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There was new movement on her forehead. Slowly, a hair at a time, her blindfold slipped up. At last it was over her brows. Her left eye filled with a small, inky head. The bonds that wrapped her so well apparently had no effect on a darking.
“Thank you,” she tried to tell Leaf. Whatever sealed her mouth kept the sound in.
“Badbad,” Leaf replied.
Yes indeed, she thought. Badbad. I must’ve stepped into a snare laid for anything big and edible that came down here to drink.
Turning her head, she examined her bonds, and began to shake. Not rope, but dust-gray web, gripped her. She knew what it was, having seen enough such webs in both sunlight and in the dark, when they glowed. They were the creation of spidrens.
She trembled. Of all the immortals that she had battled over the last three years, those were the worst. They had furry spider bodies; the females were mottled, males black. At least five feet tall, their heads were human, with sharp, predatory teeth. They leaped amazing distances, and preferred human blood to any other food. She had lost count of the times that she had found humans caught in their webs.
Immediately she listened, listened hard, for the web spinners. There was no telling which could be worse—that they had laid the trap and then left the area, or that they might be close by. At last, on the outer fringes of her magical range, she felt something immortal. If it was a spidren, perhaps she still had time to escape.
Taking a breath, the girl became a great jungle snake. Her clothes drooped around her scaled form. Gathering herself to crawl away, she ran face first into a shrinking web. As she fought to get her skull free, it closed so tightly that it pinched her coils together.
She changed: swan shape. The web fitted her new body perfectly, binding her. That sense of immortals on the fringes of her awareness was stronger, and familiar: spidrens for sure, three of them.
She wanted to scream, but stopped herself. They were very close now, moving fast; they must know they had a prize.
Perhaps small’s not the best way, she thought. Focusing on the great bears of the north, Daine shed her swan shape. The web, instead of bursting, stretched. She was as captive as before.
If she had to face them, she needed clothes. No one could feel brave when naked, and all she wore now was the silver claw. Somehow she didn’t think she would feel dressed, meeting spidrens with only the badger’s token to wear. Eyes closed, she re-formed her true self, easing human limbs into breeches and sleeves, recovering her back and hips, until she was properly dressed. That done, she sank back. What now?
Her dagger. She twisted, looking for it. Her forearms were plastered against her sides, but if she could reach it. . . . The hilt at her waist was covered by web. She couldn’t even touch the weapon.
“Look, dears, we have a guest!” taunted a voice from above.
Daine looked up. Three spidrens—two males and a larger female—descended a nearby rock face on threads of web. Her stomach rolled as they jumped away from the cliff to land near her.
“Only think,” said a male. “All the realms know that King Ozorne of the Stormwing Alliance will heap rewards on whoever brings a certain female mortal treat—”
“Or a long-shanked mortal mage,” interrupted the other male.
“Quite right,” said the first. “So everyone else searches—and the treat falls right into our nets. The gods must love jokes like these; they tell them so many times.”
The female minced over. “Greetings, Veralidaine Sarrasri. How are we today? We look terrible.” She bared silvery teeth in a grin.
“Eat my loincloth,” retorted the girl, sweating. “It’s bad enough looking at you, without hearing your blather.”
“Oh, tut.” The female patted Daine’s cheek lightly with a clawed leg. The girl winced—even a light spidren tap hurt. “That empty-headed mother of yours should have taught you manners.”
“Keep your mouth off my ma!”
The spidren crouched to bring her face closer. “You’re in no position to dictate the rules of conversation.”
“Where’s the long man?” the male who’d spoken first wanted to know. “He’s always close to this little morsel.”
“Can we kill her even a little bit?” asked the second male. “Can we eat her?”
The female spun. Pink web flew out of the spinneret under her belly, plastering itself over the hungry male’s face. He screamed and fell back, clawing at it.
“Remember Ozorne’s reward!” she cried when he’d gotten most of the pink strands off. Unlike the gray webbing, the pink left thick, raised welts. “He’ll give us human slaves for centuries! He—”
One of the two male spidrens exploded. The female spidren shrieked, and kicked Daine to the ground behind her. The girl squinted. What had happened? One spidren was gone, blown to pieces. In the splatter of black blood that was his remains stood Numair. Livid with rage, he raised his staff as the female spidren reared.
Jelly raced over the ground to plaster itself over the spinneret on the female’s belly, and bulged as the spidren tried to force liquid web through it. Leaf jumped from the top of a nearby boulder to cover the female spidren’s face. Her shriek was muffled; she could neither see nor breathe. Numair pursued the remaining male, beating him with his staff.
Slowly the female spidren collapsed. When she stopped moving, Jelly dropped away from her spinneret. The liquid web that the darking had bottled up spilled to pool uselessly on the ground. The female’s head fell back; Leaf peeled itself from her face. Daine saw lumps on the hatted darking, pieces of it that had been sucked into the spidren’s nose and mouth. Leaf had suffocated her.
Numair’s opponent was the last to die. When the immortal sank to the ground, head crushed, the webs on Daine turned liquid and flowed away. She was free.
“Numair?”
He stood motionless, his back to her, leaning on his staff. He appeared to be staring at the dead spidren.
Frightened, the girl dragged herself to her knees, then to her feet. Upright, she swayed. “Please . . . are you all right?”
He turned. “You—you’re—alive. I thought . . .”
She staggered over to him. “I hurt too much to be dead.”
Dropping the staff, Numair swept her up in his arms; hers went around his neck. He stroked her back; Daine buried her fingers in his hair. Pulling away, she tried to get a proper look at him. Their eyes met for a breathless moment as heat surged through her body. Then his mouth was on hers, his breath warmly mingling with her own.
She had been kissed before, over the last two years. Perin the clerk, the most persistent of her swains, had done it a number of times since Midwinter, before the war broke out. A moment ago, she would have said that she liked kissing well enough.
This was different. Liking did not begin to describe the thunder in her body and heart. Hot sweetness raced from his lips through her body, making her tingle, making the breath come short in her tired lungs, making her knees watery. Powerful awareness of all the places their bodies touched—from his palms on her back to her breasts, belly, and thighs crushed against his—made the blood pound in her veins.
Numair took his mouth away. “No,” she whispered, and pulled him back. He was gentler this time, easing his lips carefully over hers, pulling away briefly, then returning.
A good thing he’s holding me up, she thought giddily. Elsewise I’d fall down.
He pulled away with a strangled laugh and scooped her up in his arms, carrying her over to a large rock. There he sat, cradling Daine in his lap. “Goddess bless,” he whispered, smoothing her curls away from her face. “Magelet, I thought I’d lost you.”
On top of her recent experiences, it was too much. She buried her face in his shirt so he wouldn’t see the tears that trickled from her eyes. He seemed content to simply wrap his arms around her, lips against her hair. The darkings on the ground observed the humans, small, eyeless heads cocked to one side. Noticing them, Daine smiled.
“We need to rest and eat,
” Numair remarked after a while. “It’ll soon be too hot to travel, and there is the path to relocate as well. If I remember correctly, this river is on the map. It parallels our route and emerges from this canyon near the path. Once you feel better, perhaps, you could fly up and locate it. What do you think?”
She didn’t answer.
“Sweet?” Craning to see her face, he realized that she was asleep. With a sigh, he got to his feet, cradling his student, friend, and love. Daine’s only reaction was to snuggle closer. To the darkings Numair said, “Let’s find some shelter.”
“—if I have this straight—no disrespect, Lord Badger, but I confess to some confusion.”
Daine smiled in her dream: Queen Thayet of Tortall was never confused.
“You and this—”
“Gold-streak,” a tiny voice said.
“Tell me that these two creatures—”
“Darkings,” Gold-streak corrected.
