For minutes that felt like hours, Church dived out of the creature’s way, tearing open knees and elbows on the stones, striking as fast as he could, but never fast enough. Occasionally he would nick its steely flesh, raising a venomous cry deep in his own head; and once he struck quickly and strongly enough to hack off a length of leg that twitched with a life of its own on the floor.
He hoped to carry on whittling the thing down, but as he ducked an attack, he turned his ankle and fell to the floor, his sword skidding out of his hand. The spider was on him in an instant, its bulk pinning him down so that he couldn’t reach the sword, its legs skewering his flesh. Its eyes hovered over his face. A thousand tiny Churches were reflected back.
It struck rapidly, driving its fangs into Church’s arm. The agony was excruciating as his flesh ruptured and the poison rapidly flooded his system. On his pale flesh, the thin blue veins began to turn black as the toxins moved inexorably towards his heart and head. A jarring whispering echoed deep in his skull. The words were alien and came and went like a badly tuned radio, but they carried with them images that threatened to overwhelm him with dread and despair. The spider’s consciousness had invaded his system along with the poison, a viral intelligence within the very molecular make-up of the toxin.
After a sickening, hanging moment, a black wave sucked Church along in its wake. The language infiltrating his skull was emotional, speaking of the end of everything, of a vast hole in Existence that pulled in all light, all matter, all hopes and dreams. Church found himself walking across a blasted landscape where ghost-images hovered before winking out. Church saw modern cities fallen into shadow, and Ruth filled with a crushing grief. There were other men and women he felt he should know but didn’t.
It would have been easy to give in to the deluge of hopelessness, but instead Church became more aware of qualities that had shaped him. He recalled his despair at the death of his girlfriend Marianne, and how he had overcome that to find some hope for the future. He uncovered a strength forged by hardship. And in that instant he felt the sword in his hand.
He didn’t know whether he had found it in the throes of his delirium, or if it had magically appeared there, but he acted instantly, thrusting upward where he remembered the spider being.
An echoing shriek filled his head and the black wave receded. When his mind cleared, Church lay with the spider’s body across his legs, ichor leaking all over him. But that impression faded just as quickly, and once more he was in the tiny nook at the end of the fogou with the heartbeat drums echoing through the ground. A dream within a dream within a dream.
And he was still dying.
9
What followed came in flashes as if he were viewing intermittent frames on a reel of film. Being carried out of the fogou, seeing the powder-blue and pink flush of a dawn sky, with a few stars and a ghost-moon still hovering. Lying next to the fire in a roundhouse with Etain leaning over him, tears in her eyes. A foul stench from a pot bubbling over the fire, and an anxious Conoran throwing unseen things into the brew. Tannis bowing before him, making some oath that Church couldn’t translate.
A long period of darkness followed, and when Church next came to consciousness, the fragmentary nature of reality had subsided but the pain and exhaustion in his limbs was near-unbearable. Church fumbled for where the spider had been embedded in his arm, felt nothing.
‘Death stalks you.’ Conoran loomed over Church, his pale eyes gleaming in the firelight. ‘Are you ready for the next step of your journey?’
‘Yes.’ Church’s voice sounded as if it came from a different person. ‘But I’m not ready to die.’
‘You must fan whatever flames lie within you if you are to pull your spark back from the dark.’
‘What do I have to do?’ Church found his strength creeping back, but he still could not lift his head.
Conoran considered his response. ‘You are to meet the god above gods and plead for your life.’
10
In the dark before dawn, Church found himself carted from the roundhouse and fastened to a stretcher of wood and straw harnessed to Tannis’s horse. They set off at a slow pace that still amplified every rut and bump in the main street, and was barely less uncomfortable when they passed onto the sweeping grassland. Church was vaguely aware of other riders accompanying him, but their identities remained unknown.
For a while he was transfixed by the stars and for a moment touched a sweeping sense of wonder rarely felt outside childhood. But after an hour or so, branches closed in overhead, bringing with them a feeling of claustrophobia and a dull background drone of dread.
Tannis clearly felt it, too, for he said quietly but insistently, ‘Go slow. We are no longer alone.’
The rocking motion became a crawl, the thud of hooves barely a whisper. Church could hear the breeze rustling through the upper branches and the tinkle of a nearby stream, but nothing else. It was too dark, and death increasingly tugged at his sleeve.
‘The dark powers do not want us to reach Boskawen-Un.’ It was Conoran’s voice.
‘They come for Jack, Giantkiller?’ Etain this time.
‘He is a threat to them. They recognise this. That is why the Poison-Spider was set in his body. They did not wish a direct confrontation,’ Conoran replied.
‘Then he must be a great warrior indeed, ‘Tannis said with awe.
Church faded out for a while, and when he fought his way back to consciousness the atmosphere had grown even more tense.
‘Where? Towards the west?’ It was Etain’s friend Owein, cautious and intelligent.
‘No. Look north.’ Branwen, as flinty and insistent as ever.
‘What are they?’ A touch of horror in Etain’s voice. ‘Are they men or beasts?’
‘No time now to discuss their nature,’ Conoran said. ‘With the Giantkiller near death, we do not have the strength to fight them.’
‘Gods.’ Owein’s voice was scared. ‘See how they move through the trees? So fast and low. Surely they must have come from beneath the sea. Are they Fomorii?’
‘Enough talk!’ Conoran snapped. ‘Tannis, draw your slingshot.’
Church heard the creak of animal hide, and then the harsh clack of a flint being struck. A second later there was a whoosh and a crackle. A bright ball of light flared in the gloom before arcing across Church’s line of vision and disappearing into the trees. The tinder-dry summer wood flared up and quickly became a deafening roar. Above the crackling flames, Church heard a terrible sound, like furious pigs disturbed during feast.
‘Ride with the wind beneath you!’ Conoran bellowed.
Church was rushed along, bouncing so wildly he was convinced he would be jolted unconscious any moment. Somehow his delirium preserved him, and after ten minutes he dreamed a river took him to a night-land where a single boatman waited.
Eventually they came to a halt. He could only guess that their pursuers had fallen back. Someone lit a fire, which drove some of the aching chill from his bones, but its red light was uncommonly thin and he felt as though he was looking at it down a long tunnel. The others must have wandered away to forage for food, for their voices retreated to a distant tremor.
For a long time Church hovered in that limbo until the overwhelming odour of engine oil mysteriously appeared. An old woman’s face loomed over him, eyes red-rimmed in a face so filthy it looked as though the grime had been accumulating for decades. Her wiry hair was greasy and matted, and her breath was so foul it made Church gag.