19
On the morning of their eighth day together, as the sun climbed over the snow-capped mountains and yawned at the world below, shreds of night mist still clinging to the ground, they reached the southwest corner of the Blight, a place called Boomer's Pass. They could see their avenue of escape from the Wildlands: an old, paved roadbed, now full of weeds, stones and a great many scraggly trees, leading straight through the foothills and finally between huge slabs of black stone at the base of the Gabriel Fit Range, which towered so high that the last third of it was swathed in fat, white clouds.
We'll set out immediately after dark, Tedesco 'pathed.
After that brief announcement he shielded all his thoughts from Jask Zinn.
For the others the morning passed swiftly in silent conversation. For Jask, however, it dragged. Since the incident in the pool the day before last, they had all shunned him even more assiduously than ever. He was certain that Melopina had told them what had happened. He was bitter about her quick tongue, even while he understood that there could be no secrets between espers.
They parked beneath a stand of enormous trees, whose branches were so tightly interwoven that very little sunlight passed through to disturb the forest floor beneath. Tedesco stood the first watch from noon until two o'clock. Chaney stood guard from two until four, turning over the post to Jask, who would handle it for another two hours before waking Kiera. They had all adjusted to sleeping by day and working by night, and in the heavy shadows of the trees, they had no problems with insomnia.
Jask sat on an overturned log near the sleepers, but faced the open road up which they had journeyed and from which they might expect to get visitors of whatever sort. Occasionally he turned around to study the sleepers, most especially Melopina. She lay on her side, near the wagon, hands pulled up against her breasts, breathing quietly, her blue-green membranes trembling slightly each time she exhaled. When he was beginning his second hour on duty, he turned for yet another glimpse of her and saw — or thought that he saw — something hanging in the air above her.
“Mellie?” he asked softly.
No one replied.
He turned away from the bright sun beyond the trees and stared hard at the air just above her. In a minute his eyes adjusted, and he saw that he had not been imagining things: a spiderlike insect, fully as large as a grown woman, hung from glistening gray-white threads, its ugly black legs pistoning slowly over the girl. From its bulbous stomach a dark, wicked stinger protruded directly toward her neck, the top of it no more than twenty inches from her soft skin.
Jask stood up.
The spider quivered, did not strike the girl, waiting for some condition of the atmosphere that only it could understand.
Jask raised his rifle and was about to pull off a shot, then slowly lowered it as he remembered how many rounds it had taken to subdue the crab in that ancient church. If his shot did not kill the insect instantly, it might leap forward and spear Melopina's neck.
He 'pathed, Mellie…
Who—?
Wake up, but don't move, don't open your eyes and don't make the least breath of a sound.
Clearer then: Jask?
Do you understand what I've said?
Yes, but why—
He 'pathed her the situation.
Why can't I open my eyes?
It may have some way of registering that. You may precipitate a strike. And I'm afraid that you'd cry out involuntarily when you got a look at it. It isn't pretty.
What will you do?
Kill it.
How?
With my esp power. Now, wait and be still.
He sat down on the ground, because he knew that such a tapping of his esp could make him physically weak, and he did not want to fall over halfway through the job.
He sensed out, searching for the nimbus of the spider's primitive mind, found it, oozed carefully into it, running mental fingers over the slimy texture of those thought fragments and shattered energy pulses. He found the complex nerve clusters that regulated its reaction to fear, and he put pressure on these, trying to ignore the horrid beat of its dark desires, which thrummed all around him like singing wires ready to snap.
The spider quaked on its threads, drew its stinger back toward its black belly.
Jask did not know whether this movement meant the beast was merely cocking its device prior to discharging it into the girl's neck, or whether his psionic attack was beginning to have some effect. He put his hands to his temples and concentrated harder.
The spider rose slightly on its threads.
Jask built up bolts of mental power and, suddenly, began to feed them into the fear center of the spider's brain, one after the other, like hot blades.
The spider withdrew its stinger altogether and started slowly back up the threads, reluctant to leave such a juicy morsel as Melopina but forced into retreat by a power it couldn't understand.
Jask doubled his efforts, his arms dropping to his sides as he lost the ability to hold them up any longer.
The spider put on more speed, making for the intense shadows in the tree branches. Halfway up, it scrabbled at its silken wires, kicked loose against its will and, wriggling, fell.
Move, Mellie!
The girl rolled out of the way.
The spider landed, came up on its feet, all its black legs locked straight to give it maximum height, the maw in its gut opening and closing, dripping thick saliva on the place where Melopina had lain.
Fear… fear… terror… panic… Jask worked at projecting the proper patterns.
The spider tottered.
Fear… death… terror…
It caught sight of Mellie and, gaining some last bit of courage and strength, it reared back and skittered toward her, making no sound itself but causing the leaves beneath its feet to rustle quietly.
She screamed.
Jask leaped up, pouring out all of his reserves of power, his mind bleached white, drained empty in a gush of esp.
The spider rose over the girl on four of its eight legs, its maw snapping open and shut, open and shut, as it prepared to fall upon her and—
It burst into flame!
Rather than falling forward, the creature rolled back, wailing in its death agonies, many legs kicking off sparks, the darkness under the trees illuminated by it, the air soured by the smell of burning flesh. It rolled halfway across the floor of the woods before it stopped, and then it was very still. The flames died away, leaving nothing more than a smoking hulk a third as big as the thing had been in life.
Did I do that? Jask asked, stunned.
No, Melopina said. I did.
I didn't know you could kill like that, by setting things aflame.
And I didn't know that you could kill with your power. How were you affecting it? I couldn't tell.
The same way I killed the men who imprisoned me in my enclave — I was frightening it to death.
The girl joined him a few meters from the charred corpse, looking into the blackened mouth that still opened and closed, after death, across the width of its gut. The other espers had been awakened by the spider's cries, and they now stood behind Jask and the girl.
It would have killed me if you hadn't seen it in time, she 'pathed.
