Sathanas the Fourth was something of an adventurer, who had met the monk Sephardus, and was reputed to have visited the spider city in the guise of a slave. The globe revealed that he had speculated about the possibility of making peace with the spiders, but concluded that it would be too dangerous.
At this point, Niall’s fatigue was beginning to undermine his concentration, and when he looked up at the wall clock, he realized that he was already late for his appointment with the Citizens’ Committee, and hastened to wrap the globe in a soft leather duster, which he stowed in his pocket.
He need not have hurried. The Citizens’ Committee had been comfortably installed in the Committee Room in the palace, where a large meal had been prepared on Typhon’s instructions. Most of them were so tired after the revels of the previous night that some were dozing in armchairs when Niall arrived. But the presence of their new ruler revived them, and lunch was followed by a lively discussion that lasted until four in the afternoon.
There was an interesting diversion from their main business. The captain, as usual, had been placed in a separate room. Niall had just started to eat a mushroom tart when a maidservant whispered that the captain wanted to speak to him. Niall went next door and found a room with several large birdcages containing live birds, which had been provided for the spider’s lunch. One contained a bustard, another several magpies, starlings, and other birds, and a third larks and sparrows. Niall felt sorry for the birds, but knew they would be paralyzed before the spider ate them.
When the spider indicated the second cage, Niall peered into it and recognized the raven, looking cowed and terrified, crouching on the floor. As soon as Niall opened the cage it recognized him, and perched on his outstretched fingers, the sharp claws causing him to wince. Niall raised his arm and let it walk onto his shoulder. There it remained throughout the meal, by which time it had gained the confidence to walk down onto the table, and it wandered around inspecting the plates of the guests and eating leftovers. Selena had no difficulty coaxing it onto her shoulder, where it gently took the lobe of her ear in its beak and tweaked it.
Everyone found the bird fascinating — Niall learned later that all pets were forbidden in Shadowland — and when it climbed back onto Niall’s shoulder, it seemed perceptibly heavier.
After lunch, the discussion centered on the problem that most deeply preoccupied them: what freedom meant to them, and how it might best be used. It soon became clear that most of them would have liked to move to the spider city immediately. Niall did not confide to them his misgivings about how the spiders might react to the arrival of thousands or so human guests, but after granting general permission to travel to the surface, went on to suggest that they should wait at least until the spring.
Seeing their disappointment, he relented, and invited the Citizens’ Committee to visit Korsh at some time during the next month. This was welcomed with delight, and Niall became clearly aware of something he had so far only half registered: that when a group of Shadowlanders came together, their telepathic abilities continually changed their mood. Although telepathic contact was person-to-person and not collective, as with the spiders, their feelings and emotions were transmitted by a process of induction; so when they became downcast — as when Niall told them they would have to wait till spring — the room was filled with dejection, whereas as soon as he suggested that the visit should take place next month, the atmosphere sparkled with elation.
This, Niall realized, presaged an evolutionary change. Within a few generations, everyone in Shadowland would experience collective consciousness.
Typhon arrived at four o’clock, and the whole assembly stood up to salute him. Niall was not sorry to leave, for the Citizens’ Committee had plunged into an ideological argument about whether, now that the Magician was dead, all the old laws should be rescinded and citizens allowed to do as they liked, or whether the old laws should be left in force for the time being. Most of the women took the latter position, while Major Baltiger and most of the men were in favor of total freedom. As the head of his own Town Council in the spider city, Niall had heard it all before, and knew that if they decided to abolish all the laws, they would probably have to reinstate most of them in six months. But he knew it would be pointless to interfere; they had to learn for themselves.
In the courtyard, the raven flew off his shoulder and soared up to the roof. Niall could sense that it had had enough of behaving like a tame bird.
They now moved to Typhon’s office, which was on the top story of the palace, and Niall was interested to see that there was an elevator — the only one he had ever been in, except for the one in the white tower. Why, he wondered, had the Magician never installed one in his own tower? Then he saw the answer. The Magician’s laboratory had been built in the early years of Shadowland, long before Typhon’s wing of the palace, and had remained unaltered.
The view from Typhon’s office was even finer than from the laboratory, for it had two windows, one of which looked due north. This reminded Niall to tell Typhon that they would be departing from the Vale of Thanksgiving the following afternoon, and should therefore leave early. The moment they left the council chamber, Niall had asked about the dynasty of karvasids. Typhon explained that his own family had been in their service since the first Sathanas. During his final years, that first karvasid had become increasingly paranoid, and refused direct contact with everyone except his prefect; Typhon’s ancestor had even had to taste his master’s food and drink. From that time on, the prefects were the only persons allowed direct contact with the karvasids. In effect, the karvasids became monks — at least, in all but one respect: they kept a harem of concubines in a closed wing of the palace.
The ninth karvasid, the one who had created the gallery of freaks and the superbrain called Rufio, had learned the techniques of mind-control through vibrations, and from then on, there had been no problem in convincing the inhabitants of Shadowland that their ruler was immortal and infallible.
Niall and Typhon had many things to discuss before they prepared to leave for Korsh. Everyone in Shadowland, from the mine workers to the aristocrats of Freydig, would be demanding change. For example, the workers on the second level were already suggesting that Drusco, the overseer who had been sentenced to flogging — and who had been released, together with all the other prisoners in the dungeons — should be appointed their leader and representative, and made a member of Niall’s privy council; this, and dozens of other such matters would have to be handled by Gerek until Typhon’s return.
So the day passed — not in celebration, as with most inhabitants of Shadowland, but in discussion about organizational details. This continued in the evening when Gerek returned from his day at the second level. He described how the workers had found it almost impossible to believe that the karvasid was dead, and were therefore more subdued in their response than the inhabitants of the city. But by the time Gerek had left at six o’clock, the news had sunk in, and the workers had been preparing for a long night of celebration.
During supper, Gerek raised an interesting question: the future agriculture of Shadowland. The agricultural workers had developed a remarkably efficient system for keeping their fellows supplied with vegetables and fruit. These workers were much envied by everyone in Shadowland for their access to the open air, and there was much competition to join them.
The envy was based on a misconception, for the truth was that for eight months of every year they lived arduous and difficult lives in an enclave close to the northern exit from Shadowland, and had to walk to the surface every day and down again in the evening, carrying their produce on their backs in baskets. The remaining four months of the year they spent among the factory hands on the second level, working at menial jobs.
That afternoon, Gerek had been speaking to their representative, who wanted to transfer their underground enclave to the Vale of Thanksgiving, and suggested building a road that would run all the way from the Vale to the city. This could be done during the winter months, when there was no work aboveground. Gerek was acute enough to see that this would take far more than a single winter, and a greater force than two hundred laborers, and wanted to ask Niall about the possibility of transporting slaves from the spider city. Typhon agreed that this was one of the matters he would look into during his trip there.
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