by Dave Gross
“Watch where you’re going!” said Judge Fang. He jabbed his walking twig at more sheets of gossamer hanging from tree branches and the stones of the temple. “There are webs everywhere.”
After he got the shouting out of his cricket head, Judge Fang realized that he could not see the webs except in direct moonlight. In the shadows, they were invisible. “Hm,” he said. “Our quarry will have the advantage here. Stay close.”
He flew back onto my shoulders. The Goblin moved toward me, but I gave him the big smile. He sulked and walked behind me.
Whatever had broken the temple left piles of rocks and decaying timber everywhere. They blocked the trails and made new ones with holes in the walls. I smelled rat and insect dung, and the strong smell of dead bodies. The Hopper’s trail was fresher. I followed it through a few more rooms and into the center of the ruin.
Shafts of light slanted through the broken roof into a big room. The light turned everything the color of the moon, except for one dark corner littered with the bones of three or four men. There a sinkhole had eaten up much of the wooden floor and drank up a stream that poured through the broken wall.
Something with large teeth had gnawed the bones many times. I smelled the trail of the Hopper and of big rats, but also I smelled something else. It was like the odor of a nest of insects, but not exactly the same. Whatever it was, it ate big rats.
It ate many big rats.
My growl came up, and my hackles rose. Judge Fang flew up from my shoulders, sputtering at the fur in his cricket face.
The Goblin ran up beside me and kicked dust over my paws. “What’s the matter? Are you afraid of the dark?”
It was what might be in the dark that worried me. “The Hopper went this way, but I can’t see in there.”
Behind me, the fox kits mewed. They didn’t want to go in the hole either.
“We need a light,” said Judge Fang. He fussed with his firepot. “Goblin, fetch me some wood, and I’ll make you a torch.”
“Fetch it yourself, bug-head. I don’t need a torch to see.” The Goblin walked into the sinkhole before anyone could say another word.
A few seconds later, we heard him fall and slide down the wet passage. He whooped and cursed.
Gust filled the room with her giggles. Judge Fang hissed as the sudden breeze caused him to burn his fingers while lighting his tiny lamp.
Down in the tunnel, something made a sound like a goose that had just run into a dog. The Goblin screamed and cursed. The kits crowded beneath me as if I were their mother. Gust stopped giggling, and a few drops of rain fell on my back.
“Hurry!” Judge Fang flew up to my shoulders, holding his lamp above his head. I didn’t like the fire so close to my fur, but the Goblin was in trouble. He smelled bad, but he was our ally. It was my job to protect him.
I padded down the sinkhole. The bottom was wet, but my claws kept me from slipping down after the Goblin. We heard the sound of struggles beneath the Goblin’s curses. Under the strong smell of wet earth, I could smell both him and our quarry.
“Hurry, you stupid beasts! I’ve got—ugh! As soon as I get my hands—ow!”
We came around a bend in the tunnel and saw them. The Goblin clung to what looked like a hairy pumpkin on a crooked pony’s leg. Instead of a hoof, it had a round, toeless foot with skin as thick as ox hide.
The Hopper leaped up and down, trying to shake off the Goblin, who wrapped his arms and legs tight around the kami’s leg. With each jump, the Hopper’s big eye blinked, and the Goblin slid a few inches closer to the floor.
I growled a warning. The Hopper’s eye opened wide. That was good. If it feared me, it would obey and calm down.
But it did not calm down. Instead, it jumped more furiously than ever.
“Careful,” warned Judge Fang. “The tunnel ...”
The Goblin slipped off the Hopper’s leg. Instead of escaping, the Hopper honked and jumped straight over the Goblin’s body. The Goblin threw his arms over his face and squealed, but when the Hopper landed, it pushed them both through the soft floor.
The Goblin shrieked and the Hopper honked as they fell through the hole.
The dirt beneath me slid toward the widening gap.
I scrambled backward, but the kits crowded my steps. My front paws slipped over the edge of the hole, and the wet tunnel soil poured forward, taking us down into the dark.
For a second we were falling. Something broke beneath my weight before a spongy surface caught and held us. Judge Fang tumbled from my back, but I saw his lamp hanging in the air nearby. It was stuck against a shivering white line as thick as one of my claws. All around us were similar lines intersecting in a familiar pattern.
It was a giant web. But it wasn’t like the ones I’d seen high in the corner of the stable where I was born. There was something different about it.
It was too perfect.
Every strand lined up perfectly with the one next to it, and not in a spiral but in perfect rings, each slightly larger than the next. Except for the segments broken when the Hopper, the Goblin, and I fell through, there were no accidental gaps.
The kits cried as they dangled from the sticky lines just above me. Judge Fang clutched at my ear, but he was too weak to pull himself up onto my shoulder. His lantern twisted on a loose string a few feet above the kits.
The turning of the lantern cast eerie shadows of us and the web all around. We were in the middle of a ruined cellar. Gnarled roots reached toward us from the dirt walls. Apart from the hole we had fallen through, two more dark gaps hinted at a way out.
But we couldn’t go anywhere while we were stuck in the web.
Below us, the Goblin hung limp on the strands that had caught him after the higher ones broke but slowed his fall. Near him dangled the Hopper, thrashing so much that it wound itself up in a thick blanket of white fibers. With only the tip of its foot and the upper half of its huge eye visible, it looked like a shrouded corpse I had seen my master and Radovan bury.
“Who disturbs the serenity of my meditations?” It was the soft voice of a woman. I couldn’t tell where it came from. It seemed to come from everywhere at once, or from inside my head.
The kits quieted their whimpering, but through the web I could feel their tiny hearts racing.
Judge Fang’s voice creaked with terror. “Scare her away, Arnisant.”
I filled the chamber with my most fearsome shouts.
“Such commotion,” whispered the stern voice. She did not sound even a little bit afraid. “I will not tolerate it.”
From out of one of the dark gaps in the wall emerged a pair of long limbs. They were pale as grubs but long and slim as snakes. They gripped either side of the entrance and pulled.
Two more limbs appeared, and the face of a young woman followed. White hair flowed behind her head, but her face was different from that of other women. Her nose was normal, and so were her cheeks and chin. Mandibles emerged from her swollen human lips, and eight unblinking eyes lay across her wide brow. Our reflections appeared upside-down in each glassy blue orb.
“Has half the forest found its way into my lair? You are spoiling my beautiful home.”
The Goblin moaned. He blinked at the spider. His eyes opened wide and he began screaming again. “Help! Don’t let that ugly thing touch me!”
The Goblin’s panic frightened the kits. They scratched and bit at the webs, but their teeth were too small to cut through.
“Ugly, am I?” The spider sounded sad. She squeezed the rest of her body into the cellar. The opening was big enough that I could have walked through it.
Through the hole above came a white thread of lightning. Its tingle raised the fur all over my body and popped the kits off the web. They tumbled into a damp, roiling pile of fur on the cellar floor.
Wind blew rain down from
the upper tunnel, extinguishing Judge Fang’s tiny lantern. Gust glared down, sparks for eyes. The spider crept toward the Goblin.
For what felt like a long time, there was only darkness and a flickering from Gust’s anger. Then a pale blue beam of light emerged from the Hopper’s wide eye. The lower half was smothered by spider silk, but half a beam was enough to shine over the spider’s face. In the light of the Hopper’s eye, she looked like a young woman without any spider parts.
The light of the Hopper’s eye shone through the spider kami’s body and spread throughout the cave. Everything was white and blue and black, but we could see.
The Goblin grimaced and shut his eyes as the spider’s face moved close to his.
Before she could tear his head from his body, Judge Fang spoke. His tone reminded me of the way the master spoke to women when he wished to please them. “How lovely thou art.”
The spider whirled toward him. “Do not dare to mock me!”
“I do not,” said Judge Fang. I could smell his fear, but he kept his cricket head held high. “Under the Hopper’s flawless gaze, all truths are revealed, and in your face I see a perfect beauty.”
The spider raised the tip of one leg to her face. Under the direct gaze of the Hopper, it became a delicate human hand. She gasped at the sight.
“When I look at you,” she said to Judge Fang, “I see a pot-bellied old man who dyes his hair and wears a—”
“Yes, yes, and so I appeared in my previous life,” he said hastily. “But a man of my station is held to a high standard, and so for a few minor infractions it was determined that I was to be indentured for a period to serve the Celestial Order in my current state.”
The spider hummed her doubt.
“Forgive the wretched Goblin, gentle kami,” begged Judge Fang. “He is a coarse thing, but he came here for a good purpose.”
“Good? You have broken my house. Now your cloud kami is flooding it!”
“Indeed, we have been clumsy in discharging our duty,” said Judge Fang. “Please, imagine that I kowtow to thee, as I surely would were I not constrained by these magnificent strands thou hast woven in—if I may be permitted to offer a compliment—the most symmetrical web it has ever been my honor to look upon. My shame would fill the seas, yet my need would cover the sky. It is my duty as a duly appointed functionary of the Celestial Order to gather all virtuous beasts and kami in defense of the Dragon Ceremony, which even now is threatened by the schemes of the wicked Burning Cloud Devil and the subtle Jade Tiger.”
The spider looked back at the Goblin. Her half-human mouth was too small to devour him in a single bite. Two, maybe.
She did not see, as I did, the restored mother fox crouching below her, teeth bared, ready to leap.
The spider shook her head and turned back to observe Judge Fang. “Who could have imagined so many words could fit in so small a head?”
Her tone was friendly. She reached out with her foreleg and tapped Judge Fang above his mandibles, where his nose might once have been. Whenever the Hopper’s gaze caught her face full-on, I saw the spider’s human mouth smiling. Judge Fang’s words had worked their magic.
Behind her, the Goblin released a sigh of relief.
“Tell me more,” said the spider. “But first, make your cloud stop wetting my web. And you there beneath me, nine-tailed fox, do not think you escaped my notice. Remove this noisome little Goblin from my web, and we shall discuss the matter further.”
Chapter Sixteen
Phoenix Warrior
The basilisk slithered through the streets of Khitai. Now and then it lunged, always at a child or a pretty girl who froze in place. The monster’s orange eyes bore down until its victim shrieked. Then it shook green and yellow scales out of its mane and danced away.
Children gathered the scale-shaped leaf wrappers and ate the sweet bean cakes inside. The eight-legged basilisk moved along to the next throng of children, its painted silk skin rippling at every turn. The bare feet of the men inside the monster slapped the pavement in time with the festival drums.
I was the opposite of the basilisk, a monster hidden beneath the silk cover of a man.
Even without Burning Cloud Devil’s magic, it was a good enough disguise. Unless someone got close, I could have been another of the big northern barbarians who’d come south looking for mercenary work. I was glad I’d picked up a black rice hat with a brim so low it had an eye slit in the front. I felt like a kid playing at knights in armor, but at least no one had run screaming when I came into town.
Burning Cloud Devil was still holed up at the inn. I’d wandered off to find a smith to repair my big knife. As an afterthought I asked him to make a new one just like it, only big enough for my devil hands. We negotiated until I got tired of pantomime. I showed him the big smile, and we had a deal.
The rest of the day I figured I’d take in the sights. There was no point telling Burning Cloud Devil where I was going. After our long journey back from the western mountains, and a hundred failed attempts to teach me his Quivering Palm technique, he said he needed to catch up on his sleep.
After the business with the Moon Blade Killer, we’d both had some rough nights. More than once I’d woken from nightmares of the boss writhing inside a dragon’s belly. Across the fire, Burning Cloud Devil twitched in his sleep, soaked with night sweat. I figured he dreamed of Spring Snow in the same damned place.
Despite the nightmares, I wasn’t buying his “need some sleep” excuse. He’d been wound up tight since I showed him the silver sword. He said he didn’t believe I’d seen Spring Snow, but I could tell it was gnawing at him. I’d seen it a thousand times before with the boss.
Burning Cloud Devil wasn’t slipping away to rest. He was off to get stinking drunk.
Weeks ago I’d figured out that most of the joints he called “tea houses” were really taverns. Let him drink, I figured. At least it spared me more lessons on clarifying my soul or maintaining the perfect nature of my body or some other airy stuff. When he wasn’t full of wine, he was full of bad poetry.
Since I’d seen her face, I had a hard time picturing Spring Snow with this guy. She struck me as a good kid, full of life at one time. She had to have been a lot more fun than he was. Burning Cloud Devil didn’t deserve someone like her.
The way I saw it, he was responsible for the deaths of the family back at the restaurant. Sure, it was me the Moon Blade Killer had come to kill, but Burning Cloud Devil knew it would happen. He’d tricked me into burying the wrestler’s head. He might as well have murdered those boys and their father himself.
Anyway, it had to be his fault. Otherwise, it was mine.
I couldn’t stand to think that.
Among the festival crowd, a woman dressed as a warrior caught my eye. Her golden scale armor glittered in the sun. She held one of those long-bladed glaives, sort of halfway between a spear and a sword. Where its grip met the blade twined a golden phoenix.
Something told me she hadn’t dressed up for the festival.
Most people in town hadn’t given me a second glance, but this woman stared in a way that made me think she could see through the brim of my hat. In other circumstances, I’d tip her a wink, but she was the one who threw me a fetching smile.
Normally, that’s all the encouragement I need. Instead of taking her up on the invitation, I walked away.
Until Burning Cloud Devil released my body, I was in no fit shape for a cuddle. And yeah, I knew that probably wasn’t what her smile meant, but it was what it made me think about.
Likely she wanted a whole different kind of trouble. Without Burning Cloud Devil around to slap me up with the fight whammy, there was nothing in it for me.
She called after me in Tien. “Face me, devil.”
I kept walking. A few steps later, a wave of nausea rolled through me. She’d
thrown a spell on me.
I ran down a narrow lane between a block of townhouses and a spice shop. Waiting for me at the other end was a woman dressed identically to the first, except she held a scepter with a golden phoenix on its head. She looked exactly like the other woman.
Twins, of course.
Under other circumstances, I’d have been tickled. With their thick jaws and thin noses, they were no beauties, but they were all right. Later there’d be time to imagine the scenarios that could have been, assuming I survived this little tryst.
She pointed the scepter at me. Its wings began to move, its feathered breast glowing red.
I didn’t wait to see the result. I pulled a little juice from inside the core of my spirit and jumped from the ground to land on the roof of the spice shop.
No matter how many times I did that trick, “flying” never got old. Burning Cloud Devil said it came easily to me because of my abundant ki. Sometimes I wondered whether I’d still be able to do it when I got back to my regular body. It’d be a useful trick, not to mention one hell of a lot of fun.
My first step crunched through the roof tile. I weighed a lot more these days, so I stuck to running along the beam lines. A few more tiles clattered away behind me, but I made it to the other side without falling through. I leaped down onto the next lane, heard a cry, and looked around to see who I’d startled.
There was no one in the street except the armored woman. She lunged, twirled the glaive, and stepped back. I realized she’d already hit me only when the front of my rice hat fell off, revealing my face.
She gave me a smug smile and turned her blade so the reflected sunlight light dazzled me. I shaded my eyes until she turned the blade again, showing me the opposite side.
On the metal was etched a familiar symbol. I’d seen it in Minkai. It was the mark of Shizuru, goddess of ancestors and honor. This woman wasn’t just a warrior.
She was a paladin.
Her smile vanished as she advanced, whirling the long blade. I turned to run, but there she was on the other side, this time with the golden scepter.
