Tamora Pierce - Wild Magic

‘Onua, where’s my hawk? Where’d that man come from?’ Her knees shook.

Onua put a hand on Daine’s mouth. ‘Hush. No more questions. I’ll explain everything – later.’ She went back into the tent, pulling the flap tightly shut behind her.

‘Later,’ Daine muttered to herself. ‘Wonderful. Hawks disappearing, men appearing – why not? Later.’ She stamped off to look after the ponies, who at least would tell her things and not wait for any ‘laters’.

Hedgehogs woke Daine as they wriggled into her bedroll, shaking in terror. It wasn’t the controlled fear they felt around hunters, but the wild panic that made them run before a fire. She eased out of the covers. ‘It’s all right,’ she whispered. ‘Stay here.’

She dragged on her clothes and boots. She felt it now, heaviness in the air and in her mind—not like the Stormwings or the rabid bear, but there was a flavour in it that reminded her of the winged monsters. In the camp around her, the men slept quietly – no snorers like Grandda. Onua was mumbling in her sleep. Tahoi was not with her or the ponies.

‘Stay,’ Daine told Cloud, who wanted to follow. She fitted the string to her bow and checked its draw as she looked around. A light burned in the Lioness’s tent. The other one, where the man who’d been a hawk lay, was dark.

The wood outside their camp was thick with fear. Tiny beasts dug as far into burrows as they could. The big ones were gone. An owl sitting overhead was almost mindless with terror. That was bad: owls didn’t scare.

Tahoi sat at the edge of the trees, nose to the wind. When Daine rested a hand on his shoulder, the dog flinched. ‘What is it?’

He knew only that it was bad, and it was coming.

‘Stay with the ponies. Guard them.’ Tahoi whimpered a protest. Waiting for trouble to reach him was hard; better to hunt it out. ‘Go on.’ He obeyed, reluctantly.

A sentry nearby raised a hand in greeting. Looking past him, Daine saw another. ‘Do you hear anything?’ she asked. ‘I think something bad is coming. Something wrong .’

‘I hear nothing.’ It was Hakim. He didn’t take his eyes off the woods beyond. ‘Go back to your sleep.’

There was no sleeping, not now. Checking the ponies, Daine found they were afraid too. Beyond them the horses were alert, watching the trees like sentries. The warhorse pawed the air: he knew danger was close. Wanting to fight it, he pulled his tether to see if it could be yanked from the ground.

‘Not yet,’ she said, patting his withers. ‘Watch. Wait.’ She walked towards the forest.

‘Don’t go alone.’

Daine wrenched around and lost her balance. A strong hand grabbed her elbow and raised her to her feet. It was the Lioness, wearing a shirt, breeches, and boots. The red gem at her throat glowed steadily; a naked sword lay in her right hand.

‘Easy,’ the knight cautioned. ‘What brings you out here?’ They walked to a small clearing almost thirty feet away.

Daine took a deep breath and made herself calm down. ‘There’s something close by that isn’t right. I can’t explain better’n that.’

The Lioness scanned the trees all around them. ‘I feel it too.’ She tapped the gem. ‘This warns me of trouble, sometimes.’

‘Look.’ Her ma had said she had an owl’s nightsight. That was how she saw the rabbit in the clearing, when someone else would miss it. Kneeling to lift the body, she found it was still warm.

White light – Alanna’s magic – appeared over her hands. The knight touched the body with a palm and felt its warmth, then touched the red drops at the rabbit’s nose. She sniffed her fingers. ‘ Blood? Its heart burst—’

‘It was scared to death.’ Daine was sure of it. Gently she lay the dead creature atop a nearby stump. ‘There’s something else, Lioness. The big animals – there isn’t a one within a mile of this place right now. Listen.’

The knight doused her light and obeyed. ‘Nothing’s moving out—’

A bat darted between them, chittering a warning. Startled, the knight and the girl jumped back – and a rope that glowed a sickly yellow green dropped into the space where Alanna had been standing.

Noise overhead made Daine look up as she put an arrow on the string. A monstrous spider hurtled down at them. She shot it before she even knew what she fired at. A man screamed above; black fluid fell onto her hand, burning like acid. She put two more arrows into the thing and jumped aside when it hit the ground.

Alanna was shouting a warning to the camp. Daine was about to wipe her hand on a leaf when something moved on the edge of her vision. She leaped out of the way and the Lioness moved in, as smoothly as butter. Her sword flashed once – a powerful cut sliced two of the near legs off a new attacker – then twice, beheading the thing. It happened so fast Daine wasn’t quite sure it happened, till Alanna dragged her out of the way of the monster’s death throes. Knight and girl waited, breathless, for a moment or two, to see if another giant spider would appear.

‘I don’t think there are more,’ Daine said at last. ‘It felt – wrong – out here, before. That’s almost gone now.’

Many-jointed legs moved, and she knew the one she’d shot was alive. Gulping down nausea, she drew her dagger and walked around in front to kill the thing – cutting off its head was best.

She had thought they were spiders, almost as big as she was, with bodies dressed in dull black fur. That was bad enough, until she saw this one from the front. Head and neck were human – its teeth as sharp and pointed as a giant cat’s. It screamed with a man’s voice, enraged at seeing the knife.

Her mouth dropped open; a cry of fright and repulsion came out as a strangled croak. Her knife dropped from numb fingers. No wonder these had felt like Stormwings in the night. They were just as wrong, an eerie mating of animal and human that had no reason to exist.

‘Great merciful Goddess.’ Alanna came up behind her. It made Daine feel better to know the paleness of the knight’s face wasn’t due entirely to the light she had called so they could see. ‘Have you ever heard, or—’

‘Never.’ She turned her back on it – let it die slowly – and found a log where she could sit, shuddering in horror. Grandda had told her stories about monsters, human-headed and spider-bodied, named spidrens. A brave man hunted them best at night, he’d said: their webs glowed in the dark.

A hand rested on her shoulder. ‘Little girl, your ancestors are proud tonight.’ It was the sentry, the man Hakim. ‘You are the best archer I have ever seen – better even than the Lioness.’

Alanna nodded. She knelt beside the thing, examining it with a stick rather than touching it herself. ‘We’re lucky you sensed them coming, Daine.’

The girl swallowed, thinking, You couldn’t pay me to touch that, even with a stick. ‘The hedgehogs woke me. They didn’t know what was out there. I could feel something wrong was close, but I didn’t think it’d look like – like this.’ Wincing as the knight pulled the thing’s head back by the hair—it was dead now – she added, ‘Grandda told me stories about spidrens, but he said they were killed, ages and ages ago.’