Dragonsight (31 page)

Skylines were deployed in great cone-shaped fans that slowed their descent. One by one they dropped into the thick foliage and vanished from view.

As Jelindel’s captor plunged in amongst the trees she shut her eyes for an instant then forced herself to watch; she needed to stay alert, to learn all she could, in case there was the slightest possibility of escape.

She was amazed to discover a city set high in the trees many hundreds of feet above the ground. The spiders detached themselves from the skylines and dropped onto broad spider webs set amongst the trees; nearby were the dwellings of humans, each linked by wide wooden thoroughfares that spanned the lofty gaps between trees, and on which a respectable volume of foot traffic could be seen. However, the humans that Jelindel could make out were clearly slaves; each wore nothing but a leather loin cloth, and some kind of silver torc-like jewellery around their necks.

White baubles the size of horse trays hung from the tree trunks. With a start Jelindel realised that these were silken egg sacs.

The arrival of the spiders caused the nearest humans to stop what they were doing and fall upon their knees; each bowed low to the nearest spider, and a chant sprang up. The humans weren’t just slaves, they were
worshippers
.

Daretor’s spider had landed nearby, though there was no sign of Zimak. Daretor and Jelindel looked at each other.

‘Seems we’ve been captured by Black Quell’s minions,’ said Daretor sourly. ‘And no better place for them to breed,’ he added, looking around.

Jelindel worked warmth into her shoulders and legs. ‘We’re alive, Daretor. That in itself proves these monstrosities can make mistakes.’

The spiders dumped Jelindel and Daretor on a nearby pathway and hissed several commands that sounded intelligent, despite the sibilant speech. The two were immediately surrounded by human slaves and bundled away to a cage high in a tree. They were given wooden bowls filled with gruel and water. Setting the bowls aside they gazed at the aerial city from a small barred window. A short time later Zimak was thrown in.

Some hours passed. Finally the door opened and a tall man in rustic hessian robes entered. Acolytes or guards flanked him; it was hard to tell.

He introduced himself as Usel and claimed to be a priest who ministered to the souls of the damned, by which he clearly meant his own people. He explained that the spiders had descended upon the forest city three generations ago. They had killed many and enslaved the rest. There were several different tribes of privateer spiders that only ate other arachnids; they were also in conflict with a kingdom to the north, which the spiders raided mercilessly. However, the spiders were almost useless in any kind of orthodox warfare on the ground. Something had happened recently though. The sky had tumbled in on them and changed colour, as had the planets. It was as though a powerful magic had descended upon them.

‘You’re no longer where you think you are,’ Jelindel said. It was useless trying to explain paraworld travel to these people. How could she explain that a huge mountain and everything within its circumference had been sucked through the paraplane to Q’zar? ‘And your priesthood. The spiders let you be?’

Usel shrugged. ‘We have a certain amount of freedom. The spiders are … pragmatic. Anything that keeps their slaves docile seems a good thing to them.’

Daretor scowled. ‘So you collaborate in the enslavement of your own people?’

Usel’s face flashed with anger. ‘I collaborate in keeping as many of my people as possible alive. If you would like to keep breathing, I suggest you learn from our example.’

Daretor snorted but said nothing.

Zimak spoke instead. ‘How do we get out of here?’ he asked.

‘Get out?’ Usel repeated, enunciating the words as if they were from a dead language. ‘There is no getting out. You are here, and here you will stay, at the mercy of the Kindred.’

‘What kind of mercy is that?’ Daretor growled.

Usel was philosophic. ‘It will be what it will be. No man knows his lot.’

‘Great,’ said Zimak. ‘Slave today, food tomorrow.’

Usel grunted. ‘The spiders do not eat as we do. They wrap their food in cocoons and hang them for several days. Then they suck their victims dry so that only the husks remain. It is a lingering, painful death.’

‘This just gets worse,’ Zimak said. ‘What manner of people are you to let yourselves get slaughtered like that?’

Usel looked at each of them in turn. ‘Several Samaritans made the mistake of killing the cocooned prisoners to end their torture. But the Kindred descend to massacre ten for every one thus put out of their misery. They only enjoy fresh, live fare.’

‘Even I would rather go out fighting,’ Zimak said.

Usel smiled as though enjoying a private joke, then beckoned one of the acolytes forward. He held three of the silvery torcs, which turned out to be a kind of special web. The acolyte went to fit one about Daretor’s neck but the swordsman knocked him to the ground.

Usel stared pityingly at him. ‘One word from me and the Kindred will come for you, and you will fight to join the ranks of the Undying.’

‘Undying?’ Zimak said. ‘Immortals?’

Usel glanced at the giant thief, but returned his attention to Daretor. ‘Immortality yes, but at the price of pain and suffering unlike anything you have ever experienced.’

Jelindel put a hand on Daretor’s arm. ‘We must bide our time for now,’ she said mildly.

Daretor considered. ‘For now,’ he said. An acolyte fastened the circlets around each of their throats, pressing the ends together. Within moments the necklaces were seamless; they were also as tough as hardened steel.

‘By these,’ said Usel, ‘the Kindred can find you anywhere you go.’ To the acolytes he snapped, ‘Take them to the Place of Testing.’

They sat in a wooden cage as the contraption was lowered by a dragline several hundred feet to a huge wooden platform. Beside them sat two sullen-faced slaves. As they descended one of the slaves struck up a conversation.

‘You are the newcomers?’ he asked. He must have been handsome in his time. His silvery thatch of wild hair was pulled back into a ponytail and tied with a leather thong. Jelindel noted that he was also lame in one leg.

‘We were captured this morning,’ she answered. ‘And you?’

‘Some years ago. I was a mercenary. I was ambushed along with my entire squad. I am all that is left, and now I am useless because of my leg. My name is Retok.’

Daretor rattled the cage. Two slaves were at once by his side, their swords pricking his skin.

‘Where are they taking us?’ he asked, ignoring twin trickles of blood coursing his arms.

‘Are you skilled fighters?’

‘We give a good account of ourselves.’

‘You are to be tested,’ said Retok. ‘If you pass, you will live in a manner of speaking.’

‘And if we fail?’ Zimak asked.

‘The spiders are ravenous at this time of year, made all the more so by these strange events.’ Retok waited for a response. When he received none, he continued. ‘Yet there are worse things than becoming fodder. Sometimes those who win, lose, and sometimes those who lose, win.’

‘What is that supposed to mean? Does everyone here speak in riddles?’ Daretor demanded.

Retok grinned. ‘I see you have met our high priest. No doubt he made you think you would be kept alive if you acquiesced. Unfortunately, since travelling to this place, the Kindred have need of ground fighters. Much is happening that is beyond their understanding.’

Retok’s shoulders slumped. ‘For a year I have planned an escape, but for naught.’ He indicated the southern approach to the forest. ‘One thing I did learn. The Kindred have covered that approach with sheets of silk. Attached to them are signal threads. Put one step on their trap and they spray digestive juices.’

Zimak’s face paled when he noticed Retok’s scarred and inflamed leg.

‘All other paths are otherwise fortified,’ Retok added. ‘Our overseers have left nothing to chance.’

Jelindel felt the man’s despair. ‘There is something you aren’t telling us.’

Retok thought about his reply. ‘Forewarned is not always forearmed, my lady,’ he said. ‘Sometimes it is better not to know one’s fate.’

‘Well that’s great,’ said Zimak sourly. ‘That’s just great. As if poison in our veins isn’t enough …’ He snapped his fingers and grinned fleetingly. ‘Hie, if the spiders eat us, they might get a good dose of poison.’

‘I have a feeling we’re not heading for the fodder cocoons,’ Jelindel said.

The bamboo cage grounded abruptly and the gate was yanked open. The occupants stepped out on to a wooden platform that was a hundred yards across. On the other side a dozen warriors stood to attention. Their eerily still poise seemed almost inhuman, as if they had dispensed with breathing altogether.

Following their gaze, Retok said, ‘The Undying. Pray you do not join their ranks.’

‘Hie, they don’t look so tough,’ Zimak said. ‘Do we have to fight them one at a time or all at once?’

Retok’s lips curled into a tight smile.

One of the Undying stepped forward. The other man that had been in the cage with them was handed a sword and shoved onto the battle quadrant, a cordoned off forty foot square area in the middle of the platform. The man went immediately into a fighting stance but it did him little good. The Undying moved with reflexes that were unbelievably fast. In seconds, he was so much twitching meat on the platform, gushing blood.

‘They move pretty fast,’ Zimak said clinically.

‘The Kindred have a power that is not unlike that of the dragon’s magic. It binds the Undying together.’ Retok would say no more. He was given a sword and pushed into the square by two slaves. The same Undying soldier met him and the warriors launched into a fierce sword battle. Retok proved to be a master swordsman, but with his withered leg he could barely hold his own against the phenomenal speed of his opponent.

Suddenly, he flung away his sword and stood panting before the Undying. The other paused, as if noting this. He saluted Retok then decapitated him cleanly and swiftly.

Jelindel looked away, disheartened. Then it was Daretor’s turn. He took the sword given him and weighed it in his hand, judging its balance. He flashed Jelindel a quick smile. Few, if any, ordinary mortals could best Daretor at the sword. Or, for that matter, Jelindel and Zimak. Yet Retok’s words of caution and his bloody demise had unnerved them.

Daretor stepped into the square. A new Undying broke ranks and marched forward to face him. Daretor tensed as his opponent drew near, for what approached was clearly a corpse; one animated by the uncanny magic of the Kindred. Instead of muscle and sinew, the body before him was knit together by hundreds, perhaps thousands, of spiderlings linked together like a living mailshirt. It emitted a low, insect-like keening.

Daretor stared at the crawling, shifting monstrosity, noting that the eyes were human enough.

‘Are you alive?’ he asked.

‘I am alive in a sense,’ said the Undying in a rasping voice. ‘You are new?’

Daretor nodded. The other almost shrugged its spider-controlled shoulders. The gesture was grotesquely human. ‘If you equal or defeat me, you will be colonised. The Kindred will lay their eggs in you and the newborn Kindred will devour you slowly from within, replacing your muscles and sinews. You will become as me. An elite warrior.’

‘Can you be killed?’ asked Daretor.

‘To die forever? That is what I pray for.’ He raised his sword in a gladiatorial salute. Daretor did likewise, although revulsion shivered through him.

The Undying slashed with lightning speed. Daretor nearly lost all in that first second but he managed to block the deadly cut, and immediately moved in under the other’s guard to thrust him through the chest. The Undying staggered back as a collective gasp went up from the assembled onlookers. It seemed that few ever managed to make contact with an Undying.

The thrust had little lasting effect. The Undying soldier recovered and came back like a charging bull, slashing hard. Daretor blocked, parried, drove forward again. The blades flashed with blurring speed, almost invisible to the human eye.

Jelindel anxiously bit her lower lip. Even Zimak became uneasy as the duel continued. The moves were so fast it was difficult to make out what was happening. Only the rapid clanging sound of steel on steel told the full story.

‘Do something,’ Zimak urged Jelindel.

She shook her head. ‘Not yet. Wait.’

The Undying, barely breathing, stood back. Through slightly parted lips he said, ‘You fight well. Do not fight
too
well.’

‘Can you be defeated?’ Daretor reiterated, panting heavily.

‘I can, but no more than that can I say.’

Daretor swung suddenly, severing the Undying’s sword arm. The Undying snap-rolled aside and snatched up the sword with his other hand. He was once again on his feet, closing for battle. The technique happened in an eye blink.

Spiderlings scuttled across the platform and returned to their host, seemingly revitalising him.

Daretor feinted, fell back, switched sword arms, and in one clean move sliced off the head of the Undying.

A ripple of disbelief ran through the gathered Undying.

Zimak winced.

The body went into a crouch, swung wildly at Daretor, then against all reason shed its living skin as it collapsed.

Thousands of spiderlings dropped from the corpse like a spilt bag of marbles and scuttled across to the ranks of the other Undying, where they swarmed into other bodies, taking up residence within.

Meanwhile, Daretor’s opponent sagged into a carcass of parchment-dry flesh and bone.

At that moment the throaty notes of a shell horn sounded. All heads snapped up. Spiders scrambled for the trees, crashing upward through foliage and branches, scrabbling for the canopy. A sickening stench floated down, making everyone cough.

Jelindel grabbed a slave by the arm. ‘What’s happening?’

‘We are being attacked. We must go to our battle stations at once,’ the slave screeched, clearly terrified.

Zimak took over from Jelindel and held the slave in a wrist lock. ‘By Black Quell’s beard what is that awful stench?’