While, all along the hillside, the sun had done its work, and the boy filled his bag with tinder-dry dung for this night’s hearthfire. Bent over like an old man, he roved this way and that. This bounty would please the woman-who-was-not-his-mother, who mothered him as a mother should — although, it must be said, lacking something essential, some maternal instinct to awaken cogent realization that her adopted son lived in grave danger — and as the sack bulked in his grip, he thought to pause and rest for a time, there, up on the summit of the hill. So that he could look out over the lake, watch the beautiful sails of the feluccas and fisher boats.
Set free his mind to wander oh, memories are made of moments such as this one.
And, alas, of the one soon to come.
But give him these moments of freedom, so precious for their rarity. Begrudge not this gift of indifference.
It could, after all, very well be his last day of such freedom.
Down on the track at the base of the hill, Snell has spied his quarry. The spiders at the ends of his wrists opened and closed their terrible black legs. And like a monster that wrings goats’ necks for the pleasure of it, he clambers upward, eyes fixed on that small back and tousled head there at the edge of the ridge.
In a temple slowly drowning there sat a Trell entirely covered in drying, blackening blood, and in his soul there was enough compassion to encompass an entire world, yet he sat with eyes of stone. When it is all one can do to simply hold on, then to suffer is to weather a deluge no god can ease.
Beneath the blood, faint traceries of spider’s web tattooing etched his dark brown hide. These stung like hot wires wrapped about his body, his limbs; wrapped everywhere and seeming to tighten incrementally with every shiver that took him,
Three times now he had been painted in the blood of Burn, the Sleeping God shy;dess. The web was proving a skein of resistance, a net trapping him on the inside, and keeping out the blessed gift of the goddess.
He would pass through Burn’s Gate, into the molten fires of the underworld, and the priests had prepared for that, yet now it seemed they would fail in fashioning a means of protecting his mortal flesh. What then could he do?
Well, he could walk away from this place and its huddled, doleful priests. Find another way to cross a continent, and then an ocean. He could perhaps try an shy;other temple, try to bargain with another god or goddess. He could-
‘We have failed you, Mappo Runt.’
He glanced over to meet the anguished eyes of the High Priest.
‘I am sorry,’ the old man went on. ‘The web that once healed you is proving most. . selfish. Claiming you for its own — Ardatha never yields her prizes. She has snarled you, for purposes unknown to any but her. She is most hateful, I think.’
‘Then I will wash this off,’ Mappo said, climbing to his feet, feeling the blood crack, pluck hairs from his skin. The web sang agony through him. ‘The one who healed me in Ardatha’s name is here in the city — I think I had better seek her out. Perhaps I can glean from her the spider goddess’s intent — what it is she would have me do.’
‘I would not recommend that,’ the High Priest said. ‘In fact, Mappo, I would run away. Soon as you can. For now, at least, Ardatha’s web does not seek to hold you back from the path you have chosen. Why risk a confrontation with her? No, you must find another way, and quickly.’
Mappo considered this advice for a time, then grunted and said, ‘I see the wis shy;dom in your words; thank you. Have you any suggestions?’
The expression drooped. ‘Unfortunately, I have.’ He gestured and three young acolytes crept forward. ‘These ones will assist in scrubbing the blood from you. In the meantime, I will send a runner and, perchance, an arrangement can be fashioned. Tell me, Mappo Runt, are you rich?’
Sweetest Sufferance, who had been so named by a mother either resigned to the rigours of motherhood or, conversely, poisoned by irony, blinked rapidly as she was wont to do when returning to reality. She looked round bemusedly, saw her fellow survivors seated with her, the table in their midst a chaotic clutter of cups, tankards, plates, utensils and the remnants of at least three meals. Her soft brown eyes flicked from one item to the next, then slowly lifted, out past the blank-eyed faces of her companions, and took in the taproom of Quip’s Bar.
Quip Younger was barely visible on the counter, sprawled across it with his upper body and head resting on one forearm. He slept with his mouth hanging open and slick with drool. Almost within reach of the man there squatted a rat on the counter, one front paw lifting every now and then as it seemed to study the face opposite and especially the gaping dark hole of Quip Younger’s mouth.
A drunk was lying just inside the door, passed out or dead, the only other pa shy;tron present this early in the morning (excepting the rat).
