Starspawn

by Wendy N. Wagner

  She struck at the web, tearing at its threads with the leg’s three sharp claws. The web ripped easily under the touch of its maker. “Come on!” she shouted at Vorrin. She threw aside the leg as she ran.

  Her axe bit into the spider’s nearest leg with a crunch. She pulled back to chop again—

  And suddenly faced a wall of ice. Snow blew into her face—not the powder-soft wet snow of late autumn, but the dry shards that whip off glaciers in the worst windstorms. She had to shield her eyes from the biting bits of ice.

  “Kran? Vorrin?” She couldn’t see anything. The wind shrieked and screamed. She took a step back and then froze. She stood on the knife edge of a mountain peak. The summit reared above her, a needle of black stone and slick ice. Rocks fell away beneath her in steep slopes like she’d never seen. She wobbled and almost fell.

  “Kran!” she shouted.

  “Jendara!” Vorrin’s voice echoed from nearby, but she couldn’t see him. She turned, very slowly, so as not to overbalance and slide down the face of the icy mountain. Where was she? Where was everyone?

  “Glayn?” She narrowed her eyes. Was that Glayn, behind that broken bit of ice? She took a cautious step forward.

  A rock the size of Jendara’s fist whizzed past her head and hit the ground, bursting into shards. From behind the hunk of ice, Glayn shouted in surprise. Jendara may have found him, but now they were under attack. Another rock struck Jendara in the shoulder, hard enough to send shock waves of numbness down her arm. She nearly dropped her axe.

  Her mind struggled to make sense of it all. She’d been in an underground tunnel fighting a gigantic eleven-legged spider and now she was on top of an icy mountain. She’d never seen any place like this. The mountain rose up above a gray expanse, empty and unreadable. No trees, no buildings, no meadows, no farms. A barren waste.

  She didn’t have time to get her bearings. Another rock flew past her, falling short. On any other surface, Jendara would have rushed her attacker, but she didn’t trust her footing. It would be all too easy to slide right over the side of the steep cliff. She’d be dead in a heartbeat.

  Jendara tucked her axe in her belt and drew her sword. Her best hope was that whoever had thrown those rocks would try to move in closer, coming within range of Jendara’s blade. She set her feet in the best stance she could and readied herself for someone to come out from around the rock spire.

  The edge of a figure appeared: a ghostly figure, a floating cloud of white fabric. Was it an elemental? Some kind of a spirit? Jendara narrowed her eyes. It had to have a body to throw stones.

  The figure took another slow step toward her, its labored breathing audible. Beneath the white shroud, Jendara made out messy brown hair and a pair of dark eyes.

  Jendara shook her head. It couldn’t be. It looked like Sarni, but it couldn’t be.

  The figure raised its arm, preparing to launch another stone. The arm wavered and shook as if the muscles were tasked to their utmost. The figure’s mouth opened and closed, but made no sound.

  Then Glayn threw himself at the figure. They stumbled backward, going right through the wall of stone to slam into the ground. Jendara stood frozen. Glayn and Sarni—if it was Sarni—twisted and grappled. The icy wind stirred up, and a sheet of snow nearly obscured the fighters.

  A shimmering cord shot out of the snow and twisted itself around Jendara’s ankles. She went down hard. She should have rolled down the mountain face, but she simply lay flat on the ground, her legs hanging out over what should have been empty space. Something was terribly wrong with all of this.

  Kran was suddenly by her side, hacking at the bolas tied around her ankles. The boy perched on what looked like thin air. She stared around herself as he worked, her mind spinning. Off to her right, she could see Vorrin blindly hacking around him at the rocks, the occasional spatter of blue announcing his hits.

  She squeezed her eyes shut and reopened them. No, there were no rocks. There was no snow. It was all an illusion, a screen pulled up to block the spider from their sight.

  But the shroud-wrapped Sarni was entirely real. Glayn slammed his fist into her face and she went limp. Jendara felt her ankles come free and jumped to her feet, grabbing onto Kran’s arm. For a second she saw snow again, but then she was truly free of the illusion. A huge leg drove down in front of her, cutting her off from Glayn and Sarni.

  Jendara slashed at the leg with her sword. Her aim was too high and the blade ricocheted off the leg’s tough shell. Moving faster than any huge creature ought to, the spider twisted around, snapping its cruel mandibles shut on her arm. Her heavy jacket miraculously kept them from biting into the flesh, but she could feel bone and muscle crushing in that punishing grip. She lost her hold on her sword.

  A crunch came from nearby, and the creature made a sudden surprised hiss, the sound muffled by Jendara’s arm. Vorrin shouted something, but she couldn’t make it out. The pain in her arm made it impossible to concentrate on the world. Her left hand fumbled at her belt for her handaxe. The spider shook its head, making her legs go out from under her. All her weight hung on her aching arm.

  Then Kran shoved past her, her own lost sword in his hands, and drove the tip up under the spider’s chin. The spider shook and jerked. Jendara fell hard and lay on the ground, clutching her arm for a second. But she couldn’t just lay there. The spider hadn’t fallen yet, and her boy was in the fray.

  She forced herself upright and took her axe in her left hand. The spider snapped at Kran with the two short “arms” that framed its nasty fangs. The boy had no weapon. Her sword was caught in the spider’s skull. Blue-green blood ran down in it rivulets, but the spider showed no sign of slowing.

  Two more of the spider’s severed legs lay on the ground between Jendara and the beast, but it was still balancing perfectly well on the other eight. Only the luckiest hits could pierce its thick hide. Jendara studied the creature for another moment. Kran had the right idea, she was sure of it. If they could pierce the spider’s brain, they could kill it.

  Vorrin lunged at the spider and it brought down a pair of legs to block him. It was her moment.

  Jendara raced toward Vorrin and leaped up onto the second joint of the spider’s leg. Before it could respond, she found the spiky hairs on the inner surface of the leg and used them as handholds, hurrying up the leg like a ladder. The spider tried to shake her off, but the hairs were too large and her grip too strong. Vorrin gave a happy shout and drove his sword tip into the spider’s other foot.

  It was the perfect distraction. The leg went still long enough for her to pull herself up onto the creature’s back. Her boots skidded on its slick carapace, but she had enough momentum to keep moving forward. Her right hand’s fingers closed on the handle of Kran’s knife, still sticking out of the creature’s eye. Her grip wasn’t strong enough to use it as a handhold for long, but she didn’t need much time. With her strong left hand, she brought her axe down beside the handle of the knife.

  The spider screamed as her axe smashed through its eye. It bucked and twisted, but she kept her grip on the axe handle and the knife and didn’t fall. She wrenched free the axe and drove it in at an angle, taking out a wedge of the spider’s shell. A fissure opened up that ran down the front of the creature’s face, and she brought the axe down again, passing through tough muscle and striking the soft brain in a burst of gray sludge.

  The spider collapsed on the floor. Jendara slid down off its back.

  “Kran.” She flung her arm around her son. “Vorrin.”

  Vorrin pulled the two of them close. “Are you all right?”

  She tried to move her right arm and winced. “I think my arm’s messed up.”

  Vorrin pulled back. “Broken?”

  She forced her fingers to move and shook her head. “Just bruised pretty bad.” She looked around. “Where’s Glayn?”

  “Here.” The gnome groaned as he ducked under the fallen spider’s leg to join them. Blood ran down his face in streams.

  “Wh
at happened?” Vorrin asked.

  The gnome felt around in his pocket and came up with a handkerchief. He mopped away blood, revealing a wicked cut running through his eyebrow, but no other signs of damage. “I had Sarni, but she suddenly went all stiff and then threw me off her. I hit a rock with my face. When I got up, she was gone.”

  “She threw rocks at me,” Jendara said. “I don’t understand why she’d try to hurt us.”

  “I don’t think she recognized me.” Glayn found a second handkerchief and pressed it to his wound. “It’s like she wasn’t herself.”

  Jendara watched as Kran pulled the knife out of the dead spider’s eye and wiped it on his pants. He looked so matter-of-fact, so grown up. It shook her almost as much as seeing Sarni acting like some kind of zombie.

  “Let’s keep going,” Vorrin said. “Sarni and Korthax both went down this hallway. Whatever we’re looking for, it’s down there.”

  Kran caught Jendara’s eye. He finished writing and studied his words for a moment before holding up his slate. Are there more spiders?

  17

  A WEB OF HORRORS

  Jendara stared down the hall. In the dim light cast by the fallen lanterns, she could see sheets of spider webbing lining the walls, giving everything a faint otherwordly shimmer—a reminder that this creature was nothing like the ones that lived in her own garden. It had been smart, and it could make illusions, and it had somehow turned Sarni into its own slave.

  She had no idea how that kind of magic worked, but she had a horrible feeling that once the spider controlling her died, Sarni ought to have returned to normal. Jendara turned and wrenched her handaxe out of the dead spider’s brain.

  “Sarni didn’t come back,” she said. “I think—” She broke off, repulsed by gray goo dripping off the blade of her axe. With a grimace, she scrubbed it off on the bloated purple creature.

  “You think that means there’s another one.” Glayn had balled his bloody handkerchiefs in his fist, and the cut on his forehead looked raw and puffy, though it no longer dripped.

  “Yeah,” she agreed.

  “What if it has Tam?”

  She squeezed his shoulder. “We’ll get him back. Tam, Boruc, Zuna, Sarni—we’re going to get them all back and get the hell out of here.”

  Kran began gathering the lanterns and redistributing them. Jendara had mixed feelings about the lights. She wanted to be able to see what they were getting into, but she knew spiders were less dependent on their eyes. Even the common house spider had a remarkable sense for vibration and heat. These freakish things? They could have super-hearing and see through stone walls for all she knew. She felt a sudden urge to punch the tunnel wall. She was up against something huge and terrible, something she barely understood, and her sword arm was practically useless. And even if they fought off the next spider and found the team, they were little better off than they had been before. The team had come to this island to find a fortune, and instead they were trapped underground with giant spiders and the enmity of the deep ones.

  But her crew needed her.

  Jendara raised her lantern to study the hallway up ahead. “Let’s get moving.”

  She took a step forward and felt the ground drop out from under her feet. Glayn screamed as he plummeted down beside her.

  She bounced off something soft and then tumbled down a long drop. She hit ground hard and lay there gasping.

  “Dara!”

  “I’m okay.” She sat up.

  Vorrin got to his hands and knees beside her. He made a little hissing sound and brought his wrist close to his chest, rubbing the joint. The lantern hung above them, caught in a tangle of web. Glayn hung from a handhold a few feet above it. Jendara reached for the lantern and sat it down on the ground.

  “Kran?”

  Fylga barked in reply. She could just make out the outline of boy and dog, leaning precariously over the edge of a long tube of spider web. It had to be a good twelve feet up.

  “A trapdoor,” she growled. The damn spiders must have camouflaged the trap with gravel and rock.

  “Can you get me down?” Glayn asked.

  “Yeah, just a second.” She touched the silk with one cautious fingertip. “This is a different kind of silk—slippery. It’s going to be a real pain to climb back up.”

  Fylga whimpered.

  Kran gave a sharp intake of air.

  “What is it?” Jendara squinted up at him, but he was already throwing Fylga down. He launched himself down the slippery wall, sliding several feet before he caught himself.

  Jendara heard a soft scraping above. “There’s another! Get out of here!”

  Vorrin grabbed Glayn and they raced away from the trap. They had landed in another tunnel, its walls sheathed entirely in webbing: a tight funnel of stretchy, sticky stuff. Jendara had to turn sideways to keep it from touching her. The walls caught and held the lantern light with an eerie opalescence.

  And then the tunnel opened out into a cavern that rivaled the Milady’s grotto in size. Jendara lowered the flame on her lantern and beckoned to the others. They were alone here where the tunnel joined the cave, but faint sounds warned her they would not be alone for long. Over the faint whisper of the wind, a strange tapping and rustling echoed within the cavern.

  Walls of webbing cut the cave into a long open space with smaller chambers opening off the sides. From where Jendara stood, she could see all the way down to the far wall, where a web-veiled window about her own height let daylight filter into the room. Despite the opening in the rock walls, the air felt much warmer here than anyplace else in the underground labyrinth. The spiders had created a snug fortress for themselves.

  Movement to her right made her spin to face an attacker, her injured arm bringing up her lantern as if it were a weapon. A terrified gasp made her stop before she smashed the lantern into a familiar face.

  “Korthax!” she whispered.

  He nodded and struggled out of the pocket of webbing where he’d been huddled. It clung to him, but he wasn’t immobilized by stickiness.

  “I did not think we see each other again,” he whispered. His pupils were huge, as if he were in shock. “I saw … a spider, making a web…” His speech trailed off. He was shivering, Jendara realized. However he’d gotten past that spider, he hadn’t yet recovered from the sight of it.

  “It’s okay,” she murmured. “It’s dead now.”

  Vorrin leaned in. “We have to find Zuna,” he said in a low voice. “Korthax, have you seen her?”

  The hybrid ulat-kini shook his head, hard. “I think she is in here. I do not know. I had to hide from the spider.”

  Jendara raised a hand to stop him. “There’s another spider in here?”

  “I saw it on ceiling, by that window.” He looked like he was going to be sick for a moment. Kran gently touched Korthax’s shoulder. The ulat-kini looked down at the boy and forced a deep breath. “I am afraid of spiders.”

  “You keep watch, then,” Vorrin said. “You and Kran can keep an eye out for any spiders on the ceiling, or if anything comes out of the tunnel. We’ll go get Zuna.”

  “And Fithrax,” Korthax said, quickly. “Please do not leave him.”

  Jendara met Vorrin’s eyes. She didn’t want to put herself on the line for a slave-taking ulat-kini, but she didn’t want Korthax upset. They’d already made enough noise talking out here as it was. “We won’t leave anyone behind,” Vorrin said. “Not if we can help it.”

  Korthax nodded. Some of his color had returned, but his pupils were still huge.

  Jendara stooped so she could murmur in Kran’s ear without Korthax hearing. “I want you to keep your blade handy. If a spider comes, I don’t know if you can count on Korthax to help you.”

  Kran nodded. He brought out the long seax and held it in an easy grip, like he’d been fighting with it for years.

  “Let’s leave all but one of the lanterns,” Glayn said. “We can see well enough here.”

  Jendara spared Kran one last glanc
e over her shoulder and then crept into the nearest chamber. Her eyes roved the walls and ceiling, searching for spiders.

  She had never felt so tense, not in any dungeon she’d escaped or facing down any enemy. Every flicker of shadow made her ready her axe. The damn spider could be anywhere, behind any silken wall. It could be right on top of her and she might not even notice because the bastards could make her see things that weren’t there.

  Glayn made a tiny terrified sound, and she spun to face the far corner. A dark form hid behind a thick wall of webbing, its long legs outlined blackly against the shimmering silk.

  “It’s not moving,” Vorrin whispered. “It hasn’t seen us yet.”

  Jendara couldn’t tell if it was as big as the spider they’d found in the corridor. Its long curled legs were pressed against the sheets of web, obscuring its body, and the spikes on the foreleg looked as long as her hand. The edges gleamed in the light. If one of them touched her flesh, she knew it would slice right through skin and muscle. But it didn’t move.

  She took a cautious step forward, wishing she could hold her axe in her right hand and not her left.

  “Why isn’t it moving?” Glayn could barely whisper. He stared at the thing as if rooted to the floor.

  Jendara moved closer. She heard nothing. The creature didn’t even twitch. It could be a trap. If it was, she’d be dead the instant it lashed out at her. But if it wasn’t—if the thing really slept this deeply—she could have it dead before it could bring its weapons and venom into play.

  “Don’t get so close,” Vorrin begged.

  She pushed her axe blade against the web. The spider didn’t move. She could see its fangs now, a dull black that stood out against its purple underbelly. Jendara leaned closer, frowning at that horrible face with its many eyes. She got closer, really looking into the dull surface of the nearest orb.