Tubin concluded that Madig's party had been attacked in the middle of the night, and overpowered without a struggle. Then they had been taken away toward the west.

They must have halted briefly -- perhaps to eat breakfast -- so that Madig had an opportunity to draw the dagger from its sheath above his ankle, and leave it pointing in the direction of their march. He had driven the handle into the earth, to make sure that whoever found it would know it had been placed there deliberately, and not dropped by accident.

Yet all Tubin's skill could find no further trace of the party. Throughout that day and the next they marched toward the Gray Mountains, without discovering even the remains of an encampment. And in the barren foothills of the Gray Mountains, they decided to abandon the search and return home.

Kasib concluded that Madig had been attacked by wandering nomads, perhaps fugitive survivors from one of the armies he had conquered. But although spider balloons searched the wastes of Kend and every habitable valley in the Gray Mountains, they found no sign of human habitation.

Before that summer came to an end, a guard on the walls of Cibilla sighted a lone man, dressed in a gray cloak, stumbling across the plain toward the town. Before the stranger could pass through the gate, he collapsed in a swoon, and lay face downward like a corpse. He was carried to a nearby house and placed in a bed. It was only when the captain of the guard went to look at the stranger that he recognized him as Madig. The face was so pale and emaciated that he looked like a living death's head.

Yet when he regained consciousness, Madig refused to tell his story, declaring that this was for the ear of the Death Lord alone. By this time, Kasib the Warrior had returned to his capital, and as soon as he was strong enough, Madig was sent to the spider city under escort. There he was taken immediately into the presence of the Death Lord.

But what passed between them remained a secret, for Qisib and all his fellow counselors were sent from the room. Qisib was allowed to return when the meeting was over, and he observed that Madig seemed weary and heartsick, while the Death Lord looked grim and thoughtful.

By the end of that day, Madig had sickened with a fever, so that he was unable to stand upright. He was lodged in a room at the top of the Death Lord's palace, and even his father -- also called Hallat -- was forbidden to see him. Finally, when Hallat heard that Madig was close to death, he cast himself to the ground before the Death Lord and begged to be allowed to take leave of his son. The Death Lord granted his request, and allowed him to sit by Madig's death bed. No one learned what passed between them; but a week after Madig's death, his father followed him to the grave. Qisib was with him when he died -- for Hallat, like his own father, was a friend rather than a servant -- and saw that the loss of his son had deprived him of the will to live. The last words he spoke to Qisib were: "My son has been condemned to death."

When the Death Lord next returned to Cibilla in the hot season, he found the town in a state of panic. In the course of a year, thirty more of his human servants had disappeared. Some had been shepherds who had been tending their flocks in the foothills.

But others had been taken at night from the city itself; one man had even been kidnapped from his home while his wife and two sons were asleep. The guard had been doubled, and slaves began to build an embankment of earth around the town. And still men continued to disappear without trace. What caused so much disquiet was that no one had even caught a glimpse of the kidnappers.

It was Qisib who suggested that perhaps the enemy was entering the town from the sea. The Death Lord immediately ordered guards to patrol the shore line. Yet on that very night, two of the guards disappeared -- one from the embankment, one from the seashore. When the Death Lord learned of this latest outrage, he sent a hundred spider balloons to scour the surrounding country, as far as the Gray Mountains. But it was Tubin the Tracker, working alone, who found the body of one of the guards, buried in a shallow grave within a mile of the town. Both arms had been cut off at the elbow, and both legs removed at the knees. This was the only body that was ever found.

Now the Death Lord fell into a rage and swore revenge. (This, Niall realized, was a considerable admission; unlike men, spiders were ashamed of strong emotion; it was a point of honor never to admit to it.) He called together all his counselors -- of whom Qisib was the oldest and most respected -- and announced that he would search out the enemy and destroy him. Overawed by his wrath -- as well as sharing his anger -- most of them agreed that the enemy must be punished at all cost. Only Qisib, and an old general named Amalek, advised caution. Qisib felt that an enemy who was so skilled in concealment was more dangerous than the Death Lord realized. But Kasib was so angry that their advice was ignored.

And since everyone agreed that the enemy must be hiding in the Gray Mountains, and since it had always been Kasib's intention to lay claim to all the northern lands, Amalek was ordered to assemble an army of thousands of spiders and human warriors.

These were gathered on the plain of Cibilla, then marched north to the Valley of the Great Lake. The human warriors marched along the coastal plain, while wolf spiders scaled the mountains and searched every valley. (Niall could imagine the tireless wolf spiders clambering up and down mountains as if they were hillocks.) Four days later, the army regrouped on the shores of the Great Lake, and prepared to begin the invasion of the northern mountains. The human soldiers, under Amalek, would march up the western coastal strip; the wolf spiders would once again scour the mountains and valleys; the death spiders, under Kasib the Warrior, would march eastward to the river valley that gave access to the wastes of Kend.

On the day before the armies of Kasib prepared to march northward, the weather was stifling and humid, without a breath of wind. But in the late afternoon, the sun disappeared behind a great black cloud, and a cold wind sprang up from the southeast. By early evening the wind had turned into a gale, and the rain was so heavy that it beat the canvas tents of the foot soldiers to the ground. Kasib gave the order for the army to take shelter under the southern flank of the mountains, where a great cliff offered some refuge from the wind. Kasib himself, together with his counselors and commanders, crossed the river on a pontoon bridge built by his engineers, and struggled to the north side of the valley -- the wind was now so strong that they had to cling together to avoid being blown away -- and took shelter in the mysterious city carved into the face of the cliff. There, from inside a deserted palace, they saw the pontoon bridge swept away by the torrent.

The Death Lord was unconcerned, convinced that the storm would soon blow itself out.

But by midnight, the gale was stronger than ever. In the early hours of the morning, they heard the sound that Qisib had feared (for a sixth sense told him that they were on the brink of disaster), the thunder of waters as the lake burst its bank. Qisib had already shut his mind to the misery being endured by the spiders exposed to the storm, but now he was overwhelmed by their anguish as the torrent struck them and smashed them against the rocky wall of the mountain. Within a minute, all had been destroyed; the force of the water swept the valley clean, leaving behind not a single trace of the mighty army that had been encamped there.

By dawn the next day, the rain and the wind had ceased, but the whole valley had turned into a brown river that ran toward the sea. The Death Lord and his retainers were forced to spend another day and night in the deserted city before the waters had subsided enough to permit their escape. The sun now blazed down on a deserted wilderness of mud.

The Death Lord was in a dangerous situation, and he knew it. Unlike human beings, spiders possess little imagination, and are therefore disinclined to exaggerate their problems by brooding on them. Yet it was clear to Kasib that he had lost most of his army, and that if his human subjects should hear about this and decide to revolt, the spiders would be annihilated. But then, since there were no survivors, there was no one who might carry the story back to the ears of men. This is why Kasib the Warrior decided to return to the spider city, claiming a great victory in the north, and keeping silent about the disaster. For months afterwards the bodies of men and spiders were cast up along the coast on the incoming tide; but these bodies were instantly burned by squads of slaves, to prevent knowledge of the disaster from becoming known among men.

The stratagem worked. Men never learned of what had happened in the Valley of the Dead, and the Death Lord continued to reign as if he had a million warriors at his command.

But the unknown enemy from the north continued to make incursions into the realm of the Spider Lord, killing shepherds, kidnapping guards, even destroying a death spider with their arrows. No one ever saw them -- they seemed to possess the gift of invisibility. This is why, on the advice of his counselor Qisib the Wise, the Death Lord decided to build a great wall across the Valley of the Dead, a wall that was too high even for humans to scale. It took half a century to build and cost the lives of twenty thousand slaves. (In the time of Qisib's successor, Greeb, it led to a slave revolt that ended in the death of thousands of spiders and their human servants.) Before it was half-completed, Qisib had passed into the realm of the unliving. But from the moment the building began, the incursions ceased, and the Death Lord and his descendants were able to live in peace.

The voice of Qisib became silent. Every spider present was deeply moved by his narrative. The images of destruction were so vivid that it was as if they had all been present when the lake burst its banks and destroyed so many lives within seconds. None would ever forget the image of the valley on the morning after the catastrophe, a waste of brown-black mud and pools of standing water. (Qisib's mind had conveyed it exactly as he had seen it, and again Niall was amazed at the photographic accuracy of detail in the spider imagination.) Suddenly aware once more of his surroundings, Niall realized that the tiny chamber had become intolerably hot and stuffy. Yet this seemed unimportant compared with the significance of the story he had just heard.

He made a bow of acknowledgment and thanks, constrained only by the fact that he had almost no room to move. "I thank you, my lord. I wish I could persuade you to preserve these stories in writing."

Qisib was obviously puzzled. "You mean the use of marks that signify speech?" "Yes."

"What purpose would that serve? We already communicate without the need for speech."

"Of course. But because you communicate with your minds, you have kept no records. No spider in this city knows the history of how the great wall came to be built, or how the armies of Kasib the Warrior were destroyed in the Valley of the Dead. Do these things deserve to be forgotten?"

"But they are not forgotten. They are in my brain. That is why they keep me alive."

"And do you want to be kept alive?"

"No." A world of sadness was compressed into the syllable. "I would prefer to be allowed to remain in the land of the unliving."

Niall was unable to restrain his curiosity. "What is it like to be dead?"

"Unfortunately, I cannot remember. As soon as I enter this world, I lose all memory of that other realm, like a dreamer who wakes from sleep. But I know, from my reluctance to enter this world, that the one I have left must be very beautiful."

"But would you not like to be allowed to remain there?"

"No, for I have promised to remain alive, so that my memories shall never be lost."

"But if your memories were preserved in writing, you would be absolved of your promise."

"That is impossible." Qisib spoke with conviction.

"It is true that writing could not capture the richness of your memories. But it could duplicate all the essential facts." Sensing Qisib's objection, he went on quickly: "Listen to me. There was a time when human beings did not possess writing. But they possessed speech, and minstrels and storytellers memorized accounts of great deeds, and kept them alive for generation after generation. Then writing was invented, and it became possible to keep records. From that time on, man was able to know his own history. Now all the known history of the human race is contained in the records of the white tower."

Qisib was impressed. "That must take many words."

"Yes. Every page contains many words. And every book contains many pages.

And every library contains many books." Niall accompanied these words with images that made his meaning clear.

Qisib seemed appalled. "That would be a labor of eternity."

Niall, unaccustomed to expressing ideas, felt overwhelmed with frustration. "You do not understand. You spiders dislike the idea because you think it sounds boring. You live in the present moment, and find it so interesting that you have no concern for the past. That is a kind of laziness." In terms of spider etiquette, Niall was being appallingly rude; but he was so concerned with what he had to say that this seemed unimportant.

"Human beings are also lazy, but there have always been a few among them who were not lazy. It was these men who kept the records of history, and made maps of the stars in the sky, and studied the laws of geometry -- all activities that most human beings consider boring. That is how men came to build great cities and to conquer the Earth -- by doing things that you consider boring. It is only by doing things that they consider boring that men cease to be slaves and learn to become masters." As he spoke, he was despairingly conscious that his words were inadequate, and that no spider could understand what he was trying to say. It was only when he was finished that he realized that all the spiders in the room were listening to him with almost breathless attention; only then did it dawn upon him that because he spoke with such passionate sincerity, they regarded his words as a message from the goddess herself.

In the silence that followed, Niall was aware that they were absorbing what he had said, and reflecting on its meaning. Finally Qisib said: "It would not be easy to transcribe my memories in human language."

"No. But it would be easier than you think. In the white tower there are machines that can read the mind. They could store the contents of your memory so that they would never be lost."

"The Death Lord would never grant his permission."

"That is unnecessary. I am the lord of this city." It embarrassed Niall to make this assertion, but he felt there was no alternative. "It is I who decide these things."

Qisib turned an astonished gaze on Asmak. "Is this true?"

"Yes, lord. He is the emissary of the goddess and therefore the ruler of this city."

"And his will can overrule that of the Spider Lord?"

"Yes, lord."

Qisib mastered his astonishment; not to have done so would have been considered unmannerly. He addressed Niall with the formal respect due to one in authority. "Forgive me, sire. I did not realize who you were."

Niall replied with a mental gesture signifying that it was unimportant.

But Qisib was still troubled. "My vow to remain alive was made under solemn oath. . ."

Niall interrupted: "By the authority vested in me by the goddess, I have the power to absolve you of that vow."

Qisib considered this in silence. When he spoke again, it was obvious that he had come to a decision. "Then you also have the power to absolve me of my promise about what passed between Madig and Kasib the Warrior."

Niall asked with surprise: "You learned the secret, then?"

"The Death Lord finally spoke of it on the night of the great storm, as we waited for the dawn in the Valley of the Dead. He was deeply troubled by the disaster, and needed someone to whom he could unburden his soul. Since I was the only one to share the secret, I was sworn to silence. But there are no secrets that may not be revealed to the emissary of the goddess."

Niall's heart began to beat faster. But he restrained his eagerness and remained silent -- to show that he had no desire to force Qisib to speak against his will.

The account that followed was couched in the language of images and sensations.

Since Qisib himself had not been present during the events he described, it lacked the pictorial clarity of his earlier narrative; yet Niall was fascinated to observe how even this twice-told tale-recounted by Madig to the Death Lord, then by the Death Lord to Qisib -- still possessed the authenticity of direct experience.

Qisib described how, sleeping in a sheltered valley in the waste of Kend, Madig and his companions had been attacked in the hour before dawn, and overwhelmed before they could defend themselves. They never saw the faces of the attackers, for they were blindfolded, and warned that if they made any attempt to remove them, they would be instantly killed. On the second day their captors carried out the threat and cut the throat of a man called Rolf the Wheelwright because they said he was trying to peep underneath his blindfold.

For six days they marched across rough and uneven country, and picked their way across marshes that had a stench of decay. Their captors spoke very little, even among themselves. At the end of the sixth day, they halted at dusk in a grassy valley; in the distance Madig could hear a roaring noise like a waterfall or a river in full spate. The sound was a long way off, but Madig's hearing was exceptionally keen. The prisoners were then given a sweet-tasting drink and soon after this, Madig began to feel sleepy. But he had guessed that the drink was a drug and struggled hard to resist its effects. So he was still awake when their captors were joined by a band of men who came from the direction of the rushing torrent. This was the last thing Madig remembered before he was finally overcome by sleep.

When Madig woke up, he was on a kind of stretcher and was being carried downhill. The sound of the rushing water was now very close. Soon after this, he saw daylight under the blindfold, and knew that it must be dawn. A few hours later their captors gave them a meal, then more of the sweet drink, which sent them to sleep again.

But this time Madig succeeded in spilling half his drink down his chest, so he was able to remember something of the next part of the journey. They embarked on a boat and crossed a lake or a wide river. Then they were placed in chariots drawn by animals, and they traveled throughout the rest of the day. At evening, they were given another meal and more of the sweet drink. Again Madig tried to spill it; but this time his captors noticed what he was doing and he was given a brutal beating that left him bruised all over. He was not sorry when, after being forced to drink a large goblet of the sweet liquid, he lost consciousness again.

He awoke to find himself on a hard bed in a damp prison cell with almost no light.

The blindfold had been removed; but when he tried to question his jailer, he was warned that he would be killed if he opened his mouth again. Since he knew that these men would not hesitate to carry out their threats, he took care from then on to behave like a mute.

For many days he saw no one but the surly and taciturn man who brought him food. But one day, a girl came into his prison cell, followed by a man carrying a bucket of hot water. The man ordered him to undress, then the girl washed him from head to foot, and trimmed and combed his hair and beard. Madig guessed from these preparations that he was about to be taken before some important dignitary -- probably the ruler himself.

After being washed, he was ordered to dress. Then he was blindfolded again and led through echoing stone corridors and out of the jail. Although he could see nothing but a crack of daylight under the blindfold, he could tell that he was being escorted through the streets of a fairly large town or city, for the road underfoot was hard and smooth. He was also aware that there were other people in these streets, for he could hear their footsteps. Yet the strange thing was that it was all so silent that, although he strained his ears, he could hear no sound of voices. His companions also remained silent and Madig was afraid to open his mouth.

Now they mounted a flight of steps, and he heard the creaking of a massive door, and the sound of it closing behind them. They crossed a stone-flagged floor, and he knew from the echo of his footsteps that they were in a large hallway; after that they passed through another great door and into a chamber whose atmosphere was as cold as ice.

Madig sensed that his companions had left him and that he was now in the presence of the ruler of this city. And although Madig was famous for his bravery, he now found himself overcome by a strange feeling of dread, as if in the presence of a dangerous predator, so that it was hard to control the trembling of his limbs. Then a soft voice spoke from a place that seemed to be in front of him and above his head -- Madig guessed that the ruler of this city was seated on a throne at the top of a flight of steps.

"I want you to carry a message to the ruler of the spiders." The voice had a whispering, throaty sound, as if there was something wrong with the vocal chords. "Are you listening?"

"Yes, lord."

"I want you to tell your master that these lands belong to me, and that I shall destroy anyone who invades them. Repeat that."

"I am to tell my master. . ."

"Lower your voice. I am not deaf."

"No, lord." Madig was disconcerted; he had seemed to himself to be speaking in his normal voice. Now he lowered it to little more than a whisper. "I am to tell my master that these lands belong to you, and that you will destroy anyone who invades them."

"Good. You may also tell him that I am a magician, and that I can render this city invisible, so that it would serve no purpose to try to find it. Do you understand?"

"Yes, lord. I am sure my master. . ."

"Now go!"

"Yes, lord." But as he turned to go, the hoarse voice said: "Wait." Madig heard the soft swish of garments descending toward him, but no sound of footsteps.

"You will also tell your master that I shall hold your companions as hostages, and that unless his answer is satisfactory, they will all die."

"Yes, lord." Madig's heart sank, for he already knew that Kasib the Warrior would be enraged by the threat, and that therefore his companions were already doomed. Yet at least he would be free to avenge them. . .

But, as if reading his thoughts, the unseen man continued: "You will also die. My arm is long and I do not release my grip."

Madig's hand was taken in a hand that was cold and strangely rough -- it reminded him of the hand of a leper, covered with scales of decaying skin. As the fingers closed, Madig screamed with pain; the grip was so powerful that he felt it could have crushed the bones of his hand into powder.

Now the unseen man brought his mouth close to Madig's ear. "One more thing."

And as he spoke, Madig realized, with a shock of horror, that although the mouth was within an inch of his ear, he could feel no breath. "Tell your master that if he ignores my warning, his people will suffer a catastrophe that will make the massacres of Ivar the Cruel seem insignificant." He released Madig's hand.

"Yes, lord."

"You have one month -- thirty days. If you return here with a satisfactory answer before that time, you and your companions will be spared. If not, you will all die."

As the cold hand released his, Madig's senses felt as if they were being sucked from him. When he opened his eyes again, the blindfold had been removed, and he was back in his prison cell. He noticed that his right hand was covered with blood, and that his arm felt cold and numb. Later that evening, after supper, he fell into an exhausted slumber. When he woke up, he was again being carried on a stretcher, this time up an irregular slope, and was again blindfolded. In the distance he could hear the roaring of a river. The glimmer of light that penetrated the bottom of the blindfold was fitful, and he guessed that his captors were carrying torches, and that they were again traveling by night.

For the next six days he was made to march over rough and difficult terrain, and was always so exhausted by the end of the day that he slept heavily until aroused the next morning. He noticed that his companions spoke only in the briefest of monosyllables, but that for most of time, they were silent.

One morning, Madig was awakened by the sun on his face. It seemed to him that he had been allowed to sleep much longer than usual. He lay there, listening for some indication that his captors were preparing a meal, but the silence finally convinced him that he was alone. He pushed up the blindfold, and saw that he was lying in a wide valley which he recognized -- it would later become known as the Valley of the Dead. The sun was high in the sky, and his companions were nowhere to be seen. But they had left a cloth containing food and drink, and this convinced him that he was free. It took him two days to make his way back to Cibilla.

By now, the numbness in his arm had crept into his shoulder, and he was suffering from a permanent fever. Madig calculated that he had twenty days still to live.

This is why he refused the help of doctors, and insisted on being taken to the city of the Death Lord. There he was conducted immediately into the presence of Kasib the Warrior, where he delivered the message from the unknown enemy. The Death Lord listened silently, and when Madig had finished, questioned him closely about his period in captivity -- how many days' march lay between the wastes of Kend and the stronghold of the enemy, and how far he had marched before being freed. From these questions, Madig knew that the Death Lord was contemplating an attack on the realm of the enemy, and that he himself was doomed to die. He felt no resentment, for he knew that it was impossible that the Death Lord should submit to the threats and insults of a mere human being.

Physicians attempted to cure Madig as he lay on his sick bed; but none could discover what was wrong with him. The sensation of paralysis had reached his chest, then began to pass downward toward his feet. The fever made him delirious, and he talked endlessly of the companions he had left in the hands of the enemy. And, exactly as the enemy foretold, he died on the thirtieth day.

Hundreds of spider balloons scoured the Gray Mountains from the wastes of Kend to the Lake of Silence, but found no trace of any city or even so much as a shepherd's hut.

By that time the first snows of the winter had begun to fall and Kasib the Warrior knew that his revenge would have to be delayed until the following summer. And it was precisely one year later that the armies of the Death Lord were destroyed in the Valley of the Dead, the threat of the unknown enemy was fulfilled.

Qisib concluded: "This was the story told to me by Kasib the Warrior as we waited for daylight in the Valley of the Dead. He wanted me to reassure him that the disaster was not his fault. But for once, I was unable to offer my lord any comfort." He fell into reflective silence, and Niall was also silent, understanding that, even after death, Qisib could still experience grief. Qisib asked finally: "Well, chosen of the goddess, are your questions answered?"

"All but one, my lord."

"Ask it."

"What do you think was the ultimate purpose of this unknown enemy from the north?"