He blew out an impressed breath that ruffled her hair.
“To her, it was a test. She’d been aware of the second group circling, and told me she wanted me to have some controlled experience. I’d never heard of anything more ridiculous.” The woman had been either brilliant or insane. Likely both. “But she told me … told me it was better to be suffering in the streets of Antica than in Innish. And that if I wanted to come here, I should go. That if I wanted something, I should take it. She told me to fight for my miserable life.”
Yrene brushed the sweat-damp hair from his eyes. “I patched her up and she went on her way. And when I got back to my room … She had left me a bag of gold. And a golden brooch with a ruby the size of a robin’s egg. To pay for my passage here, and any tuition at the Torre.”
He blinked in surprise. Yrene whispered, voice breaking, “I think she was a god. I—I don’t know who would do that. I have a little gold left, but the brooch … I never sold it. I still have it.”
He frowned at the necklace, as if he’d misjudged its size.
Yrene added, “That’s not what I keep in my pocket.” His brows rose. “I left Innish that morning. I took the gold and the brooch and got on a ship here. So I crossed mountains alone, yes—but the Narrow Sea …” Yrene traced the waves on the locket. “I crossed because of her. I teach the women at the Torre because she told me to share the knowledge with any women who would listen. I teach it because it makes me feel like I’m paying her back, in some small way.”
Yrene ran her thumb over the initials on the front. “I never learned her name. She only left a note with two lines. For wherever you need to go—and then some. The world needs more healers. That’s what I keep in my pocket—that little scrap of paper. What’s now in here.” Yrene tapped the locket. “I know it’s silly, but it gave me courage. When things were hard, it gave me courage. It still does.”
Chaol swept the hair from her brow and kissed it. “There is nothing silly about it. And whoever she is … I will be forever grateful.”
“Me too,” Yrene whispered as he slid his mouth over her jaw and her toes curled. “Me too.”
CHAPTER
47
The pass between the twin peaks of Dagul was larger than it looked.
It went on and on, a maze of jagged, towering rock.
Nesryn and Sartaq did not dare stop.
Webs sometimes blocked their way, or hovered above, but still they charged onward, seeking any sort of path upward. To where Kadara might pluck them into the sky.
For down here, with the cramped, narrow walls of the pass, the ruk could not reach them. If they were to stand a chance of being rescued, they’d have to find a way up.
Nesryn didn’t dare let Falkan out—not yet. Not when so many things could still go so wrong, and letting the spiders know what sort of card they had up their sleeve … No, not yet would she risk using him.
But the temptation gnawed on her. The walls were smooth, ill-fitted for climbing, and as they hurried through the pass, hour after hour, Sartaq’s wet, labored breaths echoed off the rock.
He was in no state to climb. He was barely able to stay upright, or grip his sword.
Nesryn kept an arrow nocked, ready to fly as they rounded corner after corner, glancing up every now and then.
The pass was so tight in spots that they had to squeeze through, the sky a watery trickle high above. They did not speak, did not dare do more than breathe as they kept their steps light.
It made no difference. Nesryn knew it made little difference.
A trap had been laid for them, and they had fallen into it. The kharankui knew where they were. Were likely following at their leisure, herding them along.
It had been hours since they’d last heard the boom of Kadara’s wings.
And the light … it was beginning to fade.
Once darkness fell, once the way became too dark to manage … Nesryn pressed a hand to Falkan, still in her pocket. When the night settled upon the pass, she decided, then she’d use him.
They pushed through a particularly tight passage between two near-kissing boulders, Sartaq grunting behind her. “We have to be nearing the end,” he breathed.
She didn’t tell him that she doubted the spiders were stupid enough to allow them to walk right out of the other side of the pass and into Kadara’s awaiting talons. If the injured ruk could even manage their weight.
Nesryn just pushed onward, the pass becoming a fraction wider, counting her breaths. They were likely some of her last—
Thinking that way helped no one and nothing. She’d stared down death this summer, when that wave of glass had come crashing toward her. Had stared it down, and been saved.
Perhaps she would be lucky again, too.
Sartaq stumbled out behind her, breathing hard. Water. They desperately needed water—and bandages for his wounds. If the spiders did not find them, then the lack of water in the arid pass might very well kill them first. Long before any help arrived from the Eridun rukhin.
Nesryn forced one step in front of another, the path narrowing again, the rock as tight as a vise. She twisted sideways, edging through, her swords scraping.
Sartaq grunted, then let out a pained curse. “I’m stuck.”
She found him indeed wedged behind her, the bulk of his broad chest and shoulders pinned. He shoved himself forward, blood leaking from his wounds as he pushed and pulled.
“Stop,” she ordered. “Stop—wriggle back out if you can.” There was no other way through and nothing to climb over, but if they removed his weapons—
His dark eyes met hers. She saw the words forming.
You keep going.
“Sartaq,” she breathed.
They heard it then.
Claws clicking on stone. Skittering along.
Many of them. Too many. Coming from behind, closing in.
Nesryn grabbed the prince’s hand, tugging. “Push,” she panted. “Push.”
He grunted in pain, the veins in his neck bulging as he tried to squeeze through, his boots scraping on the loose rock—
Nesryn dug her own feet in, gritting her teeth as she hauled him forward.
Click, click, click—
“Harder,” she gasped.
Sartaq angled his head, shoving against the rock that held him.
“What a fine morsel, our guest,” hissed a soft female voice. “So large he cannot even fit through the passage. How we shall feast.”
Nesryn heaved and heaved, her grip treacherously slippery with sweat and blood from both of them, but she clamped onto his wrist hard enough that she felt bones shift beneath—
“Go,” he whispered, straining to push through. “You run.”
Falkan was shifting in her pocket, trying to emerge. But with the rock pressing on her chest, the passage was too tight for even him to poke out his head—
“A pretty pair,” that female continued. “How her hair shines like a moonless night. We shall take you both back to our home, our honored guests.”
A sob clawed its way up Nesryn’s throat. “Please,” she begged, scanning the rock high above them, the lip into the upper reaches of the narrow pass, the curving horns of the peaks, tugging and tugging on Sartaq’s arm. “Please,” she begged them, begged anyone.
But Sartaq’s face went calm. So calm.
He stopped pushing, stopped trying to haul himself forward.
Nesryn shook her head, pulling on his arm.
He did not move. Not an inch.
His dark eyes met hers. There was no fear in them.
Sartaq said to her, clear and steady, “I heard the spies’ stories of you. The fearless Balruhni woman in Adarlan’s empire. Neith’s Arrow. And I knew …”
Nesryn sobbed, tugging and tugging.
Sartaq smiled at her—gently. Sweetly. In a way she had not yet seen.
“I loved you before I ever set eyes on you,” he said.
“Please,” Nesryn wept.
Sartaq’s hand tightened o
n hers. “I wish we’d had time.”
A hiss behind him, a rising bulk of shining black—
Then the prince was gone. Ripped from her hands.
As if he had never been.
Nesryn could barely see through her tears as she edged and squeezed along the pass. As she hurtled over rocks, arms straining, feet unfaltering.
Keep going. The words were a song in her blood, her bones as she plunged onward.
Keep going and get out; find help—
But the passage at last opened into a wider chamber. Nesryn staggered from the vise that had held her, panting, Sartaq’s blood still coating her palms, his face still swimming before her—
The path curved ahead, and she stumbled for it, hand flying to where Falkan now poked his head out. She sobbed at the sight of him, sobbed as the clicking and hissing again began to sound behind her, closing in once more.
It was over. It was done, and she had as good as killed him. She should have never left, should have never done any of it—
She sprinted toward the curve in the pass, chips of shale scattering from beneath her boots.
Take you both back to our home …
Alive. The spider had talked as if they would be taken alive to their lair. For a brief window before the feasting began. And if she had spoken true …
Nesryn slapped a hand over a wriggling Falkan, earning a squeak of outrage.
But she said, soft as the wind through the grass, “Not yet. Not yet, my friend.”
And as Nesryn slowed her steps, as she stopped entirely, she whispered her plan to him.
The kharankui did not try to hide their arrival.
Hissing and laughing, they skittered around the corner of the pass.
And halted when they beheld Nesryn panting on her knees, blood from slices in her arms, her collarbone, filling the tight air with her scent. She saw them note the sprayed shale around her, flecks of her blood on it.
As if she had taken a bad fall. As if she could no longer go on.
Clicking, chattering to one another, they surrounded her. A wall of ancient, reeking limbs and fangs and swollen, bulbous abdomens. And eyes. More eyes than she could count, her reflection in all of them.
Her trembling was not faked.
“Pity it did not give much sport,” one pouted.
“We shall have it later,” another replied.
Nesryn shook harder.
One sighed. “How fresh her blood smells. How clean.”
“P-please,” she begged.
The kharankui just laughed.
Then the one behind her pounced.
Pinning her to the shale, rock slicing her face, her hands, Nesryn screamed against the claws that dug into her back. Screamed as she managed to look over her shoulder to see those spinnerets hovering above her legs.
To see the silk that shot from them, ready to be woven. To wrap her tightly.
CHAPTER
48
Nesryn awoke to sharp biting.
She jerked upright, a scream on her lips—
It died when she felt the little teeth biting at her neck, her ear. Nipping her awake.
Falkan. She winced, her head throbbing. Bile surged up her throat.
Not biting at her head. But the silk that bound her body, the thick strands reeking. And the cave she was in …
No, not cave. But a covered section of the pass. Dimly illuminated by the moon.
She scanned the dark to either side, the arch of stone above them no more than thirty feet wide, keeping her breathing steady—
There. Sprawled on the ground nearby, covered foot to neck with silk. His face crusted with blood, eyes closed—
Sartaq’s chest rose and fell.
Nesryn shuddered with the force of keeping her sob contained as Falkan slithered down her body, chewing at the strands with his vicious teeth.
She didn’t need to tell the shifter to hurry. She scanned the empty passage, scanned the dim stars beyond.
Wherever they were … It was different here.
The rock smooth. Polished. And carved. Countless carvings had been etched in the space, ancient and primitive.
Falkan chewed and chewed, the silk snapping strand by strand.
“Sartaq,” Nesryn dared to whisper. “Sartaq.” The prince did not stir.
Clicking sounded from beyond the archway. “Stop,” she murmured to Falkan. “Stop.”
The shifter halted his path down her back. Clung to her leathers as a shadow darker than the night emerged from around the corner behind them. Or ahead—she had no idea where true north lay. If they were still within the pass itself, or atop another peak.
The spider was slightly larger than the others. Her blackness deeper. As if the starlight itself was loath to touch her.
The kharankui halted as she noted Nesryn staring at her.
Nesryn controlled her breathing, rallying her mind to come up with something to buy them time, buy Sartaq and Falkan time …
“You are the ones who have been poking about in forgotten places,” the spider said in Halha, her voice beautiful, lyrical.
Nesryn swallowed once, twice, trying and failing to moisten her paper-dry tongue. She managed to rasp, “Yes.”
“What is it that you seek?”
Falkan pinched her back in warning—and order. Keep her distracted. While he chewed.
Nesryn blurted, “We were paid by a merchant, who traded with your sisters to the north, the stygian spiders—”
“Sisters!” The spider hissed. “Our blood kin they may be, but no true sisters of the soul. Gentlehearted fools, trading with mortals—trading, when we were born to devour you.”
Nesryn’s hands shook behind her back. “T-that is why he sent us. He was unimpressed by them. S-said they did not live up to the legend …” She had no idea what was spewing from her mouth. “So he wished to see you, see if you might t-t-trade.”
Falkan brushed against her arm in quiet comfort.
“Trade? We have nothing to trade, beyond the bones of your kin.”
“There is no Spidersilk here?”
“No. Though we delight in tasting your dreams, your years. Before we finish with you.”
Had they already done so for Sartaq? Was that why he did not stir? Nesryn forced herself to ask as the threads behind her snapped free so slowly, “Then—then what is it you do here?”
The spider took a step forward, and Nesryn braced herself. But the spider lifted a thin, clawed leg and pointed to one of the polished, carved walls. “We wait.”
And as her eyes at last adjusted to the dimness, Nesryn saw what the spider pointed to.
A carving of an archway—a gate.
And a cloaked figure standing within it.
She squinted, straining to make out who stood there. “W-who do you wait for?”
Houlun had said the Valg had once passed through here—
The spider brushed aside the dirt crusted over the figure. Revealing long, flowing hair etched there. And what she’d thought to be a cloak … It was a dress.
“Our queen,” the spider said. “We wait for Her Dark Majesty to return at last.”
“Not—not Erawan?” Servants to a dark crown, Houlun had said …
The spider spat, the venom landing near Sartaq’s covered feet. “Not him. Never him.”
“Then who—”
“We wait for the Queen of the Valg,” the spider purred, rubbing against the carving. “Who in this world calls herself Maeve.”
CHAPTER
49
Queen of the Valg.
“Maeve is Queen of the Fae,” Nesryn countered carefully.
The spider chuckled, low and wicked. “So she has made them believe.”
Think, think, think. “What—what a mighty and powerful queen she must be,” Nesryn stammered. “To rule both.” Falkan furiously chewed, each strand slowly, so slowly, yielding. “Will you—will you tell me the tale?”
The spider studied her, those depthless eyes like pits of h
ell. “It will not buy you your life, mortal.”
“I—I know.” She shook further, the words tumbling out. “But stories … I have always loved stories—of these lands especially. Wind-seeker, my mother called me, because I was always drifting where the wind tugged me, always dreaming of those stories. And here … here the wind has taken me. So I would hear one last tale, if you allow it. Before I meet my end.”
The spider remained quiet for a heartbeat. Another. Then she settled herself beneath the carving of the archway—the Wyrdgate. “Consider it a gift—for your boldness in even asking.”
Nesryn said nothing, heart thundering through every part of her body.
“Long ago,” the spider said softly in that beautiful voice, “in another world, another lifetime, there existed a land of dark, and cold, and wind. Ruled by three kings, masters of shadow and pain. Brothers. The world had not always been that way, had not been born that way. But they waged a mighty war. A war to end all wars. And those three kings conquered it. Turned it into a wasteland, a paradise for those who had dwelled in darkness. For a thousand years, they ruled, equal in power, their sons and daughters spread throughout the land to ensure their continued dominion. Until a queen appeared—her power a new, dark song in the world. Such wondrous things she could do with her power, such horrible, wondrous things …”
The spider sighed. “They each desired her, those kings. Pursued her, wooed her. But she only deigned to ally with one, the strongest of them.”
“Erawan,” Nesryn murmured.
“No. Orcus, eldest of the Valg kings. They wed, but Maeve was not content. Restless, our queen spent long hours pondering the riddles of the world—of other worlds. And with her gifts, she found a way to look. To pierce the veil between worlds. To see realms of green, of light and song.” The spider spat, as if such a thing were abhorrent. “And one day, when Orcus was gone to see his brothers, she took a path between realms. Stepped beyond her world, and into the next.”
Nesryn’s blood went cold. “H-how?”
“She had watched. Had learned of such rips between worlds. A door that could open and close at random, or if one knew the right words.” The spider’s dark eyes gleamed. “We came with her—her beloved handmaidens. We stepped with her into this … place. To this very spot.”