" I do feel ever so much better after this brief respite. Do come along, friend Lan Martak. It is only a short jaunt to the mountains. Not far at all."
Krek bounced off, his uneven gait faster than Lan could match. The human didn' t care. He might move slower now that he had transferred some of his energy to Krek, but that didn' t mean he wouldn' t arrive sooner or later. Lan Martak had learned much of his own limits since walking the Road. He plunged to new depths of exhaustion only because his burgeoning magical powers gave him new heights of energy.
" Move," he mumbled to himself. " One foot, then the other. Move, move, move!"
All day he maintained this ritual. Twilight descended and cooler winds blew into his face. He hardly noticed. He kept up his snail' s pace. The only change that penetrated was under his feet. Crusted sand dunes became tiny pebbles, which changed into solid rock. By the time he heard Krek' s damnably cheerful voice, he struggled along an arroyo dotted with increasingly lush vegetation.
" We' re out of the desert," he heard himself saying, almost in disbelief. " We made it!"
" Of course we made it, you silly human. I never doubted for a moment we would. Here, look. See? Is this not the most wonderful pond you have ever seen?"
" What? Pond? Water!"
" Oh, yes, it is that. I referred to the waterbugs. So tasty. Succulent, even."
The arachnid bobbed up and down, mandibles dexterously snapping closed on one insect after another. Krek became so greedy he had to use two of his front legs to force the bugs into his mouth. Lan paid him no attention. Falling flat on his stomach, he plunged his head under the cool, fresh surface of the tiny pond. Only when he began to gasp for air did he surface, sputtering and letting the restoring water run down his face.
" Are you going to drink that terrible fluid or simply play in it?" demanded Krek. " It appalls me watching you frolic and cavort about so. In water. How absolutely disgusting." The spider quivered all over to make his point.
" A year' s rest wouldn' t do me more good at the moment," Lan said, hardly exaggerating. This time when he plunged his face down to the rippling surface, he drank. Slowly at first, then with greater need. He forced himself to stop. His body required a certain length of time before it absorbed what he had drunk. A few minutes later, he again sampled the water. Whatever happened, he didn' t want to take in too much and make himself sick.
Lounging back, bare feet in the water and the shadow of a large rock protecting him from the sun, Lan vented a deep, heartfelt sigh.
" It' s been hard, old spider, but the going gets easier from here on."
" How is that?" Krek appeared distracted. He canted his head to one side, as if listening to faint sounds in the distance.
Lan concentrated and heard nothing. He' d never been clear on whether or not Krek' s hearing was more acute than his own. The spider' s senses were definitely not those of a human. The large saucer- sized dun eyes lacked the segmenting of smaller arachnids, but those deep eyes were by no means human- appearing. Krek claimed to have no sense of smell and Lan believed what " taste" the spider displayed relied more on the succulence than the flavor of what he devoured. The juicier the bug, the more he enjoyed it. One sense that Krek possessed that far outstripped Lan' s was that of feel. Digging down into the earth, Krek could detect the faintest of vibrations long before his human companion received any hint of movement.
" Do you feel something moving about?" he asked.
" No." The answer came curt and uncharacteristically short.
Lan closed his eyes and forced his tiny mote of light into existence again. He sent it forth, but it returned quickly and without new information. Using it too often might be dangerous, he knew. Claybore' s magics were more sophisticated; the light mote might lead the older sorcerer back to his adversary. Also, Lan Martak knew little of the magics powering the mote. Discovering it by accident, he had simply used it. What it was, where it came from, and why it even existed were questions he had not tried to answer. Simply surviving Claybore' s magical onslaughts was too engrossing for him to do much experimenting.
" Tell me what it is, Krek."
" I sense: something. I hardly dare believe I can be so lucky."
" Lucky?"
" There are: others near." Again the vagueness irritated Lan, but he pushed it from his mind. Let his friend be mysterious for a while. His magical senses told him they were relatively safe. He needed to rest. The battles in the Twistings, the chase across worlds, the encounter with Alberto Silvain at the oasis, and then the deadly trek to these mountains had sapped his reserves.
He fell into a deep sleep.
And Claybore visited him with even more frightening nightmares. He slept, but he did not rest.
" They will be at this city- state of Bron soon," said Krek. " Do you not wish to hurry after Inyx?"
" I' m recovering," Lan told the spider. " My energy levels feel about up to normal. Maybe even more than normal." The surges and pulses of magic he controlled surpassed anything he had dealt with before. Lan Martak knew he still lacked the skills to confront Claybore directly, but he also knew he had sufficient strength now to pursue the worlds- spanning battle.
" Inyx awaits you."
The spider' s insistence troubled Lan. He didn' t want to appear too eager to chase after Inyx- and Jacy Noratumi- but it continually rose to his mind that he did not like her being with the man. Jealousy? That was as handy a word as any for what he felt. No matter how he tried, he couldn' t push it aside.
" Very well. Let' s keep well into the mountains where there' s water and bugs and start for Bron."
He rose and started off in the proper direction. Krek didn' t move.
" Come on. You were the one demanding we get a- hiking."
" Not that way. There is a valley down there."
" So?" Lan used a minor spell to check for other magic use. He found no indication of humans, much less magical spells waiting to trip him up. Only faint magical emanations came from a distance, and these he discounted as meaningless.
" Spiders. Others. Like me."
The young warrior- mage frowned. Whenever Krek became reticent, he was holding back important information. The normally loquacious spider had been abnormally quiet the past days while they rested for their journey to Bron.
" Is that a danger?"
" You passed only briefly through the Egrii Mountains and did not encounter others of my kind."
" I met your bride Klawn." Lan swallowed hard at the thoughts Krek was several feet taller than the human, and Lan counted as tall. Klawn dwarfed Krek in all ways, including her single- mindedness.
" She is such a petite thing, is she not?" The arachnid sighed happily. " I do so wish she might be here."
" The others, Krek, the others."
" What? Oh, yes. Those even in my web had little use for humans. Always disturbing us with your rumbling wagons, those hideous demonpowered engines coughing and whining, never stopping for a pleasant chat, always assuming you were masters of the high reaches. Most of my clan enjoyed eating humans."
Krek' s mandibles clacked shut in an unconscious gesture.
Lan only winced.
" We tried to reason with you humans, but it bought us little enough. So we tried charging for every caravan that used our passes. Some of you even tried sneaking through. You can imagine how that distressed us." Again the clack of razor- sharp mandibles.
" That' s how you accumulated your web treasure. The, uh, tariffs on humans."
" Exactly. But few of my kind ever liked humans, even when you paid the paltry fees due us. And truth to tell, you are not very good food."