Of course, this was not entirely true — otherwise each individual spider would have been overwhelmed by the input of millions of telepathic signals from his fellows. The fact remained that every spider was aware of a kind of vague, blurred mass that was the group mind of all the spiders in the world. And the strength of the spider will came from the immense power of this collective mind.
By comparison, each human lived alone in a kind of prison cell. The sense of connection with his or her fellows was comparatively weak. This is why the human will was so feeble, and why humans became so easily bored. To maintain a sense of purpose, human beings needed to find the present moment interesting and exciting. And that is because they lacked a deeper sense of their own existence.
What was happening to Niall, he realized, was that he was changing into a different kind of human being, a type that could actually share the minds of other beings, as well as spiders and chameleon men. Every day he became more conscious of the change that was gradually taking place.
As he was beginning to fall asleep, he was aroused by a bird that flew down low over the fire. All he could see as it vanished into the darkness was a blur of two white spots, as if it was being trailed by two smaller birds. Then, as it came back again, he saw that the trailing spots were at the end of immensely long feathers that sprouted from the tip of the wing like feather dusters. Simeon had once pointed out the bird to him as they walked through the darkness to the city of the bombardier beetles; it was called a nightjar.
As it came back for a third time, flying as silently as an owl, the captain knocked it to the ground with a blow of his will. Curious to look more closely at the wing feathers, Niall said: “Excuse me.”
As he bent down over the twitching bird, which was about the size of a swallow, he noticed something that made him peer more closely. Around one of the legs, just above the foot, there was a tiny black circlet made of some glossy material. This was not a wild bird, but one that had been tagged by its owner. For a moment Niall thought that it might have come from the city of the bombardier beetles, where a few of the humans kept pet birds — Doggins’ children even had a pigeon loft in the garden. Then he reflected that no one would keep a nocturnal bird as a pet, and that, moreover, the city was more than a hundred miles away.
The bird had stopped moving, and was obviously dead.
Niall asked: “Why did you kill it?”
“I knew there was something wrong with it.”
Niall pointed at the black circlet. “I think it is a spy.”
The two looked at one another, and since each could read the other’s mind, further comment was unnecessary.
Niall said finally: “So he may be expecting us.”
“Except,” said the captain, “that the bird is dead.”
It was a point worth considering. But the Magician probably had many spies.
The captain, who had overheard the thought, said: “Then he will be expecting us?”
“Probably.”
“But you still intend to go?”
Niall said: “I have no alternative. My brother is infected with a deadly disease. I have to try and save him.”
“Do you have any plan?”
“No. I am hoping for help from the goddess.”
In using this phrase, Niall had only meant something like the human expression, “I am crossing my fingers.” But he saw that the spider had taken him literally, and felt that Niall had answered his question.
Niall realized there was no point in trying to explain. It would have been pointless to tell the captain that he was traveling to Shadowland without knowing how to get there, or what he intended to do when he got there. The truth was that if the Magician was already forewarned of his approach, then he was walking into a trap. Yet he could see no alternative. His brother’s life was at stake, and there seemed to be no other way.
Before climbing into the sleeping bag, he picked it up by the bottom corners and shook it vigorously to remove more of the white powder left by the slime-creature. As he did so, his fingers encountered something hard inside the cloth; he used the flashlight to look more closely. There was a tiny retractable tube sealed by a plug, which he quickly recognized as a mouthpiece; when he blew into it, the bottom of the bag inflated into a series of small balloonlike patches which, when he lay down, made him feel he was lying on a soft mattress.
Niall accepted this discovery as a good omen, and allowed it to tranquilize the slight unease he had been feeling about the incident of the nightjar. But as he closed his eyes, he remembered to exercise the discipline taught him by the chameleon men, and to concentrate his consciousness as sleep overtook him. Once again there was a sense of flying into a mist of dream images that blended with the sound of the wind in the trees.
He woke up in the dark, sleepy and relaxed, and lay there contentedly listening to the sounds of waves on the lake shore. A few bright stars showed through the canopy of leaves overhead. A faint breeze from the direction of the lake still caused an occasional red glow among the ashes of the fire, from which Niall deduced that he had been asleep for only about an hour.
At this point he felt the unmistakable signs of someone trying to probe his mind. Whoever this was obviously assumed he was asleep, so he remained totally passive. If it was the captain, Niall would be disappointed, for he thought they had established an element of trust. Then a gust of wind blew a dying fragment into a red glow that became, for a few seconds, a flicker of yellow flame, and he saw that the captain was fast asleep, his legs bunched underneath him.
Unless there was some enemy hidden in the darkness, he was left with only one possible conclusion: that it was the Magician himself. But why? What could he gain by probing Niall’s mind when he was asleep?
Still wondering, he sank back into sleep.
When he woke up, it was dawn, and there was no sign of the captain. On the far side of the fire, a woodcock was exploring the dead leaves with its long beak. Moments later it collapsed, and the captain pounced on it from the undergrowth. Perhaps to avoid shocking Niall’s sensibility, he carried it out of sight.
Niall sat up, climbed out of the sleeping bag into the cold air, and pulled out the plug to deflate it. He made his way down to the lake through the dew-soaked grass, and found a place where the shore sloped gently into the water. There he knelt down to splash water on his face. He found it so invigorating that he turned the thought mirror toward his chest and then, fortified by a surge of energy, stripped off his clothes and walked up to his armpits in the still water. He knew there was no danger Of predators like the slime-creature — otherwise the lake would not have been full of fish. A large brown trout glided past his chest, obviously unafraid, causing Niall to reflect that in this quiet place, with its peaceful sky and autumnal trees reflected in the still water, there must be so few predators that wild creatures had no idea that man is dangerous.
At that point he tripped over a dead branch that was sunk in the mud, and his head plunged below the water, which filled his mouth and nostrils. When he had blinked it out of his eyes, he saw the captain regarding him from the shelter of the trees, and sensed quite clearly his feeling that human beings must be mad to immerse themselves voluntarily in this suffocating liquid. At the same time, Niall had a glimpse of why land spiders disliked water. In the remote past it had soaked their webs and made it more difficult to catch insects, in addition to which, great drops of water from leaves, almost as big as the spider itself, threatened to wash them away.
Back on land, he pulled his tunic over his wet hair and slipped his feet into his sandals. When the captain asked him if he would like to eat another fish, Niall declined politely; there was no time to light a fire. He wanted to reach the Valley of the Dead before nightfall.
He ate his breakfast of crisp-bread with his back propped against a tree and his legs inside the sleeping bag, and washed down the food with spring water. The nightjar, he noticed, was still lying by the ashes of the fire — its scrawny body evidently held no interest for the captain, whose belly now sagged with the weight of half a dozen woodcocks.