She ripped at the silk with knife point. The tightly woven fabric gave reluctantly, this was no easily torn material. She hacked and pulled until she heard a half-stifled cry!
“For Sul's sake—”
Dairine dragged away the slashed silk. There was indeed a man ensnared. However, about him now was sticky web, for its acrid scent was heavy on the air. Against that, her knife was of no avail. To touch such would only make her prisoner, too.
She gathered up the folds of the torn bag and, using pieces to shield her fingers, tore and worried at the web. To her relief, she was succeeding. She could feel that his own struggles to throw off his bonds were more successful.
Also, she knew whom she fought to free—Rothar! It was as if he had been a part of that dream she could not remember.
Dairine spoke his name, asking him if he were near free.
“Yes. Though I still hang. But that now is a small matter—”
Dairine heard a threshing movement, then the sound of his weight touching the ground. His breath hissed heavily in and out.
“Lady, in nowise could you have come at a better time.” His hand closed about her arm. She felt him sway and then recover balance.
“You are hurt?”
“Not so. Hungry and needful of a drink. I do not know how long I have hung in that larder. The captain—he will think us both dead.”
“Larder!” That one prim word struck her like a blow.
“Did you not know? Yes this is the spider females’ larder, where they preserve their males—”
Dairine fought rising nausea. Those bags of silk, the beautifully woven silk! And to be used so.
“There is someone—something—out there,” he said.
The watchers, her protective sense, alerted her. They were now moving in again.
“Can you see them?” Dairine asked.
“Not clearly.” Then he changed that to “Yes!”
“They have throwing cords of web, such as they used on me before. No blade can cut those—”
“The bag!”
“What do you mean?”
Covered with the bag's rent material, she had been able to pull loose his bindings. Those sticky cords could not find purchase against the woven silk. As she explained that, her knife was wrenched from her hold and she heard sounds of ripping.
The watchers—as Rothar worked to empty other bags, Dairine strove to perceive them by mind. They had neared, but once more had halted, as if this were a place which they feared to enter even if ordered to do so to hold the humans captive.
“They spin their lines now,” Rothar told her. “They plan to wall us in.”
“Let them believe us helpless,” she commanded.
“But you think we are not?”
“With the bags, perhaps not.”
If she could only see! Dairine could have cried aloud in her frustration. Who were the watchers? She was sure they were not the weavers themselves. Perhaps these were the ones who supplied the thread she had harvested so carefully in the past.
Rothar once more was back at her side, a bundle of silk from plundered bags. The girl dared not let herself remember what had been in those bags.
“Tell me,” she said, “what is the nature of those spinning out there?”
She could sense his deep aversion, revulsion. “Spiders. Giant spiders. They are furred and the size of hounds.”
“What are they doing?”
“They are enwebbing an opening. Beyond that on either side are already nets. Now they are disappearing. Only one is left, hanging in the center of the fresh web.”
Through her grasp on his wrist, Dairine could read his thoughts, his mind picture, even more clearly, to add to the scene his words had built for her.
“Those others may have gone to summon the weavers"—she made an alarming guess. “So for the present, we have only that one guard to deal with.”
“And the web—”
She loosed her hold upon him, clutched a length of the raggedly cut silk. “This we must bind about our bodies. Do not touch the web save with this between your flesh and it.”
“I understand.”
Dairine moved forward, “I must loose the web,” she told him. “The guard will be your matter. Lead me to a tree where the web is anchored.”
His hand was on her shoulders. Under his gentle urging, she was guided to the left, was moved forward step by cautious step.
“The tree is directly before you now, lady. Have no fear of the guard.” His promise was grim.
“Remember, let nothing of the web touch your flesh.”
“Be sure I am well shielded,” he said.
She fingered rough bark, around her hand and arm the silk was well and tightly anchored. There—she had discovered the end of an anchoring thread far stronger and thicker than any she had harvested before.
“Ha!” Rothar gave a cry—was no longer beside her.
Dairine found a second thread, felt vibrations along it. The guard must be making ready to defend its web. However, she must concentrate on the finding of each thread, of breaking them loose from the tree.
There was no way for her to know how many threads she must snap so. From her right came the sound of scuffling, heavy breathing.
“Ah!” Rothar's voice fiercely triumphant. “The thing is safely dead, lady. You are right, the cords it threw at me were well warded by the cloth.”
“Keep watch. Those which were with it may still return,” she warned.
“That I know!” he agreed.
The girl moved as swiftly as she could, discovering thread ends, snapping them. Not only might the spiders return, but the weavers, and them she feared even more.
“The web is down,” he told her.
However, she felt little relief at what might be a small victory.
‘"Lady, now it would be well to wrap our feet and legs with this silk, they could well lay ground webs for our undoing.”
“Yes!” She had not thought of that, only of the threading cords from tree to tree.
“Let me get more silk.”
Dairine stood waiting, her whole body tense as she strained to use ears and inner senses to assess what might lie in wait beyond. Then he was back and, with no by-your-leave, busied himself wrapping her feet and legs with lengths of silk, tying the strips tightly in places.
She, who had once so loved the ribband Captain Ortis had shown her, wanted to shrink from any touch of that stuff. Save now it might be their salvation.
“That is the best I can do.” He released her foot after tying a last knot about her ankle. “Do you hear aught, lady?” “Not yet. But they will come.” “Who—what are the weavers?” he asked.
“I know not But they do not hold our kind high in esteem.”
He laughed shortly. “How well do I know that! Yet they did you no harm.”
“Because, I think, I am without sight, and also a female who knows a little of their own trade. They are proud of their skill and wished to impress me.” “Shall we go then?”
“We must watch for trees bare of threads.”
“Those I can see, lady. Perhaps trusting in my kind of sight, we can go the quicker. There has been much happened. The captain, though he is still weak, again commands his ship. Vidruth is dead. But the captain could not get that scum which his mate has signed to come ashore. And only he can hold them in control.”
“Thus you alone are here?”
He did not answer her directly. “Set your hand to my belt, and I shall take heed in my going, I promise,” was all he said.
Such a journey was humiliating for Dairine. So long had it been since she must turn to one of her kind as a guide. But she knew that he was right.
So Captain Ortis, released from the evil spell, had taken command. She wondered briefly how Vidruth had died, there had been a queer little hesitancy in Rothar's telling of that. For now she must put her mind on what lay immediately before them. That the weavers would allow them to escape easily she did not beli
eve.
A moment later she knew she was right. They were once more under observation, she sensed. This new, stronger contact was not that of the watchers.
“They come!” she warned.
“We must reach the shore! It is among the trees that they set their traps. I have a signal fire built there, ready to be lighted, which will bring in the Sea Raven.”
“Can you see any such traps?”
She could feel his impatience and doubt in the slight contact of her fingers against his body where they were hooked about his belt.
“No. But there are no straight trails among the tress. Webs hang here and there; one can only dodge back and forth between them.”
Dairine was given no warning, had no time to loose her hold. Rothar suddenly fell forward and down, bearing her with him. Her side scraped painfully against a broken end of branch. It was as if the very earth under them had opened.
5
The smell of freshly turned soil was thick in her nostrils. She lay against Rothar, and he was moving. In spite of her bruises, the jarring shock of that fall, Dairine sat up. Where they had landed she did not know, but she guessed they were now under the surface of the ground.
“Are you hurt?” asked her companion.
“No. And you?”
“My arm caught under me when I landed. I hope it is only a bad bruising and no break. We are in one of their traps. They had it coated over.” There was a note of self-disgust bleak in his voice.
Dairine was glad he had told her the bald truth. Rising to her feet, the girl put out her hands to explore the pit. Freshly dug, the earth of its sides was moist and sticky. Here and there a bit of root projected. Could they use such to pull themselves out? Before she could ask that of Rothar, words shot harshly into her mind.
“Female, why have you stolen this meat from us?”
Dairine turned her head toward the opening which must be above. So close that voice, she could believe that a head bobbed there, eyes watched them gloatingly.
“I know not your meaning,” she returned with all the spirit she could summon. “This is a man of my people, one who came seeking me because he felt concern.”
“That with you is our meat!”
Cold menace in that message brought not fear, but a growing anger to Dairine. She would not accept that any man was—meat. These weavers—she had considered them creatures greater than herself because of the beauty they created, because of their skill. She had accepted their arrogance because she also accepted that she was inferior in that skill.
Yet to what purpose did they put their fine creations? Degrading and loathsome usage, by her own belief. With a flash of true understanding, she was now certain that she had not been free here, never so until she had awakened in the deserted loom place. They had woven about her thoughts a web of ensorcelment which had bound her to them and their ways. just as at this moment they had entrapped her body.
“No man is your meat,” she returned.
What answered her then was no mind words, rather a blast of uncontrolled fury. She swayed under that mental blow, but she did not fall. Rothar called out her name, his arm was about her, holding her steady.
“Do not fear for me.” she said and tried to loosen her grip. This was her battle. Her foot slipped in the soft earth of the pit and she stumbled. She flung out her arms to keep herself off the wall. There was a sharp pain just above her eyes, and then only blackness in which she was totally lost.
Heat—heat of blazing fire. And through it screaming—terrible screaming—which tortured her ears. There was no safety left in the world. She bad curled herself into a small space of blessed dark, hiding. But she could still see—see with her eyes! No, she would not look, she dared not look—at the swords in the firelight—at the thing streaming with blood which hung whimpering from two knives driven like hooks into the wall to hold it upright. She willed herself fiercely not to see.
“Dairine! Lady!”
“No—” She screamed her denial. “I will not look!”
“Lady!”
“I will not—”
There were flashes of color about her. No mind pictures these—the fire, the blood, the swords—
“Dairine!”
A face, wavery, as if she saw it mirrored in troubled water, a man's face. His sword—he would lift the sword and then—
“No!” she screamed again.
A sharp blow rocked her head from side to side. Oddly enough, that steadied her sight. A man's face near hers, yes, but no fire, no sword dripping blood, no wall against which a thing hung whimpering.
He held her gently, his eyes searching hers.
They—they were not—not in the Keep of Trin. Dairine shuddered; memory clung about her as a foul cloak. Trin was long, long ago. There had been the sea, and then Ingvarna and Rannock. And now—now they were on Usturt. She was not sure what had happened.
But she saw.
Had Ingvarna believed that some day this sight would return to her? Not sight totally destroyed, but sight denied by a child who had been forced to look upon such horrors that she would not let herself face the true world openly again.
Her sight had returned. But that was not what the weavers had intended. No, their burst of mind fury had been sent to cut her down. Not death had they given her, but new life.
Then she, who had sent that thrust of mind power, looked over and down upon the prey.
Dairine battled her fear. No retreat this time. She must make herself face this new horror. Ingvarna's teachings went deep, had strengthened her for this very moment of her life, as if the Wise Woman had been enabled to trace the years ahead and know what would aid her fosterling.
The girl did not raise her hand but she struck back, her newfound sight centering upon that horror of a countenance. Human it was in dreadful part, arachnoid in another, such as to send one witless with terror. And the thought strength of the weaver was gathering to blast Dairine.
Those large, many-faceted eyes blinked. Dairine's did not.
“Be ready,” the girl said to Rothar, “they are preparing to take us.”
Down into the pit whirled sticky web lines hurled by the weavers’ spider servants. Those caught and clung to root ends and then fell upon the two.
“Let them think for this moment,” Dairine said, “that we are helpless.”
He did not question her as more and more of the lines dropped upon them, lying over their arms, legs. Dull gray was the cloth which they had wound about them. That had none of the shimmering quality her mind had given to it. Perhaps the evil use to which this bad been put had killed that opalescence.
While the cords fell, the girl did not shift her gaze, but met straight the huge, alien eyes, those cold and deadly eyes, of the weaver. In and in, Dairine aimed her power, that power Ingvarna had fostered in her, boring deep to reach the brain behind the eyes. Untrained in most of the Wise Woman's skills, she intuitively knew that this was her only form of attack, an attack which must also serve as defense.
Were those giant eyes dulling a little? The girl could not be sure, she could not depend upon her newly restored sight.
About them, the web lengths had ceased to fall. But there was new movement around the lip of the pit above.
Now! Gathering all her strength, pulling on every reserve she believed she might have, Dairine launched a direct thought blow at the weaver. That weird figure writhed, uttered a cry which held no note of human in it. For a moment, it hunched so. Then that misshapen, nightmare body fell back, out of Dairine's range of sight. She was aware of no more mental pressure. No, instead came a weak panic, a fear which wiped away all the weaver's strength.
“They—they are going!” Rothar cried out.
“For a while, perhaps.” Dairine still held the creatures of the loom in wary respect. They had not thought her a worthy foe, so perhaps they had not unleashed against her all that they might. But while the weavers were still bewildered, shaken, at least she and Rothar had gained time.
The young man beside her was already shaking off the cords. Those curled limply away front his fabric-covered body, just as they fell from hers as he jerked at them. She blinked. Now that the necessity for focusing her eyes on the weaver was past, Dairine found it hard to see. It was a distinct effort for her to fasten on any one object, bring that into clear shape. This was something she must learn, even as she had learned to make her fingers see for her.
Though he winced as he tried to use his left arm, Rothar won out of the pit by drawing on the root ends embedded in the soil. Then he unbuckled his belt and lowered it for her aid.
Out of the earth prison, Dairine stood still for a long moment, turning her head right and left. She could not see them in the dusky shadows among the trees, yet they were there, weavers, spinners, both. But she sensed also that they were still shaken, as if all their strength of purpose had lain only in the will of the one she had temporarily bested.
All were that weaver's own brood—the arachnoid-human, the arachnoid complete. They were subject to the Great One's will, her thoughts controlled them, and they were her tools, the projections of herself. Until the Great Weaver regained her own balance, these would be no menace. But how long could such a respite last for those she would make her prev?
Dairine saw mistily a brighter patch ahead, sunlight fighting the dusk of this now-sinister wood.
“Come!” Rothar reached for her hand, clasped it tight. “The shore must lie there!”
The girl allowed him to draw her forward, away from the leaderless ones.
“The signal fire,” he was saying. “But let me give light to that and the captain will bring in the ship.”
“Why did you come—alone from that ship?” Dairine asked suddenly, as they broke out of the shade of the forest into a hard brilliance of the sun upon the sand. So hurting was that light that she needs must shade her eyes with her hand.
Peering between her fingers, Dairine saw him shrug. “What does it matter how a man who is already dead dies? There was a chance to reach you. The captain could not take it, for that rogue's spell left him too weak, though he raged against it. None other could he trust—”