In Time for the Living

The fire folded inward and left three spiders behind.

Their legs had drawn close to blackened bodies. The pale markings in their shells no longer moved. Burning web fell in light pieces and went dark against the damp ground.

Thiarel’s moon-struck spider lay nearer, split along its carved lines.

The fifth was gone.

Rishi watched the place where it had vanished. Nothing returned.

Behind him, Maeril lowered her hand.

“Three.”

She looked past the corpses to the two cocoons still hanging beyond the edge of the blast. Both remained intact. A hand pressed weakly against one. The other moved when the elf inside coughed.

Maeril’s knees bent.

She caught herself before they touched the ground.

“Three,” she said again. “And I missed the captives.”

“You placed it well,” Rishi said.

“I placed it once.”

Heat had reddened one side of her face. Her lowered hand trembled. She stared at the scorched web as if reviewing every measurement she could no longer change.

“We will review it later.”

Her gaze snapped to him.

“That sounds like a threat.”

“It is a promise.”

The corner of her mouth tried to move.

A phase-spider cry came from deeper in the forest.

It was answered by another.

Thiarel lifted her head from Sirael’s side.

The sound came from the east, beyond the point where the mythal had pulled tight. Between the trees, air flashed once and returned with the wrong depth.

The fight had not ended. It had moved.

Branches broke behind them.

Caereth entered the clearing with four elves from the gathering. Festival robes had been tied above their knees. One carried a short spear fetched from an emergency cache. Another held a wood axe. Caereth had a plain sword in one hand and a coil of rope across his body.

He saw the spiders first. Then the hanging cocoons. Then Sirael.

“She lives,” Rishi said.

Caereth’s breath left.

“Nessari is with Lirae. We met Thiarel bringing her out.”

Thiarel bowed her head once. Only then did her hand loosen on Sirael’s shoulder.

Caereth sent two elves to Sirael. The other two waited beneath the cocoons, the spear-bearer watching the trees while he climbed the nearest trunk with the rope.

An older woman knelt beside Rishi. A healer’s pouch had been tied over her dark clothes.

“Poison?”

“Cleared. The bite is open. Her pulse has steadied, but she has lost blood and strength.”

The healer put her fingers where his had been.

“I have her.”

Rishi kept contact for two more beats, felt the same rhythm under both their hands, and withdrew.

Thiarel remained on Sirael’s other side.

Her burned forearm shook. She held it away from her sister and seemed not to feel the shoulder the spider had struck.

Sirael opened her eyes.

The next distant cry crossed the forest.

Thiarel looked east.

“Go to them,” Sirael said.

Her sister did not move.

Sirael drew one difficult breath.

“I am not alone.”

The healer’s hands were already packing cloth around the punctures. Caereth cut the first cocoon free and lowered it toward the waiting elves.

Thiarel took off her cloak and laid it across Sirael.

Then she stood.

Her shift began with the lowering of her spine. Shoulders widened. Hands found earth as paws. Grey fur travelled across her body, thick along the neck and marked darker over the back.

The lynx raised its head.

This was Thiarel’s chosen battle shape: large enough at the shoulder to meet Rishi’s chest, heavy through the forelegs, built to cross broken ground without slowing.

She bounded east.

Sirael’s hand found Rishi’s wrist.

Her grip had little strength. The intention did not need it.

“Go with her,” she told him.

Rishi looked at the healer.

“Go,” the woman told him. “Bring me no more patients if you can avoid it.”

He rose.

The radiant wings had thinned to pale outlines behind him. He recovered the borrowed quarterstaff from the leaves and turned toward Maeril.

She was already moving east.

“No claws?” he asked as he caught her.

“The claws cannot throw fire.”

“You have thrown fire.”

“There may be other bad decisions available.”

They followed Thiarel.

The path was not a path. Web crossed shrubs in torn sheets. Roots rose beneath the leaves. Rishi went first where the space narrowed, using the quarterstaff to lift strands without letting them touch Maeril. Where the ground opened, she came beside him.

Maeril’s hawk flew above, keeping to gaps between the remaining web.

The phase-spider cries changed as they ran.

At first they came sharp and close together. Then one stopped. A shout replaced it. Metal struck chitin. Someone called a name.

Maeril’s breath grew rough.

The fireball had taken more from her than that brief gesture suggested. Rishi shortened his pace enough for her to keep the line without forcing her to ask.

“Do not become considerate now.”

“I am running over roots in ceremonial clothing.”

“Fair.”

Ahead, the lynx cleared a fallen trunk, landed first on her uninjured foreleg, and disappeared over a low rise.

Rishi and Maeril reached it moments later.

The second clearing opened below, with the outlying work lodges along its rim.

Web hung in torn curtains. Some strands burned. Others had been cut from the captives and lay in pale heaps among the leaves. Three more spiders were down: one charred, one split through the abdomen, and one crushed against a boulder.

Elves moved everywhere.

Some still fought at the far edge, striking at a shape that phased between two trees. Others cut open cocoons or dragged wounded kin away from the webs. Festival clothing had been torn for bandages. A kitchen knife worked through silk. A walking staff held a spider leg away from a trapped body.

The air smelled of venom, blood, and scorched sap.

Thiarel stood in elven shape near the centre. She had changed back before they saw her. Her burned arm hung at her side while her other hand searched a pouch at her belt.

Several kin had formed a close ring around her.

No one in that ring was fighting.

Rishi knew the shape before he saw the body at its centre.

Maeril stopped beside him.

They had reached the clearing in time to help the living.

They had not reached everyone in time.