Starspawn

by Wendy N. Wagner

  “It’s just the shell,” she said. “Like a crab or a garden spider—it grew and molted.” She leaned back, taking in the full size of the creature. It couldn’t have grown much, though. The husk was shriveled and flattened, but the legs looked just as long and thick. And underneath it, she saw another smaller form, the husk of a spider no larger than Fylga.

  She thought back to the empty shipping crate. When crabs and spiders molted, it took time. They hid in the dark for a long time, waiting for their old exoskeletons to slip away and the new to grow. The shipping crate would have been the perfect way to bring a group of molting little spiders onto the island.

  How many of them were there?

  “Jendara?” Glayn tugged on her elbow. “I only see nine legs. Didn’t the one in the tunnel have eleven?”

  A gurgling scream interrupted any answer she might have made. Vorrin raced out the chamber faster than Jendara had ever seen him run. She raced after him.

  “What was that?” Glayn asked, his shorter legs making him fall behind.

  She nearly slammed into Vorrin. He had stopped in place at the entrance of an upward-curving tube of spider webbing. In the darkness beyond, she could make out panicked voices babbling in fear. Someone moaned.

  “I think it’s Zuna,” he said. “But I don’t know how we can get to her.”

  Jendara touched the end of her axe handle to the wall of the tube and gave it a tug. “It’s the sticky kind.”

  She peered into the gloom. The muted sunlight barely penetrated the thick walls of webbing, casting the room beyond in shadows. She tried to guess at the room’s dimensions, but the space went back a long way, winding off to the right and upward.

  “It’s all spider webs, isn’t it?” Glayn whispered. “A whole room made out of spider webs.”

  “I’ll bet only the entrance is sticky,” Jendara mused. “Whatever’s in there is something they want to protect. No point wasting sticky stuff on the walls—it’d just make it dirty and harder to move around.” The spiders seemed immune to their own sticky threads, but if they had to maneuver other items, like food or gear, they wouldn’t want to get them stuck. Or so she hoped.

  Leather scraped against stone behind her, and she spun around to face Kran. “What are you doing here?” she snapped, keeping her voice quiet with some effort. “I told you—”

  He waved a hand to cut her off, then tapped his temple.

  “You had an idea?” Vorrin asked.

  Kran held out the bowl he used to give Fylga water. It was full of crushed chalk—no doubt one of the pieces he carried for use with his slate. He smeared some on his palm and then patted the webbed wall beside him. His hand didn’t stick.

  “Of course,” Glayn breathed. “I use sawdust to coat my caulking gear so it’s not sticky.”

  “Good idea.” Jendara said. Then she rapped her knuckles on the top of Kran’s head. “Now get back to the entrance and hide like I told you.”

  Glayn took the bowl of chalk dust and began to toss handfuls on the floor and walls of the tube. Someone sobbed in the room beyond, and Jendara had to bite down on the side of her cheek to keep from calling out reassurance. She wanted to slash through the spider webs and charge in to the rescue, but she had no idea how the room was constructed. One wrong slash could drop the floor out from under Zuna and whoever else was in there. If she was already injured, a fall could kill their friend.

  Glayn dropped to his hands and knees, testing the surface. “It’s not too bad,” he whispered. “But the roof’s sticky, so stay low.” He shrugged off his pack and began crawling.

  Jendara and Vorrin left their own packs at the mouth of the tube, and then she followed Glayn inside. The silk creaked around her, the threads stretching beneath her palms. The dust had coated the top layer of strands, but she could feel the stickiness of the stuff below as their movement exposed it. The way out would be worse, she realized.

  “Careful,” Glayn gasped, and she paused to see what had startled him.

  She stared around herself. Perhaps her eyes had grown accustomed to the dim bluish light that made its way through the webs. Glayn hung a few inches below her, clinging to the wall as he tried to make his own sense of the place.

  The tube they had crawled through was like a straw stuck in the side of a hollow gourd. The curved floor of the gourd-shaped chamber lay at least twelve feet below the tube, and the ceiling stretched above at least thirty feet more. Thick strands of spider silk ran up the side walls, serving as support beams for the lighter-weight wall material. Each silk cable was the thickness of Jendara’s leg, and its surface shimmered softly with that purple, alien sheen.

  In the center of the room, a series of these cables ran down from the ceiling to support a massive disk of spider webbing. Another set of cables connected it to the back wall. It all supported the beginnings of a strange structure made up of smaller silken tubes, and as she studied it, she was suddenly reminded of the beehives in her yard. The bees built a framework of wax where they stored young larvae, placing each egg tenderly inside a chamber before sealing it off and building the next layer around the sleeping baby bee.

  Here the silken structures were not small hexagons, but tall boxes that looked terribly like a bank of open coffins standing side by side with open fronts. Inside the row of silken boxes, she could see five humanish shapes, one per box, with Zuna and Fithrax at one end and three larger, misshapen ulat-kini beside them. Jendara wished she couldn’t see those three tormented creatures with their bloated and bulging bodies.

  “What do you see?” Vorrin whispered, and she realized she blocked his view. She hesitated a second, then gingerly touched the wall off to her right. As she had hoped, it wasn’t sticky. She pulled herself out of the way, clinging to the wall like a frightened monkey clinging to a wall of vines.

  Jendara’s eyes crept back to the three sickening ulat-kini imprisoned in their silken coffins. They stood upright, a few coarse strands of silk binding them, finer webs gluing their hands and feet securely into the walls of their otherwise open prisons. She had no way to guess how long they’d been inside.

  A flicker of movement caught her eye, and Jendara stifled an instinctive shriek. A massive spider hung from the ceiling above the silk coffins. Jendara held her breath, but it didn’t seem to have noticed them.

  The ulat-kini beside Fithrax groaned and writhed. His bloated body bucked. Jendara wished she could look anyplace besides the sickening bulges that pulsated on his chest and torso. The ulat-kini beside him slept.

  The faint shushing of spider legs moving against silk warned that the spider moved. Its pendulous body twitched as it slowly slid down the largest of the support cables. The structure in the center of the chamber vibrated softly.

  Zuna gave a frightened shriek and thrashed against her bonds, but her hands were swallowed up in silk. Thicker strands secured her waist so she couldn’t wriggle too strongly.

  Jendara scanned the room. The horror that had gripped her fast when she first saw the spider subsided a little. She pointed out a support cable that ran around the belly of the chamber. Longer and thicker than the others, it looked wide enough for them to follow around the side of the room.

  Vorrin nodded and began to creep toward the cable. Glayn realized what Vorrin was doing and followed him cautiously. Jendara closed her eyes and sent a desperate prayer to the ancestors that the spider wouldn’t see them or feel their movements vibrating through the silk strands. She risked another look at the most bloated ulat-kini.

  Suddenly the ulat-kini shrieked, louder and longer than before. It was a scream of pure terror, of absolute pain, and it broke off with a squelch. Blood geysered from his mouth as he jerked. A groaning, crunching, crumpling sound came from his body.

  And then the skin covering his ribs ripped open.

  Blood and yellow pus boiled out of the wound and a pair of slender legs appeared, scrabbling on the slippery surface of the ulat-kini’s chest.

  Jendara couldn’t move. She couldn
’t even breathe as the first fist-sized spiderling emerged from the ulat-kini’s body. It perched on the dying ulat-kini’s shoulder, rubbing its spiky legs in his blood.

  She wrenched her eyes away. Vorrin was halfway across the chamber, one hand gripping the wall and the other out for balance. Glayn moved behind him cautiously. Jendara lowered herself down to the biggest cable and paused, thinking. If the spider noticed them, she was far enough behind the men that she wasn’t sure she’d be able to help.

  She glanced up at the spider. It had picked up speed and had nearly reached the cells that held the trapped prisoners. Its eyes were focused intently on its goal.

  Jendara began to hurry along the cable in the opposite direction from the one Vorrin and Glayn had taken. Splitting up felt smart, and in a situation like this, she had to trust her gut. She moved quickly, keeping her balance without touching the silken wall, but ready to grab it if she needed. She’d spent most of her life on a ship. Walking this cable was easy.

  Fithrax gave a startled yelp, and Jendara paused to check why. One of the spider’s huge legs bore down on the layer of webbing that formed the top of his prison cell. The leg sank deeper into the web as the massive spider slowly repositioned itself. It adjusted its other legs to hold its great weight as its bloated abdomen slowly rolled to point down at Fithrax. Jendara glanced at the other ulat-kini and the second spider crawling out of its torso. She had a horrible feeling she knew what was going to happen to Fithrax.

  The spider’s abdomen rippled. From the tip of the spider’s abdomen, just below its spinneret, a flexible tube squeezed out. The spider’s flanks gave a spasm, and the tube slowly extended. The tip glistened with a yellowish fluid. The spider tightened its grip on the cable, then drove its claw down through the web, coming down on the top of Fithrax’s head hard enough to snap his forehead back. Yellow slime spurted over his exposed face.

  Fithrax shrieked in terror.

  18

  MOMMY LONGLEGS

  The spider’s massive body obscured Fithrax from her view, but Jendara had seen enough. She leaped onto the support cable tethering the massive web platform in place. For the first time, the spider noticed the movement. It twisted around to stare at her with its ruddy eyes. At the edge of her vision, Jendara saw a flicker of movement as Vorrin climbed onto the far side of the platform. She had to serve as a distraction as he and Glayn freed Zuna and Fithrax. It might be their only chance.

  She chopped at the wall of the coffinlike cell closest to her, sending out a shock wave of vibrations. The baby spiders—three now, and a fourth pulling itself up out of the dead ulat-kini’s mangled chest—froze in place, staring at her with the same blood-red eyes as their mother. One of the little beasts flexed the armlike limbs on either side of its mouth.

  The mother spider hissed.

  Jendara grinned. “Better come and get me.”

  The flexing baby spider scurried down the dead ulat-kini, running far faster than its newborn legs ought to move. At the last second, it leaped into the air, soaring like a missile launched from some infernal catapult.

  Jendara was ready for it.

  The side of her axe caught the spiderling and sent it flying. It struck its mother’s belly with a satisfying crunch. The mother spider shrieked in rage. Its spinneret pulsed and a long strand of sticky silk shot out at Jendara.

  She managed to sidestep it. A sudden tugging on her pants leg made her realize another spiderling had approached while she was distracted. It raced up her leg, and she slapped at it. The sharp claws scored the side of her hand, ripping the flesh. She shouted in surprise and disgust and slapped it again, knocking it to the ground. She stomped on it, but the web beneath it absorbed most of the blow. The spiderling chittered and burrowed deeper into the platform.

  A soft grunt made her glance away from the creature. Vorrin and Glayn had cut through the webs securing Zuna’s limbs and were now trying to pull her away from the sticky back wall of her cell. They still had a lot of work ahead of them.

  A silken cord just missed Jendara. She leaped backward, realizing even as she moved that she’d freed the smaller spiderling. She couldn’t keep fighting two opponents, not when one moved with such uncanny speed—and she had no doubt the thing’s bite was poisonous. The spiderling jumped at her and she spun sideways, slamming into the web coffins.

  The third spiderling scrambled up over the dead ulat-kini’s face and scurried along the top edge of the structure, headed straight for Jendara. She could hear squelching as the fourth spiderling finished emerging from its host.

  Screw being a distraction. It was time to get rid of these nasty bugs.

  Jendara kicked out, the tip of her boot catching a spiderling underneath its belly and sending it up into the air. A reel of silk shot out of its spinneret, but caught on nothing. Jendara swung her axe up underneath the spiderling, and it exploded in a cloud of blue goo and purple shards.

  The other spiderling jumped, expecting to land on her face, but Jendara was already dropping into a crouch. She didn’t pause, instead straightening up before the spiderling had a chance to regain its balance. Her bleeding right hand caught one of its nine legs and sent it flying into its mother’s belly. It hit the surface hard and fell, stunned.

  Jendara swept it off the platform with her boot. She flexed her hand. It bled a little, but at least she was regaining feeling and function in her right arm and fingers. If that first spider had known her, it would have bitten off her arm instead of just trying to crush it.

  Then she saw the mother spider’s head turn and stare down at Vorrin, who was helping Zuna cross the support cable to far side of the web chamber. The spider made a near-growl.

  “Shit.”

  Jendara had to distract it before it shot down Vorrin and Zuna. The spider was still too high for Jendara to reach, and she wasn’t sure the top layer of the web coffins would hold her if she tried to climb on them.

  And then she had an idea.

  “Watch out!” she shouted at Glayn, who knelt at Fithrax’s feet, slashing at the ulat-kini’s bonds. The gnome twisted aside as she charged.

  Her axe bit into the spider’s abdomen, and the spider screamed. Its legs flailed, stabbing down into Fithrax’s shoulders and ripping at the coffin walls. Jendara reached out for the ulat-kini.

  A leg speared down through the sheet of web, nearly skewering Jendara. She bobbed aside. “Is he free?” she shouted.

  “He is now,” Glayn grunted.

  She grabbed Fithrax’s shoulders and pulled hard. The sticky web of the back wall clung to him, ripping at his flesh. Jendara pulled harder.

  Fithrax fell against her. His mouth opened and closed as he gulped for air. A thin ribbon of blood dribbled off his lip.

  “You don’t get to die,” Jendara said. “I told Korthax I’d bring you back.”

  Fithrax coughed out a fine spray of blood. But he put his hand on her shoulder and took a wobbly step.

  “Come on!” Glayn shouted.

  Something struck Jendara between the shoulder blades. Hard little knives dug into the flesh of her shoulders. Jendara doubled over. There was no way she could reach whatever was biting into her back.

  “Help!”

  The gnome’s knife flew through the air. The spiderling shrieked as the knife drove it back into the web coffin, pinning its body to the wall.

  Glayn shoved Fithrax toward Jendara. “How in all hells are we going to get him across to the other side?”

  “Take my sword,” Jendara ordered.

  “What?”

  “Just take it!”

  The gnome pulled the sword from Jendara’s scabbard and stared at her. She pushed Fithrax down onto the support cable and wrapped one arm around him and the other around the cable.

  “We all hang onto each other,” Jendara explained, “and you cut the cable. Fast!”

  The spider mother’s spinneret twitched and sprayed out web as she worked to build the net that was rapidly filling the top of the chamber. The second s
he dropped that thing, they’d all be trapped inside with her.

  “Cut it, Glayn!”

  Gripping the sword in both hands, he slashed at the cable. Then he grabbed onto Fithrax’s belt and gave the cable one last awkward chop. With a twang, the cable split. The three swung through the air and hit the wall. Jendara reached up to grab the main support beam, the one that Glayn and Vorrin had followed around the side of the chamber.

  “Get up there, Fithrax.” She grunted as she pushed him up past her, shoving his arm into the deep white fluff that made up the wall. It wasn’t sticky enough to hold him up, but he managed to get a grip and bring his feet up onto the cable. He stopped moving for a second, coughing hard. A fine mist of blood spattered the white wall.

  Jendara glanced back at the center of the room. The spider had stopped weaving her net and now turned to face them, realizing they were about to escape.

  She caught Glayn’s hand and yanked him up onto the cable. “Hurry! Go!”

  They raced along the cable. Up ahead, Vorrin and Zuna were just scrambling up into the web tunnel. Jendara urged Fithrax and Glayn forward. If the spider caught them, they were dead.

  Fithrax struggled to pull himself into the tunnel, and Glayn gave his backside a shove. Jendara didn’t wait for the gnome to start climbing; she hoisted him up ahead of her. “Hurry!”

  Fithrax crawled faster. Zuna and Vorrin were a dark blot at the end of the tunnel.

  Jendara twisted around. The tip of a huge black leg appeared at the entrance of the tunnel, the biggest claw stroking the silk tenderly. It was feeling for vibrations, she realized. Feeling for them. She turned back around and felt her shoulder catch in the sticky stuff.

  “Shit.”

  Glayn stopped. “What’s wrong?”

  She glanced back over her shoulder. Now there were two spider legs. “I’m a little stuck.” She wouldn’t say anything about the spider, not yet. “It’ll just take me a second. Crawl faster.”

  She dug her toes into the spider web and threw herself forward. Her shoulder pulled free with a ripping of silken threads—thank goodness her sheepskin jacket was tough—and behind her, she heard a thin, high-pitched screeching that sounded all too horribly of delighted laughter.