by Joshua Khan
He pointed into the sky and loosed.
Dozens of bigger jewel spiders swung from their threads above them. One was the size of a pony, an easy, ridiculously easy, shot for Thorn.
The arrow sailed over it.
“You missed,” said Lily.
Thorn’s gaze stayed upward. “I weren’t aiming at the spider.”
There was a sharp snap as the arrow cut through the silk the big spider was suspended from. The spider flailed frantically as it fell, tearing down through others that dangled in its way.
What followed was a waterfall of crystal. One spider brought down five. Those five knocked down twenty, and so on until they were all tumbling crazily over one another. They smashed on the ground, crushing the spiders beneath them. Shards of glass flew everywhere as legs snapped and bodies shattered.
The wave of spiders that had blocked their path was now just a twitching mass of broken glass. All with one arrow.
Thorn smirked. “Well?”
Sometimes Lily didn’t know whether to slap Thorn or kiss him. This was one of those times.
“Run!” ordered Golgoth.
They ran. The remaining spiders raced after them. More fell from tree boughs. Others, larger and twisted in shape and cluttered with legs—ten, twelve, or more—glided down out of the mist on their spider silk.
Jared stood at the door, shouting at them. Lily ran, covering herself with her riding cloak yet feeling the thump of spiders landing on it. As she came within a few steps of the cottage, she tossed it away; dozens of creatures crawled all over it.
Dott tugged her inside. Golgoth was a step behind, Thorn last.
Jared slammed the door shut. His wife dashed forward and wedged a rolled-up blanket against the gap at the bottom.
Lily jumped up and down and shook her head. “Are there any on me? Check!”
“No, m’lady.” Jared turned her about. “None at all.”
Lily shivered. “Yuck. I hate spiders.” She brushed her shoulders, just in case. She could still feel their spiky legs….
“Not nice! Not nice a’ all!” thundered Dott. “Prin’ess good now.” She clasped Lily and gave her a lung-crushing squeeze.
Golgoth readied his axes and Thorn grabbed a log from beside the fireplace.
“What’s…what’s going on?” said Gabriel, cowering in the corner. “Mr. Funny? Why are you dressed like that? Is this some joke?”
Lily wriggled free of Dott. “You mean he doesn’t know?”
“Know what?” asked Gabriel.
The window shattered, and a jewel spider burst in. Legs over a foot long, and a bloated body the size of a pig. Silver venom dripped from its fangs. It pounced.
Golgoth leaped between them. He swept both axes, one left, the other right. Glass splintered all around him and the spider crashed, all eight legs severed. It thrashed uselessly until Dott brought her saucepan down on it, crushing it into powder.
“Mr….Funny?” asked Gabriel.
“His name’s Golgoth,” said Lily.
“No, he’s Mr. Funny. He’s always been Mr. Funny.” Tears dribbled down Gabriel’s cheeks. “Aren’t you?”
Golgoth winked. “Take this, m’lord.” He held an ax out to him.
More spiders tumbled through the now-shattered window.
“Into the next room,” said Jared. His wife and their two children were already moving. “It has a thicker door and no windows.”
“What about the rest of the villagers?” Lily asked.
Jared’s face was grim. “They’ll have to look after themselves.”
Lily didn’t like it. She could hear screams coming from the other cottages. But Jared was right—they had no choice.
They moved rooms, and Jared shut the door. There was just a single candle, sitting in a nook in the wall.
They heard a scratching at the door. The type of noise you might hear if hundreds of glass needlelike legs were trying to get in.
Lily looked around at the others. The candlelight turned their faces into almost primitive masks. From the grim determination of Golgoth to the fear worn by Gabriel. The keenness of Thorn to the simple faith of Dott.
A pair of legs reached under the gap. Thorn snapped them with a stamp of his foot.
“Where are they coming from?” asked Thorn.
“They were falling out of the sky.” Lily shook her head. “I don’t understand it.”
Thorn frowned. “Some spiders drift in the wind. Small ones carry themselves along on threads of spider silk. But only very small ones.”
“You stand beside me, boy, on my left,” said Golgoth. “M’lord, I’ll need you on my right.”
“Me help good!” said Dott.
“Yes, you hit anything with more than two legs that gets past us.” Golgoth shrugged his shoulders. “M’lord?”
Gabriel whimpered. “I can’t.”
“There’s nothing to it.”
Gabriel stumbled backward until he was right up against the fireplace. “No, I can’t.”
The pattering was all around. The cries coming from the other cottages rose in stark contrast to the relentless chimes of the spiders’ bodies hitting one another.
The door cracked as slivers of wood were sliced off from the opposite side.
“Get ready,” said Golgoth.
Lily turned the dagger in her hand. She’d played with toy swords when she was younger, but her parents had felt it wasn’t ladylike to use weapons. The sharpest thing she’d wielded in the last few years was a needle.
Thorn bit his lip. “Hold on,” he said. There was a loud scratching coming from behind them. “Did anyone block the flue?”
Gabriel screamed.
Curled up as he was, he didn’t move quickly enough as the jewel spiders fell down upon him from the chimney. He thrashed as they scurried down his collar and up his sleeves and pant legs. “Help me!”
The door crumbled under the weight of jewel spiders piled against it.
Lily leaped at Gabriel, swatting the spiders as she saw them.
“Careful with that!” Gabriel yelled as she smashed a spider with the flat of the blade.
“Just shut up!”
Gabriel fell as webbing entangled his right leg and began dragging him back toward the fireplace.
“Someone help me!” Lily cried. She grabbed Gabriel’s arm and fought, trying to hold him. Instead, she was slipping closer to the hearth.
Jared joined her, taking Gabriel’s other arm. Small scratches and bites covered Jared’s arms. He huffed and puffed, but he was sagging. He couldn’t stay awake.
His fingers slipped. The jolt made Lily lose hold herself. Gabriel slid faster toward the chimney, and up into it.
“Come back here!” Lily grabbed hold of his hair.
“OW!”
Gabriel clung to her arm even as it disappeared up the flue. But his grip was weakening. He’d been bitten, too.
“Help…me…” he muttered. One finger after another lost hold of her. “Mind…the hair….”
A sudden, final jerk ripped him from her. Soot fell as the boy disappeared up the chimney shaft.
“M’lord!” roared Golgoth. He flung off a larger spider, smashing it under his boot. His eyes were red with despair. “I’ve got to save him!”
“How?” Lily slumped. Her arms wobbled and she saw a pair of red bite marks on her hand. It must have happened while she was trying to save Gabriel.
I will not give in.
She gritted her teeth and stood up.
I will not.
Sleep was the brother of death, so they said. And she was House Shadow, a necromancer. She was the mistress of death. The only difference between a creature sleeping and a creature dead was the breathing.
Swaying where she stood, Lily breathed in.
Whatever little life those spiders had, she wanted it.
She continued to breathe in.
The spiders nearest her simply collapsed.
Still she drew breath.
Like
a ripple spreading outward, the creatures fell. Those farthest away sensed the danger and fled, but many more expired where they were, their lives taken instantly.
The chiming stopped.
Someone took her hand. Warm fingers locked around her own.
She opened her eyes and saw Thorn.
“They’re gone, Lily,” he said.
Lily sighed, and sank to the ground.
Thorn joined the cleanup the next morning. The mist was gone, revealing a village transformed by last night’s attack.
Webs covered Three Barrows. From the roofs to the tree and everything in between. Great sheets of silver, dew-sprinkled webbing hung off the long boughs and between the cottages.
Dead jewel spiders lay scattered everywhere. The villagers were busy sweeping them up. Children prodded them with sticks, and one or two of the locals gathered them, carefully, into boxes.
Thorn picked one up. Utterly dead.
A lot of things were starting to make sense to him now. Jewel spiders, not trolls, had been responsible for the devastation he’d seen at Pitch Farm. As Lord Shadow had said, Pitch and Milly had been impregnated by the spiders, and their two sons must have been taken. Just like Gabriel was taken.
And had they taken Tyburn, too? He’d been at Pitch Farm….
Thorn searched the sky. The sun had cleared away the clouds, driving them to form a thin gray haze to the north, revealing all, and nothing.
The spiders came from on high. But how?
Lily emerged from the cottage, with Dott helping her. She shuffled along like a witch from some old fairy tale, the hem of her dress dragging in the mushy snow.
“You look awful,” said Thorn.
“Thanks,” said Lily. “I’m just…tired.”
It was more than that. Her eyes looked hollow and her cheeks sunken. She’d lost weight; her dress hung loose over her bony frame, and her wrists could barely stop her bracelets from sliding off.
She saw him staring. “It’s the magic. Like I told you, it takes a toll. The more I use it, the more I’ll…change.”
“Then don’t use it,” said Thorn.
“What choice did I have?” she snapped. She touched her bony cheek. “The effects should wear off, given time. But if I overdo it, they’ll become permanent.”
“There’s no hiding what you are, is there?”
Lily smiled weakly. “It could be worse. Sorcerers of House Djinn turn into beings of living fire. One apparently combusted at his wedding.”
Dott picked up a snapped-off branch. “Not flyin’, not flyin’ at all.” She looked up at the trees. “I got no wings.”
Thorn gave Lily a querying look. Did she know what Dott was talking about? But Lily just shrugged.
Who understands trolls?
The three of them came upon Jared, gathering the thatch that had been torn off his roof last night. He bowed. “M’lady.”
“What’s the count?” Lily asked.
“Fifteen asleep. Ten gone,” he replied grimly. “Seven of those stolen were children. Their families are beside themselves.” Then, as though he’d just remembered who Lily was, he did his best to put on a brave face. “But it could have been much worse. No doubt those spiders would have taken all of us, including me, if it hadn’t been for you, m’lady. You have all our thanks.”
Did she? Thorn wasn’t so sure. Yesterday it had all been bows and curtseys; now he noticed a wariness. The villagers were keeping clear of Lily. He couldn’t hear what they were whispering, but he bet it was about her using magic.
Jared must have guessed how Lily was feeling. “It shames me, Lady Shadow, that they don’t see what’s right in front of them; that it would have been so much worse if you hadn’t, er, done what you did.”
“We’ll find everyone, Jared, I promise. And we’ll bring them back, if we possibly can.” She picked up a straw. “In the meantime, I’ll send my thatcher to repair the roofs. You’ll have dry homes, at least.”
He bowed again and went back to dealing with the damage.
Thorn waited until the headman was out of earshot. “You got a plan?”
“I’m open to suggestions.”
Thorn peered down the road. “We’re not far from Malice. The town was the source of the last infestation. Keep going?”
“I agree—for some of us, at least. But there’s something I don’t get. Look at the trees.” She pointed to the highest point of a nearby oak. Webs fluttered among the uppermost branches. “The jewel spiders came from up high. How?”
“I’ve been wondering the same thing.”
“They were carried, somehow. There’s more to this than a random infestation, Thorn. The answer’s there,” she said, pointing toward the sky. “And you need to go look.”
“On Hades? He won’t like being woken up.”
“You have to, and then you must find our missing people.” She smiled the smile that always meant trouble. For him. “And Gabriel.”
“You want me to rescue Gabriel? Seriously?” Thorn shook his head. “I’d rather kiss a troll.”
“Smoochies?” said Dott, lips puckered and waiting.
“Uh, later, maybe,” said Thorn. “All right. I’ll go look for the missing villagers and if—and that’s a big if—I happen to stumble on Gabriel, I’ll bring him back to Castle Gloom. Probably.”
“Thank you. And one more thing: you’d better take his fool with you.”
“You mean Golgoth, the Solar executioner?” Thorn crossed his arms. “That’ll be a no. I’m squire to one executioner already, thank you very much.”
“I spoke to him. We’ve decided to forget about the incident in the barn.”
“How can you? Last night he was going to chop your head off, and now we’re joining forces with him? That’s insane, that is.”
“That’s politics, Thorn.”
Golgoth stood at the open door of the barn, his equipment spread out on a table. A pair of curved swords. His axes. A cluster of daggers, narrow-bladed for sliding between ribs. A lot for a skinny man to carry. He was no longer wearing his fool’s motley but a tunic of stiff leather covered with strips of steel. A crowd of children watched him, fascinated, and a little bit frightened. Golgoth glared at them as he strapped the swords to his back. Then he picked up three of his daggers and started juggling. The children cheered.
“Now that’s plain weird,” said Thorn.
“See? Both murderous and entertaining,” said Lily. “I’m sure the two of you will get on just fine.”
“I still think you and I should stick together.”
“I’ll have Dott. We’ll keep going to Malice. Jared warned me that the town’s deep within House Tenebrae lands, and I may not get as warm a welcome there as I did here. So I’ll be traveling more discreetly.”
“Ain’t they loyal to the Shadows?”
“Until they see a weakness.” Lily sighed. “I won’t stay long—a day, at most. There’s a place called the Baker’s Inn; that’s where I’ll be.”
“The Baker’s Inn? Sounds almost quaint.” Thorn hesitated. “I still don’t like it, though. I’ll come with you, just in case.”
“I can look after myself,” said Lily with a wry smile. “But it’s good to know you care, Thorn.”
Thorn blushed. “Well, y’know, you do pay my wages.”
From one of the many mysterious folds in her skirt, Lily pulled an envelope closed with her seal, the twin crescent moon of House Shadow. “This will explain it all to Old Colm. He’s to send bats to every village and town in Gehenna warning them about the jewel spiders.” She handed the letter to Thorn. “Now get going.”
“All right. You look after yourself, Princess.” He turned toward the barn.
“Wait, Thorn.”
“What?”
She pouted. “Smoochies?”
Thorn’s blush deepened. Lily laughed and waved him off.
“Tyburn will kill you the moment he’s back,” said Thorn to his companion.
Golgoth raised an eyebrow. �
�Will he now?”
Lily had told Golgoth the truth, that Tyburn was still alive, somewhere. Maybe she’d thought it would scare him to know that if he tried anything he’d face her executioner sooner or later.
The trouble was, Golgoth was an executioner himself. They didn’t scare easily.
Thorn continued. “He’s the greatest executioner there’s ever been. Better than you, that’s for sure.”
“If you say so.”
“I’ve seen him kill seven men with nothing but a branch.”
“Why’d he use a branch?”
“Er…” Thorn decided that telling the truth—that Tyburn had fought with a branch because Thorn had stolen his sword at the time—wasn’t such a good idea. “Because he’s amazing.”
“Clearly,” replied Golgoth, sounding anything but amazed.
“So if you want to run off and hide in a cave somewhere for the rest of your life, I won’t stop you.”
“Thank you for your concern, but for now, until Gabriel is safe, I’ll be sticking around.”
“He thought you were his fool.”
“I am. Is that so bad? The boy’s been raised with the burden of being the only son of Duke Solar, the first boy after twelve daughters. He’s spoiled, foolish, arrogant, and a sharp pain in the backside, but I was there when he first laughed. When his eyes lit up with something other than fear and worry. And I aim to get him back.”
“I ain’t heard no one speak about Gabriel like that before.”
“I doubt his own father knows him half as well as I do.”
No wonder Gabriel was so messed up. His only friend was an executioner.
Webs hung from the trees, and Thorn thought he’d heard the fateful chiming of jewel spiders moving, sometimes nearby, sometimes not. And Bone-Tree was too quiet. No birdsong. No animals moving through the foliage. No calls of deer, no foxes barking.
Thunder shifted uneasily, sensing the unnatural atmosphere as keenly as Thorn. Golgoth’s right hand rested on his ax, and his left kept tight hold of the reins of the skittish Lightning. The sun, weak as it was, glowed above the treetops and was on its way west. Thorn wanted to be back within the walls of Castle Gloom before the shadows grew much longer.
But if the spiders did attack and Golgoth happened to get caught…
Thorn smiled.