Krek lumbered along for almost a week and one sunny afternoon stopped to rest. He blinked at what lay revealed in a valley below him.
“Home!” he cried. Krek studied the web patterns and felt a twinge of nostalgia. While the geometries were subtly different, they looked enough like webs he and others had spun that they reminded him of his home in the Egrii Mountains. He bounced up and down on his long legs, hardly able to contain his joy.
“To feel the strands flying beneath the feet,” he said with more zest than he’d felt in months. “To let the spinneret run free, the web flying out just so. Ah…”
He hurried down the side of the mountain to the valley entrance. He canted his head to one side, listening. Krek heard nothing. His talons dug into the soft dirt and found bedrock. He felt for vibrations that might betray another’s presence in the valley. Nothing. The spider wailed out his misery.
“All gone. They have left this fair valley. But why?”
Faint temblors, reached his claws now. Krek turned and looked in the direction of the disturbance. Caves led back into the mountainside. Why any spider would voluntarily seek out those holes when the webs were still intact, Krek didn’t know. Some distant cousins of his preferred hiding in the ground, spinning their hunting webs over the doorways and trapping their prey in this fashion. It had always seemed a bit perverted to Krek, but still it was better than the odd ways the humans fed and sheltered themselves.
Krek was torn between the need to explore those caves for others of his kind and the mad desire to run along the aerial strands just once.
Desire overwhelmed him. He started up the sheer rock face of one cliff, saw the walking strand above him, jumped adroitly. His talons closed about the webstuff and held him firmly as his weight caused the elastic cable to stretch. He bounced, enjoying the feel once again. Then he hastened to the very center of the web.
There he gusted out one of his deep sighs and simply enjoyed life-the elevation, the feeling of dominance over the terrain, the way he came totally alive.
“Once more a Webmaster,” he said aloud. The baleful howl of wind through the valley drowned out his words. Krek didn’t care. This moment was too precious to waste. He swung back and forth, relishing the sensations he had been denied for so long.
Krek turned about in the web and looked down the length of the green valley. Tiny springs kept the vegetation lush and green but did not provide the odious ponds and splashing rivers he so hated. The constant hum of insects on which to feed told Krek this was nothing short of paradise. But where were the mountain arachnids? What forced them to abandon such a fine domain?
Krek ran lightly along one of the traveling strands and found an anchor point on the far wall of the canyon. He dug talons into the rock face and walked off the web and toward the caves he had seen. As he neared the yawning shaft, the telltale vibrations increased. Spiders. Many of them.
He paused at the mouth of the cave, then clacked and chittered and shrilled out a greeting of the proper form. Krek didn’t expect an immediate reply. Such would be discourteous. Humans rushed everything so. One spoke, the other replied immediately. Spiders not only had the proper number of legs, they also knew how to conduct a polite conversation.
Twenty minutes later, a faint clacking echoed out of the cave.
Krek tried to figure out the dialect. The words jumbled and he had to puzzle out even that someone had responded to his polite inquiry about the valley.
“I am a Webmaster,” he said. “May I pay homage to another?”
“He’s dead,” came the response so fast that Krek took a step back in surprise. Such unseemly haste in a spider showed intense agitation.
“These are not unusual occurrences,” said Krek. “While I hope to enjoy a long life amid my hatchlings on the web runs, I, too, will die someday.”
“They murdered him. They set him on fire!”
The anguish communicated perfectly to Krek. Nothing short of being soaked in water, and then set ablaze horrified him more. The coppery fur on his legs bristled, and he felt his body tensing to meet the challenge of anyone attempting to put the torch to him.
“The humans did it,” came another, lighter voice. Krek recognized it as female. Not quite as lilting and lovely as that of his delightful Klawn, but still pleasant. “They drove us into the caves. We fear for our hatchlings.”
“From the extent of your webs, there must be at least twenty of you,” said Krek. He neglected to count hatchlings. Only adult arachnids were considered in populations since the younger spiders tended not to have long life-spans. The ones that weren’t eaten often fell off the webs and died or met with other maiming misfortune.
“Only fourteen now.” Krek mentally added about fifty hatchlings, of which five or ten might survive.
“Why do you hide in caves? This is not some new hunting technique, is it?”
“They might return at any moment. They are awful.”
“The humans? Yes, they are all of that,” agreed Krek. Then other pieces of this distressing picture came together for him. “These humans. Are they all dressed in a like manner? In uniforms?”
“You refer to the woven webs they hang around their frail bodies?” came the female’s question.
“Yes. These are the most pernicious of the humans. A mage of great power and evil commands them.”
“They do wear similar uniforms,” she agreed.
Krek paused for the appropriate length of time, then asked, “Might I enter your cave?”
This time a polite delay elapsed before a simple, “Please do, Webmaster.”
Krek ducked down and waddled into the cave. His eyes took several minutes to adjust to the dimness, then he pushed on ahead, careful not to touch any of the webs decorating the walls. He saw no one, nor had he expected to. The voices had echoed from a long ways into the cavern. Krek continued on until he came to a vast chamber.
He stood and studied the array of webbing, then clacked his mandibles together four times to indicate his approval.
“We are pleased by your acknowledgment of our pitiful efforts, Webmaster,” said the small female spider.
Krek rubbed his front legs together in response while he looked her over. She was not bad looking-for a mere spider. Less than half Krek’s eight-foot height and not even a quarter of his bulk, she still presented a trim, sprightly figure. Her spinnerets carried geometric decorations pleasing to the eye and her leg fur had been neatly tended. She reminded Krek a great deal of his long-lost love, Klawn-only this spider was so tiny, almost fragile.
“We have never seen one so large,” spoke up another spider.
“For mere spiders, you have done well in spanning the vastness.” Krek lifted a midleg and pointed to the intricate patterns displayed in the cavern. “Such fineness of strand, such daring spans, such beauty. I am impressed.”
“Thank you, Webmaster,” the female said.
“I am Krek-k’with-kritklik, Webmaster of the Egrii Mountains on a world far distant along the Cenotaph Road.”
“I am Kadekk,” said the female. Krek noted the lack of status claimed. He bobbed his head up and down in acknowledgment. It seemed reasonable. She was only a mere spider and hardly in the same class as his Klawn.
“We are in exile in this cave,” moaned one of the other spiders. “Our Webmaster died a foul death at the hands of the silly humans.”
“The soldiers,” said Krek, “are the worst of the humans. A mage guides their hand in their hideous deeds.” He shivered lightly at the thought of being drenched, dried, and set afire. It was something Claybore’s troops would consider good sport. His mandibles ground together as he unconsciously wished for their commanders’ heads between the serrated jaws.
Kadekk said, “We need leadership and you are so… much a Webmaster.”