The claw withdrew. A vague, lingering pain remained. Devin stared at the perfectly smooth black shape that was the woman’s face. Well, she and her spider-wolf things hadn’t killed him immediately. That had to mean something, right?
“Good morning,” he said. “Or is it evening? One can never tell in places such as these.”
The womanly form retreated. The silvery claws crossed over her heart, assuming she had one. He couldn’t see a single feature of her body otherwise, not eyes or lips or clothing.
“Places such as these?” she asked. Her voice shivered through Devin’s spine like tinkling crystal or the soft patter of rain upon leaves. Pleasant, almost achingly so, and he immediately wished for her to say more.
“Places like caves,” Devin said. “Or monster dens.”
“Is that what you think I am? A monster?”
“You’re a shadow with claws. What else am I to make of you?”
One of those claws wagged before his nose.
“So ready to judge what you do not understand. How little humanity has changed. Would you trust me if I were clothed in silk, my lips painted cherry red and my hair laced with silver threads?”
“It’d help,” Devin said. “Though I doubt it’d have mattered once your twisted little children chased me into your web.”
“Those wolves are not my children.” The silhouette paced before him. “Nor are they like the rest of my kind. I merely found them this morning, twisted and changed by Viciss’s black water. I eased their pain and then guided them to food. They are innocent creatures of nature, and I would spare them from suffering.”
The more she talked the more Devin noticed oddities with her speech patterns, particularly with her pronunciations. Occasionally she’d say something he did not immediately recognize, but could understand from context.
“Viciss?” Devin asked. “Who is Viciss?”
“He is the crawling mountain,” she whispered with reverence. “The greatest of the five. He crafted me into who I am, and is worthy of praise.”
“Crafted you?” Devin said, still struggling to understand. “Into what? Some twisted shadow of humanity?”
“I am neither human nor twisted,” she said. No anger accompanied her rebuke, only wistfulness. “I am an artistic glory. A divine portrait. I am beautiful, little human. Viciss made me beautiful.”
From within the void of her face he saw her eyes open. A sky of soft pastels swam inside her irises, steadily transitioning from pink to ocean blue. The dark silhouette of her body brightened like the rising sun, no longer absorbing light but instead exuding it from every surface. Devin’s eyes widened, his heart halting for a long, agonizing moment. This woman… this woman did not lie. She was far from human, and she was so very, very beautiful.
Scales covered every inch of her body, but they were not hard and reptilian. They fluttered with her movements like soft petals of a flower. The center of her neck and chest were a vibrant white, with radiant waves of pink and then blood red spreading outward to her arms, back, and legs. Her stomach and abdomen were the only parts he saw that lacked scales, for instead they were formed of tough, green skin, like the stem of a flower. When she bowed Devin saw that her spine was outlined and protected with a similar stemlike covering that weaved its way up her spine to vanish beneath the crystalline rainbow that was her hair. Her fingers weaved amid her bow, and no longer did they shimmer like moon-kissed blades. Instead each long finger looked like a deep blue spinneret of a spider, all except for the middle fingers. They bore long, crooked stingers as black as obsidian. Those stingers were the only threatening image in her entire form.
“Your name,” Devin breathed. “Tell me your name.”
“I have not a name as you perceive them,” the woman said. She stepped closer and tilted her neck toward him. “Human noses are unrefined, but please try.”
Perfume washed over his face. It was a mixture of a dozen flowers, the morning mist upon a still lake, and a final lingering note of lavender. He breathed it in and tasted forgotten childhood memories of playing in the mud and wet grass after a rain. Devin’s mind swam, and the moment the scent passed he ached for its return.
The woman stepped away. Her head dipped low and her arms crossed behind her. As if she were shy. As if she weren’t an otherworldly beauty imprisoning Devin in webbed shackles.
“Never before existed a name so sweet,” Devin said. “But my clumsy tongue cannot hope to replicate that. What might I call you instead?”
“When I walked your courts I was given many names. You may use Lavender, if you wish.” Her pastel eyes shimmered. “A name for a name, human. Who are you?”
“Devin Eveson.” He did his best to respectfully bow given his current predicament. “Soulkeeper of the Three Sisters and humble servant of the people.”
“People?” Lavender asked. “Which people? The wealthy? The poor? Do you serve all people, or do you serve only the humans?”
“Forgive me, Lavender, but until two days ago I did not know there were other people besides humans.”
She lovingly brushed her fingers across the side of his face. His skin tingled at the touch. It felt like being brushed by a patch of poison ivy.
“Your Sisters left you so ignorant and confused,” she said. “But I am not here to teach you, Devin Eveson.”
“Then what am I here for?” he asked, unable to help himself. “To be your dinner?”
“Dinner?” She smiled, revealing a row of perfectly smooth teeth like water-worn marble, all flat but for two long and hooked incisors that did much to dispel the smile’s comfort. “Do you fear I’ll eat you, little human? Shall I turn your insides to jelly with my venom and drink of their nourishment to pass away the winter?”
“I’d prefer you not,” Devin said, and he grinned along with her. “But I’d hate to be a rude guest.”
Lavender laughed. A faint whiff of her name-scent trickled down Devin’s throat.
“Fear not my web. You are a skittish animal, and I sought to prevent your harm, and mine, when you woke.”
It was good hearing that she had no plans to turn him into porridge, but there still remained the awkward situation of him stuck to a wall.
“Then illuminate me,” Devin told Lavender. “Why capture me like this if you mean me no harm?”
Lavender passed her hand from one side of his face to the other, her spinnerets weaving a thick sheen of webbing over his mouth. Her lips breathed cool air against his ear.
“I have slept for so long, human. I do not recognize this world, but you do. What you know, I must know. Where are your towns, your cities? How far has humanity spread in our absence?” Her long, powder-dry tongue drifted across his cheek. “You are beautiful, Soulkeeper, in a way that only humans are. I expect this to be most pleasant.”
Something thin and sharp stabbed from Lavender’s tongue into his ear. He tried to scream into the webbing but he felt his body relax instead. A haze settled over his mind, and it felt like he lost himself to daydreaming. He thought of his trip from Londheim, of visiting with his brother-in-law Tomas in the city of Crynn before continuing on through the Winding Steppes to reach Dunwerth. He remembered the crisp chill in the air and the songs he’d sung as he walked the valleys of Alma’s Crown.
Devin’s mind seemed to grow bored with the images, and his thoughts wandered with it. He remembered holding his sister’s hand as they knelt before two triangular pyres burning away to ashes the bodies of their parents. He remembered the cavalcade of orphanages afterward, and of his excitement at being brought into the church for training. It all flowed in his mind, one memory fluidly leading to another. There seemed little rhyme or reason. Sometimes he thought of his time in training to be a Soulkeeper, other times playing leatherball with childhood friends in the fields of Stomme.
One image in particular put a smile to his daydreaming face. It was of a blond Soulkeeper kneeling over a decapitated body on a long, empty stretch of road. A jagged two-handed axe freshly paint
ed with gore lay beside her. She’d glanced over her shoulder and smiled at him, a bit of blood from her gray coat wiped across her nose, giving her a prominent jester’s dot. It was Brittany, his wife, greeting him for the first time ever as she cleaned up the last of a group of bandits terrorizing a farming village in the southern vale.
The memory that followed clenched Devin’s stomach tight. A ring of pines. A cold body atop an unlit pyre. Six years ago, it’d been, six long, painful years. Rage swelled inside his chest. He’d dealt with that sorrow once. He refused to suffer it again. His teeth clenched. His arms and legs tensed. This daydream, it wasn’t a daydream, it was a prison, and by the Goddesses he wanted out. The webs shook and stretched at his pull, and suddenly a sharp pain stung his ear as Lavender gasped and pulled away from him, blood dripping from her tongue. The color drained from the petals of her skin, removing the last bit of light in that deep, dark cave. Only her pastel eyes shone, the slanted pupils widening with surprise.
“You relive moments of joy and yet reward me with anger,” she said.
Devin’s stomach cramped. He slumped in the webbed manacles, his every muscle exhausted. His lips parted, the webbing sealing them crackling like dry leaves.
“Joy?” he said. “You have a strange view of joy. I don’t recall too fondly the loss of those I loved.”
The woman let out a strange, hissing noise.
“Not a loss, but a soul’s return to your Goddesses,” she said. “Are Soulkeepers not tasked with the aiding and celebration of this? I know your kind once feared death. Have you now come to despise it?”
Devin lifted his head and stared straight into those mesmerizing eyes, trusting the strange woman to see his resolve despite the darkness.
“Lavender, as a respected Soulkeeper of the Three Sisters, I say this with utmost civility: Either kill me, or get the fuck out of my face.”
Lavender recoiled as if struck. The pupils of her eyes slanted like a snake’s. A flutter of petals sent waves of red and orange down the scales from her head to her toes, the color quickly replaced by utter blackness.
“Kings and lords once paid for my gift of relived memories,” she said. “Women adorned themselves in lilacs and roses to mimic my beauty. I brought tears to the eyes of those whose lives I swam through. And yet you… you disheveled, lonely servant of slumbering Goddesses would insult me so?”
“My Goddesses do not sleep,” Devin said.
The walking shadow closed in, her glowing claws shaking before his face.
“Not anymore,” she whispered. “But neither do we.”
She left him there, the light of her claws vanishing so he hung in complete darkness. The sound of his breathing was the only reprieve from the silence. What he’d give for a torch, or the shining stars above. He loosely counted for about ten minutes before he started systematically working one individual bond after another, testing their strength. Wrist to ankle to wrist to ankle, figuring out which might give, which directions might have motion. He would not hang there awaiting death or worse. He didn’t know how much time passed, for he had no marker. While awake, he strained and pulled. When his legs tired, he focused on his arms. When his shoulders ached with every breath, he loosely shook his weight from side to side, refusing to give the webbing even a moment’s reprieve.
Hours, Devin was certain. So many hours passed. He gave his muscles a rare break and hung completely limp.
“Has my time come?” he whispered. “Take my soul into your hands, beloved Anwyn. Please don’t leave me here to rot in a cave until the time of Eschaton.”
A brief spark of illumination seared his right eye, and he turned his head away and closed his eyes. When he reopened them, he expected it to be gone, and it seemed it was… but there was light now. He saw the faintest gray of the cave’s walls. Where did it come from? He twisted his neck as his eyes adjusted. No, not before him. Above?
A delirious smile stretched his face.
“Puffy?” The firekin had significantly shrunk in size since last they met. It no longer maintained a humanoid form, instead appearing like a tiny ball of fire no bigger than his little finger. A singular little foot stretched from its lower half to pull it along the cave wall toward Devin’s bound right wrist.
“Shhhh,” it said, its angry little eyes squinting at him.
At least, that was what he believed the creature said. It more came out like a long sizzle. Devin nodded to show he understood. Puffy continued its crawl along the wall until it reached the thick overlapping strands of webbing keeping his right arm locked down. The firekin looked to him, made the shushing sound a second time, and then touched his shackles.
Devin clenched his teeth and gagged down his scream as the webbing burst into flame. The heat seared across his wrist. Puffy leapt off almost immediately, drawing the fire with it. Devin’s hand pulled free, and he winced at the swelling line of blisters and red skin. He slowly breathed out, his training taking over. This, he could handle.
Puffy scurried to the other hand, already appearing a little bit larger than before. It looked to Devin with its coal-black eyes, and he nodded for it to continue. Three more vicious spikes of pain later, he tumbled free to his knees. Puffy hopped down and stood before him. Tiny little arms spread from its body to haughtily push against nonexistent hips. One eye squinted.
“This wasn’t my fault,” Devin whispered. “I swear.”
Puffy didn’t look convinced. Devin decided there’d be better times to make his case. Now that he could see, it was easy to find his pack slumped against the nearby cavern wall. Devin’s sword and pistol lay beside it. He retrieved both and, after a quick check, loaded his pistol. Having his weapons with him eased his tensions a tiny bit. At least now he might go down fighting should he be caught again. Once his pack was over his shoulder he turned to Puffy. The firekin shivered on the bare floor.
Devin held up one finger, then pulled the ramrod free from his pistol. With his other hand he yanked the thick cloth mask he’d made in Dunwerth and tied it about the end. A crude torch, but it’d do for now. He offered it to Puffy, who happily hopped on and nestled in. The creature’s size grew as it consumed the cloth.
“You can keep fire from spreading to my clothes, right?” he whispered. The firekin nodded. With no choice but to trust it, Devin slid the ramrod into one of the deeper pockets of his coat. Only the upper third poked out. Puffy shifted, somehow adjusting the weight of the barrel so it hung away from the coat’s fabric. Devin readied his sword and pistol.
“Can you lead me out?” he asked.
Puffy rolled into a perfect sphere, shot out an arm, and pointed ahead.
“You’re goddess-sent,” Devin whispered, earning himself a little puff of smoke he could not interpret.
Devin cautiously traversed the winding cave tunnels, the firekin his light and guide. He passed in silence, his ears straining for the slightest noise and his eyes alert for a patch of darkness that didn’t sit quite right. There were only a few places where the tunnel branched, and Puffy pointed out the correct direction for him to take. A soft wind blew against his skin, the temperature rapidly dropping with each footfall. Relief battled apprehension when he spotted the thick angular crack leading to the snow-kissed outside. Escape was close, so close, but he mustn’t barge out recklessly. Devin leaned against the wall and listened for movement. Nothing but the wind. He glanced at Puffy, who shrugged its shoulders. Apparently the firekin detected no sign of Lavender, either.
Devin removed his pack and pushed it through the crack, then turned sideways to slide after it. The starlit mountain greeted him with a fresh gust of frozen air. Devin managed only a single step before he heard a soft cluck of a tongue.
“Soulkeeper.”
Devin smoothly turned around. Lavender sat upon a lip of rock several feet above the cavern entrance. Snowflakes settled across her petal scales, adding a layer of white, like a cape, over the red and pink. Her hands clasped together and rested on the knees of her crossed legs. Now
out of the cave he better saw the crystalline ropes that cascaded down like hair from her scalp. Starlight dazzled across them, a full rainbow of subdued colors, and with each movement of her neck they shimmered anew.
“Where’re your pets?” he asked.
“Feeding,” she said. She tilted her head at him. “You escaped.”
Devin kept outwardly calm despite the hammering of his heart.
“Yeah,” he said, glancing either way of the mountainside path. “It seems I did.”
Lavender rose to her feet. Devin’s pistol snapped up, aiming for the space between her pastel eyes.
“There’s no need for bloodshed,” he said. “Let me go and neither of us will see the other again.”
“Perhaps you will never see me,” she said. Webbing shot from her spinneret fingers, forming a bridge directly ahead of her feet so she might walk to the ground. “But I have drunk of your memories. You are a part of me now, another life that shall never dim within my mind, haunting me, my forever ghost.”
“You make it sound disturbing when you put it that way.” Lavender’s feet touched the stone. He tensed his every muscle. The aim of his pistol did not waver. “Come closer and I will shoot.”
“Then do it,” Lavender said. She took another step, and another, until the barrel of his pistol pressed against the scales of her forehead. Devin fought against her mesmerizing stare but could not look away.
“What have I to lose?” she asked him. Blue tears trickled down her cheeks. “Centuries passed while we dragon-sired slept in a shadow tomb built by your Goddesses. My mind is a graveyard of humanity. I cultivated an entire world that no longer exists. I recognize only Londheim, but you’ve taken that city from us, taken it like you took all else. What comfort am I to receive? I sipped lives like your strongest wines, but its taste turns bitter after so many centuries. I do not want this new land. I do not wish to claw, scrape, and bleed to build what we once possessed. What might your bullet take from me that has not already been taken?”
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