Spiderlight

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

“A tooth of the great mother, the prophecy says,” Dion said carefully. “And those who would come to Darvezian must do so by the spider’s path. So we are here, because Darvezian swallows souls and corrupts minds and twists the very land, and we must brave any chance to bring him down. A fang, and a map. Do you understand me?”

Penthos tutted. “Magic knows not light or darkness. It is the Power Elemental, that predates any such concerns,” he told her archly, somewhat sabotaged by the smug smirk that always crept onto his face when he was pontificating. “Besides, what need we fear the Dark, when we have you to show us the way to the Light?” For a moment he was trying on a new expression as he looked on her, that was something almost as grotesque as his experimental subject, and that she could not in any way read.

When Dion considered the world, her chief question was, Is this of Light or Dark? Penthos’s main interest was usually, Is this flammable?

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.

However resistant Nth might be to understanding the world of Man, it was that revelation—of the fallibility of even powerful Men—that made him realize how important it was that he make the effort to comprehend.

The one time he had tried to lead the fellowship across country, long before the Wood of the Spiders, he had managed to guide them into the same nest of troll-men three times, to the exasperation of all concerned, not least the troll-men, who had grown increasingly jaded about being set on fire and having their limbs hacked off.

Behind them all, Penthos stood with the utterly serene expression of a man who will set things on fire the moment the word is given. Lief thought about being in an enclosed space full of monks on fire. It seemed to offer few advantages to the nonincendiary version, and several drawbacks. He hoped that Dion was keeping the magician on a tight leash.

Enth kept his own counsel, mostly, although he had one question that she could not answer, but filed away for later use. When he intruded into the edge of her vision unexpectedly he still made her skin crawl, but it was old habit. When she caught the reins of her feelings, she could look on his silent, crouching form and see something more of a blank slate, perhaps even someone with virtues as a traveling companion. He was quiet, after all, and he was obedient, and he was strong. She had known dogs who had no more to recommend them. And that meant he was already a step up from Harathes.

Cyrene stood, clutching at the wall for balance. “Harathes, this is the last chance for a great many things ‘before the Dark.’ It’s the last chance for me to streak naked through the halls of Cad Nereg or to eat human flesh or to lift up Penthos’s robe and see what he wears underneath it, none of which I have any inclination to do. It is also the last chance ‘before the Dark’ for me to kick you repeatedly in the groin until your balls merge with your brain physically as well as metaphorically. So piss off.”

But abruptly there was a rush of sentiment in her, a burst dam of it that surged through her: not love, not even affection, but she felt sorry for him. She felt so sorry for him, for aiming his dart at someone as unfit and wretched as her. “When our work is done,” she told him, even though the wiser part of her was fighting to trammel the words up, “who knows what may happen? I may not even be allowed to hold my office then. I am a murderer, and I have struck down another priest of the Light. When this is done, who knows?” She saw him take it as the ray of hope it was not, and she wanted to call it back, the stupid thing she had just said. And it came to her, This is my penance: if the Potentate would not punish her, then she would punish herself, and by extension those around her.

“Then . . . then I don’t know what we do. I fear that, if we go onward with the creature, we will be irrevocably lost to virtue. If indeed that has not already happened.”

“It is not a person. It is a thing, an animal at best, a monster at worst, a creature touched by the Dark. It is ours to destroy or use as we see fit. I am a man, a child of the Light. It is my right to destroy this abomination if it poses a danger to me, or to any other human being. It has no such rights to life.”

“It’s not there because he’s not human!” Dion said sharply. “He’s a creature of Darkness. He’s a spider, for the Light’s sake.” “But he’s not, not anymore,” Cyrene told her soberly. “What Penthos started, we’ve all continued. When you look at him now, you see all the pieces of human that we’ve sewn onto him.” It was, Dion thought, a profoundly horrible metaphor. “Then he’s like one of those insect things, that builds itself a house of stones and leaves to hide in. But it’s still the insect underneath. It’s just a blind, so that it can fool its prey.”

How can we ever succeed, when we are so mired in wrong?

She let the scouts go on with their own mission, blessing them with a touch of the Light, and Nth felt a spark of pain in him every time she did it. It raised in him all his scrabbling, resentful fear of her—of all of them, their entire kind and their vaunted Armes, too. And yet, it hurt him more now. Because it was another wall just like all the walls that Penthos had placed about him. It was a boundary he could not cross. It marked him out as unclean, filthy vermin, and nothing he could ever do would rub that out. He was starting to see himself through their eyes. He wished, he devoutly wished, that he could unlearn everything they had ever taught him. It had been simpler when he had just been their prisoner.

And at the same time, he felt a shiver of loss, at the thought that he might one day escape from that world altogether, and return to this shape for real. All those complexities and stupidities the humans practiced . . . he would not miss them, no. The very thought was . . . was human. And yet his.

And yet he tried to find hope. Hope was not a solely human thing; even a spider can dream of tomorrow. What was building a web but a gustatory expression of hope?

And he couldn’t do it. He could not rid himself of his knowledge of them. He could not play out that scenario in his mind without touching on the human feelings they had taught him. He could not picture Lief paralyzed, eyes wide with panic, and think, Meat.

Were all beings just a thin skin of volition floating on a sea of drives and directives they could not control?

Dion found herself nodding. Of course the monsters did not value their young. The thought was almost reassuring. It was just one more ready and convenient way to find them sufficiently alien as to be below her consideration.

“They were stupid!” he got out through clenched fangs. “Stupid and blind and limited! And I tried to tell them! I said everything I could to show how murderous and merciless and terrible you—we—you are! But they thought they knew best. They had to challenge you. They dared encroach on the world of humanity. And that means death. I know that now. It always means death.”

“Everything in here is evil,” Harathes stated flatly. “Even the waiters?” “What, you think only murderers and monsters can be evil? Darkness is Darkness.”

The sullied feelings she was penning up now were not because she had used Enth as a tool. She did not like what she had seen, through Enth’s eyes. The moral certainty of the Light’s crusading methods was an easy thing to vouch for, when you only saw it from the side that held the sword and the disc.

I have been all your worst nightmares and terrorized the world; I have been your most glorious heroes, and saved it once again. History is a book of my victims, and a litany of my praise.”

“It should have worked. I’d thought it all through. I was going to save the world. I gave you brutal apes everything you needed for paradise. And you wasted it, you stupid, ignorant barbarians.”

And there I was, immortal, powerful beyond the dreams of an archmage, and sick of you mewling, backstabbing, ungrateful maggots. And bored. After the first hundred years you can’t imagine how bored. And when did the first Dark Lord show his face? Yes, you at the back in the mail!” “About . . . a hundred years after Armes brought the Light,” muttered Harathes sourly. “First prize,” the man-god applauded. “You’re helpful. I’ll enjoy wearing your face. I bet you get all the girls, too.”

Nothing had changed. And in all this time, nothing ever has. There is no hope for humanity, or anyone or anything. There’s just me, forever and forever. I knew then that I might as well just amuse myself. Dark, Light, Light, Dark, over and over.”

“But you know what, you hero types, you do believe. You go through life doing terrible, terrible things to each other, and to everything else, but you somehow still believe that you’re right. You come here full of the joys of the Light, practically singing with self-righteous fervor.

Being born to Light or Dark does not make you good or bad. That is the lie that Armes gave us, not that we can be good in the first place.”