Shadowland. Spider World 06 by Colin Wilson

But Sephardus himself preferred the lookout room, for it was here that he could feel most strongly the force that waxed and waned at different seasons of the year, but which was always stronger here than anywhere else in the Valley.

What was this force? Sephardus had no idea, except that it was associated with the sun and the moon, and that it could fill him with an ecstatic energy that left him in no doubt that the destiny of man is to become a god.

And what was the force that Niall could now feel in Sephardus’s meditation chamber? Was it the spirit of the long-dead Sephardus? Almost certainly not; yet it was a part of Sephardus, which had been imprinted on these surroundings as he might have imprinted his spirit on the words of a manuscript.

Niall stood up and climbed the three steps to the window opening. Handholds had been carved into the walls. He found himself looking out on the way he had come in the past few hours. The eastern plain, with its range of low green mountains, lay straight ahead, while beyond the foothills to the south he could see the wooded country he had crossed with the chameleon men.

Drawing his head in through the window, he noticed an odd thing. When his head was back inside the room, his view of the outside world became notably clearer and sharper than when it was outside. He had failed to notice any difference when he had looked out, but as soon as he drew his head inside, it became obvious. In fact, as he stared at the mountains, they seemed to become much closer, as if he was looking through a magnifying lens.

This, Niall assumed, was due to some peculiarity of the energy vortex that made this place sacred. And its purpose was clear: if this tower was a lookout, then the power to magnify distant objects would be invaluable. Staring at a gap in the eastern mountains that looked like a pass, Niall could see it so clearly that he had no doubt that he would be able to see a solitary traveler as well as if he were only a few hundred yards away.

Niall stared out of the window for a long time, absorbing the knowledge of Sephardus, and of the men who had built the town on the other side of the river. Then, as he was about to climb down, his head full of the violence of Rolf the Vandal, he noticed a movement far across the eastern plain. He shook his head with incredulity; a large band of horsemen, perhaps a hundred strong, was emerging from the pass in the mountains and riding toward him. Incredulously, he stuck his head out of the window; the horsemen immediately vanished. As soon as he pulled his head inside the chamber, they reappeared, looking quite solid and normal. It was hard to believe that they were some kind of mirage.

He noticed something else. When he withdrew his head, and the warriors — probably led by Rolf the Vandal — reappeared, he felt something happen in his brain. It was almost as if there was a click as some mechanism was activated. It was clear suddenly that the horsemen were indeed a product of his brain — an imaginative creation somehow inspired by what he had learned in the meditation chamber. But it was imaginative only in the sense that the horsemen were not there at the present moment. He was looking into the past.

The insight overwhelmed him. It was the recognition that these warriors had once been alive, just as he was now. They had taken it for granted that the present moment was stable and real, just as he did. Were they then wrong?

The answer was obvious. They were not wrong; it was simply that their minds were too weak. Sephardus had seen the answer, aided by the strange force that permeated this sacred place. The human mind had to become strong enough to grasp the reality of other times and places.

For no particular reason, he found himself envisaging the wood where he had slept the night before. This was recent enough to be able to conjure it up in some detail. Then he used the trick he had learned a moment ago — causing something to click in his brain. He was immediately standing in the wood, and noticing that the grass was still flattened where he had lain. A linnet, startled by his sudden appearance, flew off in alarm.

The sensation was not unlike that of being behind the eyes of the raven. Although he seemed to be here, in the woodland clearing, he knew that his body was really in the tower overlooking the Valley of the Dead, and that the person who stood here was a simulacrum. When he looked down at his hands, he could see through them. It was not exactly that he was transparent, but that he seemed to be made of some kind of shimmering energy.

This, he realized, was why Sephardus had chosen the pinnacle; it was full of energies that gave him certain magical powers. The Earth was full of such energy vortices.

Because the wall was making his legs cold, Niall climbed down from the window, and went and sat on the bench; it felt safer than standing on a narrow step.

Now he envisaged the cave of the chameleon men, making the kind of mental effort he had just taught himself; immediately he was in the cave, in the strange semidarkness by which things are nevertheless clearly visible. The cave was empty — as it would be at midafternoon, when the chameleon men were “at work.” Niall was interested to note that the yellow bubbles of light — with hairy protuberances — were drifting down from the ceiling, and that they seemed more real than last time he had been here — perhaps because he himself was semitransparent.

Inevitably, being so close to the spider city, Niall thought of Veig. After the now-familiar mental effort, he found himself standing in Veig’s bedroom. It was empty, and it was only then that he remembered that his brother was in the basement room, between the abolia trees. He transferred himself there, but took care to envisage the far corner of the room; he had no desire to startle or alarm anyone.

His caution proved unnecessary; Veig was asleep and, to Niall’s relief, seemed to be sleeping peacefully and breathing normally. A few feet away, the maid Crestia sat with her back to him, sewing by the daylight that came in at the door.

Resisting the temptation to go and see his sisters, Niall transferred his attention back to his body, sitting on the stone bench. It seemed strange to be back in the tower room, like coming back from a long journey, or waking in the morning with the room full of sunlight. All fatigue had vanished, and he felt as fresh as when he set out that morning. It made him realize that fatigue is largely an attitude of mind.

He crossed to the other side of the room, remembering as he did so that the captain was waiting for him down below and that he ought to leave soon. Then, recalling the incredible patience of spiders, he dismissed the thought; it was more important to learn what he could in this magic chamber of Jan Sephardus.

The opposite window, as he expected, looked down on the Valley of the Dead — so called because of the tremendous disaster that had taken place there in the reign of the Death Lord Kasib the Warrior. Qisib the Wise had described to Niall how, when Kasib’s vast army had prepared to march into the Gray Mountains to make war on the Magician, a tremendous storm had caused the lake to burst its banks, and within less than a minute, Kasib’s army had been destroyed.

Niall had already looked down on the valley from the top of the cliff, but had not expected the view to be so breathtaking. This window, like the other, seemed to have a slightly magnifying effect, and to deepen colors. When he thrust his head out, this effect disappeared; the colors paled, and the view also became less impressive.

Directly below him was the eastern river, which flowed into the lake; this latter looked very deep and black. The Great Wall looked as if it had been built only yesterday — he almost expected to see armed warriors on guard. He leaned out to test how far this was due to the curious properties of the window; as soon as he did so, the rich coloring vanished, and the wall became weatherworn and eroded by the centuries.

He focused on one guard tower with a missing battlement like a broken tooth and fractured brickwork; when he withdrew his head into the room, the battlement was instantly restored and the brickwork became pristine.