Oh, gods, a giant spiderweb.
Her only hope now was The Horse.
Something quivered down the length of the web. The moon had moved far enough out from behind the cloud to penetrate some of the deep shadows with light, revealing other creatures trapped like Karigan. A doe kicked, trying to free herself. It looked like she had been at it for some time. Her head sagged in exhaustion, and her body heaved in staggered breaths. Birds, squirrels, bats, a raccoon, and even a wolf were ensnared.
The wolf snapped at the air and howled, a rending howl that churned Karigan’s insides. His call wasn’t answered, and he whimpered. Karigan had heard howls like that on freezing winter nights. They had terrified her. Yet, all she could do now was pity the wolf.
On the ground behind her, almost hidden beneath a bush, was a heap of ivory bones, luminous in the dusky forest, and freshly stripped of flesh. Next to the bush was a pile of round, fist-sized objects, each the same tarnished silver of the creature. Was it her imagination, or did a couple vibrate? She passed her free hand over her eyes, uncertain of the reliability of her vision. It felt like someone was drubbing her head with a hammer, and she was dizzy.
More bones were scattered near the spherical objects, and she began to suspect that, like a fly caught in a spider’s web, the creature was not done with her.
Sounds of the battle between The Horse and the creature drew closer—the racket of hooves on carapace, the cracking of tree limbs, The Horse’s hard breaths, the snap of claws . . . The Horse backed through the underbrush, and Karigan could see the rise and fall of the creature’s claws as it herded him toward the web.
“Horse!” Karigan shouted. “It’s a trap!”
The Horse hesitated and glanced in her direction, as if suddenly understanding his predicament. The creature struck him with its tail, embedding the stinger into his neck. The Horse crashed to his side, and he didn’t move.
“Nooo!” Karigan wailed.
The creature prodded The Horse’s belly with an antenna. When he didn’t respond, it emitted a clicking sound, perhaps of approval. From The Horse, it sidled to the webbing, and moved up the line from the doe to the raccoon, then to Karigan. Eye stalks wavered as it inspected its prey. It poked her ribs with an antenna, and softly whistled to itself.
Karigan jerked away and slapped her free hand at the antenna. “Get away!” But already the creature’s attention was on the spherical objects. It nudged one or two with its claw to a more satisfactory position, then trundled away.
Karigan moaned. All was lost without The Horse. She was trapped and there was no escape. She hadn’t expected it to end this way. She thought she would reach Sacor City, and hand over the message directly to the king. She’d be a hero! If she was to be stopped, she thought it would have been by Immerez and his men, and they were horrible enough to contemplate. This monster was totally unexpected.
Moments passed and the wolf cried out with his dreadful howls. How long before the creature returned? How long before it would return to feed?
The scent of bayberry drifted to Karigan from her coat pocket. The little sprig of bayberry must have been crushed during her struggle with the creature, and now it did what Miss Bayberry said it would: “When you find resolve failing you, when all hope is lost, take a leaf and rub it between your fingers. The scent will refresh you, and perhaps you will think of me.” Hope swelled within her, and with it, courage. While she still lived, there might be a chance.
Miss Bunchberry had given her a bunchberry flower: “If you are in need of a friend, pluck a petal from the flower and let it drift in the wind.” She wished fervently that she could now be in the care of the Berry sisters. She needed a friend.
A crack split the air somewhere behind her. At first she couldn’t identify its source, then she glanced at the spherical objects. They vibrated and hairline fractures grew and spread across their smooth surfaces. Karigan sagged, but the webbing held her up. The spheres were eggs.
Antennae poked through. Tiny claws tapped on the insides of shells, and slimy silver bodies, miniatures of the parent creature, emerged wet and glistening. They slid over their brethren, one on top of the other, and scurried toward the web, attracted to the heat they sensed from those trapped in it. There was no doubt of what would be doing the feeding.
A creature crawled onto the toe of Karigan’s boot and she kicked it. It spun a yard away, but in a flurry of legs, feelers, and claws, it scurried toward her again. The animals struggled, too, but in their panic, only entangled themselves farther into the webbing.
An almost human scream drowned the moans of the animals. Karigan’s nerves stretched taut. The raccoon. She closed her eyes as if to silence its anguished cries. When the cries diminished, she opened her eyes again.
Three hatchlings crawled up her leg. She growled and shook them off, more angry now than fearful. The creatures had no right. No right. The hatchlings closest to her feet made a sickening crunching sound beneath the heel of her boot.
The bunchberry flower was in her hand. She couldn’t remember having pulled it out. The fragrance of the bayberry was intoxicating. If you are in need of a friend, pluck a petal . . . She would need an army of friends. She shook her leg, but this time the hatchlings hung on with their claws, antennae feeling the way up her leg.
She lowered the flower to her other hand which was stuck in the web, and pried off a single petal. ... and let it drift in the wind. As soon as the petal left her fingertips, a breeze swept it up, avoiding the webbing and entwined tree limbs, and carrying it out of sight above the treetops. Karigan sighed. At least she would die remembering her friends.
She shook her leg again. The creatures had climbed up as far as her hips and now employed their stingers. Her legs began to go numb. Yet she vowed she wouldn’t die without a fight. She shook and writhed her body, ignoring the stings, and brushed some of the creatures off with her free hand. Each hatchling that fell off was a victory. She ground them into the earth with the heel of her boot.
A screech echoed over the whimpers of her fellow victims, and some great winged thing crashed through the canopy of the trees. Karigan cringed under its shadow. What horror had come to join the feasting of the little creatures? Then she saw the outline of an eagle—a huge gray eagle.
“The web!” she screamed at him. “Watch the web!”
She felt the beat of each powerful backstroke of his wings. The span of his wings had to be as long as she was tall—wonderful for the great heights of the Wingsong Mountains, but not practical in the woods.
I will help you. He settled on a stout branch above her head.
“What?”
In the oldest folklore, the kind children adored and skeptical adolescents scoffed at, there were stories of creatures with an intelligence equal to a human’s, who could speak into the minds of others. Karigan herself had pleaded with her mother to tell such tales, but now, a skeptical adolescent, she wasn’t sure that she had actually heard the eagle. Master Ione had never said anything about animals or birds using mind speech, so surely, she had heard nothing at all. The eagle was nothing more than an illusion gazing at her. Her pounding, addled mind, and the poisonous stings were making her see and hear things.
I will help you. The voice was deep and guttural, and very real.
Awed, Karigan could only stare at him, her mouth gaping. If the old stories were true and the eagle really spoke to her, did she direct thoughts of what she wanted to say to him, or did she speak aloud? Could he hear her thoughts?
Direct me. The eagle perched as implacable as a statue, though his “voice” was tinged with irritation.
Karigan opened and closed her mouth, fishlike, unable to utter a word. Even if he could read her thoughts, they’d be an unintelligible jumble.
She did not know what to tell him. If he tried to fight the creatures, he could easily get tangled in the web, or the creatures could sting him, or . . . She looked hopelessly about for an answer, shaking a couple of hatchlings from her leg a
lmost as an afterthought. She looked at The Horse’s still body. He had fallen on the saddle sheath. If the eagle could reach her saber . . .
“My sword,” she said. “It’s beneath the horse. If you could pry it out and—”
The eagle, guessing her intent, launched from his branch to The Horse. He stood on the ground, his head cocked as if deciding how best to proceed. Karigan couldn’t watch. Tiny silver disk shapes swarmed all over The Horse.
Her right leg was completely numb. At least she couldn’t feel the pain in her ankle.
“Ow!” A hatchling bit her beneath her left knee. She shook her leg so violently that the hatchling smashed against the nearest tree trunk. She breathed hard with the exertion, and hung limp in the web like a marionette.
Here is the sword. The eagle hovered just above her, the hilt of the saber grasped in a huge talon.
She extended her free hand as far as possible. The eagle lowered the saber carefully, trying to avoid becoming enmeshed in the web. She couldn’t quite reach the hilt, and had to grab the blade instead.
“Ow!” It bit into her fingers and palm, and she almost dropped it. But her fear of the creatures was greater than the pain, and she kept her grip on it. She shifted it with her other hand, so she could grip it by the hilt.
Your horse still lives, the eagle said. I will do what I can for him.
The Horse was alive! Joy surged through Karigan and she slashed through the sticky web and released herself. However, her numb right leg failed to support her and she fell face to feelers with a dozen hatchlings. She scrambled to her left foot and hopped back a step. She brushed or cut off any hatchling that still clung to her.
You must kill them all, the eagle said. Using his sharp beak, he plucked a hatchling from The Horse and smashed it against a rock, much the way she had seen gulls crack crabs open along the seashore. You must do it now while their shells are still soft. They harden as we speak. Kill them all.
There must have been hundreds of the creatures scattered all over the forest floor. First she attacked those hatchlings affixed to the hapless animals caught in the web. The doe and the raccoon were dead, their flesh efficiently stripped down to the bone. Then she released the birds and bats that were too high up for the creatures to reach.
The wolf still fought, but the weight of the hatchlings attached to his blood-soaked fur weighed him down. He yelped with every movement, his tongue lolling out the side of his mouth, and yet Karigan paused. Too many people had told her, when she was little, that wolves killed the sheep people depended on, that wolves would eat a man if driven to hunger. Wolves, they said, were evil—products of Mornhavon the Black.
The wolf gazed at her with defiant amber eyes, as if challenging her. As if challenging her to release him. Just as suddenly, his eyes rolled back in a spasm of pain, and his hind legs sagged beneath him.
Without another thought, Karigan brushed the creatures from his fur with her saber. His sides heaved as he panted. Where the creatures clung to him with their mouths or claws, she speared them through the shells. When she had them off the wolf, she hacked them into pieces, their phlegmy yellow blood soaking into the ground. The wolf collapsed, his eyes half closed in exhaustion. Karigan slashed down the web to prevent any other animals from becoming ensnared.
Balanced on one foot, she single-mindedly hacked at the creatures. Without a ready source of meat, many just scurried in circles, their claws clicking at empty air. Some helped her cause by feeding on their brethren.
Agile as Karigan was, it was difficult to chase the creatures down on one foot. Her blade bounced off shells that grew harder with every passing second. Soon, the eagle deemed The Horse safe enough to be left alone, and took up the hunt, tearing the creatures apart with his powerful talons. His keen eyesight assured that not one hatchling escaped.
The Horse’s chestnut hide was nicked and streaked with blood where the hatchlings had bitten him, but as the effects of the sting waned, he could lift his head and move his legs. Karigan wiped her yellowed blade on a clump of moss. The ground was littered with destroyed hatchlings. The wolf had disappeared in the mayhem.
Sensation crept into her right leg like the sting of a hundred hornets. She didn’t even want to think about what the parent creature had done to her ankle with its claw.
“What are these creatures?” she asked the eagle.
They’ve come from Kanmorhan Vane. All things there are corrupt.
“Kanmorhan Vane?”
The Blackveil Forest which your country borders, he said. Kanmorhan Vane is its Eltish name. A friend of mine, an owl, told me there is a breach in the D’Yer Wall through which the creature came. I’ve been tracking it for two days.
Blackveil Forest figured in more stories about evil than Karigan had heard about wolves. She was inclined to believe those stories in light of her encounter with the creatures; stories of how Mornhavon the Black sickened the once verdant forest with his magic. Everything that dwelled there, it was said, became evil. After the Long War, Aleric D’Yer had begun a wall along the Sacoridian border where Blackveil threatened to spread its roots, even though the evil of Mornhavon the Black had been vanquished.
A block of granite from the wall was on permanent display at the Langory Museum in Selium, though she doubted many paused to consider its significance. The wall had stood for so long that it was taken for granted, and most information about Blackveil was held as superstition. After all, how could a mere wall prevent such a dark force from encroaching across the border? The stories about Blackveil, Karigan thought, could not have been exaggerated if the parent creature had come from there.
When you see your king, the eagle said, you must warn him of the breach. If the one creature made it through, others are bound to follow.
When you see your king . . . Karigan wasn’t at all confident she would succeed after this experience, but she felt more hopeful than just a few minutes ago.
The eagle cocked his head, as if listening. In the moonlight, his gray feathers were not dull, but rippled with subtle blues, greens, and golds.
I hear the parent, he said.
Karigan froze. The hand that held her saber shook.
It must not live, the eagle said. I will help you as well as I can.
“What?”
You must slay the parent, he said, annoyance in his voice. It mustn’t be allowed to lay any more eggs.
“How am I supposed to—”
The underbelly is soft. So is the tissue between the joints.
Vegetation rustled as the creature drew nearer. How was Karigan to reach the creature’s underside? She would have to be beneath it before she could reach with her saber.
Avoid its blood, the eagle said. It’s not diluted like that of the hatchlings. It will burn you, and maybe poison you if you touch it.
They didn’t have to wait long. The creature scuttled into the clearing, driving a terrified red fox before it. When the creature saw the carnage of its young, and the destroyed web, it screamed in rage, a high-pitched whistle racking the forest. Karigan dropped her sword and clapped her hands over her ears. The fox kept running, and without a web to stop it, was safely free of the creature.
The whistle faded and Karigan uncovered her ears. The creature charged her. She stumbled backward and landed hard on her buttocks, gaping at the creature looming over her, its antennae whipping the air above.
The eagle dove between the creature’s flailing claws, narrowly escaping being snapped shut in one pair. The creature shook tail feathers from its claw and hissed in fury. It swatted at the eagle with its tail.
The eagle dove at the creature’s eyes. Don’t just sit, he chided Karigan from mid-flight. It must be killed.
She curled her fingers about the hilt of her sword. An invisible pair of hands slipped under her arms and helped her up from the ground. There was no time to think about the unseen help as the creature made steady progress toward her, despite the eagle. The weight on her right foot sent the hornets prickling up
and down her leg.
A claw whistled within inches of her nose. She ducked and felt the whoosh of air as it clamped shut where her head had just been. A frontal assault, evidently, was not the most advantageous. She limped away from the creature’s line of sight and lethal claws, but it was quick. A claw struck her across the shoulders from behind, knocking her face first into the ground. She gasped for breath, trying to gain her bearings.
Messenger!
Karigan turned at the eagle’s warning. An open claw descended on her, but a flurry of fur darted from the vegetation and straight at the creature. The wolf!
The creature paused its attack at this new distraction. The wolf snarled, wove between the creature’s legs, and caused it to stumble.
Again, the invisible hands helped Karigan to her feet and handed her the sword. She ran-limped to the creature’s rear, but it was too quick and swiveled around to attack her directly. The tail whistled overhead. Sweat slicked her back and every step on her bad foot was agony. She couldn’t get close enough to the creature’s belly without facing the claws or tail.
The wolf positioned himself before the creature. He glanced at Karigan with his defiant eyes, then leaped up and caught a feeler in his mouth. It broke with a crack. Oily black blood spilled from the severed appendage, and the wolf dropped the broken piece, his mouth foaming. Pain enraged the creature, and it snapped up the distracted wolf in a claw.
“No!”
Karigan moved between the claws, and holding the saber two-handed, chopped into the joint of the pincer that clutched the wolf. The claw and wolf crashed to the earth.
The creature whistled and hissed. Now Karigan dared to approach closer, hacking when legs or the other claw came too close. The eagle continued to harry it from above, constantly at its eyes, even more so now that there was one less claw to worry about.
Karigan dismembered the second claw and ducked beneath the body. Without ceremony, she thrust the saber into the leathery undershell and disemboweled the creature. Foul smelling blood and black ropy innards poured from the wound. The ground sizzled beneath the guts. She jerked the saber free and backed into the open night air. The creature shuddered, tripped over its own legs, and collapsed onto the ground. Karigan waved away the stench that rose up about it.