Niall also touched the cheek; it was like cold rubber. There was something repulsive about the face; it was flabby, with a receding double chin and a thick, sensual mouth; the nose was like a pig's snout. Controlling his aversion, Niall tore open the tunic, exposing the white, hairless chest. He pointed to the pendant, which lay against the base of the throat.

"That's what killed him."

Simeon asked: "How can you be so sure?"

"Look." Niall pointed to the circular red spot above the heart; it was about an inch in diameter and might have been a burn mark. Then he took hold of the pendant and extended it on its chain; it covered the red mark precisely. "That's why he died of a heart attack."

Simeon's hand went up to his own chest. "Great goddess; I've been wearing one of those things all afternoon. . ."

Niall said: "But he had no reason to kill you. On the contrary, it would have given him away."

Veig said: "But who is 'he'?"

"I don't know his name. But he's some kind of magician. Only a magician could make the dead walk. . ." Niall's voice trailed off as he spoke the last words; it was as if he felt that even speaking them aloud was dangerous.

Simeon removed the pendant from around the man's neck, and handed it to Niall.

"Now at least he'll stay dead."

As soon as Niall's head touched the pillow, he fell into a deep and dreamless sleep. Yet when he woke, two hours later, it was as if struggling out of a nightmare. He immediately experienced a strong conviction that there was someone else in the room. He raised his head and listened; there was no sound but the wind, which howled against the corner of the building. He reached out cautiously to the lamp that burned in an alcove above the bed, and turned up the wick. The yellow flame revealed that the room was empty. Yet when he stilled his senses, retreating to the silent place inside himself, he still experienced the feeling that he was being watched.

He sat up in bed and took the lamp from the wall. Then, walking silently on bare feet, he went into the next room. Yet even as he tiptoed across the floor, he felt that these precautions were absurd. It was as if the watcher was looking down on him from above, or from some direction beyond the reach of his senses.

The glass containing the mead stood on the table. Now it contained two pendants, one taken from Simeon, the other from the corpse by the river. As soon as he saw them, Niall knew he had made a mistake to put them together. Now each one reinforced the power of the other, creating a living force field that was aware of everything that moved within its radius.

He reached out his hand toward the glass, then snatched it away; it was like trying to reach out to a striking snake. In fact, the pendants with their intertwined chains seemed to be two snakes with their coils intertwined; he felt they were daring him to reach out and touch them.

For a moment Niall considered taking them to the white tower, where they could be rendered harmless by the electromagnetic field of the Steegmaster. The thought of the freezing wind deterred him. Then he was struck by another possibility. In the basement below the hall, there were a number of stone jars made of some black, granitelike substance; they were so heavy that no one had ever attempted to move them. No one seemed to know what they had been used for. But one day the children had discovered that they possessed a peculiar property: pins, needles, and small iron ornaments stuck to them so firmly they were difficult to remove. Simeon told him they had been carved from an ore named magnetite.

With an effort that cost all his power of self-discipline, Niall reached out and picked up the glass. It was hard to dismiss the idea that the two pendants were alive and about to rear up and crawl over the sides. A few seconds later, his hand began to tingle with a sensation like pins and needles. Carrying the lamp in his other hand, he went out into the corridor and down the stairs. In the hall, the air was warm, and red embers still burned in the grate. But as he crossed to the door that led to the basement, the pins and needles turned into a numbing sensation, so that he felt he had to grip the glass more tightly to avoid dropping it.

At that moment he became aware that the force field of the glass was being reinforced from elsewhere; somewhere out in the city, an even more powerful field was joining its energy to theirs. At the same time, he seemed to be surrounded by a dull gray light that made everything unreal. The flame of the lamp was no longer necessary; the light seemed to illuminate the room like the first gray mist of dawn. The sound of his own footsteps seemed very far away. As he pushed open the door into the basement, he realized he was sweating, and that his teeth were chattering. He was seized by an overwhelming desire to put down the glass and run away; the presence that had been watching him now seemed so strong that he expected it to materialize.

He was aware that the watcher was exerting all his force to make him lose control.

If all this had happened a year ago, it would have succeeded. But contact with the spiders had taught Niall something of the use of his own will power, and of the hidden force in the depths of his being. Now, as he braced himself to resist, the danger of panic receded, as if the watcher recognized that his self-control refused to be undermined.

He hurried on down the stairs to the basement. This was a great stone-flagged room that had once been a wine cellar; a few months ago it had been full of rusty wine racks and broken bottles. Now it was used as a storeroom for food; it smelled of preserved smoked meat and spices. Along the rear wall stood six black stone jars, each about three feet tall, and carved out of a veined stone whose surface showed brown streaks of rust. Niall placed the glass and the lamp on the ground, then used both hands to lift the cone-shaped plug in the neck of the nearest jar; it was so heavy that it made him gasp. He placed this on the floor, then, gritting his teeth, raised the glass and inverted its neck over the jar. The pendants fell into its depths with a faint metallic clink.

The gray light immediately vanished, and he experienced a curious inner-shift of focus. At the same time, the numb sensation left his hand and forearm -- not slowly, like a limb to which circulation had been restored, but instantaneously, as if the numbness was some kind of delusion. The tension that had made his teeth chatter dissolved away, to be replaced by a relief that was so powerful that it seemed to drain him of strength. As he walked back upstairs, his legs ached as if he had walked to the point of exhaustion, and he had to hold on to the marble banister to support himself. By the time he was back in his room, waves of fatigue were making him walk like a drunken man. But as he threw himself into bed, he noticed that the sensation of being watched had disappeared; even the howling of the wind seemed friendly. As soon as he closed his eyes, he fell into a heavy sleep.

He woke up with a start, to find Jarita standing by the bed; sunlight slanted through the window. "What time is it?"

"Two hours after dawn."

"You shouldn't have let me sleep so late." He threw back the bedclothes.

"I looked in twice but you were sleeping deeply. And you have no Council meeting this morning."

"Thank you, Jarita."

He was hoping she would go, but she continued to stand by the bed. She wanted, he realized, to help him bathe and dress. This was one of the problems of getting up late.

The underground cave in which Niall had spent his childhood and youth had been extremely cramped; nevertheless, the men and women went to considerable lengths to preserve their modesty. Here in the Spider City, the female servants expected to help their masters to dress and undress; they enjoyed anointing his body with scented oils, and even climbing into the bath with him and administering a massage in the warm water. Veig openly reveled in all this attention, surrounding himself with attractive slaves. Niall also enjoyed being pampered, but he found that he preferred to be alone when he dressed; it seemed oddly pointless to allow someone else to help him put his clothes on. This is why he liked to rise with the dawn. Now he realized that Jarita would regard it as a rejection if he declined her services. So he stood there passively, and allowed her to remove the knee-length tunic that he wore in bed, then fetch a bowl of warm water and sponge down his body. She did this with such obvious pride and pleasure that he found himself feeling guilty about his impatience.

There was a knock at the door, and Nephtys looked in. Niall could tell she was surprised to find Jarita there, and that Jarita herself was pleased to be found kneeling at his feet.

"What is it?" His embarrassment made him speak abruptly.

"The doctor is here, my lord."

"Tell him I'll be there in a moment."

Simeon was already seated at table, drinking herb tea, when Niall came in; Niall made a gesture to prevent him from rising. "What brings you here so early?"

"Your brother. His cut has been bleeding all night -- the comfrey poultice didn't work. I've had to put in a couple of stitches."

"But it was only a small cut."

"That's what's so odd. There must have been a strong anticoagulant on the blade of that ax. But even that shouldn't stop it from healing after twelve hours. Could I see the ax?"

Nephtys, who overheard the request, left the room, and returned a moment later, carrying the bundle wrapped in sacking.

"For heaven's sake be careful. It's very sharp."

"I can see that." Simeon studied the blade at close quarters, but made no attempt to touch it. "No wonder it killed Skorbo. How do they make a blade as sharp as that? And such superb metal. . ."

"They obviously have a high level of culture."

Simeon looked at him from under his bushy eyebrows. "And do you have any idea who 'they' are?"

"Only what I can guess. Have you?"

"I noticed one rather strange thing -- the skin of those dead men. It was too pale.

I've only once seen skin as pale as that -- it was an old man who went mad and locked himself in his room for twenty years."

Niall said: "As if they lived underground."

"That's right." Simeon glanced at him sharply. "So you do know something about it?"

Niall shrugged. "The Steegmaster told me of a legend of a race of men who came to Earth from the stars, and who lived underground because the sunlight was deadly to them."

"Did he say where they lived?"

"No. He thought it was just a story."

Simeon shook his head. "I'd swear that those men had lived underground, or been kept in a dungeon." Jarita brought in another pot of herb tea; it was made from the leaves of a plant called delium, and diffused a delicate and delicious odor. The tea had a faintly astringent quality that seemed to sharpen the senses. As Jarita poured, she said: "My lord, forgive me for interrupting, but the Lord Dravig is waiting to see you."

"But why is he waiting? Ask him to come in."

"I told him you were eating breakfast, and he said he would wait."

Simeon looked uncomfortable. "I'd better go."

"There would be no point. Dravig prefers to wait. Spiders have infinite patience.

He would only feel embarrassed if we allowed him to interrupt our meal."

Simeon looked at him curiously. "You seem to understand spiders very well."

"No. I understand a little. But I think it would be impossible for a human being to understand all the subtleties of the spider mind. In some ways they know far more than human beings."

Simeon spread honey on a piece of hot crust. "Do you suppose Dravig might know where these people come from?"

"I doubt it. He told me he had no idea of their identity."

"Yet it seems incredible that no one should know who they are or where they live."

Niall asked: "What do you know of the land to the north of this city?"

"Not much. It's said to be extremely dangerous. But, as you know, the servants of the beetles were only recently granted freedom to go where they liked. And very few of them have been far from the city."

"What kinds of dangers?"

"I've heard of a beetle that has a shell so tough that no weapon can penetrate it, and jaws that can bite through a steel spear. But I must admit I've never met anyone who's seen one."

"Not even the bombardier beetles?"

"Oh no. They hate travel. They say that some of them have never even ventured outside the city." He emptied his cup and replaced it on the table. "I'd better go. Tell Veig to come and see me if he has any more problems."

He and Niall clasped forearms; the old man's forearm was stringy and muscular.

At the door, Simeon paused with one hand on the latch. "There is one more thing I meant to ask you. Why do you think that creature chopped off the head, then took it away?"

Niall smiled. "For the same reason he took his own head away."

Simeon frowned. "His own head? But that was on his shoulders."

"Quite."

"Yes, but why did he want the head?"

Niall said: "He didn't want it. He only wanted to get rid of it, so we couldn't find it. And if we hadn't caught him, both heads would now be at the bottom of the river."

"But what could we learn from a head?"

"A head contains a brain. And a brain contains information."

"Not when it's dead it doesn't."

"You could be wrong. This man is a magician. He knows many secrets that we do not know. The only thing he does not know is how much we know. That is why he wanted to get rid of the heads."

Simeon looked at him curiously. "You seem to know a great deal." He was interrupted by Nephtys, who appeared in the open doorway. "My lord, the Lord Dravig. . ."

"Yes, I know." Niall stood up. "Tell him I'm coming now." He bowed in acknowledgment as Simeon withdrew. Jarita said: "Your cloak, my lord."

As he stood there, allowing her to fasten the soft gray cloak about his neck, he noticed that her hands lingered slightly longer than necessary -- and that Nephtys was also aware of it. And since he could see into the minds of both women, he knew that Nephtys had been meant to notice. It disturbed him to realize that he was an object of a subtle rivalry between these two women, and that by allowing Jarita to dress him, he had intensified the rivalry. So, while Jarita was still smoothing the cloak, he followed Simeon out of the room.

Dravig was standing close to the fire, obviously enjoying its heat; as Niall appeared on the stairs he made the ritual gesture of obeisance. There was no greeting exchanged between them -- because they were telepathic, spiders found such human formalities incomprehensible. But since Niall was obliged to speak first he asked: "What brings you here so early?"

"The Death Lord requests your presence in his headquarters." (The image transmitted was, in fact, of a web.) "Of course." He hoped that Dravig had not noticed his uncontrollable reaction of dismay. Although he was, in theory, the lord of the Spider Lord, unpleasant impressions of previous encounters lingered in his memory. As he crossed to the alcove in which he had left his outdoor cloak and fur boots, he asked casually: "Do you know what it's about?"

"He wishes you to be present at the trial of Skorbo's fellow criminals."

This time Niall made no attempt to conceal his consternation. "As a witness against them?"

"That is unnecessary. They have already confessed."

"Then why does he want me there?"

"To witness that he always keeps his word."

"When does the trial take place?"

"It will begin as soon as you appear."

"Oh dear, I'm sorry." But even as he pulled on his boots, he knew that Dravig found his apology incomprehensible.

Spider language had no equivalent of "waiting." It would have been as inapplicable to a spider as to a tree.

The sunlight made the air pleasantly warm, although the north wind still had an edge of coldness; the snow was already beginning to thaw. The square was full of people, for today was a holiday -- a concept introduced from the city of the bombardier beetles, where men worked for six days and rested on the seventh. As soon as Niall was recognized, people cleared a way for him, then fell on their knees in the snow, bowing their heads. The fact that Niall was followed by Dravig, who walked a few steps behind him -- as was required by protocol -- obviously increased their respect. Once again Niall found himself wishing that he could stroll among his own people without being recognized.

As soon as he entered the headquarters of the Spider Lord, Niall became aware of a brooding tension. It was, in fact, an altogether curious sensation, as if walking into a kind of cold jelly. This feeling was undoubtedly shared by every spider in the building: a recognition that something of great seriousness was about to take place. In the days when human beings had been lords of the Earth, the same atmosphere had probably pervaded murder trials and public executions.

Niall found himself stifled by a sense of oppression. In the dark hallway, he turned to Dravig. "What would happen if I begged the Death Lord to spare their lives?"

Dravig answered without hesitation: "That would be inadvisable."

"You mean he would refuse?"

"No. He would agree. But for the prisoners themselves it would be a shameful humiliation."