Qisib concluded: “This was the story told to me by Kasib the Warrior as we waited for daylight in the Valley of the Dead. He wanted me to reassure him that the disaster was not his fault. But for once, I was unable to offer my lord any comfort.” He fell into reflective silence, and Niall was also silent, understanding that, even after death, Qisib could still experience grief. Qisib asked finally: “Well, chosen of the goddess, are your questions answered?”
“All but one, my lord.”
“Ask it.”
“What do you think was the ultimate purpose of this unknown enemy from the north?”
Qisib reflected for a long time. It was evident that this was a question he had never considered. “To express his hatred and envy of our people. What else could it be?”
Niall shook his head; the answer seemed too simple.
Qisib observed that he was troubled. “What is your own explanation?”
“I do not have one. Yet my reason tells me that there must be one.”
There was a long silence, which was finally broken by Qisib. “You must teach my people to use the powers of reason. We do not think enough.” He added after a pause: “And now it is too late.”
“Not too late, my lord.”
“Too late for me, at any rate. For now I must return to the kingdom of the dead. Before I go, have you anything further to ask me?”
Niall considered this. “No, lord.”
“Then I have one more thing to say to you. The land of the unliving is timeless, and the past is as the future. When I saw you, I knew that you would be making a dangerous journey, and that you would come close to despair. When that happens, remember that an unbroken spirit is unconquerable.”
“But. . .”
Even as Niall began to speak, he realized that Qisib had already gone. He had vanished with the abruptness of a bursting bubble, leaving all Niall’s questions suspended in midair. It was only when Niall observed that the three wolf spiders were lying on the floor, their legs bunched underneath them in attitudes of total exhaustion, that he understood how much living energy had been sucked from their bodies, and why Qisib — like Cheb — had vanished so abruptly. He also observed that the room had become strangely cold, and that the damp walls were now covered with a thin layer of frost and ice.
After a silence Asmak asked: “Shall we return, my lord?”
“Should we not wait until these three have recovered?”
“That would take a long time — perhaps two days.”
“Then lead the way.”
Asmak turned, and vanished into the cleft in the rock. Niall followed, and realized with surprise that his claustrophobia had vanished, and that he was leaving this strange place with regret.
The moment Niall found himself back on the solid floor, he became aware that something strange was happening. Asmak was standing silently, as if reluctant to move, and the atmosphere seemed to be permeated with a peculiar, tingling quality, as if the air was full of tiny bubbles which burst as they came into contact with the skin. It was like the spray from some cataract of sheer vital energy, or like the ringing of a million tiny bells. Niall had experienced the sensation before, in the city of the bombardier beetles. He knew it was associated with the life-giving energies of the empress plant — the plant that the spiders knew as Nuada, goddess of the Great Delta. Every day at dawn, the plant transmitted waves of pure vitality — the same vitality that had caused the abnormal development of the spiders and other insect life.
But what was now happening was that the young spiders were absorbing these energies, and then, by a process of mutual interaction, combining them together and then releasing them into the atmosphere of the sacred cave. It was as if each individual spider allowed himself to become filled to the brim with a vital fluid, then emptied this fluid into some communal storage vessel. The storage vessel was the cave itself. In this way, they were able to conserve the living energy that was necessary to maintain the memory cells of long-dead spiders like Cheb the Mighty and Kasib the Warrior, and to prevent their spirits from taking up permanent residence in the land of the unliving.
Asmak himself was caught in this torrential flow of energy, reduced to immobility and ecstasy by its tremendous vibrations, which seemed to shake the cave like the notes of some mighty organ. Niall could also sense this energy, but on a far lower level; its vibrational rate was too low to affect humans, except in a state of deep relaxation; so that although he was able to sense its power, he was unable to respond to it. Yet he recognized that Asmak himself was too old to respond with the same total involvement as the young spiders; the development of his powers of control had alienated him from the voice of the goddess. Now Niall understood why young spiders had been chosen as the guardians of the mighty dead; they alone could respond with undivided intensity. Niall envied them.
Now the energies slowly subsided, until they were like a sound receding into the distance. When it vanished, there was a strange silence, like the silence after a heavy storm, when the only sound is the intermittent fall of a raindrop. Niall was leaning back against the wall of the cave, so blissfully relaxed that he had no desire to move. It would have been pleasant to lie on the hard floor and fall asleep. Yet he was also aware that a part of his being remained detached, craving some higher fulfilment than this dreamlike sense of emotional plenitude.
It was Asmak who was the first to stir. As his mind reestablished contact, Niall realized suddenly that he had been standing in darkness; the intensity of the experience had made sight superfluous. Now once more he could “see” the sacred cave, and sense the presence of the young spiders hidden among its overhanging webs. With an effort, he forced himself to stand upright, and to return to the world of normal consciousness.
Asmak also freed himself from the spell of the goddess; his enormous will power enabled him to do this without effort.
“Shall we return, my lord?” Like Dravig, he had sensed that Niall preferred to dispense with formality. When Niall made a gesture of assent, Asmak turned and led the way across the floor of the cave.
Niall had expected to be taken back to the low doorway through which they had entered; instead, Asmak led Niall in the opposite direction, along the wall toward the far end of the cave. They had to circumnavigate veils of cobweb that had concealed entrances to the tombs of spider lords and counselors since the days of Cheb the Mighty. The cave extended further than Niall had suspected; what he had supposed to be its far wall was pierced by a low arch, on the other side of which were irregular pinnacles of some sedimentary rock, which rose like immense stalagmites toward an invisible ceiling. Beyond these, the floor sloped, and they had to wade ankle deep through freezing water, which seemed to be flowing from a hole at the base of the wall. The moisture, Niall recognized, was essential if the corpses of the dead spiders were not to crumble into dust.
They were now advancing toward a vertical rock face, in which Niall could perceive no obvious exits. He was within a few feet of it before he recognized that a sloping ramp or ledge ran upwards in a roughly diagonal line.
Asmak halted. “Would you prefer to go first?”
“No. You go first.”
As soon as they began to mount, he regretted his decision. The ledge was scarcely a foot wide, and its surface was rough and irregular. If his foot slipped, he would be hurtling downward before Asmak could save him. But it was too late to change his mind. Spiders attached a great deal of importance to face-saving, and if he reversed his decision, Asmak would be more embarrassed than he was. So he stepped onto the ledge and cautiously followed Asmak into the darkness.
Spiders, he soon realized, had no fear of heights; it made no difference to them whether they were ten feet off the ground or a thousand. For a spider whose leg span was normally eight feet, bunching them together onto a narrow ledge should have been uncomfortable; but even in this awkward position, Asmak moved swiftly and unerringly. Niall, on the other hand, felt increasing alarm as his feet stumbled on the irregular surface. Within a few minutes they were hundreds of feet above the floor of the cave, and the ramp ahead of them seemed to stretch endlessly into the darkness. The rock face was rough, but afforded no handholds. Niall had never liked heights; they filled him with an instinctive dread over which his mind had little control. Now his alarm made his legs feel weak; this was even more terrifying than wriggling into a narrow tunnel in the rock. He pressed his back to the wall, and walked with a sideways motion, glad that Asmak was looking straight ahead.