Marsheila Rockwell - Skein of Shadows

Putting herself willingly in another person’s power galled Sabira, but she supposed there was no better test of loyalty. She could only pray that the drow passed.

Xujil led them out into the cavern, and Sabira risked a glance up at the city. They were much nearer the wall here and Sabira could see a cluster of drab, torchlit tents huddled outside the gates. Beyond them, red firelight gleamed off the bladelike appendages of the guardians, each one easily the length of a greatsword. She didn’t need Xujil’s urging to look back down again.

The road beneath them was smooth from centuries of use and they moved swiftly along it, soon reaching the tents farthest from the wall. As they passed through the vacant camp, a deep tone sounded from somewhere within the city.

“I misjudged! The gates are closing! Come!”

Xujil pulled the ropes that bound them and the knots loosened and fell away. He returned their weapons and then he led them on a crouching race through the hide-covered tents, choosing a path that kept them out of view of the wall. Then there were no more tents, and the metal gates were clanging shut.

“Run!”

All pretense at stealth abandoned, they raced for the sheer stone wall.

Xujil reached it first, and turned toward the gate with a look of panic. Sabira could hear the scrape of metal on metal as the guardians began to crawl down from their posts.

“Hurry!”

Greddark reached the wall and fumbled for a charm on his bracelet, this one a tiny dagger. It grew in his hand until it was over a foot long and the purple metal shone with its own light. He plunged it into the gray stone above his head and then turned to her and Xujil.

“Take my hands!”

She obeyed, grabbing his right hand with her left while the drow grasped the other. As he began to walk into the wall, his body disappearing as it came in contact with the stone, Sabira felt pain lance along the back of her thigh. Turning awkwardly, she saw one of the guardians, its bladed leg raised for another blow.

Without thinking, she dropped Greddark’s hand and whirled. She heard Xujil cry out as she brought her urgrosh down in a two-handed grip, slamming the spider’s leg away, then rotating her wrists and catching another of its segmented limbs on her backswing. The swordlike segment fell to the ground in a spray of black blood and the guardian chittered in agony, skittering backward. Sabira turned and lunged for the wall, catching the fingers of Xujil’s outstretched hand just before he, too, disappeared into the stone.

She felt a strange stretching sensation and then she was falling through an endless expanse of vibrant blue sky, clutching the drow’s hand desperately as the three of them tumbled through perfection in utter, peaceful silence.

And then her foot hit the ground on the other side of the wall and they were inside the City of Shadows. Xujil pulled them quickly into a nearby alleyway, hunkering down behind some crates as they put their goggles back on.

“Stay here, and stay hidden. I will attempt to find where the sorceress is being held.” Sabira nodded her agreement, touching her hand gingerly to the back of her leg where the guardian had scored her. Her hand came away bloody. Greddark saw and quickly produced bandages from somewhere on his person. As he began wrapping her leg, Xujil checked to make sure he could exit the alleyway without being seen. Before leaving, he looked back at the two of them. “And if you should encounter any of the Spinner’s smaller children, do not harm them. Here, inside Her city, She will know.”

“Yeah, won’t be long before She knows about the one outside the city, either, so I’d suggest you get moving,” Sabira said, wincing as Greddark cinched the bandage tight. Then the drow nodded and disappeared around the corner, leaving them alone in the darkness.

As they waited for the drow to return, it became obvious that this part of the city was all but deserted. Even in the darkest alleyways and most secluded parks of a metropolis this size, the bustle of so many people living their lives could still be heard. Children crying, drunks brawling, dogs barking, vendors wheedling, guards shouting as they chased down thieves. But in the City of Shadows, silence reigned. That, more than anything, drove home the foreignness of the Umbragen, in a way Xujil’s odd mannerisms and brutal beliefs had not yet managed to.

She heard a faint scratching sound beside her and looked over, expecting to see the spiders Xujil had warned her not to squish. Instead, she saw Greddark using a small stone to etch tally marks in the dirt.

“Counting the moments until he comes back?” she asked, keeping her voice low so it wouldn’t carry. “Didn’t think you’d miss him that much.”

“Counting the days,” Greddark replied.

Sabira frowned and felt dried mud crack and fall from her forehead.

“Why?”

He looked at her askance.

“I don’t think you want to know.”

Well, she was sure she didn’t, now.

“Tell me.”

“I think I’ve figured out the Anvil part of the Prophecy.” More mud fell, from around her mouth this time.

“And?”

“I think the word that was translated as ‘silent’ actually meant ‘at rest.’ It’s a subtle difference, but an important one, considering what today is.”

Sabira felt her heart moving into her throat.

“And what’s today, besides the beginning of some spider goddess’s three-day Festival of Quietude?”

“It’s the second of Rhaan. Onatar’s Rest, the one day of the year the forges go quiet in the Holds.”

Sabira’s heart was joined by her stomach. Onatar was the Sovereign God of Fire and Forge, but he had another colloquial name.

The Anvil.

“It’s just a coincidence,” she said after a moment, but even she could hear the uncertainty in her voice.

They didn’t speak again after that, each of them lost in their own thoughts. Sabira refused to believe that forces beyond her ken had engineered events so that she and Greddark would be here, in this unlikely place on this unlikely date, to fulfill the conditions of some bit of mediocre poetry. Greddark must be mistaken about the translation-Breven had been adamant that the “three dark moons” interpretation was the correct one, and multiple scholars with far more knowledge and experience than the dwarf had agreed.

Then again, Sabira knew from personal experience that being certain didn’t always mean being right.

Something tickled her wrist, and she went to slap at it without thinking. Greddark grabbed her hand before the blow could connect and she looked down to see a swarm of tiny spiders crawling across her forearm. The multi-legged horde migrated over her arm, across her open palm and down her leg, congregating around the bandage on her thigh, where blood was beginning to seep through. It seemed for a moment as if the creatures were tasting her, and Sabira had to suppress a shudder of revulsion. She suddenly understood people who hated spiders much, much better.

The last stragglers were just disembarking from her boot when Xujil appeared at the mouth of the alleyway and quickly made his way to them.

“Come. I have found her.”

Tilde was being held in a small chapel away from the main temple complex where the majority of the city’s population had gathered for their observance of the Holy. Here, Xujil told them, she would undergo a cleansing ritual so that on the appointed day, she would be an acceptable offering for the Spinner. The sorceress would be attended by priestesses at designated times during the three days leading up to her sacrifice, but for the most part, she would be left alone. They had a chance to free her, if they moved quickly enough.

Two drow in ceremonial armor guarded the door, the crest on their black breastplates depicting a red-eyed, blade-footed guardian. Greddark took them out with two crossbow bolts to the forehead and they collapsed with a clatter.