The Single Strand

Nessari screamed.

The bound figure above the clearing jerked higher.

Web covered her from chest to ankles. One arm had torn partly free, but every movement fixed more silk to her sleeve. Her hair dragged across her face. A thick strand rose from the cocoon to the spider climbing above her.

It pulled her one body-length at a time.

Rishi counted five spiders.

The one hauling Nessari climbed the central tree. Another clung to a trunk on the eastern side. Two moved among the high webs where other bound elves hung. The fifth crouched below the rise, its body larger than a horse and its front legs angled toward the intruders.

Each carapace bore thin markings.

The lines were not painted. They had been cut or grown into the plates. Pale light travelled through them in short pulses and entered the web wherever a leg made contact.

The eastern spider vanished.

Its markings brightened first. Its outline doubled. Then the trunk stood empty.

It reappeared higher on the eastern web with four legs already anchored.

The strand beneath it snapped tight only after its weight returned.

Phase spiders.

Rishi had seen drawings. None had shown marks like these.

The great owl folded her wings.

Thiarel dropped toward the eastern web. Wind flattened her feathers. White-blue light gathered around her talons, thin at first, then branching from claw to claw.

The spider began to vanish.

Thiarel struck before the light in its markings reached the last plate.

Her talons hit the joint behind its head. Lightning followed.

The creature returned to the world all at once.

Its cry scraped through the clearing. Pale lines burst across its shell. One leg lost its hold, then another. It swung beneath the web and struck the trunk hard enough to scatter bark.

Thiarel released it and climbed on two heavy wingbeats.

Sirael was already running.

She crossed below the owl, planted one foot against a low trunk, and went up. Her climb did not pause where the ground ended. Hand, foot, branch. She moved around the web instead of touching it and reached a fork above the lower canopy.

The shortbow came free. One of her five arrows followed.

On the ground, the nearest spider disappeared.

Rishi saw the warning in its markings and shifted his weight before the body left. The quarterstaff stayed low across him.

“Move.”

The panther moved left.

Air thickened where she had been.

The spider returned with its forelegs driving down. Their hooked ends struck leaves instead of Maeril. The markings along its underside were still bright. For a fraction of a breath, the creature held all its weight in the world.

Maeril turned on her rear paws and launched.

She hit the seam behind its first leg. Claws entered where the plates overlapped. Her body swung against its side, hind paws searching for purchase while her jaws closed on the softer joint beneath the shell.

The spider twisted.

Rishi entered on the opposite side.

One foreleg carried too much weight to throw Maeril free. He drove the metal-capped staff into its lower joint. The leg folded a handspan.

He did not withdraw along the same line. He let the impact turn the shaft through his palms, stepped beyond the next hooked foot, and struck the rear support as it lifted.

The spider lost two points of balance.

Maeril pulled downward.

Its abdomen struck a root. The creature tried to leave the world again, but the markings beneath Maeril’s claws flashed without completing their circuit. Its body blurred, returned, and lurched sideways.

Rishi lowered his stance.

The next foreleg came for his chest. He met it near the joint and sent it past his shoulder. Force ran through the staff, his hands, and the line of his spine. He moved with it until his rear foot found the raised root behind him.

Then he pushed from the root.

The staff crossed beneath the spider’s body. Maeril shifted her grip at the same moment.

They turned it together.

Chitin scraped bark. The spider rolled onto its side, struck the ground, and continued onto its back. Its legs opened and closed above it without finding earth.

Maeril released before the rolling body trapped her. She landed on all four paws, slid through leaves, and lowered herself to spring again.

Rishi recovered the staff from beneath the spider and stepped outside the reach of its nearest leg.

The exchange had taken only breaths.

Above them, Nessari screamed again.

Rishi looked up.

The central spider had gained another span of trunk. Its marked legs moved across its own web without slowing. Nessari swung below, close enough now that the creature could reach down to her when it found a stable perch.

Two other cocoons hung farther along the canopy. One remained still. The other turned slowly as a hand pressed once against the silk from within.

The far spiders shifted toward them.

One vanished. The web shivered where it had been, but Rishi could not find the place it returned.

Thiarel crossed overhead, banking away from a strand thrown toward her. The lightning on her talons had dimmed. The spider she had struck clung beneath the eastern web, three legs failing to bear weight and its markings breaking into uneven pulses.

The toppled spider beside Rishi began to right itself. Maeril circled beyond its flailing legs, looking for a way back to the damaged joint.

There was no clean battlefield. Threats occupied ground, trunk, canopy, and the space between one instant and the next.

Sirael made stillness inside it.

She stood in the fork of a high branch with one shoulder near the trunk. One foot bore her weight. The other steadied her against the bark. Her bow had reached its full curve, the string at the corner of her mouth.

Rishi followed the arrow.

It did not point at a spider.

It pointed at the single taut strand between the central web and Nessari’s cocoon.

Sirael held the draw.

The spider pulled Nessari higher.

Its two forward legs gathered web, passed it beneath the body, and reached again. Each pull shortened the line below it. Each pause left one strand carrying most of Nessari’s weight.

Rishi’s quarterstaff settled above the leaves. The toppled spider behind him scraped for purchase, but for one breath he gave the canopy his full attention.

Nessari’s cocoon had turned until her head pointed down and one shoulder struck the trunk with every pull. The hand she had freed opened and closed against empty air.

Above her, the spider lowered its body.

Its fangs unfolded.

Rishi measured the distance without choosing to. Trunk. Branch. Web. The angle of Nessari’s fall if the strand broke. Even with the staff, there was no path upward fast enough.

Sirael had found the only path down.

Her branch moved beneath her. Not much. A slow bend under her weight, then a return. She let it carry her rather than fighting it.

The bow remained still relative to the strand.

Fear showed only in the breath she had not yet released.

The spider pulled again.

Nessari rose.

The load-bearing strand tightened into a straight pale line.

Sirael turned the arrow a fraction between her fingers. The edge of its hunting head aligned with the silk.

The spider’s markings began to brighten.

It was preparing to leave the world.

The web would move when it did. The clean line would be gone.

Rishi looked from Nessari to the open space below her.

The fall could kill her.

The fangs would.

He lowered the staff and shifted his front foot toward the tree.

Sirael saw the movement.

Her eyes met his for less than a breath.

He gave no nod. No promise could cross that distance honestly.

He did not tell her to wait.

Sirael exhaled.

Her drawing fingers opened.

The string drove the arrow forward.

It passed beneath one web, above another, and through the space beside Nessari’s free hand. The hauling spider vanished before the arrow reached the trunk.

The strand remained taut for the last fraction of a heartbeat.

The arrowhead crossed it.

Silk resisted. The shaft bent. Then the cutting edge passed through.

The two ends recoiled.

One snapped upward into the empty place where the spider had been. The other whipped across Nessari’s cocoon and fell loose.

Sirael’s bow arm lowered.

Her face did not change. Her empty drawing hand remained beside her cheek, fingers curved around the shot that was no longer there.

Nessari dropped.

Nessari dropped headfirst.

The severed strand curled above her. Her free arm snapped toward the trunk and found nothing. Silk kept the other pinned against her side.

Rishi released the quarterstaff.

It struck the ground behind him as the overturned spider found one leg beneath itself. Another leg cut across the place where his chest had been.

He was already moving.

His first step reached the root. His second drove from it. He jumped toward the falling cocoon with both arms open.

The distance remained too great.

Rishi drew one breath.

He opened the part of himself he usually kept under discipline.

Light moved beneath the scars on his back. It passed through muscle and old lash marks, gathered behind his shoulders, and broke outward.

Two wing-shapes opened from him.

They were not flesh or feathers. Pale gold marked each long pinion, brighter at the edges and almost transparent within. Pressure gathered in the air beneath them.

The first beat lifted him above the spider’s reach.

The second carried him into the canopy.

Web crossed his path. Rishi turned one shoulder through the gap, drew a wing close to lose lift, and opened it again beyond the strand. A branch struck his shin. He used the impact to change direction rather than wasting it.

Nessari fell past the next limb.

He reached her.

The cocoon hit both forearms and drove them into his chest. His shoulders took the force. His breath left. For an instant his hands slid over silk too smooth to hold.

He locked one arm beneath the bound knees and the other around her back.

Nessari’s face struck his collarbone. Her scream broke into a gasp.

“I have you.”

Their combined weight pulled him down.

Rishi opened both wings. Light tightened along their edges. The fall bent sideways, away from the trunk and toward a gap between branches.

It did not stop.

The first branch struck across his upper back. He curled over Nessari and let it turn them. The second caught his hip. Pain opened down his leg, but the collision took more speed from the drop.

He kept her head beneath his jaw.

Silk snagged a broken limb and tore free. Their bodies swung. Rishi folded one wing to let the turn carry them, then opened it hard enough to pull them clear.

Nessari made a small sound against his chest.

“Breathe,” he told her.

He did not know whether she could.

Below, the overturned spider rolled onto its side. Maeril sprang clear of its forelegs. Another vanished from the far web. The ground remained too distant and occupied by too many legs.

Rishi searched for a landing he could survive without putting Nessari beneath him.

A great owl crossed the clearing.

Thiarel came level with them between two branches. Her talons opened, then held short of the cocoon until Rishi turned Nessari’s bound body away from the trunk.

“Take the silk,” he shouted.

The owl caught two thick bands around Nessari’s torso.

Rishi kept his hold until the talons tightened and Thiarel’s wings bore the weight. Then he opened his arms.

The cocoon left him.

Thiarel dropped half a span, recovered, and carried Nessari toward the western trees. She flew below the webs and above the reach of the spiders, each wingbeat heavy with the added weight.

Nessari’s free hand reached back once.

Rishi saw it. Then branches covered her.

His own body was still falling.

Freed of Nessari, he turned toward the nearest trunk. One foot found a sloping branch. His knee bent until his heel nearly touched him, receiving the impact without locking. He pushed sideways before the branch could throw him.

The radiant wings opened behind him.

They took the last violence from the fall.

Rishi struck the ground on one shoulder, rolled across his back, and came onto a knee. Leaves filled his sleeve. One wing passed through a low branch as light and re-formed beyond it.

His lungs pulled in cold air.

Pain marked his shin, hip, shoulders, and ribs. Nothing failed when he moved.

He looked west.

Thiarel and Nessari had cleared the web.

Above, Sirael began to descend.

Behind him, a spider vanished.

Rishi rose with the radiant wings half-open and his quarterstaff several strides away.