Venom and Song (64 page)

Asp had been to this chamber many, many times, but had never seen the image before. How it had gotten there while the Spider King ruled Vesper Crag . . . he had no idea. He turned and looked at the chamber floor leading up to the sunlit wall. There was a blackened trail, quite wide actually, running from the balcony side of the chamber all the way to the image. If he didn't know better, he'd have thought the image of the spider maiden was burned into the wall. Asp laughed. That was ridiculous. To burn crystal into the rock of the mountain would take a source of heat beyond his reckoning.

Asp was furious by the time he'd finished his search of Vesper Crag. He'd found more dead Gwar than he'd ever care to think about, and he'd had to turn them over, dig them out, and sometimes even put them back together to see if one bore a resemblance to the missing Spider King. He'd scrutinized every corpse for his strange hair, slanted eyes, and narrow ears—the marks of a half-breed—but he'd found no such being. There was only one place left to search.

The water.

Asp hated water with a vengeance. But he had to know for sure.

Leaping lithely from cliff to cliff, Asp found several pools where Gwar corpses floated. None of these were the one he was looking for. But as he prepared to jump to the next cliff, Asp saw something a little farther down. There was a large portion of one of the castle's many turrets smashed on the ledge below. All of the castle's turrets were smashed, but there was something peculiar in the debris near this one.

Fifty feet was nothing for a Drefid, so he leaped down. And there, half-crushed beneath several tons of broken stone, was what at first he took to be a Gwar and a Warspider, seemingly killed at the same time. Asp stared. This was not two creatures but one.
Had she been washed this far out of the stronghold?
Asp wondered.
Would he have even removed her chains, her harness?

Then he saw something that made his stomach lurch. The creature's head . . . there was the strange hair he had been looking for, the ears, too. Asp reached down and rotated the head, saw that two of the eyes were slanted.
It's him
. Asp could scarcely believe it. So the Spider King had gone back to dabbling in the dark arts, eh?
And then what? You die a miserable death, drowned like a cur
.

Asp would have a lot to report when he returned to his clan and then to Earth. He laid the head down and thought,
I was never convinced you were up for the jo—

The thing lurched forward, the fangs extended and fell, piercing Asp's thigh.

The Drefid shrieked and kicked the head away. It fell limp beneath the water and bubbled.

Asp held his leg and tried to stand. He lost his balance and fell into the larger pool below. Swimming like a mad thing, he made it to the shore, extended his claws, and scratched his way a few feet away from the water. His body started to spasm; he was wracked with agony, as if things were being ripped out of his body.

Acknowledgments

WTB:
Venom and Song
was an absolutely thrilling book to write. But it was also enormously time consuming. If it weren't for my wife, Mary Lu's, generosity with time and responsibilities, there's no way I'd have ever been able to do my part. Gorgeous, this book is a jewel in your crown. Thank you so much.

I'd also like to thank my kids for understanding why Dad just had to write sometimes. And thank you for being ready to throw the football around, play Ping-Pong and video games, watch movies, or even just talk with me when I stepped away from the computer.

Thank you to my extended family—Mom and Dad, Mom and Pop Dovel, Leslie, Jeff, Brian, Ed, Andy, and Diana—for always asking and always encouraging.

Thank you to my friends for still being there when my deadline is at last met.

Thank you to my incredible readers who are passionate and generous.

Thank you to my students at Folly Quarter Middle School. You inspire me more than you'll ever know.

Thank you to the special venues that have hosted Christopher and me on our various writing excursions: the Banshee and the Radisson in Scranton, DuClaws and O'Lordan's, Panera Bread, and ten or twelve other places we love but cannot remember! LOL!

CH: Without the encouragement of my bride, my rib, I would not have authored any books, let alone this one. Jenny, it is your support, seemingly boundless love, and enthusiasm for my work that has sustained this craft through arduous turning points. Thank you for believing in me and being a woman who prays for her man's success.

To Evangeline, Luik, and Judah, may you know that your daddy lives for another Kingdom, and does everything with passion for his King.

Jason Clement (
www.jasonjclement.com
) deserves a hearty toast for assisting Wayne and me on our many ventures into web-dom. Without your friendship, generosity, and creativity, we'd be stuck in the throes of birthing HTML and Java, thinking both were new forms of coffee.

I certainly must thank all the online Elves of The Underground for their heartfelt enthusiasm and appreciation for our writing. You have made our work 3-D in that the stories resonate in your actual lives, not just some fictional characters we put together. Thank you for going with us! And to those who completed (or even attempted) the ARG, well done!

About the Authors

WAYNE THOMAS BATSON is the author of five best-selling novels:
Isle of Swords
,
Isle of Fire
, and The Door Within Trilogy. His books have earned awards and nominations including Silver Moonbeam, Mom's Choice
^®
Silver, Cybil, Lamplighter, The Clive Staples, and American Christian Fiction Writers Book of the Year. A middle school reading teacher in Maryland for more than nineteen years, Wayne tailors his stories to meet the needs of young people. When last seen, Wayne was tromping around the Westfarthing with his beautiful wife and four adventurous children.

For more on Wayne, go to
www.enterthedoorwithin.blogspot.com
.

CHRISTOPHER HOPPER, whose other books include
Rise of the Dibor
and
The Lion Vrie
, has often been called a modern-day renaissance man. Christopher is also a record producer and recording artist with ten CDs, a youth pastor, a painter, president of a Christian discipleship school, an entrepreneur, and a motivational speaker for conferences and schools across the United States and Europe. Christopher has dedicated his life to positively affecting the culture of his generation and longs to see young people inspired to live meaningful and productive lives. He resides with his wife, three children, and three rangesteeds in the mysterious Thousand Islands of northern New York.

For more on Christopher, go to
www.christopherhopper.com
.

The Underground Bonus Scenes

The following are scenes cut from the original manuscript to either help keep the story more concise or, often times, eliminate inconsistencies. A careful reader may be able to spot these nuances, from deleted text to shifts in tone to complete name changes. We hope they're not only fun additions to the book, but provide a few opportunities for some questing of your own.

—WAYNE THOMAS BATSON AND CHRISTOPHER HOPPER

BONUS SCENE
1
The Dark Veil

Authors' Notes:
While this scene has some great character insights, we decided to start the book with action and introduce the cast to new readers more slowly.

“WE MUST not delay!” Grimwarden urged the others behind him, shouting over a crack of thunder. “Our change of course toward the Dark Veil put the enemy off our scent for a time, but they've caught it again and will charge even harder on their home soil.” He pointed into the twilight to a thick, irregular band of gray that wound like an ashen serpent through the rocks and thickets behind them. It was the Spider King's forces, a legion . . . at least, and now just a few leagues behind them. Grimwarden lunged ahead and their group was off and running once more.

“Are you sure we'll make it?” asked Mr. Wallace, breathing heavily. “Before the . . . before the enemy catches up?”

“We'll make it,” grunted Grimwarden in reply.

“I trust you know what you're doing,” said Goldarrow, a sudden purplish-white light flickering on her face. “But it would help to know why we travel this way, so close to oblivion.” Thunder crackled again, then rolled, deep and ominous.

Lumbering across the rocky terrain, Grimwarden replied, “Hardly the time for long explanations, Elle.”

He could tell me if he chose,
thought Goldarrow. She smirked affectionately.
He's grown even more stubborn in his old age.

The narrow line of cloaked Elves fled northward beneath the shadowy gaze of Vesper Crag looming in the east. Wreathed in shreds of clouds, and obscured by the ever-falling curtain of gray ash, its black pinnacle lurked always in the Elves' peripheral vision.

Their forward view was little better. The last light of a crimson sunset cast the mountains ahead in a bloody glow, the Dark Veil, summoning prey for its next feeding. Ever-present flashes of lighting connected sky to land in a dizzying display of electrical chaos that tore through the heavens and shattered boulders. This was the realm of the Spider King, and those who raced through the crook of its basin were trespassers, hunted by the elements and by the creatures that dwelled there.

One by one the Elven warriors made their way along the lonely footpath, weaving between jutting rock shards one moment, balancing precariously on the edges of long crevasses filled with luminous lava flows the next. It was even difficult for the Elves who'd been trained for such missions. For the young lords, it was arduous.

Tommy stumbled to one knee. Kat reached to assist, but Tommy shook his head and said, “Thanks, but I can do it.” He was up in no time and trudged on.

Kat frowned.
I just wanted to help.

With the fading light, each step became all the more perilous, and the environment was far from welcoming.

“I don't know how much more of this I can take,” said Jimmy, coughing harshly. The air was as inhospitable as the treacherous landscape: caustic, filled with the overpowering scents of sulfur and lye. It stung Jimmy's eyes. He was only a few yards back from Tommy and Kat, but he could barely see them through the sweat and tears. He sighed, thrust a hand through his choppy red hair, and grunted as he leaped from rock to rock. “This is killin' me feet.”