“Calm yourself!” Chevat cried, advancing closer to the hanging thing, reaching for something around his neck. “Or you shall be punished.”
Arasteht shuddered and twisted his head away, gnashing his teeth and flexing fingers that bent backward as well as forward. He remained silent.
“Why do you let him live?” Brindani asked, his eyes and voice a bit clearer after consuming Chevat’s potion. “Why do you not kill him, and be done with it?”
“For information, or at least whatever we can glean from his mutterings,” Chevat replied, crossing his arms and turning to glare at Ghaelya menacingly. “He warns us when the Choir, or their servants, are near… He told us that you were coming last night.”
“H-how could?” Ghaelya stammered.
“How is not a factor that concerns me,” the aranea interrupted loudly. “I should think the why of it would be of far more importance.”
Uthalion stiffened, hearing the scratching approach of spidery legs from all sides. Jade eyes appeared in holes along the ceiling in groups, and others approached from behind the rocks they’d passed just moments ago. He cursed quietly, his hand edging to his sword as he realized Chevat’s intent. Though with all that had occurred, he could not blame the aranea.
“The twin…” Arasteht muttered, suddenly focused on the genasi. “The Prophet-…”
“Quiet!” Chevat yelled.
“She who would sing” Brindani uttered and took a step backward, shaking his head and wiping his lips as if they’d betrayed him. He looked wide-eyed at the ceiling and walls, turning in a circle. “They’re coming!” he added in a rushed whisper.
“Who?” Uthalion asked, narrowing his eyes at the trembling half-elf. “Who’s coming?”
Distant buzzing shrieks echoed through the tunnels, followed by growl-like clicking and sounds of combat. Chevat snarled at the sound, his face twisting briefly to reveal his dual nature, his pointed chin splitting at the base like mandibles.
“More of those you fought on the surface,” Chevat answered ancrrilv. “The servants of the Choir.”
“The Flock,” Arasteht grumbled with a low chuckle like rocks rolling in a tin bucket. He faced Ghaelya, his mandibles rising as he spoke. “They see you little one… They love you…”
“Enough!” Uthalion yelled, drawing his sword and advancing on Chevat. “Get us out of here!”
Chevat bared his white teeth, double-sets of eyes protruding from his cheeks as he fumed and flinched as the sounds of fighting drew closer. Piercing screams rippled through the warrens, bounding off the walls like living things as Arasteht sighed loudly, licking his thin, drawn lips with a long tongue.
“If you want us dead, do it yourself, or give the order,” Vaasurri said. He drew his bone-blade though he did not level the weapon at Chevat. “But letting those things take Ghaelya will not solve the problems you have here!-“
“And letting you go will?” Chevat replied incredulously.
The sound of dozens of sharp, scampering legs joined the shrieks and screams from the tunnels.
“It’s a better chance than’sending your own into Tohrepur,” Uthalion answered, sensing a kindred warrior in the aranea, a leader pushed to the boundaries of strategy, and understanding the occasional necessity of such sacrifices. “If you kill us the Choir will only get stronger, push harder, take more of your people…”
“And if I let you go to them?”
“Then there is a chance!” Uthalion shouted and lowered his sword. “More than you’ll have with us dead.”
“Go to her… to the Lady!” Arasteht cooed, his voice growing stronger despite his apparent weakness, his tentacles reaching through the webbing for the genasi. The power in his words stole everyone’s attention, cajoling blades to be set aside, calming rising tempers, and obscuring the frantic struggles of spiders in the tunnels. Uthalion tried to fight back, paralyzed in the effort as Arasteht tore through a section of web. “Go to the song… to the shore… to the bloom and the”
A roar of rage overtook the malformed aranea’s powerful voice as a blur of movement charged past Uthalion. A flash of steel freed the man’s limbs, left him staggering, his heart pounding as he looked up to see Brindani’s sword buried in the throat of the monstrous singer.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
11 Mirtul, the Year of the Ageless One (1479 DR) The Lash, Akanul
K. eening voices clashed with metallic clangs, drawing ever closer as Brindani twisted his blade through Arasteht’s flesh, growling savagely as tentacles wrapped around his arms and legs in a tightening embrace of death. The singer’s gurgling death rattle incited its battling servants, the Flock, to greater ferocity; their shrieks increased as they frantically fought to reach the bone-patterned chamber. Uthalion caught the shocked gaze of Chevat, his lips set in a thin line. He waited for the aranea’s decision, though Ghaelya spoke first.
“They can die,” the genasi said coldly to Chevat as Brindani fell away from Arasteht’s body, sweet-smelling blood dripping from his blade. “That’s two we’ve slain in as many days, and they have my sister, my twin. I do not intend to stop killing them, or anything else that gets in my way, until I have her back.”
Chevat hesitated for only a moment, sparing one last glance at the dead body of Arasteht before turning to the back of the chamber, a fleetness in his step as he called over his shoulder.
“Come!”
Uthalion waved the others on, keeping a careful watch on the dark tunnels of the northern wall, convincing himself for a moment that he would stand strong if the white spiders broke through, that he would make the necessary sacrifice for his companions. There was some truth in the he, enough that he knew it was what he should do, but not enough to make him abandon fear for his own familynot enough to banish that part of him that still longed for the beguiling song out of the south.
He turned and ran just as the others disappeared into the shimmering shadows of a southern tunnel, the shrieks and scratching claws sounding dangerously close on their heels. Chevat’s voice echoed loudly from the lead, the language unknown to Uthalion, though the tone was as familiar as his own battle-tested sword. The aranea barked orders as they twisted and turned through narrow tunnels and crawl spaces, creating a shadowy flurry of activity in their wake.
Uthalion spied dark cloaks and jade eyes. Heavy-bodied spiders scrambled along the walls and crouched among the glowing roots overhead. Humanoid forms dived out of side passages, their bodies shifting with alarming speed. They landed more gracefully on eight legs than Uthalion mused he might have managed on two. They hissed as he passed, glaring before moving on, clearly not pleased with the newcomers’ presence, but loyally gathering to defend their warrens.
The light flashed and flickered constantly as the sounds of battle faded farther and farther behind them. The tunnels slowly widened into ones less ornate than the web-lined artworks of the araneas entrance tunnels and more easily traversed by those unused to such shifting terrain. At length they came to a massive chamber scattered with thin shafts of glimmering light. An incline at the far end led to a loosely circular line of illumination, much like the trapdoor Chevat had led them through. It was a welcome sight for Uthalion’s impatience to be free of the spiders’ kingdom.
They rested at the base of a narrow tunnel leading out, listening to the passing of the Lightning Tide and waiting for Chevat’s word that it was safe to leave. Uthalion kept a sharp eye on the aranea, half-expecting any moment for the spiders’ leader to change his mind and seek to slay Ghaelyait was, after all, a decision Uthalion would have considered had he been in the same position.
“What used to live there, in the Temple?” Ghaelya asked Chevat, breaking the silence. “Did your people ever discover?”
The aranea shook his head thoughtfully.
“Whatever it was, men died trying to possess it,” he said after a time. “The walls were decorated with their bones, their drowned bodies used for trifles, the abandoned artwork of a fickle creature that thought little of mortal lives or desires.”
