14. Cursed Scholar

In a small artificial clearing well distanced from the regular trail, thousands of spiders swarmed over a great tree whose trunk swelled broader than Silane was tall. The spiders were so densely concentrated over the tree’s base that Silane could not sense whether the tree was alive or dead beneath the amassed mist-signatures, only that it had the approximate shape of a tree. All around the central trunk, plants had been gnawed away into a roughly circular empty area filled only with marching spiders. They gathered together from every direction into narrow streams of activity, like rivers flowing to the sea or roots to a tree. Ripples of motion traveled up and down the branched columns of individuals marching in synchrony. Not once did any spider harm its neighbor in this vast pilgrimage; those who struggled with more difficult prizes were, astonishingly, helped along by those with lesser burdens.

Cooperation was a rare thing among Mistforged. Silane recalled well her own awakening to sentience: the realization that the countless other wisps in her shoal were slower, less cunning, more edible than herself; the triumph of consuming the first peer, which nearly doubled her capabilities; the ensuing thrill of carnage as she ate everything of lesser power in her vicinity, until at last she attained the strength to dredge face and voice and identity from the scattered hunger of her existence. In view of that origin, the very concept of a nest with hundreds of equally powered mistlings in dense concentration was unnatural to the extreme—by Shadowed Isle standards at least. Maybe it was different here in the mortal realm.

A twig snapped. The dim blot of life essence beside her that she’d initially taken for a large mossy rock suddenly raised a hand in greeting. Silane flinched, but an arm steadied her before she overbalanced into the rosebush at her back. She latched on reflexively and met the glyph-inscribed leather of a paladin’s vambrace.

“Quiet,” the rock said in a low voice.

“Sir Raimond? Is that you?” Silane whispered. The voice was Sir Raimond’s all right—Silane would never forget it—but she couldn’t sense the razor-brilliance of his life.

“Yes. I’ve been observing this infestation since sundown. Didn’t expect to find any initiates here. Good thinking, seeking the root of the problem instead of only fighting that which comes to you. However, your arrival was likely noticed. We can observe no longer.”

Sir Raimond shifted with the rustle of fabric, and then the full brilliance of his life shone forth like fresh-lit kindling. The tree rippled with motion, neat marching lines devolving into a mindless charge toward their hiding spot as every available spider reacted to the flare of Sir Raimond’s unveiled power with the singular instinct to kill.

“Take this cloak. It is wrought with spells of concealment.” A pile of cloth was shoved into her arms: a cloak with the texture of damp moss, heavy and much too large for a child. She draped it over her shoulders as Sir Raimond turned to fight.

“Illuminate.”

Lightning split night into day. Even through clenched-shut eyelids, the flash burned Sir Raimond’s silhouette into Silane’s vision. The spiders vaporized into hissing steam, erased under his attack. In the darkness that followed, the faint moonlight from above showed no trace of spiderkin remaining in the clearing. The ground directly in front of Sir Raimond was scorched bare, devoid of both Mistforged and mortal energy. Burning autumn leaves fluttered through the air around him, afire for scant moments before their embers winked out into skeletal ash.

“Step forth, foul demon, and face the judgment of the light,” Sir Raimond commanded.

Within the old tree about which the spiders had amassed, a life once concealed by their density was now revealed. The old tree was hollow. Within, a man in dark robes climbed to his feet, shedding clumps of dirt. A cough bubbled out from him.

“Behold the mighty Order, come to put me out of my misery at last,” the tree-man croaked. Sir Raimond stopped short.

“That voice… I know your voice. Brother Jerry, is that you? Silane, a light, quickly.”

Silane retrieved a lantern from her pack and lit it, emerging from behind the rocks now that Sir Raimond had deemed it safe. Firelight brightened the area, giving color to the stiff shapes of the burnt forest. Brother Jerry looked as shriveled as the carcass of the old tree he was leaning against. He might have been the same physical age as Sir Raimond, but he stood hunched and crooked in comparison. His robes, now recognizable as an Order missionary’s habit, were tattered and stained all over with dark crusted patches.

“It gladdens my heart to find you alive after all this time, Brother Jerry. What happened? Where is the rest of your caravan?” Sir Raimond asked.

“They, uh, erk—” Brother Jerry coughed wretchedly and shook his head.

“It must be painful to recall. I understand. No need to dwell on the past. What matters is that we arrived in time to rescue you.”

Brother Jerry spasmed, shoulders shuddering with the force of his latest coughing fit. He collapsed to his knees. As Sir Raimond rushed forth to support him, however, the rattling coughs smoothed into laughter. Brother Jerry looked up from where he crouched, eyes bloodshot and wild in the lamplight.

“Rescue me? Me? What for? To squander my remaining years on transcribing the Order’s dusty books? What a deal, ahahahaha…” His chortles dissolved into hacking coughs.

Sir Raimond recoiled. “Excuse me?”

“Train hard and you’ll do great things, they said. Find a guardian and become a paladin, they said. Anyone can surpass mortality with enough diligence, they said.” Brother Jerry slammed a bony fist into the dirt with a thud. “Lies! I took your worthless exam twenty times over, and what did I get?” Brother Jerry laughed again, voice cracking. “Better luck next year, they said, and back to the bookstacks with that moron Jerry.”

“The ways of the reverend ancestors are a mystery to us all,” Sir Raimond said levelly. “Rest assured that whatever they do, they do for good reason, even if their reasons are beyond mortal comprehension. Perhaps your long trial was meant as a test of your extraordinary patience—”

“Bah! More like a good laugh for all and sundry! Must’ve been funny for you real paladins, watching me fail for twenty years straight.” Brother Jerry looked up, a too-wide grin slashed across his face. “No more. I took fate into my own hands. Since your lot refused to give me power, I claimed it on my own terms.”

Rising to balance on one knee, Brother Jerry drew a silver dagger from his boot. Sir Raimond stepped back, easily retreating from stabbing range. However, Brother Jerry did not try to attack. He pushed up his left sleeve to reveal a spider-shaped tangle of red scars on his forearm. Centered among that mess was a demon’s Mark laced with an energy signature Silane knew as well as her own: Elrach’s Mark, denoting this man as Elrach’s minion. Silane retreated from the clearing posthaste, knowing better than to interfere with one of her dear friend’s schemes.

“Sorcery,” Sir Raimond said in a low voice.

“Strength.” Brother Jerry pressed the blade to his arm, adding another gash to the many healed-over scars already there. Blood spilled across the ground, slopping over his boots and adding to the stains on his weathered cloak. Brother Jerry swayed and slumped against his hollow tree. After what seemed like half of his life’s blood had poured onto the ground, his face had gone pale and chalky, and he was no longer kneeling so much as slumped in the dirt. He spoke in a whispery voice. “Aren’t you going to summon that guardian of yours, oh mighty paladin? See how he fares… against my guardian…ssss.”

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The soaked ground unraveled into the living fabric of some innumerable thousands of spiders reanimated through his sacrifice. Sir Raimond took a step back on instinct, and then he made a derisive noise.

“My guardian has better things to do than deal with corrupted trash.” Sir Raimond’s hand began to glow, and Silane barely had time to duck behind her borrowed cloak before lightning vaporized every spider in sight.

Brother Jerry howled with the pain those spiders could not voice. When the light faded, he was folded over in a fetal position, coughing up blood. The blood became more spiders, some of which coalesced even before he spat them out in wriggling mucus-drenched globs.

“Enough, Brother Jerry. Your injuries are severe, and your unholy puppets are defeated. Surrender. Repent of your evil ways, and the Order will help you regain your humanity.”

“Defeat? Oh no. There’s no defeat here. I am not alone. Others will rise in my place. Those you have deemed unworthy of the light, failures to you—we persist.” He raised a trembling hand to the sky, reaching for the distant treetops. His fingertips began to shrivel. The Mark of Elrach on his arm spread black veins across his shoulder and face, oozing dark power through his ragged garments. “Hail the Great Spider!”

The spiders pooled around Brother Jerry’s knees, dripping down his chin, squirming out of his arm—all suddenly converging upon their master. He screamed. Legs and pincers ripped into his flesh like a thousand tiny blades. From every fresh wound, more spiders emerged to set upon their master, sprouting and gnawing and sprouting anew. Brother Jerry howled in raw agony, limbs flailing as the ever-multiplying masses of spiders tore him apart. To both observers, it was unclear whether this was suicide by cannibalism or he had simply lost control of his creations.

Light struck the clearing again. Sir Raimond banished the ravenous swarm with one wave of his hand, but it was too late. With all the spiders vaporized, nothing remained of their master except clothes, bones, and one silver dagger. Silane crept closer, lamp held aloft to better inspect the remnants. The bones were picked clean and slightly charred. Elrach’s Mark had dissipated alongside the spiders.

“Be at peace, Brother Jerry,” Sir Raimond said, kneeling beside the remains with a somber expression. “What devilry had snared you, to turn you thus from our guiding light?”

Opening both hands above the skeleton, palms face down, Sir Raimond began to pray aloud. The incantation was that of a sealing spell, yet the arcane words were spoken in voice only, without any infusion of mana to lend them physical effect. Silane held the lantern while Sir Raimond conducted this ritual over the bones. When the words ran out, he touched one hand to his own chest, bowing his head with a final, “be at peace,” spoken in the modern tongue. He then took his cloak back from Silane and gathered the remains into a bundle, leaving no bone or scrap of cloth behind amid the earthen debris of the clearing.

After the cleanup, Sir Raimond launched a mana-powered flare into the sky to summon Sir Tessa and the rest of the student groups. They gathered on the main road beside the cliffs. Everyone was accounted for, although a few initiates had scrapes and bruises from stumbling around in the dark.

Sir Raimond told them of the reanimated spiders and Brother Jerry’s corruption. Brother Jerry had been traveling with the merchant caravan on missionary business—but, as near as Sir Raimond could figure, he had communed with dark forces and betrayed his traveling companions, leading to the caravan’s disappearance. Brother Jerry had been clever to set up in an area with a known wisp infestation, such that the increase in demonic activity would not immediately rouse suspicion, but not clever enough in his debut; the disappearance of a full caravan had been too great a loss for the Order to let it pass uninvestigated. In the end, however, he had suffered remorse and repented for his misdeeds with his life. It was a regrettable loss, for justice never demanded the cost of a human life—so Sir Raimond explained.

The initiates were sent off in groups again, this time with strict instruction to beware of unnatural occurrences while they attempted to capture wisps. If any further trace of sorcery appeared, the initiates were to call for help immediately by firing three blanks in rapid succession, and under no circumstances confront any suspicious person or beast thus encountered. Silane was once again paired with Aaron, who happily shared the tale of his solo adventure over the past few hours. Spider hunting had brought him to an abandoned wagon that had toppled off some higher-up trail. It was loaded to the brim with goods: rich fabrics, fine tools, exotic foodstuffs rotted over time, and intricate baubles from faraway places.

“Don’t you see? This confirms Sir Raimond’s theory about those demon spiders. It was them that ate the caravan. No self-respecting bandit would’ve left so much loot behind,” Aaron said excitedly, waving his lantern about for emphasis.

“Watch where you’re shining that,” Silane replied, blinking away spots from a glimpse of the flame.

“Oh, sorry.” Aaron swung the lantern in the opposite direction, and the wisp Silane had been tracking for the last five minutes fled from the light. Air escaped her in a frustrated hiss, and Aaron looked at her oddly.

“Stubbed my toe,” she said as an excuse, turning her face away for a moment to recompose her expression. Didn’t Aaron know that his lantern was only repelling their quarry? The mist-binding jar in Silane’s hands was still empty, and Aaron hadn’t even bothered to take his own jar out of his backpack since their reunion. If they didn’t catch any wisps tonight, they would surely fail the assignment. Silane walked faster, trying to escape the lantern halo to reach the wisps stalking them from the darkness.

A shadow fluttered in the edge of her vision. She spun, uttering the words of sealing drilled into her head through far too many practice sessions. Mana shot forth, focused though thin as always, in a cloud of translucent sky-blue glyph threads that spiraled around the wisp—and tore to shreds when the wisp jackknifed against its restraints in panicked retreat, startled by Aaron’s sudden approach.

“Ooh, nice try. You’ll get it next time,” Aaron said, lowering the lantern from where he’d raised it to peer at the escaped wisp.

“Yes, I will,” Silane snapped, “and I would’ve caught it this time too if not for you. That lantern does nothing but scare them away.”

“You… think this is my fault?” Aaron said, sounding confused.

“Yes! How long have we been stumbling around, an hour yet? And what have we caught? No wisps. None. We’re going to fail for sure.” Silane threw her empty mist-binding jar on the ground, feeling the prick of wetness at the corner of her eyes. Curse this flesh body and its stress reactions. Failure was too close on her mind after witnessing Brother Jerry’s demise.

“What’s the big rush? I already caught, like, five wisps before.” Aaron set his lantern on the ground and took off his backpack, retrieving his own mist-binding jar at last. True to his word, it was swirling with darkness. The captured wisps had been undetectable when stored in Aaron’s backpack, hidden in the radiance of his life, but their hunger flooded out of the jar when he held it up to show Silane.

“Oh,” Silane said, not really sure how to respond to that. Her eyes watered despite her best attempts to restore them to a normal condition. Aaron frowned and took a step closer.

“Hey, hey, don’t feel bad. I know spells are hard for you, but it’s nothing to be ashamed of. We’re a team, see?” Aaron placed his full mist-binding jar on the ground next to Silane’s empty one. He popped off the lids on both jars and transferred two wisps into hers. “No one is going to fail tonight.”

“I don’t need your pity.” She took the jar anyway, then turned on her heel and sprinted into the darkness.

A large pine tree loomed before her, invisible to eyesight yet brimming with life. She leapt up and caught a low branch with her free arm. Clambering up into the boughs, she risked a flicker of true power to immerse herself in shadow. Below, Aaron crashed through the underbrush and stopped, swinging his lantern in all directions. He didn’t look up—nor would he have seen anything if he had, due to Silane’s artificial cloak of darkness.

“Wait, come back! Silane!” he shouted. After a rather mystified inspection of where Silane’s trail of broken twigs abruptly ended, Aaron picked the direction with the lowest density of obstacles and ran that way. Three wisps snaked after him, giving Silane a wide berth.

Once the lantern’s glow dwindled and the distance swallowed Aaron’s footfalls, Silane dropped out of the branches, careful not to jostle the mist-binding jar in her grasp. Her shins were a sticky-wet mass of lacerated pain, and her right palm was torn from grabbing onto rough tree bark, but there was no structural damage. The real problem was the trail of blood she was leaving behind, black in the faint moonlight but still warm with residual life essence. She used the dry fabric on her sleeves and at the front of her shirt to soak up the worst of the leakage. Then, she picked a direction at random and walked that way, determined to catch some wisps of her own.