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A Long and Weary Way  by Canafinwe

Note: Chapter title from "The Mewlips"; The Adventures of Tom Bombadil; J.R.R. Tolkien

Chapter IX: Spider-Shadows

For all that Aragorn knew, he was stumbling in circles through the unending maze of tunnels. At least, cold comfort though it was, he knew that he had not found his way back to the cavern where the spider-skin lay rotting. As he advanced, his head and hands were slapped again and again with tickling tendrils that he knew now to be cobwebs. It was one of those rare instances when he would have preferred ignorance to knowledge. His skin was crawling beneath his clothes, as if tiny, many-legged creatures were scuttling up and down his limbs and his torso.

The last traces of the soothing but deadly complacency that had plagued him in the blackness behind were gone now, replaced by the battle-ready alertness that the long years had honed to an instinct. Despite the noxious darkness Aragorn's senses were awake to the slightest change in his environment. His ears picked up the faintest sound, the most fleeting whisper of the gravid air. As he moved forward with what haste he could, he listened ever for the clicking noise of spider-pincers or the scrape of claw-tipped legs that would herald his death.

Yet on he ran, and neither death nor the spider had found him yet. Though he tried to keep his mind solely on the present peril, his thoughts kept drifting back to everything he had ever heard about this place and the fell shadow that dwelt here.

In Gondor the truth was all but forgotten, recalled only in the name of the pass and the hive of caverns above it. In his time in the service of Ecthelion, Aragorn had never heard more than vague legends of some evil in these caves, and in his youthful ignorance he had imagined a colony of creatures like those that plagued Mirkwood. Even the Rangers of Ithilien, who laboured near this terrible place, could say no more. Yet in Núrn the Pass of the Spider was hailed as a destination of unspeakable terror. He remembered now, too late, the rumours that he had heard but little heeded, whispered by the servants of Sauron and the wretched slaves misused by them, of a single, almost demonic presence in the Pass.

It struck him with a dawning horror that slaves and captives for whom there was no further use had at whiles been sent to Cirith Ungol to meet their end; sacrificed, doubtless, to placate the beast that dwelt within these caverns.

He stumbled as the passage changed direction, and skidded to his knees against the unnaturally smooth rock-wall. Aragorn slapped his hand against the stone in frustration: he could not afford weakness now. With an effort he hauled himself to his feet and struggled on, but fear and weariness and time unknowable spent in this gloom had drained much of his reserves of strength. As he groped ahead through the blackness he began to despair of ever finding his way out of this dreadful pit.

He beat back that thought. If he allowed hopelessness to take hold, the dark would devour his mind as it had threatened to do before. As the memory of that – that thing in the cavern behind once more eclipsed his reason, he was driven back into the realm of ancient tales, and accounts of that creature, a spirit of evil in the form of a spider, who had with Morgoth ravished Valinor. Ungoliant, who had drained dry the wells of the Blessed Realm and devoured the light of the Two Trees, belching forth darkness in its place. It was said that the great spiders of Mirkwood were her long descendants, but whatever had wrought the web of black in which he now was caught was nearer offspring than that. Aragorn understood now his former aloofness to his plight and the fog that had so consumed his senses. This darkness was more than the ordinary gloom of the subterranean paths of Middle-earth. It was the product of an evil thing, in malice equal to Sauron himself, that had dwelt in these hills through the long ages, forgotten by all save the servants of the Enemy who dwelt upon her threshold.

Again his face was brushed by a foul strand of spider-silk. Panic was swiftly mounting, and he fought it yet again. He could submit to terror still less than he could exhaustion. He had faced more desperate situations than this, he told himself bracingly – though a niggling voice from deep within retorted that he could count such incidents upon his thumbs. Still, he resolved, he would not lie down in the dark like a sheep ready for slaughter. He refused to wait for death; he would run until his legs gave out beneath him, and then if needs must he would crawl, but he would never submit.

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He no longer knew how long he had been walking. His back ached and his weary feet pained him. His head felt muddled, and he knew it was as much for want of rest and nourishment as it was because of the spell of the darkness. Now and again he dared to take the risk of lifting the orc's water-skin to his lips and sipping at the tepid fluid within, but for the most part his hands were needed: the left to feel his way forward along the concave wall, and his right to hold his knife. At some point he had dropped the small throwing-dagger, but he had not noticed where or when. His limbs were shaking with exhaustion and that particular enervation that came from labouring too long in a state of heightened alertness, awaiting a calamity that never descended. All that he wanted was to sink to the ground and draw his cloak about himself and sleep, just for a few short hours. Sleep...

'No!'

His voice echoed in the blackness, startling Aragorn out of the dangerous reverie into which he had sunk. He held his breath. Had anything else heard his cry? Was this the mistake that would summon the monster? But only the silence greeted him: the silence and the perpetual reek.

'No,' he whispered, and the word fell deadened at his feet. 'You cannot die here, you fool. Come now, recreant: onward! Onward.'

And onward and onward. There was a limit even to his endurance, and Aragorn feared that he would soon surpass it. If he did not receive some sign of progress soon, his flagging resolve and his weary body would no longer be equal to the task of keeping him on his feet. He dared another mouthful of water. There was food in his pack, and he had only to halt for a moment to dig it out, but the thought repulsed him. Not only pausing, but the idea of eating anything in this vile place. Though he knew it had been many, many hours – perhaps a day or more – since he had last taken nourishment in that first tunnel, he could not bear the thought of food. Closing his eyes, for they were useless anyhow and it soothed the tension in his brow to lower his lids, he groped forward again.

Suddenly he became aware of a change in his surroundings. It took him several steps before he realized what it was that was different, but when he did his pulse quickened. Though the darkness was still as pervasive as before, and the air still as foul and his body still as sore, the floor beneath his feet had changed its incline. He was moving downward now.

He did not dare to hope that this might be a sign that he was proceding in the right direction, for it might just as easily mean that he was descending further into the lair of the spider, but at least with the pull of the earth in his favour his progress was less painful. He hastened down the sloping tunnel, booted feet skidding and slipping against the slick stone. Then suddenly the grade was flat once more, and he drew himself up sharply as the wall beneath his fingers abruptly ended. This unexpected development almost thrust him into the panic that had been threatening for hours, and he stumbled backward until his back struck stone. He groped about, and found the place where the rock wall turned a sharp corner. Across the gap only a little way there was a second such junction. He had reached the intersection of two passages: the relatively narrow one through which he had passed, and the one in which he now stood.

Despite the thickness of the stinking air, this space felt more open than the other. Cautiously, Aragorn stepped forward, fingers outstretched in the darkness. One step, two. Five, six, seven... and at last he touched the far wall.

It was wider than any passage he had yet encountered, and at first he wondered whether he had found his way into some other cavern, but a few minutes' walking with the wall to his left convinced him that this was indeed a tunnel. He halted then, with his back to the wall, and tried to consider his course. What sense of direction he was able to retain in such dark places had long since forsaken him. Whether he was walking Eastward or West, North or South he could not say. Nor, he was forced to admit, did he particularly care. He could not consider his hunt now, when he was in danger of becoming prey himself, and after so long in this vile place he longed only to see the open sky again and to breathe air not permeated with evil and spider-shadows. Therefore lost as he was one way was as good as the other. He continued forward.

Then suddenly there was a sound: a sharp, creaking ululation that ended in a long hiss. It was followed immediately by the noise that Aragorn had been dreading: the clattering click of spider-legs on stone. It was coming from up the passage, rapidly approaching. The Ranger's eyes grew wide and he flung his back against the wall, flattening himself along the stone. He tightened his grip on his knife. If it was to end here, he would at least wound the dread thing.

Again the spider shrieked. It was a terrifying noise, thin and high-pitched and, despite the miasma that seemed to swallow sound, disconcertingly loud. It was near indeed now, and Aragorn braced himself to spring into hopeless battle. The scuttling legs sounded off the stone, shuffling, scrambling, ticking against the ground. Nearer and nearer and nearer still, until Aragorn could feel the wind of their motion upon his outstretched left hand.

Then with another blood-curdling cry the creature was past him, careening off into the darkness behind. Aragorn stood frozen, unable to quite believe his good fortune. Was it possible that it had not sensed his presence? Was it even conceivable that it could have passed so near and failed to notice an intruder in its lair? Shaking off his shock as swiftly as he could he turned and began to run, in the direction opposite to that in which the creature had fled.

Fled. The word struck home even before he heard the creak of joints before him and the low, venomous hiss of a huntress rapt in the chase. Even as the light of some dim, luminescent mass began to advance upon him, Aragorn realized that what had passed him was not the beast upon whose horrible hide he had stumbled far above. It was some other wretched creature, like him a captive of this mire of blackness, and it had sped past him without notice because it was driven by fear of what lay behind.

He could feel the vast bulk of the creature surging forward through the tunnel. The sickly glow was surely the spider's vast underbelly – the pallid ghost of which had been preserved on the forsaken shell. The rattling and creaking of its joints as great legs strove to support the massive body filled Aragorn's ears. In that moment his mounting terror overwhelmed him completely, and he forsook all hope of inflicting some hurt to his foe ere he perished. Unable to master himself, he flung his body down upon the floor of the cave, arms thrust up to shelter his head, and he huddled there, incapable of motion, as the beast swept towards him.

A claw landed close by his elbow. Another grazed his leg, scoring his garments and sending a fiery pain into his loins. There was a venomous hiss and the snapping of pincers and a stench unbearable even after so long in this noxious atmosphere. Aragorn braced himself, prepared at last for death...

And the creature was gone. Away it swept, carrying its vile reek with it. Heedless of the wretch cowering upon the floor it surged off into the darkness in single-minded pursuit of its prey.

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Aragorn scrambled to his feet, nearly tumbling again as pain shot up from his wounded thigh. He bent, clapping a hand over the place the spider-claw had struck, attempting futilely to stem the bleeding. His every instinct told him to run, as fast and as far as he could in the direction opposite the passage of that monstrosity. But reason overtook him in the time it took his hammering heart to force out three tremulous beats. The spider had come from the direction he faced. If he ran forward, he would be stumbling into its lair. When it returned – and it would return – he would not be so fortunate as he had been just now.

The other spider, the smaller one, had fled down the passage for a reason. That way had seemed to it the surest escape. Long years in the wild had taught Aragorn that beasts and birds knew best the way to water, or sustenance, or safety, and it was a foolish man indeed who did not heed their signs. He groped on the ground for his knife, taking it in his left hand, for his right was clutching his scored leg. Then he turned in the direction that the two beasts had raced.

Some shard of good sense protested that he was a fool for running towards such a foe, but Aragorn did not heed it. He was pushed beyond desperation now, and he had no longer the luxury of sober second thought. There was only a primal instinct, nurtured and heightened by the ceaseless struggle for survival that had been his adult life. If there was a way out of this place, that was the way that the smaller spider would have chosen. And if he overtook the larger beast before she found her quarry, the kill might distract her just long enough for the Ranger to escape.

He broke into a loping, limping stride, moving as swiftly as he could. Now and again he felt a jarring pain from his freshly-injured leg, but such was his desperation that he heeded it not. His chest ached from the exertion, and his head swam as the foul air failed to furnish sufficient breath. A vague white form coalesced before his eyes, swimming upon the very cusp of unconsciousness...

And then he realized that it was not a product of his failing faculties at all, but a brightness in the passage ahead. Aragorn released his hold on his wound to catch himself against the tunnel wall before utter astonishment overcame him completely. He halted for less than a breath, however, as he ran forward towards the light, praying desperately that he came not too late, and that the lesser spider was offering its pursuer adequate distraction.

As he staggered out of the tunnel and up the slope to the open cleft of the pass the light blinded him. After so long in the darkness, even the gloom of Mordor seemed unbearably bright. Furiously, frantically, Aragorn blinked his eyes in an attempt to clear his vision. When at last the vague shapes about him hardened into bleak reality, he looked about desperately for any sign of the spiders.

A cry from above alerted him, and he turned, casting his eyes heavenward. There, upon the shelf of stone overhanging the entrance to the tunnel, the one beast chased the other. The first spider was no larger than the monsters of Mirkwood, Aragorn noticed. The other, vast beyond imagining, was too terrible to behold. She was scrambling after the lesser creature, and as the Ranger watched she caught him between her mighty forelegs. From her spinnerets a thick rope of silk shot, and she looped it around the flailing legs. Then there was a horrible noise as the great spider sank her fangs into the lesser, injecting within him the paralytic poison that would keep him quiet and complacent whilst she wrapped him. Then she would drag her unhappy mate back into the darkness behind and devour him, sating one appetite with the body of a creature that had fed another.

Fighting the urge to vomit up the meagre contents of his stomach, Aragorn knew that if he was going to fly, this was his only chance. Tearing his eyes away from the horrific spectacle above, he ran. In his exhaustion he stumbled, falling with his face in the dust, but somehow he scrambled up, dragging his hurting leg after him. Down the winding way he ran, gulping greedily the cold air of a mountain winter – foul with the reek of Mordor, but fresh to lungs grown accustomed to the spider-stink. The tunnel was far behind him now, and he heard no sign of pursuit, but still he ran. He ran until he could run no more, and then he loped on at a pace less than his most lazy stride, his good leg trembling and his right a leaden weight of pain. He clutched the cliff face and dragged himself onward, until at last he stumbled upon an uneven place in the path and fell for the last time.

His final disjointed thought before he slipped from consciousness was that he still did not know which side of the Pass he had found.    





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