“Lynx!” Karigan cried.
“Lynx? Is it him?” Yates asked, his voice swelling with hope.
“Yes, yes it is him.” Lynx was cloaked in the forest’s gloom, but it was him.
“Hold onto my belt,” Karigan said. “We’re going to him.”
Yates sheathed his long knife, but held onto his saber, and with Karigan’s guidance, clenched the back of her swordbelt. Leaving behind their lean-to shelter and supplies, Karigan started toward the beckoning Lynx, the shadow beasts parting before her, and rejoining the pack behind. They followed, a seething, stalking mass.
“Lynx!” Karigan cried again. He was not any closer, and she speeded her steps causing Yates to stumble behind her.
“Are we almost there?” he asked. “Are the others with him?”
“Alone,” Karigan replied, pressing on. Why didn’t Lynx come to their aid? Where were the others?
She jabbed her staff at a beast that edged around beside them. She totally missed it, but the creature returned whining back to the pack. Ahead, Lynx appeared ever farther away. He turned, striding into the distance.
“Lynx!”
Karigan strained against Yates’ weight. They were going to lose Lynx, just like before.
“Karigan,” said Yates, “I can’t—”
“Pick up your feet, just trust me!”
She hastened her pace and Yates did his best to keep up. She ignored the pain of her leg, defied the wall of fatigue, and the shadow beasts rolled and crested like a wave pushing them ahead.
The distance between them and Lynx widened more and more.
“No, no, no,” Karigan muttered. “Not again!”
She sprinted. Yates lost hold of her belt, and freed of his weight, she flew forward, flew forward until she was caught in midair by . . . nothing.
She tried to shake her head, but could not move it, as if it was glued to the air. Her whole body was stuck.
“Karigan?” Yates. He was not far behind.
No, she wasn’t stuck in the air. A net with sticky, mist-fine filaments held her. More precisely, a web. Strung between trees, it went for great length through the forest.
“No,” she moaned.
She tried to pry her limbs free, but could not. It was not the first time she’d been so caught and a powerful dread descended on her. She panicked for a time, struggling, trying to kick her legs free, Yates calling to her. She was quickly overcome by exhaustion and hung there like a discarded marionette, realizing that panic would not help free her. She searched for Lynx, but when she found him in the distance, his form evaporated. She’d been lured into a trap by illusion or a hallucination. They’d been herded by the shadow beasts. Down the length of the net were other prey, wound in web packets, some still quivering with life. The beasts sniffed at one, tore into it, while being careful not to get entangled themselves. She winced at the squealing that came from the trapped creature. The beasts cleverly stole prey from another predator, even drove the prey into the web for an easy meal.
“Are you all right?” she asked Yates.
“They’re all around me,” he said, his voice desperate. “Can you help me?”
“No, Yates, I can’t.” Beasts snuffled at her leg. She felt hot breaths against her trousers.
Yates grunted and a beast yiped. “Think I got one!”
Tears welled in Karigan’s eyes. A broad muzzle pushed into her wounded leg, nipping flesh, but another beast brushed against her and leaped on the first followed by vigorous snarling and flying fur. They bumped into the back of Karigan’s legs as they fought over her, their next meal.
She could give in, give in to the lethargy that was quickly overtaking her once again. She thought of the funereal vision she’d seen in the looking mask of the mourners surrounding the king in his bed. He was gone. What did the rest matter?
Yates called to her, his voice barely registering amid her despair. “I think they’re leaving!”
“What?” She tried to look around, listen, but could not detect the presence of the shadow beasts. Why would they leave? As quickly as she’d fallen into her despair, her hopes began to rise once again, until she heard an immense something crashing through the woods.
The shadow beasts had left them alone because something worse was on its way.
CREATURES OF KANMORHAN VANE
The creature whose web Karigan was trapped in hurtled through the woods, smashing trees aside with enormous claws as if they were nothing, the metallic gleam of its carapace a nightmare memory of the other time she’d been caught in such a web and fought the same kind of creature. Fought and survived, but not without help. She did not think that Soft Feather, the great gray eagle, would fly in to help her this time.
She cried out in despair when she saw there wasn’t just one creature, but two, each like a giant crab, each scuttling forward on jointed legs, black orbs on the ends of mobile eyestalks and antennae feeling out the terrain. Tails with dagger-sized stingers arched over their backs.
So this was really it, Karigan thought. The end.
“What’s happening?” Yates demanded. “Tell me!”
“It’s been . . .” Karigan began, and she meant to finish with: an honor to be your friend. And then she was going to tell him to leave, to find his way as best he could, to go somewhere he could wait for the others to locate him. But something—someone—else caught her eye even as the crab creatures trundled closer, a flash of movement, a man.