Hand of the Hunter

CHAPTER EIGHT

The sound of drums woke Hweilan. Her head felt full to bursting, and she had to force her eyes open. The world was a strange array of gray and green and the shadows between. The first thought that occurred to her wasWhy has the world gone upside down?

And she realized that the world had stayed as it ever had, but she was hanging upside down, and the sound of drums was her own heart, filling her head with blood. Her hands, dangling so that her fingertips brushed the dead-leaf carpet of the forest floor, felt thick and ready to burst.

Hweilan looked up at her feet.

Thick whitish thread encased her legs, hips, and thinned out just over her navel. No, not thread. The small movement of her head set to swaying, just a little, and she felt the stickiness of the stuff over her bare skin. Not thread at all. It was webbing.

That realization brought back the memory of Kesh Naan, the cave, and the spiders. The thousands upon thousands of spiders…

Her head fell back. She felt sure her hands and arms and every last inch of her would be a mass of swollen flesh and fang-ravaged skin. But there wasn't so much as a scratch. In fact, every nick and scrape she had suffered over the past days was completely healed, her skin flawless. Except for one: The livid burn scar across her palm, the Dethek runes spelling kan-"death" in the tongue of the Vil Adanrath. But everything else… completely healed. How long had she swooned under the spiders' venom? How long had-?

Something moved through the brush of the trees overhead.

She looked up again and saw black shapes moving through the leaves, making their way over the thick branches of the tree from which she hung. More of the large, black spiders. Every one of them was headed straight for her. The sheer number of them made her heartbeat quicken.

She tried to move her legs. The spidersilk encasing her did not loosen in the slightest. She tried to pry at it, but her fingers only stuck to it.

The nearest of the spiders emerged from the leaf-thick branches and she got her first good look.

They were not as large as the ones in the cavern that had joined and become Kesh Naan. But they were still far larger than any spider ought to be. Each spider's abdomen was the size of a dinner plate. Its head-sprouting moist fangs and a dozen glassy eyes-was bigger than her fist. The spiders were not hairy, but black and shiny, a thing completely of chitinous armor.

Hweilan screamed.

"Kesh Naan! Kesh Naan, help!"

She thrashed, and her fingers swept through the leaves under her. The nail of her middle finger hit something hard. She looked down.

A knife lay there, buried in the leaves. She recognized it. A long flat of steel, etched with runes, hilt bound with thin strips of leather. She had first seen it in the snowy foothills of the Giantspires in what seemed another lifetime. It was an elf's knife. Lendri's knife.

A vibration ran through her, ever so slight, no more than a tickle in her bones. She looked up. The nearest of the spiders had reached the point from which began the tangle of web binding her to the tree. Its front two legs sought a grip on the web, found it, and the spider climbed down toward her. More spiders-a dozen at least-were crawling over each other in their eagerness to join the first.

Hweilan shrieked and stretched her hand out for the knife. It was a near thing, the tips of two fingers brushing over the cold steel, then she swung back. She thrashed again, gaining momentum, and on her next try she swung closer. The flat of the blade slid between her fingers, she tightened her grip, pulled, and slapped the handle into her other hand.

The spider passed her feet, her knees, her thighs-probably hoping for a spot of bare skin in which to sink its fangs.

Her fear and revulsion had robbed her of any thought of strategy or finesse. The spider's fangs twitched once, then opened wide to strike. Hweilan attacked. The point of the knife raked through the spider's eyes, and they burst like a bundle of overripe berries. The spider scrambled back so quickly that it lost its grip and fell. Hweilan's second strike batted it away. The feel of its hard carapace and the sharp points of its feet as her forearm struck made bile seep into her throat.

The blinded spider scrambled away, spraying dead leaves in its wake. The others, gathered on the branch overhead, hesitated only a moment before beginning their descent.

Hweilan tried to slice away the webbing by sliding the edge of the knife under the silk. But it was stuck fast to her skin. Given hours of careful work, she knew she could probably manage to slice away enough to free herself. But she had moments at best.

The spiders came down. The webbing vibrated like a harp string, and she could feel their claws grabbing the tangle of silk. Others, seeing the way down full with their fellows, affixed their own webs to the branch and dangled toward her.

The nearest spider scrambled over her knees. She felt another coming down the back of her legs.

Hweilan swiped with the knife in front of her and her fist behind. The spiders stopped just out of her reach. The one she could see eyed the sharp steel of the knife as it swept past again and again. She half-considered bending up at the waist to extend her reach, but she feared that doing so would give the spider on the back of her legs the opening it needed.

The spider grasping her shins watched the knife go past twice, three times, and after the fourth it leaped, falling down, then grasping all eight of its claw-tipped legs around one breast and shoulder.

Hweilan screamed and instinctively pulled her head away as far as her neck would stretch. But against her will her eyes looked down and she saw the spider's fangs twitch once, then spread wide, each point filling with a shiny, clear droplet of venom.

A round knob of wood struck the spider's head. A sharp crack of shattering chitin, and the thing flew away. She heard another strike, and the weight across the back of her legs flew away.

"Get gone, you!" shouted a reedy voice, followed by thwack-thwack!

Hweilan twisted her head around, swiped her own hair from her face, and looked for her rescuer. There stood Gleed, swiping at the spiders with the staff that was taller than he was. For a creature that had probably been old when her grandfather was born, the goblin was surprisingly spry.

But there were too many. Hweilan had first numbered the spiders at dozens. Looking up, she saw that there had to be at least two score, perhaps more. They had seemed eager before, coming for her. Now, they were enraged. But they seemed to have forgotten her for the time being.

Those hanging from the web or clinging to her perch jumped to the forest floor and scrambled for Gleed. Those still in the branches leaped for him. The closest in the near branches overhead turned their swollen bodies and spat out lengths of web that caught in the slightest breeze.

But it was all in vain. The runes etched into Gleed's staff and burned into his leather robes flared with a green light. Fire sizzled from his open palm, and emerald flame flared along the length of his staff. The shards hit the spiders in a shower of sparks. The nearest took the full brunt of the attack and burst into smoking pieces, but some tried to dodge, and the missiles glanced off their thick shells. Still, it soon took the fight out of them, and they scurried into the underbrush, trailing acrid fumes behind them. Green fire caught in the strands of silk riding the air, and even as it burned them to ash the flames raced up the strand to catch on the spiders themselves.

It was over in mere moments. A rattling of leaves and underbrush as the spiders fled, and then there were only a few left. Even though the flames were dying, still all it took was a waggle of the staff in their direction, and they too joined their fellows for the deeper shadows of the forest.

Hweilan hung there dumbly, the knife dangling from one hand.

Gleed turned to her. "You survived Kesh Naan," he said. "I am most pleased. But I see you still have much to learn."

She glared at him. "Just get me down."

"Drink this," said Gleed. He held out a brass goblet from which a thick steam rose.

Hweilan, sitting in front of the crackling hearth inside Gleed's tower, frowned at the proffered drink. "The last time I drank something you offered, I passed out then woke up naked in the woods."

The old goblin smiled, revealing sharp yellow teeth. "See, you are learning. Well done. But this is only mulled wine with a few special herbs. It will warm you up and help you to relax. Nothing more."

Hweilan took it and sniffed the steam. Her scowl turned to a grimace.

Seeing it, Gleed chuckled. "I didn't say it was good wine."

Despite the smell, holding the warm liquid in her hand made Hweilan realize how thirsty she really was. She took a quick drink and forced it down. She almost choked. "Gah! That is… foul."

But Gleed had already turned away to tend something in the fire, and he ignored the comment.

The wine seemed to settle in her stomach only a moment, then the warmth spread throughout her whole body. She felt her skin flush, and a pleasant tingling started at the crown of her head and worked its way slowly down the length of her body to her toes. She made sure Gleed wasn't watching, then finished the rest in two gulps.

"Want some more?" said Gleed, who still hunched over the fire. He hadn't even glanced behind him. Hweilan thought he must have the ears of a bat.

"Yes," she said.

He didn't laugh as he took the empty goblet from her, but she could see the amusement in his eyes. "Grows on you, does it not?" he said.

"It tastes like the bottom of a horse bucket, but the way it feels…" She shrugged. "I like it."

"You like it now," he said, handing her a full goblet, "but you'll learn to love it later." He gave her a conspiratorial wink. "Always a danger with such things."

She took the goblet and breathed in the steam.

"Take your time with that one," said Gleed. "I want you relaxed, not insensate."

The goblet stopped halfway to her lips. "For what?"

Gleed pursed his lips in thought, then said, "You know of the uwethla?"

She started to shake her head, then stopped. Hweilan of Highwatch had no idea what uwethla were. But she was more than that. The well of her memory, quiet and still since she'd woken in the woods, suddenly rippled, as if stirred by something swimming just below the surface. A hundred lifetimes of her people… she'd seen them, sometimes through their own eyes. She'd felt them, every pleasure and pain, and the words came to her unbidden.

"Wethresta," said Hweilan. "Wethre unekwa lahena."

"He binds it," said Gleed, translating, his voice taking on the singsong chant of words spoken by rote. "He binds the words of power to the skin." He blinked once, very slowly and purposefully, then nodded. "You have the Lore. You passed the first test. You have earned your first uwethla."

Gleed turned back to the fire and removed a long rod of steel, wrapped in leather on one end, the other ending in a sharp point, which glowed red. He raised it, smiled, and Hweilan knew what was coming.

Seeing the red hot steel, she knew it would hurt like unholy hell. But after what she'd been through, after being the sole survivor of her family's slaughter, after enduring torture at the hands of Kunin Gatar, after being chased across half of creation, after having her mind ravished by Nendawen and spiders biting every inch of her skin and enduring all the sorrows of a hundred generations…

Well, a little pain in the skin seemed a small price to pay.

Her gaze hardened. "I didn't need the wine for this."

Gleed watched her a long moment, his eyes no more than slits. "Yes, I see that now," he said. Then he nodded at the door. "Outside."

They crossed the bridge and followed a path along the shore. At the end of the path, where water and light came together at the lakeside, Hweilan removed the cloak and kneeled near the water's edge, the water lapping less than a foot from her knees. Her wet hair lay heavy against her skin, but she felt hot, partly from the wine and partly in anticipation of what was to come.

Gleed stood behind her, moon- and starlight sparkling in the runes etched into his robes, almost as if they'd been sewn with diamond dust. In his left hand he held a wooden bowl, filled to the brim with a clear liquid that reflected no light at all. In his hand he held the pointed steel shaft, the end of which still held the heat of the fire.

"The Lore is to Know," said Gleed, his voice again toned to rote. "But to Know the Lore is a matter of the Heart. I will bind the Lore to your Heart. Do you wish it?"

Hweilan of Highwatch would have recoiled at the very thought of this, and her voice, now very small, did say, What are you doing? That voice would always be there-at least she hoped that some part of her would always be Hweilan of Highwatch-but she was something more now, and becoming more still. What… she wasn't sure yet. But she could feel the power coursing in her veins. And in her heart, she still remembered all that she had seen in her vision. She felt its absence, the loss like a hunger. And she knew there was only one way to fill it.

She stood and turned her back on the light rippling across the dark water. Looking up at her, Gleed saw that the sharp horn of the moon stood over her left shoulder, almost like the curve of a bow, and he had a momentary vision of what was to come. He shuddered and said again, his voice weaker this time, "Do you wish it?"

"He nethke," said Hweilan, her voice clear and strong. "Kethne kyerhewun."

She spoke the words perfectly, and she understood them-"I do wish it. Let it be done."

"So be it," Gleed said, and dipped the glowing tip of steel into the bowl. The liquid therein sizzled, but it did not steam, instead soaking into the hot metal like parched ground drinking in the first summer rain.

Hweilan kneeled again. She did not flinch or close her eyes as he approached with the hot steel. She forced herself to watch, to focus on the red hot point of metal.

"The Lore," Gleed said. "Upon your heart, I bind it."

He plunged the tip of the steel into her skin, beginning just above the swell of her left breast. Pain shot through her entire body. Her fists clenched involuntarily. Empowered by the sacred water, her skin did not burn or crisp, but took the fire into its very essence, even as her blood boiled and sizzled.

She did not scream.

Later, as Hweilan slept in her pallet beside one wall, Gleed sat up, staring into the glowing embers in his hearth.

Tonight by the lake, he had felt the very first tingle of fear. The first in a long, long time. When he plunged the hot metal into the girl's skin, tears filled her eyes, but the gaze that burned behind them showed only hunger and eagerness.

For the first time in all his years, Gleed thought perhaps the Master had bitten off more than he could swallow.