Roland Green: The Wayward Knights

Instead of dropping, the ceiling rose further and the walls receded. Before Pirvan had fully realized it, the vanguard had spilled out into a vast underground chamber, taller than the highest tower in Istar and so wide that an entire regiment could have formed a line of battle across the floor. Or rather, they could have, if a vast expanse of white webbing hadn't stretched across the chamber from side to side. It hung a man's height off the floor, rose two men's height higher than that, and seemed to spread over at least half the chamber's area.

It also glowed, with a pearly light that recalled no kind of spell Pirvan knew of, and made him wish that Tarothin was alive or Lujimar not wholly lost in his own purposes. The knight was commander of this host; he needed to know his enemy.

One thing struck several fighters of each race at the same moment: the light made glowballs unnecessary. They dropped theirs and rushed forward. No one saw whether a minotaur or a human reached the webbing first, but everyone in the chamber saw what happened to the first of each.

It was not without reason that Pirvan had thought of spiders when he saw the webbing. What crawled out of the webbing had twelve legs instead of eight, and poison-dripping hooks on the inside of the foremost legs instead of fangs. They also had more eyes than Pirvan dared count, all glowing a diseased blue that might have been found in the coldest part of the Abyss or in some nightmare cave on Nuitari.

To these not-spiders, the minotaurs and humans charging them were as flies. In moments all were reeling about the chamber, clutching where the venom from the foreleg-hooks was eating into their flesh. Pirvan saw the envenomed slashes turning black and flesh crumbling as it turned the color of charcoal, pouring out blue smoke at the same time.

The victims fell to the floor, but their weapons did not clatter beside them. The tendrils of webbing had already wound themselves around the weapons and snatched them aloft. Now the same tendrils dropped to the chamber floor and began reeling in the dead and dying in an obscene parody of fishermen with their catch.

Pirvan kept his eyes firmly fixed on the horror, to not show weakness and to learn more of what they faced, if any untutored eye like his could see anything useful. To the side, Pirvan glimpsed Lujimar, standing as solid and as impassive as a boulder on a mountainside.

He wanted to shout at the minotaur to do something. He also wanted to shout at the murmuring humans behind him to show some pride before the minotaurs. The "Destined Race's" warriors were probably as uneasy about this deathtrap as their human comrades, but were certainly hiding it better.

It was then that Sir Niebar stepped forward, out of the ranks of the humans. He was wrapped in his cloak, all but his sword arm, and moved like a man just risen from a bed of near-mortal sickness. Behind him stepped Lady Revella-who had to be ten years older than the knight, but now walked as if she were twenty years younger-carrying only her staff.

A look passed between knight and Black Robe, of a kind that Pirvan knew he would never be able to describe. Nor did he wish to. Knights of the Rose were not supposed to share secrets with Black Robes, and there were those in the Keeps who would make a scandal if they suspected such.

Sir Niebar halted until the webbing had swallowed the last of the bodies. It now jerked and twisted, like blankets over restless sleepers, and Pirvan had the stomach-turning thought that it was digesting the bodies. Perhaps the spiders were only the servants-the hounds coursing prey for their master, the living web.

Niebar took the last three steps, to within reach of the nearest spider. For the first time, Lujimar seemed to notice what was happening. He raised one hand in an urgent gesture.

Before the minotaur could finish the gesture, Sir Niebar raised his sword. He raised it high overhead, held level, within easy reach of the nearest spider or the web. The spider did not take the bait. The web did. Tendrils as thick as tent ropes poured down and wrapped themselves around the web-and around Sir Niebar's sword arm. Pirvan saw his face twist in pain; there must have been something like acid on the tendrils.

Then the web lifted the knight clean off the floor. As it did, he came within arm's length of the spider. His free hand darted under his cloak and came out with a glowball. With an arrow-swift gesture, he thrust the glowball into the spider's gaping maw.

Then the web jerked the knight upward again, so violently that Pirvan thought-and hoped-that the motion must have snapped his neck. His close-cropped white hair vanished into the web; Sir Hawkbrother cried out in rage and despair. Close at hand, Pirvan heard Haimya fighting not to do the same-and Lady Revella raised her staff.

She said nothing, made no other movements, and indeed stood as if turned to stone. But behind the Abyss-fire in the spider's eyes, something glowed that had not been there before. It was a warmer color-almost the color of one of the glowballs, Pirvan realized, in the last moment before fire erupted from the spider's mouth and joints.

For a long moment, the spider seemed to be a wheel of fire: orange, crimson, wine-hued, and even a virulent green. Then the fire touched the web-and the spider vanished in a whirlpool of flame as the web burned.

Half-dazzled, Pirvan saw Sir Niebar's partly-consumed body fall to the floor. He was not too dazzled to see Hawkbrother and Eskaia dash forward to recover it. Nor did he fail to see Haimya drop her sword and run to join the younger couple.

Pirvan caught up with them by the time the web was fully ablaze. He never afterward recalled any of the details, nor at precisely what moment he heard Eskaia scream, nearly stumbled over a half-melted sword that seared through his boot, and caught a lungful of smoke of such gagging vileness that his breath wanted to leave his body for fear of another such.

Somehow, they found themselves standing behind Lady Revella. She now stood with her staff apparently planted in the solid rock, her arms crossed on her chest, and an implacable look on her face.

Her features softened as the four companions laid what was left of Sir Niebar down. Pirvan took only long enough to see that Eskaia was only burned about the arm and neck, before he faced the Black Robe.

"Did you send Niebar to his death?" he shouted.

"Take your hand off your sword when you ask one of my age a question," Revella shot back.

Pirvan did not move. Haimya came to stand beside him and practically spat, "Was he Rubina's father?"

The Black Robe's answer to that was an almost girlish shriek of laughter. "Oh, I wish he had been. But he was not." She sobered. "Only a man who saw that his time was near, and wanted to make his death worthwhile.

"The web could have stood off fire from outside for longer than we could stay here. But fire inside its defenses, inside a spider-neither Lujimar nor Wilthur could halt it."

"Lujimar?" Pirvan exclaimed. That had sounded remarkably like an accusation of treachery against the minotaur. But Lady Revella had not heard, nor would she listen.

Instead, she turned toward Lujimar and cupped her hands to shout, "Magic brother! Crack the roof, for the love of all gods and your own true death, before we stifle!

The ambush of the first enemy band reminded Gerik of a tale he had heard about the Silvanesti. Once upon a time, an ambitious human king had claimed part of their forest. He could send ten thousand fighting men to enforce that claim, he blustered.

"They will be shot down like deer," the Silvanesti emissary replied.

"What if I send twenty thousand?"

"Then each of our archers will shoot twice," was the elven reply, or so the story ran.

Gerik commanded twenty archers against somewhere around eighty foes. That meant shooting four times-or would have, if his archers had been the Silvanesti of legend.