Hand of the Hunter: Chosen of Nendawen, Book II (9 page)

Coaxing.

“
Alet, kweshta. Alet
.”

A woman emerged from the cave. At first, she was nothing more than a pale something amidst the darkness, then she stepped fully into the light of the cavern.

She was tall, elf lithe, her skin pale as old bone, her face ageless. Her nose was little more than a slight bump on her face with two slits of nostrils to either side. Her eyes, both browless, had no whites, but seemed to swirl with a half-dozen colors, like a thin sheen of oil over black water. Silver hair hung past her waist, and she dressed in a gown of what Hweilan first thought was black silk. But as the woman moved, threads of it floated in the air around her, finer than pollen on summer breezes.

“Hweilan, is it?” said the woman. “She who knows her name.” The woman’s voice held no warmth, but neither was it particularly cold. Simply dryly curious.

“Yes,” said Hweilan, and she found herself taking a step back for every step the woman took toward her until her heel touched the edge of the water. She stopped. “Are you … Kesh Naan?”

The woman gave a tight smile, revealing no teeth, just a curve of her lips. “And you know my name.”

Hweilan didn’t understand, so she said, “Gleed sent me.”

The woman’s smile melted away and she stopped a few paces in front of Hweilan. She watched Hweilan a long time. Hweilan was suddenly very conscious of her nakedness,
though she no longer felt cold. On the contrary, the blood suddenly felt very hot under her skin.

Kesh Naan closed her eyes, bent her head back, and took in a deep breath through her open mouth, almost as if she were tasting the air.

It would be most dangerous if she smells blood on you
.

Gleed’s words. Hweilan looked down and saw the blood streaking her side, running down her hip and leg to mix with the mud.

Kesh Naan lowered her head, and when she opened her eyes, the look in them had changed. She had the gaze of a hungry beast, the leader of the wolf pack who has just caught sight of the straggler in the herd.

Hweilan swallowed and said, “I—”

Kesh Naan struck, a lunge so swift that there was nothing Hweilan could have done had she tried. The pale woman seized her. Kicking and clawing and screaming, Hweilan could not break free, could not even loosen the woman’s steel grip. Kesh Naan pulled her in close. A black tongue emerged from between her pale lips, and Hweilan felt the cold flesh slide along the wounds on her shoulder, licking at the blood.

Hweilan screamed.

Kesh Naan held her at arm’s length and sighed, like a destitute drunkard enjoying his first taste of a truly fine wine. But then, as Hweilan watched, the look froze on Kesh Naan’s face. Her upper lip curled into a snarl, and Kesh Naan threw Hweilan away—so hard that she flew across the cavern, slammed into one of the stone columns, then hit the ground, dirt and grit raining down upon her.

She heard Kesh Naan spitting. “Blood burns and bites—gah!”

Almost paralyzed with fear and confusion, Hweilan managed to look up. Kesh Naan was staring at her—
studying
her—through eyes narrow as the slash of a razor. Very slowly, she wiped her lips with the back of one hand.

“What are you?” Kesh Naan said.

“I … I—”

“What
are
you?” Kesh Naan’s voice came out more the roar of a beast than that of a woman. Each word brought her a step closer.

“I—”

“What are you, girl?” This last came out a whisper, but she was so close that Hweilan could feel her breath against her cheek.

Hweilan squeezed her eyes shut and tried to crawl away. But she came up against the stone column and could go no farther. She felt the strong hands grab her again, lift her, and when she dared to open her eyes, all was darkness. They were in the cave.

Blind panic seized Hweilan. She knew they were moving, could feel the steady rhythm of Kesh Naan’s tread and the slight movement of air against her bare skin. Kesh Naan had a grip like steel chains, and one arm held her chest so tight that it was all she could do to draw shallow breath after shallow breath. The dark was utter and complete. The only sound that of Kesh Naan’s heavy breathing and the slap of her feet against the tunnel floor.

Hweilan bucked and thrashed, but Kesh Naan only held her tighter. Hweilan tried to scream, but Kesh Naan’s grip was too tight. Every movement made seemed to find the crack in her rib and grind it. She could not gather breath. Lights danced before her eyes.

Just when the play of light and darkness was about to overwhelm her senses, she heard Kesh Naan scream—almost in disgust, she thought—and the crushing grip was gone. Hweilan felt cool air rushing over her naked skin and knew she was again flying through the air.

She landed on one shoulder, then tumbled and slid across gritty stone. For a long while she could do nothing but lay there, desperate for air, each breath sending a lance of agony through her side.

When she opened her eyes, she saw that the lights were still there—but farther away. She was in a huge cavern, far larger than the one from which she’d come. It was devoid of any sun- or starlight, yet it sparkled with a thousand colors. Lying on her back, she watched them. Thousands had been too timid an estimate. By far. Looking up, she saw what were probably millions of tiny lights, all constantly on the move, some on a ceiling that sloped into a deeper darkness where the lights would not go, some scuttling across the walls and floor, and some hanging in midair—a few close enough that had she reached out she could have touched them.

They were tiny spiders, transparent as crystal, their plump bodies pulsing with colors—reds, greens, blues, yellows, silver, gold, and purples of every shade. The lights they cast sparkled off webs strung around the cavern. Terrified as she was, every breath a stab of pain, still Hweilan could not help but feel overwhelmed at the beauty of it all.

As her heart began to slow and her breathing to calm, Hweilan could hear them moving—the susurrus of millions of minuscule legs moving over stone and soil and each other. It sounded like the rustle of a summer breeze on the grass of the high steppe. Soothing. One of the spiders dropped from its web and landed on her shoulder. It felt soft as goosedown.

But then she heard something else. Something scuttling in that impenetrable darkness far above. No, not something. Some things. Her eyes were adjusting to the new light, and she saw that amidst the millions of small spiders, dozens of larger spiders moved. She hadn’t seen them at first, because unlike their smaller cousins, they were black as moonless night, visible only because of the other lights reflecting off their hard carapaces.

“K-Kesh Naan?” she tried to call out, but it sounded no more than a whisper. Hweilan swallowed, winced as she gathered a full breath, then tried again, louder. “Kesh Naan?”

The black spiders dropped, a dozen or more striking the ground around her. The smallest of them was big as a cat, and the largest was almost the size of a hound. They turned to face her, the mandibles on their faces
click-click-clicking
together, in a horrible rhythm. Something about the sound seemed on the verge of forming words.

Hweilan forced herself to her feet, but the spiders surrounded her. She didn’t dare try to rush between them, and she knew she wasn’t strong enough to leap over.

“Kesh Naan!” she screamed. Her side screamed at the movement, but she bit back a scream and forced herself to stay put. “Please. Gleed sent me to you.”

A sharp hiss from the nearest and largest spider. Nothing remotely human in it. Hweilan swallowed and decided to try another tactic.

“The Master sent me,” she said.

Hweilan held her breath. Silence.

“You must teach me!”

The spiders surged into movement, so quickly that Hweilan screamed. But they weren’t coming for her. All of the giant black monsters leaped onto each other, their legs scrambling in a writhing mass, faster and faster until they blurred together into a swirl of blackness. Before her eyes, the blackness took shape.

Kesh Naan stood before her, clothed in the gossamer-fine threads of darkness. “You wish to
Know
, girl?” she said.

Had Kesh Naan moved toward her, Hweilan might have scrambled away. But the woman just stood there, looking at her, the slightest curve of a smile on her lips.

“You desire … en-light-en-ment?” She broke the last word into pieces, emphasizing each syllable. “You ask for Lore.
Ahwen
in the sacred speech. Say it.”

“
Ahwen.
”

“And why do you desire this?”

Truth be told, Hweilan didn’t. The only thing she desired at this moment was to be far away. Even Gleed’s dank tower
seemed a paradise compared to this nightmare. So she said the only thing she could think of. “Th-the Master sent me. Nendawen.”

“Yes,” said Kesh Naan. “But why are you here?”

“I … I don’t know.”

Kesh Naan smiled—fully this time, revealing gums pale as her skin and teeth black as onyx. She raised both hands, palm outward. “I smell the lie in that, girl.”

“I—”

“Truth now. Has fear so clouded your mind that you forget? Let me help you. What is the one thing you desire most? If you could have only one thing right now, what would that be?”

“Vengeance,” she said it without thinking.

“Truth at last. But know this: The Master is not one to bargain. You do not make demands of the Master of the Hunt. Obey him, or do not. There is no middle ground.”

“My family—”

“Vengeance will not bring them back. It will not ease your pain.”

“Jagun Ghen killed my family!”

“Ah,” said Kesh Naan. “Now we come to it. Jagun Ghen killed your family. Do you know why?”

Hweilan could not look away. The woman’s eyes … depthless. But they held her. Hweilan opened her mouth, but before she could speak—

“The truth now,” said Kesh Naan. “Only the truth.”

And so she spoke the truth: “I don’t know.”

“You will,” said Kesh Naan. She clapped her hands. Just once, but it filled the air like the crack of a whip.

And the spiders came. Thousands of them. Millions. Dropping from the ceiling and running across the floor, covering Hweilan’s skin, crawling into her ears and nose. She rolled and thrashed, crushing hundreds, desperate to shake them off. But for every dozen she managed to smash or shake loose, a hundred more took their place. Their tiny legs did no more than tickle, but their fangs—

They bit, again and again and again. One of them surely would have done no harm, been no more than an irritation. But thousands biting her at once—

Hweilan screamed.

Spiders swarmed into her mouth, biting and biting and biting …

Lights exploded in Hweilan’s mind. Each tiny bite bringing a spark, every flicker its own unique color, every one trying to swallow all her other senses.

She let them.

C
HAPTER
FIVE

O
N THE
N
ORTHERN
I
CE THE WINTER DARK LASTED
for months, and even high summer could not melt the frost. Yet still people managed not only to survive there, but to thrive in their own way. It was a hard land, and the people harder still, but even so, Jatara could remember a time when she’d been allowed to be a little girl. Pampered by the elders. Fed the choicest meats from every hunt. Given the softest, warmest clothes. She’d even had a little doll, made from baby-soft sealskin. In the darkest winter nights when the wind howled over the ice and the elders made sacrifices to keep demons at bay, Jatara had huddled in her blankets near the fire, the doll cradled against her chest, and with her free hand she would stroke the soft sealskin over and over, imagining that she was her mother, and the doll little Jatara. No matter how the wind howled or the priests shrieked their blood rites, that little doll had helped Jatara feel safe. As an adult, when she thought
home
, it was not her clan’s faces she saw, not her mother or father, but the scent of a fire, and the feel of that little doll against her palm.

“Home …” she said. It came out a croak. Her throat felt raw. The pain jolted her out of her reverie. She held the doll close and stroked it.

But something was wrong.
Felt
wrong. Not the softness of sealskin. She could feel the doll’s skin, yes, but it was not seal soft. No. It was rough, torn, and—

Wet.

Warm, yes, but that was quickly fading.

And the smell … no. Smell was the wrong word. The
stench
was tangy, coppery, and foul.

Jatara stroked the doll again, grasping for that reassurance of
home
, but the ragged wetness under her palm only drove it farther away.

With a very great effort, Jatara opened her eyes.

And remembered.

Home
was far away. Not separated from her by hundreds of miles, but years upon years. She was not a little girl anymore. The doll long gone. Under her hand—

A man’s head lay in her lap. It was still loosely attached to the body by a mangled web of skin, flesh, and tendon. His jaw was gone, as were both eyes and an ear.

“What—?” she said.