The spider key, p.25
The Spider Key, page 25
Ink shut his eyes and whispered aloud to himself.
“I do not hate. I don't despair. I do not hate. I don't despair.”
He repeated the phrase a third time before the Spektor suddenly stopped her strange dance and began to pull at her hair.
“And then they left me!” she cried. “Went and shot themselves, the fools! They hastened only to eternal doom. Eternal scorn! I have been there. I have seen it!” She gnashed her teeth and tugged even harder at her hair, as though wanting to tear it from her head. Then suddenly, she grew calm. Her silver eyes lifted towards Ink again. “Eamon's boy. There’s something special about you. Something important. What is it they say? What is it? Ah! Yes! You have poor Wickwire’s watch. You looked inside. And now its power is inside you. What a clever boy. Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock.”
Ink felt his stomach turn. Where were the others? Where was Caradoc?
She moved closer, sucking the saliva between her silver teeth. “How my Mistress would love to meet you in person. I would take you to see her myself if I could. But perhaps . . . perhaps I shall keep you here instead.”
Ink struggled against the vapor's hold. “You ain't keeping me nowhere! I'm no use to you! I do not hate! I don't despair!”
“Yes!” she said, clasping her clawed hands together in delight. “Yes, you will stay! And then I shall have someone to play with! I will teach you all the games I know. How to draw strife to a household. How to infect the blood with rage. Yes! And drawing, of course! I am very good at drawing. Let me show you! Let me show you the soul markings!”
She stepped away and waved her emaciated arm as if to clear the mist again. But this time, a host of rune-like markings lit up across the ground all at once, glowing bright as gold.
“All is lost lest these are lost!” she said, spreading both arms wide.
From what Ink could discern, the symbols were not all unique to one another, but the same five repeated over and over again. To his great horror, one in particular struck him as familiar.
“It can’t be,” he whispered to himself.
He shut his eyes. Yes. There it was. The symbol behind his eyelids, glowing gold. The same mark the mysterious rider had drawn on the shores of a dead Otherworld after he'd named Caradoc as his enemy. Now it lay before his feet in his own world, and in seemingly infinite iterations.
“What are they?” he asked.
“I told you, stupid boy! They are soul markings! True names in the First Language! All is lost lest these are lost!”
“First Language? But . . . ain’t that forbidden?”
Her silver eyes shot back to him, the corners of her mouth curling into a horrible sneer. “Forbidden? What is such a word to me? What care I for commands or prohibitions? There is nothing beyond my reach! Nothing denied me! Not even you!”
She swooped towards him and rose into the air. Ink felt the blood rush to his head as she clasped her dead hand around his throat and squeezed.
“We mustn’t hurt the boy!” she raged in a mocking voice. “We mustn’t anger the Mistress! That wouldn’t do! No! It wouldn’t do at all!”
Ink wheezed. Stars began to dance in his eyes. When the creature spoke again, her hollow voice sounded farther away.
“Too long have I been without sustenance! Far too long! I will have him. I will have him for my own. All to myself!”
She opened her mouth—much wider than should have been possible—until the only light Ink could see in his dimming vision was the glint of her two rows of silver teeth.
“Aaahhh!”
The creature screamed. She plucked her hand away from Ink's throat and touched back to the ground, reeling as she drew her cloak tight around herself. Ink gasped the air back into his lungs and opened his eyes. Another figure moved near the edge of the clearing, dark and blurred, slowly approaching the Spektor but maintaining a cautious distance. The woman writhed and hissed like a vicious asp, spitting and cursing. Ink blinked a few times to clear his vision. The stranger was holding out his left hand towards her.
“Release him!”
Ink felt a flood of relief wash over him. It was Caradoc’s voice.
“Keyholder!” she cried. “Hellfire take you! You will burn! You will burn!”
“Release him!” he commanded again, reaffirming the gesture of his steady hand.
The Spektor cried out as her chains tightened and bit deeper into her flesh. The black vapor released its hold on Ink, dropping him to the ground before flying back to her. He scrambled to his feet and hurried behind the tree, watching as Caradoc continued to advance.
“This boy is under my protection,” he said. “You will not touch him again.”
“I will do as I please! You are no master of mine!”
“You know him. You know he’s being tracked by your kind. Why?”
She cursed him again and spat. Ink saw Caradoc’s left hand tense. The glow of light on his palm grew stronger. The Spektor gasped as the chains tightened again. She pulled at them, the whites of her eyes growing dark.
“No! My time is not yet come! It is not yet come!”
“I ask again. What has he done? Why are the Spektors after him?”
A low rumble resounded around them. Ink glanced up as a strong wind suddenly whipped past. The thick wall of fog surrounding the clearing began to spin like the vortex of a whirlwind.
“I will flee!” the Spektor hissed. “Damn you, I will flee!”
“No,” Caradoc said, the fierce tone of his voice matching the fire in his eyes. “You will stand where you are and answer me, or I will send you back to the Crypt this moment!”
At this threat, the Spektor began to tremble, shrinking down under the weight of her chains. The wind died away. The whirling fog slowed. She moaned and clutched at her head. Caradoc stepped forward. His palm shone with all the brilliance of sunlight. The Spektor’s chains began to glow, brighter and brighter until they appeared as white-hot as metal in a forge.
“No!” the Spektor screamed, falling to her knees and pulling at her chains. “The boy is marked! His eyes have been opened! He must be watched! He must be watched!”
“Who commands this?”
“The Mistress! The Mistress!” She fell forward onto her hands, shaking uncontrollably. A stream of obscenities issued from her mouth as vile as the vapor around her.
“Where is your Mistress?”
In answer, she spat on the ground, then began to claw at one of the glowing soul markings with her cracked fingernails. It was the symbol behind Ink’s eyelids.
“Your soul will burn, Keyholder!” she cried. “Your strength is false! Your heart weak as a dying ember! You cannot stand before her, nor will you ever find her! Never!”
Caradoc frowned, his brow glistening with sweat. He stepped forward again. “What has the boy seen? How have his eyes been opened?”
The Spektor erupted into mad laughter.
“What has he seen?” Caradoc demanded again.
“Ask him! Ask! But do not trust! He is a liar! A traitor! He plays you for the fools you are! Tell him, stupid boy, tell him!”
Ink ducked behind the tree, feeling his chest tighten with anxiety. What if she really did know everything? The name he'd given to the Wickwire Watch. His Spektor grandfather's commands. His agreement with Seherene. If she spilled everything now, it would mean the end of all his plans, all his hopes. He had to stop her somehow. Somehow.
“Where is your Mistress?” the Keyholder asked again, his voice brimming with rage.
She laughed once more, but the sound soon turned into a scream. Her chains had again grown white-hot. Smoke rose where the metal touched her skin. The black veins in her face bulged as she strained and thrashed, desperately trying to loosen her bonds.
“The island! The island!”
“Which island? Damiras? We looked there! It was abandoned!”
She coiled inward, writhing away from the light of the Key. “She hides! She hides in—”
A tremor ripped through the ground. Ink clutched at the tree and glanced around the trunk. The chain connecting the Spektor to the ground had suddenly become taut. Her eyes widened in horror, her cracked lips quivering. The earth shuddered again. The sound of rocks tumbling into the ravine echoed from somewhere behind them. And then, bit by bit, the chain began to slide backwards into the ground.
She screamed with the full power of her terror and strained against the chain, pressing the metal thorns even deeper. Black blood began to seep through her cloak.
“No! No! Mercy, I beg you! Mercy!”
Her cries became piercing screeches, so terrible that Ink put his hands to his ears. The ground shook again and a chasm opened where the end of the chain descended. Caradoc drew quickly back as the Spektor fell and was dragged along the ground. She clawed at the earth, her shrieks growing even more frenzied. The next moment, a shaft of cold light shot up out of the crevice and engulfed the woman as she was pulled down into the earth.
Almost as soon as the terrible creature was gone from sight, the clearing's floor began to break apart and fall away. Caradoc raced back to Ink and grabbed him by the arm, preparing to lead him to safety. But it was only in time to see the path back to the ravine plunge down into darkness. They stood back against the tree, watching as the lean-to slid into the growing abyss, taking its tortured victims at last to their burial. One by one, the dead trees began to follow, accompanied by sounds of sharp cracks and deep booms as their roots tore from the ashen earth. The fissures multiplied and split wide apart, and it soon became clear that the destruction was only spreading so far as the soul markings—which surrounded them for thirty feet on every side.
“What do we do?” Ink cried. “What do we do?”
“Hold tight to me. We’re not done yet.”
It was a fine thing to say, and by Caradoc's tone of voice alone, Ink might have believed him. But the worry in the Keyholder’s eyes told the truth. There was really nothing to be done. It was far too great a distance to jump, and there was nothing to cling to that wouldn’t soon tumble into oblivion.
But then, the tremors stopped. The last bits of loose earth crumbled away. The clearing fell silent and still. All that now remained of the Spektor’s former site of anchorage was a great bottomless pit more than fifty feet across, with only a single tree perched on a thin column of earth in the center.
When it became clear their safe haven was truly safe, they began to breathe again. Ink sat down with his back to the trunk and rubbed at the spot on his neck where the cracked fingernails had pressed into his flesh. Caradoc examined his face and throat and determined she had done no serious injury. He sat down next to Ink and wiped the sweat from his brow.
“I’m sorry, Ink,” he said. “I’d hoped you’d had your last glimpse of a Spektor back at Corvus Lake. And after all my talk about none being left here . . .” He shook his head in regret. “I'll give you a glass of tonic to help you sleep tonight—”
“What happened to her?” Ink said. “Why was she dragged into the ground like that? Is that . . . is that what an expulsion looks like?”
“Yes. Spektors swear a powerful oath to serve the Mistress. It is a Keyholder’s job to try and make them break that oath. Such a thing is considered an act of treason, and what you just witnessed is the consequence. Getting them to reveal any kind of secret is usually a reliable way to go about it.”
Ink frowned. “Those symbols on the ground. She said they were ‘soul markings’. True names in the First Language. And she kept repeating, ‘All is lost lest these are lost’.”
Caradoc set his forearm on his knee and gazed out across the chasm. “The Mistress has her own warrant list, made up of people who are to be tracked and watched whenever possible, all for various reasons. I can’t read the markings myself but I know my name is among them. Perhaps Mavie’s as well.”
Ink looked up at him. “And Mr. Bash? Do you think he was on it as well?”
After a moment's hesitation, Caradoc nodded.
Ink glanced down into the chasm, feeling a knot form in his stomach. He put a shaking hand to it. “And now . . . mine's there, too. She said I was to be watched.” His breaths began to quicken in panic. “Does that mean they can see us all the time? Everywhere we go? Are there dozens of 'em looking at us right now?”
“No. They're not omniscient. Their powers of sight and sense are every bit as limited as ours—if not more so—although they can detect certain things we cannot. And besides that, they have an insatiable hunger which compels them to hunt for victims. Constantly watching someone's every move—particularly a person who wouldn't give them what they crave—would only deny them the true purpose for which they returned from death. It's all the more reason to keep a close eye on ourselves, be on the lookout for any dark feeling that might turn into something worse and draw them back again.”
Ink nodded. Caradoc reached beneath his coat and tore a wide strip from his shirt. Fresh blood had begun to ooze through the gold mark on his left hand. Ink recalled Riva's words from the night they’d returned from Margaret’s house. The Key needed blood to work, and the open wound beneath ensured a wellspring at every use.
Ink frowned down at it. “Why did you ask Mavie to give you that thing? Why'd you ever want it in the first place? Seems all it’s brought you is pain.”
Caradoc tied off the makeshift bandage, then pulled his fingerless glove from his pocket and tugged it carefully down over his hand. “As it comes to questions, I’ve got a far more pressing one. What haven’t you told me?”
He wasn't angry, but worried. Ink hesitated, unsure how to answer. The Spektor had said that his eyes had been opened. And whether she’d meant his dealings with the Wickwire Watch and the mysterious cloaked rider, or his meeting with his granddad in an Otherworld, the conclusion was the same; he could tell Caradoc nothing.
“She must’ve meant I was never supposed to see that Spektor in Corvus Lake,” he answered. “Or at least, that I shouldn't have lived to tell about it. Maybe I surprised it. And now that I’ve seen two of ‘em, I know even more things I shouldn’t. It makes me worry about Margaret, really. She saw seven Spektors. What if she's on this list, too?”
“Hey!”
They glanced towards the ravine path. Simon and Riva had just stepped out of the fog and now stood waving their arms.
“You two in need of assistance?” Simon shouted. “Or did you decide on purpose to rest yourselves way out there?”
“You know me! I always liked a good challenge!” Caradoc called back.
“Hold on!” Riva cried. “I'm going to lay a shield across this gap!”
Escaping their precarious situation was nearly as harrowing as the circumstance which had forced them into it. The bridge the Entress made for them was practically invisible. There was no light glittering at the edges, no sound of solid footfalls beneath them, only a faint shimmer of air like Ink had sometimes seen rising from a pavement on a hot summer's day. It meant that crossing the abyss demanded what little courage remained of his already threadbare nerves.
Caradoc instructed him once more to hold tight to the back of his coat, and this time Ink was all too happy to oblige. Once back on solid ground, however, he felt little relief. Though they had survived one terrible danger, another lay less than a mile behind them. Worse still, he was certain Seherene and the Colonist-hunters had made their way closer by now.
“You weren’t joking about elaborate traps,” Simon said, surveying what was left of the area. “What triggered it?”
“We heard gunshots,” Riva added.
“That story will have to wait 'til we're home again,” Caradoc said. “Any sign of Wen and Jo?”
“Not that we've seen,” Simon replied. “But hopefully Abner and Evering have had better fortune. This mist is thickening by the minute. We ought to head back to the Drifters.”
“And quick as we can,” Ink said, resisting the urge to look over his shoulder.
When they met up again with father and son, it was to learn that luck had eluded them all. The hour was up, and the Plumsleys remained lost. Tears slipped down Riva’s cheeks.
“I can’t bear to think of them in a place like this,” she said. “There must be something else we can do.”
“We can try scouting the area from the Drifters again,” Abner replied. “Low as we can. In safety, of course.”
“It’s worth a try,” Caradoc said.
Simon put a hand on Riva’s shoulder. “Don’t count them out yet. For all we know they’ve reached safety already. You and I can take Drifter Two.”
Abner nodded as he clapped Evering on the arm. “We’ll take the other. Come on.”
Ink and Caradoc followed them to Drifter One. Once aboard, Abner ignited the burner while Caradoc untethered the anchor line. Ink hurried to the prow, his eyes searching the ravine paths around them. They’d made it back to the Drifter all right but there was still the possibility of catching sight of the Colonist-hunters from the air—and what then?
“All set!” Abner announced.
Caradoc stepped forward to board the Drifter. Suddenly, he froze. A look came across his face, as though he’d had a shock, and he glanced over his shoulder with a frown creasing his scarred brow. Ink watched him with concern. There was no one else in sight, but he seemed to be scanning the rocks and ridges behind him as though expecting to see something at any moment.
“What's wrong?” Abner asked.
It was another long moment before Caradoc turned back again. The look of bewilderment was still etched into his expression. He shook his head and blinked as if to wake himself.
“Something’s always wrong here,” he answered. “Let's go.”
As the Drifter rose above Ban-Geren, Ink saw that the fog had completely flooded the eastern half—including the winding trench where he had last seen the Plumsleys. He could also see nothing of Seherene or the hunters, a fact which filled him with relief, followed by a deep and piercing stab of guilt.
“Don’t worry, Ink.”
He glanced up at Evering, who sat across from him.
“They’ll be all right,” he said. “Wen can be fierce as a tiger when it comes to protecting her sister. She’ll take care of things.”
