Dragon Soul - The Ancestor Gods Saga Book 1

31. The Ritual

Spider had made the long walk to the town many times. He often went to visit the promiscuous tavernkeeper's daughter. His feelings towards her were complicated. He desired her when he saw her and liked to be in her company, but when he was apart from her his thoughts rarely wandered in her direction. She wished to run away with him. She had talked about it a good deal. Spider had no intention to marry the girl. She would just be a burden to him. Where would he take her, anyway? His hideout was not suited for two to share and he suspected she would be disappointed with it anyway.

There was the question of the child in her belly. She said it was his. He was not so sure. He knew she slept with any man who took her fancy, though she pretended she was loyal to him when he was in her company. If he had cared for her, it might have piqued his jealousy. As it was, it made him wary of making promises.

Lilith was convenient, that was all.

Once he had retrieved the thing in the bottle, he was going to go as far away as possible. He was going to find a city, sell the bottle and live like a man, rather than like an animal. He would buy himself a house and purchase his own bed. No one else would ever use it. It would not be the rented bed of a tavern or the borrowed bed of a friend. It would be his.

Spider would have fuel for a fire, and he would be warm all winter. If he chose, he should never leave his house in the coldest months. He would have food brought to him and he would bask in his warm safety, forgetting all about his past, untroubled about his future.

Such dreams can make a man reckless and desperate. They can make him violent when he fears they will be snatched from him.

Evening was falling as Spider walked into the town. He preferred the shadows of darkness and would have waited at the edges of the forest if he had approached when it was still daylight.

He could smell smoke, pungent and strong. Stronger than the smoke from chimneys even if they were all pluming at the same time.

It made him uneasy.

He skirted around to the familiar tower, the largest structure in the whole town. Local gossip said that in one of the upper rooms the sorcerer kept a wealth of treasure, protected by spells and magical traps. Spider had never been brave enough to try to raid the tower, though he had dreamed of it often enough.

Now he circled the tower debating his next move. Near a building off to one side of the structure he caught a whiff of something rotting. He gagged at the rancid stench and scuttled away to regroup.

The smell worried him. What would the sorcerer be doing with something rotting in an outbuilding? Like everyone else in town, he had heard fables about the work of sorcerers. Most of it was elaborated or complete fantasy, but he was not to know that. In his mind, Spider muddled sorcery with necromancy and all manner of evil magic.

It was at that point he almost retreated back into the woods, back to his den. He did not want to end up in that outbuilding with whatever rotting thing was lurking there.

He slunk behind a smaller wooden outhouse and sank to the ground to think. He had seen strange things that day, things that had made him question his sanity. He certainly wondered just what sort of magic occurred in the tower.

Spider was bold, but he was also careful. He had no desire to die under some horrid magical spell. He was not sure how long he sat contemplating his choices. Go back and continue to live underground like a mole, or risk everything and enter the tower.

His life underground could be over anyway if the men who had tracked him down came back for him. Now his hiding place was known, he was exposed. He thought then of the approaching autumn and winter. Of the cold that would come when summer ended. Of the nights of trying not to freeze to death in the forest.