Chapter 2

Chapter II

"It began when we were little more than striplings. What was it six, seven years ago Enki?"

"Seven."

"Seven, then. We had just left home after having received our warrior's braids. Like all young warriors -- I suppose like all youths -- we wanted to accomplish a deed which would make our names live forever in the fireside tales of the bards. We left our home in Gillette and travelled far to the west, across the Silver Sea. We stayed in the ports of the Spice Coast only long enough to provision ourselves for our trek and set off to explore the badlands in the interior. Little did we know what we would find.

At first, one day seemed much like another and each place differed little from the last. The land was dry and barren and filled with spires of rock and huge upthrusts of land that were like islands in the sea and were as flat as a table on top. The only signs of life were the strange green trees which had no leaves or small branches but which were covered with needle-like spines, the scuttling lizards, the poisonous adders with strange rattling tails (which tasted quite good by the way, somewhat like the hen we ate earlier), and the vulpine birds which waited for things to die so that they could feast on them. The wind seemed to blow constantly, swirling the arid air around and kicking up an endless succession of dust demons. We had heard, however, that the land was rich with treasure to be won and monsters to be slain.

Why, we had even heard of a city made entirely of silver which was inhabited by a bizarre race of red people who worshipped the sun and made sacrifice to a feathered god by ripping the hearts out of their enemies while they -- the hearts -- were still beating. This, according to the tales, was deemed by the denizens of the land to be a more honorable death than any other. It just goes to show how strange the tales are that are concocted around the fireside when people are confronted by the unknown: honor from having your heart ripped out when you are still alive, indeed.

Anyway, I have heard it said that truth is stranger than fiction. I can vouch that is so. We did not find cities of silver inhabited by red men nor did we find much treasure, at least not treasure of the sort we expected. What we found was infinitely more terrible and more valuable in a unique sort of way.

We must have traveled through the badlands for at least a hand of five-days. The days began to run into one another as the monotony of landscape began to take hold of our hearts. Finally, one day there was a break in the tedium. We came to a river that seemed to spring from between two of the upthrusting tablelands that were so close together that they nearly touched. The river was deep and fast and it had ripped a channel that must have been at least fifty strides deep below the high waterline. It was bound by overhanging walls that rose another thousand strides into the air. It was all but impassable. So, of course, it was just the kind of challenge with which to break the monotony and it would bring the adventure which Enki and I sought.

Like two giggling schoolchildren, we began to climb along the walls of the tablelands in order to pass over the rushing river below. The passage was long and arduous. The rock was some sort of black crystal worn smooth by time, the river, and the wind, and it was almost slick as glass. Despite our climbing claws, I nearly fell to my death twice and Enki almost met the gods once. If we hadn't been roped together neither of us might be here to tell this tale."

Urki winked and went on, "But we were and we are and so I will continue. We made our way slowly along the channel and after what must have been at least a dozen hours, but what seemed more like that many days, we reached the far side of the passage.

The far side of the cut in the tablelands was like nothing we had seen on that side of the Silver Sea before. It was as lush as any place I have seen elsewhere in Seremoreh. It seemed like paradise. It wasn't, at least not for humanity. Although the grass was verdant and the trees heavily laden with fruits of every sort, there was -- as you have no doubt surmised -- terrible danger. Otherwise, why would I bother with this tale?

Anyway, the danger was not at first apparent. The valley (for valley it was, carved out of the tablelands by the river and who knows what other forces) widened quickly after its passage through the narrow canyon. The ebon walls were still vertical or past vertical and all but unscalable for as far as the eye could see. Their shadows stretched far into the valley, for the sun had nearly set. As I said, the grass was verdant and the trees lush with their fruits within the lengthening shadows. There was little in the way of fauna, however. A few birds and insects flitted about but there seemed to be few, if any, larger animals -- domesticated or wild. We would soon find out the reason for that lack, but it is as yet not part of the story.

At any rate, after our long climb we were overjoyed to find so beautiful a spot to camp and rest before we explored. Despite the fact that we were both exhausted, we maintained camp discipline and stood watch. First me, then Enki. Thank the gods we did, else I think neither of us would have lived to recount this tale for while nothing happened during the night, we became the prey of an unknown race at the first light of dawn.

As I said, my watch passed uneventfully. Nothing but crickets and tree frogs disturbed the solitude of the night in the valley. When I had done my time, I woke Enki for her watch. Again the hours of darkness passed without incident. As the sun rose and began to take the chill out of the valley, everything became suddenly silent. The birds had sung when the sun first rose, but they soon after became as quiet as the grave.

That metaphor speaks more than you know, magelet. Had things been slightly different, had the fates been less kind, our graves are all we would have found in that inhuman place. As it was, not only did we survive, but we also became friends with your mentor, Astall Demonsbane.

The sudden, unnatural silence of the forest about us made Enki wary. Wariness alone, however, was nearly not enough. Were it not for a dried twig that gathered dust in an opportune place, we would have been dinner. No, our bones would not have been picked clean, nor would we have been torn limb from limb. Instead, we would have had our flesh turned to juice and our insides sucked from our skin like marrow from a bone.

We had become the prey of hunters. And as you may have gathered they were no ordinary hunters, Jerrod. Neither man nor beast, the predators which sought our blood -- and our fat and muscle for that matter -- were huge creatures that stood the height of a man and hunted in a pack like wolves. As I said they were not beasts, though. No warm blood ran through their veins -- if they even had veins. In fact, the creatures which sought our lives didn't even have blood. Instead they were filled with ichor. 

Do not presume that because they were bloodless, they were brainless. Far from it. They were as intelligent as you or I -- well, at least as intelligent as you."

Urki winked again and continued. "They were spiders, Jerrod, giant spiders. At least that is what the great, chittering things appeared to be. I didn't exactly have time to do a taxonomical examination -- surprised I know that word, eh, well I know a good deal more that would be an even bigger surprise to you -- for Enki and I were soon fighting for our lives and lucky to be doing that. But they had eight hairy legs, two eyes, and a pair of pincers projecting from their maws.

I know that they had the ability to think because not only did they also carry pouches which dangled from their necks on leather straps, but they talked to one another as they hunted. Even more than that showed their sentience. One, the leader by the elaborateness of its pouch and the way it commanded the others with its chitterings, stood back and directed the others with motions from its forelegs.

As I said, Fortune smiled on us that morning Jerrod. One of the spiders stepped on that dry twig which was so fortunately placed in his path of approach. Its snap alerted Enki who immediately woke me. We stood and drew our swords just as the swarm of arachnids broke through the tree line of the meadow in which we had camped. Eight of the monsters were on three sides of us and closing fast. Discretion seemed the better part of valor. But the only way open was deeper into the valley and that did not have the earmarks of a wise decision. We looked at each other and in unspoken agreement grabbed our gear and turned and ran that way anyway. The spiders followed.

They continued to follow for the rest of the morning. They did not seem to be making an attempt to catch us, but if we tried to turn aside from our path deeper into the valley, we found that they were on our flanks as well as to our rear. They were herding us, Jerrod, like wolves herd their prey to a waiting trap.

We had no intention of rushing headlong into the jaws of that trap, however. As we ran, we tried to devise a plan with which we could extricate ourselves from our predicament. It was not easy, for nothing came readily to mind. But eventually we came up with a stratagem that seemed as if it had some hope of successfully breaking their lines of containment.

It worked. We escaped their trap. That did not bring us to safety, however.

Our solution had been simple. We went somewhere that the spiders couldn't. Despite their size, they had little trouble going through the trees as they followed us. But their size and the existence of birds within their realm gave us an idea about where they might not be able to go. So we climbed. No, not the walls of the cliffs. We were nowhere near the cliffs. We were in the midst of the woods. So we climbed trees. We climbed as high as we could, all the way to the area where the branches grew close together and became barely thick enough to bear our weight.

The spiders didn't even attempt to follow us. Instead, they camped out below. Given the respite from the threat of immediate capture or death, we strung our bows. Archery isn't easy from trees, Jerrod, despite what you may have heard. It is especially difficult from unsteady platforms like the slender limbs upon which we were perched. We began to pepper the monsters with arrows anyway. They were after all rather large targets." Urki grinned. "Most of the arrows hit. None seemed to do much damage. Still, most of the spiders were soon leaking yellow ichor from the wounds we had inflicted."

Enki and I looked at each other and we stopped our shower of arrows. They were having little immediate effect and we might need them in the future. The question was what should we do. We were out of danger for the nonce, but we hadn't escaped. Worse, there was no obvious path out of our predicament. We still needed to come up with some means of escaping our besiegers.

They, for their part, posted a watch below to make sure we did not sneak off and escape whatever they had planned for us. While we were ensconced thus, Enki and I got a chance to study our adversaries more closely.

As I said, Jerrod, they were spiders, huge and awe-inspiring spiders. They had eight legs, two of which (the forelegs) seemed slightly more delicate than the others. These two they used to signal one another and to manipulate objects such as their pouches. They did not have hands as such at their ends but they did have some sort of grasping members with which they could clutch articles and open the pouches which I mentioned earlier that they carried.

Anyway, they had two parts to their bodies. One, which I deemed their front, was the location of their maws, their mandibles and their eyes. The eyes were not like the compound optical organs of insects with their multi-faceted lenses. Rather they were huge black orbs which glinted whenever the light struck them. The spiders also seemed to be covered in some sort of fur which was of a light brownish hue that contrasted markedly with the ebony of their bodies and eyes.

They carried only the pouches I mentioned before. They had no obvious weapons and they wore no jewelry or clothing. As evening fell, the contents of the pouches became apparent. They had flint and tinder in them as well as food. The food was unremarkable, small ground-running birds and things like squirrels and rabbits. Their method of devouring their food was unlike any I had ever watched before. I'll explain.

They used the tinder to light a large bonfire which crackled and roared like giants laughing at our plight. The heat from the fire was enormous. We could feel it in the trees high above. The spiders didn't use it to cook their victuals, however, though it would have been easy given the heat. Instead, they took their provenance out of their pouches and set it off to the side where it could be no more than lightly warmed by the blazes.

At first that seemed strange, but soon the reason for it became apparent. They weren't discarding their food, nor had they forgotten it. What they were doing, Jerrod, was heating it up to body temperature. While they weren't warm-blooded themselves, they liked their food to be around the temperature it was when it lived. When the dead creatures had warmed sufficiently -- on both sides, they turned it once in a while as it was heating -- the spiders picked them up and the put the food to their mouths -- or in their mouths, I was never quite certain which. Moments later they discarded the husks of whatever they had eaten. The skins were intact and, as we later found out, filled with nothing but the bones.

It was a fascinating and frightening tableau. Clearly, the arachnids had the same fate in mind for me and my sister. We on the other hand had other ideas in mind for our futures. But we were still trapped and for a time it seemed their plans were closer to fulfillment than were ours.

That changed. As I mentioned, evening had fallen. It was a moonless night. There was no light anywhere except for that which emanated from the blazes below and the faint twinkling of the stars above. Luck was still with us that night, young mage. The twinkling stars soon began to disappear. Clouds were moving in. Thick dark clouds. They covered the night sky with increasing rapidity. Soon only the blazes below illuminated the trees.

Still we could not take our leave. The spiders had surrounded our perches with the fires below. Any attempt to escape by way of the ground would be seen. Yet, I thought to myself, why not try to move from tree to tree? They seemed unable to climb. Perhaps we could make our way through trees to a site more conducive to our deliverance. Unfortunately, the trees were too far apart. There was no way from one to the other without rope or vines of some sort. And while we had rope, we had no way to attach it to the other trees. We were still stuck.

Then it began to rain. The rain was our deliverance. It wasn't a little drizzle. No, Jerrod, it fell suddenly in such a deluge that it seemed if the skies had turned to oceans and begun to pour down upon the earth. The arachnids' huge bonfires were doused as if they had been nothing more than sparks. The rain was accompanied by thunder and lightning. The thunder was another boon because, not only was it now dark so it was impossible to see anything, with the bellowing of the clouds as they wrestled each other for primacy, you could hear nothing either. The lightning could have been a threat, but it seemed far off and while it lit the sky above us, little light penetrated the forest.

The rain brought with it a chill. While the cold here and now is anything but lucky, then and there, it was another stroke of good fortune. I called to Enki, "This may be our best chance!" She signalled her agreement with a nod.

We began to edge quietly downward. The rain-soaked bark was slick with water. We clung like leeches to each branch that we grasped. Our eyes were useless. We could see nothing. We listened as we never listened before and have never listened since even though the likelihood of our hearing danger before it was in our laps was negligible. We heard nothing. We moved farther down. Still no sound rose from the floor of the woods. After what seemed like hours but could more likely have been most easily measured in minutes, we reached the bottom-most branches. Still there was no sign of life from below. Quietly, everso quietly, we placed our feet on the ground below.

We could see nothing and we heard nothing. I moved toward Enki. She moved toward me. Still there was no sound. We nearly walked into one another in the blackness. We were as blind as bats. Would that we were bats, we would have been better off, for they can maneuver quite well in the dark, avoiding obstacles and navigating with no difficulty.

That was one bit of luck which we were denied that evening. We could not avoid obstacles for we could not see and if they did not move we could not hear them. We struck many barriers to our progress that night Jerrod, but the first was the worst. And we, or rather I, struck that first impediment almost immediately.

It was not much thicker than a sapling and it did not hurt much more than my dignity when I walked into it, but worse luck could not have befallen us. For Jerrod, it was the leg of a spider. It flicked when I struck it, Jerrod, and it sent me flying. I scrambled to my feet and called to Enki to follow as I began to run in the opposite direction. I crashed into tree after tree in my mad flight to escape the cookfires of the spiders, Jerrod. Enki could not help but follow the path of my flight from the sounds of collisions alone which were audible even over the peals of thunder. I, too, knew that she was behind me because I could hear the thuds of her impacts close behind me. We could also hear the spiders stirring and beginning to follow. They, too, had difficulty navigating the forest floor that night.

In fact, it seemed they were having more difficulty than were we. Their pursuit sounded curiously slow and lethargic. The impacts were few and far between. When the impacts did occur they did not seem to have the violence which our own generated. The arachnids quickly fell far to the rear of us. Enki called to me to slow down and, seeing the wisdom in lessening the brutality of the collisions which bounced me from tree to tree, I did.

We had escaped. But we weren't out of the woods yet." Urki grinned at his own attempt at humor one more time, and continued. "We still were in the valley of the spiders, two against who knows how many. Being young and perhaps still a bit foolish, we didn't take advantage of the spiders lethargy and immediately turn around and make our way out of the valley that night the way we had come. Our appetites for adventure whetted, we decided to explore this land and see if perhaps we could find some treasure or unravel some mystery. We headed deeper into the valley.

The storm seemed focused over the far end of the valley so that was the direction we took. It was an incredible display of energy, Jerrod. Lightning was coming thick and fast soon after we had escaped the spiders in the woods. Eventually, the bolts of lightning were being loosed so frequently that the entire night was lit with a strange, actinic glow. As we moved toward the far end of the valley, we began to notice an oddness about the storm. 

First, we noticed a strange glow coming from the end of the valley as if on of the bolts had lit a huge fire. Next, we saw that the flashes seemed to be different hues as if they were jagged bits of rainbow rather than the pure white lightning usually is. As we got closer to valley's end, we saw that all of the lightning bolts were raining down in a small area and several bright glows were emanating from the ground which was the apparent target of the coruscating energy. They didn't appear to be fires. They didn't flicker like the flames in a hearth. No tongues of fire shot above the treeline. Instead, the glowing regions would brighten first one, then another. But no matter how bright the glowing regions appeared we could see no sign of fire.

We crept closer. With as much stealth as we possessed, we edged toward the heart of the storm. It was there that we saw first your master. He was involved in a what appeared to be a duel arcane with six of the spider people. No one involved the tableau moved so much as a muscle. The only sign of movement was the flashing of the lightning. Each was surrounded by a glowing dome of different color. The one which surrounded your master was golden, golden like the sun early in the morning on a crystal clear summer's day. One of the spider mages had a leaf green dome, another one that was sea blue. Two of them had ruddy red hemispheres surrounding them. Another an iridescent indigo demiorb.

The last of the spiders was the largest that we had seen. It was also the first which we had seen with any decorative items about its person. Its mandibles were tipped in a silvery metal that shone in the light of the storm. On each of its forelegs was a thick band of gold that must have been at least two handspans in width. It was surrounded by a dome that was the electric blue-white of glacier ice in the mountains of the far north.

Each of the domes -- that of your master and those of the spider mages -- was being assailed by a barrage of lightning bolts from the storm clouds above. As one of the glowing hemispheres was struck, it would brighten noticeably from the energy of the bolt which struck it. I don't know who called the storm, but bolt after bolt was raining down on everyone with equal abandon. It seemed as if the duel would last forever. Suddenly, one of the spiders' hemispheres flashed brightly as it was struck by a bolt and it disappeared with a pop.

Enki and I were momentarily blinded. When our eyes recovered from the burst of luminescence, there was no sign of the spider where it had stood 'neath its dome save for a smoking patch on the ground. Quickly another of the spiders went the way of its sorcerous colleague. The large spider made a motion with one of its forelegs and we saw several spiders like those that had pursued us in the forest move forward out of the shadows pushing an engine of war.

It was the first weapon we had seen among the spider folk. And it, unlike those who operated it, was familiar. It was a great arbalest, Jerrod.

I can see by the look of puzzlement on your face that you have not been acquainted with that particular implement of destruction, Jerrod. Why should you have been, you are a mage, not a warrior. Since you are not familiar with the arbalest, young mage, I will describe it to you. Picture a crossbow which is the size of a horse and which has shafts the size of a spear. That is an arbalest and it is used in battle to light fires deep within the hearts of besieged cities.

Why the spiders had such a thing, I do not know. They had no enemies to besiege, isolated as they were within their valley. Yet had it they did, and more of them besides, and it nearly proved the undoing of Astall. Had the spiders been more adept in the use of their siege engines or had the fates been less kind you would have had no master and we wouldn't be traipsing through this godsforsaken rime-covered land together. As it was, they weren't and we are.

The spiders moved slowly. As you might have guessed, the cool of the evening seemed to inhibit their movements. Their lethargy made Enki and I suspect that they were cold-blooded like snakes, a fact which was later confirmed by your mentor, Jerrod. But slow or fast, the arachnids were intent upon skewering Astall with the bolts from their arbalest.

The first bolt from the arbalest flew wide of your master, but it had passed through his protective dome as if it wasn't there. Clearly this was a threat from which the mage could not easily defend himself. The spiders reloaded as quickly as they could in the chill night air and fired again. This time they missed by no more than a hairsbreadth.

Enki and I looked at one another. If this kept up the human mage was done for. Suddenly a bolt of lightning leapt down from the clouds and struck the arbalest with a crack. The spiders manning it went flying and the arbalest burst into flames. We breathed a sigh of relief. That threat was taken care of.

But we had relaxed before the full tale was told. The spiders wheeled out another arbalest and then another. If these were not quickly destroyed, the human would not last long. He sensed it, too, and another bolt of lightning flashed from the clouds toward one of the arbalests. Abruptly, a brilliant blue-white dome flared around the arbalest and saved it from destruction. The other siege engine was immediately protected with another protective demiorb which, like the first, duplicated that of the large spider. Enki and I groaned.

We looked at one another once more. The mage was done for unless we intervened. Here was the adventure which had been seeking. Stranger or no, we weren't about to let the spiders that hunted us kill a member of our species without trying to stop them.

The spiders had brought out one of the gigantic crossbows very near where Enki and I were hidden. We looked at each other and drew our swords. We had discarded the notion of using our bows because they had proven ineffective against the spiders earlier and with the downpour of the storm drenching everything with water we knew without trying them that fire arrows would be ineffective. The question was: how do you kill a giant spider?

We hadn't a clue, but we weren't going to find the answer by contemplating our navels. We began to advance silently toward the near arbalest. When we reached the end of our cover -- and the beginning of the dome of light, we stopped and gathered our legs underneath us. Enki held up three fingers. Then two. Finally one. When she clenched her fist once more, we leapt from concealment and charged the spiders.

Passing through the dome of light was an eerie experience. It felt a bit like we were being tickled over our entire body with feathers and at the same time were being bitten by fire gnats. It apparently made no sound because the two spiders manning the arbalest remained totally absorbed in their task of arming their weapon and aiming it at the mage.

Enki swung her sword at the rear spider, the one which was aiming the engine of destruction. She hacked off its rear leg with her first blow. Yellow ichor spurted from the severed appendage. Both it and its partner turned immediately toward us.

As the second spider, the one operating the crank, turned, it presented itself broad side to me. I swung my sword with all of the strength that I possessed at the joint between its head and its body. My sword penetrated and then became wedged in the spider's carapace. The spider made a shrill squealing sound -- the first sound beyond chittering which we had heard from one of the arachnids -- and tried to face both to the front and the rear at the same time. Ichor began to spurt from the wound. I released the sword to the mad twistings of the wounded arachnid and drew my long knife. It was not the kind of weapon that seemed as if it would be effective against a monster spider.

Meanwhile, Enki and the first spider had squared of against one another. Its loss of a leg did not appear to be a major immediate handicap. I suppose you can afford to lose a leg if you have eight. It reached for her with one of its forelegs. She dodged and swung a backhanded blow at the grasping limb. Her blow glanced off its hide without any damage. It swung the other forelimb toward her and struck her a powerful blow that knocked her into the arbalest. Enki dove toward the spider in a lunge that ended with her sword in its eye. It keened like the one which had felt my steel a moment before. The spider jerked in a tremendous paroxysm of anguish. It raised up on its back four legs and clawed at the sword in its eye. Its efforts were to no avail, for it fell almost immediately to the ground and lay still because, as we found out later, Enki had pierced its brain with her lunge.

In the meantime, my spider advanced on me on wobbly legs -- yes, all eight of them. I had clearly wounded it sorely. Ichor was pouring out of the wound which I had inflicted in what seemed to be buckets. It waved a forelimb at me. I dodged. It tottered, but did not fall. It struck me a glancing blow with a forelimb and then it fell writhing to the ground. It keened once more and was still. I recovered my sword from its twitching body and Enki and I looked at one another with a mixture of relief, elation and pain. Why pain? Well, the beasts were remarkably strong, Jerrod. We would be bruised for days from the single blow that had been inflicted on each of us.

It was not the time to let pain stop us or even slow us though. The other arbalest was still in action. It fired a bolt which, like the one from the siege bow that had been destroyed, just missed the human mage. We spun the arbalest we had captured toward the one the spiders still controlled. I cranked. Enki aimed. Suddenly, golden light flared all around us. The mage had shielded us just as we were about to be struck by a bolt of lightning. Death had reached for us from the sky and nearly harvested our souls. The near miss of the scythe of the ravisher sent shivers down my spine.

It did not alter our course nor deflect our aim, however. Enki lined up the sights of the crossbow on the other arbalest. I finished drawing the bowstring back. We released the bolt. It sped toward the other arbalest. Suddenly, it burst into flame. It burned with a golden fire that seemed impervious to the downpour that fell from above. It flew straight and true toward its target and buried itself in the stanchion upon which the other arbalest rested. That, too, burst into golden flames. The spiders keened their agony as the golden flames touched them. They fled from the arbalest and my sister and I cheered as it quickly turned to ash.

We had achieved a small victory, but the battle was unfortunately not yet over. The spider mages were still raining lightning on our human ally. We had also become targets for the coruscating energy which the storm clouds spat. The huge arachnid -- we later found out that it was their queen -- motioned again. More spiders appeared from out of the shadows. Their lethargy was clear but so was their determination. There were dozens of them, Jerrod. Then scores. They began to advance on both the mage and the two of us. We were sorely outnumbered and there was no way to beat them. Things once again looked about as bleak as they could.

The mage motioned to us to move toward him once. To do so, we would have to leave our dome of protection. Enki looked at me. I looked at her. We shrugged, realizing that life is only really worth living when you live it on the edge. As one, we broke for the mage. The arachnid warriors in their languor could not match our speed or quickness. The queen and her mages, however, had a weapon with a better chance at success. Lightning bolts rained down, nearly striking us as we ran a broken path toward the mage. Yet we made it, with little more than a singe or two on our gear.

When we arrived at the site where the mage was making his stand, we once more had the protection of his magic. That, however, was no protection from the spider soldiers who slowly advanced toward us.

`We must flee,' Enki called to the mage over the howling wind.

He nodded and replied, `Although I could perhaps defeat the queen and her mages, I cannot long survive an encounter with her troops as long as I must use my magic to counter that of their leaders. While I can eliminate some of the troops (as if to punctuate that capacity a lightning bolt turned one of the arachnids into a cinder), I cannot defeat them all.

Nor do I have means of escape while locked in a duel arcane with the queen. It appears I bit off a bit more than I could chew. Can you suggest anything?'

Enki and I nodded. `We have rope and climbing equipment. If we can get to the valley walls we can climb out. It will not be easy though in this storm.'

The mage shrugged, `We must do what we must. Let us assay the escape then. By the way, my friends, I am Astall Demonsbane. And you are?'

`Enki and Urki Siti,' we replied. `Shall we?'

We turned and dashed for the trees. They weren't far and we appeared to have caught the arachnids by surprise. We made it.

When we reached the trees we were saved from a repeat of Enki's and my earlier bruising dash through the dark of the woods by a light which Astall conjured. It showed the way well enough that we avoided any collisions even though he was to the rear.

We had little trouble outdistancing the spiders despite the reality that the somewhat elderly Astall was not nearly so fleet as were Enki and I. He was still far more fleet than were the spiders.

We reached the valley wall well ahead of our pursuers. We were at the opposite end, though, from that at which we had entered because the arachnids had been between us and that site. Here there was no narrow cleft between two huge walls. In fact there was no cleft at all. Instead, we faced with a wall over a thousand strides high, down which cascaded a mighty waterfall which had created a small lake which fed the river which had carved the valley. The walls were still made of that same glassy substance. Climbing such a cliff would have been a daunting task even under the best of conditions, but at night with the rain making the bluff even wetter than the spume from the cataract already made it and with a horde of murderous spiders in pursuit, it seemed nearly impossible. However, we took the motto of the guard of the city of Terblanche as our guide. We had done the improbable in climbing into the valley and arriving our present predicament. The impossible -- our escape -- would just take a little longer.

I turned to Astall and asked, `Have you climbed before?'

He shook his head, `I have had little need. I usually have less strenuous means of motility.' He sighed ruefully.

You know, Jerrod, sometimes when it seems that things can't get any worse, they can't. But most times, they do.

`Well, just follow our lead. We'll all be roped together and when it gets tricky we will pull you up.'

Fortunately, both Enki and I had spare climbing claws. Enki was more of a size with Astall so she gave him her spares. We donned ours and began the long climb to safety.

It was a harrowing ascent, Jerrod. It made our trip into the valley seem like a walk in a meadow in comparison. I cannot count the number of times we nearly plummeted to our deaths. Nor can I count the number of times Astall saved us from magical assaults by the queen and her minions, be they lightning bolts, sudden patches of sorcerously-conjured oil in our path, or her attempts to create miniature avalanches with which to squash us. In fact, I remember less of it than you might think. It all blurred together into a sort of dangerous montage. One thing still stands out in my mind though, my last view of that valley.

We reached the top as the sun rose over the tablelands at the other end of the valley. As we looked back down on the site of our brush with death, we saw a verdant blanket of beautiful green which covered the floor of the vale like a carpet in the palace of a king. It was split in two by a strip of glistening blue lit with golden highlights. It was a paradise as far as one could tell from where I then stood. But far below, at the foot of the precipice which we had just scaled, were the beings who made it anything but a paradise for humanity and looked more like their tiny brethren here in Seremoreh than any sane person's view of humanity -- the arachnids and their queen.

Jerrod, we found both the adventure which we had sought and the treasure of a friendship with your teacher, but I never want to go back there again. Despite its beauty and our victory that night, we would not survive another trip. Had it not been for Astall or had it not been the day in which that sorcerous battle raged we would have been spider food. Had it not been for us, your mentor would have been spitted on an arbalest's bolt and have become an appetizer at their next meal. Without both sword and sorcery, none of us would have lived to see this or any other day."