The Heretic Land by Tim Lebbon Page A

search though he did, Venden could find no evidence of an eighth. Lost in a fight, perhaps. But it was just as likely that it had mutated this way. He prodded the sad body, and its ruptured shell was cool and surprisingly soft.
    ‘Seven legs,’ Venden said. Whenever his voice sounded across the clearing, it felt like an intrusion into the wild. ‘Nature welcomes even numbers. Hard walking. Goes in circles. And the eyes.’ He turned the dead creature a little, leaning close and trying to ignore the acrid smell. ‘Simple surface eyes. All but blind.’ There was athick line of thread still hanging from the spider’s abdomen, trailing across Venden’s mattress and disappearing into the grass. He scanned left and right until he saw where the sun glinted from a hanging thread high above his head, drooping down from the overhang and waving in the slight breeze. Perhaps it had been lowering itself down when it fell. Venden touched his face and throat, because he had never known how these things hunted, or killed. He found no punctures.
    Beneath the overhang was a rock with a hollow in its surface, and Venden took his morning scoop of water from here and drank deep. It never tasted fresh. Water dripped from the overhang above, and he wondered how long it had taken to filter down the surface of the cliff. Perhaps some of it was run-off from the previous night’s dew. Or maybe it originated deeper, filtering down through the cliff and exiting eventually to drip into the hollow, and pass into him. This filtering water might have been many years on its journey through porous rock, and he wondered what this clearing had looked like when the rain fell.
    Barely taking his eyes from the shifted remnant, Venden went through his usual waking ritual of toilet, a meal of dried fruit and a silent moment of reflection upon this land. He had been here for years, and he was more certain than ever that the war and its results had banished humanity from these shores. He was only a visitor here. That the unknown presence, the hollow inside, seemed to feel at home disturbed him, but he did not dwell on it.
    He judged that it was approaching late afternoon. The sun dipped towards the low wooded slopes in the west, setting fire to the treetops and smudging the landscape with vibrant fire colours. He still had time.
    The remnant loomed higher above him than it ever had. He circled it twice, examining theground where it appeared rooted with the tree. Though it had moved, its end still disappeared into the ground, soil around it disturbed and upset, wet. Its other end also pierced the land, and there was no sign of any upset from the movement – no disturbing of the long grass, scoring of the turf or topsoil. In order to rise as far as it had, it must have grown.
    He moved back to the tipped tree trunk again and knelt to examine it. There were thousands of ants crawling around the exposed roots, gathering countless spotted white eggs and transferring them down beneath the soil again.
    ‘Only just exposed,’ he whispered. A breath of air passed across the clearing, rustling plants growing on the cliff face and waving the grass in complex patterns.
    The object he had brought back that morning was still where he had dropped it close to the cart. He remembered the remnant’s strange movement, and dropping the spined object as he dashed for his place beneath the overhang. After that there was nothing, and sleep must have come quickly. This journey had been a long one, and tiring, and he still felt weary.
    He touched the object, and the sense of raw power struck him hard. There was no movement this time, but a staggering potential that made everything clear and defined, smoothing blurred edges of doubt. And he knew what he had to do.
    The object was light and comfortable in his arms. He pressed it to the remnant many times – its end, its underside, the edge with the longer projecting spines. When he shifted it in his grasp and presented the shorter