When they turn the pages of history
And these days have passed long ago
Will they read of us with sadness
For the seeds that we let sow.
                    .....A Farewell To Kings
                                               .....Rush

   In a land forever shrouded by boiling thick gray clouds night comes suddenly and black like a blindfold drawn over the eyes of a condemned man. Only the brave or foolish venture out into nights like these. All others huddle beside fires, grateful for the walls that are between them and the black things that roam the darkness.

   It is on one such pitch black night, that a man of less than average stature comes to the island of Mercy moving with practiced stealth. He moves with the agility of a monkey and easily scales the walls of The Temple Of Arac.

   Built thin, his small size belies the strength within his diminutive frame. The muscles on his spare body are like steel cables hardened by a life living on the streets of one of the few remaining human cities.

   This is the man that is known by the name of Slickman for his quick hands and skill at being a pick pocket. He peers down from his perch at the rim of the circular opening at the top of the dome over the sacrificial chamber of the Temple Of Arac.

   Dressed in the subdued colors of black, brown and gray, he is all but invisible against the roiling black sky above him. The only things he wears that are not of dark colors are the glistening silver rapier that hangs at his side he has named Stinger, and the three throwing daggers stuck in Slickman's belt.

   He sees what he came here for.

   The treasure that could buy a long life of safe lodging, good food and willing, enthusiastic bed partners.

   The Eyes Of Arac!

   The eight glowing green eyes of the statue of the spider god. Said to be made of magical jade, the eyes are priceless and would fetch a huge amount of gold in any marketplace.

   The statue sits against a stone wall on a throne. Eight thick hairy legs hang over the arms of the throne. The bulbous round body rests on the central cushion of the chair. A jeweled gold and platinum crown sits on top of the massive spider head.

   The regal black granite statue of The Spider God Arac watches over his chamber and his kingdom.

   Slickman looks down at the eyes and fastens a hook to the lip of the opening and begins to climb down into the pit.

* * *

   With a lantern held out in front of him, a massive Barbarian moves through the dark ancient sewer system tunnel beneath The Temple Of Arac. He crouches as he walks, although that was not necessary. The tunnel was large enough for him to move standing at full height, but he stooped anyway.

   Used to being in open spaces he hates the feeling tight quarters gives him.

   The lamplight illuminates every silvery breath the barbarian exhales. His garments of thick wool and animal skins only partly fight off the cold.

   This is the man known as Bub. A barbarian warrior who makes his living sometimes as a personal guard, sometimes as a mercenary and sometimes like tonight, as a thief.

   He was just now thinking that if the drunken deposed acolyte of Arac from whom he purchased the information of this secret passage into the sacrificial chamber was lying to him and this was just a dead-end, he would have to go back and crush the guys skull.

   Wading through ancient shit was not his idea of an enjoyable night. He would rather be spending this time in the warm arms of one of the slim working girls at Mother Teresa's House Of A Thousand Pleasures.

   But the promise of treasure beckoned.

   The Eyes Of Arac would sell for enough money so Bub could continue his quest uninterrupted till the end of his days.

   At least the shit left in the tunnel was so ancient that the only smell left was something like moldy bread.

   He moved down the stone cold damp tunnel resembling in his own way a huge predator cat.

   Bub came to the steel ladder that lead upward to the sacrificial chamber just where the acolyte had said it would be. Raising the lantern over his head he saw the steel circular sewer cap that he had also been told would be there.

   Well, he thought, maybe he wouldn't be crushing the poor drunkards skull after all.

   Setting the lantern down on the cement floor so he could make use of both hands, Bub touched his heavy broadsword at his side. It was an unconscious gesture. He was never without his blade, and he always made sure it was with him.

* * *

   By the light of flickering torches mounted on a raised platform in the center of the sacrificial chamber Slickman descended on his rope as Bub silently raised the sewer lid that was above him and slid it off to the side.

   Strange light gray gauzy material hung in strips from the domed ceiling and Slickman noted absently that the chamber was in bad need of a good dusting.

   Bub watched as Slickman touched the cement floor of the chamber and went directly to where the statue of Arac sat.

   Both of them knew there would be no guards inside the chamber at night. Guards were outside the only set of doors, but no one would dare disturb the Spider God after dark. It is said that when the sun sets, the Spider God wakes.

   Superstitious nonsense, Bub had called the warning when it was given to him, but as he watched Slickman go toward the black granite statue he saw stuck high up on the walls, wrapped in the same gauzy material that hung loosely down, things that looked like mummies.

   The head of one of these mummy things moved.

   Pulling himself up out of the hole in the floor Bub stretched himself to his full height. He pulled his broadsword from his scabbard and pointed at Slickman.

   "Hold it there little man!" He said. "It looks like you're about to be trying to take what I came for." He spoke loudly and clearly. There was no one who could hear anything that might be said inside this chamber at night.

   Slickman was reaching for the jeweled eyes when Bub's words reached him. He ripped his rapier from his scabbard and spun about facing the towering barbarian with drawn sword.

   With a smile on his lips he spoke. "Well, who do we have here? Oh, don't answer. It doesn't matter. I'm here first. These are mine."

   "Only if you can get past me. I'd wager you'll have a hard time climbing that rope after I hack the arms from your shoulders."

   Bub moved forward.

   Slickman made four slashes in the air between them. "Stinger will have something to say about that! One things for sure, you'll not be riding any more whores after I cut the nuts from between your legs."

   Bub laughed. It was a blood curdling thing to hear. The laughter of the barbarians from The Mountains Of The Olde Gods is usually the last thing that rings in their opponents ears before they come to a bloody end.

   Slickman's gaze jerked upward to a point somewhere behind Bub.

   "Behind you!" He yelled.

   "You think I'd fall for that?" Bub shouted back as he came forward. Then he was dodging to the side a backhand thrown dagger that Slickman had aimed at his head.

   The dagger flew past Bubs head and from the sound of it, struck something in the air.

   Greenish, slimy, sticky liquid splashed on Bub's head and shoulders as a furry eight-legged thing that had been descending on a thin string spewed out it's lifeblood from the dagger wound.

   All around them, descending on webs, black spiders the size of hunting dogs came down from the ceiling.

   Their fight against each other was forgotten.

   With the first sight of the spiders, goose bumps jumped up all over Bubs arms. The one thing he almost had a primal fear of was spiders.

   But he didn't have time for fear now. With a savage yell he cut two of the descending arachnids in half in the air. Their green blood splashed across his face.

   The spiders were coming down from all parts of the domed roof. There were too many of them to be counted.

   Slickman's rapier flicked left, then right and sixteen legs kicked in the air from four separated halves of spider bodies. He danced around the room in a strangely graceful dance of death slashing the huge bugs as they came down.

   Each time a spider was hacked in pieces the thing screamed out a loud squeal that was something like a cross between a seagulls cry and a woman's scream. The squeals were unnerving. They sounded almost human.

   Bub was bellowing challenges at the descending spiders until he caught a look at the webbing high up on the ceiling and saw something that chilled his blood.

   The webbing was being ripped away by a spider leg that looked to be around twenty feet long.

   "We have got to get out of here!" Bub yelled and Slickman followed his gaze to the huge thing at the ceiling ripping itself loose.

   The spider that gazed down at them was easily twice the size of an elephant. Against it, their swords would do no more than give it a moments annoyance before it ate them.

   "By the Seven Hells of Hasper, " Slickman said and stepping backward he disappeared down the manhole. From down in the hole a clank followed a thud a moment later.

   Bub cleared a path through the dog-sized spiders and virtually dove down into the hole he had come out of.

   At the bottom, on the cement floor, Slickman was unconscious.

   "A good time to take a nap," Bub told him. He grabbed the sword laying at Slickman's side and slid it back into his scabbard.

   Above them, the huge spider was trying to fit itself down into the manhole. It's legs were reaching down and beating against the rungs of the steel ladder making it ring like a chime. As big as it was, Bub could tell it would still be only a matter of minutes before it squeezed itself down into the hole.

   "Well, I wouldn't leave anyone to a death like that," Bub muttered under his breath. He picked Slickman up and hoisted him over his right shoulder and picking up the lantern and holding it out in front of him with his left hand, took off at a trot back the way he came in.

* * *

   Slickman awoke to the sound of swishing water as oars parted the surface and pulled the rowboat he was laying in.

   He was in total darkness except for a line of lanterns that were bobbing in the distance.

   "Where the hell am I?" He asked almost shouting the words.

   "Keep your voice down," Bub told him, "Or I'll toss you overboard. The Acolytes Of Arac are searching for us. There are too many of them to fight and I don't feel like being Big Ugly's next meal."

   "Where are we going?"

   "Away from them," Bub answered and the line of lights did appear to be receding into the distance.

   "Are we to the east of Mercy Island?" Slickman asked.

   Bub didn't answer.

   "Well?" Slickman asked again.

   "No!" Bub said.

   "That means we're heading in the direction of The Ghostlands, right?"

   "Tonight, there's nowhere else to go."

* * *

   Through the chill black of night they took turns rowing toward the west. When Slickman first awoke, he heard the cawing of a few of the night ocean birds overhead.

   Now, he heard nothing.

   The lamps on the boats of the Acolytes Of Arac were far behind them.

   It was like they moved away from nothing and moved toward nothing. Blackness was behind them and a head of them.

   It was so pitch black that they could not even see each other in the rowboat. The only sound that broke the silence was the rhythmic slap, splash and swoosh of the oars as they were drawn through the water.

   It seemed for awhile as though nothing in the universe moved. They were alone among the stars. Except, it was so pitch black, even the stars were blotted out.

   Bub spoke and his voice breaking the silence almost sounded as large as some ancient god hurling pronouncements down upon worshippers from high on a mountain peak. "Is this how it will be, when all things come to an end?" Bub asked.

   "I don't know." Slickman answered in a whisper, that sounded as loud as a booming foghorn. "I doubt I'll be here when we come to the end of all things."

   They glided through the thick dark. A Stygian blackness so thick it's weight could be felt upon the skin like a physical touch.

   Whispering sounds started gliding to them over the subdued waves.

   Speech, words, cries, tears, wails, screams, begging sounds, so faint it couldn't be identified for certain. Things were out there, in the chilly blackness.

   Things that whispered and tittered with voices too weak to be heard by human ears. But the voices could be felt.

   They glided on.

   Both of these men had faced death in ugly ways more times than they could count. When Death looked their way, they would stare it down and fight it to the last breath. That was their way. To fight and die when their time came. They accepted their fate.

   But these voices, these crying things unnerved them. Here, there was nothing to fight. There was only the chorus of a million maddening voices crying out that they wanted to live, they needed to live, they did not even know that they were dead.

   Overhead came a chopping noise such as they had never heard before. Chu chu chu chu ....chu chu... and something streaked, flying through the air above them, roaring.

   A boxlike thing glided in a straight line past the end of their boat. it had glowing white eyes and screamed a warning shout of anger. It was followed on it's path and joined by hundreds of things that glided smoothly along at speeds that were far faster than any of the fastest racing steeds.

   Some of the things were the size of ox drawn carts, while others were the size of buildings. They flashed past in a bewildering display of color and raw power.

   Behind the lines of the things that flashed past what looked like black mountains sprang up. These black mountains shot straight up into the sky. They were made up entirely of sharp black cliffs that were so steep the two men knew no one could ever climb them. The thing that was the strangest about the sheer mountains were the unearthly lights that shown from out of the black cliffs.

   Lights do not shine from the sides of cliff faces. Slickman and Bub knew this. But here, they did.

   Slickman and Bub were speechless at the massive display of ghostly apparitions.

   For ghosts they knew these things surely were. Their skins were translucent. One could be seen through another.

   Now they started getting visions or were they memories of a way of life that was alien to the two of them. People sat inside the boxlike things and were propelled at dizzying speeds along wide flat trails built for these things.

   These people were people who lived in comfort. They had joys that Slickman and Bub couldn't even dream of. These people who never even knew how to harvest their own food or hunt never knew hunger. Searching for amusements from day to day was how they lived.

   They lived in a self made paradise and it was all brought to a sudden and total end. Now they screamed that they didn't know where their lives had gone and they wanted it back.

   Slickman grabbed one oar and Bub grabbed the other and together they paddled as fast as they could away from the shoreline of The Ghostlands.

   What little they had seen of that place told them that to land there would cost them their sanity. In such an alien place a man could not even hope to keep his mind.

* * *

   They rowed heading North, although at this time they weren't sure what direction they were heading. Being in a pitch blackness, on an open body of water will take away all sense of direction.

   Slickman and Bub knew they were going North when the sky to the East started lighting up for the morning. That was also when they came to the broken down Bridge Of Memories.

   In a land always covered by thick gray clouds, morning comes in muted shades of blue and gray. The Bridge Of Memories rose up out of the mist in front of them like a long gray many humped sea monster.

   The Bridge Of Memories was a left over relic from the ancient civilization of man, who strove to become gods and blasted their own world to hell. It was a steel and stone construction that was missing segments. Once this bridge was used to join the Ghostlands to the mainland. Now it was only a lonely reminder that men do not have the wisdom to control the power of the gods.

   Turning toward the East, they rowed until they beached their boat at a point just North of the town of Bella. It had been a long night and the both of them were exhausted.

   Slickman turned to head into Bella and Bub turned to head into the forest to the East. Bub was more at home among the trees than under a roof and inside confining walls.

   "Where will you be?" Bub asked as Slickman started to walk away.

   "What's it to you, where I will be?" Slickman said back.

   "You owe me for the Eyes Of Arac," Bub said. "If you wouldn't have been there, I would have taken them."

   "No!" Slickman said. "It's you who owes me. I was there first, remember. I would have been out of there before the first Crawly woke up, if you would of kept your bellowing barbarian mouth shut."

   "I saved your sorry ass," Bub told Slickman. "I could of let Big Ugly chew you up like a child's piece of taffy."

   "And I saved you and lost a good throwing knife in the bargain."

   Both of them went to draw their swords, ready to spill blood. They stared in each others eyes. Hot-blooded murder radiated in the air between them.

   A growling sound came from deep in Bubs throat. The barbarians from the foot of the Mountains Of The Olde Gods considered themselves more animal than man and were proud of it.

   Slickman bounced lightly on his toes. Standing sideways, he readied himself to draw and slash and a sound like a, "Aaaaaaw, aaaaaaw," came out of his mouth, that sounded almost like a birdcall.

   Why he did this, he wasn't even sure. It just seemed like something strange to do just before a fight. So he did it.

   Bub told him, "You sound like a Hoot Owl with the runs."

   Slickman answered, "And you sound like the last woman that I fucked!"

   "I'd hate to see that girl," Bub told him.

   "Yeah, me too," Slickman answered.

   After a time of cawing and growling and staring at each other, they grew bored with that and broke it off.

   "I'm going to Barbara Walter's Bed'em And Bang'em Motel," Slickman told Bub. "I'm going to do it the other way round. Bang'em, then get some sleep. Where are you going to be?"

   Bub pointed toward the tall trees of the emerald forest. "I sleep better underneath pines," He said. "When I awake I'll be traveling to the East. There's much out there that's not known. You could travel with me until you find a way to repay what you owe."

   "Maybe, I'll consider it," Slickman answered. "I've seen what there is to see in this part of the world. And, it would be good to be around when you have the money to pay me what you owe."