by KD Sarge
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5
In the dark of a few dim dancing lights, tens of eyes stared from the bottom of the stairs at Srivasi and Dasid. For a moment Srivasi tried to count them, but the eyestalks and the lights both swayed as if to an unheard music, and some of each dropped down as others popped up and—and far more important were the claws, great pincers as thick as his forearm. One for each creature—the opposing pincer was half the size.
Wide bodies built low, pincers—crabs. Giant—for crabs, the tallest would come up to Srivasi’s waist, but the leg-span was huge, and they were armored with—or possibly made of—rock?
Dasid moved to put the gem in his shirt. The crab-shaped rock creatures swayed forward.
“Stop,” Srivasi murmured. “Don’t move.”
Dasid froze. “I was just—”
“Put your hand down.”
Dasid lowered his hand. The creatures swayed back, like sea grass as a wave ran out.
“What, do they think it’s a weapon?” Dasid asked, moving the gem slowly behind his back. “It’s—”
The creatures leaned forward again, as if a wave pushed them, but a little closer, each wave bringing the tide farther up the beach.
“Hold it in front of you,” Srivasi breathed. Was it theirs? Were these the book thieves? That couldn’t be. But what other candidates did he have?
“I’m trying to protect it from those things!” Dasid snarled, but he held the gem in front of him.
The wave ran out; the creatures leaned back. Why did their motion remind Srivasi so much of the sea? These creatures were native to no beach.
“Set it down,” Srivasi directed. If they’d come back with reinforcements, the gem must be something precious to them…right?
“But what if they take it?”
“Look at those claws,” Srivasi said. “If they come up here, losing a rock will be the least of our problems.”
“Says the whiskered wizard who never went hungry in his life,” Dasid growled, but he bent down and set the gem on the ground then straightened. “There, see? No move—”
Little jeweled legs sprouted from the gem, and, pincers waving, the tiny crab scuttled down a step as Dasid stepped forward. Srivasi dragged him back.
“It’s one of them!” Srivasi said as the little gem crab scrambled down another step. “The attempted book thieves were hatchlings, and that one got caught in the light—” An arrow of the bigger creatures swept forward, like a wave in a trough, and met the little creature and fell back with it into the sea of claws and eyestalks.
“Great,” Dasid muttered. “Kids up to no good. So now we have no gem, but we’ve still got these things. Now what? What are they, even?”
“Crabs, or that’s what they look like.”
“No, they sure don’t! Crabs are yea long,” he held up both hands, forefingers a few inches apart, “not wide. Eyes on their blasted head, pincers same size, narrow bodies—”
“Crayfish. Those are crayfish, not crabs. Crabs—most crabs—live in the ocean and—”
“Fine, fine, if we survive this, I’m never going near the ocean. Now what? They are still staring at us and we gave their little back.”
“Can you speak?” Srivasi asked, projecting his voice to carry.
The creatures stared at him, a ripple moving toward the back, possibly showing where the little creature was ushered to safety, but the warriors at the front didn’t move.
Warriors? Well, that was the impression. The largest ones were at the front.
“Do you speak Klaneeri?” Srivasi tried in that language, since Syntari didn’t gain an answer. No response to that either. He tried Ikontra.
What were these things, really? They had weapons, they carried lights, they must communicate to have known to come to the rescue…but he could not recall ever hearing of things that looked like stones carved into crabs.
One of the warriors turned one eyestalk from Srivasi to a smaller creature near it. Clicking noises that Srivasi could not separate into words, and then the smaller creature backed up, some of the others following to create a current like an undertow flowing off the beach.
Now there were fewer creatures facing them, and Srivasi thought the waving claws were less threatening. He tried Vralajii, and then Fwenye, because why not?
Srivasi tried language after language, until Dasid sighed and folded his arms.
“You said that already.”
“Did I?” Srivasi ran through a mental list. Was there anything he hadn’t tried? Perhaps—well, they’d used an Aduli script upstairs, if these were the builders of the labyrinth—but surely not. How could they work stone without hands?
“What of your magic, friend Whiskers?” Dasid looked up at him. “Can you not drop a fireball on them?”
“They are simply defending—”
“Fine.” Dasid shook his head. “Perhaps if you bring some water from a rock, in an hour there will be enough for them to play in. Or if you read one of your books to them, perhaps they will go to sleep and then we can escape?”
“What if we just back up? Close the door? I don’t think they can reach—” A waft of air and then a chittering from behind. Srivasi turned to stare up at the mob above them on the stairs. “Actually, it seems they can reach the knobs.”
“Do we…” Dasid stopped, licked his lips. “Do we fight? How?”
“If they wanted to hurt us, they would have done it already,” Srivasi said, hoping it was true.
“We’re going to die,” Dasid moaned. “Killed! Eaten alive, picked apart piece by piece like swarm ants on a fool of a sheep.”
“That—sounds extremely, distressingly specific.”
“Mylo saw it once! Before he could say hey diddle diddle demon fend—”
“Is that a spell?”
“It’s a saying! Means it happened fast. One moment the sheep’s thrashing and bleating and the next—lady’s slippers, friend, focus! They’re getting fidgety. Throw a fireball if you’ve got one in you!”
“Not…a specialty.”
“Lightning bolt? Orb of Death? Mighty wind? What kind of mage are you?”
A chittering ran through the group in front, from one wall to the other and back. The bodies swayed in the direction of the chitter, across and back. Srivasi thought of the action of waves and wondered more.
Then the crowd washed back, and one large creature stood alone. Its eyestalks came to maybe Srivasi’s waist, but its front legs when spread wide spanned the corridor. Draped over its—her? Srivasi thought her for no reason he could think of—draped over her wide back was a decoration made of knotted ropes, with sparkling rocks dangling from its ends.
None of the languages he knew had drawn a response. It did not have the same body structure, but perhaps…? Srivasi bowed to the creature. He ignored the creatures behind him. This was their leader. She would decide their fate.
Eyes immobile on their stalks, still staring at Srivasi, the creature bent its front legs so its body dipped. At last! It was nearly communication. Srivasi held out his empty hands, palms up. We mean no harm, he meant.
The creature had huge pincers. The gesture did not look so harmless when she did it.
But she mimicked the gesture. That was the important part. Aresthanet had theorized that when a stranger found commonality with a native, friendly bonds were more readily formed.
Srivasi crossed his arms on his chest, palms in. The creature crossed her pincers in front of her.
“That’s wonderful,” Dasid murmured. “Now if you can just get it to dance a jig, we’ll be blessed!”
Srivasi rolled his eyes. The crab rolled hers.
“Look, that’s the leader, right?” Dasid asked. “So if you just—scare it, maybe it’ll go away and take all its family or hatchlings or whatever with it?”
“Scare her how, exactly?”
A chittering sound, and Dasid muttered “no, no, no,” and backed up till he ran into Srivasi. At that moment, the warrior reached to pull the knotted cloth from her back, and Srivasi realized as she swung it that the rocks were not decoration—they were weights. On a net.
He dove for the wall, but Dasid staggered against him, and then the net wrapped around him and the weights thudded against him. Bound to Dasid and off balance, Srivasi fell, Dasid’s yelp ringing through his head.
If he ever went home, Srivasi thought, if his father ever learned of this—learned that Srivasi Dalal had not recognized a net on sight…he would be shamed forever. Him, his father, his grandfather, Aunt Jivenrhee who made the best nets in seven—
“Ow! Stop kicking me, Dasid!”
“I’m trying to kick them!”
“Well, your aim is bad!”
“I could cheerfully kick you,” the boy snarled. “What kind of defense was that? What kind of mage are you? All you’ve done is gotten us deeper and deeper—”
“I could have left you in that room with your skeletal companion!”
“I bloody wish you had! I would have found my way out by now, and I wouldn’t be about to become dinner for a bunch of—of—jewels with legs and claws and what in the blasted Abyss is it with eyes on stalks? What has eyes on stalks?”
“Many creatures, actually, including—”
“No one cares, Whiskers!”
Like a wave catching candles, all the lights went out. Dasid gulped and went silent, and the crabs made no noise. In the dark the silence pressed on Srivasi.
“…Whiskers?” Dasid breathed. “Are they—are they nibbling on you yet?”
Srivasi craned his neck and found himself looking up at the net-thrower, who peered down at him from dimly glowing opalescent eyes. “I don’t think that’s what’s going on.”
“You’re hopeless,” Dasid growled. “What do you think, they want us to come see their jewel vaults and share?”
“The maze filtered for knowledge! I don’t think they look for learned folk because they taste better!”
“Fine, they just want to eat your unworthy companions!”
“Do they hear, do you suppose? None of them seem bothered by your insults.”
“Have I said anything—?” the boy fell silent again, hopefully to review his words. The net tightened around Srivasi, pressing him into Dasid at his back. Then they moved, pulled down the stairs, and Srivasi’s ribs found the edge of a step, or rather the edge found—
“Ow!” Dasid yelped. “Ooh—ow—ow—”
The net tightened again, and they were lifted off the steps. Wrapped in the net, they were lifted onto the backs of the creatures. In the darkness Srivasi listened to the rustling of hundreds of jewel-armored legs and tried to keep the points of pincers from his more tender body parts as the swarm of unnatural crabs bore him into the darkness.