perspire. Even thinking about the giant spider sent a chill through his body.
'I quite agree,' Bellis declared. 'Something so wonderfully alien ought to be investigated more thoroughly than would be possible just by a post-mortem, no?'
'We're being rather optimistic in even assuming it can possibly be caught. I've no idea where it nests, no idea where it takes its victims. Ideally, I'd like to track it back to its, what's it called, its lair, just to see if there are even any survivors. So, do you really think you can help?'
Bellis grinned amiably. 'Let's have a while to think about it. But I suspect we can rustle something up, right, lads?'
'You charge for your business?' Jeryd asked.
'Good heavens! We're not like all those other cultists. We do not prostitute the power of relics, no. One cannot assign a mere monetary value to such things, sir.'
Refreshing, Jeryd thought, to find such an attitude anywhere in the Empire. 'I'd be owing you a big favour. Is there anything I can offer in return?'
The cultists made eye contact with each other, then Abaris stroked his chin and said, 'Maps?' He paused, then explained: 'We could do with a decent map of Villiren. You being in the Inquisition, like, you might find us something decent and all.'
'Maps I can do,' Jeryd confirmed. 'I've assembled quite a collection while identifying where all these people disappeared. Feels like I know the damn city better through lines on paper than in real life.'
'In many ways, that's all it is,' Bellis said. 'But less theory. Sir, we will get you your spider-trap. Let's meet again here in three days, at the same time.'
But he still had his secret shame to confess, and wondered if they might help him. 'Bellis, there's actually something else. It's uh, a little private…'
*
'And it's just that, the touching that concerns you most?'
Jeryd nodded, embarrassed. It wasn't easy to admit this, let alone talk about it. There was an awkwardness from merely opening this region of his mind. The fact that she was a woman helped.
'Just the thought of it touching me and immediately I can't cope. It's their quickness and unpredictability. I don't know what they're going to do. I sound ridiculous. Some bloody Inquisition officer I am – to be terrified of spiders.'
Bellis clutched Jeryd's hand in her own, and he noticed how hers felt. 'Dear, dear man, it's a more common reaction than you think. Why, I've seen great men from the military cower when talking in front of a group of people. I've seen tribal barbarians refuse to venture out on certain evenings due to astrological phenomena. Fear – to such a degree – is often down to something that we experienced in our upbringing – but we cultists also believe many phobias simply derive from an instinct of self-preservation, a primitive echo from our evolution. Perhaps some of your own distant forebears were once poisoned by those creatures!' With a confident smile, Bellis turned to look around the empty bistro.
The day was unwinding itself, and most of the customers had gone, including her two companions. Outside, it was getting dark, and they silently watched a street trader pitch his cart in front of the window, only to be moved on by army personnel. There was a distinct calm about the place – providing an ideal place to debate Jeryd's secret fears.
Bellis produced a glass orb from her bag, heavy enough to require two hands as she placed it on the table.
'Look at this marvel.' She gestured with open palms, and stared at the object with such glee that he felt an expectation for him to be impressed.
'A relic?' Jeryd enquired.
Although it was transparent, he could see how pulses of coloured light flickered beneath the surface, like miniature flashes of lightning.
'We're too predictable at times,' Bellis said shaking her head. 'A relic for this, a relic for that – well, I guess we just get used to dealing with life in such a prescriptive way. Anyway, we call this one flaraor fold – which is literally translated as 'the false world'.'
'Looks like a crystal sphere to me,' Jeryd mumbled, still peering down at it.
'Well, yes, it is that too,' Bellis cackled, and her laughter could almost cut through the glass.
'What's this thing do then?'
'Look closer. What you see won't be real, and if you want to be rid of your fears, then just touch it. Go on.'
Jeryd yielded, and moved his left hand towards the- s u r f a c e and suddenly, shooting through insanely bright storm clouds, he was elsewhere.
Warmth? The surroundings took shape, and he found that he was in a re-creation of his former house in Villjamur – in his cluttered bedroom, in fact – but everything was so bright, too bright. Milky light poured in through the windows, from a hazy, too-yellow sun outside, but then it faded into something more like the real world once his eyes adjusted.
Bellis's voice came to him, from a distance or inside his head or both, he couldn't work out.
– Remember, this is only a controlled vision, a re-created world – it isn't real!
– What do I do? Jeryd asked.
– Wander about, or sit down and relax. Enjoy it!
– Easy for you to say.
Jeryd slouched on the familiar bedsheets, crisp and clean, and there was a tang of Marysa's perfume in the air, a glass of whisky on one side. He was pleased to discover that he was imagining some of his favourite things.
– Comfortable?
– I guess so.
– Something will happen now, and you must realize that it is only an image. I will control it.
– Right…
An image shuddered into being. Jeryd froze. There it was, on the floor by the foot of his bed, enclosed in a glass box: a spider the size of his fist. The same feelings besieged him: he felt it again in his heart, not merely in his chest; an overwhelming tightness, as if his very life was trapped. A total shortness of breath. He squeezed his eyes shut.
– Just keep looking at it, right? It can't harm you, silly Jeryd. It can't go anywhere – and it is not real. It is just an image.
– I know, but…
– No buts! Focus, if you want to be rid of your fear.
Opening his eyes with a sigh, he then regarded the spider. Though not very big, it seemed to be staring up at him, taunting him. Jeryd's tail was frozen still, and he could feel his pulse beating in his throat.
Bellis gave him instructions from afar, and Jeryd obeyed her reluctantly. Sometimes her words seemed slurred as if he couldn't hear them clearly, but he could tell they were formed inside his head. She commanded Jeryd to walk around the room. She asked him to look down into the glass box. She instructed him to put his hand up against the side of the box. She urged him to perform a whole series of actions that seemed to go on forever, frustrating in execution, and even foolish at times. Again, her words working inside his skull. Childhood memories flickered into his consciousness once or twice: his mother standing terrified on a chair in the kitchen as a big spider scuttled across the room, his father shambling in drunk to swat it with a book.
Jeryd did what he was told and was surprised to find that by the end he was not experiencing the same degree of paralysis as before. It helped, of course, to know that it wasn't real, that it was an image imprisoned in a false world. All through the ritual, Bellis continued explaining her secret theories about the nature of fear – things, she said, that he would forget as soon as he was removed from this setting, yet would remain lodged deep inside his mind. Jeryd didn't know what to make of any of it and suddenly-
J
e r y d was back in the same cafe, clutching the box as if it was for real with the spider right up against his face – and there was now minimal panic, no quiver or heart murmurs, and he was totally astounded. Bellis merely sat there sipping her cup of tea, with a satisfied grin on her face. 'The mind', she announced, 'is a powerful thing.
