Michael had wanted to march on foot, along with the troops, but young Ghieste had insisted, and Michael was too tired to argue. The divine wrath had left him spent once it had passed, and even riding, he slumped in the saddle as if wounded.
No one spoke. They marched in utter silence, only
?7S
the steady tramping of feet and the jingling of gear breaking the stillness of the forest. At some point, Aedan wasn’t sure exactly when, he realized what sounded wrong. No birds. It was just like in the Shadow World. Dawn approached and the birds should have been chirping.
But there were no birds.
“You feel it, too?” Sylvanna asked.
He glanced at her and nodded.
“What is it?”
He shook his head, scanning the forest all around them. “No birds,” he said.
“I had noticed that as well,” she said, “but that’s not it. There’s something else……
Aedan heard something scurrying through the underbrush off to his left.
He glanced quickly in that direction, and saw fern branches moving from the passage of … something.
“Pass the word for the troops to be on guard,” he said.
As the word was passed down the column, he took a deep breath and let it out slowly in an effort to steady his nerves. After what they had just been through, he didn’t know if the troops had enough strength to fight off some new threat.
Again, scurrying noises off to the side. He looked again, but whatever it was escaped his notice.
“There’s something moving in the brush,” he said.
“I know. I heard it,” Sylvanna replied, her gaze on the underbrush around them. “And not just something. There’s more than one.”
Aedan saw Caelum Ghieste and Taelan Alam looking around them, as well.
The sounds had not escaped their notice. What was more, they seemed to be increasing. There was more rustling in the underbrush around them now. Aedan glanced over his shoulder at the troops. They were aware of it.
Moments earlier, the men had been simply marching at a weary pace, their faces drawn and haggard, their shoulders slumped. Now, they were all alert and glancing to their sides, watching the brush and keeping their hands close to their weapons.
Aedan spurred his horse slightly and trotted up to Korven and Michael.
“There is considerable rustling in the brush around us,” he said.
“I know,” said Korven. Michael merely nodded.
His earlier slumped posture had changed. He sat erect in his saddle, clearly tired, but scanning the area around them intently. Visibility was still poor, but the sky was getting lighter, and more light was filtering through the trees.
“Another few miles, and we should be clear of this place,” Korven said.
He sounded more hopeful than certain. “The brush is getting thinner.
We must be approaching the outer edges of the forest.”
Sylvanna came trotting up behind them. “Aedan, look at the trees,” she said tensely.
He looked and at first he didn’t see anything.
Then he saw movement on the tree trunks that they passed. Spiders.
Hundreds of them. Some were small, but some were fist-sized, and some still larger, like small melons. They were crawling up the tree trunks all around them, making them seem to writhe.
Some were already in the lower branches and were dropping down on web strands, one after another after another. The sunlight filtering through the upper branches glistened off the web strands, hundreds of them, thousands, coming down on either side of their route.
“What in Haelyn’s name?” said Korven.
Hundreds of thousands of spiders were all around them now, spinning a vast curtain of webs.
“It’s the Spider,” Sylvanna said grimly. “He’s controlling them.”
No one living had ever seen the Spider and survived to tell the tale.
One of the most dangerous and hideous awnsheghlien, it was said he was once a goblin king named Tai-Qazar, who had led the goblin forces fighting for Azrai at the Battle of Mount Deismaar. What little was known of him came from ancient writings preserved in the library at the College of Sorcerers in Anuire, set down by those who had encountered him hundreds of years ago, while he had still retained some shreds of sanity.
Imbued with the god essence of the dark lord, TalQazar had united several tribes of gnolls and goblins under his leadership and founded his domain within the forest north of Diemed, which came to be known as the Spiderfell. The god essence of Azrai had brought about a horrible mutation in his body, which had progressed the more he used his powers, which in turn gave him an appetite for bloodtheft unmatched by any other awnshegh, with the possible exception of the Gorgon. The upper portion of his body was said to be humanoid in appearance, but so grotesquely changed that he bore almost no resemblance to his original form. His lower half was the bloated body of a huge arachnid, with eight legs and a bulging abdomen. He never ventured from his nest deep within the Spiderfell, but he knew everything that went on within his forested domain through the eyes of the hundreds of species of poisonous arachnids that lived within the Spiderfell.
And to feed his insane appetite for bloodtheft, the gnolls and goblins he controlled brought victims to him.
The woods on both sides of the army were quickly becoming shrouded with a huge network of filmy webs as the horde of spiders clambered over the strands they were spinning. It was a frightening and repellent sight.
None of the spiders were attacking any of the troops. They seemed intent upon their spinning, building up layer upon layer of gossamer webs on both sides of the army’s route.
“They’re trying to trap us!” Aedan said as understanding suddenly dawned.
“With spiderwebs?” said Korven. “Ridiculous! We can break right through them.”
“Any man who tries
