Asmak made a semi-obeisance, symbolic of acquiescence. Then he turned toward the door, gesturing for Niall to follow.
As they descended the stairs to the hallway, Niall experienced misgivings. He had a suspicion that his simple inquiry had given rise to some misunderstanding, whose nature escaped him. Yet there was something about Asmak’s manner that aroused intense curiosity. His perplexity increased when, instead of crossing the flagstones to the main door, Asmak turned to the right and descended a further flight of stairs. Niall found himself in total darkness, and had to place a hand on the wall to recover his bearings. A moment later, as the stairs made a right-angle turn, he tripped and stumbled; it was Grel who saved him from falling by hooking a foreleg around his waist. Asmak immediately recognized his difficulty, and extended assistance. The darkness seemed to vanish, to be replaced by a soft luminescence which enabled Niall to see the walls and the stairway. It took several moments for him to realize that he was still in complete darkness, and that the spider was simply conveying a kind of mental picture of their surroundings, exactly as on the “flight” over the mountains.
Niall had expected to be led into some kind of cellar or underground vault; instead, he found himself turning more right-angle bends and descending further flights of stairs. When they finally reached level ground, Niall calculated that they must be as far below the roadway as the roof of the tower was above it.
The corridor in which he found himself was about six feet wide and seven feet high; its ceiling was curved, and, like the walls, was made of irregular stones set in cement. Asmak’s height meant that he had to walk with his belly lowered, to avoid striking his head on the ceiling; from this, Niall deduced that the tunnel had not been built by spiders, or for them.
A dozen yards ahead, the corridor was blocked by a massive door, whose timbers were held together by wrought-iron bands. As they approached, there were sounds of bolts being withdrawn; then the door swung open to reveal a brown wolf spider, who immediately prostrated himself at Asmak’s feet. There was some kind of interchange — spiders were always punctilious in greeting one another — then the wolf spider withdrew into an alcove in the wall, leaving them room to pass. For a moment Niall felt sorry for him, standing guard for hour after hour in this cold darkness — until he recalled that all the spiders in this city were bound together in a kind of mutual awareness, and that therefore no spider was ever completely alone. It was the human beings who deserved pity.
The air was damp, and had a smell of mildew; it was also extremely cold, although Niall experienced no discomfort — his contact with the spider’s mind ensured that his body remained pleasantly warm, as if he had been taking vigorous exercise on a winter’s day.
It also ensured that, although the spider’s body would normally have blocked his view along the tunnel, he was able to “see” for a considerable distance beyond it. He was impressed by the fact that Asmak must have been familiar with literally every inch of their surroundings, for his mind reflected them as literally as if he had been able to see them. There were places where the walls had fallen into a state of disrepair, and slabs of stone lay on the ground. In another place, the ceiling had started to collapse and had been supported by balks of timber, including a beam that lay across the floor holding the uprights in place. Asmak skirted such obstacles without the slightest hesitation. At one point, the corridor was crossed by a lower tunnel with a downhill slope, and the ground there was covered with a slimy liquid with an unpleasant smell of stagnation; Asmak’s warning of the slippery surface caused him to tread cautiously, and enabled him to avoid a fall.
So far, Niall had shared the spider’s mental states in the sense of being an onlooker. His awareness of what was being communicated by Asmak was more direct than listening to a human voice, yet essentially of the same nature. But now, as he allowed himself to relax, he found that his own consciousness was beginning to blend with Asmak’s, so that it was difficult to tell where his own began and Asmak’s ended. It was an extraordinary sensation. To begin with, Asmak’s consciousness was so much “stronger” than his own that it made him acutely aware of the inadequacies of the human mind. He was reminded of the state he achieved when using the thought mirror, which amplified the will. But the thought mirror was tiring; it left him physically drained. Spider consciousness had a tremendous, unflagging power which somehow renewed itself through its own sheer enthusiasm and interest in the world. Yet although Niall found this marvelously exhilarating, he was not entirely happy about it. There was something crude and practical about this spider consciousness; it failed to satisfy some deep hunger for subtlety and complexity. . .
He was aroused from these reflections by the realization that they were no longer walking along a man-made tunnel. It had widened, and the walls on either side of him were made of a white rocklike material that might have been chalk or limestone. The ground underfoot was irregular, although there were many places where it had obviously been leveled with tools. A hundred yards further on, the tunnel widened again, and they were in a wide gallery whose roof was supported by irregular pillars of the white rock. It was obvious to Niall that this had been carved by water in some remote geological era. Shallow pools of water still covered the irregular floor; they waded through one that was ankle-deep, and the water was icy. Drops of water fell from the ceiling, and the sound was unusually loud in the stillness.
They had been walking for almost half an hour, and had probably covered a distance of more than two miles. Niall found himself wondering which direction they had taken; his question was “overheard” by the spider, who immediately made him aware that they were walking due east. As far as Niall could calculate, that placed them somewhere beneath the “industrial estate” to the east of the main square.
Ten minutes later, he became aware of another sound, like a distant rumble. As it grew louder, he realized that it was the sound of rushing water. And in spite of his sense of heightened vitality, he found it hard to suppress a rising nervous tension. This was not due to any lack of trust in Asmak’s guidance, but merely to an instinctive fear of unknown perils. It cost a genuine effort to assure himself that Asmak would not allow any harm to befall him.
Moments later, the rushing sound filled the air like a tempest, and they came to a halt on the bank of a wide river. The black water was flowing very fast, but so smoothly that only a few ripples on its surface betrayed its speed. Niall was relieved to see that it was spanned by a metal bridge with a railing on either side; as they walked across this, the water flowed only a few inches below their feet. In the center of the bridge — which was made of welded metal plates — the noise was deafening; Niall’s impression was that the river plunged over a waterfall, perhaps another quarter of a mile downstream. Asmak, he noticed, was also nervous; like all death spiders, he had a natural dislike of water.
On the far side of the river, the nature of the terrain changed; the white rock was replaced by a dark, granitelike substance. They were no longer walking along a tunnel, but along some kind of cleft in the rock; Niall surmised that it had been caused by an earthquake or volcanic eruption, and again the thought made him irrationally nervous. The ground sloped toward the left, and it was necessary to walk carefully to avoid slipping. This “road” twisted and turned between sheer rock faces. The sound of water was soon left behind them, and they were once again walking in a silence in which Niall’s footsteps sounded eerily loud. (The spiders walked as softly as cats.)
He could now recognize in Asmak a sense of anticipation that told him that they were drawing close to their goal. He could easily have learned the nature of this goal by seeking access to a deeper level of Asmak’s consciousness; but he sensed that the spider would regard such uncontrolled curiosity with a certain disapproval.
The rock faces on either side now came closer together, and finally joined overhead to form a pointed arch. The rocky path underfoot had obviously been leveled, but the sheer hardness of the rock had frustrated all efforts to make it smooth, and Niall had to tread carefully to avoid twisting his ankle. Grel and Asmak had no such problem; the number of their legs made it virtually impossible for them to stumble. But as the tunnel became narrower and lower, both had to bend their legs, so that their bellies were close to the ground. A point came where the walls were scarcely a yard apart, and Niall had to bend his head to avoid striking it on the roof. Asmak had to walk very slowly to squeeze his considerable bulk between the walls. Then, just as Niall was beginning to feel claustrophobic, the tunnel widened suddenly and came to an end.