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The complicated gates of the castle were usually open, since the wide chasm between it and the lake at the base of the cave worked as an effective enough guard. It was possible for invaders to climb the hills the cavern filled, and find castle openings in the meadows and sheep-fields on the surface, but a silk lattice covered the grass there, and was regularly renewed. Every guard-spider and shepherd-spider for miles knew the exact position of every human foot on the hill.

The entrance hall Raguel and Nub walked through was black-walled and lined with fanciful statues of the spider-folk, many holding ceremonial objects. Books, scrolls, some heddles. Nothing like a weapon. The tops of those statues, and a lot of the floors, were caked by an offensive number of candles. Their yellow flickering among the statues' many limbs made complex shadows form and vanish in the air above them. Tangled blue gossamer hung directly above them, far above.

"I think we should present ourselves as hostages," Raguel said to Nub, looking left and right at the colossi. He wondered if these were specific spider-folk idols, or representations of professions. They were almost symmetrical, on either side, at least in the splay of their limbs. However, the more he compared them, the more Raguel noticed different numbers of eyes, different tails, spindlier or thicker legs... "They'll take our weapons, but only while we're here, and return them when we leave."

"I don't have any weapons," Nub said, not quite as interested in the architecture. He was naturally a little faster than Raguel, and never seemed to walk steadily - he was always skipping around him, or walking backwards to look directly at Raguel while they spoke. "So, I don't really care. Are you not afraid they'll attack you?"

"I read the book while you were sleeping," Raguel said, proudly. "It's not legal for any citizen of the castle to hurt a visitor-hostage. You'd ruin the bargain for compensation for misbehaviour... though, it's all a deterrent, and they're supposed to return the hostage in every case."

"Raguel, have you never broken the law? Or met anyone who did?" Raguel's blank look showed he had not understood the question. "What if you offend and provoke one?"

"I killed many bandits before the snakes' valley... and I can defend myself well enough with my hands."

They came to an enormously tall wooden door. There was a small wooden panel at eye level, with a little silk string next to it, probably for a bell on the other side. The rest of the door was covered in brass reliefs of web-patterns.

"Oh, yes, you're a competent warrior, but these are magical, poisonous monsters with four times as many hands as you." Nub crossed his arms, unimpressed. The cloak was serving him very well as a large skirt - but for being barefoot and stripped to the waist, he looked almost dressed. "Hundreds of them. Perhaps thousands."

"Five times many, isn't it?" No, Raguel. Stop. "Let's not talk about that. Yes, Nub. I can defend both of us." Raguel rang the bell. There was no response, at first. "Why are you here, Nub?"

"I think I want to become a spider."

"You have to know you want it, though."

The little wooden panel opened, and a gold-orange face appeared. It was small. Six white eyes met Raguel's two.

"Mmhm?"

"I am Raguel, of the Order of Saint Parthos," Raguel said, and regretted saying so the moment he had. It was probably too late to continue using his Order membership in his identity. He had broken some oaths already, especially with Bochi, and he knew, deep inside him, how the Order's Elders would respond to the news of the founders having become the hierophants. They would know already. Raguel would be expected to keep mum, or he would be exiled, or he would be killed. He was here in the spiders' lands to learn what he could, and send missives and cures back, and then... he had honestly not expected to survive the journey through enemy lands.

"Mm." There was a series of light thumps on the other side of the door as the face facing Raguel turned upside-down. The little guard must have been stuck to the other side of the door.

"My friend and I have come to speak with your Hierophant, Aran. I come for information about a plague in our lands, else a cure. We have not come for war, or to preach. We offer ourselves as visitor-hostages."

"Sorcerers, though." The goblin-like gold spider guard a very high, nasal voice that, if it didn't come from an inhuman monster, would have befit a small child. "Order gives blessings. We take weapons, but you need to lose magic."

There was a loud yelp somewhere behind the door.

"Oh, no," said the gold spider.

"Oonop! What are you doing? If I've told you once, I've told you - and there are guests! Silly girl!" The new voice was female, and furious.

"Oh, no," said Oonop, again, and her face was yanked away. A slightly larger face, rather like Oonop's in shape and colour, filled the window in her place.

"Hello," said Raguel, to the newcomer.

"That was my daughter," she said. Raguel was confused. He had been sure becoming one of these creatures brought sterility. He was sure of the same thing regarding the serpent-folk. He never asked that, either, not of Ghum, or Paean, or Bochi. "I'm Linyph, the gatekeeper today."

"I am Raguel, of the Order of Saint Parthos," Raguel began.

"Oh, of course. And you've got the little demon, too," Linyph began. She cleared her throat, having prepared information for them. "Yes, Aran agreed to see you tomorrow, and we are to put you up tonight. It will take you most of the day to get to the other side of the castle, where your rooms are. How would you like to enter?"

Raguel was glad he'd read the book of the spiders' law. If he hadn't, this would have been very confusing. He looked to Nub, whose expression clearly said he thought Raguel's decision was dooming them both.

The light from the bottom of the door was getting brighter, redder. Oonop was singing a song.

"As visitor-hostages, please," Raguel said, unhooking the ankh from its strap on his leg and sticking it into his sack. "I have my weapon in a bag, here."

"Ah, yes, so that's what Oonop was talking about." Linyph's expression - for all that her face was nothing like a human's - was kindly. "You do know we do not just take physical weapons from hostages, yes?"

"No?" Oh, no.

"The Order gave you blessings and spells, which you could still attack us with," Linyph said. Raguel remembered that it was legal for spider-folk to explain the first chosen entry method, but that the law became vague and murky afterward. The arrangements were never quite to entrap people, but allowed for it at the instant they turned into a threat. "You can still take the visitor-hostage option, but that means you'll be made to forget those spells. The Church's Fool, Ged, will do that for you. Are you still...?"

"Ged?" Nub said.

"Yes," Linyph said, absently, "Ged. Visitor-hostage, then?"

Raguel had to. He could keep the book with him, he knew that. Just no armour. How much would they take, though? So much of Raguel’s fighting ability was anchored in his memory. His knowledge of how to fight could have been taken. Would his memory of Magdalene be defined as a weapon, since it drove him?

…Did it actually drive him, anymore?

Raguel coughed, and agreed, and the door opened - a portion of one of the doors, at least. Inside was a high, circular room, with even more of those ridiculously gargantuan statues. These ones had their hands held out, all of them, as if to offer an embrace to one another.

Raguel could see the guards in full, now. Linyph was tall, and long-armed, and variegated. Oonop was an appropriate size for a little girl, and played with colourful silk ragdolls at a table. Nub joined her, and played along, and she was delighted.

"Will Oonop eventually take over from you?" Raguel asked. He wanted, desperately, to know if Oonop had a father, or if Oonop was a human little girl given the converting potion. The idea of a recruited child horrified Raguel to his bones. Children could be so easily convinced by those with greater knowledge that it wouldn't, ethically, be their choice... but there was no way to tell if that was how the magic worked. You might have just needed to want it. He was about to become very vulnerable to these creatures, though, and to ask those questions now would jeopardise his mission.

If anyone could kill a pest, after all, it would be a spider.

"Oh, I can dream," Linyph said. Unlike Bochi's static mask on a human face, and despite their strange fingered mouths, the whole-spiders' faces were very expressive. "She will need another century or two, for that, though. I only had her two years ago."

They reproduced, then. Raguel stopped himself from sighing, from reacting at all.

"Ged's the master of ceremonies here, too," Linyph said, taking the bag from Raguel and plucking Oonop from Nub's back in one smooth motion, "and the dance for the start of Autumn is about to start. Follow me, and we'll trust you two with your magic long enough to let you see the celebration."

The pair were led up a spiral staircase inside the wall, and through another ornate brass-lined door.

-

Nub strayed closer to Raguel as they walked through. Behind the door, it was darker - flat stone floors gave way to thick red carpets - they were again led by blue lights in the silk on the walls, following them. The little droplets flashed red when they turned the wrong way.

There were many chapters in Bochi's book about Autumn, referring to it as 'the season'. Laws swapped effects, disappeared, or came into effect then. The reason for 'the' season was still unclear to Raguel, even after reading the whole thing. There was some courtship involved, and some holidays from weaving and gatekeeping duties. Raguel had thought that courtship was just a timetable for their fornication, but obviously, they married, as Linyph had a child.

Raguel and Nub sat in plush chairs on a balcony overlooking a great black stage, unlike any structure Raguel had seen. Rows of seats circled the stage completely, and while Raguel could not see who was sat in them, he felt, more than heard, a shuffling like hundreds of cats running. This was what a crowd of spiders sounded like.

Is this what they had, instead of God? Dances to mark the time? Raguel wondered how different it would be from the chanting he was used to in Church. If the churches of the snakes, spiders and Polypi all came from the Orders' founders, it was probably going to be some imitation of what he knew.

Raguel peered upwards, at the rest of the room. They were in a great tower, and there were many balconies like their one.

The roof of the room, a long way above them, was a window. Moonlight filtered down from it to the stage. Raguel realised with a little anxiety just how far they were from the world above, and feared that this would be the last time he'd know who he was.

In the centre of the stage were six or so spider-folk, some striped, some spotted, all with patches glowing white in the moon. They were lean, young-looking, and their arms were small and man-sized while one of their long legs splayed out in front of them. In their little circle, the eight of them seemed to make a small sun.

Raguel couldn't see where it came from, but a fiddle started up, and the dancers' little sun raised its rays in a very simple pattern... Up, then down, trembling. Up, then down.

Another fiddle began, and its melody slotted in harmony behind the first. The rhythm seemed too complex to dance to, but as the spiders' legs shifted around one another, and the dancers separated from their clump, every aspect of the tune became apparent through their movement. Raguel thought he could hear chimes slotting in more over time, and the polyphony was quite unlike anything he had heard before.

When he blinked, the music was chaotic, confusing, but once his eyes were open, everything made sense again.

Raguel stood up from his chair and leaned over to the balcony's edge, to realise that branching iron bars had slipped down like a portcullis without him noticing. No chance of falling, he thought, having no fear of being a prisoner, now, since he'd decided to be one. He pressed his face to the bars to see more, looking through a convenient circular hole in them. He saw the dancers and their rhythm changing.

They shook and furled and unfurled, and for all that they were moving faster than when the sun split into eight, their rhythm had slowed between each other. Each spider was slower or faster than the dancer opposite. There was a ruffling in the audience, then some sharp shouts, when the dancers uncrossed their arms and held them above their heads. Each had a brightly-coloured strip of cloth wrapped around their forearms, thick enough to make their arms seem to swell.

They circled their outstretched arms - there were voices behind Raguel, swearing quietly, and he gestured at them to shut up. The ribbons, every colour in the world even if there were only eight of them, unfurled a little at the dancers' wrists.

The dancers' front legs gracefully folded down, to close their palm around that ribbon, and pull it up. The dancers looked like they were puppets.

The music stopped.

The ribbons were rhythmically pulled up, unwrapped from the dancers' forearms, and wrapped around the spidery legs instead. Finally, reaching a knot, they were crossed above them. Their wrists effectively bound behind their heads, the dancers' bodies were taut, and looked almost exquisitely human... if furred, and glowing, and heaving.

Raguel held the bars more tightly. The dance flowered, and finished.

Raguel collapsed back into his chair, the rhythm still in his head - mainly the drums - though he had no idea when they had started. Eight 'arms' meant very complex beats, and it was exhausting for the knight's mind to remember. Their little room's maroon walls, maroon seats and darkness were comparatively relieving, for all that the dance had been brightly wonderful. He felt like he had gorged himself on a great meal.

"You liked it, then?" asked Nub.

"I apologise," said Raguel, "for shushing you."

"Oh, I don't mind. Ged came in. Had a little talk. You weren't listening, though."

Raguel turned to Nub - who was cocooned onto his own seat, wrapped and wrapped in colourful sheets and ropes of silk. While he looked, the silk was a pale red - after looking away a moment, it was pink. They shifted colours slowly, and did so more when Raguel didn't look at them.

"What in Creation happened to you? Are you..." Raguel stumbled from his seat, and reached to press at the encapsulated demon, finding it was tight - but not sticky. "Are you safe? Are you hurt? Who...?"

"Ged, like I said," Nub said. He did not seem bothered by his situation at all. The silk was a deep purple, now. "This is how they treat hostages before they take your spells."

"You have a magic voice, Nub," Raguel said, baffled. "Why didn't he gag you? Were you... drained, again?"

"He trusts me," Nub said, grinning. It was a little smug. Knowing more than Raguel did seemed to really thrill him.

"Why would he trust you? You're from Hell." Raguel explored the cocoon with his hands, trying to find where the ropes knotted, where the tension hinged.

"We spoke with each other a long time ago." Nub was entirely comfortable where he was, it seemed, and entirely aware of his situation, so Raguel left his wrappings alone. This had nothing to do with the fact he wasn't sure how to remove them. "Yes, I'm from Hell, but you shouldn't decide a man's character by his home."

"You won't tell me how you know him, will you?" Nub shook his head, and Raguel glowered. "He hasn't taken your memories, yet."

"No. He said he would let you watch his dance, then he would come back, and he could 'do it' for both of us. You really needn't worry."

There was a knock at the door to the balcony. Shortly afterwards, a tiny bell tinkled, next to the door.

"You'll have to get that," said Nub, as he couldn't move. Raguel cautiously approached the door, and opened it, to see an auburn-furred face fully twice the size of his own. Below that were the man-like shoulders and arms he'd come to expect, and the hallway behind the newcomer was filled with fluffy, thick red-brown legs.

"Good evening," said Raguel. "I apologise for quieting you."

"No-no-no," Ged said, in a fluid voice. The accent was familiar - somewhere far off in the North-West. "It was my dance, I choreographed it. I'm pleased you didn't want it interrupted." He reached out with his human hand, and lifted Raguel's chin to make him look into his eyes. The two in front, at least. "If there was time, you would have danced with us."

"Would I?" Raguel couldn't help but feel a bit excited. There was little celebration among the Order except after large battles, and even that was frowned upon. The Devil sent pleasures to steal you. Raguel coughed, and smiled. "Would I have had any choice?"

"Goodness, no," said Ged.

-

The court fool's enormous, tufted body and many limbs filled the hallways they walked down, shadowing the walls as they crawled along. It was a long way down - so much that Raguel could only really make out small details in passing. This staircase went down the outside of the column the performance was made in, and they were below that circus, now. Nub, in his little cocoon, was strapped onto Ged's back with silk he had brought with him. Ged did not seem to use much of his own silk in anything. Perhaps he was spent, or this was his own silk that he had spun out earlier.

Somehow, despite them having barely exchanged a word, this was comfortable. The fool was huge, and so warm that Raguel could feel it on his own body, and he had a way of moving that was very inviting.

As in the dance, Raguel could not quite see the spider-folk as composite. They were not like Paean, where what was human and what was snake would change, but change obviously. The shape of Ged was handsome and broad, for all the extra limbs. Sometimes Raguel could see his segments mimic human muscle under the fur - a farmer's shoulders, a curved back. The way his limbs sprawled out from that back, though, and how he crawled, his round tail bobbing behind him -- once Raguel paid attention to any of that, he was a spider again.

Ged scuttled through the floor. Down that hole, Raguel could see nothing, until Ged's foot slipped back out of it. It wrapped around Raguel's head, and gently pulled him through.