Cicely—don’t listen and tell your men to fight her song!
I shook my head, trying to clear my thoughts. I know, I’m trying to shake out of it enough to—Fuck!
One of the guards—one of our men—had lurched forward and was nearly within reach of her long, jointed legs. Check leaped forward, grabbing the man by the arm and slamming him back, throwing him to the ground. The guard groaned, but his eyes cleared, and he struggled to his feet and scrambled back.
The snow weaver let out a noise that sounded like a heavy sigh, and the song intensified, but Ulean swept through with a huge gust of wind to divert the music into the slipstream, away from us. The resulting static disrupted the spell and the spider fell silent, but the feeling of malevolence grew stronger, and I had the feeling she was pissed out of her mind that we’d put a stop to her magical song.
“We have to go in. She’s probably not going to try to lure us again, and if she does, Ulean seems to be able to disrupt her. But she’s deadly, so one bite can kill.” I glanced back at the guards. “I hate to say this, but Lannan, one of your men might be the best bet. You guys are already dead.”
He gave me one of those looks and shook his head. “No, we are not dead. Well, yes we are, but there’s a lack of respect in your words, dear Cicely. However, that aside, I concur. Her poison cannot harm us.” Motioning to his burliest guard, he said, “Mort, get your ass in there and do your best to skewer her. She needs to die.”
Mort—I supposed it was short for Mortimer—stepped forward. He was tall and stocky, a barrel-chested man who fit the uniform he was wearing, which happened to be a pair of dark jeans, a Metallica T-shirt, and a black leather jacket. He wore a motorcycle cap that was studded with little spikes. As he moved toward the spider, he pulled out a wicked-looking knife with a long serrated blade.
The snow weaver shifted as he moved toward her, and the glint in her eyes told me that she recognized he was ready to rumble. She scuttled into a better position so she could use her web for balance and yet rear up, ready to strike.
Mort gauged the distance between them and eyed her soft underbelly. That’s where the majority of spiders were most vulnerable. As he jockeyed for position, so did she, and it was like some macabre dance—the vampire and the spider, trying to find their perfect balance.
And then, because somebody had to make the first move, and she was obviously waiting for him to, Mort leaped forward, sweeping his blade through the air to land in the belly of the snow weaver.
The spider reared up again, then fell on him, plunging her fangs deep into his shoulder. He let out a string of curses, but pulled out the knife and struck her again. She scuttled back, tearing herself off the blade with a sucking sound.
I thought I detected a hint of confusion in her look. Mort wasn’t dead; he wasn’t on the ground. Which meant chances were good that she didn’t know he was a vampire and immune to her poisons.
Mort followed her, but she stopped at the edge of the door. She wouldn’t run away. She was a guardian, bound to stay and fight, and she was doing her damnedest. She leaped forward, oozing blood and fluid from her abdomen, and landed on Mort again, once more sinking her fangs into him. She missed his heart—a good thing—and one last time, he brought his blade up, directly beneath her as she straddled him. The snow weaver shuddered, and the lights in her multifaceted eyes went out. The vampire shoved her off him, and then stabbed her again to make certain she was dead.
“Good work.” Lannan helped Mort up and examined his wounds. Though the gaping holes in his clothes were still there, his wounds were already healing over. He’d be fine. His heart was intact, and therefore his body would heal.
“Thank you.” I didn’t know what else to say, but acknowledging that he’d saved us a good deal of trouble and lives lost seemed important. “Are you all right? Did she harm you?”
Mort gave me a long look. It was impossible to read what was behind those dark eyes. “Thank you, Your Majesty. I’m fine.”
Well, he was certainly more polite than his boss. There was no sarcasm in his words, and for once, I wasn’t left with a sour taste in my mouth. I motioned for Check to take a gander through the door. He quietly sidled up to it and peered around the corner. After a moment, he leaned back.
“A wide cavern, Your Majesty. Like a field of boulders across a plain of ice. Dark, but illuminated lightly from a glow within the frozen wastes. I could detect no movement, but that doesn’t guarantee there isn’t something in there waiting for us.”
“Oh, you can bet there’s something there. We’ll just have to figure it out when we get there. From what I can tell, there are usually three to five guardians set by the Queens. They get progressively harder to pass the farther you go along. I’m not looking forward to running this gauntlet, but now that we’re over the first hurdle, we’d better get a move on, because the others might figure out we’re here.”
I wanted to add that I knew for sure they would. That, when I’d set up my own guardians, they’d formed a network. If one went down, the others would be alerted. But that would be giving away my own secrets, and I wasn’t comfortable doing so. I was also aware that, by protecting myself, I was putting my friends in jeopardy by not telling them what I knew. Either way, it was a losing situation. But self-preservation won out. I kept my mouth shut.
Finally, I accepted the wisdom of what Lainule had tried to teach me—the Queen must protect her heartstone above all else. The Queen was the heart of the Barrow. It felt both a selfish and conceited thought, but it was true. And sometimes the truth wasn’t politically correct.
“Are we ready, then?” Check gave me an odd look, but when I met his gaze, he simply smiled softly and turned to lead us through the door. Sometimes I had the feeling he could look through my skin and see everything going on beneath the surface.
We entered the cavern and found ourselves on a sheer sheet of ice. Boulders—large blocks of granite that had cleaved off the mountain—littered the enormous chamber. The other side was difficult to make out. In fact, I wasn’t even sure if we could really see it from here. I thought I might be able to make out a distant wall, but the light was too dim, and the chamber too large to know for certain.
The ice had a peculiar sheen to it. Unlike the ice in the realm of Winter, it bore only streaks of blue through it, no pinks or purples. Faint slate streaks that raced along the glassy surface. Pinpricks of light, sparkling like silver stars, shone from within the ice through the pale, hazy film of frost. Was this a giant ocean frozen over? Or simply ice on the ground? Or was it something else entirely, something Myst had managed to conjure from whatever magic her shamans had been able to manifest?
I leaned down and trailed my fingers across the surface. A faint pulse echoed from deep within the frozen waste, sending a tingle through my skin. For a moment it startled me, and I just about pulled away, expecting it to hurt, before realizing it actually was making me smile. There was something familiar about the sensation. And then I understood—it was the ice itself that tickled me.
Perhaps it was different than the ice back in my realm, but the feeling of the frozen water was comforting, and all ice came from the same underlying source. Myst might be an upstart, but she had managed to tap into Winter’s energy, and she did understand its nature.
Which makes her even more dangerous. Ulean, how much do you think she knows about me? I mean, she knows I was her daughter, but how well do you think Myst understands who I am . . . and what I am becoming?