Then it struck Niall that the troll had given him the most important clue when he said that Sathanas seemed possessed by a consuming hatred. Such a man could never believe that he was safe from the spiders.
Although Gerek was now dozing, Niall was impatient to hear more of the story.
“And did they spend the second winter by the lake?”
“Yes. But they were no longer alone. By that time they had brought women to Shadowland. The karvasid sent a raiding party to the city of Cibilla, and they saw women working in the fields. They kidnapped four of them and brought them back to Shadowland. And the following year, the first babies were born here.”
Niall asked: “And when did they raid the cliff dwellings?”
“Oh, that was a long time later — more than a century.”
“But if you already had women, why did you need more?”
“It was not women we needed, but men. By that time we were building this city, and needed workmen. The karvasid also felt that our population was not increasing fast enough — we needed settlers to farm the land below the Vale of Thanksgiving.”
“Was the karvasid no longer afraid of being discovered by the spiders?”
Typhon shook his head. “Not after he learned to control the weather. Many spider balloons were wrecked over the Gray Mountains, until they stopped coming. But of course, the karvasid’s greatest triumph was to make the spiders decide to build the Great Wall. They thought they were doing it for their own defense.” He chuckled. “They did not realize they were doing it for ours.”
At this point they were both startled by a loud snort from Gerek, who awakened with a sudden start. He rubbed his eyes. “Sorry — I’ve had a long and hard day.”
“Then you should go to bed.” Typhon turned to Niall and the captain. “Would you like Katia to show you to your rooms?”
“Thank you.” The idea of sleep was certainly marvelously alluring; this had been perhaps the most eventful day of his life.
Gerek said: “Let me show them.”
Typhon said good night, and Gerek led the way from the room. Although less spacious than Niall’s palace, having only two stories, Typhon’s villa was beautifully designed, with wide corridors lit by electric light; the stairway had a balustrade of fine wrought ironwork. There were also, Niall observed, many wall clocks.
Niall’s bedroom overlooked a garden at the rear of the house, in which there were small trees with a purple fruit that looked like eggplant.
Gerek showed Niall how to close the blind, pulling a lever that caused its slats to close and cut off the perpetual blue daylight, and how to turn off the electric light.
The captain was waiting in the doorway. Gerek said: “Your room is next door.”
The captain looked round Niall’s spacious room. “I would prefer to sleep here.”
“Of course.” Gerek seemed unsurprised. “If you’re sure you’ll be comfortable. I am two doors away, in case you need me.” He indicated the clock on the wall, which glowed with some form of internal light, and now showed half past ten. “I will wake you at half past seven — we have a long day tomorrow. And we have to be at the palace of the karvasid at seven in the evening.”
When Gerek had said good night, Niall went into the bathroom. It was as well appointed as anything in his own palace. He was tempted to take a bath, but suspected he would fall asleep in it, so contented himself with sponging himself in warm water.
The captain had moved a thick rug to a corner of the room, and was standing by it — Niall suspected he felt it would be impolite to retire first. Niall climbed into bed, and regretted for a moment that he was not alone, so he could close his eyes immediately. He forced himself to ask politely: “What do you think of Shadowland?”
The captain hesitated. “I have not yet made up my mind.”
Something in his tone — telepathic communication carried far more overtones than ordinary speech — made Niall suddenly alert.
“Why?”
“We arrived unannounced, yet I had the feeling that we were expected.”
Now Niall understood why the captain had preferred this room: he wanted a chance to talk to Niall. He said: “That is possible. It often occurred to me on our way here that we might be expected.”
The captain, who had continued standing, said: “But why?”
The telepathic comment, which would have been ambiguous if spoken aloud, implied many questions: why should the Magician want to lure Niall to Shadowland, how had he done it, and what was his ultimate intention?
Niall answered the last of these.
“Perhaps, as Typhon said, because it would suit him to make peace with us.”
“Then why did he not send ambassadors? Why, instead, did he send assassins to kill Skorbo?”
Niall had to agree that the captain had a point. He still had no idea why Skorbo had been killed. He said: “Perhaps he felt Skorbo had betrayed them in some way.” His inability to answer the question emphasized the lure of the soft pillow.
The captain sensed his tiredness. “I am sorry — you want to sleep.”
He obviously found these human beings peculiar, with their need to switch off consciousness like a light every sixteen hours or so. Spiders could remain in a state of semisleep for days or even weeks.
Niall smiled. “I promise I will think about what you say.” The captain lowered himself onto the rug, and bunched his legs underneath him.
“Perhaps I am mistaken. Perhaps they really want peace.”
Niall turned off the light. Lying in the darkness, he reflected that it surely made no difference whether they were expected or not. All that mattered was that the Magician wanted a peace treaty, and would cure Veig.
The thought made him glow with happiness, and the happiness carried him into sleep.
Niall woke from a deep sleep soon after six o’clock; in the spider city it would have been half an hour before dawn. The room was silent except for a faint humming made by the clock, and the sound of the captain’s breathing. Underneath the bottom of the blind, Niall could see the unchanging blue daylight of Shadowland.
As he lay there, he reflected on what the captain had said before they went to sleep. It was, of course, quite possible that their arrival had been expected. The Magician probably had spies in the spider city — that was why Niall had left by the underground route. But once he was out in the open, nothing could shelter him from prying eyes.
But could the captain be correct in suggesting that Niall had been deliberately lured to Shadowland?
He recreated in memory the scene in which Veig had cut the ball of his thumb with the ax. The overseer Dion had brought it to the palace, wrapped in sacking, from the garden where Skorbo had been struck down.
Of course, whoever left the ax behind in the garden would expect it to be taken to Niall. And if Veig had not been present, Niall himself would have unwrapped it. And, seeing its razor-sharp edge, would almost certainly have tested it, just as Veig did, with his thumb.
And so it would have been Niall himself who was stricken with the poison. And he certainly would have been in no position to make the journey to Shadowland.
So the captain must be wrong. There was no obvious way in which Niall could have been deliberately lured to Shadowland.
The wall clock was showing half past six. Niall decided to try to contact his mother. He sat up in bed, propped a pillow behind his back, and stilled his mind.
Nothing happened for several minutes, while he remained passive, as if listening. Then he became aware of his mother’s presence, as she would be aware of his.
She asked him: “Where are you?”
“In Shadowland, in its capital city.”
Her voice was as clear as if she was in the room.
“Are you safe?”
“Yes. I am a guest of the Magician.”
“What kind of a man is he?”
“I have not yet met him. I shall be introduced to him this evening.”
“When will you return?”
“Soon, I hope. How is Veig?”
“The same as before. He sleeps a lot.”
“Tell him I hope we can cure him soon.”
The closeness of the contact diminished; it required total freshness of mind to stay in touch. He only had time to say, “I will speak to you soon” when the connection was broken.
The captain was still sleeping. Niall tiptoed to the bathroom and ran himself a bath. It seemed strange that it should be so like a bathroom in the spider city, until he recalled that the Magician had come from the spider city, and that this place had been built in its image.