The Adventure of the Steel Gazelle

electrical equipment, and Jeremiah found and began reading the researcher's notebook. It was Shrewsbury who broke the silence first.

  "This is a scrying glass."

  "A what?" Carroway asked as the Arkentons looked over at their friend.

  "A magical device for viewing scenes from great distances."

  Carroway barked out an astonished laugh, but Shrewsbury gave him a stern look. "There is nothing amusing about it. This is an extremely dangerous object, unless you know how to handle it. Among other concerns, it can act both ways, so that a being you are observing may observe you as well. And unlike a technological viewing device such a telescope, a being with a sufficiently powerful will may directly affect whatever it views."

  Carroway burst out with a genuine horselaugh, which earned him disapproving looks from all present. "Surely you're not serious?"

  "I am deadly serious, Theodore." Shrewsbury's tone sounded severe. "I see you haven't changed. You always were a stubborn student, and it would seem you still need to learn your lessons the hard way."

  Carroway colored with anger and embarrassment, but before he could respond, Shrewsbury suddenly announced: "I'm afraid I must leave."

  "So soon?" Kathleen objected as she walked over to him.

  He smiled. "Yes, I have to be back in Arkham this evening and my flight leaves in an hour."

  "Jerry and I were hoping to take you to dinner this evening." She sounded disappointed.

  "My apologies, but when you come to Arkham next you shall be my guests instead." He took her hand, and she reached up to kiss him lightly on the cheek.

  "We'll see you at the conference in July, Laban," Jeremiah said before turning back to the notebook.

  Squeezing Kathleen's hand, Shrewsbury then turned towards Carroway as he began to leave. "I leave you in good hands, Theodore; if anyone can determine what happened it is the Arkentons. However, I strongly advise all of you that once you have completed your investigation, you destroy that device immediately. Good luck, and good day." And with that he left the room and headed down the hall.

  Carroway waited until he had passed from earshot, then turned back to the Arkentons. "Surely we can disregard that nonsense about magic."

  "At our peril," Jeremiah replied without looking up.

  Kathleen added, "Laban may not be a scientist, but he is a leading scholar on the philosophy of science and its relationship to metaphysics and epistemology. He is also an acknowledged theorist on the application of abstract mathematics such as hyperdimensional geometry to physical and metaphysical cosmology. Much of his expertise is in what people superstitiously call 'magic', so his warning is to be taken seriously."

  Carroway's face purpled with anger again, but for a different reason. "Then Francis may have been using museum funding to perform crackpot experiments?"

  Kathleen scowled, but she was interrupted by Jeremiah's even voice: "Perhaps not so crackpot."

  Carroway scoffed, but he followed Kathleen as she went over to where her husband was sitting. "What've you found?" She leaned over him.

  Taking a pen from the desk and ripping the top sheet off a legal pad, Jeremiah began scribbling out formulas. "I'm not sure." He sounded distracted. "The math is rather complex; I wish Robert were here."

  Kathleen looked up at Carroway. "Robert is our son; he's currently doing postdoctoral work at Harvard on developing new methods of calculus."

  "However," Jeremiah said, sounding more focused, "it would appear that your researcher had a rather unique theory to explain how a scrying glass worked."

  "Oh, please, I need you to conduct a serious investigation. If you're going to waste my time on a wild goose chase--"

  "Keep still and listen!" Kathleen spat, her Irish temper aroused.

  Jeremiah tossed the pen onto the pad. "Based on what I've read, your researcher speculates that scrying glasses use tachyons the way a cathode ray tube uses electrons, to paint pictures on a specially prepared screen. He then attempted to construct a 'tachyon television' as he called it using science instead of sorcery." He paused as a faint smile cracked his lips. "Your researcher seems to have a rather wry sense of humor; he abbreviated his invention as the 'tacky-TV' in his notes."

  "What in the name of Beelzebub is a tachyon?" Carroway sounded sarcastic.

  From "Gruff Tolls"

  The three women paused as they topped the crest of the ridge. The other side of the pass ran down-slope to a narrow but deep cleft between the two mountain ranges. The sides of the ravine were sheer vertical rock walls some thirty feet apart, and even from where they stood they could hear the muted roar of the cataract deep inside the fissure.

  Medb hErenn watched as Morgiana crouched and examined the vista with her experienced thief's eye.

  "You were right," she remarked in a casual tone. She was addressing the Zoog Conaed, called Runt, who sat on one of the three pack yaks behind her. He was only about half the size of his race, but his verdigris-tinged bronze fur was darker and the tarnished silver facial stripes were bolder.

  He declined to answer, but the former queen replied, "You should know by now he is very seldom wrong."

  Morgiana gave the massive woman a look that mixed amusement and exasperation on her lovely Arabic face, then turned her attention back to the ravine while Medb followed her gaze. As Conaed had predicted, the gulf was spanned by a footbridge suspended from two pairs of rough-hewn stone spires, one on either side. The planks of the deck appeared to be made from ordinary wood, but the ropes that supported them did not look like hemp or metal wire or any other recognizable material. They almost seemed to resemble cobwebs.

  Mephitis walked up to stand between them. Medb spared the apothecary a sidelong glance and saw her eye the bridge in a dubious manner. "Are you sure this is the only way through?"

  "The Quarry of the Giants should be just a few miles west of here," Medb said. "From there the trail to Urg is clearly marked, with Inganok a day's march beyond."

  Morgiana stood and gave her arms a languid stretch over her head. "We certainly cannot go back the way we came. The valleys are literally crawling with spiders. I wasn't aware they had penetrated this far."

  "The spiders of Leng migrate out of their valleys every quarter-century," Conaed said. "The last such was a mere lustrum ago. In time they will starve as they consume all the available food, including each other, but for now they are a grave danger."

  Mephitis threw him a sarcastic glance. "You have a talent for understatement, Master Zoog."

  "We wouldn't be in this mess if you hadn't started this expedition," Morgiana said, though in a facetious manner rather than with reproach.

  Mephitis made no reply, but she flashed an expression of remorse.

  "It matters little." Medb had a slight smile on her lips. "We are both of us big girls--"

  Morgiana laughed. "Speak for yourself, you voluptuary."

  Medb raised on eyebrow at the thief's taunt, but made no remonstration. "My point is we made our own decision to accompany her."

  Which was true. Mephitis had come to them a fortnight before, while they sat drinking in the Inn of the Quixotic Muse, and asked them to accompany her on a trip into the Northern Lands. She needed to collect several natural products from which she obtained the ingredients for a number of the medicines, potions, poisons, and other drugs she created, that could only be found in the mountains that formed the western border of the Plateau of Leng. Medb she needed as a bodyguard, pure and simple, but several of the plants, mosses, lichens, and fungi she sought grew on cliff faces and steep mountain sides inaccessible to all but a master thief. She offered each a handsome remuneration, as well as the opportunity to plunder the ruins that dotted the plateau and its barrier mountain chains, but she did tax Morgiana's talents and ingenuity to the utmost. Still, thanks largely to her expertise, they were able to collect large amounts of everything Mephitis needed, except spider venom.

  "Of course, Your Majesty," Morgiana joked.

  Medb formulated a retort, but forgot
it when the bird Teehar'owan came flying up the slope towards the small group, his gaudy blue, green, red, and gold plumage unmistakable against the drab surroundings. He circled them a couple of times, then landed on the head of the lead yak, between the horns, flexing his crest and long tail.

  "Mistress," he piped, "the bridge is guarded by a spider!"

  All three women studied the structure. "I don't see anything," Mephitis said.

  But Medb was able to look more closely. "Where is it?"

  "In the shadow of the right-hand column."

  She spotted it immediately. "Ach, yes. About the size of a bull, I would say." It looked like a normal orb-weaver spider, except for its size. Its abdomen was large and bulbous compared to its cephalothorax, and somewhat oblong, while its eight legs arched high over its body. A pair of pedipalps, almost like a fifth pair of legs, sprouted from either side of its "face". Its base color was a vivid hue of purple, but it appeared mottled by a bold lace-pattern of indigo that dyed its legs and bordered its lapis-lazuli eyes. There were four pairs of those, the front pair being the largest, with the other three arranged in a box-like pattern on its "head".

  Morgiana shook her head. "I still don't see anything. I wish I had your hawk-eyes. So, a runt then." Her tone suggested disgust. The Zoog growled softly in reply, but the women ignored him. Medb knew it wasn't the creature's small size that disturbed the thief, but its