The spider’s massive body obscured Fithrax from her view, but Jendara had seen enough. She leaped onto the support cable tethering the massive web platform in place. For the first time, the spider noticed the movement. It twisted around to stare at her with its ruddy eyes. At the edge of her vision, Jendara saw a flicker of movement as Vorrin climbed onto the far side of the platform. She had to serve as a distraction as he and Glayn freed Zuna and Fithrax. It might be their only chance.
She chopped at the wall of the coffinlike cell closest to her, sending out a shock wave of vibrations. The baby spiders—three now, and a fourth pulling itself up out of the dead ulat-kini’s mangled chest—froze in place, staring at her with the same blood-red eyes as their mother. One of the little beasts flexed the armlike limbs on either side of its mouth.
The mother spider hissed.
Jendara grinned. “Better come and get me.”
The flexing baby spider scurried down the dead ulat-kini, running far faster than its newborn legs ought to move. At the last second, it leaped into the air, soaring like a missile launched from some infernal catapult.
Jendara was ready for it.
The side of her axe caught the spiderling and sent it flying. It struck its mother’s belly with a satisfying crunch. The mother spider shrieked in rage. Its spinneret pulsed and a long strand of sticky silk shot out at Jendara.
She managed to sidestep it. A sudden tugging on her pants leg made her realize another spiderling had approached while she was distracted. It raced up her leg, and she slapped at it. The sharp claws scored the side of her hand, ripping the flesh. She shouted in surprise and disgust and slapped it again, knocking it to the ground. She stomped on it, but the web beneath it absorbed most of the blow. The spiderling chittered and burrowed deeper into the platform.
A soft grunt made her glance away from the creature. Vorrin and Glayn had cut through the webs securing Zuna’s limbs and were now trying to pull her away from the sticky back wall of her cell. They still had a lot of work ahead of them.
A silken cord just missed Jendara. She leaped backward, realizing even as she moved that she’d freed the smaller spiderling. She couldn’t keep fighting two opponents, not when one moved with such uncanny speed—and she had no doubt the thing’s bite was poisonous. The spiderling jumped at her and she spun sideways, slamming into the web coffins.
The third spiderling scrambled up over the dead ulat-kini’s face and scurried along the top edge of the structure, headed straight for Jendara. She could hear squelching as the fourth spiderling finished emerging from its host.
Screw being a distraction. It was time to get rid of these nasty bugs.
Jendara kicked out, the tip of her boot catching a spiderling underneath its belly and sending it up into the air. A reel of silk shot out of its spinneret, but caught on nothing. Jendara swung her axe up underneath the spiderling, and it exploded in a cloud of blue goo and purple shards.
The other spiderling jumped, expecting to land on her face, but Jendara was already dropping into a crouch. She didn’t pause, instead straightening up before the spiderling had a chance to regain its balance. Her bleeding right hand caught one of its nine legs and sent it flying into its mother’s belly. It hit the surface hard and fell, stunned.
Jendara swept it off the platform with her boot. She flexed her hand. It bled a little, but at least she was regaining feeling and function in her right arm and fingers. If that first spider had known her, it would have bitten off her arm instead of just trying to crush it.
Then she saw the mother spider’s head turn and stare down at Vorrin, who was helping Zuna cross the support cable to far side of the web chamber. The spider made a near-growl.
“Shit.”
Jendara had to distract it before it shot down Vorrin and Zuna. The spider was still too high for Jendara to reach, and she wasn’t sure the top layer of the web coffins would hold her if she tried to climb on them.
And then she had an idea.
“Watch out!” she shouted at Glayn, who knelt at Fithrax’s feet, slashing at the ulat-kini’s bonds. The gnome twisted aside as she charged.
Her axe bit into the spider’s abdomen, and the spider screamed. Its legs flailed, stabbing down into Fithrax’s shoulders and ripping at the coffin walls. Jendara reached out for the ulat-kini.
A leg speared down through the sheet of web, nearly skewering Jendara. She bobbed aside. “Is he free?” she shouted.
“He is now,” Glayn grunted.
She grabbed Fithrax’s shoulders and pulled hard. The sticky web of the back wall clung to him, ripping at his flesh. Jendara pulled harder.
Fithrax fell against her. His mouth opened and closed as he gulped for air. A thin ribbon of blood dribbled off his lip.
“You don’t get to die,” Jendara said. “I told Korthax I’d bring you back.”
Fithrax coughed out a fine spray of blood. But he put his hand on her shoulder and took a wobbly step.
“Come on!” Glayn shouted.
Something struck Jendara between the shoulder blades. Hard little knives dug into the flesh of her shoulders. Jendara doubled over. There was no way she could reach whatever was biting into her back.
“Help!”
The gnome’s knife flew through the air. The spiderling shrieked as the knife drove it back into the web coffin, pinning its body to the wall.
Glayn shoved Fithrax toward Jendara. “How in all hells are we going to get him across to the other side?”
“Take my sword,” Jendara ordered.
“What?”
“Just take it!”
The gnome pulled the sword from Jendara’s scabbard and stared at her. She pushed Fithrax down onto the support cable and wrapped one arm around him and the other around the cable.
“We all hang onto each other,” Jendara explained, “and you cut the cable. Fast!”
The spider mother’s spinneret twitched and sprayed out web as she worked to build the net that was rapidly filling the top of the chamber. The second she dropped that thing, they’d all be trapped inside with her.
“Cut it, Glayn!”
Gripping the sword in both hands, he slashed at the cable. Then he grabbed onto Fithrax’s belt and gave the cable one last awkward chop. With a twang, the cable split. The three swung through the air and hit the wall. Jendara reached up to grab the main support beam, the one that Glayn and Vorrin had followed around the side of the chamber.
“Get up there, Fithrax.” She grunted as she pushed him up past her, shoving his arm into the deep white fluff that made up the wall. It wasn’t sticky enough to hold him up, but he managed to get a grip and bring his feet up onto the cable. He stopped moving for a second, coughing hard. A fine mist of blood spattered the white wall.
Jendara glanced back at the center of the room. The spider had stopped weaving her net and now turned to face them, realizing they were about to escape.
She caught Glayn’s hand and yanked him up onto the cable. “Hurry! Go!”
They raced along the cable. Up ahead, Vorrin and Zuna were just scrambling up into the web tunnel. Jendara urged Fithrax and Glayn forward. If the spider caught them, they were dead.
Fithrax struggled to pull himself into the tunnel, and Glayn gave his backside a shove. Jendara didn’t wait for the gnome to start climbing; she hoisted him up ahead of her. “Hurry!”
Fithrax crawled faster. Zuna and Vorrin were a dark blot at the end of the tunnel.
Jendara twisted around. The tip of a huge black leg appeared at the entrance of the tunnel, the biggest claw stroking the silk tenderly. It was feeling for vibrations, she realized. Feeling for them. She turned back around and felt her shoulder catch in the sticky stuff.
“Shit.”
Glayn stopped. “What’s wrong?”
She glanced back over her shoulder. Now there were two spider legs. “I’m a little stuck.” She wouldn’t say anything about the spider, not yet. “It’ll just take me a second. Crawl faster.”
She dug her toes into the spider web and threw herself forward. Her shoulder pulled free with a ripping of silken threads—thank goodness her sheepskin jacket was tough—and behind her, she heard a thin, high-pitched screeching that sounded all too horribly of delighted laughter.
“Hurry up!” she screamed, beyond the ability to keep calm, beyond feeling anything but the blind need to run. There was sudden light as Glayn wriggled out of the tunnel and she shot forward.
Her hands touched rock at the same time something tightened around her right ankle, and her leg yanked backward hard enough to make the joints scream with pain.
“Help!” She clawed at the stones, but her body slid backward inexorably.
“Jendara!” Glayn grabbed her wrists.
She gasped as her body snapped tight, held fast between her friend and the spider. “It’s got me!”
“Hold on to her, Glayn!” Vorrin pulled out his sword. He slashed at the web that made up the roof of the tunnel, trying to make enough space to reach the line pulling on her ankle.
Glayn’s boots skidded on the floor and Jendara let out an inadvertent shriek.
Then Kran was there, throwing his arms around Glayn’s waist. Jendara tightened her grip on Glayn.
Vorrin swore softly as he chopped at the tough, sticky fibers. “Got it,” he grunted and gave the sword one last swing. Jendara’s ankle came free and she fell forward.
Glayn dragged her to her feet. “Are you all right?”
Fylga let out a volley of barking as the mother spider broke through the wall of the chamber, her tough leg spikes tearing free of the web as if it were wet paper. The wall beside it sagged and buckled, revealing more of the cavern’s true shape. Where she and the others stood, the stone floor ran straight and true, but from that point left, erosion had worn away the stone. A rip between the egg chamber’s wall and the floor revealed what she couldn’t see before: the spiders had spun their web rooms over a hole in the ground. A salt breeze wafted up, carrying with it the sound of waves.
A sea cave. Jendara’s mind spun. That was probably how the spiders had gotten inside the island—they’d simply floated inside, no different than riding the Milady into their own little grotto.
“We can get out down there!”
The others stared at her.
“Don’t you hear the sea?” She point at the rip. “It’s just down there!”
And then the spider mother knocked Jendara off her feet.