Moonkind (Winterling) Read Free Page B

right. He’d seen web like this before; he’d seen Fer toss it over herself like a silver net, and then he’d seen Fer’s wolf-guard and her fox-girl maid bow to her as if she were a queen.
    Fer, he knew, hadn’t liked that. But the Lords and Ladies of all the other lands—they liked what their glamories did.
    “Rip’s been spying on some of the Lords and Ladies,” Asher said. “Following them. They take a different route here every time, trying to keep it secret, but we figured it out. They come here to harvest the web and cut it into pieces, and then they use it to rule.”
    Rip glanced aside at him and gave a sharp smile. “They say we pucks are liars and cheats. But they’re the ones lying when they wear these webs.”
    “They are,” Rook agreed.
    “They’ll not give them up,” Asher said. The glamories, he meant.
    “Not without a fight,” Rip agreed.
    As an answer, Asher gave a snarling smile. “We’ll see about that, brothers. Now, there should be a chasm or a ravine nearby,” he said, looking around at the barren rock. “Cast out to search for it.”
    Each of the pucks set out in a different direction. Rook stayed in his person form, shivering at the cold wind blowing across his shoulders. Leaving the moon-spinner spider behind, with the rising moon low in the sky on his right, he searched. He walked for a long time. The only sound was the hiss of the wind over the bare rock. The moonlight shone down, sheeny white. There was nothing here; Rook felt sure. This land was empty, except for the spider.
    But no, wait. Ahead was something else. He crept closer, staying low and quiet, the rock cold under his bare feet. A wide crack in the rock that looked like it was sucking in the light, leaving only darkness. This was it, what his brothers had come here to find.
    Rook glanced over his shoulder. He’d walked a long way; the spire stuck up in the distance, the spider there only a bright spot in the night. He saw movement on the rock plain: his brother-pucks, searching. “Here!” Rook shouted and waved, and he thought he saw a wave in return.
    He turned back to the chasm. Might as well take a look while he waited. The moon had crept higher into the sky, so he could see well enough. Carefully he edged up to the jagged rim of the crack in the rock and knelt to look in. The chasm was far too wide to leap across, and it was deep and full of sharp shadows cast by the slanting moonlight. He could see a narrow path leading down to a ledge. Below that was only darkness, but he thought he saw something moving down there too.
    The path wasn’t much of a path. He had to go sideways down it, his chest scraping on the rock wall of the chasm, his feet feeling their way. Down and down he went, deeper and deeper, until he got to a ledge. He stepped off the path and crouched. A foul smell drifted up from below. His nose wrinkled. It was the smell of rotting offal and swamp and dead fish—a stench so heavy and oily, it almost seemed to cling to his skin. Something had to be down there, making that smell. He lay on his chest on the ledge, peering into the roiling darkness.
    A thin voice called from above. “Pup, are you there?”
    He was about to answer, I am, yes , when the ledge crumbled away beneath him and he was sliding down a steep slope in a tumble of rocks. With a yell and a splash he landed in something as cold and thick as mud, but slick with the horrible smell too.
    At that moment, the moon rose high enough in the sky to peek over the edge of the chasm. Its light shone down, and Rook saw that the bottom of the chasm was a cesspit full of stinking, bubbling muck, and there were things moving in the shadows. Things with eyes . He scrambled to his feet and backed away, beslimed with muck. With his hands he felt for a crack in the wall so he could climb away.
    The things in the darkness came closer. He heard a sucking sound like something big dragging itself through mud, and then a huge spider lurched into a