Tallah

Sil dusted herself off and shook out her wet boot. She tried not to squirm at the mess. The pool tempted her for a wash.

“Is it safe to drink?” Vergil asked as he skirted the edge of the water, two steps away from it, sword in hand. “Or is something going to snap up from it?”

“Water is sacred. Water is life. We do not hunt by the water.”

“Handy that. Can I drink, Sil?”

Sweat dripped off her in ceaseless rivulets. More than drinking the water, Sil wanted to bathe in it. But somehow, she expected the spider wouldn’t take kindly to her fouling the watering hole.

“I’d rather you didn’t. You should still be good from earlier. This may be foul. Fancy shitting yourself?”

And that would be the kindest thing that may happen. She knew of at least five different water-borne parasites that caused irreversible necrosis of the stomach lining. No. Better to wait out the thirst, at least until they got back to the others, and she had her medicine ready again.

Fruits and berries lined the trees and shrubs around the water but looked too alien for Sil to trust eating them. Vergil swore he recognized some of the mushrooms, but she refused to let him eat them. Boy had a death wish.

“What now, spider? We keep going?”

“No. We have arrived. Now We wait.”

For what?

As if to answer her thoughts, something lowered from above. A bridge? Sculpted in the same kind of style as the architecture they’d seen around Grefe, it descended among the trees and settled softly on the edge of the pool.

“We prepared for you. Please hurry now. Before the false mother sees.”

It swayed underfoot and creaked as Sil settled her weight upon it. It stretched towards the ceiling, connecting to a large stalactite in the distance, high above the forest’s treeline.

No. Not above the forest at all. Halfway up she understood. Their destination hung above the abyss, a lone place much more austere than whatever else she’d seen of the city so far. It was the first place she’d seen in Grefe that wasn’t directly lit by one of its many crystal spires.

The forest beneath ended at a sheer cliff, the verdant green over-spilling into hanging creepers down that side of the city. Whatever the original design had been, it was clear the place had overgrown it.

“Hurry hurry.”

Hard to hurry up when the whole bridge swooned with every step. She held on tight to the peculiar side rail, but her stomach somersaulted at every tremor.

Once hanging above the abyss, she found her feet leaden and unwieldy. Looking down into the gaping black maw made it so much worse. Vergil at her back seemed to have the same issue as he resisted the spider’s urging.

“This may have been a bad idea,” he said, trying and failing to keep a light tone.

“It may be a terrific one,” Sil answered even as her stomach dropped with each sway. “It’s different. It’s a vantage point. Tallah will make for it.”

“And you know that for sure?”

Of course she didn’t. But she knew Tallah enough to expect this wouldn’t escape her notice.

The crystal light did not extend quite so far. They were climbing into the dark and she was certain she saw shapes moving across the end of the bridge. Some of them quite large.

Once you cut, make sure you cut to the bone or not at all. Mertle’s words of encouragement whenever she hesitated over something. May as well. Back there were those phenomenally large spiders waiting to pounce. Ahead, the beasts looked at least somewhat smaller.

Death by many bites instead of one… She cursed her traitorous imagination and everything it conjured up.

She hurried, one foot in front of the other, each a silent prayer to the Goddess that this wasn’t another mistake. They’d been swimming in those ever since wither, all culminating with this ill-fated journey. Somehow, she didn’t expect finding the flowers up there, but the spider had promised answers.

She promised and lied to herself those answers would be worth the short terrifying climb to a place hanging isolated above certain death, overrun by black, gnarled shapes and so many fangs.

A path opened for them at the top. Indeed, there were great black shapes waiting here, melted into the dark. Sil heard the bridge draw up behind her as Vergil stepped off. He didn’t have his sword out this time.

“If they wanted us dead, we’d be dead. Right?”

Dead by spider.

Or dead by fall.

“Pretty much. Let’s hope they’re as friendly as the thing on your shoulder.”

“We are not thing. We are of kin,” the spider complained.

Shapes moved away from their path as they stepped forward. The stalactite was much larger than seen from afar. Unlike the rest of the city, it hadn’t been hollowed out and left a gracious amalgamation of columns and statues. A balcony ringed the whole thing and, ahead, between the many guards, was a stone door. Light shone through cracks outlining the heavy-looking slab.

“Come. Touch nothing. All will be told as all is.”

In the deafening silence, the door gap widened with an anguished roar of rock scraping against rock, pushed out from inside by what proved to be two spiders bigger than the ones in the forest. Sil leaned on Vergil as the two retreated into some hidden space all their own and cleared the way forward.

Inside they were met by books and scrolls. Bookshelves had been sculpted out of the wall with barely enough room between the rows for a person to pass through. Sil estimated there to be close to a thousand ancient texts only as far as she could see by the soft white light of several gemstones.

Spider webs were strewn between books and scrolls, in a pattern so intricate that even other small spiders were having trouble navigating. Their guide looked to be one of the largest of the creatures. They were all scurrying about, darting in and out of half open books, building webs across spread scrolls.

A small room, just beyond the doors, was the only space without any white strands. It was filled with animal bones picked clean. Sil gagged at the smell.

“This used to be a library,” Vergil said, stating the only obvious thing about the arrangement.

“Yes, this is the Knowing. This is where We have become.”

Sil watched, amazed, the many links that connected the various books, and the many spiders that travelled the paths. There was a pattern to their connections, not to be read at a glance but there all the same.

In a flash of inspiration, she understood. They weren’t to touch the webs, not the books. Whatever had transformed the spiders, whatever they had learned from the builders of Grefe, they were storing it in that ever-expanding web.

There was power there. It sang in the air and strained in containment. She didn’t have Tallah’s sensitivity for illum but even she could feel the layers there and the twisting, churning effect produced by something so intricately built.

The spiders. All of them on the great web. Some as small as her hand. Some large and ungainly, perched atop shelves, wrapped in silk that they guided with patient care. Looked at from a certain perspective, she gained a semblance of understanding for what was happening.

“The webs are the actual library, Vergil. They’ve built a mind. Don’t touch any of it.”

She barely resisted the temptation herself, to reach out a hand, grab a strand and feel the flow of information. The spider bristled even at the twitch of her fingers.

Conceptually, it made sense and gave up an important piece to the puzzle of the spiders’ intelligence. If the winged creators of Grefe stored any kind of illum knowledge in tomes, and they likely did, then there would be illum residue that would bleed out with effects impossible to foresee. Even the libraries at the School of Healing faced the same problem. Pest control was important lest there be connections made where none should ever occur. Here the books were tied together, their power woven in a pattern as much physical as ethereal. Every movement on the web was deliberate, every destination known, every connection necessary. Like watching ideas scurrying about…

Now she regretted never caring for the working of the mind while back in training. This was the domain of the select Pentsatu calling, that strange melding of healers and metal minds, the true mind readers. Christina would probably have Tallah wetting herself in excitement if she ever got into this room.

“How much do you understand at a glance?” a new voice intruded on her amazement. Telepathic but carrying a weight of age that she hadn’t felt from the other spider.

A large specimen lowered itself into view from the height of the library, gracefully avoiding every piece of the web as it came nearly level with Sil’s head. Much larger than the librarians and even the black spiders that had attacked their group, though lacking the ferocity of those monsters.

It set itself between her and the library, settling down with its belly nearly flat on the stone floor. Gnarled like old tree bark, with long legs and a matte black body, flattened like a crab, it had her instincts howling in panic.

It was only the amazement of this place and the lingering aftershock of meeting the hunters in the forest that kept her from fainting as the creature raised unblinking black eyes to take her in fully. If anything, she felt a pang of pride for keeping upright.

“The Oldest, I assume?” Her voice frayed at the edges into a terrified whisper, but the spider didn’t make any move aside twitching palps at her.

“I am,” the voice answered back. Its mental sound and the sight attached a certain wizened description in her mind to the thing. Yes, old and likely older than she imagined.

“I? Not we?”

“I, yes. I am the last and oldest hatched of Mother. I am of no brood still living. I am I, and nothing more.”

Vergil lowered his burden to the floor and the critter moved closer to its much larger kin. Some discussion seemed to happen silently between them marked by leg movements and palp waving.

“I understand,” it addressed them again. “You have seen the dying hollow. You have seen the cruelty of the false mother.”

“I have no idea what I’ve seen or why. I hope you’ve brought us here for answers since this one kept insisting on getting help.” She toed at the smaller spider and it, in turn, looked up at her. What cuteness Vergil saw in the thing, she couldn’t fathom.

“Much to explain. Little time. The false mother has sent her hunter out of the creche. Must move quick. Quick.”

“I’m not taking a step until I understand what’s going on. I have two different stories already, and no idea which to believe or why.” She crossed her arms and steeled herself. “Best make sure whatever enlightenment you offer is more believable than what the others have teased. I am quite done being led by the nose.”

“Sil, wouldn’t it be wiser to just listen to the big, scary spider, instead of antagonising it?” Vergil had drawn closer and whispered in her ear.

“No. I want it to tell me why they think they deserve help. They’re monsters. I want to know what they’ve done to the girl after taking her. Why would we do anything to help beasts?”

The Oldest bristled at that and stamped its feet in annoyance.

“We are not beasts. We are not monsters,” it shot into their minds, its voice echoed by many smaller ones. Some of the critters stopped dead on the web. “Our guilt is that we were young when she came. We were curious and hungry for contact. None of the Knowings here name curiosity and youth as faults that deserve destruction. We ask for help to right our mistake.”

“And what mistake is that, precisely?” Sil held her ground even as myriad eyes crawled over her. “Why did you take her?”

“Because she shone. Because she was beautiful. She was a Maker, and she was so beautiful.”