Venom and Song

by Wayne Thomas Batson

  Navira turned and raced with spider swiftness to the Elves. She slammed forelegs down on either side of Tommy, stone splitting underfoot. He was about to try to roll beneath her when she said, “I perceive your thought, Elf. Do not try to escape me.”

  “Jimmy!”

  “I . . . I don’t think she’s going to kill yu!” he yelled back.

  “Don’t think?” Tommy growled.

  “I do not plan to kill you,” Navira said. “I was once your kindred.”

  There was an awkward silence. “Our kindred? I—I don’t understand,” said Johnny, pointing to where the Spider King had fallen. “Why’d you kill him?”

  “That is a long tale,” she said, no emotion in her dark eyes, her voice raspy but somehow sweet. “I loved him once, but what began in him as bitterness became something far worse, and he grew to hate even me. I became a prisoner in this land, and everything I knew of him died away. But when he discovered the Drefid clans and their dark arts, he became consumed, experimenting with ancient relics, poisons, and strange elements.

  “Each time he created a new potion, he tested it on me. I grew very sick, on the verge of death even. And that was when he inoculated me with venom from creatures that dwell in the deep place of Vesper Crag where volcanic gases replace the air. I became”—she tilted her massive head back and shrieked—“this! He used me to breed his Warspiders . . . and other things. But he was furious with me because my offspring shared only my size, not my power. He put those shackles and chains upon me and tightened them whenever it pleased him to see me in pain. I . . . I murdered for him . . . so many times.

  “That,” Navira said, “is why I killed him. Those chains have restrained me for nearly a thousand years. When he released them, I had only a moment to act.”

  “Navira, you mentioned something about your power,” Tommy prompted.

  “Yes,” she replied. “Lords of Berinfell, did you not recognize it? Did you not hear me as I spoke your thoughts? For I am born Navira Hiddenblade.” She looked to Kat.

  Kat rocked in place and was speechless.

  “Does that disturb you?” Navira asked.

  “I’m sorry,” Kat said. “I did not mean . . . that is, I just wasn’t expecting it.”

  “Remember, I was not always as I am,” she said. “I once had beautiful blue skin like yours. I am eighth-generation Hiddenblade. What are you?”

  “I, um, don’t know,” said Kat. “I haven’t learned that much about my—our—family.”

  “That is of mixed consequence,” said Navira. “Now, young Elven Lords, I am sure there are others in this war who might need your assistance.”

  “And we need to get Jett,” said Kiri Lee. “I had no choice but to leave him.”

  “How do we get out of here?” asked Jimmy.

  “His portal is still active,” Navira replied. “It is the only way, unless you can climb sheer rock like I can . . . or fly.”

  “Some of us can fly, er, sort of,” said Tommy. “But we’ll take the portal. Our weapons are in the high tower and . . . and we need to get our friend.”

  They turned to leave, but Johnny hesitated. He looked back at the creature who had once been an Elf maiden. She sat in kind of a crouch and rubbed her leg where a shackle had been for so long. She wasn’t so frightening now. In fact, he felt sad for her.

  “Navira?” he called back to her. “Where will you go now?”

  She looked up. “I—”

  “Rrrrraaaahhhhh!” The room shook with a deep, rolling roar, and the young lords covered their ears as the horrible sound ended with a high, wailing shriek. Luminous red eyes appeared in the back of the chamber.

  Faster than blinking, something massive leaped out of the dark and landed on Navira’s back. She hissed and clawed at this sudden intruder. But the creature, larger and heavier than Navira, crushed her to the ground. In one swift, violent motion, it grabbed her head and wrenched it. Her flailing stopped, and she fell limp.

  “Nooooo!” Johnny yelled, and he loosed his fire upon the murderous beast.

  Laughter rolled out of the inferno . . . familiar laughter. It was the same otherworldly sound that spoke not of joy but of agony and malice . . . the same they had heard near the tower of red light.

  “The Spider King,” whispered Autumn. “No . . . no, it can’t be.”

  “We need to leave, right now! Follow me!” Jimmy yelled. “He won’t fit through.” Jimmy stepped into the portal and disappeared.

  Roaring, the creature leaped through the fire directly at the Elves.

  Johnny shoved Kiri Lee into the portal. Autumn shoved Johnny. Kat shoved Autumn. Tommy shoved Kat, but something struck him hard on the back and he fell through the portal into the tower of red light.

  “Tommy, you’re bleeding!” yelled Kat.

  Rolling his shoulder blades, he stood up. “I’ll be fine,” he said. “Get your weapons. If there’s a way to get here quickly from inside, he’ll know it.”

  “But that’s not really him . . . is it?” asked Kiri Lee. “Navira killed him.”

  “Maybe it was another Wisp,” said Jimmy.

  “No,” said Tommy. “Not a Wisp. And Navira didn’t kill him. We all just thought she did. Her venom . . . it must . . . it must have changed him, turned him into that thing.”

  “Tommy, what do I do?” asked Johnny. “My fire won’t work against him. I have no other weapons. Nothing.”

  “Remember your Vexbane training,” said Tommy. “Use your fire for movement, for cover, for distraction. Remember, if we work together, we are far more powerful.”

  Emboldened, Johnny nodded. “Okay, okay, got it.”

  Kat strapped on her long fighting knives. “What about the Rainsong?” she asked.

  That stopped Tommy cold, and he closed his eyes. While training and reading the book of prophecies back in Whitehall everything had seemed so possible. And after finding the Keystone, Tommy felt sure that everything in the prophecies would come true . . . well, true the way he thought they should. Now what? We needed all Seven. Jett’s gone. What good is the Rainsong, and what good are any of the prophecies?

  “I heard all that, you know,” said Kat. “I think we should try it anyway.”

  Tommy looked at his feet for a second and then turned to Kiri Lee. “Kiri Lee, do you—?”

  Kiri Lee sat six steps down from the balcony. She wept quietly into her hands. Tommy went to her and sat down next to her. For once, Kat didn’t mind. In fact, she joined him by sitting on Kiri Lee’s other side. Jimmy sat down behind her. Johnny and Autumn stood nearby.

  “We’re going to get through this,” Tommy told Kiri Lee. “We will.”

  “Jett didn’t get through it,” Kiri Lee cried.

  “Jett made a choice,” Tommy said. “The right one.”

  “How can you say that?” She turned and pounded on Tommy’s chest. “He was our best warrior, our strongest. He was our healer. All I’m good for is getting away.”

  “Hey, now,” Johnny intervened. “That’s no good. If it hadn’t been for you, I’d be smeared all over the rocks down there.”

  “That’s right,” said Kat. “If it hadn’t been for you, we’d have been killed at Dalhousie. Every gift is important, Kiri Lee. Remember what Grimwarden taught us from First Voice? Ellos uses the weak and foolish things of this realm. He gives gifts and prepares good things for us all to do.”

  Kiri Lee sobbed. “I watched him die,” she said. “I told him to let go, but he wouldn’t. And I watched the light in his violet eyes fade.”

  Tommy pulled her to his shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I know it hurts. But we’re all glad you’re still with us.”

  “Tommy.” Jimmy’s voice was tight and clipped. “Tommy, stand up. He’s coming.”

  Tommy was on his feet in an instant, watching the Spider King clamber up the mountain with dreadful speed. He could hear his heart beating in his ears.

  “Well, m’lads and lasses,” said Jimmy. “This is it.”

&nbs
p; “What do you mean?” asked Autumn.

  “It’s quite simple really,” Jimmy replied. “He’s comin’ to get us, so either we figure out a way to kill him, or we all die.”

  41

  Stalemate

  AS THE creature traversed the final hundred yards, the young lords saw him clearly for the first time. He was, in general form, very like Navira, only larger. His legs were thicker and had spikes of bone jutting from each joint and segment. His arms, more bulky with muscle, and his clawed fists, heavy and vastly oversized . . . like weighted clubs. His shoulders were peculiarly humped as if an immense tumor had spread across his back, and there was a black socket on either side as if the tumor itself had eyes. But it was the creature’s head that was most different, and rather terrifying.

  The new Spider King had six eyes, two of them large, deep set, and slanted. The other four were smaller and spread back on his scalp. But they were all red, red as if the normal pigmentation of Gwar eyes had been stoked to a radiant flame by utter malice. Where Navira had had a nest of whiplike strands in place of hair, the Spider King had just three. They curled back over his bare skull, one from each corner of his brow, and the third bisecting his forehead from the bridge of his flat nose.

  “Kind of you . . . to wait for me,” he said. His voice was deeper and had an odd hiss, and massive fangs jutted from the corners of his misshapen mouth.

  “Now for it, lads!” The surprising command came from Jimmy, and he charged down the mountain toward the enemy.

  “Everyone, go, now!” Tommy yelled. “All as one! Endurance and Victory!”

  Kiri Lee leaped into the air and drew her rychesword. Johnny ran beneath her, pulled fire into his palms, and began to run to his right. His fireballs hit the Spider King across his entire body, and Johnny walked them up, launching four directly at his fanged face. Autumn’s axes sang as she darted in and out of the creature’s legs. Kat circled around below him to the left, and Tommy stayed at a distance, waiting to take his shot.

  Johnny’s fire was only an irritant, a blinding cover, but it did no harm. The Spider King swiped with a club hand, missing Johnny but spraying him with volcanic rock. Johnny cut off his flame and covered his head, and that gave the Spider King an opportunity to charge. Johnny wouldn’t get up in time. Tommy nocked and fired one arrow at the creature’s eye, then another. But the Spider King clubbed them away and kept climbing toward Johnny.

  Kiri Lee ran across the air and dropped down toward the monster’s head, but he perceived the attack and leaped. His sudden upward thrust caught Kiri Lee off guard. The hump on his back crashed into her like a battering ram from below. Kiri Lee was knocked head over heels fifty yards down slope, but she managed to right herself and slow her descent.

  The Spider King leaped again, this time for distance. Autumn sped upslope to the place she thought he would land and, remembering a scene from a favorite movie, tried to position herself so that when he landed, he would impale himself on her sword. But as he plummeted toward her, he drew his six legs to a point aiming right for Autumn. If she didn’t move, she’d be killed.

  “Run downslope, Autumn!” came Kat’s thoughts. Autumn raced out just in time.

  “I hear your thoughts,” said the Spider King as he landed. “You have no hope.”

  “You can’t fight us all at once!” Tommy yelled as he fired a flurry of arrows.

  “Yes,” said the Spider King, capturing the arrows with his claws. “Yes . . . I can.”

  A streak of lightning blasted the rock just fifty yards below where Tommy stood. He gazed down in dismay as he saw a myriad of warriors charging up the mountain far below. Using his telescopic vision, he saw that Gwar, Drefids, and Warspider were racing to the Spider King’s aid. But the Elves, and even some Gnomes, were climbing after them, hewing at their heels from behind. Tommy couldn’t stare for long, and a warning from Jimmy saved his life. He dove and rolled ten yards before coming to a rough stop in a mixture of ash and broken stone. The Spider King snarled and withdrew the tip of one of his segmented legs from the puncture mark where Tommy had been just a moment before.

  Johnny laid down a wall of flame, hiding Tommy from the Spider King’s view. Jimmy raced behind it and helped Tommy to his feet. They ran for cover, finding a cleft in the rock where they could hide on the southern side of the peak.

  “This is ridiculous,” said Jimmy, panting. “We trained to fight Warspiders and Gwar, not some mutant mixture a’ both!”

  “Don’t give up,” Tommy implored. “The prophecy said we’d have power unmatched and victory assured. He’s got to have a weakness.”

  “If he does, I’m not seein’ it.” Jimmy wiped the back of his neck. His hand came back with bits of black rock and a smearing of gray ash and blood. “Wait!” Jimmy straightened his posture. “When he killed Navira—”

  Tommy finished the thought, “He got her by the neck.”

  “Right,” said Jimmy. “Bah! If only Jett were still here. He could leap up on the beast’s back and snap his neck.”

  “We don’t have that brute strength anymore,” said Tommy. “But maybe we can still cut him there. Come on!”

  “Where’s, what’s . . . huh?”

  “Just stay with me, warn me every time I’m about to get clobbered!” Tommy ran out and raced toward Kat.

  “Aye,” said Jimmy, chasing after him. “I’ll try.”

  While the Spider King was busy with Kiri Lee’s air attacks and Autumn’s hacking away at his legs, Tommy had given Kat his plan and grabbed Johnny to circle back twenty yards below the Spider King. Now it was their job to utterly distract the beast. Maybe, just maybe, he would be so engaged in the brazen frontal assault that he wouldn’t be able to focus on reading thoughts. If Kat could tell Autumn and Kiri Lee what to do without the Spider King learning, they’d have their best chance, perhaps their only chance, to defeat him.

  Better hurry, Tommy thought, glancing down the mountain. The enemy forces were still climbing, fighting the Elves all the way.

  “Jimmy, you got our backs?” Tommy yelled.

  “AYE!”

  Tommy squinted. Waited. Then, “Now, Johnny!”

  Johnny split off to the right and opened up the floodgates on his flame. He put his wrists together and sent a dense stream of fire directly into the Spider King’s face. The Spider King was not burned, of course, but it did cause him to maneuver. He ducked and bobbed, sliding left and then right, getting dangerously close to Johnny.

  Tommy had just a handful of arrows left . . . seven at most. It was time to spend them. He nocked the first and aimed. This was a far cry from the Thurgood Marshall Middle School gym on Falcon Day. And he wasn’t shooting at straw-filled targets with a few hundred students looking on.

  No, Tommy was lining up to shoot a dangerous, darting, constantly moving target. He glanced down the mountain: the warriors—both enemy and ally—had arrived. And inexplicably only a few of them were still fighting. They stared at the combat above them, the Spider King and the Elven Lords of Berinfell. It was the Battle of Generations, and would be heralded as such for generations to come . . . if any of them survived to recount it. It suddenly seemed that the weight of history pressed down on Tommy. Seven arrows. He’d need to make every shot count.

  Tommy fired the first arrow through the fire directly at the spot where the creature’s left eye should be. But the Spider King smacked it away. Another and another Tommy fired, each from a different angle as he changed positions. He loosed all his arrows but one, and still the Spider King blocked.

  A good thing, Tommy thought, . . . means his thoughts are on the inbound arrows, not behind him.

  At that split second there came a freezing, sudden fear. The Spider King hesitated just a moment. Tommy knew what he’d done. He’d just given up the plan in his thoughts. But as the Spider King started to make a move, Tommy fired his last arrow. It flew straight through Johnny’s stream of fire and—

  “No!” Tommy cried out.

  The Spider
King had caught the arrow in his claw. But when Tommy looked closer, he saw that the claw held only the back half of his arrow. The creature had reached up a moment too late and clipped the arrow in two. The other half was buried in the Spider King’s right eye.

  Greenish liquid oozed from the wound, but the Spider King did not seem the least bit troubled by the arrow in his eye. He reached up with his claw and plucked it out without uttering so much as a growl of pain. At that moment, from above and behind the Spider King, Kiri Lee climbed the air—and she was carrying Autumn. In a flash, she dropped Autumn onto the Spider King’s humped back. Using her supernatural speed, Autumn used both axes and hacked away at the Spider King’s neck. Tommy couldn’t see her strokes—they were a blur. She’d have felled a redwood in three seconds with such a flurry. But . . .

  There wasn’t any blood.

  The Spider King shrugged his massive shoulders, propelling Autumn into the air. At the same time, the Spider King clubbed Kiri Lee, not a full-on blow, but enough to send her spinning.

  Johnny awkwardly fired himself in the air to grab Autumn. She smacked into him, and as much as he tried to stabilize their fall, they hit the ground, sending up a plume of fresh ash, and rolled toward the surging mass of warriors just below.

  Tommy dropped his bow. There were no more arrows. He shook his head in disbelief. We’re supposed to be the saviors of Berinfell . . . of Allyra—foretold by the prophets, trained by the elite, branded as heroes before we’d ever swung a sword. But it was more than that. The Seven had held powers . . . unimaginable powers! They’d found the Keystone and now possessed the Rainsong. If anything, their powers should be amplified, but they’d tried and now all their powers seemed useless against the Spider King.