Eventually the spider scuttled away.
Kormak reached through the tear in the webbing. Once again he used the edge of the Elder Sign to rip the cocoon. It fell open. His body partially fell out. The spider this time definitely released he was awake and scuttled towards him. He tumbled forward to the ground, a drop that knocked all breath out of him and sent stars dancing across his vision.
Desperately he wriggled free of the silken restraints surrounding him. The drugged-looking elf raced towards him, an envenomed spear held in his grip. Kormak reeled upright, his legs still numb, his reflexes slow. He barely managed to parry the spear point with his hand. He leapt forward, grabbing at the hilt of the spear. He found himself breast to breast with the elf, wrestling for the weapon. He butted the elf in the nose. Bone crunched. Blood flowed. The elf’s grip weakened for a moment and Kormak used his superior strength to tear the spear from the elf’s grasp. He hit the elf in the throat with the butt of the weapon, smashed him on the side of the head, sending him tumbling to the floor then drove the stone point into its chest, ending its life.
Another elf cast its spear at him. It flashed through the air towards him, dazzlingly swift. By reflex, Kormak ducked beneath it. The elf drew a stone knife in each hand and raced towards him. The elf’s blades wove a glittering web of obsidian. Greenish poison paste dribbled from their points and Kormak knew that if it once touched his flesh, he was doomed. He stepped back, pulling the spear free of the corpse then lunged forward, forcing the elf to keep its distance, hoping that strength and feeling would return soon to his numbed limbs. He moved more slowly than he was capable of doing, hoping to lull the elf into a mistake.
The elf smiled, sensing his weakness, feinted with the left hand blade and struck with the right. Kormak knocked the blow aside with the shaft of the spear and then stabbed as the left hand blade came in, taking the elf through the throat. The elf gave a dreamy, drugged smile that slowly twisted in anguish. The ecstatic expression remained even as it writhed on the floor. A shadow fell on Kormak, warning him and he stabbed up with the spear as the spider dropped from above, impaling itself on the blade.
Kormak tossed the spear into the wall, leaving the spider pinned there, legs kicking feebly until it expired. He bent over and picked up the elf’s knives and the other spear. His lungs felt as if they were on fire. His skin felt clammy. He knew he needed to find his sword if he was to have any chance to survive down here.
Dizzy and weak he reeled towards the exit of the cave, praying that the vision he had of the tree’s heart was true and not simply a hallucination brought on by the narcotic venom and the tortures of imprisonment.
Greenish light emerged from the fungus on the walls, the glow of decomposition, of rot, of the gathering strength of the Shadow. It illuminated a long twisting tunnel that ran through the root system of Mayasha. Large segmented things scuttled away at his approach. They reminded him of slaters he had once seen when he turned over a rotten log in the forest. Long, long feelers twitched obscenely as they moved. A massive worm’s head emerged from the wall and then retreated. He felt like he was being given a view of all the monstrous things that lurked beneath the dark places of the world.
Slowly feeling and strength returned to his limbs. He felt like himself again. He was free and he had a weapon in his hand and, under the circumstances, that was about the best he could ask for.
He moved on, following the vision that had appeared in his narcotic dreams. It seemed like the only thing to do. He had no idea where he was in this vast underground labyrinth so the path revealed to him seemed as good as any other. So far the path was as he had been shown. At least part of his vision seemed true, then again, perhaps that was not so good, if what was waiting at the end of the trail was also true.
He took a deep breath and slowly exhaled, repeating the old breathing exercises, and sinking into others that would sharpen his senses and quicken his reflexes. He wanted to be aware of any threats coming up on him and he felt sure that the elves and spiders both could see better in the gloom than he could.
He thought about the vision he had seen and was alarmed. It seemed something had invaded his mind to provide him with the information, bypassing his amulets, his own resistance and all the safeguards that had been placed there by the priestcraft and sorcery of the Order of the Dawn. He knew he was vulnerable here and the sooner he got out the better, but somehow his legs carried him on into the depths below the world.
It was not exactly that a geas had been laid on him, at least he thought not. That was something to which he should be immune. It was just that Mayasha, if Mayasha it was, had shown him the route he must take to perform his duty, to help oppose the Shadow, to prevent its complete victory here. He knew he needed to escape and bring word of what was going on here back to the Sunlands. Given time Weaver could build an all but invincible army in these blighted woods and spread the Shadow’s corruption far beyond them.
There was another truth. There was no other path for him to follow. He could leave it but the chances were that he would wander lost in the depths until he was recaptured. He doubted that this time he would escape so easily. What Mayasha had revealed to him was his only hope of recovering his dwarf-forged sword and he could not leave this place without it.
He wondered where the others were now, whether any of them had escaped from the elvish ambush or whether they had all been captured and were hanging cocooned, being corrupted by the Shadow and the Spider God.
He thought of the elf girl who had warned them out in the forest. She had been right. He thought of Grogan who had foreseen the ambush was likely but had gone forward anyway.
He thought of the long mazy roads that had brought him to this point, the wanderings across three continents and scores of kingdoms, the wars and battles, the women he had perhaps loved and the Order he had served, and he knew it was all a distraction to keep him from thinking about what he had to do and what he had to face next.
He thought about the Great Tree surrounding him, not dead yet, trying to extinguish the last remnants of its life and consciousness in order not to fall to the Shadow it hated and feared.
A sense of futility settled on him. Mayasha was older than many of the kingdoms of men, had seen generations of long-lived elves come and go, had in its time been as powerful as any living being on the face of the world, and even it, in the longest of runs, had fallen. What chance did anything as tiny as a man have of opposing the Shadow?
He entered the chamber he had been shown in his vision. Ahead of him lay a huge mound of coins, helmets, carved objects, like a heap of offerings piled in front of the altar of a wicked god. Atop the pile lay a familiar scabbard, thrown there by those who had captured him. He raced forward and picked up the weapon, breaking all custom and training by drawing it, to make sure it was his own weapon. He felt the familiar weight of it resting in his hand, looked upon the glowing runes and knew them to be true. He felt whole again.
A long time ago as men measured their lives, if but an eye-blink to the gods of Shadow, he had taken up this weapon and he had sworn an oath. While he lived he would keep it. He had spent his lifetime walking into the dark with this sword in his hand. He was a Champion of the Sun. Whatever he could do to oppose the ancient evil here, he would do.
Ahead of him, deeper in the chamber, the green glow intensified, a vast bulk shifted, a demon woke.
Kormak stepped forward, deeper into a vast cave-like chamber. The walls seemed to be made of an interlocking tangle of roots, covered in a carpet of sticky webbing. At its centre, was a stump of wood that looked like any other save that it was covered in a pulsing, brain-like nugget of fungal growth. Next to it, watching it like a dragon watching its hoard, was the largest spider Kormak had yet seen. It was big as a house, bloated and evil. It considered him with glittering green eyes from which shone boundless hunger and boundless malice and an ancient inhuman intelligence.
The body was so huge that he doubted that even its massive columnar legs could have supported it without the aid of the vast cables of webbing that suspended its body from the ceiling. It lay on a carpet of broken bones and shattered skulls. Its mandibles looked big enough to decapitate a bull. A swarm of smaller spiders scuttled around it and over it, tending it, picking small parasites from its carapace, grooming the furry hairs of its abdomen, feeding her morsels of something.
How long had this thing been down here, Kormak wondered? How long had it been growing bloated on the power of the Shadow and the flesh of the living?
The stench of rot was strong. The oily taste of the Shadow’s presence was on Kormak’s tongue. He met the spider’s gaze and felt an immediate sense of contact, of a hungry alien presence trying to force itself into his mind. The Elder Sign burned on his chest. He muttered prayers of resistance to the Shadow, and worked the rituals of cleansing. A wave of nausea passed over him and was gone.
The ground shook as the Queen spider raised herself up. There was a creaking sound as if her legs could barely support her weight. A flick of her limbs scattered bones and sent a skull rolling to Kormak’s feet. It looked up at him mockingly with empty eye-sockets. Smaller spiders tumbled off the greater one as it moved; some regained their balance, some lay on their backs, spindly legs kicking in the air.
Kormak stood sword in hand, waiting, like a small boy confronting a maddened mastodon. The thing dwarfed him and made him feel almost powerless. It came to him that there was still time for him to turn and run.
The Queen’s mandibles clicked. A sound like a wheezing roar emerged from her maw. The other spiders moved, some clambering over it, some spreading out to circle the walls of the chambers, leaving a clear space for the Queen to advance over, while letting them threaten Kormak from the flanks. There were all different types of them and they looked lethal.
The Queen moved forward as much swinging from her web as charging on her legs. She gained huge momentum as her massive form advanced. Poison dribbled from her mandibles.
She grew larger and larger in Kormak’s vision, swelling to terrifying proportions. His heart pounded against his ribs. His mouth felt suddenly dry. At the last moment, he threw himself flat and rolled under the vast flabby body, slashing up with his razor sharp blade, opening a great wound in the armour of her underbelly. The Spider Queen shrieked and raised herself up. Kormak kept moving, heading towards the node that represented the last glimmer of the consciousness of Mayasha.
A spider intercepted him, moving under the bulk of its mother and Queen, throwing itself at Kormak like an attack dog leaping on prey. Kormak slashed at it, severing its front legs, and kept moving, even as the Queen brought her great bulk down. He rolled faster, just managing to pull himself clear. The spider was not so lucky. Black fluid flowed from beneath the Queen and when she raised her bulk again, Kormak could see that her child had been crushed.
A pack of smaller spiders raced towards him, trying to cut him off from his objective. He danced through them, slashing and twisting and killing with every stroke till he reached his goal. He hacked at the node, cutting it in two, sending the corrupted fungus-covered head skittering away across the floor.
Something landed on his back. He reached over his shoulder with his free hand and caught something hairy and scuttling. Stick-like legs brushed against his hands. He tossed the small spider away before it could sink its fangs into his hand, and slashed a creature the size of a dog that was threatening to bury its mandibles in his leg.
He turned at bay. The Spider Motherwas turning, twisting the cables of web as she tried to bring herself round to face him, hissing and bellowing with frustrated rage at the way the things that supported her weight restricted her movement.
Kormak felt safe for only a moment until he saw small valves open on either side of her mouth. A moment later jets of webbing squirted towards him. He threw himself flat and they passed over his head, but as he did so another spider bounded towards him.
He raised his blade and the creature impaled itself on it. Kormak got a boot under its stomach and using its momentum and the power of his own leg muscles kicked it off, sending it sliding off his blade. He rose to one knee and just had time to slash at another of the spiders as it closed the distance with him.
Another strand of webbing hit the ground where he had been. He kept moving, knowing that to be hit was to be rendered immobile and in this place that meant death.
He studied the plant-like growth rising from the floor, wondering if he had fulfilled Mayasha’s last commandment. So far he could see no sign that what he had done had made any difference. He hacked at it again, taking off another chunk. This time the luminescence in the chamber dimmed a little.
The Spider Queen let out an angry hiss that held a note of warning. Perhaps it had just occurred to her what Kormak was attempting. En masse her children threw themselves towards him, uncaring of their lives, threatening to swamp him with sheer weight of numbers.
For a dozen heartbeats, he dodged, parried and struck, a whirlwind of death tearing through the heart of the scuttling pack. Poisoned mandibles clashed before his face. Bony spearpoints at the end of chitinous legs stabbed at his mailed torso. Skeletons crunched beneath his boots, providing an uncertain platform for his footwork, threatening to overbalance him at any momentary miscalculation.
Something heavy hit him from the side and bowled him over. For a brief, terrible desperate instant, he scrambled on all fours on a carpet of human bones under the belly of a monstrous arachnid, then rose to his feet.
He lashed out once more at the last shard of Mayasha, this time severing it close to the root. The ground shook slightly. The phosphorescent lights dimmed. The Spider Queen bellowed her rage and twisted away from Kormak. She raised herself into the air on her front legs and swung herself backward so that she would pass over his head and be in a position to charge him once more. As she did so she spat more webbing at him. A glob of it landed on his foot and wrapped round his leg, tightening swiftly. Desperately he lashed out with his blade severing the strand and leaving himself free to move once more.