Gregor the Overlander - 1 (13 page)

"This river runs through Regalia as well. Our cattle live off the plants, but they are unfit for humans to eat," said Solovet.

Gregor had been eating beef jerky all morning without wondering what the cows ate. He could probably spend years in the Underland figuring out how it worked. Not that he wanted to.

Cockroaches who were fishing along the banks had a quick exchange with Temp and Tick and pulled several large fish out of the river with their mouths. Mareth cleaned them and set them on the torches to grill.

Gregor set Boots down to stretch her legs and asked the cockroaches to keep an eye on her. They ran up and down the bank steering her away from the water and letting her ride on their backs. Word of her arrival spread quickly, and soon dozens of bugs appeared. They settled down just to watch "the princess."

When the food was cooked, Vikus made a point of inviting Temp and Tick to join them.

"It is time," he said in response to Henry's frown. "It is time those of the prophecy became of one journey, of one purpose, of one mind. All are equal here." Temp and Tick still sat off to the side, behind Boots, but they ate with everyone else.

"It is not far now," said Vikus, pointing at a small tunnel. "One could make it shortly even on foot."

"To my dad?" asked Gregor.

"No, to the spinners. We must persuade two to join us on the quest," said Vikus.

"Oh, yeah. The spinners," said Gregor. He hoped they were more into the trip than the roaches had been.

They were just finishing up the meal when all five bats jerked their heads up. "Rats!"

hissed Ares, and everyone started moving.

Except for Temp and Tick, all the roaches vanished into the shallow tunnels that led away from the river-bank.

Vikus thrust Boots into Gregor's backpack and shoved them toward the tunnel he had pointed out earlier. "Run!" he ordered. Gregor tried to object, but Vikus cut him off. "Run, Gregor! The rest of us are expendable; you are not!"

The old man vaulted onto his bat and joined the other Underlanders in the air just as a squad of six rats stampeded onto the riverbank. The leader, a gnarled gray rat with a diagonal scar across his face, pointed at Gregor and hissed, "Kill him!"

Stranded on the riverbank without a weapon, Gregor had no .choice but to sprint for the mouth of the tunnel. Temp and Tick scurried after him. He glanced back for a second and saw Vikus knock the scarred rat into the river with the hilt of his sword. The other Underlanders, blades flashing, were attacking the five remaining rats.

"Run, Gregor!" ordered Solovet in a rough voice so unlike the quiet one he was used to.

"Make haste, make you, make haste!" urged Temp and Tick.

Using his flashlight, Gregor started down the tunnel. It was just high enough that he could run upright. He realized he had lost Temp and Tick somewhere and turned back to see the entire tunnel, floor to ceiling, filling up with roaches. They weren't attacking the rats. They were using their bodies to form a barricade that would be nearly impossible to penetrate.

"Oh, no," thought Gregor. "They're just going to let themselves be killed!" He turned back to help them, but the roaches nearest him insisted, "Run! Run with the princess!"

They were right: He had to go. He had to get Boots out of there. He had to save his dad.

Maybe he even had to save the Underland from the rats, he didn't know. But right now he could no more get through the fifty-foot wall of cockroaches to fight the rats than the rats could get to him.

He took off down the tunnel, setting a pace he thought he could maintain for half an hour.

He ripped his face off the sticky ropes, and it felt like someone had yanked strips of adhesive tape off his skin. "Ow!" he said. He freed his flashlight arm, but the other remained enmeshed in the web. Boots was on his back, so she hadn't got caught.

"Hello!" he called. "Is anyone there? Hello!" He shone the flashlight around, but all he could see was web.

"I am Gregor the Overlander. I come in peace," he said. I come in peace. Where'd he get that? Probably from some old movie. "Anybody home?"

He felt a light tugging on his sandals and looked down. A huge spider was wrapping his feet together with a steady stream of silk.

"Hey!" yelled Gregor, trying to free his feet. But in seconds the spider had spun its way up to his knees. "You don't understand! I'm -- I'm the warrior! In the prophecy! I'm the one who calls!"

The spider busily worked its way up his body. "Oh, man," thought Gregor. "It's going to cover us completely!" He felt the arm that was caught in the web tighten up against his body.

"Ge-go!" squeaked Boots. The silk ropes pressed her against his back as they encircled his chest.

"Vikus sent me!" yelled Gregor, and for the first time the spider paused. He quickly followed up. "Yeah, Vikus sent me and he's on his way and he's going to be really mad you're wrapping us up!"

He waved his free arm with the flashlight for emphasis and caught the spider full in the face with the light. It skittered back a few yards, and Gregor got his first good look at the arachnid. Six beady black eyes, bristly legs, and massive jaws that ended in curved, pointed fangs. He quickly diverted the flashlight beam. No point in making it angry.

"So, do you know Vikus?" he asked. "He should be here any minute to have some official meeting with your king. Queen. Do you guys have a king or a queen? Or maybe it's something else. We have a presi dent, but that's different because you have to vote for them." He paused.

"So, do you think you could unwrap us now?"

The spider leaned down and snapped a thread with its jaws. Gregor and Boots shot up fifty feet in the air and yo-yoed up and down like they were on a big rubber band. "Hey!" Gregor yelled. "Hey!" His lunch sloshed around in his stomach. Eventually the bouncing stopped.

Gregor shone the flashlight around him. In every direction he could see spiders. Some were working busily; others seemed asleep. Every single one of them was ignoring him. This was new. The roaches and bats had greeted him civilly enough, a whole crowd of people in the stadium had fallen silent when he appeared, and the rats had gone into a rage when they'd met...

but the spiders? They couldn't care less.

He yelled stuff at them for a while. Nice stuff. Crazy stuff. Annoying stuff. They didn't react. He got Boots to sing a couple rounds of "The Itsy-Bitsy Spider" since she had a special way with bugs. No response. Finally he just gave up and watched them.

An unlucky insect flew into their web. A spider ran over and drove its wicked fangs into the bug. It went still. "Poison," thought Gregor. The spider quickly wrapped the insect in silk, broke it into pieces, and shot some kind of juice inside it. Gregor looked away when the spider started sucking out the bug's liquefied insides. "Ugh, that could've been us. That still could be us!" he thought. He wished Vikus and the others would show up.

But would they show up? What had happened back on the riverbank? Had they been able to fight off the rats? Had anybody been hurt, or worse, killed?

He remembered Vikus's ordering him to run. "The rest of us are expendable, you are not!" He must have been talking about the prophecy. They could always find more crawlers, fliers, and spinners. Nerissa might be able to stand in if something happened to Luxa or Henry.

Or maybe they would make someone else the king or queen. But Gregor and Boots, two Overlanders with a dad imprisoned by rats, they were irreplaceable.

Gregor thought grimly of the people sacrificing themselves back on the riverbank. He should have stayed and fought even if he didn't stand much of a chance. They were risking their lives because they thought he was the warrior. But he wasn't. Surely that was clear by now.

Minutes dragged by. Maybe the whole party had been wiped out and he and Boots were on their own. Maybe the spiders knew that and they were just letting them live so they could be nice and fresh when they decided to eat them.

"Ge-go?" said Boots.

"Yeah, Boots," said Gregor.

"We go home?" she asked plaintively. "See Mama?"

"Well, we have to get Daddy first," he said, trying to sound optimistic even though they were dangling helplessly in a spider's lair.

"Da-da?" said Boots curiously. She knew their father from photos, though she'd never seen him in person. "See Da-da?"

"We get Da-da. Then we go home," said Gregor.

"See Mama?" Boots insisted. Images of their mom began to make Gregor ache with sadness. "See Mama?"

A spider near them began to make a humming sound that was picked up by the other creatures. It was a soothing, soft melody. Gregor tried to remember the tune so he could play it for his dad on his saxophone. His dad played, too. Jazz, mostly. He'd bought Gregor his first saxophone, a used one from the pawnshop, when he was seven and started teaching him to play it. Gregor had just begun lessons at school when his dad had dropped out of sight and become a prisoner of the rats who probably hated music.

What were the rats doing to his dad, anyway?

He tried to distract himself with more positive thoughts but, given the circumstances, failed.

When Henry materialized on the stone floor below him, Gregor wanted to cry with relief.

"He lives!" Henry called out, looking genuinely happy to see him.

From somewhere in the darkness Gregor heard Vikus call out, "Free you the Overlander, free you?" He felt himself being lowered to the ground. When his feet hit the stone, he fell on his stomach, unable to stand on his wrapped legs.

They instantly gathered around him, cutting the silk off with their swords. Even Luxa and Henry helped. Tick and Temp chewed through the cords around Boots's pack. Gregor counted the bats, ones two, three, four, five. He could see several wounds, but everybody was alive.

"We thought you lost," said Mareth, who was bleeding freely from his thigh.

"No, I couldn't get lost. The tunnel came straight here," said Gregor, kicking his legs free happily.

"Not lost in direction," said Luxa. "Lost forever." Gregor realized she meant dead.

"What happened with the rats?" he asked.

"All killed," said Vikus. "You need not fear that they have seen you."

"It's worse if they see me?" asked Gregor. "Why? They can smell I'm an Overlander from miles away. They know I'm here."

"But only the dead ones know you resemble your father. That you are 'a son of the sun,'"

said Vikus. Gregor remembered how Fangor and Shed had reacted when they'd seen his face in the torchlight. "Mark you, Shed, his shade?" They hadn't just wanted to kill him because he was an Overlander. They'd thought he was the warrior, too! He wanted to tell Vikus about that, but a score of spiders were descending around them and perching in nearby webs.

One magnificent creature with beautifully striped legs swung down directly in front of Vikus. He bowed very low. "Greetings, Queen Wevox."

The spider rubbed her front legs over her chest as if she were playing the harp. An eerie voice came out of her although there was no movement of her mouth. "Greetings, Lord Vikus."

"Meet you, Gregor the Overlander, meet you," said Vikus, indicating Gregor.

"He makes much noise," said the queen distastefully, her front legs moving across her chest again. Gregor realized that was how she talked, by making vibrations on her body. She sounded sort of like Mr. Johnson in apartment 4Q who'd had some kind of operation and talked through a hole in his neck. Only scary.

"The Overlander ways are odd," said Vikus, shooting Gregor a look that told him not to object.

"Why come you?" strummed Queen Wevox.

Vikus told the whole tale in ten sentences using a soft voice. So apparently you spoke to spiders quickly and quietly. Screaming at them endlessly had been counterproductive.

The queen considered the story a moment. "As it is Vikus, we will not drink. Web them."

A horde of spiders surrounded them. Gregor watched a gorgeous, gauzy funnel of silk grow up around them as if by magic. It isolated the party and blocked all else from view. The spiders stopped spinning when it reached thirty feet. Two took positions as sentries at the top. It all happened in under a minute.

Everyone looked at Vikus, who sighed. "You knew it would not be simple," said Solovet gently.

"Yes, but I had hoped with the recent trade agreement ..." Vikus trailed off. "I hoped too high."

"We still breathe," said Mareth encouragingly. "That is no small thing with the spinners."

"What's going on?" said Gregor. "Aren't they coming with us?"

"Prisoners!" exclaimed Gregor. "Are you at war with the spiders, too?"

"Oh, no," said Mareth. "We are on peaceful terms with the spinners. We trade with them, we do not invade each other's lands ... but it would be an exaggeration to call them our friends."

"I'll say," said Gregor. "So, did everybody know they would lock us up except me?" He had trouble keeping the irritation out of his voice. He was getting tired of finding out about things after the fact.

"I am sorry, Gregor," said Vikus. "I have worked long to build bridges between ourselves and the spinners. I thought perhaps they would be more agreeable, but I overestimated my influence with them."

He looked weary and old. Gregor hadn't meant to make him feel worse than he already did. "No, they really respect you. I mean, I think they were going to eat me until I mentioned your name."

Vikus brightened a little. "Truly? Well, that is something. Where there is life there is hope."

"That's so weird. That's what my grandma always says!" said Gregor. He laughed, and somehow that broke the tension.

"Ge-go, fesh di-pur!" said Boots crankily. She tugged at her pants.

"Yes, Boots, fresh diaper," said Gregor. She hadn't been changed for ages. He dug through the pack Dulcet had given him and realized he was down to two diapers. "Uh-oh," he said. "I'm almost out of catch cloths."

"Well, you could not be in a better place. The spinners weave all our catch cloths," said Solovet.

"How come they're not sticky?" asked Gregor, touching his face.