Tara Duncan and the Spellbinders (49 page)

With an evil smile, one of them thundered, “That doesn't work with us, kid. Don't try to go any further or we'll chop you to pieces.”

Tara didn't give them time to taunt. Without bothering with a formula, she shouted “Melt!” and pointed at the ground.

The giants had no time to react. An enormous hole opened beneath their feet and their fall through four floors plus the basements was punctuated by a booming series of and

“Very efficient—and a neat trick to remember,” commented Cal. “It would never have occurred to me. All right, let's go. We still have to get across that dangerous bridge.”

The arachne was waiting for them. She had already removed the bridge she'd spun to allow Magister, Deria, and Tara's mother to cross, and she now hung on her silk thread, waving her mandibles with an awful creaking sound.

The kids now understood why Tara had wanted Fabrice and Sparrow along. In their little group, Fabrice was the one who loved riddles most, and Sparrow was the quickest to get them.

When they were a few steps from the precipice, the arachne descended and sang in her melodious voice: “To pass without danger to the other side, an answer to my riddle you must provide. It has two words, you get one try, and if you fail, you'll quickly die. I'll count each second while the riddle you reckon.”

“Only one of us can answer her,” whispered Sparrow. “And the riddle has two words.”

“In that case, I'll give it a shot,” said Fabrice bravely, who was bitterly regretting the day he ever took an interest in riddles.

He stepped up to the giant spider and cleared his throat: “I'm . . . I'm listening.”

The monstrous arachnid spoke:

First half a degree in a chilly clime
;

Second start of simian that likes to climb;

Third cut yourself a little slack;

Fourth share the ball, and don't hold back.

What happens to all of us in time

is fifth and last in my little rhyme.

“Hey, she didn't say what the whole thing was,” cried Cal indignantly.

The arachne trembled and lowered herself a little on her thread.

“That's no big deal,” hissed Fabrice through clenched teeth. “I'm not about to argue with a giant spider whose jaws are bigger than I am. Keep quiet, Cal!”

The arachne finished: “I will count to eighty-eight, then the answer you must relate.”

“Why not to a hundred?” exclaimed Cal. “The last time, you said to a hundred!”

The arachne quivered in annoyance, lowered herself a little more with her mandibles right above Fabrice's head, and started to count. “One . . . ”

“Cal, if you say another word the spider won't kill you, because I will,” snapped Fabrice. “Okay, let's think. ‘Half a degree' would be either de or gree. Except for ‘grease,' I can't think of many words that begin with ‘
de
- or
gree
,' so let's go with
de
. The second clue is pretty easy. A simian is an ape or a monkey, and ‘start' usually means the first syllable of word. ‘Ape' only has one syllable, so the clue must be mon. That gives us
de
- and
mon
-.”

The arachne was already up to twenty and Tara was getting tense. But while his friends were trembling, Fabrice was so focused that he forgot about the danger.

“I'm stuck on the third clue,” he said. “I know what cutting slack means, but is ‘slack' the important word, or ‘cut'? Or is it ‘little'? I better focus on the last two clues. Maybe they'll help me fill in the third one. My guess is that to share a ball is to
toss
or
pass
it back and forth.”

“I think I have an idea for the fifth clue,” said Cal. “Two things happen to all of us eventually: we get old, and we die.”

“Fabrice, is there any way to combine the fourth and fifth clues?” asked Tara. “Something like ‘ball-die' or ‘pass-die'?”

“I can't see it,” he said. “Maybe there's another way of saying what we'll do in time. We die, we croak, we kick the bucket, we buy the farm, we eat it . . . Nah, none of those seems quite right.”

The arachne was already up to sixty.

“Wait a minute,” said Cal. “We're focusing on the wrong part. If you think about what we do in time, it's easy: we
age!
”

“That's right!” exclaimed Fabrice. “Which gives us ball-age . . . No, I know,
pass-age!
Of course: the word is
passage!
”

The arachne moved her venomous jaws. “Sixty-nine . . . seventy . . . ”

“Okay, I've got to stay calm,” said Fabrice, closing his eyes so as not to see the spider's jaws. “So far, we've got
de- mon
- something
passage
. Could the word be ‘demonstration'? I'm still stuck on the third clue. What was it again? ‘Cut yourself a little slack.' I just can't think of anything for ‘slack.' Maybe we should focus on ‘cut' instead. What is a cut? A slash, an incision . . . It's also a reduction in prices . . . A player who's dropped from a team is cut . . . I'm in trouble, gang. I'm getting tense and my brain is starting to freeze up!”

The arachne: “Eighty-three . . . ”

“Relax, Fabrice,” said Tara. “I'm sure you'll solve the riddle in the nick of time.”

The arachne: “Eighty-six . . . ”

“That's it!” yelled Fabrice.

“What is?” asked Cal.

“Tara said it: the word is
nick
, meaning a small cut! And it fits the clues perfectly! Why didn't I think of that?”

“I hope you're right, because I sure don't get it,” said Cal.

The arachne spoke: “Eighty-eight! I've waited long enough for you. Give me your guess and hope it's true.”

Fabrice turned to the spider, looked straight into her eight green eyes, and spoke: “Half a degree is
de
. The simian start is
mon
. The little cut is a
nick
. What we do with a ball is to
pass
it. And the thing we all do is age. Put them together, and you get
de + mon + nick + pass + age
. The answer to the riddle is
demonic passage
!”

The arachne didn't stir, and for a horrible moment they were sure they'd gotten it wrong. But then she backed up, muttering in disappointment, and said, “The riddle's solved in the right way, the bridge I'll spin without delay.”

She retracted her poisonous fangs, ascended her thread, and started to weave a bridge between the two sides of the chasm. But suddenly a brilliant red ray flashed and severed the spider's thread, and she fell, howling with rage. She grabbed the threads she had already woven, but her weight snapped them and she tumbled into the abyss and hit the bottom with a sickening thud. Stunned, the friends looked toward the far side where the ray came from.

Standing there was Deria, defying them.

“You won't cross!” she yelled. “I just cast a spell on the abyss that prevents levitation. There's no point in trying. Go back the way you came before it's too late. I'm going to rejoin my master to tell him that the arachne is dead. Whatever you do, don't try to cross!”

There was terrible anguish in Deria's voice, as if she were trying to warn them about something. But for Tara, retreating wasn't an option. Magister had her mother, and Tara wasn't backing off if she had to face all the demons of hell.

Deria vanished into the darkness, and the five friends looked at each other.

“What do you want to do?” Cal asked Tara. “Try to cross, or wait for Master Chem?”

“What do you think?”

“Yeah, I shouldn't have even bothered asking,” he muttered with resignation. “All right, step aside, everyone. Make way for a pro!”

The spider's fall had snapped the initial strands of her bridge, but they were still dangling on their side of the precipice. Cal grabbed one and cut off a decent length. Then he took two small pieces of metal from his pocket and assembled them into a neat little hook. This he tied to the thread, grumbling as the silk stuck to his fingers. He tested the tension by pulling on it: it was as strong as steel. He had created a perfect cable.

“I never go out without my tools,” said Cal, grinning at the others' astonished looks. “The Bloodgraves didn't confiscate them because they must've thought they were useless pieces of junk— which was the idea.”

Cal judged the height of the spider web hanging from the ceiling, then turned to Robin.

“I'm too short for this one,” he said. “I don't think I'll manage to reach the web. You're an elf. Do you think you're strong enough to throw the hook up there?”

“I'm only a half-elf, but I think it's doable,” Robin said with a grin.

He took the spider thread with the hook, swung it around his head a few times, and heaved it upward. The hook missed the web by about a foot. Robin tried several more times but with no better luck.

“Rats, I'm not tall enough,” he groused. “I'm going to have to stand on someone's shoulders.”

“All right, go ahead,” said Fabrice resignedly, whose athletic build made him the perfect porter. “Climb onto my shoulders.”

Robin stepped up, and skillfully balanced on Fabrice's shoulders, who tried hard to remain steady. Robin swung the hook again and threw it. This time it was high enough, and it snagged the web. He very cautiously tugged on it a few times, but it seemed to hold.

“I'll go first,” he said, “and use being on Fabrice's shoulders to help give me momentum. I'm going at the count of three.”

Gripping the thread, Robin leaped into space and soared across the abyss in a long, elegant curve.

“It's fine,” he yelled. “Plenty of momentum to get across without any trouble. Climb on that little stone ledge next to you. That should help give you a head start.”

That came as a relief to Fabrice, who feared he would be serving as everybody's springboard. He went second, followed by Sparrow and Tara, who both landed on their feet. Tara was afraid Deria would show up while they were crossing the abyss, but there was no sign of her.

“My turn now!” cried Cal, who was the last.

Robin sent the thread back and Cal grabbed it, but nobody realized that the hook had been gradually cutting into the spider web. That web was strong enough to hold the arachne's prey, but it wasn't designed for the repeated tugs of their swings across the gap. When Cal jumped, the hook cut through what little remained of the web, and it gave way just as he was above the middle of the precipice.

With a scream of terror, Cal vanished into the abyss.

“C
al!” they all screamed.

“Quick,” cried Tara, “we've got to go down and help him!”

Robin grabbed her arm as she leaned over the edge, desperately trying to see the bottom of the abyss. “Take it easy,” he said. “We can't climb down, the walls are too smooth.”

Sparrow yelled: “By Flamus, give me fire! Bright flame this instant I require!”

A large fire lit up the bottom of the chasm. By its light they could see the many bones littering it . . . and Cal's body, sprawled motionless on top of a huge boulder.

When she realized there was nothing to be done, Tara burst into tears. Her legs buckled and she slumped to the ground. Feeling shattered, Fabrice, Sparrow, and Robin surrounded her, trying to comfort each other.

“I should never have taken you with me,” said Tara, sobbing. “I'm so sorry. It's my fault that he's dead.”

“Don't say things like that,” said Robin. “Cal knew the risks. He'd be furious if he saw you giving up now. And he'd be the first to say you have to save your mother, so his sacrifice wouldn't be in vain.”

“But I can't,” moaned Tara, overcome with guilt. “I can't buy my mother's life with Cal's. We have to stay here and wait for Master Chem. If we'd all stayed together, Cal would be alive now.”

In spite of their arguments, Sparrow, Robin, and Fabrice weren't able to change Tara's mind. In fact, she was probably right. They decided not to continue until the dragons had caught up with them.

They were still weeping over their friend's death when a terrible yell brought them to their feet. For a moment they thought they were under attack and looked at the door to the Initiation Hall, but there was no one there. The sound was coming from behind them.

“By Baldur's steaming entrails and the putrid gullet of a snaptooth, it stinks down here!”

Wild hope gripping their hearts, the friends looked down to where Sparrow's fire was sputtering out. There was Cal, sitting on his rock, trying to wipe something off that seemed to be covering his entire body.

“Cal!” yelled Fabrice. “Are you all right?”

“I'm fine,” he said, sounding in a very foul mood, “except that I landed right on the belly of this disgusting spider and I'm covered with the juice of bugs and their body parts.”

“Yuck! That's disgusting!” said Sparrow, who was gagging but wearing a huge smile.

“Disgusting maybe, but the arachne saved his life,” said Robin. “What we thought was a rock was actually the spider's body. It must have cushioned his fall.”

“Can you climb back up?” asked Tara, who was mad with joy.

“Yeah, I think so; there are plenty of holds. But I'll need a hand at the top because the cliff is pretty smooth up there.”

Agile as a monkey, the young thief climbed the lower walls with impressive speed. Then Fabrice held Robin's legs as he leaned over the edge, grabbed Cal's hand, and hauled him up safe and sound.

Cal was dripping with putrid greenish muck, and cursing fluently. Sparrow and Tara would have rushed to hug him, but the reeking spider guts kept them at a distance, preserving his dignity. He quickly cast a Cleanus spell that left him clean and dry.