“Nicely played, girl,” Carus murmured in her ear. “Now, let’s see what kind of act you can put on for Lord Lerdain of Blaise!”
Garric knelt in the graveyard, eyeing an entrance set into a granite ramp that was almost flush with the ground. The bronze doors had warped when the jamb shifted in some past age. Through the crack Garric could see spiderwebs and the glint of eyes.
“He’s still…” said Thalemos, eyeing Metron with a worried frown. “Still asleep, that is.”
Garric translated: Still unconscious. Still comatose. Still breathing but no more than that. Aloud he said, “He’ll be all right, Thalemos. But staring at him won’t make him come around any sooner.”
The young nobleman walked around the slab toward his companions, looking unhappy. He may have felt more affection toward the wizard than Garric and Vascay did, but regardless of personal opinion they all wanted him to awaken. Metron was the only person who knew why they were here in Wikedun.
“What do you think?” Vascay said, using his javelin butt to trace the design molded into the doors’ surface. “My bet is that it’s the catacombs where the priests were buried. Likely there’d be grave goods like you wouldn’t believe down there.”
The door’s decoration was a moon in the grip of a spider whose web spread across the lower portions of both valves. Even distorted, it was artwork of the highest order.
Garric’s personal feeling was that melting the cursed thing or throwing it into the sea would be the proper response to it, however.
One of the gang hooted cheerfully. The Brethren were scattered across the plain, though everyone was in sight of the others except when he crawled into a tomb.
“It wouldn’t do any good,” Garric said. He pointed to the overgrown depression in the ground just behind the entrance. “The passage is blocked just beyond, even if we could get through the door.”
He stood. His own guess was that there’d been a small earthquake; the rigid granite block had focused the shocks on the softer limestone through which the catacombs were carved. It’d be hard to open the twisted doors with the tools the Brethren had available, and removing wedged slabs of rock would be next to impossible.
“How would we carry gold back with us?” Lord Thalemos asked. He bent to peer through the opening. Changing the subject, he added, “There do seem to be a great number of spiders here, don’t there?”
“Yeah,” said Vascay as he turned away with a grimace. He’d been irritated when Thalemos mentioned the difficulty of men on foot carrying any quantity of gold. That was a rich man’s point, but the bandit chief knew it was a valid one nonetheless.
Vascay tapped the bronze again with his javelin. “Maybe that’s why they worshipped spiders, do you think?”
“No,” said Garric. He didn’t like the subject. “I think it’s the other way around. And Vascay, I think we ought to get out of here. Quickly.”
He’d noticed holes in the cliff face; either Vascay hadn’t, or he hadn’t understood their significance. The chief of the Brethren was both learned and clever, but he hadn’t been born and raised a countryman.
Those weren’t natural caves: they marked where the sea had sheared back the cliff face and opened tunnels which had been well inland. They’d provide an easy way into the catacombs—and if Vascay didn’t realize that, Garric didn’t intend to tell him.
An animal squealed. Garric jerked his head around, wondering if a hawk had stooped on a vole when his back was turned.
The victim was a vole, all right, a plump one as long as Garric’s outstretched hand, but it was in a spiderweb instead of a hawk’s talons. The vole’s hind legs and stubby tail flailed furiously, stretching but not breaking the sticky silk holding its forequarters.
The spider, her orange-and-black body the size of a woman’s fist, sidled toward the vole, holding a further loop of silk in her hind legs. She was preparing to bind her victim securely before stabbing her fangs into the warm body.
“Have any of you seen a lizard since we’ve been here?” Garric asked, watching the spider. Part of him wanted to crush her and free the vole, but nobody who’d kept a garden had much affection for voles, gophers, or any other rodent.
Besides, there were way too many spiders in this sunlit city of the dead for him to kill them all.
“Lizards?” said Vascay. “No, nor any snakes, praise the Lady. I didn’t want to show it on Serpent’s Isle when we were searching for your ring”—he nodded to Thalemos—“but I’d rather just about anything than deal with a snake.”
Garric looked at Vascay sharply. “You didn’t show it,” he said. “I didn’t have any idea you felt anything about snakes except not wanting one to bite you.”
Vascay smiled faintly. “Couldn’t let it show,” he said. “The Brethren were spooked enough as it was. If I’d let on I was scared…”
He shrugged. It struck Garric, not for the first time, that heroes were people who went on no matter how frightened they were; and that everybody was afraid of something.
Metron gave a racking cough and sat up, much as he had after Garric dragged him from the bottom of the pond. Thalemos was closest to the wizard, but Garric and Vascay reached him before the youth did.
Garric put an arm around Metron’s shoulders for support. The wizard tried to stand.
“Maybe you’d better rest for a moment, Master Metron,” Garric said.
“There’s no time for that!” Metron said peevishly. He braced his hands in the coarse soil and pushed, rising to all fours. “The Mistress has been speaking to me. We have very little time, maybe not enough time.”
He rose, wobbling and suddenly white-faced. Garric helped him get up, since that was what the wizard was determined to do.
“This is Wikedun?” Metron said. He gazed around the plain. “It is, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Thalemos. “I’ve read enough of the stones to be sure.”
“It’s Wikedun,” said Vascay, “but I want to know why we’re here, wizard. And how you propose to get us someplace else that we might want to be.”
“I said there was no time!” Metron snapped. “Here, there should be a number of animals caught in spiderwebs nearby. Gather up as many as you can find—”
As he spoke, he noticed the vole that’d been trapped moments before. The little mammal was swathed like a corpse for burial, but it still scratched vainly against the silk. The spider had backed to the center of its web without poisoning the helpless prisoner.
Metron bent and scooped up the vole in his left hand, tearing the broad web. The spider watched impassively.
“—and bring them to me,” he continued. “I’ll be on the edge of the cliff since there’s no beach here.”
Vascay didn’t react, but Garric felt his forehead furrow. Metron hadn’t looked over the escarpment to see whether there was a beach or not, but he was quite correct.
Metron walked with quick, mincing steps toward the edge, pausing once to snatch up another victim bound in spider silk. Thalemos started looking around; Vascay did also, though he put his javelin point through a fat-bodied spider before he robbed her web of what was probably a shrew from its small size.
“What’re you going to do with the animals, Master Metron?” Garric called. He already knew, knew what the wizard must have in mind. Garric knew also that he would have no part of it.
“I’m going to save our lives!” Metron said. “Get on with it! I’ll need many more.”
“Metron, there’s no good that ever came from blood magic!” Garric said.
The wizard ignored him, instead walking to the cliff edge and settling there. He held the vole in his left hand as he scribed on the soil with the athame in his right. The sapphire winked on his middle finger.
“Brethren!” Vascay bellowed. “Brethren!”