“Perhaps he wasn’t lying. Perhaps someone removed the balloon so we wouldn’t know exactly where he crashed.”
“The magician?”
“That seems possible.”
The spider instantly understood the implication. “You believe that Skorbo was a traitor?”
“I believe Skorbo may have fallen into the hands of the magician. Did he ever explain what happened to him during the period after he crashed?”
“He said that he was injured, and took shelter until the storm passed. He did receive an injury to his right foreleg; I saw it.”
Niall stared at the strange landscape before him — at the massive wall that stretched as far as the eye could see in both directions, at the deserted city carved into the mountainside, and at the mist-covered mountains, with their snowy peaks, that vanished into the distance. The city still seemed to him the likeliest entrance to the kingdom of the magician. The human beings who had carved these dwellings out of the solid rock could surely burrow into the earth beneath.
But the spider, who had read Niall’s thoughts, made a gesture of dissent. “Such a labor could not be completed in a thousand years.”
“Even for the men who built that wall?”
“A wall is a simple task. It requires only a sufficient number of slaves. But to tear out the heart of a mountain would be a labor of giants.”
His mind was able to convey the full extent of his objection: an image of giant spiders (for this is how Asmak envisaged giants) burrowing into the solid rock, while an army of slaves removed the debris, carrying it to some distant place where it would not betray its origin.
Niall stared at the lower slopes of the mountain to the west. “Then where could it be? You know these mountains better than any other. Is there no place that could be the entrance to an underground kingdom?”
“I know of none.”
For a long time, Niall stared at the twisted, snow-covered landscape, as if trying to wrest its secret from it. Asmak waited respectfully, prepared to answer further questions; yet Niall could sense that he felt the quest was hopeless. Niall said finally: “Thank you, commander.”
As he spoke, the spider released his grip on Niall’s imagination, and he found himself once more standing on the roof of the tower.
It was so dark that for a moment Niall had the strange impression that he was in some chilly dungeon. Then he felt the wind against his face, and saw stars in the blackness overhead. It came as a shock to realize that night had fallen, and that his strange mental voyage had therefore taken more than an hour. As his mind readjusted to present reality, he realized that his arm, which was resting on the parapet, had become completely dead; when he allowed it to fall to his side, it began to prickle with pins and needles. Yet the rest of his body felt normal and comfortable, and even his face, which had been exposed to the wind, was pleasantly warm.
The spider noticed his perplexity, but was too polite to ask questions. Niall explained: “The wind is cold, yet my body is warm.”
The spider’s response — the equivalent of a puzzled stare — made Niall realize that he found the comment baffling. Then the solution dawned on him. The will power of the spiders meant that they never experienced cold; when the temperature fell, they merely increased their circulation by an act of concentration. And since Niall had been sharing Asmak’s consciousness, his own body had responded in the same way.
As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, Niall saw that Grel was still standing a few feet away, exactly as he had been standing an hour ago, when they had stepped out on the roof; again, he experienced wonderment at the apparently inexhaustible patience of spiders.
The night wind was already beginning to chill him. He turned and led the way back down the stairs.
The room in which the men had been working was empty; they had returned to their homes. The spider balloon on which they had been working was neatly folded in the corner of the room. And since there were no chairs, Niall went and sat down on it. He asked Grel: “Were you with us on the flight?”
For a moment the spider was puzzled; then he grasped Niall’s meaning. “Yes, sire.”
Now he thought about it, it was obvious. There had been no “flight”; Asmak had merely told him a story, using his telepathic powers to make it seem real. And Grel had also “listened” to the story, as any normal child would.
Niall asked: “Have you ever been in a spider balloon?”
“Only once, when I was a child. My father took me on a flight over the mountains.” His mind conveyed an image of the mountains to the north.
“If you were searching for the kingdom of the magician, where would you look?”
He was aware that it was a difficult question, and was surprised when the spider answered without hesitation: “At the root of the mountains.”
This was an intriguing idea. Niall had been thinking of an entrance through the crater of some extinct volcano, or perhaps beneath the city carved out of the mountainside. He asked: “Why the root?”
Grel found this too difficult to explain; but his mind conveyed a picture of a river flowing into the heart of a mountain.
Niall turned to Asmak. “Do you know of any such place?”
“No, sire. But then, I have never been beyond the great wall. Shall I order our patrols to explore further north?”
Niall considered this, then shook his head. “No. It might warn our enemy that we are looking for him.”
His thoughts returned to the great wall. Who had built it and why? Could it be a coincidence that it was so close to the place where Skorbo’s balloon had crashed?
“Do you think that the Death Lord would know who built the wall?”
“No, sire.”
“But how can you be sure?”
Asmak’s reply was conveyed in a single condensed thought, whose richness and complexity would have been inexpressible in human language. What Asmak embodied, in that burst of thought-energy, was an insight into the minds of spiders: their interest in all living creatures, and their total lack of interest in such inanimate objects as walls. He made no attempt to disguise the fact that the spiders’ interest in living creatures was based on their preoccupation with food, and their desire to absorb vital energy. Also implied was the admission that spiders saw the absorption of life energy as their chief means of evolution. For human beings, food is merely a chemical substance that keeps them alive; for spiders, it is the source of life itself. All this, and far more, was conveyed directly into Niall’s mind, and it made him aware of the absurd poverty of human language, and of the richness of communication possible between spiders.
“But are there none among you who preserve knowledge of the past?”
“Assuredly. But only of the past of our own race.”
“But perhaps the great wall is a part of your past.”
“How so, my lord?”
Niall found himself wishing that he had the skill to convey his own thoughts in a single burst. “The great wall must have been built by men. Do you agree?”
“Of course.”
“But which men? The human beings who lived on Earth in the age before the coming of the spiders had no use for such a wall. They had flying machines that could carry them through the air like birds, and weapons that could demolish the strongest wall into dust.”
“But were human beings always so skilled in technology?”
“No. The men of the ancient past built many great walls. But those walls are now ruins. This wall looks as if it has been built more recently.”
The spider said with astonishment: “The human mind is amazingly subtle.”
The remark made Niall aware once more of the curious limitations of the spider mind: that for all its shrewdness and sagacity, it lacked the power of logical induction.
“Who are these spiders who are versed in the history of your race?”
“The great ones of the past: Cheb the Mighty, Qisib the Wise, Greeb the Subtle, Kasib the Warrior. . .”
“But among the living?”
There was a pause, as if Asmak was searching for the right words. He said finally: “Their knowledge lives on.”
“But how can I share this knowledge?”
“By entering its presence.”
Niall was baffled. “But how?”
The question seemed to cause the spider some difficulty, as if he failed to grasp Niall’s meaning. “You wish to do this now, sire?”
Niall said hesitantly: “If it is permitted.”
Asmak answered: “You are the lord of this city. To you all things are permitted.”
“Then I would like to speak with these spiders who know the history of your race.”