By the time they had unpacked and tended the Keplian, the travelers were almost too tired to eat, themselves. Hastily they swallowed a cold meal, since Eydryth advised against lighting a fire. “It would be best not to flaunt our presence,” she cautioned Alon as they spread out their bedrolls.
“Why?” Alon said. “We have seen no sign of anyone but ourselves. Every land has its brigands, but would outlaws roam so far from homesteads and villages?”
“I know not,” she said quietly. “My concern lies with the possible presence of other… dangers. Arvon, like Escore, holds perils for the unwary.” She glanced cautiously around her. “Perhaps we should stand watches.”
“Monso will warn if anyone comes,” Alon pointed out. “If we are to make good time on the morrow, we will need a full night’s sleep.” Eydryth agreed, knowing that any animal’s senses were far superior to her own.
But even though she was weary, snuggled warmly in her cloak and blankets, slumber eluded the songsmith, chased away by her uneasy thoughts, and questions that only time would answer. Will Dahaun’s red mud cure my father? Will we reach Kerovan in time to warn him? Will our warning be enough to save him, or will Yachne be able to summon him to her no matter where he may be, or how we try to protect him?
And lastly, and most worrisome of alclass="underline" Alon is changing before my eyes. He is suspicious and morose… not himself.
Why? And, more importantly, what can I do to halt what is happening?
Her eyelids were finally growing heavy. With a sigh, Eydryth let them close…
She awakened with a start when Monso snorted loudly. It seemed that sleep had only claimed her for a moment, but the waning moon had risen, shedding a pallid light over the meadow. Eydryth lay in her blankets, every sense alert, listening. Monso snorted again. Last year’s dead grass and bushes crackled as he pawed restlessly.
The songsmith turned her head on her arm, moving slowly, as if she still slept, but her eyes were open, scanning the distant woods, the field surrounding them. In the darkness, nothing moved. Nothing… for many heartbeats, nothing…
Then, at the corner of her vision, something flickered. Alarmed now, Eydryth sat up, straining her eyes in the dim moonlight. Many faintly glowing shapes were drifting toward their campsite, borne on the night breeze. The songsmith reached for her companion’s shoulder, nudged it. “Alon!” she whispered.
He awoke with a start, then sat up. “What… what is it?”
“Rouse you! Danger!”
As he rubbed blearily at his eyes, still groggy with sleep, Eydryth threw aside her blanket, pulled on her boots, then picked up the quarterstaff that lay beside her. With one swift movement, her sword was in her hand. She stood poised and ready.
Once more she attempted to discern what those wafting shapes were. They glowed a sickly greenish color against the distant blackness of the forest, a green shot through with streaks of pale purple. Eydryth had seen slime growths on the walls of caves glow eerily in just the same way. What could these floating creatures be?
Monso suddenly sounded a stallion’s shrill battle-challenge, teeth bared to snap, forelegs ready to strike. The Keplian’s nostrils flared widely; then he snorted again, as though he scented something noxious. Eydryth hastily fastened a lead-shank to the stallion’s halter, then tied him to a scrubby tree beside their packs.
By the time she finished, Alon was on his feet—boots on, sword out and ready. As they stood together, his shoulder brushed Eydryth’s; for a moment she fought the urge to lean against him, take his hand. Human comfort seemed very desirable in the face of the strange creatures bobbing ever closer to them. “What is it?” he whispered.
Eydryth pointed to those faintly luminous wind-riding shapes. “Look over there. Five… six… ten… at least a dozen of them, perhaps more.”
“A dozen of what?” he demanded.
She shrugged, knowing he could see her clearly in the moonlight, even though his face was naught but a dim blur to her own eyes. “I cannot be sure… but I believe they may be web-riders.”
He gave her a quick, incredulous glance. “But they are only tales… legends! I have traveled the length and breadth of Escore, and never have I heard of them as anything but stories to terrify children when told before a roaring fire in midwinter!”
“In Arvon, like Escore, many old tales prove to have all-too-real substance,” she reminded him. “And if they are indeed web-riders… we may not live to see the morn, Alon.”
Just then the minstrel caught a faint whiff of an odor that made her nose wrinkle. Rank it was, as though their visitors were long-dead and decayed. “Whatever they are, their smell tells me they come from the Left, not the Right-Hand Path.”
Alon sniffed, too. Eydryth saw the white blur his hand made as he traced a glowing sign in the air. With a muttered curse, he jerked his fingers back, as if they had been burned. “You have the right of it,” he agreed. “There is no doubt that they mean us harm.”
“Could Yachne have sent them?”
“Possible. It is also possible that they are denizens of this land. Perhaps they are the reason that no one lives here.”
The thought made Eydryth shudder as she watched those distant shapes drifting closer… closer. “Can you see them clearly?” she whispered to Alon.
“They appear to be greenish-white creatures riding atop those purple filaments,” he said, his voice hardly more than a breath against her ear. “They are perhaps two handspans in width, with long, many-jointed legs…”
“Like spiders?”
“More like some ugly cross between a spider and a crab,” he said. “They seem half-transparent, as though they are so light that they wove those webs, then cast them adrift on the night breeze and leaped upon them to ride them here.” He shuddered in his turn. “They are fanged, and have pincers, or claws. I would wager that they are poisonous, like spiders.”
“You have just described a web-rider,” she said grimly.
“I know.”
Eydryth glanced around her, wondering whether they should make a stand here, or try to run. Her breath caught in her throat, and her fingers clamped onto Alon’s forearm with a force that made him gasp. “More of them… many more…” she whispered. “We are surrounded!”
As the fell creatures bobbed closer, Eydryth could make out what Alon had described. Their eyes gleamed tiny and reddish in the faint moonlight. Their pincers and fangs dripped with venom. Could they be intelligent? There was no way to know. One thing was certain… they were at a grave disadvantage trying to fight in the darkness. “Can you summon light?” she asked the Adept. “Enough so I can see to use my sword?”
“I can,” he said, and made several gestures. A wan violet light flickered unevenly over the tramped-down grass marking their campsite. “But I do not believe that swordplay is the best way to fight them.”
“Then what is?” she countered, edging around him until they stood back-to-back, her sword in her hand. By now the web-riders were so close that some of them were little more than a sword-length from the perimeter of their campsite. The creatures seemed to be at the mercy of the breeze, with little ability to direct their floating webs. That is one small thing in our favor, Eydryth thought.
“I may be able to—,” Alon began; then he broke off as Monso screamed again and lunged toward the circling invaders. The lead-shank parted with a snap. “No, Monso!” Alon shouted, dashing up to catch the Keplian’s halter. But the stallion reared violently, pulling his master clean off his feet, then, with a toss of his head, flung Alon down. Eydryth heard him land with a thud, heard him gasping, trying to regain the breath that had been driven from his lungs.