As fast as his small feet could carry him, the small boy rushed through Two-Ox Gate and out on to the raised cobble road that, if he elected to simply hurry on, and on, would take him to the very edge of the World, where he could stand on the shore staring out upon a trackless ocean, so vast it swallowed the sun every night. Alas, he wasn’t going that far. Out to the hills just past the shanty town to collect dung, a bag full, as much as he could carry balanced on his head.
It is said by wise and sentimental poets that a child’s eyes see farther than an adult’s, and who would-with even less than a moment’s thought-claim otherwise? Beyond the ridge awaits a vista crowded with possibilities, each one deemed more improbable than the last by teeth-grinding codgers eager to assert a litany of personal failures should anyone care to hear, but no one does and if that isn’t proof the world’s gone to ruin then what is? But improbabilities is a word few children know, and even if they did, why, they would dismiss the notion with a single hand fluttering overhead as they danced to the horizon. Because it will not do to creep timorously into the future, no, one should leap, sail singing through the air, and who can say where one’s feet will finally set down on this solid, unknown land?
The boy hurried on, tracked by the dull eyes of the lepers in front of their hovels, squatting forlorn and forgotten each in a nest of flies when flies with singular poignancy expound the proof of cold-legged indifference. And the scrawny half-wild dogs crept out to follow him for a time, gauging with animal hunger if this one might be weakened, a thing to be taken down. But the boy collected rocks and when a dog drew too close he let fly. Ducked tails and startled yelps and now t he dogs vanished like ghosts beneath stilted shacks and down narrow, twisting lanes off the main road.
Overhead, the sun regarded all with its unblinking omnipotence, and went on stealing moisture from every surface to feed its unquenchable thirst. And there were long-legged birds prancing on the sewage flats just past Brownrun Bay, beaks darting down to snatch up fleas and whatnot, while lizard-ducks nested on float-ing shit islands further out, calling to one another their hissing announcement of each bell in perfect cadence with the city’s water clocks and tho.se sonorous chimes drifting out over the lake, although why lizard-ducks were obsessed with such artificial segmentation of time was a question as yet unanswered even alter centuries of scholarly pursuit-not that the foul-smelling creatures gave a whit for the careers they had spawned, more concerned as they were with enticing up from the soupy water eels that would swallow their eggs, only to find the shells impervious to all forms of digestion, whilst the scaled monstrosities within pre-pared to peck their way free and then feed on eel insides unto gluttony.
What significance, then, such details of the natural world, when the boy sim-ply walked on, his long hair bleached by the sun and stirred like a mane by the freshening breeze? Why, none other than the value of indifference, beneath which a child may pass unnoticed, may pass by free as a fluffed seed on the warm cur-rents of summer air. With only a faint memory of his dream the night before (and yes, the one before that, too, and so on) of that face so vicious and the eyes so caustic as to burn him with their dark intentions, the face that might pursue him through each day with the very opposite of indifference, and see how deadly that forgetfulness might be for the child who hurried on, now on a dirt track winding its way up into the modest hills where baleful goats gathered beneath the occa-sional tree.
For the blessing of indifference might be spun on end, momentarily offering the grim option of curse, because one child’s gift can well be another’s hurt. Spare then a moment for the frightened beast named Snell, and all the cruel urges driv-ing him to lash out, to torment the brother he never wanted. He too thrives on in-difference, this squat, round-shouldered, swaggering tyrant before whom the wild dogs in the shanty town cowered in instinctive recognition that he was one of their own, and the meanest of the lot besides; while the boy, chest swelled with, power, continued on, trailing his intended victim with something in his soul that, went far beyond a simple beating this time, oh, yes. The thing inside, it spread black, hairy legs like a Spider, his hands transformed there at the end of his wrists, oh, spiders, yes, hook-taloned and fanged and onyx-eyed, and they could closs into bony fists if they so desired, or they could stab with venom-why not both!
He carried rocks as well. To wing at the lepers he passed, to laugh as they flinched or cried out in pain, and he rode their ineffectual curses all the way up the road.
While, all along the hillside, the sun had done its work, and the boy filled his bag with tinder-dry dung for this night’s hearthfire. Bent over like an old man, he roved this way and that. This bounty would please the woman- who-was-not-his-mother, who mothered him as a mother should-although, it must be said, lack. ing something essential, some maternal instinct to awaken cogent realization that her adopted son lived in grave danger-and as the sack bulked in his grip, he thought to pause and rest for a time, there, up on the summit of the hill. So that he could look out over the lake, watch the beautiful sails of the feluccas and fisher boats.
Set free his mind to wander oh, memories are made of moments such as this one.
And, alas, of the one soon to come.
But give him these moments of freedom, so precious for their rarity. Begrudge not this gift of indifference.
It could, alter all, very well be his last day of such freedom.
Down on the track at the base of the hill, Snell has spied his quarry. The spiders at the ends of his wrists opened and closed their terrible black legs. And like a monster that wrings goats’ necks for the pleasure of it, he clambers upward, eyes fixed on that small back and tousled head there at the edge of the ridge.
In a temple slowly drowning there sat a Trell entirely covered in drying, blackening blood, and in his soul there was enough compassion to encompass an entire world, yet he sat with eyes of stone. When it is all one can do to simply hold on, then to suffer is to weather a deluge no god can ease.
Beneath the blood, faint traceries of spider’s web tattooing etched his dark brown hide. These stung like hot wires wrapped about his body, his limbs; wrapped everywhere and seeming to tighten incrementally with every shiver that took him,
Three times now he had been painted in the blood of Burn, the Sleeping God-dess, The web was proving a skein of resistance, a net trapping him on the inside, and keeping out the blessed gift of the goddess.
He would pass through Burn’s Gate, into the molten fires of the underworld, and the priests had prepared for that, yet now it seemed they would fail in fashioning a means of protecting his mortal flesh. What then could he do?
Well, he could walk away from this place and its huddled, doleful priests. Find another way to cross a continent, and then an ocean. He could perhaps try an-other temple, try to bargain with another god or goddess. He could-
‘We have failed you, Mappo Runt.’
He glanced over to meet the anguished eyes of the High Priest.
‘I am sorry,’ the old man went on. ‘The web that once healed you is proving most… selfish. Claiming you for its own-Ardatha never yields her prizes. She has snarled you, for purposes unknown to any but her. She is most hateful, I think.’
‘Then I will wash this off,’ Mappo said, climbing to his feet, feeling the blood crack, pluck hairs from his skin. The web sang agony through him. ‘The one who healed me in Ardatha’s name is here in the city-I think I had better seek her out. Perhaps I can glean from her the spider goddess’s intent-what it is she would have me do.’
‘I would not recommend that,’ the High Priest.said. ‘In fact, Mappo, I would run away. Soon as you can. For now, at least, Ardatha’s web does not seek to hold you back from the path you have chosen. Why risk a confrontation with her? No, you must find another way, and quickly.’
Mappo considered this advice for a time, then grunted and said, ‘I see the wis-dom in your words; thank you. Have you any suggestions?’
The expression drooped. ‘Unfortunately, I have ‘ He gestured and three young acolytes crept forward. ‘These ones will assist in scrubbing the blood from you, In the meantime, I will send a runner and, perchance, an arrangement can be fashioned. Tell me, Mappo Runt, are you rich?’
Sweetest Sufferance, who had been so named by a mother either resigned to the rigours of motherhood or, conversely, poisoned by irony, blinked rapidly as she was wont to do when returning to reality. She looked round bemusedly, saw her fellow suryivors seated with her, the table in their midst a chaotic clutter of cups, tankards, plates, utensils and the remnants of at least three meals. Her soft brown eyes flicked from one item to the next, then slowly lifted, out past the blank eyed faces of her companions, and took in the taproom of Quip’s Bar.
Quip Younger was barely visible on the counter, sprawled across it with his upper body and head resting on one forearm. He slept with his mouth hanging open and slick with drool. Almost within reach of the man there squatted a rat on the counter, one front paw lifting every now and then as it seemed to study the face opposite and
