When the Spider Lord spoke, his voice was cold and detached. “You will leave this city immediately and never return. But you will not be allowed to return by sea to your own land. No ship will carry a traitor who prefers dishonor to death. Now go.”
The spider dragged himself toward the door, every movement revealing a deadly fatigue. In this state, a child could have killed him.
The voice of the Spider Lord followed him. “You are now an outlaw, and all creatures are licensed to kill you. You must find your way back to your own land as best you can.”
The door swung open; Sidonia was standing on the other side. When the exhausted spider had crawled past her, she closed it again.
The Spider Lord now addressed Niall. “You have chosen to spare his life. That was your own decision, and I accept it. But the debt is now discharged.”
The implication was that, since Niall had spared the captain’s life, he should not complain if more human beings were killed. Niall signified his understanding by making a deep bow. The gesture was intended as a kind of apology, and the Spider Lord understood it as such. Then, followed by Dravig, Niall made his way to the door, walking cautiously to avoid slipping in the blood. Activated by some command that was beyond the range of Niall’s perceptions, Sidonia opened the door again, then closed it behind them. It was a relief to be in the clean air. The stench of dead spiders had brought Niall to the verge of being violently sick.
Sidonia was standing to attention, her face as blank as a doll’s; the shoulder-length blonde hair and the pink cheeks reinforced this impression. But behind the immobility, Niall could sense her nervousness as he stood looking at her.
“Sidonia, I want to talk to you.”
Her color deepened as he spoke; otherwise she gave no sign of having heard. He said: “I’d like you to come with me.”
As she followed him down the stairs he could sense her puzzlement; she could imagine no reason why he should want to talk to her, unless he found her attractive, and harbored the same desires as his brother. Dravig was also puzzled, but was too polite to attempt to read Niall’s thoughts.
Outside, the sunlight seemed dazzling. On the northern side of the square, he could see the captain moving down the main avenue toward the bridge that led to the slave quarter. Although his movements still betrayed fatigue, he was traveling swiftly, apparently determined to leave the city before someone took advantage of the license to kill.
Niall sat down on the sun-warmed balustrade, and gestured for Sidonia to take a seat beside him. She sat down awkwardly, as if it made her uncomfortable to cease to stand to attention. Dravig waited impassively; spiders had an odd ability to freeze, as if turned into statues.
Niall asked: “How well do you know this city?”
“Very well, I think.” She spoke in the clipped voice of one accustomed to giving commands.
“Do you know of a square, gray building, surrounded by green bushes and red and yellow flowers?” He reinforced the question with a telepathic image.
She looked down at the pavement, biting her lip, then shook her head. “No, lord.”
Niall could see she was telling the truth; yet he could also sense an element of doubt. Something about the image aroused a sense of familiarity.
“Are you quite sure?”
She flushed, thinking that he was doubting her word. Because she was so accustomed to spiders probing her mind, she had no idea that her privacy was being invaded.
“Yes, lord.”
“But have you any idea where it might be?”
She frowned. “There are many flowers in that part of the city.” She raised her hand and pointed to the east, along the avenue that ran past Niall’s palace.
“How far?”
“Perhaps two or three miles.”
Niall turned to Dravig.
“Do you know that part of the city?”
“No. My business has never taken me there. It is quite deserted.”
“Why is it deserted?”
“Because it is not suitable for human habitation.”
“I would like to go there. Will you come with me?”
The spider made a gesture of acquiescence. Niall turned back to Sidonia. “I would also like you to accompany me. Please come to the palace at two o’clock this afternoon.”
The sun now shone from a clear blue sky; the only unmelted snow lay in the shadows of trees and buildings, and the air was full of the rippling sound of water as it ran along the gutters and down the drains. The heat on their backs was so great that Niall and Simeon removed their cloaks and carried them over their arms; only Sidonia preferred the discomfort of the sun to the indignity of being improperly dressed. Dravig, as usual, seemed indifferent to the temperature.
Around his neck, Niall was wearing the thought mirror that had been presented to him on his first visit to the white tower. This was a device for coordinating vibrations from the brain, the heart, and the solar plexus, producing a concentration that intensified the perceptions. Since becoming ruler, Niall had lost the habit of using it; he found that it heightened the powers of the will at the expense of intuition. Today he was wearing it for a special purpose. On that first visit to the tower, he had used the thought mirror to enable him to memorize the map of the city. It had imprinted the map so powerfully on his memory circuits that now, with its aid, he was able to study it in detail merely by half-closing his eyes. The map showed the eastern part of the city extending to the lower slopes of the circle of hills that enclosed the spider city. But a large area was marked with the words “Industrial Estate,” a description that Niall found baffling, and upon which neither Simeon nor Dravig was able to throw any light. He was aware that industry meant the production and manufacture of goods, and his history lessons in the white tower had included the story of the Industrial Revolution; but in the part of the city they were now approaching, he could see no sign of soot-blackened factories or tall chimneys. The buildings seemed, if anything, to be lower than in the central part of the city.
The sandstone-colored road along which they were walking looked as new as if it had been built yesterday. In the second half of the twenty-first century, tarmac and concrete had given way to a compound of stone dust and plastic that hardened into a substance not unlike marble, but twice as durable. This is why the road, and the pavements on either side of it, showed no sign of wear. The houses, shops, and office buildings in this part of the city had also been built of new compounds, so that they were in a far better state of repair than those in the center. The total effect was neat and orderly, but oddly dreary.
A mile further on, commercial buildings gave way to small identical dwelling houses built of red brick, each standing in its own small garden. These had once been saved from monotony only by the elaborate patterns surrounding windows and doorways; now the gardens had turned into tangles of overgrown vegetation that sometimes covered the roofs; in one case, a tree had grown up through the center of the house, so its trunk had pushed its way through the slates, and its branches overshadowed the roof. Niall experienced an intense curiosity to explore one of these houses, to see whether their former inhabitants had left behind evidence about their daily lives; but he knew that only a few more hours of daylight remained.
After another mile or so, the scenery again changed dramatically. The first sign of this was a profusion of bright color which began half a mile ahead where the red brick houses left off. According to the map, this was the beginning of the industrial estate; but the buildings looked as if they had been designed for a carnival or recreation park. They were built of brightly colored bricks, many of them triangular or circular, and none of them was more than two stories high; the favorite color of the roofing tiles was a mottled shade of emerald green. Like the red brick houses, these were overgrown with vegetation; but this vegetation had a tropical luxuriance. The main plant was a kind of thick creeper, whose broad, glossy leaves were marbled with green and yellow, while the flowers were trumpet-shaped cups of scarlet. A smaller plant also had bright green leaves, round and glossy, and bright blue flowers. Palm trees, such as Niall had seen in the Delta, pushed their way above this mass of vegetation. The total effect was one of strange extravagance, as if it had been designed by a joker.