penthos’s fire.

Then one spider had sprung onto Harathes’s shield and dragged it down, and another took his sword right in the nested cluster of its eyes, and Dion was forced to use her golden power to drive the hustling host back as he reclaimed his feet and his weapon, to prevent him being overrun—and that meant they were descending from above again. There seemed to be no limit to the monsters.

“We can’t hold them!” Cyrene yelled.

Then there was a creature that had sprung past Lief’s spear to leap onto his back, fangs up. Dion saw Cyrene desperately try to reverse the motion of her sword so she could swat it.

Enth took the spider and hurled it away into the midst of its fellows. He did not smash it or tear it apart, as he surely could have done. His movements were almost fastidious, practically delicate. He cast the creature away with care, as some benevolent soul might have shuffled one of its smaller brethren away out of a window.

There were more now, though, and they were growing bolder. Enth was put to evict another couple almost immediately afterward, and as much as Dion shifted and shaped the Light of Armes, she could not keep them away.

And then Penthos was calling out, “Gather close! Close, all of you! There’s only one way!”

Gratefully she pulled back, and pulled Harathes back too, until her back was to Penthos’s shoulder, until she was jostled in with Lief and Cyrene and the man-spider; until all six of them were pressed into a space barely wider across than her outstretched arms.

And Penthos let out a fearsome yell—something of savagery, something of elation, and something that owed nothing to a merely human throat. And he made fire.

She had said to him, at Cad Nereg, that he was one of the greatest wizards of her knowledge. He had many tricks, did Penthos. His transmutation of Enth was only one of them, for he was a magician’s magician, a man who had mastered many of the realms of magic, and perhaps all of them.

But he was a child at heart: he loved setting things ablaze. It was here that his most ardent studies were concentrated. And within the nest of the spiders, he called forth a weight and width of fire such as none of them had ever seen before.

Dion had a hand up, for the feeble protection it might grant her, but there was no heat turned inward. A shell of shimmering blue-white surrounded them, swirling like circling clouds. Beyond was only the inferno. She had a vague sense of scrabbling, blackened legs, of cracked bodies burst by the boiling of their own innards, of many-legged dances of agony that were mercifully brief. These were only shadows within the light.

Penthos’s face was that of a man caught at the edge of ecstasy or madness, or death. As his feats were so far beyond the human, so what he must feel in exercising those powers was surely no more suited to a human face than the desires of his creature Enth.

And at last Dion forced herself to look on Enth’s face, because to do otherwise would be cowardice, and a failure of her leadership.

His eyes boiled and flared with the energies that shone back from their depths. His mouth was a tight line, and she saw the muscles of his jaw clench and ripple asymmetrically. His hands were knotted fists, and every muscle she could see was taut and tensed beneath his gray hide. At any moment she thought he must fly at Penthos to break the spell, so fierce—so human—was the rage that roamed up and down his body. But the strictures held, and so he was stiff with fury and yet unable to vent it.

Can I feel sorry for him? What a time for such a thought, when the firestorm raged on every side! And yet, though she could not find a human being anywhere in that manlike frame, she felt a stab of sympathy nonetheless. Better to kill the creature and put it out of its misery. Better to turn their backs on what they had done. And yet those were the coward’s way too; nothing more than an abrogation of responsibility. She had caused this miserable monster to come into being. She must live with what she had done.

And then the fires were dying, ebbing, for all the force Penthos was still apparently cramming into their creation. Moments later, shockingly swiftly, they had guttered and died, as though the whole vast blaze had been nothing but a candle, magnified to outlandish size. They were left only with the faint bluish swirls of Penthos’s shield, and her own softly glowing disc.

The magician let out a long sigh, and Lief was already moving out, passing through the shimmering field with his spear ready. A moment later he staggered, eyes bulging, and dropped to one knee. His spear clattered away and his hands went to his chest. In a move swift as striking, Enth had snared him and yanked him back.

“Augh!” the thief gasped, choking. “The air’s poisoned!”

“Smoke,” said Harathes dismissively, although Dion could see precious little of it.

“It is not smoke,” Penthos intoned solemnly. “The wise know that there is that within the air that sustains life: remove it, and though there is air—and not poison air—no living thing can prosper within it. This same quality sustains the fire. When it is gone, so the flame perishes as any living thing. This shield you see about you is not to save you from the flames, but to save that part of the air that the flames would otherwise devour.”

“Then . . . what’s out there?” Lief asked hoarsely.

“Dead air,” was Penthos’s sepulchral reply. “Stay close to me and we shall pass through it sustained by the breath of my magics.”

And they had no choice, then, but to advance, because Penthos was certainly striding onward and their continued existence in that place was tied to him. Dion considered—and not for the first time—how lucky they were that the minutiae of most human interactions passed the wizard by. Had he decided to hold them to ransom over demands of his own—and she could think of a few he might own to without stretching her imagination overmuch—then he would have had more than one opportunity to do so.

Then they had passed over the floor of that great chamber, that crunched and fragmented under their feet with its charcoal burden of incinerated spiders. Enth was looking at none of them—looking at nothing, she suspected. Whatever thoughts were stewing in that gray head were nothing she wanted to consider, but she would probably have to. They had slaughtered the monster’s relatives. No doubt it was seething with revenge, and she would have to be on the lookout for any chance that might come its way.

Then they broke out through another narrow passage, that was stubbly with the charred ends of old webs, and entered a further chamber. Here again there were dead spiders, but these were not burned. There was a whole mound of them at the far end, piled up one on another as though some infernal cleaner had gathered them all up into a heap for later disposal. They were intact, for the most part, and Dion realized that they must have suffocated when Penthos’s fires drew all the goodness out of the air. They must have clawed and scrabbled and crawled over each other and up the wall, seeking some air that might sustain them, until at the last they had reached the farthest extent of the chamber and found no succor.

A great many of them, she saw, were far smaller than those that had fought. She saw, also, that the floor of the chamber was stippled with lumpy mounds, some burst open, the nearer ones scorched. Eggs.

Cyrene made a noise, and Dion saw her move partway toward Enth and then stop, held back by the creature’s sullen solitude.

“Enth . . . ,” she murmured. “I’m so sorry. These must be the young, the . . .”

Don’t say “children,” Dion asked silently, because of course they weren’t children. Humans had children, just as dogs had pups and horses had foals. Spiders had . . . well, as far as she was concerned, spiders just spawned more spiders.

Enth glanced at Cyrene. “They are just hatchlings,” the creature said blankly. “They have not learned anything or experienced anything. They are not the loss that the nest has suffered.”

Dion found herself nodding. Of course the monsters did not value their young. The thought was almost reassuring. It was just one more ready and convenient way to find them sufficiently alien as to be below her consideration.

She listened to the run of her own thoughts, knowing them riddled with logical defects. And yet she had the trump card to send all her qualms packing, of course: whatever they might be, whatever Cyrene and Lief might think, these things were of the Dark. Ridding the world of them was a holy duty.

They crossed the nursery-turned-morgue and were just about to exit when the great pile shifted slightly.

They all of them recoiled—Enth as much as anyone—and Lief let out a yell of horror. The great stack of arachnids rippled as though even smaller spiders were charging about underneath it, and then stiff dead bodies were cascading down, breaking or rolling as they struck the floor.

Everyone had their weapons ready now, crouched close to Penthos still. Beneath the clumped mass of the dead was something pale and mounded, something of dense webbing.

“It’s a plug,” Enth said, but Dion did not understand him.

Cyrene did, in the next moment, “A door. They made a door to keep the fire out. Could it keep the good air in?”

“That’s an interesting question,” Penthos began. “It would depend on the—” and then the webbing plug expoded outward, and vomiting forth from the chamber beyond came a vast spider the size of four horses: the mother; the queen.

The monster barrelled for them instantly, moving far faster than anything that size should have been able. It was as big as Enth’s own Mother, who had donated a fang and a son so unwillingly to their quest, but Dion guessed there would be no patient negotiation with this beast.

She got her disc out, throwing a wash of divine Light at the creature. Armes’s holy force struck and seared the spider queen without slowing her. It let out a screech that might have been a voice, or might have been its fluid boiling in its joints.

Harathes met the monster, not a head-on charge that would have flattened him, but ramming it from the side with his shield, deflecting it slightly. Cyrene darted forward and got a solid strike in with her blade, shattering one of the queen’s forelimbs, but the answering spasm knocked her across the floor. Dion found herself facing into the thing’s plate-sized eyes, seeing herself and the Light she placed her faith in reflected there, multiplied and in miniature.

It reared up, scythe-long fangs cocked back to drive into her. Penthos flung his arms forward, but achieved only a feeble scattering of fire that did nothing but singe the monster’s hair.

There was a scream of fury and Harathes slammed his sword into the monster’s underside with all his strength. The fangs rammed down and struck his shield, knocking him flat to the ground and piercing through the steel.

Lief drove his spear into the spider’s bloated abdomen before falling back to Penthos’s side, and Cyrene was cutting at it as well, but the monster was so vast they seemed all pinpricks to it. Dion drew together her certainty of purpose—a battered and abused organ of her mind these days—and threw forth all her digust into a cutting sword of the Light that raked across those many eyes as though she were trying to blot out the sight of her own reflection.

The spider reared up a second time, one fang shattered to splinters already, and Harathes wedged his mauled shield under its belly and stabbed and stabbed past the rim, greenish-yellow ichor spattering him from every hole he punched in the creature’s shell. A wild swing from Cyrene cut the remaining fang in two and buried her blade deep in the thing’s body.

Abruptly some malign purpose was gone from the vast hulk, and Dion darted forward and dragged Harathes out from under its shadow before the monster collapsed.

In the silence that came after, Penthos gradually let his bluish shield fade, as the rank-smelling air from the queen’s chamber was evidently still replete with that goodness that sustained life. Harathes was staring about himself almost rebelliously, his ire fixed mostly on Enth.

“I see it didn’t help us.”

“He helped before,” Lief pointed out.

“He warned us about the ambush,” Cyrene added.

“Listen to the pair of you,” the warrior spat. “Or are we going to be terribly sorry now, that we killed these monsters? Is this creature going to be giving me its angry looks, because I defended us from the Dark? I suppose this is all our fault, is it? Are we going to tut and sigh and say they were only defending themselves?”

“No,” Enth said, unexpectedly enough that everyone jumped. His round black eyes gleamed in Armes’s Light as his attention skipped from one to another. “I told them. I told them you would do this if they gave you an excuse. They could have hidden. They could have listened to me. It was their decision, to attack us. To attack you. You. Us.” His hands twitched and flexed, and abruptly his whole face convulsed, an expression forcing its way into being from the very depths of his Dark heart. “They were stupid!” he got out through clenched fangs. “Stupid and blind and limited! And I tried to tell them! I said everything I could to show how murderous and merciless and terrible you—we—you are! But they thought they knew best. They had to challenge you. They dared encroach on the world of humanity. And that means death. I know that now. It always means death.”

Which was not entirely how Dion wanted to think of things, and she knew that there were surely gaps in the creature’s logic somewhere, but just then she could not muster the mental resources to think of them.

And, besides, Harathes was coming back with, “That’s right, and don’t you forget it,” and for a moment Dion found herself regarding him as she saw Enth, as an inhuman and repulsive specimen of some alien species.

“Let’s just move on,” she said quietly.

There was a light touch on her arm: Penthos, regarding her with recognizable human concern.

“I’m fine,” she said, with more force than she felt. “Let’s just move on. We’ve got a job to do. We didn’t come here to kill spiders.”

It was Enth who led on, from that point, with Penthos conjuring good air when necessary—less and less as they neared the far side of the caves. They passed many more spiders, but they were all of them dead, their subterranean home become their tomb. We got them all, Dion considered. We wiped out the whole nest of them. It should have been a deed of song and story, a great Darkness cleansed from the world. Right then she just felt empty. Not guilty, not sorry that the monsters were gone, but not triumphant, either. She felt as though the whole trek onward to Darvezian was something that she must endure, plodding ever on and on, until it was done. And then? And then at least, whatever else, it would be done. Time enough to think then what she would do with herself.

Sooner than she would have believed there was a faint grayish light ahead, and she realized that it must be the predawn, which came weakly even to the skies over Darvezian’s tower. Harathes let out a bark of triumph, and the mood of all the rest was instantly brighter—save for her and save for Enth, each of them locked in their own rigid worlds: priest and spider; spider and priest.

The rest tumbled out into the open air, leaving only Harathes at her side. Dion was bracing herself, as though when the sun touched her she might just burn up, all her doubts and sins flaring into instant white-hot fire when they were exposed.

“Now’s the time,” Harathes told her softly.

She looked at him without understanding. “What do you mean?”

“The monster, the spider-creature. This is it. It’s accomplished what we needed it for,” he hissed urgently. “You and me, we’re the ones who understand. We should get rid of it. It’s a liability.”

Still she stared at him dully.

“Dion, the monster has brought division into our very ranks. If we release it here, it will warn our enemies. If we keep it, then we’re nursing a scorpion—a spider—something poisonous. It’ll sting when we least expect it. Perhaps it’s been working for Darvezian all this time, as is its nature. Perhaps Darvezian can undo Penthos’s magics. We need to destroy it, quickly and surely.”

“So it can’t sleep with Cyrene again, you mean.” She hadn’t meant the words, but she was abominably tired and now they were said.

Harathes goggled at her, and his hurt look was a beat late in coming to his face, and another awkward moment dragged before he put in, “That’s not it. We need to be rid of the thing for, for many reasons, you’ve heard my—”

“You really are a . . .” She managed to bite down on what she had been about to say. A shit. He’s a shit. I never saw it before, but he really is. But he’s our shit, and a child of the Light. Which is ever so reassuring when I’m here trying to convince myself of the rightness of my cause. “We’re not killing it,” she told him. “It would be wrong. We have used it, and it has served us, despite its nature. And that’s an end to it.”

Harathes scowled at her. “There’ll be no better time, no other time than this,” he warned.

“No doubt.” She forced herself to push past him, stepping out under a dawn-colored sky.

Ahead of them, past a jagged rubble of barren rocks and crags, a tower jutted into the sky. Dark it was, and crowned with spikes, and its edges were spined like the back of a reptile. At its peak a greenish beacon burned, a rallying point for all that was vile and evil in the world. There it was, and they were within an easy hour’s walk of its dread portals. They had reached the domain of Darvezian, the end of their quest. They had followed the spider’s path, followed the words of the prophecy, and now all that remained was to confront the Dark Lord and end his reign.

Hooray for us, thought Dion, but inside she felt only empty.

10: Fear of a Dark Tower

LIEF HAD EXPECTED the clear ground before Darvezian’s tower to be a litter of tents, a great and unruly host of Ghants, wicked men, and monsters camped under their master’s eye, ready to go storm Cad Nereg and devour the free world at a moment’s notice. Instead, the place looked oddly abandoned. I mean, yes, he thought to himself, desolate, windswept, bleak, all these are good words, but where the pits is everyone?

There were a few huts at one end of the valley of the tower, a little village of Ghantishmen scratching out a living somehow. Of the anticipated Great Evil Horde there was nothing. Lief—on his own recognizance since Dion had sent him to scout—ghosted from shadow to shadow across the uneven rocky floor of the valley, closing on the tower that loomed so high above. Somewhere up there is Darvezian, he thought, and his mouth went dry. The Dark Lord, the actual Dark Lord himself. And yes, there had been other Dark Lords, a string of them back through history as various evil men discovered the true power of the Dark and rose to dominate the evil creatures of the world. But Darvezian was their own Dark Lord, Lief’s and the rest. Previous generations had, with great struggle and loss, cast down their tyrants. This one was for him and Dion, Cyrene and Harathes and Penthos. They had followed the twists of their quest; they had fulfilled the terms of their prophecy, and now here they were.

Lief was a cynic, a realist, the last to cheer on a hero, the first to bite a coin to see how little gold it contained. Even he, though, felt a thrill of destiny in him, looking up at that tower. Who would have thought we’d ever make it?

And yes, there was the little matter of actually having to confront and kill Darvezian himself, but Lief had assumed that first they would have to cut a swathe through a shambling mass of minions, and such a mass was conspicuous by its absence.

He skulked closer. The foot of the tower was as grand around as a nobleman’s country manor house, all of the same black stone, and every edge adorned with the sort of pointlessly elaborate spikes that made Lief wonder how many Ghantish masons were accidentally impaled during its construction. Of course, it was the Evil Tower of the Dark Lord. Perhaps random deaths had been the point.

There was a set of great doors, big enough for a dragon riding an elephant to process out of—too big, really, even for the size of the tower, suggesting that the ground floor must contain a great deal of empty space. They were, in fact, far too big for anyone of Lief’s acquaintance to even reach the handle, and instead some practical-minded evil carpenter had installed a man-sized door set into the main portal, and that stood open.

Lief’s fingers twitched, a thief’s eternal instincts kindling to life at seeing such a breach of security. Well, I suppose the Dark Lord probably doesn’t get many visitors, he considered. Even so . . . It would be terrible to find that some other thief had already got to the place and cleaned it out.

At that point he had to stop and forcibly remind himself that robbing the Dark Lord was not the point of the exercise. The former possessions of Ultimate Darkness were notoriously difficult to fence, or indeed to physically divest oneself of before turning into a toad or becoming irrevocably evil oneself. More than one previous Dark Lord had started out as an opportunistic adventurer coming into possession of some damned memento or other.

But he crept closer, trying to work up a proper head of nervous energy while all the time the great almost-empty valley stood silent around him.

Is everyone on holiday or something? Is it Evil Pilgrimage Week?

When someone came out of that smaller door, it was more a relief than a shock.

Lief saw a couple of Ghants: not armed and armored as warriors of the Dark Lord’s Dread Host, but just wearing stained and patched robes, and carrying . . . buckets, actually. Squint as he might, Lief could not particularly characterize them as evil buckets, although from the way that the Ghants held them at arm’s length they were probably evil-smelling. The two gray-skinned humanoids shuffled around the tower, and Lief shadowed them soundlessly, waiting to discover what nastiness was going on.

There was a garden there, he saw. It was a wretched thing, a long trough chipped out of the stone and filled with an ashy gray earth, in which thorny, twisted plants grew. Poisons, Lief wondered. Magic potion ingredients, maybe? Whatever grew there, the locals weren’t stinting on the fertilizer. The Ghantishmen slopped the contents of the buckets about without much energy, the reek of it enough to wrinkle Lief’s nose where he hid.

Well, nobody gets to be a sneak thief without knowing the smell of shit, he considered. Someone’s eating well in that tower. And he waited while the Ghants made several more trips, and tried to calculate just how many bowels were moving in the Dark Lord’s domain.

So is it just Ghants, or . . . ? Experience suggested that his nose was not sharp enough to tell the stools of Ghants from the excrement of men and, in all honesty, before now he would not have said it was a skill any adventuring hero might have need of.

When the Ghants finished their rounds—four trips, two buckets each, and no easy way to know how often they slopped out—Lief let himself creep closer to the door, still standing open.

What vile practices lie inside? he wondered. Is all that crap from prisoners, or a garrison . . . ? It would have to be a rather meager garrison for the size of the tower, but then perhaps most of the defenders were undead or something. A freedom from being caught short seemed to be one of the few advantages of being a Deathless Servant of the Dark.

Hidden, with a vantage point through the doorway, the mystery unraveled. He was looking into a huge space, too large to see how big from his narrow slice of it. He could spot a half-dozen Ghants there, and they were engaged in the villainous activity of cooking something.

Of course, you could still cook and be evil—Cyrene’s encounter with the innkeeper proved that—but this looked to be a relatively run-of-the-mill subsistence sort of cookery. There was a fire, and a big iron pot, and the stuff they were throwing in looked more like vegetables and some rather nasty sort of meat than eye of bat and wing of frog. Human meat, Lief speculated, but he wondered if he was just finding evil because he was looking for it. Even the servants of the Dark Lord needed to eat.

He had an odd moment, then, considering just how inconvenient this place must be to live in. Nothing much grew roundabouts, and that twisted, spiny patch was more likely an attempt at a vegetable patch than a place to cultivate horrors. Even the wood the Ghants were burning must be brought in specially. No wonder there were no great hordes at the Dark Lord’s very doorstep—they would have starved to death, or frozen in the nights, or just died of extreme bad backs and crooked necks trying to sleep on the hard ground. Of a necessity, the Dark Tower’s complement must be a small one.

Then another figure crossed past the Ghants, speaking sharply to them and cuffing one. Lief drew in his breath, confronting a proper evil at last. The man was rake-lean and stooped, but he wore dark robes embroidered with glimmering symbols: no mistaking a Doomsayer.

This is where the Doomsayers live. Or at least where they came back to and reported, when not out doing evil. Darvezian had his little elite of warriors and magicians, and here in this tower would be the greatest concentration of them in the world. Lief felt almost upbeat, discovering that: suddenly the whole business didn’t seem too easy and, despite all their tribulations so far, it had been leaning that way. At least now he had something to report.

* * *

“Swift and silent” was Cyrene’s plan, pretty much in its entirety. “We go in, kill the Doomsayers before they have a chance to react, cut our way to Darvezian, and take him on like we discussed.”

Lief leant in toward Enth. “You up to nobble another few of the Doomsayers? You’ve got a title to defend, remember?”

The man-spider looked at him with that depressingly familiar blankness, but then essayed a tentative expression. It was probably meant to be a smile, but the movement of the lips was off, and no definite impression was communicated.

“Am I permitted?” Enth turned his round black eyes from one to the next of them.

“What is it asking?” Dion frowned.

“There will be fighting,” the man-spider clarified precisely. “Am I permitted?”

“Penthos’s things on him, his restrictions,” Lief put in. “Good question, actually. It’s going to get a bit frantic in there, I’d guess. We don’t want him just standing about.”

Dion stepped until she was looking Enth right in the face, eye to glassy eye. Lief waited for the creature to glance away, but this time the spider met her head on. After what had happened in the tunnels there was a new tension in Enth, and hardly surprising. Perhaps the creature was desperate for a fight now, to take out its frustrations.

“You want to fight the minions of Darvezian, do you?” Dion asked him. Lief was glad that at least she hadn’t said “the other minions.”

“There will be fighting,” Enth repeated. “I can—I cannot—I do not know what I can fight, or when. Tell me.”

Dion glanced at Penthos. “But it knows, surely, with your strictures.”

The magician shrugged. “It finds out, when it attempts something outside the bounds I have set on it,” he said. “I . . . suppose that might make it somewhat hesitant about experimenting. Probably it isn’t very pleasant, to get bitten by the geas if it tries to overreach its boundaries. If you want Enth fighting alongside us, then it may be worth setting some fresh limits.”

“Does that mean you need to change the spell?”

“No, no, no.” Penthos waved a hand magnanimously. “We’ve built in that sort of flexibility, in demanding the creature follow orders. Simply give it permissions in the form of orders, and it will take those as its limits. Have I not wrought well?”

Dion sighed. “There’s nobody else I’d turn to if I needed to yank a monster of Darkness about by its chain,” she remarked dryly.

Penthos beamed, oblivious as always to subtext.

“Listen to me, creature,” Dion said to Enth, and then a shadow passed over her face and she grimaced. “Enth, listen to me.”

The man-spider waited for her to speak.

“We go to fight the Dark Lord,” Dion told him. “All we have done—entering your forest, all the traveling, the tunnels, the Spider’s Path, and the Tooth of the Great Mother, all this has been to put us in a position where we can defeat him. We have been guided by the most erudite scholars’ interpretations of prophecy, to bring us to this point.”

Enth nodded.

“I can’t expect you to understand why the Dark Lord needs casting down. I think you’d need some Light in your soul for that. You have no such Light. Probably you have no soul.” Dion shrugged. “It isn’t your doing, but that’s how things are. Darvezian has caused the deaths of thousands, the corruption of more. He threatens the freedom and virtue of the world, as his predecessors did before him. Just take it from me that he must be destroyed.”

Enth nodded.

“When we enter his tower, you may fight and kill any creature that is not one of us, and is not a prisoner of the Dark Lord. Certainly anything that seems our enemy.”

Enth nodded a third time. Dion peered into his almost-human face, into the void of his eyes, seeking true comprehension and seeing only her own shadowed reflection.

“It will have to do,” she said at last to the others. “I fear I am not thinking clearly, but if he is to fight, he will need his initiative.”

Enth was looking up at the pinnacle of the Dark Tower now, and his long-fingered strangler’s hands were clenching and unclenching slowly.

* * *

They went in as swiftly as Cyrene had said, although the “silently” was a matter of opinion. There were six Ghants in the kitchen now, one of them engaged in the very evil business of sweeping something up. There were also two different Doomsayers, a great bull of a man wearing a filthy arming jacket, presumably suitable for wearing under huge suits of rune-inscribed black armor, and a woman whose pallid skin glowed with greenish sigils. They were eating.

“Don’t like the look of her,” Lief had decided.

“Don’t look at her then,” had been Cyrene’s advice. “Get into place, all of you.”

First through the door was Cyrene’s best arrow, properly briefed on all details of the plan by its mistress. The woman with the illuminated skin took it through the eye at quite a respectable distance, flinging her plate at the high ceiling in a theatrical gesture before toppling backward. Even as the man looked up, the rest were through the door.

Harathes went for him without ceremony, brawn to brawn. The Doomsayer had a sword leaning beside him, and just enough time to snatch it up. Then the warrior’s shield struck him in the face and knocked him sideways. The black-metal rune-sword swiped wildly over Harathes’s head and, with a furious shoulder-barge, the warrior knocked the Doomsayer into the cauldron and the fire.

In the interim the others had poured in, Penthos’s hands spitting with fire and Dion with the disc of Armes bravely upraised. The Ghants fled across the room to cower in a pack against the wall. Harathes got his sword through the big Doomsayer even as the man was clawing his way out of the boiling mess of the cauldron, and chopped his head off with the next swing.

“What about them?” Cyrene had her bowstring drawn back, the arrow at one of the Ghants. The kitchen staff were cowering back, a few of them with knives upraised in threat, baring their teeth and hissing defiance.

Dion opened her mouth, and then the stooped old Doomsayer in the robe appeared in a doorway, mouth open and eyes wide in shock. Instantly his hands lit up with blue fire, even as Penthos was turning to meet him.

“Aa—!” the old man began, a challenge or a spell or just an exclamation. At that point Enth tackled him about the waist, slamming him to the floor, ribbons of arcane flame scattering everywhere. He had his hands about the Dark wizard’s throat instantly, finding their place with desperate need, and everyone heard the sharp snap as he clenched them into fists.

“Kill the Ghants,” Harathes snapped.

Cyrene hesitated, though her fingers shook on the bowstring.

“They’re things of Darkness and we can’t just tie them all up. They’ll bring down the rest of the tower on us, probably while we’re facing off Darvezian,” the warrior went on. “This is no time for philosophical niceties.”

“They’re serving staff,” Lief pointed out.

“Everything in here is evil,” Harathes stated flatly.

“Even the waiters?”

“What, you think only murderers and monsters can be evil? Darkness is Darkness.”

“Fuck your theology,” Lief stated flatly.

“Enough!” Dion hissed. “What happened to ‘swift and silent,’ for the Light’s sake? They’re Ghants. They’re things of the Dark. We can’t leave them to raise the alarm behind us.”

“No, listen.” Lief glanced from her to Cyrene, seeking support that was plainly not forthcoming.

The archer shook her head. “Lief, this is not the time—”

Then the yelling started because, while Lief looked away, Harathes had started laying into the servants. He had strolled over to them, and abruptly his sword was in motion, cleaving them down with brutal economy. One got under his swing to run for the door, and Cyrene tracked and shot him convulsively, a predator that cannot help following its instincts.

They were dead in moments, the Ghants. Broodily, Harathes cleaned the blood from his blade.

“We’re here for the Dark Lord, Lief. We can’t take chances.”

They waited: had that outburst of noise called down worse upon their heads? Apparently not. It had been over swiftly, and probably the Dark Tower of Darvezian was used to the odd bout of wailing and crying.

“You didn’t have to,” Lief muttered.

“Dark is Dark,” Harathes declared.

“I’m sorry, Lief, but the enemy’s servants are still our enemies,” Cyrene said, notably less pleased with herself but not backing down.

“There were Ghants at Cad Nereg, on our side,” the thief pointed out.

“And if this lot had joined them, this wouldn’t have happened to them,” Dion decided.

“Let’s go.” Cyrene was at the exit the old Doomsayer had appeared from. “There are stairs here. Onward and upward.”

* * *

Lief went ahead once more, padding on flannel feet up the steps, his way lit only by globes of reddish, angry light. He let his mind connect fully with his ears, an old thief’s trick—good thieves knew that you didn’t just hear, you had to properly listen. What his ears told him was that he was being followed.

He looked around, and found Enth almost peering over his shoulder.

“What are you doing?” he hissed out of the corner of his mouth, using his smallest ever voice.

“I want to see.”

Lief was impressed: the man-spider’s lips had barely moved. At least Enth understood stealth, which was more than the thief could say for most of his more human companions. “See what?”

“The Dark Lord.”

Lief was keeping his eyes on the curve of the stairs, watching for any shadows to fall through the red light. “He won’t just be sitting up on the second floor twiddling his Dark thumbs, Enth. He’ll be right up top, lording it over his Dark domain or whatever it is Darvezian actually does with his time. Can’t you wait until I give the general guided tour?”

“I want to see,” Enth repeated stubbornly.

Lief sighed. “Just keep quiet, fall back when I do, and don’t go running off.”

Enth nodded curtly, and the two of them crept on.

The red lamps kept up a constant murmuring hum that put him off, but he realized after what must have been a half-turn of the tower’s circumference that there were voices mingled in with it. At first it was just low talk, and in these surroundings he could easily picture an evil ritual, or a torturer whispering questions to a victim just before the screaming began. A half-dozen steps closer still, though, and what he heard was just talk, the back and forth of an amicable conversation.

He glanced at Enth, found no clues there, and crept on.

He had seen they were running out of steps, with a broader space beyond, and was just edging upward to get a look when he triggered the trap. It was a magical trap, and that was his excuse: no loose stone or tripwire or beam of light, or any other conventional trigger. He felt a sudden rush of cold air about him, and a phantasmal thing just floated up through the stone of the stairs, a glimmering skull and bones atrocity hung with the ghostly ropes of entrails, and with eyes swiveling independently in their hollow sockets. Lief practically swallowed his tongue, seeing that wheeling gaze pass about the stairway and then both translucent eyes come to a consensus and fix on him.

Silently the specter lifted an arm in accusation, the bony pointing fingertip almost close enough to brush his nose. The temperature plummeted still further, Lief’s breath gusting white from his mouth and a skin of frost forming on the stones around him.

Enth lunged for the thing wordlessly, his groping hands passing through its fickle substance. The specter reacted even so: those mad eyes span about again as though they were balls on a gambling wheel, and then they fixed the man-spider with their crazed stare.

With a stiff elegance, the spirit essayed a bow, and then sank back through the floor, leaving Lief sat on the stairs with his back to the wall, breathing heavily and trying to slow his heart back down.

He wanted to say a lot to Enth then, but any words would surely have escaped into the room beyond and warned whoever was up there. There was no suggestion that the man-spider understood what had just happened: probably he went through most of his forcibly human life not understanding things, and a visit from random undead fit into that pattern perfectly. Lief had a good idea, though. Nobody living in a place like this would go mad with pressure plates and wires and all the rest: fine for tombs and treasuries but hardly practical to have at home. The Doomsayers and their master had some thoughts for security, however. He guessed that they had set up a trap that they themselves need never worry about triggering. The spirit had been bound here ready to wreak its unliving vengeance against all comers, unless . . . well, unless they were already tainted by the Dark, Lief supposed. He felt almost flattered that the heinous apparition had considered him virtuous enough to take offense at. And then he thought about Enth, and felt rather less pleased with himself. You poor bastard. You’re one of them, whether you want to be or not. Mind you, Harathes is one of us, so you win some, you lose some.

He signaled that they would creep up a little farther, to see what was what. The whole business with the ghost had taken place in utter silence.

The stairs came out onto a curve-walled room that Lief guessed was basically a segment cut out of the tower’s roughly circular profile, and then truncated to fit around some central core. There were doors here—not just doorways but actual doors, although the carpentry involved looked shoddy—probably the original evil architect had not considered internal doors sufficiently villainous. There was some furniture here as well, Lief saw: rugs on the floor in various stages of moth-eatenness—and did that imply evil moths, or had they been shabby before they were brought here?—and some chests at a far wall that set his fingers twitching. He was forced to restrain his larcenous desires, though, because there was also a big table and a half-dozen chairs, some of which were occupied. There were two of them, both men, one squat and corpulent, the other broad-shouldered and powerful-looking, and they were playing for money. Lief knew the type instantly: they slapped their cards down fast, looked in each other’s eyes, and were constantly commenting on the flow of the game or abusing one another’s parentage. Aside from the motley of baleful amulets and rings both wore, and the fact that the tougher-looking customer of the two had glowing red eyes, they could have been any pair of card-sharps in any dive Lief had been to.

He had turned back to Enth to whisper something when he heard the first scream. It was a woman’s voice, and there was a man’s triumphant yell with it, and it came from just beyond one of the doors.

Of course there would be torture cells, Lief thought. He pointed hurriedly back down the stairs for Enth’s benefit, and then the two of them scurried back down as quickly and quietly as they could.

* * *

Dion listened carefully to Lief’s report, and then had him describe the phantom trap again in as much detail as possible, with Penthos listening in over her shoulder. They conferred briefly together, two professionals who had gained a good knowledge of each other’s capabilities, and then Dion led the way.

She had not truly thought that there would be prisoners to rescue. No doubt there were some luckless scouts from Cad Nereg, brought here for interrogation about the fortress’s strengths. The opportunity to relieve them from torment and release them was like a ray of sunshine in Dion’s increasingly murky world.

But she and her fellows would have to be perfect in their execution if they were to get the chance. If they got into a pitched battle with the two gambling Doomsayers then surely any prisoners would end up dead before they could be rescued.

She put Harathes as rearguard: as the least stealthy, he would have no chance of tipping the enemy off with an inopportune scrape of shield or rattle of armor. She and Penthos were in the lead, the rest strung out down the stairs in the middle.

Ahead, she tried to detect the undead lurker within the stones, but there was such an all-pervasive Dark aura to the whole place that her divine senses were useless. Thankfully Penthos’s Power Elemental cared nothing for Light and Dark. He put a hand to her shoulder and nodded, his finger jabbing at something invisible.

He flexed his shoulders and brought his hands up, ready to unleash his magic, and she took that one step farther.

The thing shot out of the wall considerably faster than Lief had described, no doubt keyed up by the Light that she brought with her. Even as its mouth hung open for screaming and the air crackled with ice crystals, Penthos lunged with both hands, encapsulating the apparition in a bubble of spinning threads and streamers of flame. Any ghostly wail of warning was caught by the magician’s power and held within the vibrating shell.

Dion brought the disc of Armes up and concentrated on the creature, finding the knot of evil that comprised it, distinct from the background emanations of everything around her. With brutal efficiency she focused her faith and power into a scalpel sharpness and severed all the bonds that held the spirit to the mortal world. It was easy work: those unnatural cords had been bowstring-tense, straining against the natural tendency of dead souls to be drawn to other less corporeal places. In an instant, the monstrous revenant was sucked away, off to its much-deserved sinner’s reward.

Through it all, nobody had made a sound. From ahead the murmur of idle conversation, the slap of cards, went on uninterrupted. Then another female scream shook the air and Dion turned to her companions and signaled the all clear.

Lief and Cyrene were up next. The thief slid past Dion to the top of the steps, paused briefly as he waited his moment, and then snuck soundlessly into the room above, sloping about the walls until he could get himself into position. Cyrene counted carefully, putting an arrow to the nock and slowly drawing her bowstring back, the weapon pointed almost at her feet.

What number she and Lief had agreed on, Dion did not know, but abruptly Cyrene skipped up three steps and into sight of the room, swinging the bow round. Dion heard the musical thrum as the arrow leapt from the string, and at the same time there were a couple of knocks and a gasp from above.

“Done,” Cyrene murmured, and they all crowded into the room.

One of the Doomsayers had an arrow in the back of the neck, just about where it met his skull. He was sitting up very straight, his head tilted at a quizzical angle, quite dead. His companion, no less dead, was slumped face down on the table, the cards awash with blood. Behind his chair stood Lief, like an overenthusiastic barber, cleaning his dagger blade with a grimace.

In moments they had pushed forward to the door of the torture cell, Lief to open it, Harathes to bound through it, Cyrene to back him up. Dion and Penthos were ready to deal with any supernatural threat, although Penthos claimed there was nothing much of a magical nature behind the door. Of course Penthos’s “nothing much” could be another man’s arcane arsenal.

Enth himself was standing by the table, looking at the two bodies as though trying to work out what had gone wrong with them and whether it could be fixed. He reached out a finger and prodded the arrow-struck man in the temple thoughtfully, turning the angle of the man’s head from quizzical to incredulous.

Dion shook herself. Time to worry about the man-spider later.

She nodded. Lief threw open the now-unlocked door, and Harathes barrelled in.

A male voice from inside yelled out, “Don’t you clowns have anything better—oh, fuck!” and then there was the sound of a shield and a skull coming into swift collision. Cyrene had her bowstring drawn back, but there was an awkward look on her face and she hadn’t loosed the arrow. Dion shouldered past her, disc upraised for ease of smiting, and took a look.

There were two people in there, a man and a woman, but even a first glance suggested that any torturing had been purely consensual. They were both stark naked and still semi-entwined on a bed, and Dion could not help noting the rapidly wilting credentials of the male party involved. Harathes had them at sword point, and the man was sporting the beginning of what promised to be a spectacular bruise across half his face.

Strewn about the floor were various articles of clothing, including a leather breastplate covered in what seemed to be stitched-together human faces, and a robe that swirled with dark mists. Doomsayers, then.

Stripped of their trappings, the pair of interrupted villains had little of evident evil about them. Harathes was making them keep their hands in view, and if either was a magician then any attempt at magic was likely to be brief. There was, as all could plainly see, nothing up their sleeves.

“No sign that anyone heard that ruckus,” Lief commented. “All right, what now?”

“Who the pits are you?” the woman Doomsayer got out.

“We are of the Light,” Dion told her sternly. “That’s all you need to know.”

“You’re mad. Darvezian will make your deaths last a thousand years!” her trysting companion added.

“And yours will be somewhat swifter, but we’ll all be just as dead at the end of it,” Cyrene pointed out, and drew back her string to the ear.

“Wait!” the man threw up his hands, and she shot him through the left one, pinning it artfully to the woodwork.

“There you go,” she told him as he writhed and choked. “Another notch for the bedpost.” Even as she was speaking she had a second arrow nocked. “How about you steer clear of anything that looks like magic?”

“Oh—Dark Lord’s Wrath!—it wasn’t magic! I don’t do magic! She does the magic!”

“Shut up, moron!” the woman spat, and then the edge of Harathes’s blade came to rest companionably under her chin and she followed her own advice.

“Get something out of them, at least,” Lief suggested. “They must know what’s waiting above us, if nothing else. You can tell if they’re lying, right?”

“The Light shall illuminate the truth,” Dion agreed. She fixed the two hapless Doomsayers with a steely glower. “You’ll answer what we ask, and truthfully, or you’ll end here.”

The woman tried a defiant look, but it was somewhat spoiled by Harathes inching his blade up, forcing her to stare at the ceiling or cut her own throat.

The male Doomsayer’s gaze was fixed on the steady point of Cyrene’s arrowhead. “Look, please. We were just—”

“Evidently,” Dion finished for him. “And just as evident, you’re servants of the Dark Lord. Why are his chiefest servants always human? Why not Ghants or specters? There is nothing more abominable to the Light than those who cast away its gifts to choose Darkness.”

“No, no, we’re not, we were never chiefest anything,” the Doomsayer told her hurriedly. “We’re very minor, not important, not really . . . I never wanted to be evil, it was just, things happened, and . . .”

Dion remembered the vacant sockets and gapes of his leather vest, and her lips thinned.

“I’ll talk,” he got out hurriedly, seeing that dangerous expression. “Please, I’ll tell you it all. Just, don’t kill me. Take me back for judgment, I’ll do whatever you want, just . . .” He could see that Cyrene’s arm was beginning to quiver, that soon she must loose or relax.

Dion exerted her faith again, fighting against the innate resistance of this place to circle his brow with a blazing golden band. It obviously pained him, but it would burn far fiercer if he tried to lie to her. “Tell us what lies above,” Dion commanded him.

“All right, all right! There are about half a dozen more spook traps,” he said, stammering over the words. “There was a guardian serpent, but someone forgot the password and we had to put it down. The armory has a whole load of locks and glyphs and things on the door but I don’t know how to get past them. I’m not important enough, please—seriously, there’s not much up there. The top levels, nobody goes there anyway.”

“Except Darvezian,” Dion prompted.

His eyes bugged. “You’re looking for . . .”

“Wait,” Cyrene broke in. “You’re saying Darvezian isn’t up the tower?”

“No, I wasn’t, I didn’t mean—Ah!” and the golden fires of truth seared a red weal across his forehead. “All right, yes! He’s not up there! Nobody’s up there!”

“Don’t tell us he’s not even here,” spat Lief disgustedly.

The Doomsayer stared at them helplessly. “Well, of course he’s here. He’s down on the bottom floor. That’s where his throne room is. You must have gone right past the door to it. Who would live at the top of a tower? Have you seen how many fucking stairs there are?”

Dion stared woodenly at him, aware that somewhere at the edge of her vision Lief was smirking uncontrollably.

“Oh, well, don’t we feel like fools now,” the thief snickered. “Terribly sorry to have bothered you. We’ll head back downstairs again, shall we? Let you get back to ploughing your furrow. Sorry about the mess. Oh, no, I forgot! You’re evil, and it’s an evil furrow! What an impasse!”

“Shut up, Lief,” snapped Dion, Cyrene, and Harathes all together, when it became evident that his gift for improvising was not going away any time soon.

“Well, seriously, though, what do we do with them, exactly?”

Dion sighed, looking at the two wretched Doomsayers. “You’re good with knots. Tie them—to the bed, to each other, whatever. Gag them.”

“Break their fingers, maybe,” Harathes suggested dourly.

Lief shook his head, and took a knife to the bedsheets, ripping them into strips and then doing a very professional job securing the two naked Doomsayers, leaving the man’s hand pinned to the bed by Cyrene’s arrow. He took his time and checked all of the knots. “Well, don’t know how long it’ll take to do what we came here for, but they’re here for the duration or until someone finds them. Let’s pop downstairs and finish this.”

Dion took a deep breath. “The Dark Lord.”

Lief shrugged. “We’ve made quite a dent in his hired help already. How many Doomsayers are there, anyway? We’ve finished off five here, and Enth got a couple before. Even if we . . . even if things don’t go to plan, that’s got to count for something, right?”

“Things will go to plan,” Dion stated, hearing the force of her own words ring hollow inside her head. “I will bless you all, when we’re down. What power the Light can muster in this place, I shall gift you with it. If you have any talismans or potions or other measures of last resort, now is the time to resort to them. I should . . . I should say something, I think.”

“Nothing long-winded,” Lief pointed out.

“But this is . . . we’ve worked so hard for this.”

There was a muffled rasp and a thumping noise from the prisoners. Dion rounded on them angrily, about to castigate them for their impiety. And stopped. They had been precastigated with extreme prejudice. Enth stood by them, a knife in his hand that gleamed wetly. The pair of Doomsayers were sagged together, heads lolling drunkenly, and both of them awash with red that slicked their skins and soaked into their bindings.

“What . . . ?” she whispered.

“What did . . . Why did you . . . ?” Lief got out, bug-eyed. “We didn’t need to . . .”

Enth looked at the knife in his hand, then back at them all. “It was permitted,” he said simply.

“You murdered them!” Harathes snapped, leaping to full righteousness from a standing start. “You filthy animal.” He tried to loom at Enth, waiting for the man-spider to cringe away, but Enth just stood there, staring past him as though he was the least relevant thing in the world. Instead, that glassy black gaze met Dion’s.

“They were of the Dark,” he said.

“You can’t even know what that means,” she told him, skin crawling to hear him say the words.

“I know what it means. It means they can be killed,” Enth stated flatly. “My people are of the Dark. They can be killed by Men. The Ghants are of the Dark. They can be killed by Men. Perhaps Friend Lief is sad they are killed, but it is too difficult not to kill them: they are killed. These were servants of the Dark Lord. They are to die.”

“We were going to spare them, because they helped us,” Dion said weakly.

“Helped you?” Enth echoed vacantly.

“They told us where Darvezian was.”

“And if the Ghants had told you, they would have saved themselves?” There was a tremor building up in the creature. “No,” it said. “No. It is because these were Men. Dark Men. Evil Men. But Men. So you save them.”

“Enth, we tried, with the spiders. You tried,” Lief said softly.

A full shudder went through the man-spider, a convulsion that drove the knife into the body of the dead man by sheer muscle reflex. “I tried,” Enth hissed. “I tried and I couldn’t save them. From you. I couldn’t save them from you. Dark, Light, I don’t know these things, but they were not servants of your Darvezian. These, these were, and why, why should they live, when my people, when my people are dead, are dead, all dead.”

“Enth, please just put the knife down,” Lief whispered, because the man-spider’s hand was making a mince of the dead man’s shoulder and chest, spasmodically carving and cutting.

Enth’s fingers twitched wide, the blade dropping to the floor, and then he had whirled and lashed out at the wall, beating his fists against the black stones, shattering one of the red lamps. A sound came out of him: something utterly inhuman; something utterly comprehensible, frustration and rage and grief.

Harathes actually stepped forward, sword directed at that bowed back, but Cyrene shoved him to one side and was beside Enth in the next moment, her bow falling to the bloodied bed, her hands on his shoulders. Dion tensed, waiting for the creature to batter itself against Penthos’s strictures, to get its hands about her throat, to have to be put down. But it just slumped there, as though that one strike had somehow thrown its anger into the substance of the tower, and it had nothing left.

“I’m sorry,” Cyrene was murmuring. “Enth, I’m sorry. I really am.” Dion was shocked at Cyrene wanting to comfort the thing, more so that it apparently wanted comforting.

“Why do I feel this?” the man-spider asked. “Why would anyone want to feel this . . . I don’t even have words for what this is.”

“Guilt, remorse, empathy,” Lief listed lazily. “You’re already more human than Harathes.”

“Stop . . .” The warrior gritted his teeth. “Stop taking its side.”

“But we’re all on the side of the Light, didn’t you know?” Lief smiled sweetly at him. “No matter what we do.”

“Enough.” Dion glanced about for the last member of their company, finding the magician with his back turned, looking hawkishly at the stairs.

“You’re right, Penthos,” she decided. “Recriminations later. Let’s finish this.”

“Hmm, what?” The magician glanced at her, frowning. “Apologies, I was miles away. What’s happened?” His eyes took in the dead prisoners without finding anything amiss.

They trooped back down the stairs in grim silence. If Enth was leaving a trail of bloody footprints, the black stone and red lighting contrived to conceal it. Back in the makeshift kitchen there was a moment when everyone looked over the dead Doomsayers, the dead Ghants, and probably there was some sort of reassessment going on, in some heads at least. Dion knew that inside hers there was a great dammed weight of introspection that she was holding back. She had felt soiled from the moment that they had taken up Enth as a traveling companion, but that had been simple: to travel with a thing of Darkness was a bad thing—hardly the sort of complex moral quandary that would go into a seminary exam. The sullied feelings she was penning up now were not because she had used Enth as a tool. She did not like what she had seen, through Enth’s eyes. The moral certainty of the Light’s crusading methods was an easy thing to vouch for, when you only saw it from the side that held the sword and the disc.

There were several other doors off the kitchen, and Lief examined each, making full use of the fact that they had all been put in far more recently than the building of the tower, and that none of them fit their stone frames overly well.

“Storeroom,” he murmured, “weapons rack, some sort of tool cupboard. Oh . . .” He backed up rapidly from one door, no grander than the others. “Oh, that’s the one.”

“You’re sure?” Harathes demanded.

Lief gave him a look. “Well, I’m no expert, but it’s a big old room, most of the rest of the bottom floor, and it’s pretty much empty, but there’s the biggest seat I ever saw at the far end with a robed bloke sitting on it. Maybe they just went overboard with the dunnies here, but somehow I don’t think it’s that sort of throne.”

“Well, then,” Dion stated, drawing their attention. “You know the prophecy. Bring out the Tooth.”

For a horrible moment she could not remember who had the thing, and would not have been remotely surprised if the vital artifact foretold in omens had been left in an inn room somewhere. Then Cyrene drew it out, the curved, wicked-looking fang of Enth’s bloated mother.

“Let me have it,” Harathes demanded.

“No,” Dion said. “We will not defeat the Dark Lord by challenging him to single combat. His powers would destroy you, or any of us. Not Penthos nor I could stand against the full strength of Darvezian.” Or why would we go through this remarkable charade? “We will hold his attention, though. We will draw him into a fight, and we will stay alive, and hold him off—even keep him talking—just long enough for Lief.”

“Me?” The thief flinched. “You’re . . . ?”

“You are no great hero, Lief,” Dion told him kindly, “and you are no virtuous paragon of the Light. But you are a subtle and soft-footed rogue, and in a fight you’re best placed at the enemy’s back. So there you will go, while Darvezian focuses on us. Go and be the man who strikes down the Dark Lord. Take your place in history.”

Lief’s eyes were wide as moons. “You’d . . . trust me with this?”

And Dion smiled fondly. “None better.”

“This is a travesty,” Harathes muttered, but nobody dignified him with an answer.

“All right, okay,” Lief said, visibly mustering his courage. “In that case the main obstacle is furniture, because I wasn’t exaggerating, that chair is huge. I need him out of it so I can get a good stab in.”

“I would hope that even the Dark Lord would dignify our presence by standing up,” Dion shrugged. “You hang back, Lief. Everyone else?” Her gaze took in Harathes, Cyrene, Penthos, even Enth. “I bless you all. I give you the strength of the Light, the fortitude of Armes.” Her gestures pointedly excluded Enth—because he would sully her religion, or because her religion would burn him? She made no attempt to answer the question. “Let’s go.”

She strode forth and kicked open the door, wondering mid-move whether it was locked. Thankfully it was not, and the portal slammed back with all the thunderous booming she could have wished, the sound reverberating across the vast, echoing throne room of the Dark Lord.

The Dark Throne was as great a symbol of evil as whoever sat in it, and also the main reason the ceilings were so high. It rose as tall as four men on each others’ shoulders, a splay of stone spines and barbs rising to a pair of ridged horns that curved together until, high in the upper shadows, they came within a thumb’s breadth of touching. The scale of the seat was such that it would have borne a giant easily enough. The figure sitting there was dwarfed by it. Darvezian had been a man once, after all, before he had become the master of the Dark.

His black robe was made of shadow more than cloth, depthless, textureless. Over it were odd fragments of armor, silver chased with more black: a single shoulder guard, gauntlets, a gorget. Every piece of metal was wrought into the shape of interlocking screaming faces, and they shimmered and trembled, impossibly pale no matter how red the light was.

There was a griffin skull atop the Dark Lord’s head as a kind of helm, the hooked beak curving down over his brow, the eye sockets set with rubies that glimmered with their own malevolent fire. They had names, those gems, and sagas of their own that listed the atrocities they had spurred their many owners on to. Beneath that beak the figure’s hood contained two burning orbs of scarlet fire.

It was all, Dion considered, good theater. No doubt it kept the Doomsayers and the Ghants in line. He was just a man, she reminded herself. She felt fear, of course, but she had long ago learned to be its master, not its servant.

“Darvezian!” and she was striding across the great vacant floor toward that throne.

“Who calls my name?” came a voice from the cowl. It was a surprisingly human voice, for all the pomp and dread grandeur, deep, rich, and deceptively pleasant. It was the sort of voice that would order men to their deaths and expect them to go willingly. It was, she guessed, the last thing remaining of the man Darvezian had been.

“All the world calls it,” Dion declared. “All your many victims cry it out, and demand justice!” Cyrene had an arrow to the string; Harathes had his shield up on her other side. Penthos was a little behind her, his hands dancing with fire that he was visibly restraining. Enth . . . Enth was there. He was there, and somewhere behind her. Should I have had the creature killed? Is this what will doom the world, my inadequate resolve; the unwillingness of some of my friends to squash a spider? Too late now to wonder.

“I am Dion of the Light!” she cried, purging her uncertainty through the fires of shouting at someone as loud as she could. “Stand forth and face me, monster, and pay the price for all you’ve done.”

“What took you?” Darvezian asked idly. “I’ve been waiting here since all that racket in the kitchen. Did you take the scenic route?”

Dion was left wordless, finding herself not apparently meeting the rigorous standards a Dark Lord expected in his enemies.

Unexpectedly, it was Harathes who came to her aid. “We have disposed of your servants, Dark One. Eight of your Doomsayers lie dead, that might have aided you.”

“Consider me inconvenienced,” Darvezian growled, with a great shrugging sigh—trackable in the dark only because of that single pauldron. He stood abruptly, no obvious human motion, just a serpent-smooth transition. “Well, then, Champions of the Light, I salute you for getting this far, but you have no idea of my power and my provenance. I will have to make you die in agony over a long period of time now, but don’t take it personally. You really have done very well indeed.”

And he laughed, a great, full peal of genuine amusement, and stepped down from the throne with his hands held out to his sides. Dion thrust the disc of Armes forward, calling up her strongest wards, and Penthos’s hands blazed bright and fierce.

And Lief leapt up, actually getting a foot on the seat of the Dark Throne and kicking off from it to give his blow more force, and buried the Tooth of the Mother in the small of Darvezian’s back.

11: Putting out the Lights

“HAVE IT, YOU TURD!” the thief yelled as he struck. It was, Cyrene considered, a battle cry unlikely to make the sagas. The bravado of the shout was also belied by the fact that Lief got as far away from Darvezian as possible the moment after, leaving the fang embedded in the Dark Lord’s back.

Darvezian dropped to his knees with a gurgling choke, and the seething silvery power that had wreathed his fingers a moment before was abruptly dissipating into the gloomy air.

Cyrene loosed, sending her shaft thudding into the Dark Lord’s shadowy chest, rocking him back and eliciting a hollow gasp.

“What have you done?” Darvezian choked. “What is this sorcery? My wards, my protections—! How have you done this to me?” He clutched at his throat, choking and gurgling horribly.

“This fate you brought down on yourself . . . ,” Dion started, but uncertainly, because the character of the Dark Lord’s garglings was changing even as she spoke. From rasping and gasping, Darvezian veered inexorably into laughter. In context, it was the least pleasant and welcome sound Cyrene had ever heard.

“What’s this?” the Dark Lord cried, springing to his feet nimbly. “Someone’s done their homework! Is this really . . . ?” Ignoring them, he reached back and, after some awkward twisting and fumbling, yanked the spider fang from his back with a ripping sound. “Don’t tell me . . . It is!” He brandished the gory memento aloft. “Well done, you, look what you brought me. An actual tooth from a spider matron! I can’t believe it, how did you ever get this? I thought this would keep your lot on their toes for another two decades at least. What tribulations you must have gone through.” He shook his shrouded head in a kind of wonder. “I’d ask you to tell me all about it, but I suspect that it’s probably not that interesting. Better preserve the mystique, say I.”

“You . . .” Harathes was the only one of them who could speak. “You fiend! You wanted us to bring you the tooth? You’ve . . . it’s part of your evil schemes . . . ?”

“What, this?” Darvezian cocked his head at the fang. “Nasty-looking thing, isn’t it,” and he threw it casually over his shoulder. “You’ve no idea how hard it is to put together a properly foreboding prophecy—and believe me, I’ve been doing it for a while! No, don’t worry, you’ve not fulfilled my evil scheme by bringing me a piece of a spider. Why would I want that? You’ve fulfilled it mostly by just storming my tower. But you have to have a prophecy, don’t you? To keep you hero-types on your toes. And it gets so dull, otherwise. Next time I’ll have to set some really challenging conditions. I honestly thought the whole spider business would keep people busy longer.”

“Enough!” and Harathes launched himself at the dark figure, and a heartbeat later they were all in motion. Lief struck from behind again, with just a regular blade, and Cyrene sent an arrow right between those glowing red eyes. Dion ran forward, calling on the Light, and Penthos’s fingers spat arcing darts of fire.

And perhaps the fire singed Darvezian’s dark robes slightly, but the rest did nothing. The arrow vanished tracelessly into his hood. Lief’s blade snapped, and Harathes’s sword rebounded, each feat of magic accomplished with but a word from the Dark Lord. Dion practically thrust her disc of Armes into that unseen face, the symbol blazing like daylight. Darvezian took it off her.

She stumbled back from him, aghast. They were all aghast, right then. Even as powerful as he was, the Dark Lord should have suffered something from the power that was his nemesis. Instead, he turned the disc over in his gauntleted hands as the golden fire died on it.

“Trinkets,” he said, and cast the disc ringing at Dion’s feet. “Now, have I established my credentials? Yes, I am the Dark Lord. No, you cannot harm me. Yes, I will tell you my evil plan. No, you will not live to tell anyone else. But I will tell you, you see. It’s the highlight of my life, each time we get to this point. I want to see your faces, when I let you in on the joke. I get surprisingly few laughs, in my line of work.”

“Joke?” Dion demanded, but Cyrene was already butting in.

“What do you mean, ‘each time’?”

“Each time some pack of would-be heroes comes to defeat the Dark Lord, of course. I’d thought that was obvious,” Darvezian told her conversationally. “Do you not study your own histories anymore? You should—I’m in them. Don’t you recall Sargos the Light-Herald when he took down the Dark Lord Morticleer? Or, wait, what about the Three Companions and their epic defeat of Dreadnoth the Unspeakable? Or—”

“But that wasn’t you, it was . . . there were other Dark Lords,” Dion said weakly.

“It’s the throne,” Lief put in. “The throne’s the Dark Lord. Or the robe, or the hat, or . . . something.”

“No, no, it’s me,” Darvezian corrected him. “It was always me. I was the first Dark Lord. I was all the Dark Lords. And in between, I’ve been most of the heroes of the Light, as well. When Sargos came to defeat me, it was I who walked out of here in his shape. And—oh!—such a shame that only one of the Three Companions survived that grand battle, hm? So many different shapes and faces. And I suppose I need to decide which of you lot will return the triumphant, yet grieving, hero. Not the weasel thief, not the women, and being a magician would be too much like the regular job, don’t you think? And . . .” The red orbs fixed on Enth briefly. “Well, not that. Nobody’d mistake that for a hero of the Light. So congratulations, son,” he concluded to Harathes, “you get to be the hero. Or I do, anyway, but your face goes on the statues. Preferably not with the expression that’s on it now, of course. I’ll try to be more dignified.”

“You,” Dion hissed. “You could never pass for one of the Light. They would scent the reek of the Dark on you from a hundred miles away.”

“Oh, really?” Darvezian steepled his metal-sheathed fingers. “And you’re such an expert, are you? Then tell me, oh, Champion of the Light, can you see the Dark in me?”

Cyrene watched as Dion frowned furiously at the Dark Lord, seeing the priestess go ashen. “I . . . there’s nothing. Dark, Light, nothing at all.”

“I was a man once,” Darvezian said contemplatively, “a long, long time ago. But I have become a different order of being. Dark, Light, I have wormed my way through both sides of this world I have helped shape. I have been all your worst nightmares and terrorized the world; I have been your most glorious heroes, and saved it once again. History is a book of my victims, and a litany of my praise.”

“But . . . why?” Lief got out, his voice shaking. “Why all of that? Why would you do that to people?”

Cyrene expected some mocking retort, but apparently Darvezian took that part of his work seriously.

“People?” he spat, putting more than a lifetime’s contempt into the word. “People? What do I do to people, that they’ve not brought on themselves? That was my mistake at the start, trying to help people. And you know what, they don’t want to be helped. They deserve it all, everything the Dark inflicts upon them, every harsh judgment of the Light. People? Don’t make me laugh. Helping people is like beating your head against a wall, and in the end, when you live forever and you’re sick of the same mistakes over and over and over; in the end the only thing left is just to amuse yourself at their expense. Because you can’t make things better, and frankly, no matter how much evil you do, you’re not making things much worse, either.”

“That’s not true!” Dion challenged him. “The Church of Light is devoted to helping people.”

“Oh, spoken with the wisdom of, what, four decades? I am suitably chastened, I who was old before your church even began!” Darvezian advanced on her, but she held her ground, reclaimed disc clutched to her breast, and the others clustered behind her for what little moral support they could provide.

“I know,” the Dark Lord whispered, and a gauntleted hand rose up to rest on hers, closing about her holy symbol. “You were brought up proper, a good little girl. You were taught about the Light and the Dark, and told how everything was. And before I destroy you utterly, and your dreams, and your friends, I’m going to correct you on a number of interesting doctrinal points that will break your spirit and your faith, and amuse me just enough to make saying the words worth the breath it takes to speak them. But right now you’re burning with self-righteousness, because you know you’re right, and because you’ve lived your whole life only seeing the good in people, and ignoring all the bad—yes, even among your fellow priests—because you knew they were touched by the Light, and therefore they had to be Good. Good by default, no matter what they did.”

“You’re wrong,” Dion said quite calmly. “Destroy me as you may, you will never break my faith. I believe in Armes, who brought the Light into the world, and saved us. I believe in his church, who strive to defend us from the Dark. And if we do not destroy you, others will.”

“Such conviction,” Darvezian murmured. “And to think, I used to sound like that. I’ve been so many people, heroes and villains, generation on generation, but at the start I was just like you. Oh, more intelligent, certainly—vastly so, the most gifted magician and philosopher who ever lived, I modestly add—but I was an idealist first, before I became anything else.”

“Well, then.” Dion was trembling slightly. “If you’re going to destroy us anyway, why not show us your true face, your first face. You were a man once, you say? Then show us that man. Show us the truth of the Dark Lord.”

And Cyrene could not but admire the woman, because even at this remove she was still striving to defeat the evil. Would Darvezian’s mortal face bring any of his actual mortality with it? Surely not, and yet Dion was still trying.

But that request appeared to be something that Darvezian had been angling for. “Right question!” he crowed. “Oh, I love it, I love it when they ask that. Yes, O faithful priestess, I shall show you my face. Yes, it shall be my pleasure, and one I indulge only once a generation or so.” He spun away from her and stalked a few paces, spinning on his heel to spread his arms wide. “You have come all this way, after all. You have earned the right to look upon your enemy, and despair.”

“Show me then,” Dion snapped. “But be warned: I don’t despair easily.” Her voice was a ragged ruin as she said it, but there was still a core to her that would not break.

Darvezian sighed, and put his hands up to his cowl, flexing his fingers like a conjurer. With a great flourish he cast his hood back, and with it went all the other mummery: the robe, the gleaming armor, the griffin skull with its gemmed eye sockets. And what was left was a man.

He was a handsome, square-jawed man with a warrior’s strong frame, robed but with a sword at his side. His hair was golden, and his eyes were a deep ocean blue, both of which details were usually missing from the statues Cyrene was used to seeing. He extended his hands, palms down like a priest giving a blessing, and grinned at their expressions.

“Well?” he asked them. “Come on, then, someone say something. You’ve got what you wanted. Why the long faces?”

Dion made a spitting, stuttering sound. Her eyes were bulging and her face was going red, and Cyrene wondered if she would drop dead from apoplexy there and then, and deny the Dark Lord the fullness of his jest. “You . . . ,” she got out, sounding as though her own tongue was trying to choke her. “You . . . How dare you malign his holy form! Vile though you are, how dare you go so far into blasphemy as to don his shape.”

Darvezian burlesqued a hurt expression. “But dear priestess, O Faithful of Faithfuls, this is my shape. It was mine long before they started making the statues, although I will say, they do me very well, even after all this time. Between you and me, I had them do my nose a bit smaller, when they did the first ones, but we all have our little vanities, don’t we?”

Dion’s face twisted, and she let out a screech of rage. “Tell him! Someone, tell him to, tell him to . . .”

“Master magician, will you vouch for me?” the Dark Lord asked Penthos earnestly. “Surely you can see there is no illusion clinging to me, that what you see is no more than what you asked for: the truth.”

Penthos coughed awkwardly, and Dion rounded on him.

“What?”

“He, it’s just as he says,” the magician reported hollowly. “There is no trace of obfuscation about him. He’s . . .”

“Armes,” Cyrene finished. She felt as though she were watching some great natural disaster, a landslide or earthquake, vast and slow and infinitely destructive, unfolding out within Dion’s mind.

“That’s nonsense,” Harathes stated flatly. “I look more like Armes than he does.” It was a wretched sop for Dion, patently untrue, and she cast it off.

“Take what form you may. You cannot be Armes.”

“Oh, the faith!” Darvezian—or whoever it was that spoke to them—gasped, a hand to his chest as though wounded. “But all shall be explained. I insist upon it. I want you to know, before you die, what you have been living. I’ll give you a clue: it’s a lie. A big lie. A lie told for the best reasons, at first. But a lie, nonetheless.”

Cyrene’s arrow leapt from the string and struck him in the chest, but bounded from the robes as though they were stone. The Dark Lord blinked, momentarily put out, and then grinned. “Fast, very fast. Fast and futile, alas. Of course you had to see if I had inexplicably bared my vulnerable spot at you.” He scooped the arrow from the floor and held it up. A word came from his lips, like the words he had spoken to repel their earlier attacks. Once spoken, Cyrene could not recall it, nor could she ever have said it, but she knew its meaning: it meant arrow, in some quintessential way that the mere word “arrow” did not. Then he looked at Cyrene and spoke another word, and a great invisible fist smashed her to the ground, hard enough to knock out two teeth and send her vision out of focus for a moment. The terrifying thing was not the attack, but the word. The word had been her, the essential nature of her in a single utterance.

“It’s all right,” Darvezian assured them as though nothing had happened, turning the shaft this way and that. “I don’t have a vulnerable spot. I don’t have a weakness. I am the master of all things. You can’t hurt me—why are you snickering, rogue?” He cocked an eyebrow at Lief.

The thief swallowed, and then squared his shoulders and faced Darvezian full on, an act of more courage than Cyrene would have credited him with. “I thought you looked like the sort of person who didn’t have any vulnerables,” he got out through clenched teeth.

“Hah!” Darvezian grinned, and then a single syllable had Lief rolling over and over, cursing and clutching at ribs that had just been cracked.

Cyrene struggled to her knees, and then a hand found her arm and helped her up. She turned to see Enth, whose face was almost refreshing in its lack of emotion. Of all of them, whatever revelation was about to come would not touch him. Why should he care about the faith that despised him on sight?

Darvezian looked about brightly, grinning. “So tell me,” he addressed them, “who was paying attention in theology class? Who can tell me the story of Armes—my story? You, O faithful one?”

“I will not give you the satisfaction of mocking my faith,” Dion growled.

“I think you mean my faith. How about you, Gaptooth the Archer? No? Or the magician? Or . . . or your thing. Is that . . . ? It’s something of the Dark . . .” He squinted. “Is that a spider in there? You bizarre people.”

Enth just stared at him mulishly, and then helped Lief to his feet as well.

“Armes looked upon the world and saw it riven with strife.” The voice was Harathes’s, reciting what was practically a child’s text. “He found the sacred mountain and ascended past the clouds, to where he found knowledge of Light and Dark. And Armes came down from the mountain and gave the gift of Light to Men, so that they would always know the Darkness. And you’re not him.”

“And it wasn’t a mountain, of course, but you tell people a metaphor and a generation later everyone thinks you were speaking literally,” the Dark Lord moaned. “You, you magician-type, you’d probably understand some of this, so forgive me, I’ll have to put it in baby-language for the rest.” He sighed. “I was a magician—the greatest of them all. And principled, as I said. I did indeed see that the world was ‘riven with strife,’ and I thought that a proper application of magic should heal all ills. You understand that, yes?”

Penthos was nodding, stroking his beard.

“But from the perspective of a mere human, the problem was too complex. I could not perceive the world in the right way. And so I had to step beyond it. I found a way to rise above it all. Not demon-worlds or elemental planes or cloud castles or any of that nonsense, but . . .” A frustrated expression marred the strong-jawed perfection of Armes’s familiar face. “Look, think of the whole world as just a map, a flat, flat map. All the people on it are just dots on the map. They can’t see beyond what’s immediately around them. Any line on the flat is an insuperable boundary to them. Imagine how life is to those flat little dots of people. Then imagine if you could break from that map, so that you could stand over it and look down. That was my mountain. I turned myself toward a direction nobody had ever thought about before, and walked until I could look back and see the whole of reality in one go. All the world and everything in it, its true nature and being, all laid out for me like an anatomist’s diagrams. Or . . . no?” He plainly did not see the comprehension he was hoping for in their faces. “Come on, this is the clever part. I want you all to see just how damn clever I was back then.”

Penthos spoke up. “You’re . . . talking about dimensions,” the magician said thoughtfully.

“Yes! The man in a dress wins a prize!” Armes pounced happily. “Just as, with more dimensions than the map, we can view it, understand it as a whole, amend it and fold it as we please, so I could stand and view the world as if it were that map. I gained complete knowledge of the world. I learned the secret names of all things—all laid out for me. And I brought that knowledge back to the world, to help people. As the lump in the armor recites, I brought Light into the world.”

Dion’s face was as stone.

“And Dark, of course,” their antagonist added, offhand. “Light and Dark, the knowledge of them both.”

“Why?” Dion whispered.

“What’s Light without Dark?” Armes shrugged. “But seriously, the world was in a mess. People fought each other, enslaved each other, stole, raped, and lied to each other. And I thought to myself: what’s the real problem here? It’s that people need help to tell right from wrong. Plainly they do, or else everything wouldn’t have been so fucked up, am I right? And so I came back to the world, from my ‘mountain,’ and I made them all creatures of the Light. And I made most of the rest, all the subhumans and monsters, creatures of the Dark. And I set out some doctrine for how the Light should live. And I gave them the Dark to go work out their frustrations on. It should have worked.” And for a moment the mirth dropped off Armes’s face like shed skin. “It should have worked. I’d thought it all through. I was going to save the world. I gave you brutal apes everything you needed for paradise. And you wasted it, you stupid, ignorant barbarians.”

“You set up a system of ‘us’ and ‘them’ and you wonder why it didn’t make people nice?” demanded Lief, wheezing a bit around his injured ribs.

“It should have worked!” Armes snapped at him. “But people just went on doing things to each other. Some of them even went over to the Dark, because there was power there to be had, power to balance the Light. Nobody did what I wanted them to do. The whole thing, all that work, it was a waste of my time. And there I was, immortal, powerful beyond the dreams of an archmage, and sick of you mewling, backstabbing, ungrateful maggots. And bored. After the first hundred years you can’t imagine how bored. And when did the first Dark Lord show his face? Yes, you at the back in the mail!”

“About . . . a hundred years after Armes brought the Light,” muttered Harathes sourly.

“First prize,” the man-god applauded. “You’re helpful. I’ll enjoy wearing your face. I bet you get all the girls, too.”

Harathes took that badly, and said nothing.

“Even when I was the Dark Lord, that first time,” Armes went on, “I thought it would help. I still wanted to help, you see. A real enemy, to unite the forces of the Light: something to make people put aside their differences and really appreciate what they had. And when the first real hero came, to the tower I had then—not this one, it was a smaller one, and I hadn’t had the throne done—I let him think he’d killed me, and I traveled back with him, sightless as a ghost, to see the brave new world my experiments with evil had built. And it was just the same. Nothing had changed. And in all this time, nothing ever has. There is no hope for humanity, or anyone or anything. There’s just me, forever and forever. I knew then that I might as well just amuse myself. Dark, Light, Light, Dark, over and over.” He shook his head, like a man contemplating the follies of children. “But you know what, you hero types, you do believe. You go through life doing terrible, terrible things to each other, and to everything else, but you somehow still believe that you’re right. You come here full of the joys of the Light, practically singing with self-righteous fervor. And then you meet me, and I tell you all of this, and I hear your little hearts break. When you find out you’re not right, and you’re not chosen, that the prophecies are just me indulging myself, and that there’s nothing but me that has meaning in the world, forever and forever. So let me hear it. Let me hear the sad little sound of your hearts breaking. And then we can end this.”

There was a long silence after he finished speaking. Everyone was looking at Dion, and she was looking nowhere at all, still clutching the little round piece of metal to her, though the Light had long faded from it.

Then Enth said, “I want to kill him.”

“Join the queue,” Lief muttered.

“You?” Harathes looked from Armes to Enth and apparently found the latter a target he could safely strike against. “This must be music to your ears.”

“I want to kill him,” Enth repeated. His knuckly fists were clenched.

“How touching. Does it do any other tricks?” Armes asked, approaching Enth and staring into the black orbs of his eyes. “Why even bring this thing? Even had I been no more than Darvezian the Dark Lord, it would have been mine for a word. Of course, you weren’t to know who I really was, and that everything is mine for a word.” He examined Enth’s face, then grimaced. “It’s disgusting, really. You’ve surpassed nature in making something even nastier out of a spider. And does the little monster want to kill poor old Armes?” In a grotesque stage whisper, with an eye for Dion’s reaction, he confided to Enth, “It’s all right, I’m not really of the Light. Light and Dark are just things I made up, back when I was trying to help. Does that set your little arachnid brainstem at rest?”

Enth was shaking with a captive rage Cyrene could entirely sympathize with. “My Mother was hurt,” he hissed out. “My people were slaughtered. I was taken from my home. I was remade. All for your prophecy. All for your Light and Dark. And it was a joke. And it was because you were bored.”

“And I never did like spiders much,” Armes added carelessly, peeling back Enth’s lips to look at his teeth.

The man-spider shook him off furiously, and Cyrene thought he must surely go for Armes’s throat, but he just stood there, radiating frustrated anger. “Everything I have seen of Men has made me want to hate them. But it is you. It is you I can hate. For making me part of your prophecy.”

Armes mummed looking wounded. “But you have to have a prophecy, or nobody takes you seriously as a Dark Lord. You have to be great and terrible and all-powerful, save for some ludicrous set of conditions that—alas!—strips you of your invulnerability and lets some hero in to polish you off. How else to balance the overwhelming threat with the possibility of defeat?” And his focus was swinging back to Dion again, sending him stalking across the floor to her. “And I’ll bet a hundred learned disciples of the church spent decades mulling over all those veiled references, before they came up with the ‘right’ answer. And I’ll let you into another secret, there wasn’t one. I wouldn’t really have cared. Some other interpretation would have been just as good. What a shame, though, all that earnest scholarship in vain. Just like the Light and the church turned out to be in vain.”

“You’re wrong.” Dion’s voice was almost too quiet for Cyrene to hear.

“What was that?” Armes snapped.

“You’re wrong. The church has good people. The church has people trying to do what is right.”

“Nonsense.”

“Not all of them, perhaps,” Dion went on, not looking at Armes or at any of the rest. “Perhaps not even most of them. But even the Potentate himself tries. And I have tried. I have had faith. I have done my best.”

Armes’s face was solemn, and for a broken moment Cyrene thought that Dion’s sincerity had got through to him. It was just another ploy, though. “Oh,” he sighed. “Oh, my poor dear faithful one, what sad words. Done your best? Have you really done your best? Do you not see what a wretched epitaph that is? What poor last words? My child, it doesn’t matter if you do your best, if you don’t get anywhere. It’s just doubly pathetic that this, only this, was your best. That, pushed to the utmost limit of your abilities, all you could achieve was this. Have you defeated the Dark? No. Have you slain Darvezian? No such man. Have you fulfilled the prophecy? Yes, but you’ve found out that was just a bit of fun anyway.” He was very close to her now, speaking in her ear. “Have you championed the church and the Light? Yes, but it’s my church and my Light, and all those statues you’ve prayed before, they’re me.”

“Stop it!” and she struck him, backhanded him across the face, Cyrene heard the crunch of bones breaking, saw Dion’s hand deform across Armes’s square jaw. The priestess let out a single sound of raw agony, and then she was clutching her shattered knuckles to her, eyes bright with tears. The pain on her face was not for the physical hurt, though, but for the philosophical.

“Enough,” came a voice, and Armes raised an incredulous eyebrow at the challenge.

“Enough came centuries ago,” he said, hunting for whoever dared interrupt him. “The whole point to this is to keep me amused for the long, long years after ‘enough’ came and went.”

“Leave her alone.” Penthos was pale, muscles ticking in his jaw. “You’re upsetting her.”

Armes’s eyes flicked from him to Dion. “Of course I . . . That’s the point. I’m not just ‘upsetting’ her, I’m breaking her. I’m destroying her faith. Haven’t you been listening? Haven’t you . . . Do I need to start all over with the explanations?”

“I don’t care about the Light,” Penthos said carefully. “I don’t care about the church. I care about Dion. Leave her alone.”

“Seriously?” Armes wondered. Cyrene wondered if this was a moment when he stood before them without masks: the damaged human being he had once been, confronted with the damaged humanity he had lost. “I am Armes, you street-corner conjurer. What are you going to do to stop me?”

For an answer, Penthos thrust forward his arms, and a line of flame leapt eagerly from them to hammer into the man-god, striking him from Dion’s side and hurling him across the room.

Cyrene felt a shock go through her: some small churchgoing part of her soul still cried “blasphemy!” no matter all she now knew, but by far the greater part of her was exalting.

Armes had been knocked back all the way to the throne, and for a moment his body sprawled on it in an unintended pose of casual dissipation. Then he shook his head and pushed himself back to his feet, stumbling a little. “That . . . ,” he said, “that hurt.” He worked his jaw like a man with a loose tooth. “That actually hurt. I don’t think anyone’s managed to hurt me for centuries. I can’t even remember the last time. Not bad, magic man. Not enough, but not bad.”

“That,” Penthos said tightly, “was just to get you away from her.” And he lashed out with a ceiling-high wave of flame that struck Armes directly in the chest, the Power Elemental smashing the man-god backward and shattering his Dark Throne into splinters of stone.

“Yes!” Cyrene whooped—they all did—but even then Armes was stirring, lurching to his feet. There was a trail of blood from the corner of his mouth, and his pale robes were scorched across.

“Oh, it’s on,” said the face that launched a thousand statues. Cyrene had been entertaining a little hope that actually finding someone to challenge him would make a coward of the man, but there was nothing in Armes’s expression except eagerness to rise to that challenge.

“You may wish to stand back,” Penthos advised primly, and then Armes had unleashed a wave of crackling silver energy the width of the room.

Dion brandished the disc of Armes in her good hand, conjuring a shield of Light about them, and Penthos was already summoning forth a rushing tide of elemental flame to meet it. The two surges of power met, and the room resounded with the thunder of it, the very air punching left and right about them as the magicians fought. Cyrene and the rest—even Enth—were huddled behind Dion, hoping that the Light was real enough to keep them from being obliterated by the merest aftershock of the wizards’ duel.

But Cyrene could not look away. Even though she had to shade her eyes as though looking at the sun, she could not avert them. Everyone’s attention was fixed on their unlikely champion as Penthos strode forth, calling on the bottomless reaches of his power, transforming it into flame and hurling it at Armes. Penthos had never been subtle. He was not a wizard to be trusted with illusions. No sane man would go to him for cures or enhancements, love philters or parlor tricks—not unless they had a parlor they badly needed incinerating. But for raw power, for taking the stuff of magic and using it to blast and burn and destroy, there was no equaling him. And, watching the back and forth of magical energies that blazed between the two, Cyrene understood that, all the time she had known him, Penthos had been holding back. Even in his most uncontrolled and unwise moments, when idle use of his powers had caused such widespread devastation, he had been keeping them on a leash. Now, though: now he had an adversary he did not need to hold back with. Now he could let it all come out.

His face was fixed in a rictus that was somewhere between exhilaration and agony, the face of a man shorn of all the social niceties that Penthos had always been so bad at. It was a face so naked, so lost in the moment, that to look on it was almost indecent. And Armes was having to work, to keep him back. The man-god had his head lowered like a bull, physically braced against the force of Penthos’s attack. He gave as good as he got, his own magical energies boiling and seething about his foe, but at least he was not crowing, not mocking. The fight took all his attention.

Cyrene nocked an arrow carefully, steadying her breathing. Her chance was at hand.

She would have liked to have chosen her moment, but the roiling magical chaos that had engulfed the two allowed no such distinction. Instead, all she could do was leap up and step from the shield to loose her shot.

She heard Harathes shouting at her to stop, but she was already gone by then. The air that engulfed her was hot as a furnace.

She had a line on Armes as she took that step: her fingers knew their work and let the string go, even as the fire scorched across her. Then hands were on her, dragging her back, but too late to prevent that shaft from speeding true.

Her hair was aflame, when they got her back in, and her clothes. Lief and Enth had hauled her from the inferno, and now they beat at her until she was out, with a dozen small burns across her body where they were not fast enough. Her bow was ruined, the string shriveled, the wood charred. She fought through the pain, though, asking through cracked lips, “Did I . . . ?”

Dion was the only one whose eyes had never left the fight. “No,” she said dully. “The arrow . . . burned. It flared into light.”

“But I . . .” I was going to be the one who killed the Dark Lord. Surely that was the point where it could be done. I was . . .

“Sorry,” Lief muttered. “Good idea, but . . .”

“Penthos,” Dion said.

Beyond the shield, which was cracking across with the mere backwash of the energies hurled back and forth, Penthos retreated a step.

Armes’s expression had changed. There was something of his former smugness back on it now. He very deliberately advanced another step, and again Penthos was forced to give ground. He was retreating at an angle to the others, rather than back straight into Dion’s shield. They could see his face screwing up in dreadful concentration as he ransacked his reserves of strength, emptying them, throwing everything he could muster at his enemy. His rival for Dion’s affections, Cyrene wondered. Is that how he’s always seen Armes?

But probably that was not it. Probably she could have no idea about what Penthos thought or felt.

And then a change came over the magician. He had been hunched forward, every part of him crooked and clawing as he hurled forth his fires. Now he straightened up suddenly, and his face was very pale. The expression they saw there was of a man seeing something just out of his grasp, reaching, desperately reaching.

Falling short.

And then the fires went out, so abruptly that Armes dropped forward to one knee. Penthos swayed, trying to look toward Dion but his eyes never quite seeing her, and then he fell full length to the floor.

Dion was rushing over to him instantly, her shield gone. The Light seethed about her hands, the whole and the broken one, and she lunged for Penthos’s body, grasping desperately for that last spark of life that surely remained there. She had saved Lief by catching that ember and breathing on it until it flared once more. Surely she could . . . surely . . .

But she was left kneeling by his still form, pressing the disc of Armes to flesh that was waxy and cooling. The fires of Penthos had finally gone out. The great magician was dead.

There was a chuckle. Armes had regained his feet.

“That was fun,” he told them. “I’ve not had a tussle like that for ages. You should probably have run off, while we were doing that. I’d have hunted you down, but still . . .” And his smile was back and he was sauntering over toward them.

“I want to kill him,” Enth said once more.

“Oh, yes.” It was the first time Harathes had agreed with the man-spider. Then the warrior of the church was rushing forward, sword and shield before him.

“Come on then!” crowed Armes, and took the shield to his face, the metal bending about his cheekbones. “Do your best! Do your worst! Do it all, and then I’ll do mine!”

Dion screamed and sent a ray of Light at him that would have obliterated a squad of Ghants, but the radiance just splintered away from Armes’s chest. Lief was behind him by then, ribs or no ribs, breaking a dagger against the man-god’s kidneys. There were words on Armes’s lips, as he ordered the world around him, the world he had seen entire. He spoke of metal, of mankind, all the secret names of a creation that was his to command.

Cyrene had her own sword out in raw hands, hacking at Armes’s hamstrings and not even marking his skin. Harathes’s blade shattered across his temples, and then the founder of the church grabbed the warrior’s face with one hand and flung him backward across the room.

Enth just stood there, clenching his fists. I want to kill him, he had said.

Cyrene tried a scything cut at Armes’s stomach that felt as though she had struck iron, and the thought came to her, He’s asking for permission, the poor bastard! “Enth! Do it! Nothing to lose!” she cried, and then Armes took her blade from her, twisting it out of her fingers by main force and swatting at her with the quillons. She threw herself underneath what was surely a bone-breaking swing.

Lief had leapt up on Armes’s back, an elbow about that unyielding throat, the other hand prying into eyes that were as inviolate as stone. Armes rolled those eyes, put a hand on that strangling arm, and clenched until Lief screamed and dropped away. The moment his throat was exposed again, Cyrene’s dagger blade lunged at it, snapping in half with the impact.

Armes kicked her in the stomach, driving the wind from her so hard she thought she would never breathe again. Another bolt of Light from Dion refracted from his face, making him blink irritably. Lief drove another knife savagely into his foot, bending the blade.

“Have we just about exhausted your capabilities?” Armes asked them pleasantly. “I want you to feel you’ve had a good run, but really, I have a heroic procession to be attending in your names.” He raised a hand—whether to make a point or blast them into dust, Cyrene couldn’t guess—and then Enth tackled him about the waist and knocked him off his feet.

It was the same artless move he had used on the old Doomsayer, just a desperate attempt to bear his enemy down so he could get to strangling. Enth, like the magician who had reworked him, was not one for subtlety in a crisis.

Armes hit the ground hard—the stone cracked beneath him, though the impact did not seem to hurt his flesh—and hurled Enth away. The man-spider landed on hands and feet, skittering sideways across the floor in a stomach-twistingly inhuman way.

“You as well?” Armes got to his feet, and he was doing his mummery again, pretending that the whole business was just too much effort for him. Cyrene saw the very moment that he stopped, putting a hand to his side. There was a moment’s puzzlement on his face that was not feigned.

By then, Enth was already charging him again, on two legs, then on all fours, then two again, and Armes looked at him with contempt and said a word.

Spider, Cyrene understood. All of Enth’s being summed up in that single dismissive utterance.

Enth leapt and struck Armes hard. Cyrene braced for the sound of him splintering off the man-god’s invulnerable hide, but instead Armes went reeling back, Enth clinging to him like a monkey.

Armes said the word again, and again, and then Enth’s thumb found his eye and he screamed, bucking the man-spider off him. Cyrene stared aghast as the founder of the church staggered back, a hand over half his face, yelling, “Stay away from me, Spider, Spider!” that defining word.

Enth had gone tumbling over and over—Armes was still supernaturally strong—but now he was stalking forward once more, his glassy, lidless eyes fixed on his opponent.

“Not a spider,” he spat, with a string of bloody saliva. “All I wanted to be was a spider. I was happy as a spider. Or what a spider thinks is happy. Your prophecy. They made me into this for your prophecy. And you have killed the only man who could make it right. Not a spider. Not a man. Not any thing.”

Armes stared at him, one good eye, one red-rimmed and weeping. He spoke more words then, a battery of meanings from the man who had seen the world laid out like a map, to be redrawn as he willed it. He knew the names of everything in creation, from the lowest to the highest. He was as much a god as any man had ever been. But the creation that he had catalogued so thoroughly had not contained a thing such as Enth. It was Penthos’s posthumous revenge. Have I not wrought well? he would have asked of his magic. They had shied away from what he had made, but what he had accomplished was more than any of them knew, magical laymen as they were. He had brought something new into the world.

And still Armes tried to name Enth, ransacking his divine lexicon for the term that would pin down the thing before him, and put it within his power.

Enth watched him for a moment, taking great breaths and flexing his shoulders. “Yes,” he said softly. “What am I? Can even you tell me what I am?” and Cyrene thought that he might be actually hoping that Armes would find some precedent, some explanation for what he had become.

“You are . . . a thing of the Dark,” Armes told him hoarsely. “You owe me fealty. I am the Dark Lord, am I not? Obey me, and I shall give you power, I shall make you my . . .” But he could see that the words were just chaff to Enth, and the man-spider was closing with him again.

Desperately, Armes plucked his own sword from its scabbard for the first time, having dropped Cyrene’s when he was bowled over. Nothing in the stance he took suggested he had been forced to resort to the weapon in the last 500 years.

Enth took it off him, prying the weapon from Armes’s fingers and then breaking it against his face. The blow did nothing in itself, but Enth was right behind it, fingers clawing for his enemy. For a moment they grappled, strength against strength. There was a point when Armes had his enemy bent back, sheer godlike might prevailing against the man-spider. Then Enth had squirmed from his grasp and got his hands either side of Armes’s face, thumbs under his chin, forcing his head back.

The man-spider thrust forward savagely, jaws gaping wider than human tolerance should allow, and buried his teeth in Armes’s throat.

Nobody interfered. Nobody went near, until the thrashing and the kicking and the gurgling were done; until the blood of the man who would be god was a slick across the black stone of the floor. Until it was done.

Then Enth straightened up and, with an oddly fastidious gesture, began using a torn scrap of Armes’s robe to wipe at his chin.

“I want to go home,” he said, and the loneliness and grief in his voice almost broke Cyrene’s heart. There would be no going home for Enth.

Looking around, she wondered if there would be any going home for any of them. Dion was standing by Penthos’s body still, looking down at it. Lief and Harathes, as battered as Cyrene herself felt, were exchanging bruised glances, waiting to see what happened next.

“Hooray,” the thief said in a small voice. “The Dark Lord is dead. That’s going to be our story, is it?”

Dion looked up at them, red eyed. “More than the Dark Lord is dead.”

“He . . . was lying. It was a trick of the Dark,” Harathes suggested improbably. Even he could not muster much conviction, and a moment later he put in, “Nobody must ever know. Nothing needs to change.”

“What do you mean?” Dion demanded.

“The church, nothing needs to change. We can just go on. We didn’t know Armes was still, ah, with us. Now he’s not. Things can be as they always were. You still have the Light?”

Dion turned the disc of Armes over in her hand. It glimmered and flashed. “What changes Armes made to the world have not been undone,” she confirmed.

“Then nothing needs to change. We can just go on,” Harathes insisted.

“And the Dark? The Ghants? Him?” Cyrene challenged, with a look at Enth.

“We need an enemy to fight. Or what would bring people to the Light,” Harathes said earnestly. “Yes, Armes turned out to be a monster, but some of what he said was—”

“No more,” Dion stated. The words were quiet, but they shut Harathes up straight away. “It was a lie,” she added.

“No . . .”

“It was a lie,” she repeated. “But there is a truth there. There are good people in the church, even as there are bad ones. There are those who have sought wisdom and compassion and generosity. If the Light was a lie, then that makes those people all the better for living as they have. And the Dark . . . Being born to Light or Dark does not make you good or bad. That is the lie that Armes gave us, not that we can be good in the first place.”

“So what then? I don’t understand,” Harathes demanded plaintively.

“If I return to Armesion, the priestess whose mission brought down the Dark Lord, they will make me Potentate in time,” she said, and there was a new fire in her, a new faith. “And I will take the church and make it what it should be, what it should always have been. And I will make peace with the Ghants and the others—all the easier now they have no Dark Lord spurring them to evil. I will end centuries of strife. I will work toward the world that Armes saw, before his power turned him into this. Before he grew bored with trying.”

“It won’t work,” Lief muttered. “You can’t change human nature.”

Dion knelt to close Penthos’s eyes, staring sadly down at him. “You cannot say how much you can change,” she said, “until you try. Enth.”

The man-spider started, hearing his name.

“I want you to come with me to Armesion.”

“I don’t reckon he’s got many fond memories of that place,” Lief pointed out.

“I’m sure he doesn’t. And I am asking. I cannot order you any more, Enth. But I want the people there to see you. I want them to see you, and see the Dark in you, and know that you were one of us, that you brought down the Dark Lord. No word of Armes, no word of that sordid history. But you have earned your place, and I want people to see. And perhaps, when they next meet a Ghant, or see a spider, they will remember.”

Enth looked uncertainly from Lief to Cyrene. She went to him, touched his arm gingerly, ignoring Harathes’s grimace. A moment later, his hand was on hers, gripping: not hard enough to hurt, but hard enough for her to feel the desperation.

“And besides, we don’t need to stay long,” Lief’s voice came to them. “And once we’ve had the parades and the fanfares and the no-doubt-sizeable reward, then I know some places where you won’t stick out, Enth. We—we three, if you want—we can go some place where nobody will care who or what you are, so maybe you can decide for yourself.”

Enth’s gaze, his greater and lesser eyes, took in them all. Cyrene could see herself reflected there in miniature.

“Yes,” said the man-spider, the god-slayer. “Yes.”

About the Author

ADRIAN TCHAIKOVSKY was born in Woodhall Spa, Lincolnshire, before heading off to Reading to study psychology and zoology. He subsequently ended up in law and has worked as a legal executive in both Reading and Leeds, where he now lives. Married, he is a keen live roleplayer and has trained in stage fighting and historical combat. He maintains a lively interest in history and the biological sciences, especially entomology.

Adrian is the author of the acclaimed ten-book Shadows of the Apt series starting with Empire in Black and Gold, published by Tor UK. His other works for Tor UK include standalone novels Guns of the Dawn and Children of Time and the new series Echoes of the Fall starting with The Tiger and the Wolf. Other major works include the short-story collection Feast and Famine for Newcon Press and novellas The Bloody Deluge (in Journal of the Plague Year) and Even in the Cannon’s Mouth (in Monstrous Little Voices) for Abaddon. He has also written numerous short stories and been short-listed for the David Gemmell Legend Award and the British Fantasy Award.

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Also by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Children of Time

Guns of the Dawn

The Tiger and the Wolf

SHADOWS OF THE APT

Empire in Black and Gold

Dragonfly Falling

Blood of the Mantis

Salute the Dark

The Scarab Path

The Sea Watch

Heirs of the Blade

The Air War

War Master’s Gate

Seal of the Worm

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Table of Contents

1. Cover
2. Title Page
3. Copyright Notice
4. 1: Mirkwood Blues
5. 2: Fear and Loathing in Shogg’s Ford
6. 3: The Third Rule of Arachnophobics
7. 4: The Light Stuff
8. 5: Dueling Dogmas
9. 6: Old-Fashioned Hospitality
10. 7: Border Crossings
11. 8: Unnatural Relations
12. 9: Trailblazing
13. 10: Fear of a Dark Tower
14. 11: Putting out the Lights
15. About the Author
16. Also by Adrian Tchaikovsky
17. Contents
18. Copyright Page

Copyright Page

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novella are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

SPIDERLIGHT

Copyright © 2013 by Adrian Czajkowski

Cover illustration by Tyler Jacobson

Cover design by Christine Foltzer

Edited by Lee Harris

All rights reserved.

A Tor.com Book

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

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New York, NY 10010
www.tor.com

Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

ISBN 978-0-7653-8835-3 (ebook)

ISBN 978-0-7653-8836-0 (trade paperback)

First published in serial form by Aethernet magazine, 2013

First Tor.com Edition: August 2016

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