Time crept by, but it gradually grew darker as the yellow sun set, and then followed the longest, darkest night of all their lives. Thomas was more terrified than he'd ever been before in his life. More frightened than when he'd been a prisoner of the Mad Woman near his home in Andor, because then he'd known that the others were still free and would try to rescue him. More frightened than when he'd been in the Maze of Samnos, because then he'd still been free and able to defend himself against the horrors that dwelled there. He got no sleep that night, and nor, he knew, did any of the others. Who could possibly sleep, knowing that they might be eaten alive by half human monsters in the morning?

     The gradual brightening of the forest as dawn approached brought a strange sense of acceptance to Thomas. He knew that he was going to die that day, that he would not live to see another sunset. The calm acceptance lasted until it was bright enough for him to see Lirenna, hanging a few feet away from him. She was looking at him, looking straight into his eyes, and the blank look he saw there, the total absence of hope, shocked him back into life. The fear came back in a rush. Not fear for himself, but for her. Having to watch, unable to help, as she was feasted upon, would destroy his mind. He struggled with all his strength, a struggle are easier by the fact that he could no longer feel his hands. The webs binding him were too tight. It allowed him to pull harder than he'd been able to the evening before, free from the pain it had caused him, but it was just as hopeless as before and when he finally gave up from exhaustion he was bound just as securely as ever. He looked across at Lirenna, to see a sad, hopeless smile under the gag that covered half her face. He felt tears running down his face. The only hope he had left was that the arachnaurs would kill him first.

     He became aware of movement in the forest surrounding them. Hungry arachnaurs, looking for their breakfasts. A group of half a dozen appeared from the direction of the city, climbing along the overhanging branches and selecting a large, muscular Shadowsoldier, a giant of a man who looked as though he'd never been scared of anything in his life, but who was now struggling madly and making muffled, begging noises in a quite pitiful fashion. An arachnaur pulled him up by the web he was hanging by, opened its mouth wide and spat a pale liquid onto the cobwebs around his right shoulder. A chemical agent in its saliva dissolved the webs in that area, enabling the creature to loosen the man's clothing and bare his shoulder.

     The arachnaur again opened its mouth wide, this time revealing a pair of long, needlelike fangs which it sank into the man's flesh, injecting a dose of poison. The skin around the puncture wounds immediately turned dark and swollen, the purplish, yellow colour of an old bruise and the puffiness of a bad blister, and the blight spread rapidly to cover a greater and greater area of skin. The man stopped struggling and hung limply in the creature's grasp, but Thomas knew that he was still alive because he could see him breathing. He had either fainted from terror or been rendered unconscious by the poison.

     The poison spread up his face, turning his quite handsome features into a thing of nightmares, and down his right arm and across his chest. The wizard imagined it continuing to spread under his clothing, and after a few minutes the Shadowsoldier gave a convulsive shudder and stopped breathing, so that Thomas knew it had reached his heart. Still the arachnaurs waited, however, evidently waiting for the poison to spread completely through his body, and as it did so the flesh invaded by the poison seemed to melt or dissolve beneath the skin. Breaking down into loose fluid that flowed around the bones, flooding to his body's lowest points where it made the skin bulge and stretch like a balloon filled with water. His hands, bound by the silken threads behind his back, swelled to twice their normal size, the skin stretched tight and shiny like surgical gloves blown up by frolicking doctors, and ripples of motion could be seen running through it as the arachnaurs shifted their grip on him. In contrast, the skin over his face and head, elevated above the rest of his body, flopped in loose folds as the liquidised tissues ran out through the neck and down into his chest. Only his skull prevented his head from collapsing completely.

     The entire process took about twenty minutes to complete, at the end of which the Shadowsoldier had been reduced to a sack of skin containing fluid and a jumble of bones. The arachnaurs then gathered around the obscenely slopping and gurgling thing, puncturing its skin with their fangs to drink the fluid as it drained out. Five minutes later, they dropped the remains, now just skin and bones, down onto the forest floor, where it landed on a pile of other dried husks with a sickening rattle.

     Other arachnaurs came, hauling up other Shadowsoldiers and jungle animals to repeat the process, and Thomas had to exert all his willpower to prevent himself from vomiting. If he threw up while gagged, he would suffocate on his own vomit. Now they knew exactly what was in store for them, and the eight travellers waited in helpless terror for their own turn. At least the poison killed fairly quickly, the first victims wouldn't suffer too badly. The real suffering would belong to the last victims, who would have to watch it happening to their friends.

     Time passed with glacial slowness, and it seemed to the eight travellers that days and weeks must be passing while one Shadowsoldier after another was pulled up into the overhanging branches and consumed, but eventually what they'd been dreading finally happened. Ten more arachnaurs came in their direction, stopped above Diana and Lirenna, and pulled the two women up.

     Shaun and Matthew went into a wild frenzy, thrashing around in berserk desperation but as ineffectually as ever. Thomas, in contrast, simply hung there with tears in his eyes, glad that the demi shae's suffering would soon be over. The arachnaur bared her shoulder, and the wizard was sickened to see red welts in her skin where the tight webs had bitten in. She looked down into his eyes, and then the arachnaur administered the poison and she fell unconscious.

     Another arachnaur was repeating the process with Diana. When it bared her shoulder, however, it noticed the silver chain around her neck and, filled with curiosity, pulled it to see what was on the end. When it saw the silver caroli flower, hidden up until now in her clothing, it became very excited and spoke to the others in a high pitched, chittering, chattering language.

     Yes, that's right! thought Thomas with a surge of renewed hope. She's a cleric of Caroli! Now ask yourselves what a follower of the Lady of Healing is doing with a bunch of evil Shadowsoldiers! Go on, think! He prayed to every God and Goddess he knew that the arachnaurs had enough intelligence and common sense to realise the truth. The old one had claimed that they were merely punishing the Shads for an unprovoked attack on them. If that was true, then they wouldn't murder a group of innocent bystanders who'd just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. On the other hand, they might be inherently evil creatures who captured and ate anyone who entered their territory. The wizard prayed as he'd never prayed before, and looked at Lirenna, wondering how much further the poison still had to go before it reached her heart.

     The arachnaur opened its mouth wide and spat its saliva over the cleric's face, dissolving her gag and freeing her mouth. Diana, blinking saliva out of her eyes, didn't wait for it to question her but forced her mouth open, the last strands of the gag pulling at her skin as they clung relentlessly. "We're not with the Shadowsoldiers!" she blurted out. "We're their enemies! We were chasing them! We're not your enemies! Please, we're not your enemies! I'm a cleric of Caroli, you can see I am! Why would I be with those evil people? Think about it! Use your brains, if you've got any! We're not your enemies!"

     The arachnaur looked puzzled, as if having difficulty grasping the concept, and the cleric shouted at him, the first time Thomas had ever heard her raise her voice. "Quickly, you idiots! She's dying!" She shook her head at the demi shae, whose entire shoulder had turned dark and puffy, and Thomas prayed that it was possible to halt the action of the poison. Perhaps once the process started, it was irreversible. No! They must have an antidote to their own poison, he thought frantically. They must have!

     The arachnaurs deliberated for a moment longer, then came to a decision. One of them freed Lirenna's mouth and produced a small phial made of solid web containing a clear fluid that it poured down her throat. Thomas almost sobbed with relief as he saw her shoulder return to its normal pale, clear, almost transparent colour, and then the creature pulled her clothing back into place, buttoning it around her neck. It then gagged her again with fresh webbing produced from its own body and lowered her back down to the others before speaking.

     "We will take the cleric to speak to our elders," it said. "If she can prove to their satisfaction that she is telling the truth, and that the caroli flower is truly hers and not stolen from a real cleric, then you will be freed. Otherwise, you will be eaten along with our other enemies. Two of us will stay with you, to make sure no-one eats you in the meantime." It then picked up the cleric and carried her off towards their city, followed by seven of the other arachnaurs. "Don't worry!” called back Diana as they went. “We'll all be free in no time! I'll be back soon!" Then she was gone.

     Lirenna regained consciousness shortly afterwards, and seemed surprised to find herself still alive, but Diana's absence plus the new, hopeful expressions on the others' faces told her what had happened. They waited for hour after hour, during which more of the Shadowsoldiers were pulled up and eaten, and they gave thanks for the new chance they'd been given, a chance that depended entirely on Diana's persuasiveness and the arachnaurs' sense of justice. Of the first they had no doubts, Diana could talk a trog into cheerfully donating all his iron to charity, but the second was a big unknown. They could only cross their fingers and hope for the best.

     An hour before sunset, Diana and the arachnaurs returned, and now all her web bindings had been removed and she rode on the leading arachnaur. A female, larger than the males but with a gentler, less savage look to its human parts. Diana had her arms around its waist and wore a weary smile on her face. The others were released, carried a little way from the pantry and lowered to the jungle floor, where they stretched and rubbed the pain and cramp out of their limbs. Poor Lirenna was still badly scared, even though the cleric kept reassuring her that the danger was now over, and Jerry was little better. His hair had grown noticeable whiter during his ordeal, approaching the pure silver of an adult nome, and his face was pale and sweaty, the normal rosy red colour of his cheeks noticeably absent.

     "We are very sorry for our mistake," said the female arachnaur, "but you have to admit it was a perfectly understandable mistake, and no harm was done. Will you accept our very sincere apologies?"

     "No harm done!" spluttered Shaun furiously. "You scared us all to death, almost killed us in the worst way imaginable and you say there was no harm done? Where would we be if you hadn't seen Di's silver flower?" The male arachnaurs scowled angrily at his outburst, but remained silent.

     "If you hadn't gagged us, we could have told you who we were, and this whole thing would never have happened!" added Petronax angrily.

     "We have to gag our prisoners, otherwise all their screaming and begging would be quite intolerable," explained the female patiently. "We like peace and quiet."

     "Peace and quiet!" screamed Shaun. "Well, we wouldn't want anything to disturb your peace and quiet, would we?"

     "Shaun, please," said Lirenna weakly, steadying herself on Thomas’s arm, although the wizard didn't look too good himself. "I just want to get out of here."

     "Me too," agreed Jerry. "I never want to see another cobweb again for as long as I live! Where are our belongings?"

     "They are being searched for," said the arachnaur. "We have no use for such things and so they were thrown on the refuse pile. It may take a little while to find them again. In the meantime, sunset is only an hour away. You might as well stay with us until morning."

     "Absolutely not!" said the demi shae vehemently. "I'll start walking right now rather than spend one more minute in this awful place!"

     "But we want to make up for our shameful treatment of you. Won't you give us a chance to show you how sorry we are for what happened?"

     "Just let us go!" sobbed Lirenna. "We just want to go!"

     She started crying on Thomas’s shoulder, and he hugged her tight, which might have comforted her if he hadn't been shaking so badly himself. "That's right," he added angrily. "As soon as our stuff arrives, we're getting out of here."

     The arachnaur looked distraught. "Then at least promise to come back one day, when you've recovered from this unfortunate incident. We feel very bad about it, and we'd greatly appreciate the chance to make amends. Come back one day and be our honoured guests, give us a chance to show you what we're really like."

     Lirenna gave a hysterical laugh, and Thomas could only agree. "Come back? You've got to be joking! I'm never coming anywhere near this place again for as long as I live!"