World Weaver (The Devany Miller Series Book 4) (35 page)

We had to hurry.

The roar of the waterfall announced its presence long before it came into view. The path widened first, then the trees thinned, granting us the longest view we’d had since plunging into the jungle. The waterfall tumbled off a cliff high above us. The trail twisted abruptly right and angled up, around, and out of sight. The water splashed into a lake overgrown with tall cattails choking the shore.

We followed the trail upward, ending up on the spine of hills that stretched into the distance. Fog sat low over the trees and it was so hot I could hear the steam of the evaporating moisture from the leaves. Far ahead a sliver of blue rose up out of the trees, glinting in the sunlight. It wore vines like jewelry, purple, red, and yellow blossoms dotting it like gemstones. The flowers had to be gigantic to be seen this far away. Would the trail lead there? Was that the stronghold of the Riders?

The trail sketched a jagged line over the peaks of the hills for a couple miles before plunging back into the jungle. The building and its mysteries were lost from sight.

We stopped for a break and I scored another magical marker into a tree. The bark of these trees was slippery, smooth. It would be hard to climb them, but after telling my story to Krosh, the old yearning to monkey up toward the sky tickled at me.

A piece of blue fabric caught my eye. I stooped and plucked it off the branch it had been speared on. Bethy’s shirt. It had been placed deliberately, I thought. My daughter was leaving crumbs to show me the way. Had I missed others? Probably. I’d been so focused on my worry, on going forward, that I hadn’t been looking down.

I showed Zeph, her smile making me proud of my kid. “She’s keeping her head. I like her already. Let’s go, sailors!”

There weren’t any groans despite the short break. Everyone was anxious about what we’d find at the end of our journey.

Bethany’s proof of life had injected new energy into our party and we forged down the trail faster than before, taking it almost at a run. It winded me until I began spooling in Source, fortifying myself as Neutria had once done for me.

I’d learned that from my clever spider friend. That and how to be ruthless when I needed to be. Oh, and the magical webbing. I thought I might be able to do that on my own, now that she’d done it in my head. Arsinua had said the pathways for forming hooks had been burned into my brain, which is why I’d been able to do them when I’d gotten her out of my mind.

“Devany.” Someone caught my arm. I hadn’t been paying attention and my boots skidded on the loose soil.

“What?”

Krosh didn’t answer, just pointed. There was another scrap of fabric, also blue, tucked into twisted leaves of a vine that disappeared into the canopy above. “Bethy,” I breathed.

We continued on, hurrying, but still on the lookout for my daughter’s bread crumb messages. It wasn’t until it was almost dark that we came on the hole in the ground. Zeph almost fell into it, caught as her foot plunged downward by one of her sailors.

The trail ended here. Jungle closed tightly around. I so didn’t want to go into that dark mouth, and was sick with fear for my daughter, who hadn’t been able to sleep without a light on.

Zeph’s face was grim. She and Mal exchanged looks I couldn’t decipher.

“What?”

“There are few things that live below Ground. The gruewen is one of them. We’ll need weapons and fire.” She set to the task of gathering the items they needed from the surroundings as I puzzled over the word. Where had I heard it before? It tickled at the edge of my memory, but wouldn’t yield itself to me. Never mind. It would come once I stopped picking at it.

We all gathered stout branches that Zephyrinia wrapped with a thin white cloth. She dipped each in black slime from a pot she had carried in her pack. The goo smelled like fart, but when it was lit, its flame was bright white, almost painful.

“All right,” Zeph said as we all stood around the hole, our torches held aloft, the flames throwing the faces around me in sharp relief. “Only three of you know what we’re in for, which is either a blessing or a curse. About seventeen years ago, Mal and I, Josie, Ben, and Mien descended into the mines under Colsom Creek. What we found there …” She took a breath, her voice not quite steady when she spoke again. “The gruewen are fast, vicious and carnivorous. They don’t like light or flames and their skin is extremely flammable.”

The Riders lived underground with things that liked to eat people? Dear lord. I clutched Krosh’s arm, feeling sick to my stomach.

“We stay in a tight group. Stay in the light. We don’t wander off, we don’t leave anyone behind. Stay in the circle of light thrown off by our torches. If one comes at you, set it alight. It will try to grab your torch. Maintain a good grip.”

“I can put up a protection bubble around us,” I said.

“If there are gruewen, then there will be bitumen. If there’s bitumen, it will gobble your magic. You’re welcome to try, but don’t rely on it. Understood?”

I nodded numbly, and down we went. Zeph led the way as usual, her sturdy form disappearing into the darkness without hesitation. We followed, my heart thudding so loud I wondered if Krosh could hear it in the dark.

The stairs led ever downward, the walls on both sides of us jagged rock, the stairs uneven. My legs started to shake with fatigue, making the going even more nerve-wracking. If I lost my step, I’d tumble everyone else like dominoes.

Just when I thought the stairs would never end, my foot hit dirt and the lights ahead evened out. We were strung out into a long line, but there weren’t any side tunnels to worry about, at least not yet. It wasn’t until the tunnel opened up into a large sized cavern that the fear rushed back.

It smelled like a charnel house, smelled of rotted corpses and corruption. The air was cool on my hot skin, but it felt greasy. I gagged, then pulled my shirt up over my nose to mask the smell.

“Devany, can you see where your daughter went?”

I sank into the Magic Eye and saw the thin thread of my daughter’s essence spiral away to our left, across a boneyard. I pointed with my torch and off we went, following the thread of life that seemed to grow stronger and thicker as we went. Closer? Dear lord, I hoped so.

The stench dissipated, thankfully, but my unease grew. The cavern was as silent as the jungle outside, the only sound the shuffle of our feet, the clink of a buckle, Krosh’s even breathing, the crackle of the torches. The brush of skin on rock.

Wait. “Stop,” I whispered.

The whole group paused, torches raised.

A breath of sound. Eons of silence.

“Let’s—” The word was cut off in a scream. Our group scrambled. I slammed down a bubble over us, the magic wavering but holding.

A torch slid through the dark, the sailor holding it screaming as the thing—whatever it was—yanked him away from us. We clustered together, the light shivering around us as if even it were scared.

The scream abruptly cut off.

Silence.

On the floor, I spotted something blue. I stooped to pick it up, my hand trembling. A piece of Bethy’s shirt, this one damp with blood.

***

I checked again with my Magic Eye. Bethy’s lifeline was as vibrant as ever, spooling off into the darkness. Still alive. Still breathing. It wouldn’t do her any good if I gave into the urge to run pell-mell after her.

The darkness pressed against our light. It was a hungry, living thing, mocking us, hiding its monsters from us. We moved as quickly and quietly as we could, listening for anything that might indicate a return of the thing that took Eris—Zeph had said a quick memorial for the man. I hadn’t even known his name until she’d spoken it to honor his death. Once again, I hadn’t spent time getting to know the people risking their lives for me. What kind of person was I?

A skittering sound stopped us all dead. We tightened our circle, our backs to each other as we faced what was lurking in the shadows. I put up another barrier, the magic glitching again, but still holding its shape. Krosh added his power with mine, solidifying the dome over us.

A scrape of claw on rock? Closer. To my left.

My guts tightened. I scrambled for a way to dial up my vision and hearing, slow and clumsy about it without Neutria guiding me. I had been stupid to not take her back. She might have kept us all alive had she been here.

Something shifted in my head as I fiddled with the imaginary dials in my noggin, then the room brightened, the torchlight painful.

On my right, not four feet from us crouched a thing of nightmares—and I’d seen fleshcrawlers.

It was the thing in the jar in the Bayladdy shop.

Its mouth was open in a bloody grin.

I flung my hand outward, a sizzling gout of magic that hit it full in the face. Its scream bit down hard into my skull. The others yelled too, some clutching their ears.

The monster tumbled out of sight, still screeching. I’d hurt it, by damn. Maybe it would leave us alone.

“How did you know it was there?” Mal asked.

“A little trick a spider taught me,” I said. “Let’s keep going. I’ll watch for them.”

Three more tried to sneak up on us, but the minute I saw them, I hit them hard with magic. They stayed well back after that, though their noises got louder, a keening sound that echoed throughout the caves and grated on everyone’s nerves.

We came to a gate barring the way forward. My daughter’s essence curled through the metal and disappeared down the hall. Zeph squatted down, studying the lock. She dug around in one of her many pockets and pulled an old iron key free. It fitted into the lock and with a bit of cursing, she managed to get it to turn. The gate swung open, its hinges well oiled so they didn’t make a sound.

We threaded through the gate. I was the caboose, walking backward to keep an eye out. I started to turn around when a white shape streaked at me, teeth bared. I screamed and thrust my torch forward, unthinking, forgetting I had magic.

The fire caught on the thing’s skin and set it ablaze. The gruewen screamed and thrashed, trying to put the fire out. Its flesh peeled and dripped to the floor, darkening the dirt underneath it. It was still screaming when its eyes caved in, when its grasping, clawed fingers crisped and blackened.

I tossed my cookies as someone grabbed me from behind and dragged me through the gate. Krosh. He slammed the iron bars back in place and Zeph locked it.

Was it there to keep the gruewen out?

We didn’t let up on our vigilance, keeping close as we walked on. The tunnel opened up and evened out, and dirt gave way to dark gold cobblestones and torches set along the wall at even intervals. We lit them as we went, leaving a trail of light behind us that would hopefully keep the gruewen at bay if they did live beyond the gate.

My calves began to burn and I realized we’d been walking at a steady, upward pace. Soon, light shone at the far end. We consulted and decided to put out the magic fire on the torches, stowing them in our packs in case we needed them again.

We moved faster, hurrying toward the light, each of us wanting to leave behind the horrors in the dark.

“What do you think is out there?” I asked, my words breathy from the exertion and the terror still draining from my system.

Krosh shook his head. “I can’t imagine.”

Me neither.

Zeph and Mal exited our nightmare hole first. A few of the sailors next. They gathered at the mouth of the tunnel, silent. Staring.

“What?” Feeling like a little kid in a crowd, I pushed forward, apologizing as I went, then gasped when I saw what lay before us.

Valley’s Head. The ruined capital of the Witch King.

TWENTY-EIGHT

The jungle had swallowed a lot of the destruction, but one of the blue glass spires of Sorgen’s castle still stood, draped in gaudy blooms. The road that I’d walked while visiting the memories beyond the Spider Queen’s door was still there, broken though it was, and reclaimed in places by the ever-present vegetation. The spiral arms of the city were in better repair. People moved along the pathways like ants busy at work.

Ants. Riders.

A city of Riders.

There were at least a hundred of them, and maybe more hidden beyond the walls of the city. Too many to conquer, too many to dodge.

Would I ever catch a damned break?

“What is this place?” One of the sailors, Ben, asked.

I was able to tell him, my voice dull. “It’s Valley’s Head, former home of the Witch King.” He frowned, obviously not knowledgeable about the history of the witches and Wydlings. ‘Join the club,’ I thought at him. Out loud, I said, “What are we going to do?”

No one knew. No one had ever seen so many Riders before, never. I’d grappled with one and it had been a horror. Not quite as scary as the gruewen, unless I counted the one I’d killed wearing a Liam suit. That one won hands down for the scariest thing ever award.

“Let’s rest and observe,” Zeph said, no despair in her voice. I didn’t think the lady knew the meaning of defeat. Did she have doubts? Did she quail at the shit laid out before her or was she a badass who could face the darkest dangers without flinching or hesitating?