Nesryn glanced at the polished stone. Even Falkan seemed to pause to do the same.
“She bade us stay—to guard the gate. Lest anyone should pursue her. For she had decided she did not wish to go back. To her husband, her world. So she went, and we only heard whisperings through our sisters and smaller kin, carried on the wind.” The spider fell silent.
Nesryn pushed, “What did you hear?”
“That Orcus arrived, his brothers in tow. That Orcus had learned of his wife’s leaving and discovered how she’d done it. Went beyond what she’d done, and found a way to control the gate between worlds. Made keys to do so, shared with his brothers. Three keys, for the three kings.
“They went from world to world, opening gates as they willed it, sweeping in their armies and laying waste to those realms as they hunted for her. Until they reached this world.”
Nesryn could barely draw breath to ask, “And they found her?”
“No,” the spider said, something like a smile in its voice. “For Her Dark Majesty had left these mountains, had found another land, and prepared herself well. She knew that one day she would be found. And planned to hide within plain sight. So she did. She came across a lovely, long-lived people—near-immortals themselves—ruled over by two sister-queens.”
Mab and Mora. Holy gods—
“And using her powers, she ripped into their minds. Made them believe they had a sister, an eldest sister to rule with them. Three queens—for the three kings that might one day come. When they returned to their palace, she tore into the minds of all those who dwelled there, too. And any who came. Planting the thought that a third queen had always existed, always ruled. If they somehow resisted her power, she found ways to end them.” A wicked chuckle.
Nesryn had heard the legends. Of Maeve’s dark, unnamed power—a darkness that could devour the stars. That Maeve had never revealed a Fae form, only that deadly darkness. And she had lived far beyond the lifespan of any known Fae. Lived so long that the only comparable lifespan … Erawan.
A Valg life span. For a Valg queen.
The spider again paused. Falkan had nearly reached her hands—but still not enough to free them.
Nesryn asked, “So the Valg kings arrived, but did not know who faced them in the war?”
“Precisely.” A delighted purr. “Disguised in a Fae body, they did not recognize her, the fools. But she used it against them. Knew how to defeat them, how their armies worked. And when she realized what they had done to arrive here, the keys they possessed … she wanted them. To banish them, kill them, and to use the keys as she saw fit within this world. And others.
“So she took them. Snuck in and took them, surrounding herself with Fae warriors so others might not ask just how she knew so many things. Oh, the clever queen claimed it was from communing with the spirit world, but … she knew. She had run those war camps. Knew how the kings worked. So she stole the keys. Managed to send two of those kings back, Orcus one of them. And before she could go after the final king, the youngest one who loved his brothers so very deeply, the keys were taken from her.” A hiss.
“By Brannon,” Nesryn breathed.
“Yes, the fire-king. He saw the darkness in her but did not recognize it. He wondered, suspected, but all he’d known of the Valg, our people, were their male soldiers. Their grunts and princes and kings. He did not know that a female … How different, how extraordinary a female Valg is. Even he was tricked by her; she found paths into his mind to keep him from truly realizing it.” Another soft, lovely laugh. “Even now, when all should be clear to his meddlesome spirit … Even now, he does not know. To his oncoming doom—yes, to his doom, and the other’s.”
Nausea roiled through her. Aelin. Aelin’s doom.
“But while he did not guess correctly about our queen’s origins, he still knew that his fire … She greatly feared his fire. As all true Valg do.” Nesryn tucked away that kernel. “He left, building his kingdom far away, and she built her defenses, too. So many clever defenses, should Erawan rise again and realize that the queen he’d sought for his brother, conquered worlds to find, was here all along. That she had built armies of Fae, and would let them battle each other.”
A spider in a web. That’s what Maeve was.
Falkan reached Nesryn’s hands, chewing through the silk there. Sartaq remained unconscious, so perilously close to the spider.
“So you have waited these thousands of years—for her to return to these mountains?”
“She ordered us to hold the pass, to guard the rip in the world. So we have. And so we will, until she summons us to her side once more.”
Nesryn’s head spun. Maeve—she’d think on it later. If they lived through this.
She flicked her fingers at Falkan, signaling him.
Silently, keeping to the shadows, the shifter scuttled into the dark.
“And now you know—how the Black Watch came to dwell here.” The spider rose with a mighty heave. “I hope it was a fitting final tale for you, Wind-seeker.”
Nesryn opened her mouth as the spider advanced, rotating her wrists behind her back—
“Sister,” a female voice hissed from the darkness beyond. “Sister, a word.”
The spider halted, pivoting her bulbous body toward the archway entrance. “What.”
A beat of fear. “There is a problem, sister. A threat.”
The spider scuttled toward her kin, snapping, “Tell me.”
“Ruks on the northern horizon. Twenty at least—”
The spider hissed. “Guard the mortals. I shall deal with the birds.”
Clicking legs, shale shifting all around her. Nesryn’s heart hammered as she flexed her aching fingers. “Sartaq,” she breathed.
His eyes flicked open across the way. Alert. Calm.
The other spider crawled in, smaller than her leader. Sartaq tensed, shoulders straining as if he’d try to burst from the silk that held him.
But the spider only whispered, “Hurry.”
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Sartaq sagged at Falkan’s voice as it came from the kharankui’s hideous mouth.
Nesryn hauled her hands free from the webbing, swallowing her grunt of pain as the fibers tore at her skin. Falkan’s mouth and tongue had to be aching—
She glanced at the spider hovering over Sartaq, slicing through the silk binding the prince with slashes of the claws. Indeed, where those pincers waved, blood leaked out.
“Quickly,” the shifter whispered. “Your weapons are in the corner there.”
She could just make out the faint gleam of starlight on the curve of her bow, along the naked silver of her Asterion short-sword.
Falkan cut through Sartaq’s bindings, and the prince sprang free, shoving off the webbing. He swayed as he stood, bracing a hand on the stone. Blood, there was so much blood all over him—
But he rushed to her, ripping at the threads still covering her feet. “Are you hurt?”
“Faster,” Falkan said, glancing to the archway entrance behind. “It won’t take her long to realize no one’s coming.”
Nesryn’s feet came free, and Sartaq hauled her up. “Did you hear what she said about Maeve—”
“Oh, I heard,” Sartaq breathed as they rushed to their weapons. He handed her the bow and quiver, the Fae blade. Grabbed his own Asterion daggers as he hissed to Falkan, “Which way?”
The shifter scuttled forward, past the carving of Maeve. “Here—there is a slope upward. We’re just on the other side of the pass. If we can get up high—”
“Have you seen Kadara?”
“No,” the shifter said. “But—”
They didn’t wait to hear the rest as they crept on silent feet from the archway, entering the starlight-filled pass beyond. Sure enough, a rough slope of loose stone rose from the ground, as if it were a path into the stars themselves.
They’d made it halfway up the treacherous slope, Falkan a dark shadow at their backs, when a shriek rose from the mountain beyond. Bu
t the skies were empty, no sign of Kadara—
“Fire,” Nesryn breathed as they hurtled toward the apex of the peak. “She said all Valg hate fire. They hate fire.” For the spiders, devouring life, devouring souls … They were as Valg as Erawan. Hailed from the same dark hell. “Get the flint from your pocket,” she ordered the prince.
“And light what?” His eyes drifted to the arrows at her back as they halted atop the narrow apex of the peak—the curved horn. “We’re trapped up here.” He scanned the sky. “It might not buy us anything.”
Nesryn withdrew an arrow, shouldering her bow as she tugged a strip of her shirt from beneath the jacket of her flying leathers. She ripped off the bottom, sliced the piece in two, and wrapped one around the shaft of the arrow. “We need kindling,” she said as Sartaq withdrew the flint stone from his breast pocket.
A knife flashed, and then a section of Sartaq’s braid was in his outstretched hand.
She didn’t hesitate. Just wrapped the braid around the fabric, holding the arrow out for him as he struck the flint over and over. Sparks flew, drifting—
One caught. Fire flared. Just as darkness spilled into the pass below. Shoulder to shoulder, the spiders surged for them. Two dozen at least.
Nesryn nocked the arrow, drawing back the string—and aimed up.
Not directly to them. But a shot into the sky, high enough to pierce the frosty stars.
The spiders paused, watching the arrow reach its zenith and then plunge down, down—
“Another,” Nesryn said, taking that second strip of fabric and wrapping it again around the head of her next arrow. Only three remained in her quiver. Sartaq sliced off a second piece of his braid, looping it over the tip. Flint struck, sparks glowed, and as that first arrow plummeted toward the spiders scattering from its path, she loosed her second arrow.
The spiders were so distracted looking up they did not stare ahead.
The largest of them, the one who had spoken to her for so long, least of all.
And as Nesryn’s burning arrow slammed into her abdomen, sticking deep, the spider’s scream shook the very stones beneath them.
“Another,” Nesryn breathed, fumbling for her next arrow as Sartaq ripped the fabric from his shirt. “Hurry.”
Nowhere to go, no way to keep them at bay.
“Shift,” she told Falkan, who monitored the panicking spiders, who balked at their leader’s screaming orders to put out the fire atop her abdomen. “If you are going to shift into something, do it now.”
The shifter turned that hideous spider’s face toward them. Sartaq sliced off another piece of his braid and slid it over the head of her third arrow. “I will hold them,” Falkan said.
Sparks showered, flame kindled on that third flaming arrow.
“A favor, Captain,” the shifter said to her.
Time. They did not have time—
“When I was seven, my older brother sired a bastard daughter off a poor woman in Rifthold. Abandoned them both. It has been twenty years since then, and from when I was old enough to go to the city, to begin my trade, I looked for her. Found the mother after some years—on her deathbed. She could barely talk long enough to say she’d kicked the girl out. She did not know where my niece was. Didn’t care. She died before she could give me a name.”
Nesryn’s hands shook as she aimed the arrow toward the spider trying to edge past her burning sister. Sartaq warned, “Hurry.”
Falkan said, “If she survived, if she is grown, she might have the shifter gift, too. But it doesn’t matter if she does or does not. What matters … She is my family. All I have left. And I have looked for her for a very long time.”
Nesryn fired the third arrow. A spider screamed as it found its mark. The others fell back.
“Find her,” Falkan said, taking a step toward the horrors churning below. “My fortune—all of it is for her. And I may have failed her in this life. But not in my death.”
Nesryn opened her mouth, not believing it, the words surging up—
But Falkan sprinted down the path. Leaped right in front of that burning line of spiders.
Sartaq grabbed her elbow, pointing toward the steep slope downward from the tiny peak. “This—”
One moment, she was standing upright. The next, Sartaq had thrown her back, his sword whining.
She stumbled, arms flailing to keep her upright as she realized what had crept up the other side of the peak. The spider now hissing at them, enormous fangs dripping venom to the stone.
It lunged for Sartaq with its front two legs.
He dodged one and swung down, striking true.
Black blood sprayed, the spider shrieking—but not before it slashed that claw deep into the prince’s thigh.
Nesryn moved, her fourth arrow flying, right into one of those eyes. The fifth and final arrow flew a moment later, shooting for the spider’s open mouth as it screamed.
It bit down on the arrow, slicing it in half.
Nesryn dropped her bow and drew her Fae blade.
The spider hissed at it.
Nesryn stepped between Sartaq and the spider. Down below, the kharankui screamed and shrieked. She did not dare to look to see what Falkan was doing. If he still fought.
The blade was a sliver of moonlight between her and the spider.
The kharankui advanced a step. Nesryn yielded one, Sartaq struggling to rise beside her.
“I will make you beg for death,” the spider seethed, advancing again.
It recoiled, preparing to spring.
Make it count; make the swing count—
The spider leaped.
And went tumbling off the cliff as a dark ruk slammed into it, roaring her fury.
Not Kadara. But Arcas.
Borte.
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A whirlwind of fury, Arcas reared up, then dove again, Borte’s battle cry ringing off the stones as she and her ruk aimed for the kharankui in the pass below. To the spider holding them off, blood—red blood—leaking from him.
Another cry split the night, one she’d learned as well as her own voice.
And there was Kadara, sailing hard for them, two other ruks in her wake.
Sartaq let out what might have been a sob as one of the other ruks broke away, diving to where Borte swept and lunged and shattered through the kharankui ranks.
A ruk of darkest brown feathers … and a young man atop it.
Yeran.
Nesryn did not recognize the other rider who sailed in behind Kadara. Blood stained Kadara’s golden feathers, but she flew steady, hovering overhead as the other ruk closed in.
“Hold still, and don’t fear the drop,” Sartaq breathed, brushing a hand over Nesryn’s cheek. In the moonlight, his face was caked in dirt and blood, his eyes full of pain, and yet—
Then there was a wall of wings, and mighty talons spread wide.
They wrapped around her waist and beneath her upper thighs, hauling her sitting upright into the air, Sartaq clutched in the other, and then the great bird shot into the night.
The wind roared, but the ruk lifted them higher. Kadara fell into rank behind—guarding their rear. Through her whipping hair, Nesryn looked back toward the fire-limned pass.
To where Borte and Yeran now soared upward, a dark form clutched in the claws of Yeran’s ruk. Utterly limp.
Borte was not done.
A light sparked atop her ruk. A flaming arrow.
Borte fired it high into the sky.
A signal, Nesryn realized as countless wings filled the air around them. And as Borte’s arrow landed atop a web, flame erupting, hundreds of lights kindled in the sky.
Ruk riders. Each bearing a flaming arrow. Each now pointing downward.
Like a rain of shooting stars, the arrows fell upon the darkness of Dagul. Landed on web and tree. And caught fire. One after another after another.
Until the night was lit up, until smoke streamed, mingling with the rising screams from the peaks and wood.
The ruks veered northward, Nesryn shaking as she clung to the talons holding her. Across the way, Sartaq met her gaze, his now-shoulder-length hair rippling in the wind.
With the flames below, it made the wounds to his face, his hands, his neck all the more gruesome. His skin was wan, his lips pale, his eyes heavy with exhaustion and relief. And yet …
Sartaq smiled, barely a curve of his mouth. The words the prince had confessed drifted on the wind between them.
She could not take her eyes from him. Could not look away.
So Nesryn smiled back.
And below and behind them, long into the night, the Dagul Fells burned.
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Chaol and Yrene galloped back to Antica at dawn.
They left a note for Hasar, claiming that Yrene had a gravely ill patient who needed to be checked on, and raced across the dunes under the rising sun.
Neither of them had slept much, but if what they’d guessed about the healers was true, they did not risk lingering.
Chaol’s back ached thanks to yesterday’s ride and last night’s … other ride. Multiple rides. And by the time the minarets and white walls of Antica appeared, he was hissing through his teeth.
Yrene frowned at him the entire painful trek through the packed streets to the palace. They hadn’t discussed sleeping arrangements, but he didn’t care if he had to walk up every single one of the stairs of the Torre. Either her bed or his. The thought of leaving her, even for a heartbeat—
Chaol winced as he climbed off Farasha, the black mare suspiciously well behaved, and accepted the cane the nearest stable hand had retrieved from Yrene’s mare.
He managed a few steps toward her, his limp deep and splintering, but Yrene held out a warning hand. “Do not think about attempting to lift me off this horse, or carry me, or anything.”
He gave her a wry look, but obeyed. “Anything?”
She turned a beautiful shade of scarlet as she slid off the mare, passing the reins to the waiting stable hand. The man sagged with relief, utterly grateful to not have the task of handling the impetuous Farasha, who was currently sizing up the poor man attempting to drag her toward the stables as if she’d have him for lunch. Hellas’s horse indeed.
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