Jendara stared down the hall. In the dim light cast by the fallen lanterns, she could see sheets of spider webbing lining the walls, giving everything a faint otherwordly shimmer—a reminder that this creature was nothing like the ones that lived in her own garden. It had been smart, and it could make illusions, and it had somehow turned Sarni into its own slave.
She had no idea how that kind of magic worked, but she had a horrible feeling that once the spider controlling her died, Sarni ought to have returned to normal. Jendara turned and wrenched her handaxe out of the dead spider’s brain.
“Sarni didn’t come back,” she said. “I think—” She broke off, repulsed by gray goo dripping off the blade of her axe. With a grimace, she scrubbed it off on the bloated purple creature.
“You think that means there’s another one.” Glayn had balled his bloody handkerchiefs in his fist, and the cut on his forehead looked raw and puffy, though it no longer dripped.
“Yeah,” she agreed.
“What if it has Tam?”
She squeezed his shoulder. “We’ll get him back. Tam, Boruc, Zuna, Sarni—we’re going to get them all back and get the hell out of here.”
Kran began gathering the lanterns and redistributing them. Jendara had mixed feelings about the lights. She wanted to be able to see what they were getting into, but she knew spiders were less dependent on their eyes. Even the common house spider had a remarkable sense for vibration and heat. These freakish things? They could have super-hearing and see through stone walls for all she knew. She felt a sudden urge to punch the tunnel wall. She was up against something huge and terrible, something she barely understood, and her sword arm was practically useless. And even if they fought off the next spider and found the team, they were little better off than they had been before. The team had come to this island to find a fortune, and instead they were trapped underground with giant spiders and the enmity of the deep ones.
But her crew needed her.
Jendara raised her lantern to study the hallway up ahead. “Let’s get moving.”
She took a step forward and felt the ground drop out from under her feet. Glayn screamed as he plummeted down beside her.
She bounced off something soft and then tumbled down a long drop. She hit ground hard and lay there gasping.
“Dara!”
“I’m okay.” She sat up.
Vorrin got to his hands and knees beside her. He made a little hissing sound and brought his wrist close to his chest, rubbing the joint. The lantern hung above them, caught in a tangle of web. Glayn hung from a handhold a few feet above it. Jendara reached for the lantern and sat it down on the ground.
“Kran?”
Fylga barked in reply. She could just make out the outline of boy and dog, leaning precariously over the edge of a long tube of spider web. It had to be a good twelve feet up.
“A trapdoor,” she growled. The damn spiders must have camouflaged the trap with gravel and rock.
“Can you get me down?” Glayn asked.
“Yeah, just a second.” She touched the silk with one cautious fingertip. “This is a different kind of silk—slippery. It’s going to be a real pain to climb back up.”
Fylga whimpered.
Kran gave a sharp intake of air.
“What is it?” Jendara squinted up at him, but he was already throwing Fylga down. He launched himself down the slippery wall, sliding several feet before he caught himself.
Jendara heard a soft scraping above. “There’s another! Get out of here!”
Vorrin grabbed Glayn and they raced away from the trap. They had landed in another tunnel, its walls sheathed entirely in webbing: a tight funnel of stretchy, sticky stuff. Jendara had to turn sideways to keep it from touching her. The walls caught and held the lantern light with an eerie opalescence.
And then the tunnel opened out into a cavern that rivaled the Milady’s grotto in size. Jendara lowered the flame on her lantern and beckoned to the others. They were alone here where the tunnel joined the cave, but faint sounds warned her they would not be alone for long. Over the faint whisper of the wind, a strange tapping and rustling echoed within the cavern.
Walls of webbing cut the cave into a long open space with smaller chambers opening off the sides. From where Jendara stood, she could see all the way down to the far wall, where a web-veiled window about her own height let daylight filter into the room. Despite the opening in the rock walls, the air felt much warmer here than anyplace else in the underground labyrinth. The spiders had created a snug fortress for themselves.
Movement to her right made her spin to face an attacker, her injured arm bringing up her lantern as if it were a weapon. A terrified gasp made her stop before she smashed the lantern into a familiar face.
“Korthax!” she whispered.
He nodded and struggled out of the pocket of webbing where he’d been huddled. It clung to him, but he wasn’t immobilized by stickiness.
“I did not think we see each other again,” he whispered. His pupils were huge, as if he were in shock. “I saw … a spider, making a web…” His speech trailed off. He was shivering, Jendara realized. However he’d gotten past that spider, he hadn’t yet recovered from the sight of it.
“It’s okay,” she murmured. “It’s dead now.”
Vorrin leaned in. “We have to find Zuna,” he said in a low voice. “Korthax, have you seen her?”
The hybrid ulat-kini shook his head, hard. “I think she is in here. I do not know. I had to hide from the spider.”
Jendara raised a hand to stop him. “There’s another spider in here?”
“I saw it on ceiling, by that window.” He looked like he was going to be sick for a moment. Kran gently touched Korthax’s shoulder. The ulat-kini looked down at the boy and forced a deep breath. “I am afraid of spiders.”
“You keep watch, then,” Vorrin said. “You and Kran can keep an eye out for any spiders on the ceiling, or if anything comes out of the tunnel. We’ll go get Zuna.”
“And Fithrax,” Korthax said, quickly. “Please do not leave him.”
Jendara met Vorrin’s eyes. She didn’t want to put herself on the line for a slave-taking ulat-kini, but she didn’t want Korthax upset. They’d already made enough noise talking out here as it was. “We won’t leave anyone behind,” Vorrin said. “Not if we can help it.”
Korthax nodded. Some of his color had returned, but his pupils were still huge.
Jendara stooped so she could murmur in Kran’s ear without Korthax hearing. “I want you to keep your blade handy. If a spider comes, I don’t know if you can count on Korthax to help you.”
Kran nodded. He brought out the long seax and held it in an easy grip, like he’d been fighting with it for years.
“Let’s leave all but one of the lanterns,” Glayn said. “We can see well enough here.”
Jendara spared Kran one last glance over her shoulder and then crept into the nearest chamber. Her eyes roved the walls and ceiling, searching for spiders.
She had never felt so tense, not in any dungeon she’d escaped or facing down any enemy. Every flicker of shadow made her ready her axe. The damn spider could be anywhere, behind any silken wall. It could be right on top of her and she might not even notice because the bastards could make her see things that weren’t there.
Glayn made a tiny terrified sound, and she spun to face the far corner. A dark form hid behind a thick wall of webbing, its long legs outlined blackly against the shimmering silk.
“It’s not moving,” Vorrin whispered. “It hasn’t seen us yet.”
Jendara couldn’t tell if it was as big as the spider they’d found in the corridor. Its long curled legs were pressed against the sheets of web, obscuring its body, and the spikes on the foreleg looked as long as her hand. The edges gleamed in the light. If one of them touched her flesh, she knew it would slice right through skin and muscle. But it didn’t move.
She took a cautious step forward, wishing she could hold her axe in her right hand and not her left.
“Why isn’t it moving?” Glayn could barely whisper. He stared at the thing as if rooted to the floor.
Jendara moved closer. She heard nothing. The creature didn’t even twitch. It could be a trap. If it was, she’d be dead the instant it lashed out at her. But if it wasn’t—if the thing really slept this deeply—she could have it dead before it could bring its weapons and venom into play.
“Don’t get so close,” Vorrin begged.
She pushed her axe blade against the web. The spider didn’t move. She could see its fangs now, a dull black that stood out against its purple underbelly. Jendara leaned closer, frowning at that horrible face with its many eyes. She got closer, really looking into the dull surface of the nearest orb.
“It’s just the shell,” she said. “Like a crab or a garden spider—it grew and molted.” She leaned back, taking in the full size of the creature. It couldn’t have grown much, though. The husk was shriveled and flattened, but the legs looked just as long and thick. And underneath it, she saw another smaller form, the husk of a spider no larger than Fylga.
She thought back to the empty shipping crate. When crabs and spiders molted, it took time. They hid in the dark for a long time, waiting for their old exoskeletons to slip away and the new to grow. The shipping crate would have been the perfect way to bring a group of molting little spiders onto the island.
How many of them were there?
“Jendara?” Glayn tugged on her elbow. “I only see nine legs. Didn’t the one in the tunnel have eleven?”
A gurgling scream interrupted any answer she might have made. Vorrin raced out the chamber faster than Jendara had ever seen him run. She raced after him.
“What was that?” Glayn asked, his shorter legs making him fall behind.
She nearly slammed into Vorrin. He had stopped in place at the entrance of an upward-curving tube of spider webbing. In the darkness beyond, she could make out panicked voices babbling in fear. Someone moaned.
“I think it’s Zuna,” he said. “But I don’t know how we can get to her.”
Jendara touched the end of her axe handle to the wall of the tube and gave it a tug. “It’s the sticky kind.”
She peered into the gloom. The muted sunlight barely penetrated the thick walls of webbing, casting the room beyond in shadows. She tried to guess at the room’s dimensions, but the space went back a long way, winding off to the right and upward.
“It’s all spider webs, isn’t it?” Glayn whispered. “A whole room made out of spider webs.”
“I’ll bet only the entrance is sticky,” Jendara mused. “Whatever’s in there is something they want to protect. No point wasting sticky stuff on the walls—it’d just make it dirty and harder to move around.” The spiders seemed immune to their own sticky threads, but if they had to maneuver other items, like food or gear, they wouldn’t want to get them stuck. Or so she hoped.
Leather scraped against stone behind her, and she spun around to face Kran. “What are you doing here?” she snapped, keeping her voice quiet with some effort. “I told you—”
He waved a hand to cut her off, then tapped his temple.
“You had an idea?” Vorrin asked.
Kran held out the bowl he used to give Fylga water. It was full of crushed chalk—no doubt one of the pieces he carried for use with his slate. He smeared some on his palm and then patted the webbed wall beside him. His hand didn’t stick.
“Of course,” Glayn breathed. “I use sawdust to coat my caulking gear so it’s not sticky.”
“Good idea.” Jendara said. Then she rapped her knuckles on the top of Kran’s head. “Now get back to the entrance and hide like I told you.”
Glayn took the bowl of chalk dust and began to toss handfuls on the floor and walls of the tube. Someone sobbed in the room beyond, and Jendara had to bite down on the side of her cheek to keep from calling out reassurance. She wanted to slash through the spider webs and charge in to the rescue, but she had no idea how the room was constructed. One wrong slash could drop the floor out from under Zuna and whoever else was in there. If she was already injured, a fall could kill their friend.
Glayn dropped to his hands and knees, testing the surface. “It’s not too bad,” he whispered. “But the roof’s sticky, so stay low.” He shrugged off his pack and began crawling.
Jendara and Vorrin left their own packs at the mouth of the tube, and then she followed Glayn inside. The silk creaked around her, the threads stretching beneath her palms. The dust had coated the top layer of strands, but she could feel the stickiness of the stuff below as their movement exposed it. The way out would be worse, she realized.
“Careful,” Glayn gasped, and she paused to see what had startled him.
She stared around herself. Perhaps her eyes had grown accustomed to the dim bluish light that made its way through the webs. Glayn hung a few inches below her, clinging to the wall as he tried to make his own sense of the place.
The tube they had crawled through was like a straw stuck in the side of a hollow gourd. The curved floor of the gourd-shaped chamber lay at least twelve feet below the tube, and the ceiling stretched above at least thirty feet more. Thick strands of spider silk ran up the side walls, serving as support beams for the lighter-weight wall material. Each silk cable was the thickness of Jendara’s leg, and its surface shimmered softly with that purple, alien sheen.
In the center of the room, a series of these cables ran down from the ceiling to support a massive disk of spider webbing. Another set of cables connected it to the back wall. It all supported the beginnings of a strange structure made up of smaller silken tubes, and as she studied it, she was suddenly reminded of the beehives in her yard. The bees built a framework of wax where they stored young larvae, placing each egg tenderly inside a chamber before sealing it off and building the next layer around the sleeping baby bee.
Here the silken structures were not small hexagons, but tall boxes that looked terribly like a bank of open coffins standing side by side with open fronts. Inside the row of silken boxes, she could see five humanish shapes, one per box, with Zuna and Fithrax at one end and three larger, misshapen ulat-kini beside them. Jendara wished she couldn’t see those three tormented creatures with their bloated and bulging bodies.
“What do you see?” Vorrin whispered, and she realized she blocked his view. She hesitated a second, then gingerly touched the wall off to her right. As she had hoped, it wasn’t sticky. She pulled herself out of the way, clinging to the wall like a frightened monkey clinging to a wall of vines.
Jendara’s eyes crept back to the three sickening ulat-kini imprisoned in their silken coffins. They stood upright, a few coarse strands of silk binding them, finer webs gluing their hands and feet securely into the walls of their otherwise open prisons. She had no way to guess how long they’d been inside.
A flicker of movement caught her eye, and Jendara stifled an instinctive shriek. A massive spider hung from the ceiling above the silk coffins. Jendara held her breath, but it didn’t seem to have noticed them.
The ulat-kini beside Fithrax groaned and writhed. His bloated body bucked. Jendara wished she could look anyplace besides the sickening bulges that pulsated on his chest and torso. The ulat-kini beside him slept.
The faint shushing of spider legs moving against silk warned that the spider moved. Its pendulous body twitched as it slowly slid down the largest of the support cables. The structure in the center of the chamber vibrated softly.
Zuna gave a frightened shriek and thrashed against her bonds, but her hands were swallowed up in silk. Thicker strands secured her waist so she couldn’t wriggle too strongly.
Jendara scanned the room. The horror that had gripped her fast when she first saw the spider subsided a little. She pointed out a support cable that ran around the belly of the chamber. Longer and thicker than the others, it looked wide enough for them to follow around the side of the room.
Vorrin nodded and began to creep toward the cable. Glayn realized what Vorrin was doing and followed him cautiously. Jendara closed her eyes and sent a desperate prayer to the ancestors that the spider wouldn’t see them or feel their movements vibrating through the silk strands. She risked another look at the most bloated ulat-kini.
Suddenly the ulat-kini shrieked, louder and longer than before. It was a scream of pure terror, of absolute pain, and it broke off with a squelch. Blood geysered from his mouth as he jerked. A groaning, crunching, crumpling sound came from his body.
And then the skin covering his ribs ripped open.
Blood and yellow pus boiled out of the wound and a pair of slender legs appeared, scrabbling on the slippery surface of the ulat-kini’s chest.
Jendara couldn’t move. She couldn’t even breathe as the first fist-sized spiderling emerged from the ulat-kini’s body. It perched on the dying ulat-kini’s shoulder, rubbing its spiky legs in his blood.
She wrenched her eyes away. Vorrin was halfway across the chamber, one hand gripping the wall and the other out for balance. Glayn moved behind him cautiously. Jendara lowered herself down to the biggest cable and paused, thinking. If the spider noticed them, she was far enough behind the men that she wasn’t sure she’d be able to help.
She glanced up at the spider. It had picked up speed and had nearly reached the cells that held the trapped prisoners. Its eyes were focused intently on its goal.
Jendara began to hurry along the cable in the opposite direction from the one Vorrin and Glayn had taken. Splitting up felt smart, and in a situation like this, she had to trust her gut. She moved quickly, keeping her balance without touching the silken wall, but ready to grab it if she needed. She’d spent most of her life on a ship. Walking this cable was easy.
Fithrax gave a startled yelp, and Jendara paused to check why. One of the spider’s huge legs bore down on the layer of webbing that formed the top of his prison cell. The leg sank deeper into the web as the massive spider slowly repositioned itself. It adjusted its other legs to hold its great weight as its bloated abdomen slowly rolled to point down at Fithrax. Jendara glanced at the other ulat-kini and the second spider crawling out of its torso. She had a horrible feeling she knew what was going to happen to Fithrax.
The spider’s abdomen rippled. From the tip of the spider’s abdomen, just below its spinneret, a flexible tube squeezed out. The spider’s flanks gave a spasm, and the tube slowly extended. The tip glistened with a yellowish fluid. The spider tightened its grip on the cable, then drove its claw down through the web, coming down on the top of Fithrax’s head hard enough to snap his forehead back. Yellow slime spurted over his exposed face.
Fithrax shrieked in terror.