XVI

“Should we really be going in during the night?” Sir Morryn asked.

“Ideally no,” Dantera answered.

Yoreno followed, his torch lit and providing plenty of good light to see by. But he wouldn’t have minded having Mai around for the extra illumination. In some instances she even enchanted the flame, making it brighter than a normal torch.

Crickets shirped in the grasses.

Yoreno unsheathed his sword as they approached the crag in the ground. The gossamer webbing all around was mostly gone, charred to ashes on the dirt.

He came up beside Dantera and glanced down into the hole. There was almost no light at the bottom, save for what little daylight remained. It projected a soft visible area at the bottom.

Dantera dropped her torch.

It landed on the dirt bellow and lit a wider area. “I see no spiders.”

“It’s so dark,” Sir Xanderial said. “Why don’t we simply pour a few barrels of oil down there and light it up?”

“We don’t know how far the tunnels go,” Dantera said. “Even if they do not go far, the spiders are likely to dig their way out to escape. You don’t want that, do you?”

He shook his head.

“Let’s kill them,” Sir Morryn said as he unsheathed his sword. “You and you, pound that stake into the ground.” He pointed at the mallet and the iron stake. Then he dropped the thick coil of rope on his shoulder.

The townspeople went to work.

Once the rope was fastened, Yoreno took hold if the coil and dropped it into the hole. “Sir Jerrin?”

He had been quiet. Yoreno had almost forgotten he had come with them.

“Yes?”

“I think it would be wise if you stayed behind to guard our exit. We don’t know who else is around these parts, and I have a suspicion about this spider nest.”

He nodded solemnly. “Of course.”

Sir Xanderial said, “I’m astounded by which the ease you do your work, Lord Brendara.”

Yoreno couldn’t help but smile. It hadn’t been long before when he had been little more than a pampered noble. Back then, the thought of crawling into a spider nest would have been horrifying.

“They still give me the shivers,” he said. “But as an adventurer, you get used to these sorts of things.”

“Then I will forevermore remain a knight.”

Sir Morryn grunted as Dantera let out a small laugh. Despite her knightly status, she still acted the lady. It clearly couldn’t be helped.

It didn’t bother Yoreno. He just hoped this didn’t cause them trouble at some point in the future. Before repelling down, Yoreno glanced at Dantera and grinned. See you down there.

“Of course,” she said, her tone playful and full of disdain.

With his sword in his left hand, Yoreno wrapped the thick coil of rope around his leg and used his right hand to control the speed at which he would slide down the course material.

He jumped, the coil around his leg taking the brunt of his weight as he slid down. He squeezed the rope and his glove got hot, but before it burned through the leather, he landed on his feet amidst the orange-yellow flicker of the torch, his footfalls echoing across the cavern interior.

Immediately he felt the dampness in the air, the warmth.

Glancing up, he saw the silhouetted forms of Dantera and their two knight companions offered to them by Lady Kornet. Sir Jerrin was not glancing down into the pit. Perhaps it was the right call to leave him on the surface.

Yoreno glanced about, making certain no spiders were nearby before he bent and picked up the torch.

Dantera did not call down after him, instead she did exactly what he had and landed next to him. Her eyes flicked up as soon as her feet hit the ground, then she stalked about the chamber with with wary eyes and her sword in her hand.

“It stinks.”

“Ash and burnt webbing,” he offered in way of explanation.

“No,” she said. “I smell… rotting flesh.”

“I have no doubt we will find the desiccated bodies of more than a few of the villagers.”

Dantera made a noise of disgust as Sir Morryn dropped down in the chamber shortly before Sir Xanderial. Xanderial coughed quietly and glanced about while he walked forward. “I’ve never been in a spider nest before.”

He pulled a torch out of his bag and handed one to Morryn, then one to Dantera. They all took turns lighting them on Yoreno’s.

“Now you have a story to tell at ale houses.”

“Hardly the reason I would want to do this,” Xanderial said.

“I know.”

Yoreno moved forward while he held his torch as high as he could to cast as much light down into his way as possible. The grotto chamber was rough and rocky, bits of burnt web still hanging about. Other debris littered the floor, but it was difficult to tell what they might be. So far there were no bodies.

In front of him the chamber opened up into a narrow passage, burnt webbing inside. He moved to the crack and turned his shoulders to keep from touching the webbing. It was sticky, but wouldn’t prevent him from peeling himself off of it.

If a man landed bodily into a wide swath of web, then he would have trouble getting out. But it seemed these spiders were burrowers, not the traditional suspended web types, which rarely made for monstrous class anyway.

The cave continued on for about ten paces, then opened up into another hollowed out cavern. This one was full of webbing.

Yoreno glanced about, tightening the grip on his sword as the suspended bodies created a path of obstacles in his way.

“And here we are,” Dantera said quietly behind him.

There were at least ten bodies here.

“My gods!” Sir Morryn exclaimed. “I knew it would be bad, but… but this is…” then he bent over and retched.

Sir Xanderial dropped his torch and went up to his fellow knight. He put a hand on Morryn’s shoulder.

“Ugh.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his glove. “I’m fine.”

Xanderial glanced about. “I was apprehensive to come down here before,” he said. “But now I’m glad we’ve come.”

Yoreno moved between the bodies. Most of them had layers of webbing around them, but not enough to completely obscure the desiccated corpses within, their hollowed out eyes stairing out at them and their open mouths laughing.

They had screamed while dying.

Dantera kept close, glanced at Yoreno as he moved forward.

Suddenly something scurried.

Sir Morryn gasped and glanced about quickly.

Yoreno turned. “Easy.”

“Where are they?” he asked.

He was panicking. This was not good. Yoreno glanced at Xanderial, then jerked his head toward Morryn. Xanderial nodded imperceptibly in acknowledgement of Yoreno’s warning.

“Whoa!” Dantera said. She said it—she did not shout it. “This one is moving.”

“Cut him down!” Morryn said. “He’s still alive!”

“Wait!” Yoreno called.

But Sir Morryn didn’t listen. He swung his blade and cut the body down. It fell heavily onto the floor and he dropped his sword. It clattered across the rocky ground.

“Morryn,” Xanderial said. “Do not put down your sword!”

“Do not open that!” Yoreno hissed.

Morryn made to rip the webbing open, but when he pulled back the sticky gossamer, all he found was a thick paper-like husk and jerked back with a gasp, then pushed forward with more vigor.

“We have to get him out!”

Yoreno put his boot onto Morryn’s shoulder and knocked him aside. He sprawled out in a scraping of armor and jerked his head up with surprise.

Xanderial looked at him sharply, confusion on his face.

“What are you doing!” Morryn shouted. “There’s a person in there!”

“Dammit, man!” Dantera snarled. “That is not a person.”

“Wha—what do you mean?” Xanderial asked as he glanced back at Morryn, then to the pouch on the ground.

“Look at it,” Yoreno said. “Look!”

Xanderial bent down and examined it. “What… what is this?”

Morryn was looking at it too now.

“It’s a spider egg.”

Dantera physically shook.

Yoreno looked at her, then regarded the two knights. “It’s moving because it’s nearly ready to hatch.”

“And then?” Xanderial said.

“And then a few hundred milky-white spiders the size of your fist come pouring out of it. They will be hungry and ready to eat.”

There was more scurrying above them in the webbing. They all glanced up suddenly and a shiver ran up Yoreno’s spine. “And now,” he said, “we’ve alerted the spiders to our presence.”

“What?!” Morryn barked. He grabbed his sword, the tip sliding across the rocks loudly and metallically.

“They will come to defend their eggs,” Dantera said. She was very composed, except for her moment of shivering.

“There,” Yoreno said, and pointed.

Xanderial and Morryn turned to regard the spot where he had indicated.

Morryn shouted. “There! It’s there.”

“We can see it!” Xanderial said.

Yoreno moved forward, keeping his eyes open and his awareness high. “Be careful,” he said. “Make sure you watch for jumpers.”

“Jumpers?” Morryn asked incredulously.

“These may not be the sort, but you never know.” Yoreno moved up and the spider reacted by recoiling away from him. But now he was in lunging distance. He lashed out, the point of his sword taking the spider between its glossy black beads for eyes.

As he pulled back like a fencer, the spider squirmed, fell to the ground and jumped on its back, its legs curling in on itself.

“Is… is it dead?” Xanderial asked.

“Close enough,” Dantera said. “Spiders are not warriors—they are hunters. Once you mortally wound a spider, it will not fight, it will curl in on itself and die quietly.”

Morryn had worked up a sweat, his eyes wide. “Truly?”

Dantera nodded solemnly.

The blood on Yoreno’s sword could hardly be called blood. It was more of a viscous slime, yellow-green in color and odorless.

“One dead,” Dantera said. “Who knows how many more to go.”

“Let’s burn them!” Morryn said.

Yoreno moved up beside the man. “That is not a bad idea, Sir.”

Yoreno flung his torch into the gossamer webbing on the wall. The flames took hold quickly and began to lick at the highly flammable webbing.

“Now we retreat to the chamber beyond and wait.”

They did just that, but when Yoreno came forward, his heart leapt into his throat. Clearly it was completely dark outside now, because the light cast on the floor through the hole was gone, the opening above completely dark save for the stars.

But what Yoreno’s torch illuminated revealed a horrifying truth.

“NO!” Morryn shouted. He looked at the three dead bodies of the peasants who had come here to help them and at the coil of rope that had been cut. He stalked forward, his armor scraping, and glanced up. “Hey!”

“Gods…” Xanerial said. “Who would do this?”

Despite feeling uneasy, Yoreno did not panick, though he did swallow against the knot in his throat. “I’m not certain.” But Sir Jerrin was up there.

“Sir Jerrin!” Dantera called.

They waited.

“He’s not here!” Morryn snapped as he gestured to the dead bodies. “It must have been him!”

“We will figure that out later,” Dantera said. Then she glancing up at the hole above, she bellowed through cupped hands for Sir Jerrin a second time.

But there was no answer.

“Can you make that jump?” Yoreno asked.

Morryn whirled on them. “You can jump from here? You can get help?”

“No,” Dantera said.

“BUT HE SAID—“

“Be quiet, man! I cannot jump that high!” she hissed, indicating the hole above with a fling of her torch.

“Morryn,” Xanderial said. “Be calm.”

“Be calm?! How can I be calm, you fools! We’re going to die down here!”

“Does it look like we’re dead?” Dantera asked.

“That’s enough,” Yoreno said, indicating both Dantera’s loss of patience and Morryn’s excessive panic. “We will do what we came here to do. If there isn’t another way out of this nest, then Lady Kornet will send more knights to investigate when we don’t return soon.”

Morryn sucked in a huge lungful of air as he obviously tried to take control of his own fear. He did seem to calm a bit as he glanced about. The cold sweat on his face was visible from three paces away.

“The fire will burn the webbing in the next chamber and we will press on if this nest goes beyond what we have already seen.”

“I doubt it does,” Dantera said.

“Why?” Xanderial asked as he glanced back toward the narrow crack between the two chambers. “How can you be so certain?”

“Spider nests aren’t particularly rare,” she said. “Even the monstrous variety. Not often do they spread out beyond a few chambers.”

“Can this be true?” Morryn asked.

Yoreno nodded. “Unless…”

He didn’t say the rest. Had Sir Morryn not have been in such a panic, Yoreno might have, but he was concerned for Morryn’s behavior and what problems it might cause.

Dantera looked at Yoreno, a slightly grave note in her eyes.

“What is it?” Xanderial asked.

She looked at him, but they couldn’t just as well lie to the two knights. They weren’t fearful children calling on their parents because monsters were under the bed.

“It does seem to be a strange location for a nest,” Dantera said.

“Why?”

“Directly into the ground?” she asked. “How often do you find rocky grottos near a town in what would otherwise be a very common area in the foothills to the mountains?”

Xanderial glanced between her and Sir Morryn and shrugged.

“Cult magic?” Morryn asked. “Is that what you’re implying?”

No one said anything.

“I should not have come,” Sir Morryn said.

“Hold it together, man,” Xanderial said through gritted teeth. “Did you not see how easily Lord Brendara dispatched that spider?”

He swallowed, nodded. “Okay. Okay.”

“All right?”

“Yes,” Morryn said. “I am fine.” He swallowed. “I will be fine.”

But the knight looked like he might need to sit.

A a wave of scurrying echoed through the crack between the caverns. Yoreno whirled.

“What was that?” Xanderial asked.

“That’s… not possible for a normal spider nest. Not after we burned the chamber beyond!” Dantera said.

“Get ready!” Yoreno shouted, and tossed his torch near the crack. “Ready your blades!”