Spiderlight

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

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 fal...