by Lou Anders
“Why?”
“Your ears are twitching.”
Desstra felt the muscle convulsions in the tips of her long ears. Her sixth sense always warned her of danger—unfortunately never more than a few seconds ahead of time.
Both girls readied their weapons. Watching the tunnels to either side, they began to move cautiously across the room. They headed for the dryad, still happily soaking her feet in the shallow water.
“Daphne,” said Thianna, “we’re leaving.”
“So soon?” said the tree girl, disappointed. Her foliage seemed darker, which in the dim light probably meant it was becoming more green, and her leaves appeared fuller and bushier than before. “Can’t we stay a little longer? The water here is deliciously pure. And rich in minerals.”
Something emerged from a tunnel at the opposite end of the cavern.
“Don’t worry,” it said. “You’re going to stay a lot longer. In fact, you’re never going to leave.”
The speaker emerged fully into the chamber. The creature had the legs and body of a large spider, but where a head should have been a human torso grew, with human arms and a human face. Instead of two human eyes, however, eight beady black orbs glared at them. More of the creatures scuttled from out of other tunnels. Scarlet markings in the shape of an hourglass were visible on their lower abdomens.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” said Thianna. “Goat men, bull boys, now spider women?”
“Arachne,” said Daphne in a small voice.
“I’m pleased you have heard of us,” said the spider woman.
“It is said,” explained the dryad, “that the chief goddess Casteria cursed a mortal woman for her vanity, turning her into a spider. The first of their kind. They’re really nasty.”
“Nasty is in the eye of the beholder,” said the arachne. “Nasty is a fearful little plant girl with bad manners and no red blood for us to drink.” The arachne turned her multiple eyes on Thianna. “But don’t worry, sisters. This one looks like a meal big enough for all of us.” She dropped to block the far exit from the room, while her so-called sisters fanned out in an attempt to flank the companions on both sides.
“Fall back,” ordered Thianna, withdrawing the way they had first come.
“I don’t think so,” said the arachne. “Oh, boys!” she called.
The hairs on the frost giant’s neck crawled at the scurrying sound behind her. Reluctantly, she turned to look. The “boys” were only spiders, without any human bits. But they were enormous, easily the size of large dogs. And there were dozens of them. The spiders swarmed all over the room, cutting them off and blocking any hope of retreat.
“I guess the bugs want to fight,” said Thianna.
“Spiders aren’t bugs,” Desstra corrected her, then hastily added, “I know, you don’t need to know what something is called—”
“To stomp it,” said Thianna, bringing her foot down heavily on one of the males that had scuttled too close.
“Careful,” warned Desstra. “They’re venomous.”
“Of course they are,” said Thianna resignedly. “At this point, I’d be surprised if they weren’t.”
One of the arachne hurled a web at the giantess from overhead. It struck her sword arm. Thianna cried out but couldn’t disentangle herself. On the ceiling, the spider woman attempted to draw the line in.
“Sisters, help!” it called. “This one is even heavier than she looks.”
Desstra ran to Thianna’s side.
“Be still a moment,” the elf said. Then she quickly set to work unsticking the webbing from Thianna’s forearm. “Special gloves,” she explained. “Made from spider hide back home.”
“You know these things?” Thianna said in amazement.
“No,” replied the elf. “We have large spiders but nothing like these twisted creatures.”
“Manners,” chided one of the arachne. “You may look like a pale, bloodless thing, but we can smell the juice inside. We’ll eat you first if you don’t behave.”
“Don’t do me any favors!” Desstra shouted. She yanked hard on the webbing, dislodging the arachne on the ceiling. It dropped at her feet, and the elf brought her weapon down hard on its head. With a groan the spider woman fell unconscious.
“I think I could learn to like hammers,” said the elf. Then the spiders were upon them.
Thianna and Desstra chopped and hammered while dodging threads of spider silk and avoiding bites of the males’ savage fangs. Despite the giantess’s reluctance to admit it, she and the elf were a formidable team when they were forced to work together. Crumpled spiders piled up at their feet and another of the females was taken down. But the numbers were too great. It wasn’t a fight they could win.
The spiders appeared to be ignoring Daphne. The dryad stood quaking in the pool of water, her leaves turned up around her in a useless attempt at camouflage. Desstra thought the arachne were ignoring the tree girl because of her lack of red blood, but when quick dodging maneuvers splashed some of the puddle water onto her bare skin, she understood. The pool was freezing cold. Of course, the elf realized. The spiders of the Svartálfaheim Mountains back home were sluggish in the cold. They only ventured aboveground into the Wyrdwood in the summer months and remained belowground for the rest of the year. Extreme cold could paralyze or even kill them.
“Thianna,” she called, “freeze the room.”
“What?” said the giantess.
“They can’t bear the cold,” the elf explained. “Drop the temperature in this room.”
“Hard to do that and still fight,” Thianna replied.
“It’s our only chance,” said Desstra. “I’ll cover you.”
“I’ve got four sides,” said the giantess.
“I know,” said the elf. “You just do your thing and I’ll do mine.”
Then the Svartálfar was moving as quickly as she ever had. The little elf was nearly a blur as she danced around and even over the frost giant. She struck at arachne before, behind, beside, and above the giantess.
Thianna was amazed, but she couldn’t afford to waste the breather Desstra was buying her. Drawing a great gasp of air, she put as much force into her frost charm as she ever had. “Skapa kaldr skapa kaldr skapa kaldr,” she chanted.
The air around Thianna misted. The puddle at her feet froze over. Norrøngard-born Desstra had no trouble keeping her feet, but the arachne weren’t so fortunate. Those that scurried across the ice slipped and slid and were easy to squash with a hammer.
“It’s working!” shouted the elf. “Pour it on.”
“Skapa kaldr skapa kaldr SKAPA KALDR!” roared Thianna. A spider woman lost her grip on the ceiling overhead and fell to the floor, striking with a dull thud.
Thianna laughed.
“Don’t stop,” said Desstra.
As the giantess continued her invocation, the spiders slowed. They rolled over to their backsides and curled their legs up. More of the females dropped to the floor. Thianna stopped chanting. She and Desstra stared around the chamber at their vanquished foes.
“Thanks for the tip, Long Ears,” said Thianna.
“Did I hear that right?” said Desstra. “Did you just thank me?”
“Don’t get used to it,” said the frost giant. “It did work on the bugs really well, though.”
Desstra looked toward the dryad. Daphne had grown quite still, her foliage curled up around her. “That’s not all it worked on,” said the elf.
“Is she dead?” asked Thianna.
As if in answer, the dryad let out a loud snore.
“Doesn’t sound like it,” said Desstra. “Though one of us is going to have to carry her, and that one isn’t me.”
Thianna grumbled, but she lifted the dryad easily, tossing the girl over one shoulder. Desstra bent and selected a long strand of spider silk from the cavern floor. She looped it into a tight coil and fixed it to her belt. “For later,” the elf explained. Then, as she straightened up, Desstra noticed something on the giantess’s exposed
calf.
“Thianna, your leg,” she said.
“Yes, those are my bare legs. Karn has already remarked on it. They don’t seem to like pants here very much. Or haven’t you noticed?”
“No,” said her companion, pointing. “You’ve been bitten.”
Thianna glanced at her calf. Blood oozed slowly from a small puncture. The wound was slight and already scabbing.
“That’s nothing,” she said. “Just a scratch.”
“But, Thianna,” said Desstra, worry filling her dark eyes. “You saw the red hourglass markings. These spiders are venomous. I don’t have my satchel…my antidotes.”
“Oh. How venomous are they?” Thianna asked.
“Even tiny spiders can be deadly,” the elf replied. “And these are giant.”
“Yes, well, I’m a giant too.” Thianna began marching toward the far cavern exit. “Come on,” she said. “No sense waiting around here for the bugs to wake up.”
Sirena marched sullenly through the palace. She had returned from an all-night and utterly fruitless search of the lower city. There was no sign of the troublesome giantess anywhere. As unbelievable as it seemed, the enormous girl had simply vanished. She’d heard the reports from the south gate, the theft of the hippalektryons, but Thianna was not among the fugitives.
“Crows take you, cousin,” she swore. The barbarian had betrayed her, betrayed her hospitality. Sirena had treated Thianna like an equal, afforded her the pleasures of a full Calderan citizen. But even shown the trappings of civilization, Thianna had rejected her. And in so doing snatched away any chance of a return to Sirena’s former life. She shuddered to think they were related.
Sirena reached the central courtyard of the palace complex, where a broad patio was surrounded on three sides and opened to the steep cliff on a fourth. The courtyard was unusual in that it was dominated by a life-sized Queen’s Champion board, complete with theater seating. Spectators could choose to sit in either the Sky Queen’s or the Land Queen’s stands. She saw that Queen Xalthea walked across the checkered board now, in the company of three soldiers.
A guard stood nearby in the shadow of the palace.
“To whom does the queen speak?” Sirena asked.
“Hippalektryon units,” the guard replied.
“Melantha’s soldiers?” Sirena was surprised. Xalthea commanded the wyvern troops who held sway over the skies, but Melantha was in charge of ground forces.
“They wear their earrings on their right,” the woman said. Sirena nodded. Calderan soldiers only wore one earring. Those who served the Sky Queen pierced their left ear; those who served Melantha, their right. Her own ear had been pierced on the right, but she had had to pierce her left when she was elevated to the position of Keras Keeper. The hole in her right lobe had yet to close.
“They did not report to the Land Queen?” she asked.
“Xalthea intercepted them,” the guard replied, her previously impassive face growing uncomfortable with discussing the rivalries of her monarchs. “They had just returned from chasing the escaped hostages.”
Sirena raised an eyebrow.
“Returned empty-handed?” she asked.
“So it appears,” said the guard, stone-faced.
“I would not walk in their sandals,” said Sirena. The guard diplomatically said nothing, but her eyes said she agreed. The Sky Queen was not known for her mercy.
Sirena walked out into the courtyard but took a seat in the stands. She could see that one of the three soldiers was badly injured. She was clearly in need of medical attention but had come to report first. Perhaps this would mitigate the queen’s displeasure. As Sirena watched, the woman fell to the ground. She lay where she had fallen, struggling to rise.
“Be still,” Queen Xalthea said. “You have clearly given your all in the service of Caldera. We will see your injuries treated shortly. And you”—she turned to the other wounded soldier—“do not seem much better. Your effort is commendable.”
Xalthea turned to the remaining women.
“Step forward,” she commanded. The women did so. This placed them each upon a separate square on the Queen’s Champion board. Xalthea looked to a woman with a dark bruise on her face.
“Knocked from your mount and rendered unconscious,” the Sky Queen said. “Not an ideal performance.”
“My queen,” said the nervous soldier, “I was incapacitated.”
Xalthea harrumphed. “Chasing after children,” she said. Then she addressed the last soldier.
“Where is your sword?” she asked.
“It was taken from me, my queen,” the woman responded.
“And your fire lance?”
“Also taken.”
“And your pelta?” Xalthea was referring to the distinctive crescent-shaped half shield that marked Calderan soldiers. The woman did not immediately answer. “Are you going to say that it was taken from you too?”
“Yes, Sky Queen,” the soldier said. Sirena wondered if the use of Xalthea’s title was a desperate attempt to remind the queen that they served the Land Queen, not her.
“And yet you are not injured,” Xalthea said, frowning.
“I was overcome and disarmed.”
“By a beast boy,” said the queen. She sighed theatrically. “What do we say in Caldera where our shields are concerned?”
The woman did not answer. Xalthea turned to Sirena, though she hadn’t taken any notice of her before.
“Keras Keeper, you were once a soldier.”
“I was, my queen,” said Sirena. It stung to be reminded of the life that was denied her.
“What is the slogan that they drill into you concerning your pelta?”
Sirena hesitated, as if saying the words made her complicit in the soldier’s fate.
“Come now,” said the queen. “Surely you have not forgotten already?”
“Either with your shield or on it,” she called quickly.
“Either with your shield or on it,” Xalthea repeated. “You are not with your shield, and yet you walk unaided and uninjured.”
“My queen,” said the woman, desperation mounting in her eyes. Sirena felt her own pulse quicken in sympathy with the woman’s.
“I am not your queen,” Xalthea replied coldly. “I would be ashamed to have such cowards in my ranks.”
The Sky Queen suddenly stepped forward onto a square beside the frightened soldiers. In Queen’s Champion, this would constitute a challenge. The woman opened her mouth to speak.
Gears under the checkerboard turned. The square the doomed soldier stood upon fell inward like a trapdoor. She disappeared through the hole in the board. Sirena heard her screams for a brief moment; then they were cut off abruptly as her body collided with the cliff and tumbled to the waters below. The section of checkered square slid back into place with a mechanical click. It rang loudly in the stunned silence.
The remaining soldiers looked at Xalthea in horror. Sirena turned her face away. The penalty for failure in Caldera was always strict. It should not bother her so. She knew that strength of the city came at a high cost.
The queen turned to the one with the bruise on her face.
“Don’t fail me again,” she said.
The queen left the soldiers on the board and walked to where Sirena sat in the stands. Her look sent a chill down Sirena’s spine. For a moment, she worried that her futile search for Thianna might also be counted a failure in Xalthea’s judgment. But she was no longer a soldier. She carried no pelta.
“When this is over,” the queen said, “I think we’ll send a squadron of my wyvern riders to Ymiria and burn that pathetic frost giant village to the ground. A long overdue payback for harboring our enemies.”
Sirena nodded. If she worried for a distant village of inhuman strangers, that concern paled against her relief that Xalthea’s temper was focused elsewhere.
The Sky Queen started toward her wing of the Twin Palaces, then paused. She fixed Sirena with a cold stare.
“And,
Keras Keeper,” she said, “if for any reason I am unable to command my wyverns then, you will follow this soldier down the mountain.”
—
The sphinx was luxuriating in a patch of sunlight. She was loving the feel of the warmth on her belly while she pondered new riddles. Obviously her material was getting a bit dated and she needed to up her game. She should have asked that blond-haired boy to tell her a few riddles before letting them go.
Around her the kobalos began chittering excitedly. The noise was distracting.
“Keep it down,” she ordered. “I can’t hear myself think.” She rolled over onto her belly and arched her back in a long stretch.
The din the kobalos were making only got louder. Several of them came scurrying up to her where she sat atop a broken roof.
“Honestly,” the sphinx complained, “I don’t know why I keep you wee folk around. If you weren’t such excellent cooks—”
She stopped talking when she saw the dust of the ground rising in little swirls. The sphinx raised her eyes and saw three wyverns dropping out of the sky. Not for the first time, she was jealous of their power of flight. Thican sphinx were wingless, unlike her winged cousins across the sea in Neteru. It was hardly fair.
Then she noticed that the wyverns had riders. Soldiers in black leathers and bronze armor. They wore helmets with black plumes. One of them wore a black cape. The sphinx supposed this one thought she was the most important.
The black-caped woman stepped down from her wyvern. She approached the sphinx on her perch, walking with a slight limp. The woman took off her helmet.
“My name is Leta,” the woman said. “I am the captain of the Keras Guard.”
The sphinx shrugged. Politics and soldiery weren’t nearly as interesting as sports competitions and riddle contests.
“We are tracking two fugitives,” the woman named Leta continued. “We know that they came to these ruins.”
Now the sphinx had her back up.
“These ruins, as you call them,” she said, sitting up and puffing out her chest, “are the Sanctuary of Empyria. One of the most sacred spots of all Thica.”
Now it was Leta’s turn to shrug.
“Ancient history does not concern me,” she said. “The whereabouts of my quarry does.”
