CREATURES OF KANMORHAN VANE
The creature whose web Karigan was trapped in hurtled
through the woods, smashing trees aside with enormous claws as if
they were nothing, the metallic gleam of its carapace a nightmare
memory of the other time she’d been caught in such a web and fought
the same kind of creature. Fought and survived, but not without
help. She did not think that Soft Feather, the great gray eagle,
would fly in to help her this time.
She cried out in
despair when she saw there wasn’t just one creature, but two, each
like a giant crab, each scuttling forward on jointed legs, black
orbs on the ends of mobile eyestalks and antennae feeling out the
terrain. Tails with dagger-sized stingers arched over their
backs.
So this was really
it, Karigan thought. The end.
“What’s happening?”
Yates demanded. “Tell me!”
“It’s been . . .”
Karigan began, and she meant to finish with: an honor to be your friend. And then she was going
to tell him to leave, to find his way as best he could, to go
somewhere he could wait for the others to locate him. But
something—someone—else caught her eye even as the crab creatures
trundled closer, a flash of movement, a man.
This time it was Ard
who appeared to her. She was sure of it. No mistaking him for Lynx
or Grant, and certainly not the Eletians. He watched them from
behind a tree.
He was no more than
illusion, she concluded, just like the masked tumbler, just like
Lynx. She’d lost her grip on what was real.
The Ard figure
peered at the scene very carefully, and with a final glance toward
the creatures, he backed away and ran into the woods. Karigan
watched him go with regret.
Perhaps the
creatures were illusion, too, but no such luck, for Yates kept
demanding for her to tell him what she saw. It was clear he could
hear the monsters well enough. They’d halted several yards away
from the web, swiveling to face each other. One was clearly larger
and raised its claws and tail high as though to impress the other
with its size. The other sidestepped away as if wanting to flee,
but the bigger creature moved with it, blocking it. The smaller
then jabbed its claws at the larger, and the larger caught and held
them in its own pincers.
Their movement
became a sort of dance, the pair circling around and around,
holding claws.
If the creatures
kept busy, Karigan thought she might still have a chance. The
urgency of the situation cleared her mind of illusion and fear.
Resolve surged within her.
“Yates,” she called,
“do you still have your sword?”
“Yes.”
“Carry it pointed
ahead, toward my voice.”
“Why?
What—”
“I am caught in a
web. You hear that noise? The web belongs to one of those creatures
making all the noise, and the last time I was caught in a web like
this, I was supposed to be food for that creature’s offspring.” So
far, with her limited range of vision, Karigan had not observed any
eggs.
“Oh,” Yates said, the lilt in his voice telling her
he remembered her story about the creature of Kanmorhan Vane. He
remained silent after and Karigan feared he’d frozen.
“Yates! You all
right? We haven’t time. . . !”
“Yeah. I think I’m
sometimes glad I can’t see.”
Karigan kept
talking, guiding him slowly toward her, trying to sound calm while
panic reared up inside her once again, and the two enormous
creatures continued their dance on the other side of the web. They
appeared transfixed with one another, their tails arced high,
stingers leaking poison, poised for battle. How long would they
remain preoccupied? She hoped, when they knocked over another tree,
that they would not knock one down on her and Yates.
Finally she felt the
pressure of Yates’ sword against the small of her
back.
“Stop!” she
cried.
“Whew. Didn’t want
to run you through.”
“I need you to cut
me out of the web,” she said, and continued to give him painstaking
instructions, guiding his sword with her words.
He nearly cut off
her hand, but he turned the blade just in time, slashing through
the sticky, strong filaments of the web. When her arm was free, she
was able to draw her long knife and cut herself out the rest of the
way. She backed away from the web, pulling sticky strands off her
face and hair and body. The broken filaments of the web floated
after her, reaching for her.
“Can we go now?”
Yates asked.
“Definitely.”
Karigan collected her staff and glanced back at the creatures. And
did a double take. Their dance had concluded, and now the larger
was clambering onto the back of the smaller, which had lowered its
tail submissively to the side, its stinger planted in the
earth.
A choked,
half-hysterical laugh crept out of Karigan’s throat.
“What is it?” Yates
asked.
“They weren’t
fighting after all,” was all she said.
“Oh.”
She had no idea how
long the mating of the creatures would take, so she hurriedly
placed Yates’ hand on her shoulder and started leading him away as
fast as her painful leg allowed. She did not have a plan or
direction in mind, just to get as far away from the creatures and
the web as she could.
“By the way,” she
said as she limped along, “if I say I’m seeing something, you make
sure I’m really seeing it.”
“Like Lynx
earlier?”
“Yeah.”
“How do I do
that?”
“I don’t know. Pinch
me, kick me. Question me. Do whatever it takes.”
Yates sighed. “Life
with you is not dull.”
Karigan lost track
of what direction they were headed in. For all she knew they were
wandering in circles, but she kept stumbling on until night swooped
down on them like the dark wings of one of Blackveil’s giant
avians. When Karigan found a seemingly safe place beneath a leaning
pine—any place away from the web and those creatures seeming to be
safe—she collapsed on the spot. Her leg was screaming and oozing,
and all she cared about was getting off it. Immediately the languor
descended on her once again. Yates slid down beside
her.
“We lost our stuff,”
he said.
“I
know.”
“What about a
shelter?”
“I’ll make one.” But
she could not imagine rising again. All her remaining strength bled
from her and her mind felt gray, as gray as the fog of Blackveil.
With the pain and exhaustion, she just wanted to rest.
“We don’t have any
food,” Yates said.
Why must he state
the obvious? “Eat some dirt,” she mumbled.
“You want me to eat
dirt?”
“Thought I saw
Ard.”
“Just
now?”
“Earlier. When I was
stuck in the web.”
“One of your
illusions?”
“Uh-huh. If he saw
us, he’d have brought the others to help us.”
“I hope,” Yates
said, “this problem you’re having is a temporary
thing.”
“Me, too,” she
replied, leaning against his shoulder. She wished it were all
temporary. Their chances of survival were dismal at best. They were
without food or a reliable source of water. Alton had somehow
survived for days in Blackveil under similar conditions, but he’d
found the wall and Tower of the Heavens. Karigan and Yates were far
away from the wall. For all Karigan knew, they’d passed into one
hell or another, and the chances of finding their way out were
growing less likely, especially with Yates blind and her own sight
unreliable.
At the moment, she
didn’t care. She just needed a little rest. She’d rest then somehow
make them a shelter. Before she fell asleep, she had the presence
of mind to remove her moonstone from her pocket, its brightness
raising her spirits for a moment, but even that light could not
hold back the darkness of deep exhaustion, and she dropped off even
as the rains came once again.