Cenotaph Road

" I mean you no harm. Didn' t I risk my life to save you from the wolves?"

" You humans seldom do things with logic. Why not save me from them for your own perverse killing pleasures? Straying so far from my web has worn down my will to survive."

Lan planted the butt end of the torch in the ground and moved away from the sputtering fire. Sparks flew everywhere now, and he began to share Krek' s fear of being set on fire. He sank to the ground, crosslegged, and gave the spider his closest scrutiny. It was even more repulsive than Lan had anticipated. The huge mandibles snapped noisily, in a menacing ma

" Why did you leave your web in the first place? I can' t see you being native to this world. There isn' t a lump of muck large enough to call a mountain, much less the lofty spires that must be your domain."

" Ah, you are another traveller along the Cenotaph Road." For a moment, the self- pity evaporated and Krek talked with some animation. " I left my lovely web seeking adventure. Nothing ever seemed to happen. Just hang around all day, dangling at the end of a sticky strand, waiting for some ugly humans to caravan by. They would either pay the tribute due me or:"

A resounding clack of huge mandibles graphically showed the alternative to tribute. Lan' s hand moved to his sheathed knife with an instinctive jerk.

" But I frightened you! I am sorry. You humans are so fragile. Why, the last one I encountered on this miserable, wet, soggy ball of mud hardly struggled at all in my hunting web before he was entangled so badly he hanged himself. A pity. And it was such a tiny web. I was casting forth for a wild boar or a roe, perhaps, nothing more. But along he gallops on that silly four- legged beast you humans are wont to sit astraddle and that was it. Whish! All caught up and quite dead before I could rescue him."

Lan blinked rapidly at the idea that this spider' s web actually caught and held not only a human but his horse. He felt the developing silence to be ominous. He wanted to babble to fill, the quiet. Instead, he stilled his impulses, swallowed, and considered what he would tell this bizarre arachnid.

" I' m an unwilling traveller," Lan confessed. " There was a slight misunderstanding, a lady dead- not by my hand!- and I fled to avoid the unpleasantness of being reduced."

Krek wasn' t listening. A thin sigh wheezed from him as he settled down to the ground. With his legs pulled in, the spider appeared no more than a shadowy boulder in the clearing.

" No, this is not the terrain of my personal choosing. So true," the spider mused, " so true. How I wish I had not been struck with the obscene desire to explore other worlds. Not a one of my ancient and noble race has left the web of our ancestors. None, save me." Its entire body shivered as if infected with the shaking palsy. " I, Krek of the Pi

Lan let out a short, harsh laugh, more from nervous release than any other reason.

He said, " You don' t look like a warrior at all."

Again came the crashing of powerful mandibles. Lan felt the blood rush from his face. His hand gripped the handle of his knife with feverish intensity, ready for a fight, even though he knew he could never overpower such a large creature.

" If I' ve offended you, many pardons," Lan said hastily. " I only meant:"

" I know what you meant, and it is regretfully true. My vitality has been sapped. The farther afield I travel from my superb, mountainspa

Lan nodded, understanding. It was never good to be away from a personal place of power. Krek' s problem was compounded by being a traveller on the Cenotaph Road. Lan knew of no way to return to the world of one' s origin, though. The Resident of the Pit had warned him that he could never return home. Krek carried the same burden.

" I would give my entire web treasure if only I could return to Klawn- rik' wiktorn- kyt."

" What?"

" Not what, who. My betrothed. Such a fine mating web she spins. Such delicacy and intricacy of pattern. It is a joy to race along the strands, feeling the vibrancy of the web under your legs. Ah, it makes the very fur on my legs tingle thinking of her. All lost to me, all lost!"

Lan watched the spider shrink to rock size. If he hadn' t known the large dark lump in the center of the clearing was Krek, he might have blundered along and mistaken it for an inanimate resting spot off the mucky ground.

" I wish I could help you, Krek, but that first step along the Road is a permanent one. There' s no going back. You and I are cut off forever from our home worlds."

Krek uttered a sound that seemed a cross between a snort and a cough. Lan wondered if the spider had fallen ill. When Krek spoke, he knew differently.

" Foolish human! Of course you can walk backwards on the Road. Whatever gave you the idea you could not?"

" But I was told:"

" Told wrong. All one has to do to find the appropriate spot is to close your eyes and drift. The cenotaphs glow inside the mind, and if you concentrate on any individual one, images dance about it. So simple. I know precisely the way back to my web."

Lan thought over the spider' s words. To go home! He could persuade Krek to show him the way!

Then the desire faded like a night- blooming flower facing the dawn. Nothing pulled him home. Zarella was dead. Her murderer would come to grief, so said the Resident. But the Resident had been wrong once. Could it have erred on this? Somehow, Lan thought not. Discounting this, what did his home world have that couldn' t be found elsewhere?

The negative points outweighed the positive ones. Why not let Krek guide him along the Road?

" Krek," he said with more spirit then he' d felt in days. " What exactly comprises this web treasure of yours? You said you' d give it all simply to return to Klawn- whatever- you- said." The spider didn' t seem a bad sort, and if a little gold could be made escorting him back into those Egrii Mountains he mentioned, so much the better. But Lan didn' t want to end up with a few cocooned bugs. Treasure to a spider might differ vastly from the treasure of a foot- loose adventurer.

" Web treasure?" Krek asked dully. " I seldom think of it anymore. It was once a noble stash. Rubies as large as roc- eggs. Silver chains a mile long. There is even the Eye of the Rainbow."

" What' s that?"

" According to human tales, all rainbows leap from the center of this gem. While it does possess a certain brilliance, I have seen other stones with better clarity and color. And this is so small, too. Hardly as large as your fist."

" How did you get this Eye of the Rainbow?" Lan doubted this jewel would prove too valuable, but the silver chains and the rubies sounded enticing.

" A careless human caravan. Refusing the tribute due me called for their deaths. The Eye was in a large box filled with the softest silks I have ever seen spun by mere- spiders. It will be an inspiration to my hatchlings."