Shadowland. Spider World 06 by Colin Wilson

Conversation being impossible, since the children were playing a noisy game that involved chasing one another in circles, the troll took a wooden cup from a shelf and filled it from a black crystal jug that would have been too heavy for Niall to lift. The liquid foamed over the rim of the cup. The troll filled three more, handing one to his father and one to his wife, and offering the fourth to the captain, who declined it, making a gesture signifying thanks that Niall had often seen Dravig use.

The grandfather and the woman both drank deeply as soon as their cups were placed in their hands, and Niall, who had been hesitating, assuming they would all drink together, realized that trolls have no interest in such niceties as toasting one another’s health.

The taste made him gasp. It was as if he was now drinking a concentrated version of the water he had just tasted in the cave above. But this was full of bubbles, and tasted of some citrus fruit that was neither orange nor lemon. This was not water but a kind of wine, and the effect was almost as powerful as that of a certain colorless liquid that the chief wife of Bill Doggins distilled from mead. For a moment Niall was afraid that one mouthful had already made him drunk. But after a few seconds, during which the energy sang in his ears, it subsided and left him feeling only mildly exhilarated.

The children were both clamoring for a drink, and their father let them taste from his cup. This had the immediate effect of making them noisier than ever, until Niall wondered how much of this ear-shattering din their parents could stand.

At that point, the wife beckoned Niall and the captain to follow her. Through the doorway was a room that was obviously a kitchen, since there was a great loaf of bread on the table and a dish of apples the size of small footballs, as well as a bowl with a white mountain of curd that looked like goat cheese, and an assortment of huge sausages.

She led them on through another door, into a larder with anirnal carcasses hanging from a beam and joints of ham — there was a similar larder in Niall’s palace.

Since the children were now two rooms away, and it was possible to speak without shouting, she addressed Niall and the captain in her own language, which her pleasant voice made sound less guttural than her husband’s, and gestured toward the carcasses. She was obviously asking them what kind of meat they would like to eat. Niall felt his mouth watering at the sight of a large joint of ham, and pointed at this. But the spider again declined. The lady looked concerned, and asked a question that was obviously whether he was feeling well — she lacked the telepathic abilities of her husband, but her meaning was perfectly clear.

Niall looked inquiringly at the captain, and saw immediately why he had refused. The immense energy that filled this place was making him feel sick — merely tuning in to his vibration made Niall feel sick too. It was easy to understand what was wrong. Again the problem lay in the immensely powerful will of the death spiders. In most species, evolutionary development takes place over such a long period that qualities like instinct, will, and intelligence develop in parallel. In the spiders, the brutal war against human beings had led to a completely disproportionate development of willpower. This meant that the spider’s capacity to absorb and adjust to experience was limited in comparison to its capacity for dominance and self-discipline. The captain could be compared to a person with a small stomach, who finds that anything more than a limited quantity of food makes him feel sick. This, Niall realized, was why spiders were so prone to seasickness — they lacked the ability to adjust to the tossing of waves. And the waves of energy transmitted by the crystal were not unlike a stormy sea.

Niall tried to express this to the troll woman, but it was hard without telepathic contact. Looking up at this magnificent embodiment of womanliness towering five feet above him, with great rounded breasts that could hardly be contained in her blouse, Niall tried to tune in to her mind, while she, like someone leaning forward to hear better, tried to open herself to his thoughts.

The result was unexpected; it was exactly as if she had picked him up and kissed him — he was almost overwhelmed by the sheer power of her femininity. He had not experienced anything like it since the last time he had kissed Merlew.

As she understood what he was trying to convey, her face became serious. She looked down sympathetically at the spider, then reached out her hand and placed it on his head. The captain flinched, then became suddenly still. A moment later, as Niall again probed his mind, he found that the nausea had vanished; the woman had somehow soothed it away.

When once more she gestured to the captain to choose food, he indicated a joint of uncooked beef. She removed this from its metal hook, then with the beef joint in one hand and the ham in the other, smiling her gap-toothed smile, she led them back to the kitchen.

Her husband was standing at the table and contemplating the food with the interest of the famished. His wife placed the joints on the table and spoke in her own language; her husband translated for her.

“Do you prefer it hot or cold?”

“Hot, please,” said Niall, wondering at the same time how she proposed to cook it in a kitchen that did not appear to have an oven.

The captain said he would prefer his meat cold. Niall had expected that — he had never seen a spider eat anything hot.

The troll asked Niall: “Where is the. . .” It sounded like “denkuta,” but since it was accompanied by an image of the globe, Niall understood what he meant, and went to fetch it. He noticed, as he took it from the pack, that it was making his fingers tingle, obviously responding to the energy that filled the cave.

The woman took it in both hands with admiration, turned it carefully against the light, and placed it close to her ear. She said something in her own language, and her husband translated: “She says it looks like the work of Salgrimas, who was the most famous of our craftsmen.”

The woman asked Niall — again it was easy to read her thoughts — “Where did you find it?”

He conveyed to her mind a picture of the cave where they had been trapped.

She said: “Ah, that is what the karvasid was looking for.”

“The karvasid?”

The troll said: “It means the Master or the Great One. He has made many attempts to find it.”

This casual mention of the Magician made Niall’s scalp prickle. He asked: “Do you know anything about the master of Shadowland?”

The troll said: “Yes. But my father knows more.”

Niall had to suppress a chuckle of delight.

He was puzzled to see that the woman was slicing open the ham joint, cutting round the bone to make a pocket, and forcing the globe into it. Her husband then placed both hands on the table, leaned over the joint, and stared at it as if looking for something. A moment later there was a hissing noise, like a sizzling frying pan, and a column of steam rose from the cut in the joint. A few minutes later there was the unmistakable smell of roasting meat.

They returned to the other room. There the children had subsided enough to make conversation possible, although the youngest continued to run back and forth, making roaring and hissing noises.

Niall asked the troll: “What game is he playing?”

“He is being a dragon.”

Niall was startled: “Has he seen a dragon?”

“No. But we tell him stories.”

It struck Niall that, with the telepathic abilities of the trolls, their children would receive a more realistic and fearsome image of a dragon than any human child could receive from a story book.

The old man in the corner spoke for the first time.

“My grandfather saw a dragon.”

His ability to communicate telepathically was as strong as his son’s. Niall asked: “Was that a long time ago?”

The troll nodded, and the glance of his eyes was so powerful that Niall felt like dropping his own gaze. But he sensed that this ancient troll was friendly.

“A long time. Trolls live more than twenty times as long as humans, so this was more than a hundred generations ago.”

A quick mental calculation told Niall that he was speaking of about three thousand years.

“Did they breathe fire?”

“No, but their breath was so hot that it felt like fire.” His thought conveyed far more than his words said. He meant that just as an adult produces more body heat than a child, so these great creatures produced enough heat in proportion to their vast bulk to make their breath as hot as a furnace.