No one spoke as they made their way down the stairs. The island had so many, many staircases, some narrow, some broad, some long enough to stretch from the top floor down to the lowest tunnel, and others that only connected the bowels of the place to its lower levels. The people who had made this city must have spent most of their lives moving from level to level, from one dark hallway down to the darker. So many stairs, and not a single one was built for someone with a human-sized foot. Jendara glowered at the dark stones beneath her boot. Her legs hurt.
Fylga pressed against her as they walked. The dog had never expected Jendara to pet it or feed it or do anything beyond open the door so it could go outside to relieve itself, but now Fylga want to be right next to her. Maybe it was just Kran’s closeness. He always carried himself with independence, but now he, too, walked as closely behind Jendara as physically possible. She could feel his warm breath against her shoulder and smell the odd combination of laundry soap and dog that made up his scent these days.
If she could have clung to someone, perhaps she would have. But she needed both hands free to carry her axe and her lantern. She’d rather have her sword out—if they came upon whatever shot those webs, she wanted to inflict damage from as far away as possible—but she knew the axe was a better choice in this narrow stairwell.
“There’s more of the web stuff,” Glayn murmured.
Vorrin and Glayn gave the web a wide berth as they passed, but Jendara paused to take a closer look. This webbing didn’t look like quite like the white material that had shrouded Zuna. This was a long silky strand with an opalescent gleaming. Jendara had seen it before—stuck to Zuna’s hair. Her stomach sank as she realized she’d seen it before that, even. Back on Sorind. It was the stuff that had trapped Oric and Fylga on the rocks.
She made sure Kran avoided touching the web and stayed quiet until they reached the landing below. She caught Vorrin’s arm and quickly told him about the shimmering threads. He grew more uncomfortable as she spoke, but didn’t open his mouth until she had finished.
“On Sorind? You’re sure?”
She nodded.
“I don’t like this,” he admitted. “That means that whatever is making these webs isn’t limited to this island.” He shook his head. “Do you think something could hitch a ride on the Milady?”
“That thread is about a thousand times thicker than a regular spider’s web. I’m sure we would have noticed a giant spider.”
“Vorrin and Jendara? Do you see this?” Glayn held the lantern higher.
The hallway they had just entered looked very much like the other second-level tunnel they’d explored. It was quiet enough Jendara could hear the faint sound of feet splashing in the distance—probably Korthax, running up ahead of them.
Everything felt damp down here. When the island had been submerged, this level had certainly been filled with water, and every surface was overgrown with seaweed and crustaceans, now very dead. But the big black box leaning up against the nearest support column was completely clean. It sat in the midst of some broken and dirty spider webs, a structure that reminded Jendara of an abandoned bird’s nest.
Vorrin rapped his knuckles on the front of it. “What’s this made out of? It’s not metal, that’s for sure.”
“I don’t care much what it’s made of.” Glayn edged away from the thing. It was nearly as tall as he was. “Look at all that web stuff inside. It’s like it was part of a spider’s nest or something.”
Recognition struck Jendara. “It does matter what it’s made of.” She squatted down to study the strange black stuff more closely. She ran her palm across it. Not a single scratch marked its surface. “Remember when we first saw the ulat-kini and the black ship? They were unloading those really big black crates.”
Vorrin nodded. “The crates were full of the pieces they used to build the floating dock.”
“Right.” Jendara stood back up. “But what if there was something else inside one of them? What if they had a stowaway?”
“Shipping crates make good places for vermin to hide,” Glayn pointed out. “Plenty of bugs and spiders get hauled around on ships.”
“But what kind of spider shoots a web big enough to snare two human-sized creatures?” Jendara asked.
Kran’s chalk tapped on his slate. They all turned to watch him hold up his slate. Are there spiders on Leng?
Jendara frowned at him. She had no answer for her son.
Somewhere in the distance, someone screamed.
* * *
The hallway sloped downward as they ran, and Jendara’s boots slipped and slid on the damp sludge of rotting seaweed and mud. A faint breeze stirred the fetid air, bringing with it a charnel stink: not the usual pungent stench of fish and crustaceans, but the darker reek of death.
In the corridor ahead, something gleamed. Jendara slowed, trying to make sense of the dazzle of light. Fylga gave a sudden excited bark and picked up speed, leaping over heaps of broken shells as she went.
Realization hit Jendara. “Kran! Stop!”
In mid-jump, Fylga hit the wall of webbing and yelped with fear. Kran tried to stop, but the floor was too slick. Fylga flailed and whimpered.
Vorrin stumbled and caught himself. “Kran!”
Jendara and Glayn reached the web. “Are you okay?” she asked.
Kran looked up at her and nodded. He and Fylga were tangled together in the sticky stuff. The dog’s struggling had done nothing to loosen her. Kran was in better shape, because Fylga’s furry body had come between his legs and the web. But his right hand, the one carrying his lantern, had thrust into the gap between two of the thicker strands so that his entire right shoulder and rib cage were stuck fast. He had to hold his neck stiff to keep his head free.
“Don’t touch anything,” Glayn warned unnecessarily. Everyone was thinking of the ulat-kini who had lost his skin to the powerful stickiness of the web.
The little gnome moved closer, frowning. “A spider web isn’t sticky all over,” he pointed out. “Otherwise the spider would be trapped like the bugs it catches. Some of its strands are made out of a different kind of thread.”
Fylga stopped flailing, but her whimpering grew louder. Vorrin reached out to stroke the top of the dog’s head. “Don’t worry, girl. We’ll get you out of this.”
Jendara stooped so she could make eye contact with Kran. “We’ll have you loose in a second, okay?”
Kran smiled and waved his free hand in a show of unconcern. Jendara tried to smile at him, but her face didn’t want to work properly. He couldn’t even talk to her, not with his slate caught in the web.
She had to stop looking at him. “Okay.” She looked up at the web. “Okay,” she repeated. “How do we know which strands are sticky and which aren’t?”
Glayn stared up at the top of the tunnel, where coarse strands of silk joined with the ceiling. “Those ones, there,” he pointed out. “Those are definitely for structure.”
“There must be threads like that at the bottom.” Jendara lowered her light.
“One of them doesn’t actually go down to the tunnel floor,” Vorrin noticed. “It goes off to the side and down the hall. It almost looks like a trip line.” He paused. “Like on a snare.”
Fylga stopped whimpering and began to growl.
“Do you hear that?” Glayn whispered.
A tiny sound, barely audible over Fylga’s growling, came from the darkness beyond the light of Kran’s lantern. A tiny click-clicking, like the tap of some hard point against stone. Jendara raised her lantern so its light shone on the ceiling just beyond the web.
Four gleaming orbs reflected back at her.
“Shit!” Jendara almost dropped the lantern.
The clicking hurried toward them. Jendara pulled her handaxe from her belt and chopped at the thick cord of web on Kran’s right side. For a horrible moment she thought the blade would stick, but with a faint squeak, the fibers parted. She tried to find the next structural thread, but Fylga was struggling again, and the whole web bucked and twisted along with her.
“Can you calm Fylga down?” she begged Kran. What the hell was the spider doing? Was it just watching them?
“Watch out!” Glayn yelled.
Vorrin threw himself sideways just in time to miss the silk-and-rock bolas that launched his way. It hit the wall with a nasty thud.
This was no ordinary spider. Its body filled the roof of the tunnel, its many legs gripping the walls on either side. And it wasn’t just huge, it was smart enough to make weapons. Jendara chopped at the next strand of the web, watching the creature from the corner of her eye. She could just see Glayn slicing away at the strands around Fylga.
The spider dropped to the ground, and Jendara could see it fully now. Each of its eleven legs was close to twice as long as Jendara was tall, and its bulbous purple belly glistened faintly in the lantern light. Its mandible-like mouth parts opened and shut with a cold snicking sound.
Fylga snarled at the thing. With a twang, the main structural thread beneath her broke under Glayn’s slashing, and the dog fell free. She rushed at the spider, strands of web trailing out behind her. The spider raised a massive spiky leg and batted her aside as if she were a gnat.
The dog struggled to get to her feet, but the sticky webbing caught and stuck to the floor. She barked angrily and the spider raised its clawed foreleg above her, poised to strike.
Kran’s hand moved faster than Jendara could have expected. He’d drawn his belt knife while Jendara worked to cut him loose. The knife flew true, driving into one of the spider’s eyes with a squelch. The spider hissed.
Glayn squeezed beneath the bottom of the web, the sticky stuff catching his pack for an instant before he pushed through. His short-bladed gladius sliced through the bottom third of the spider’s leg. Blue-green blood sprayed out. The spider reared back on its remaining legs, exposing its mottled black spinneret.
“Help me,” Jendara called to Vorrin. She nearly had Kran free.
He grabbed Kran’s shoulder and began pulling at the boy as she chopped at one last strand. Vorrin and Kran tumbled backward. Through the veil of the web, Jendara saw a shimmering as the spider began to play out a length of silk. It chittered at Glayn. His attack on the spider had been brave, but now he’d drawn its ire, and there was no place for him to run if the spider tried to net him.
An idea hit Jendara.
“Glayn—the broken leg! Throw it to me!”
He grabbed the sheared-off spider leg and tossed it through the gap beneath the web. It felt cold and strange in Jendara’s hand, a weirdly smooth substance that reminded her of the material of the black packing crate and the floating docks. No stone or metal or wood had ever felt like this. The hair spikes on the inside edge of the leg bit into her palms as she hefted the thing. It was only about three feet long, but it weighed a tremendous amount.
She struck at the web, tearing at its threads with the leg’s three sharp claws. The web ripped easily under the touch of its maker. “Come on!” she shouted at Vorrin. She threw aside the leg as she ran.
Her axe bit into the spider’s nearest leg with a crunch. She pulled back to chop again—
And suddenly faced a wall of ice. Snow blew into her face—not the powder-soft wet snow of late autumn, but the dry shards that whip off glaciers in the worst windstorms. She had to shield her eyes from the biting bits of ice.
“Kran? Vorrin?” She couldn’t see anything. The wind shrieked and screamed. She took a step back and then froze. She stood on the knife edge of a mountain peak. The summit reared above her, a needle of black stone and slick ice. Rocks fell away beneath her in steep slopes like she’d never seen. She wobbled and almost fell.
“Kran!” she shouted.
“Jendara!” Vorrin’s voice echoed from nearby, but she couldn’t see him. She turned, very slowly, so as not to overbalance and slide down the face of the icy mountain. Where was she? Where was everyone?
“Glayn?” She narrowed her eyes. Was that Glayn, behind that broken bit of ice? She took a cautious step forward.
A rock the size of Jendara’s fist whizzed past her head and hit the ground, bursting into shards. From behind the hunk of ice, Glayn shouted in surprise. Jendara may have found him, but now they were under attack. Another rock struck Jendara in the shoulder, hard enough to send shock waves of numbness down her arm. She nearly dropped her axe.
Her mind struggled to make sense of it all. She’d been in an underground tunnel fighting a gigantic eleven-legged spider and now she was on top of an icy mountain. She’d never seen any place like this. The mountain rose up above a gray expanse, empty and unreadable. No trees, no buildings, no meadows, no farms. A barren waste.
She didn’t have time to get her bearings. Another rock flew past her, falling short. On any other surface, Jendara would have rushed her attacker, but she didn’t trust her footing. It would be all too easy to slide right over the side of the steep cliff. She’d be dead in a heartbeat.
Jendara tucked her axe in her belt and drew her sword. Her best hope was that whoever had thrown those rocks would try to move in closer, coming within range of Jendara’s blade. She set her feet in the best stance she could and readied herself for someone to come out from around the rock spire.
The edge of a figure appeared: a ghostly figure, a floating cloud of white fabric. Was it an elemental? Some kind of a spirit? Jendara narrowed her eyes. It had to have a body to throw stones.
The figure took another slow step toward her, its labored breathing audible. Beneath the white shroud, Jendara made out messy brown hair and a pair of dark eyes.
Jendara shook her head. It couldn’t be. It looked like Sarni, but it couldn’t be.
The figure raised its arm, preparing to launch another stone. The arm wavered and shook as if the muscles were tasked to their utmost. The figure’s mouth opened and closed, but made no sound.
Then Glayn threw himself at the figure. They stumbled backward, going right through the wall of stone to slam into the ground. Jendara stood frozen. Glayn and Sarni—if it was Sarni—twisted and grappled. The icy wind stirred up, and a sheet of snow nearly obscured the fighters.
A shimmering cord shot out of the snow and twisted itself around Jendara’s ankles. She went down hard. She should have rolled down the mountain face, but she simply lay flat on the ground, her legs hanging out over what should have been empty space. Something was terribly wrong with all of this.
Kran was suddenly by her side, hacking at the bolas tied around her ankles. The boy perched on what looked like thin air. She stared around herself as he worked, her mind spinning. Off to her right, she could see Vorrin blindly hacking around him at the rocks, the occasional spatter of blue announcing his hits.
She squeezed her eyes shut and reopened them. No, there were no rocks. There was no snow. It was all an illusion, a screen pulled up to block the spider from their sight.
But the shroud-wrapped Sarni was entirely real. Glayn slammed his fist into her face and she went limp. Jendara felt her ankles come free and jumped to her feet, grabbing onto Kran’s arm. For a second she saw snow again, but then she was truly free of the illusion. A huge leg drove down in front of her, cutting her off from Glayn and Sarni.
Jendara slashed at the leg with her sword. Her aim was too high and the blade ricocheted off the leg’s tough shell. Moving faster than any huge creature ought to, the spider twisted around, snapping its cruel mandibles shut on her arm. Her heavy jacket miraculously kept them from biting into the flesh, but she could feel bone and muscle crushing in that punishing grip. She lost her hold on her sword.
A crunch came from nearby, and the creature made a sudden surprised hiss, the sound muffled by Jendara’s arm. Vorrin shouted something, but she couldn’t make it out. The pain in her arm made it impossible to concentrate on the world. Her left hand fumbled at her belt for her handaxe. The spider shook its head, making her legs go out from under her. All her weight hung on her aching arm.
Then Kran shoved past her, her own lost sword in his hands, and drove the tip up under the spider’s chin. The spider shook and jerked. Jendara fell hard and lay on the ground, clutching her arm for a second. But she couldn’t just lay there. The spider hadn’t fallen yet, and her boy was in the fray.
She forced herself upright and took her axe in her left hand. The spider snapped at Kran with the two short “arms” that framed its nasty fangs. The boy had no weapon. Her sword was caught in the spider’s skull. Blue-green blood ran down in it rivulets, but the spider showed no sign of slowing.
Two more of the spider’s severed legs lay on the ground between Jendara and the beast, but it was still balancing perfectly well on the other eight. Only the luckiest hits could pierce its thick hide. Jendara studied the creature for another moment. Kran had the right idea, she was sure of it. If they could pierce the spider’s brain, they could kill it.
Vorrin lunged at the spider and it brought down a pair of legs to block him. It was her moment.
Jendara raced toward Vorrin and leaped up onto the second joint of the spider’s leg. Before it could respond, she found the spiky hairs on the inner surface of the leg and used them as handholds, hurrying up the leg like a ladder. The spider tried to shake her off, but the hairs were too large and her grip too strong. Vorrin gave a happy shout and drove his sword tip into the spider’s other foot.
It was the perfect distraction. The leg went still long enough for her to pull herself up onto the creature’s back. Her boots skidded on its slick carapace, but she had enough momentum to keep moving forward. Her right hand’s fingers closed on the handle of Kran’s knife, still sticking out of the creature’s eye. Her grip wasn’t strong enough to use it as a handhold for long, but she didn’t need much time. With her strong left hand, she brought her axe down beside the handle of the knife.
The spider screamed as her axe smashed through its eye. It bucked and twisted, but she kept her grip on the axe handle and the knife and didn’t fall. She wrenched free the axe and drove it in at an angle, taking out a wedge of the spider’s shell. A fissure opened up that ran down the front of the creature’s face, and she brought the axe down again, passing through tough muscle and striking the soft brain in a burst of gray sludge.
The spider collapsed on the floor. Jendara slid down off its back.
“Kran.” She flung her arm around her son. “Vorrin.”
Vorrin pulled the two of them close. “Are you all right?”
She tried to move her right arm and winced. “I think my arm’s messed up.”
Vorrin pulled back. “Broken?”
She forced her fingers to move and shook her head. “Just bruised pretty bad.” She looked around. “Where’s Glayn?”
“Here.” The gnome groaned as he ducked under the fallen spider’s leg to join them. Blood ran down his face in streams.
“What happened?” Vorrin asked.
The gnome felt around in his pocket and came up with a handkerchief. He mopped away blood, revealing a wicked cut running through his eyebrow, but no other signs of damage. “I had Sarni, but she suddenly went all stiff and then threw me off her. I hit a rock with my face. When I got up, she was gone.”
“She threw rocks at me,” Jendara said. “I don’t understand why she’d try to hurt us.”
“I don’t think she recognized me.” Glayn found a second handkerchief and pressed it to his wound. “It’s like she wasn’t herself.”
Jendara watched as Kran pulled the knife out of the dead spider’s eye and wiped it on his pants. He looked so matter-of-fact, so grown up. It shook her almost as much as seeing Sarni acting like some kind of zombie.
“Let’s keep going,” Vorrin said. “Sarni and Korthax both went down this hallway. Whatever we’re looking for, it’s down there.”
Kran caught Jendara’s eye. He finished writing and studied his words for a moment before holding up his slate. Are there more spiders?