The strand trembled when my breath touched it.
Lower.
I ducked. A second strand crossed where my eyes had been, so fine it disappeared whenever Kade's fading blue edge turned away.
Shadowmaw began as a limestone throat behind the empty prison. The worked stone ended within a dozen steps. Wet rock closed around me, layered with silk that ran wall to wall in shining passages.
The mark in my cut left palm burned. Darker power waited behind the pain, separate from the old blue enchantment on Kade's sword.
Behind me, the broken prison passage stayed dark. Nothing followed. Ahead, the silk drew tighter down the slope.
I moved before the stillness could change its mind.
The passage dipped beneath a limestone shelf. I ducked, scraped my back against the ceiling, and skidded on damp grit. My left shoulder struck the wall. Pain flashed through it, but the sound that followed came from above.
A soft click.
I looked up.
The spider dropped out of the ceiling.
It unfolded as it fell, eight jointed legs opening around a swollen body. It landed behind me with a wet slap that trembled through the webbing beneath my boots. I twisted too late. A foreleg swept for my head.
Down.
I folded at the waist. The limb cut through the air where my face had been and lifted my hair. Kade’s sword came up without a target. Steel struck something hard and skidded away in a spray of pale fluid.
The blade’s old enchantment answered first. Blue light shivered steadily along its edge, the same narrow glow it’d carried before the binding. Beneath it came something else.
Heat rushed from my palm into the hilt and down the steel. It wasn’t blue.
Nightblade, Astarra said. Call it along the edge. Don't clutch at all of it.
I clutched at all of it. The current came cleanly. I was the crooked part, and the black lines above the pact mark blazed from wrist to elbow.
The spider reared.
I tried to draw the new strength into the edge. It answered with more force than my wrist could bear. My arm jerked, and the blade tore through the nearest leg.
The limb came away at the joint.
The spider shrieked, stabbing the passage and turning my stomach. It lurched sideways, scraping both walls as its body pressed against the ceiling.
Something clicked behind me.
I glanced over my shoulder. A second spider crouched where the passage narrowed, smaller than the first but broad as the passage. It’d come through the rubble gap, its pale eyes catching the blue light.
For one breath, I stood between them.
My body offered several sensible suggestions, all involving panic and none involving survival.
The wounded spider struck.
I raised Kade’s sword. A hooked leg slammed into the blade and drove it toward my shoulder. The point slipped past the guard, opening my left shoulder through leather and skin. Heat burst down my arm, and my knees dipped.
The mark pulsed, and the gap to my right became the only space the creature had left me.
I shoved toward the wall instead of away from it. The spider crowded the passage, one leg punched through a hanging curtain of silk. I caught the strand with my free hand and yanked.
The web stretched between my fingers, then snapped against the spider’s face.
The creature recoiled. I drove my shoulder into its underside.
That was a poor decision. Its body weighed more than a loaded cart. I bounced away, lost my footing, and dropped onto one knee. Kade’s sword nearly tore free.
Behind me, the second spider clicked again. Its forelegs rose.
The mark burned once, so sharply my teeth met.
I rolled toward the wounded spider. The second creature stabbed at the place my back had occupied, punching through the silk beside my ribs to scrape stone.
I came up beneath the first spider’s body. Its bitter, greasy stink filled my mouth. A leg folded toward my face. I caught the joint with my left forearm, holding it from my throat while driving the sword upward with my right.
The new force surged.
For an instant, my grip slipped beneath more strength than I knew how to direct. I hauled at it like a frightened boy with both hands on a chain.
I had no idea how to shape that much strength.
I gave it a terrible angle.
The sword punched into the spider’s underside. The edge resisted, then sank through. Black fluid poured over my hand as the creature bucked against the ceiling, shaking grit around my head.
One leg hooked beneath my left shoulder.
The claw tore down.
My jerkin split, and flesh opened beneath it. I shouted and drove the blade deeper. My arm trembled against the hooked limb. The mark burned until singed cloth stung my nose.
The spider convulsed. Its fangs snapped shut beside my ear.
I twisted the sword.
Steel grated through the body. The creature collapsed across my legs.
I lay pinned beneath it, breathing through the sour wetness on my face. Blood ran beneath my sleeve. Kade’s sword remained lodged in the carcass, blue light shining through the smear while darker power held in a hard seam along the hilt. The weapon was ready. I was pinned.
The second spider pulled free of the silk.
It rose over me.
I kicked its nearest leg. My boot struck the joint, but the creature barely shifted. It lowered its body, fangs opening, and I seized the sword with both hands. My left arm answered late, while the dead spider’s weight held the blade fast.
“Come on,” I rasped. “I’ve had a terrible day. Don’t make it worse.”
The spider lunged.
I tore the sword loose. The release sent me rolling through the dead creature’s blood. Fangs snapped shut where my chest had been. I came up on my back with the blade between us and slashed upward with everything my shoulders could give.
The edge caught the spider across its front. Blue light flashed along the cut. Pact power followed in a crooked burst, driving the wound deeper than my strength could’ve managed.
The spider recoiled. One foreleg hung badly, dragging through the silk.
It didn’t fall.
It backed into the passage, squeezing between limestone teeth and the webbed wall. I watched it retreat around the bend, its injured limb scraping behind it. The silk quivered, then settled.
I tried to stand.
My left shoulder buckled when I rose, driving me back against the stone. Blood warmed my sleeve. Kade’s sword slipped free, struck the floor, and rang with blue light.
I reached for Kade’s sword before its ring finished fading. My right fingers closed around the grip, and the pact answered beneath the bindings. Strength arrived without instruction. I’d invited something enormous into my blood and would have to learn my manners around it while spiders listened from the walls.
The web overhead shivered.
I froze with my hand on the hilt.
Nothing descended. No hooked leg pierced the curtain. The strands settled against one another, trembling back toward stillness. I let out the breath trapped behind my teeth and hated how much it shook.
I moved. The scenery hadn’t earned my admiration.
A niche crouched behind the dead spider, hidden beneath a thick curtain of web. Leather showed through the white layers. Below it, the curved limb of a short bow pressed against stone.
Someone had reached this place from above.
A narrow crack high in the limestone admitted a smear of gray daylight. It lay beyond the corpse’s tangled boots, packed with silk but unmistakable. An opening. A route. Hope lifted its head before sense could stop it.
The web across the gap had built up over generations. Older layers had yellowed against the stone. Whatever opening once existed had belonged to the corpse’s world, not necessarily mine.
I sheathed Kade’s sword and drew my knife. The left shoulder wouldn’t help with pulling, so I kept that arm close and sawed through the cords one-handed. The web yielded reluctantly, stretching until each strand parted with a faint note.
The corpse lurched toward me.
I caught it against my chest. Cold leather, stiff limbs, the dry weight of a person made into an object. One hand swung beneath the silk, its fingertips picked clean.
“Sorry,” I whispered, and hated that the word sounded like permission.
The bow strap had been cut halfway through. Not by teeth. A blade had worried the same spot again and again before the web won. The dead adventurer had tried to free it. I finished the work and pulled the weapon loose.
Seven arrows remained in a small quiver at the hip. Their gray fletching had bent against the wall, but the shafts were straight. Crooked feathers might spoil a shot. They wouldn’t spoil the idea of one.
Beyond the niche, the web trembled. A faint clicking passed along the stone, stopped, then answered from farther down. I cut the belt pouch free without testing its knot.
It held flint, steel, and tinder wrapped in waxed cloth. Those went into my own pouch. A pair of stiff leather gloves followed, too large and carrying the sour smell of old sweat beneath everything the cave had added.
I left the dull buckle, two snapped arrowheads, and an empty wooden tube. None of them would keep me alive.
A strand snapped behind me.
I turned with Kade’s sword in my right hand and the bow trapped against my ribs. The passage beyond the niche lay layered in silk. Nothing crossed it. Nothing I could see, anyway.
Leave it.
“Gladly.”
I hooked the bow diagonally across my back. Drawing it while the left shoulder recovered would be nearly useless, but nearly useless had just become a category worth carrying. The arrows rode high enough not to scrape the wall.
Before leaving, I looked once more at the corpse. The boots were worn smooth at the toes from climbing. Whoever had died here had come upward often enough to mark the leather, or had spent their final hours trying.
The crack of daylight offered no answer.
I stepped over the dead spider and backed from the niche. The bow altered my balance, the pouch knocked once against my hip, and the blocked opening narrowed behind the web.
I’d found proof that an upward route had existed. I carried no proof that it still did.
The ledge narrowed beneath my boots, then surrendered.
I dropped onto a slope of pale limestone. Grit pattered into the webbed hollow below, and every strand answered with a faint tremor. I waited until the motion died before shifting my weight.
The passage had become a staircase no mason made. Limestone teeth jutted from floor and wall, forcing me sideways, down onto one knee, then sideways again. Silk filled the gaps: fine strands at eye height, thicker cords sagging from swollen knots in the ceiling.
There was no floor to follow, only stone that might hold.
I tested each foothold. One shelf flaked away under gentle pressure and rattled below. I shifted toward the wall and chose a darker seam instead.
The bow struck behind me.
I caught it before the wood scraped limestone. Strapped across my back, the short weapon occupied the space where my balance wanted to go. I shortened the strap, turned the bow nearly vertical, and tried the next gap sideways.
Better. Not graceful, but the cave had no audience I wanted.
A faint pulse from Kade’s blade caught on a strand.
My raised hand halted beside a thread so fine it vanished against the pale rock.
Stop.
“I wasn’t touching it.”
You were about to.
“A distinction of some importance.”
I withdrew my fingers. A second thread crossed beneath the first, visible only where the sword’s blue sheen touched it. Both ran toward a knot above an egg mass.
The eggs clung to the far wall in translucent clusters, each one smooth and faintly damp. Shadows no larger than curled fingers floated inside. When my breath stirred the nearest web, several shadows turned together.
I stopped breathing toward them.
The water-polished seam narrowed beneath the egg mass until stone pressed my back and silk brushed the front of my jerkin. There was no room to turn and nowhere else to put a foot.
One of the curled shadows inside the nearest egg unbent.
Don't touch the pale strands.
“I had gathered that.”
Your bow hasn't.
The upper tip rested a hair from the nursery web. I eased the strap down my shoulder with two fingers, caught the bow before it swung, and fed it ahead of me through the gap. The pale strand followed the wood without touching it.
My next breath moved the egg.
I let the air out slowly. The shape inside turned toward the warmth of my mouth, four small limbs unfolding against the translucent skin.
The seam ran beneath it. I went sideways, one boot at a time, with the bow pinned between my hip and the wall. By the time the passage widened, my lungs hurt from refusing a full breath.
Behind me, the curled shape settled. Ahead, the seam divided around a limestone pillar, one side broken above the drop and the other polished dark by water.
I put my palm against the pillar. A vibration moved through it, distant and regular.
“Spiders?”
Water.
The answer shouldn’t have been comforting. It was.
I followed the water-polished seam. Behind me, the shadows in the eggs slowly turned back toward whatever passed for sleep.
The final foothold crumbled under my heel. I caught the wall with my right hand and dropped onto the narrow shelf below. It held.
Beyond its edge, the passage fell away between egg masses and silk passages. The water seam continued downward, the only line in the cavern the spiders hadn’t made.
A narrow shelf let me sit without sliding into the silk passage below. Kade’s sword rested across my knees while I found the heel of a travel loaf, hard, dry, and entirely mine.
That mattered more than it should’ve. Maren had wrapped it into my pocket the morning Brookhaven vanished beneath my feet. I’d carried it through rubble and blood, then forgotten it until hunger reminded me I still owned something. The loaf had survived better than most people I loved. I bit into it.
“A feast fit for a lord,” I muttered.
The bread tasted of dust, old grain, and pack leather. My stomach growled so loudly that I glanced toward the silk passage. Excellent. If the spiders had missed me, my belly had offered directions.
I chewed anyway. Maren always cut loaves too thick, then accused anyone who complained of lacking ambition. The last mouthful scraped down my throat. I washed it with a careful drink of water and tucked the remainder away. A crumb hid in the fold of the wrapping. I chased it with one fingertip and ate that too. Miserable bread was still bread she’d put in my hand.
My left shoulder had stiffened during the crawl. I drew Kade’s sword once with my right hand, slowly, feeling where the damaged arm stopped helping. The blade cleared the scabbard. The shoulder would complain; it wouldn’t decide.
I settled the sword across my knees again and watched tiny tremors travel through the web below. Several went outward. One returned from somewhere I couldn’t see.
“Is this what freedom feels like?”
A pause touched the mark.
No.
“Useful answer.”
Freedom is distance. We haven't made enough of it yet.
A clean strand below tightened toward a hole in the wall. I watched until it slackened again.
“Can you see that through me?”
I receive what you notice. Your eyes are hurried things.
“They've had a difficult day.”
Then teach them better.
I looked again at the passage. The web wasn’t one white sheet. Old strands had gone gray beneath newer silk. Some lines sagged under dust while three taut threads ran cleanly toward holes in the wall. The spiders didn’t merely live here. They’d built roads, alarms, and doors I’d been too frightened to read.
That was more than I’d known a moment ago and less than I wanted. Astarra could tell me where centuries of movement had ended. She couldn’t promise the next handhold would remain attached to the wall.
“Would you’ve sent me down this route if another one still reached open air?”
I don’t know another route that still carries living movement.
Not the same as saying there was no other route. She’d given me the boundary instead of disguising it as certainty. I could work with a limitation I could see.
I secured the bow along my right side where I wouldn’t need the shoulder to reach it quickly, then stood with Kade’s blade low. Below, another tremor moved through the silk and divided at the clean strands.
“Will the bare stone hold me?”
Until it doesn’t.
“A comfort.”
I stepped onto the seam of limestone beside the webbed passage. A clean strand tightened toward the wall. I waited for it to slacken before moving my second foot.
The limestone seam carried me to a pinch in the gallery. Web sealed the passage from floor to ceiling except for one low opening and a bare ledge descending beyond it.
Three clean strands crossed the opening. Each ran to a different pocket in the wall.
Three spiders, then. The web wasn’t a road here. It was a gate.
I set waxed tinder against the lowest anchor and teased loose silk over it before I touched the bow. Kade’s sword went point-first into a crack beside my knee, close enough to grab. The blue enchantment along its edge stayed steady. When I reached for Nightblade, dusk gathered over the blue without replacing it.
Two powers. One borrowed blade. One bad shoulder.
I drew the bow as far as the shoulder allowed and aimed at the center strand.
The arrow clipped stone, wobbled, and cut the strand anyway.
The web snapped tight.
Two spiders rushed the opening exactly where their lines had warned me. I’d watched those angles. The third dropped from directly above.
Its foreleg smashed my left arm against the wall. Feeling vanished from shoulder to fingertips. The bow fell. I caught Kade’s sword with my right hand and shoved myself under the hanging body before its fangs found my neck.
The first spider came through the low gap. I met it in the narrowest part, where its legs had to fold. Blue light bit into the joint. Nightblade carried the cut through the shell and into the body behind it.
The spider collapsed across the opening.
The opening narrowed. Both others moved.
The spider above me tried to pull free. I drove my shoulder under its belly and forced it onto the dead one. Its legs tangled in the sagging web. The last spider held beyond them, waiting for room.
I needed the tinder lit.
My left arm hung uselessly. I jammed Kade’s sword deeper into the crack, pinched the flint in my right hand, and struck it against the blade’s spine. The first spark died. The second caught the teased silk.
Fire ran white, then orange.
The trapped spider thrashed. Burning web tightened around its legs and rolled it into the lower anchor. I tore Kade’s sword free and cut once through the soft joint beneath its head. It stopped moving while the fire climbed over it.
The third spider backed away. Flame reached the clean strand between us; it recoiled into its wall pocket and didn’t return.
Two spiders lay dead. The wall pocket stayed empty.
Heat drove me onto the descending ledge. Behind me, the two bodies settled into the opening as the anchors burned through. Silk, shell, and a slab of loosened limestone came down together.
The upper route disappeared under fire.
Below, the ledge narrowed and fell beside a webbed gallery I hadn’t seen before. I shifted Kade’s sword low in my right hand, tucked my numb left arm against my ribs, and started down before the choke finished collapsing.