“There’s no such thing as a clear prophecy,” Penthos decided to point out. “And it’s not as if spiders are natural cartographers.” There was an interesting thought. Perhaps they were, at that. Had anyone ever looked into it? Perhaps if I fed one of these beasts purely on maps and map-makers for a year…? Distraction, once more, but this standoff was boring him. Raising this much power and then just standing around with it always resulted in headaches and sometimes vomiting later. I need to do something with all this. In truth he had expected a bigger fight, and probably for some of the others to die. It had been a bit of an anticlimax, honestly. Not that he bore Cyrene, Harathes, and Lief any ill will, but stumbling out of the forest carrying Dion in his arms, barely victorious and mourning their comrades… well that was proper legend material, wasn’t it?

And there I go again, always letting my thoughts run away with me…

“So what’s the spider’s path?” Cyrene was asking—at least quicker on the pertinent questions than her male counterparts. “Is it a place? A pass? A tavern?”

“A drug, maybe,” Lief suggested. “Maybe you have to be stoned out of your mind to go fight him. Makes sense to me.”

“Quiet, Lief,” Dion told him. “The spider says… it says it knows things, paths, ways. It can hardly write them down for us, though.”

“Can we take its brain or something?” Cyrene suggested. Thankfully it was only Dion’s words that the matriarch could understand, or that might have snapped the stalemate.

“Just have her come with us?” Penthos suggested. The expected laughter didn’t come, reminding him that his elevated sense of humor was not shared by most others. And it was true, he did tend to catch them off guard with some of his more innovative solutions.

“Shut up, Penthos,” Harathes snapped at him, which would earn the man another week of impotence once they got back to civilization, not that he’d ever suspect who was behind his intermittent problem. Oh it’s good to be a magus.

“It says…” Dion wrinkled her nose, and Penthos sighed for her silently. How was it that such a gifted and beautiful young woman ever ended up in the service of such a dull religion? “It says it will send one of its brood. She will impart her knowledge to it. Penthos, is that even possible?”

“Easily—her link to her offspring should be very strong. Good idea, actually.”

“Whoa, whoa, do you remember just how much ground we need to cover from here to Dervazian?” Lief complained. “How many, you know, towns, and people, we have to go by. How do you think they’re going to react if we’ve got a sodding giant spider with us? It’s not as if we could put a leash on it and disguise it as a dog!”