Castle Roogna (10 page)

       There was no way to undo what had been done, no way to reclaim his lost innocence. His body had fought in the manner it was accustomed to. As his revulsion abated, Dor realized that both he and the monster spider had had a narrow escape. Had they not been together, and made their truce, and fought together, both would have fallen prey to the savage goblins.

       Why had the goblins attacked? Dor could find no reason except that he and the spider had been present and had seemed vulnerable. If goblins thought they could prevail, they attacked; it seemed to be that simple. Maybe they had been hungry, and Dor and the spider had appeared to be easier prey than whatever else offered. At any rate, it had been the goblins who started it, so Dor told himself he should not feel complete guilt. He had only done to the goblins what the goblins had tried to do to him.

       Still, there remained a grim pocket of negation in him, or horror at himself, at the capacity he had discovered in himself for slaughter. His new, powerful body had been the mechanism, but the will had been his own; he could not blame that on anything else.

       If this was part of growing up, he didn't like it.

       He turned his attention to the spider. Was this creature native to this jungle? This seemed unlikely. The scabbard had said the spider was a stranger here, and it surely would not have fallen prey to goblins on the ground if it were familiar with this region. It would have been safe in its web, high in some tree. Dor had not seen any giant spiders illustrated in the tapestry. So yes, this could be a stranger, as he himself was. In any event, a useful ally. If he could only talk to it.

       Well, he could talk with it, if he worked out a system. If he could find some object that understood spiders, not just war talk or negotiation-from-strength talk. Some pebble on the ground where spiders foraged, perhaps, or-

       "That's it!" he cried.

       "What's it?" his sword replied, startled. "Are you going to clean me off now, so I won't rust?"

       "Uh, of course," Dor said, abashed. Swords in his own day all had antirust spells, but now he was amid primitive times. He wiped the blade carefully on the freshest grass he could find, and sheathed it. Then he walked to the nearest tree and inspected its bark carefully.

       Meanwhile the monster spider was cleaning its body, wiping the blood off its legs with its mouth parts, making itself look glossy-clean again. One of its eyes-it turned out to have eight of them, not six-watched Dor. Since the eyes faced in each direction, it did not have to move its body at all to watch everything around it, but Dor was sure one of those eyes was assigned to him.

       "Aha!" Dor exclaimed. He had found a cobweb.

       "Are you addressing me?" the cob inquired.

       "I am indeed! You're from a spider, aren't you? You understand the language of spiders?"

       "I certainly do. I was fashioned by a lovely Banded Garden Spider, the prettiest arachnid you never did see, all black-and-orange-striped, with the longest legs! You should have seen her snare a mosquito! But a mean old gnat-catcher bird got her, I don't know why, it certainly wasn't out of gnats-"

       "Yes, very sad," Dor agreed. "Now I'm going to take you with me-may I put you on my shoulder? I want you to translate some spider talk for me."

       "Well, my schedule is-"

       Dor poked a finger at it warningly. "-really quite flexible," the web concluded hastily. "In fact I'm not doing anything at the moment. Do try not to mess up my pattern when you move me. My mistress put so much effort into it-"

       Dor moved it carefully to his shoulder and fixed the pattern there, only messing up a few strands. Then he returned to the monster spider. "My, he's a big one!" the web remarked. "I never realized that species grew quite so large."

       "Say something to me," Dor said to the spider. "I'll signal yes or no, some way you can understand."

       The spider cluttered, "I wish I knew what you wanted, alien thing," the web translated. This was almost like having Grundy the golem with him! But Grundy could translate both ways. Well, on with it; he was a human being, albeit a young and inexperienced one, and he should be able to work this out. Dor raised his fist in the spider's greeting-among-equals mode. Maybe he could let this indicate agreement, and the wide-open-arms gesture the opposite. "You desire to renew the truce?" the spider inquired. "It doesn't really need renewal-but of course you are an alien creature, so you wouldn't know-" Dor spread his arms. The spider drew back, alarmed. "You wish to terminate the truce? This isn't-"

       Confused, Dor dropped his arms. This wasn't working! How could he hold a dialogue if the spider interpreted everything strictly on its own terms?

       "I wonder if something is wrong with you," the spider chittered. "You fought well, but now you seem to be at a loss. You don't seem to be wounded. I saw you regurgitate the refuse from your last meal; are you hungry again? How long has it been since you've eaten a really juicy fly?"

       Dor spread his arms in negation, causing the spider to react again. "It is almost as if you are in some fashion responding to what I am saying-" Gladly, Dor raised his fist.

       Startled, the spider surveyed him with its biggest, greenest eyes. "You do understand?" Dor raised his fist again.

       "Let's verify this," the spider chittered, excited. "It hadn't occurred to me that you might be sapient. Too much to expect, really, especially in a non-arachnid monster. Yet you did honor the covenant. Very well: if you comprehend what I am saying, raise your forelegs."

       Dor's hands shot up over his head. "Fascinating!" the spider chittered. "I just may have discovered non-arachnid intelligence! Now lower one appendage."

       Dor dropped his left arm. It was working; the spider was establishing communication with a non-arachnid sapience!

       They proceeded from there. In the course of the next hour, Dor taught the spider-or the spider evoked from his subject, depending on viewpoint-the human words for yes-good, no-bad, danger, food, and rest. And Dor learned-or the spider taught this: He was an adult middle-aged male of his kind. His name was Phidippus Variegatus, "Jumper" for short. He was a jumping spider of the family Salticidae, the most handsome and sophisticated of the spider clans, though not the largest or most populous. Other clans no doubt had other opinions about appearance and sophistication, it had to be conceded. His kind neither lazed in webs, waiting for prey to fly in, nor lay in ambush hoping to trap prey. His kind went out boldly by day-though he could see excellently by night too, be it understood-stalking insects and capturing them with bold jumps. That was, after all, the most ethical mode.

       Jumper had been stalking a particularly luscious-looking fly perched on the tapestry wall, when something strange had happened and he had found himself here. He had been too disoriented to jump, what with the presence of this-pardon the description, but candor becomes necessary-grotesque creature of four limbs, and the onslaught of the goblin-bugs. But now Jumper was back in possession of his faculties-and seemed to have nowhere to go. This land was strange to him; the trees had shrunk, the creatures were horribly strange, and there seemed to be no others of his kind. How could he return home?

       Dor was able, now, to fathom what had happened, but lacked the means to convey it. The little spider had been walking on the tapestry when Good Magician Humfrey's yellow spell took hold, and the spell had carried him into the tapestry world along with Dor. Since the spider was peripheral, his transformation had been only partial; instead of becoming small in scale with the figures of the tapestry, and occupying the body of a tapestry spider, he had kept his original body, becoming only somewhat smaller than before. Thus, here in the tapestry, Jumper seemed like a man-sized giant. Dor, had he entered similarly, would have been the size of several mountains.

       The only way Jumper could return to his own world was by being with Dor when he returned. At least, so Dor conjectured. It might be that the spell would revert everything it had put into the tapestry, when the time came. But that would be a gamble. So it was safest to stay together, returning more or less as a unit: Dor to his body and size, Jumper to the contemporary world. Dor could not make the details clear, since he hardly had them clear in his own mind, but the spider was no fool. Jumper agreed: they would stay together.

       Now both of them were hungry. The black flesh of the goblins was inedible, and Dor saw none of the familiar plants of his own time. No jellybarrel trees, flying fruits, water chestnuts, or pie fungi, and certainly no giant insects for Jumper to feed on. What were they to do?

       Then Dor had an idea. "Are there any buglike forms around here?" he asked the web. "You know-the big six-legged creatures, segmented, with feelers and pincers and things?"

       "There are crabapple trees an hour's birdflight from here," the web said. "I have heard the birds squawking about getting pinched there,"

       An hour's birdflight would mean perhaps six hours travel by land; it depended on the bird and on the terrain. "Anything closer?"

       "I've seen some tree-dwelling lobsters right around here. But they have mean tempers."

       "That should be just the thing; I'd feel guilty about fingering sweet-tempered ones." Dor faced Jumper. "Food," he said, pointing to the nearest tree.

       Jumper brightened. It was not that his eyes glowed, but merely a heightening of posture. "I shall verify." He moved with surprising rapidity to the nearest trunk.

       "Uh, is it safe?" Dor asked the web.

       "Of course not. There are all manner of bug-eating birds up there, and maybe some bird-eating bugs."

       Oh. Birds were deadly to spider-sized spiders. Jumper was something else. Still, best not to take chances. "Danger," Dor said.

       Jumper clicked his tusks together. "All life is a danger. Hunger is a danger too. I am at home at the heights." And he continued climbing the tree with his marvelous facility, straight up the trunk. His eight legs really helped. Dor had assumed that two or four legs were best, but already he was having second or fourth thoughts. He could not mount a tree like that!

       In a moment Jumper's worried chitter percolated down through the foliage. "Unless there are praying mantises up here?"

       "What's a preying whatsit?" Dor asked the web quietly.

       "That's p-r-a-y, not p-r-e-y. The mantis prays for prey."

       "All right. What is it?"

       "A bug-eating bug. Big. Bigger than almost any spider."

       Just so. "None your size," Dor called up, hoping Jumper understood. Then he waited at the base, nervously. No mantises, surely-but wouldn't a steam dragon be as bad? His acquaintance with the big spider was recent, but he felt a certain responsibility for Jumper. It was Dor's fault Jumper was in this predicament, after all. And yet, if Jumper hadn't been brought along in the eddy-current of the spell, what would have happened to Dor himself, thrown innocent into the pack of goblins? The two of them together had overcome the menace, while Dor alone would have-He shudderd to think of it. He owed Jumper a considerable debt already, and his adventure in the tapestry had just begun!

       Something loomed at his face. Dor ducked, alarmed, fingers scrambling at his hip for his sword-and of course not finding it there. Then he saw that the looming thing was a tree-lobster, descending on a thread. Except that lobsters didn't use threads! No, this, one was tightly bound, helpless, its leaf-green claws tied close to its bark-brown body, swinging head down. A captive of the big spider!

       Almost, Dor felt sympathy for the lobster, for it was still alive and struggling vainly against its web-bands. But he remembered the time he had climbed a butternut tree to fetch some butter, and a lobster had nipped him. He had been nervous about them ever since; they were ornery creatures. This one's red antennae radiated malevolence at him.

       Another bound lobster was lowered to hang a few feet above the ground, and then a third. Then Jumper himself floated down. "I ate the rest," he cluttered. "Less juicy than flies, but nonetheless excellent. These ones I shall save for future repasts. My gratitude to you for your timely information, Dor-man."

       "Yes," Dor said, using the best word he had to indicate a positive response directly. He was glad that he had been able to help, but it was not enough. His responsibility would not be through until he had returned Jumper to his own world.

       Now it was Dor's turn to look for food. He asked the web, but it had seen mainly things that moved, while Dor preferred sedentary food. So he inquired of stones he saw, and sticks of wood, and soon located a hominy tree with a few ripe grits on it. This wasn't much, but it would hold him for a while. The magic vegetation did exist; it was merely sparser, more secretive than in his own day, forcing him to search it out more carefully.

       By this time it was late afternoon. It would not be safe to spend the night on the ground; more goblins could come, or other threats could manifest. If this were Dor's own world, there would have been half a dozen bad threats already, as well as several nuisances and a couple of annoyances. But maybe the goblin band had cleaned out the local monsters, not liking the competition. "Rest," Dor said, pointing to the declining sun.

       Jumper understood. "I can see very well in the dark, but it may be unsafe for Dor-man. The trees are not safe either; there are other things than birds up there, that I perceived a moment ago. One resembled a bird, but had a man-face and a bad odor-"

       "A harpy!" Dor cried. "Face and bosom of a woman, body of a bird. They're awful!" Of course he knew Jumper couldn't follow all that, but he would pick up the tone of agreement.

       "Therefore we should sleep in the air," Jumper concluded. "I will string you from a branch and you will swing safe for the night."