Shadowland. Spider World 06 by Colin Wilson

When Niall returned the captain was awake. Niall asked: “Are you hungry?” and the answer came back in the form of a feeling rather than words; it conveyed: “Yes, very.”

Niall opened the blinds, and looked out at the soft blue daylight. Now he could understand why there were so many clocks in Shadowland. In the world above, life was governed by the seasons, by night and day. Here it would be all too easy to lose count of time, and drift into a kind of perpetual present.

As he stood there, a woman came into the garden with a basket under her arm, and began picking some of the eggplantlike fruit. She had her back to Niall, and her movements were so graceful as she bent to put the fruit in the basket that Niall watched them with pleasure. As she turned sideways, he saw that she had a pretty figure and well-shaped breasts. Her hair was fashioned into a bun on the back of her head. Then she turned toward him, and her face became fully visible. Niall saw, to his surprise, that it was the face of an old woman, with wrinkled cheeks. At that moment she became aware of Niall’s gaze, and smiled up at him. Her mouth had only three teeth. The odd thing was that her smile was still charming; moreover, despite the wrinkled cheeks, Niall still found her oddly attractive.

A few minutes later, her basket half full of fruit, she went back indoors, having first made a little curtsy to Niall.

He was intrigued. Ever since arriving in the spider city a year ago, he had become accustomed to pretty girls and attractive women. When he lived in the desert, Niall would have found it impossible to believe that he would have failed to respond to most of them. Yet because his telepathic abilities meant that he was aware of their minds as well as their bodies, he found most of them uninteresting. They had been bred for physical attractiveness, not for intelligence or vitality. He enjoyed being pampered by Nephtys and Jarita, having them wash him when he took a bath, then dry him and rub his body with oil. Sometimes Jarita looked up into his face and he knew she wanted to be kissed; but he felt that this was a borderline that he was unwilling to cross, for it would have soon reached the ears of the other maidservants — Jarita would have made sure of that — and created discord. So unlike Veig, for whom every woman was a mystery that filled him with longing, Niall preferred to preserve a delicate balance, and to absorb from the women a subtle essence, like the scent of a flower.

So it was strange that, in this city of the Magician, his response to women was becoming more like Veig’s. Was it simply that he was missing the daily contact with the girls of his entourage? Or was it, like the mystery of the colors and scents, another sign of the Magician’s power to create illusions?

There was a knock on the door. Gerek called: “Ready?”

The breakfast had already been set out on the table, and there was a jug of some steaming liquid. At the side of Niall’s plate was a golden armband containing a clock.

Gerek said: “Typhon wishes you to accept this gift.”

This was the thought that had flashed into Niall’s mind as he saw the armband, and he was delighted that he was correct.

“Wonderful! A clock to wear on my wrist!”

“They are called watches.”

He clasped it on his forearm, noting that the time was a quarter to eight. He had been in Typhon’s house precisely twelve hours.

In the corner of the room, on another table, there was a plate full of slices of red meat, which Niall guessed was intended for the captain’s breakfast.

Gerek said: “Typhon has already gone out. We shall see him later. Please help yourselves to breakfast.”

Niall experienced a tingle of excitement at the thought that, even now, Typhon might be speaking to the Magician about Veig.

Katia poured liquid from the jug into glasses; it was red, and smelled of raspberries. Niall had a strong intuitive sense that she found him attractive; she often smiled at him, and as she leaned over him to pour, her breast brushed his temple, and Niall experienced a sudden glow of sensuous warmth. But at close quarters he observed something that struck him as odd; the bare skin of her arm was not smooth, like that of Nephtys or Jarita, but covered in fine wrinkles. He found himself wondering if this was due to lack of sunlight.

The food was simple: fruit, fish, sliced meat, and a dark brown bread in which Niall detected the now familiar taste of the flour made from fungus. There was even a kind of yellow jam made from the acidic fruit Niall had tasted.

Standing in front of his own table in the corner, the captain was eating with the total absorption that spiders always displayed at meals. But he was picking up the meat with his tarsal claw rather than setting the plate down on the floor in the manner Niall knew he would have preferred. He drank by lifting an earthenware vessel of water in both claws.

Niall asked: “What are your plans for today?”

“To show you our city. And then, if you don’t mind a long walk, to see the Vale of Thanksgiving.”

“I would like to.” Niall sensed that this had a special meaning for the inhabitants of Shadowland.

Niall ate a good breakfast, and washed it down with the warm raspberry drink, which was unsweetened; his week of travel had given him a powerful appetite.

As they left the room, Gerek said: “Katia suggests that you leave your tunic behind and let her wash it for you. You can borrow one of mine.”

Niall accepted the offer gratefully; his own tunic had become grubby and wrinkled.

When they emerged from Typhon’s villa, a cart drawn by two gelbs was standing at the bottom of the steps. The animals stood silent and unmoving. Gerek turned to the captain.

“There is room if you would like to ride.”

The spider said drily: “I would look ridiculous.” This was the first time Niall had seen him display a sense of humor.

Gerek took the reins, and Niall sat in a well-padded seat beside him. As the cart drove off down the multicolored avenue, he experienced the satisfaction of a child on holiday. The gelbs trotted at about twice a man’s walking pace, so the spider had no difficulty in keeping up with them.

Periodically, jets of the sweet-smelling steam blasted out of the ground, but the animals did not flinch. They remained indifferent even when lightning struck a conical tower as they passed it, and they were showered with fragments of colored stone. Niall tasted one of these; it was sweet, and had a peppermint flavor. But it did not dissolve in his mouth, and he finally spat it out. The taste, it seemed, was another of the Magician’s illusions.

He asked Gerek: “What is the purpose of these towers?”

“The karvasid built them as lightning conductors. They also collect electricity.”

This struck Niall as a novel idea. He had never thought of electricity being collected like rainwater.

He also noted that Gerek had said he “built them,” as if the Magician had constructed them personally.

“But why do they have colored stripes?”

Gerek smiled. “To lift the spirits of our citizens.”

As they trotted silently along the avenue — the hooves of gelbs made almost no sound — they saw a few more carts drawn by gelbs and, farther along, a strange device that Niall had never encountered before: a single large wheel with someone balancing astride it and riding it along the flat surface. Niall had never even encountered a cycle, much less a bicycle with only one wheel.

Clearly, the citizens needed some form of transport to cover these enormous distances. Niall asked: “Why is there so much space in your city?”

“The karvasid feels that it looks more attractive. But we have not yet reached the living quarters.”

Ten minutes later, the scenery began to change. The conical towers came to an end, and there were rows of wooden houses, with alleyways in between them. These alleyways were at right angles to the road, and were bounded on either side by a kind of wooden wall, behind which were brown two-story houses with flat roofs.

They began to encounter more of the one-wheel cycles, and carts drawn by gelbs — usually one to a cart. There were also men and women who looked at first glance very like the people who could be seen around the spider city, except for their bright-colored garments. They evidently found Niall and the captain objects of curiosity, and stared at them intently.