(eng) P. K. Lentz by Death to the Witch-Queen!

Author:Death to the Witch-Queen! [Witch-Queen!, Death to the]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Eight

Nice move staying inside me, the metal box observed. Not that I'll save you for long.

Blaik lay quietly, keeping his head away from the bars, which meant he saw and heard only enough to ascertain that some number of Priests were engaged in cutting Qilliara down from the chamber wall whilst keeping her immobilized.

“If you can hear me, Qil,” Blaik whispered, “I'm still with you. But we need separate plans for now.”

The Witch-Queen did not speak again, but over the voices of the others who did, a strange, intermittent chittering became audible. It had been present all along, but seemed louder in the calm at battle's end.

A yellowish Warpy face filled Blaik's window. Its sharp-toothed mouth reported, “He's alive.”

Bolts were popped on the box, and light streamed in as its door flew open. Armored Priest arms reached in and grabbed Blaik, dragging him up and out by shoulder and waist.

The first thing he saw, after his captors' faces, were the sources of the chittering sound. They all but filled the large, open doorway of the round chamber.

The two white spiders were each larger than a human bent on all fours, and the uppermost hinges of their stick-like legs would tower over most standing men. Their enormous, crimson eyes were segmented spheres. The nightmarish prongs of their mouths moved unceasingly, dripping milky strands of the same substance which had entangled Qilliara. The mounded backs of their abdomens were covered with stiff, bristling fur.

“Aaagh!” Blaik screamed, unable to keep from recoiling.

The spiders hung back beyond the open door, tended by a pair of unarmed humans. The Priests treated them as a sight of little note.

“I mean—I love spiders,” Blaik swiftly recanted. “Bigger the better. I-I would be one if... y'know, if I could.”

The Priests half-dragged Blaik across the tangle of armored bodies littering the chamber floor, toward the open door—and the spiders.

Just as they reached the threshold, when Blaik began digging his heels into the bodies in a vain attempt to halt the advance, the two white spiders parted, led away by their human handlers. Behind them stood—

A mound of legs and bristling white fur. A third spider, but this one, Blaik quickly realized, was dead. Unmoving, it was covered with black smears, one red eye of its inert head oozing the same fluid onto the floor.

Beside it, with hands and cheek laid tenderly upon the spider's fur, knelt a human figure. Its long, full hair was silvery-blue in color, and it wore an ornate gown of flowing white. From the back of the gown, at a spot near the center of the figure's back, protruded a bundle of thick cords and tubes, most sheathed in bright metal, that extended in a gentle, slack-filled curve to the high ceiling of the next room.

Blaik's eyes went to the figure's face, which was almost colorless except for lips of dull red twisted in a mourning frown. Its eyes were shut in an expression of the same as its pale, lace-cuffed hand caressed the dead bug's hide.

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