Obsidian Ridge - Jess Lebow [43]
Mariko swung her broken bit of stone again, catching the spider right in the mouth, breaking away one of its fangs. The sharpened bone clanked as it hit the floor and skidded off into the darkness. The creature let out an angry screech that echoed throughout the room. It flailed around, clearly unhappy, then reared back and dived for the princess, burying its other fang into her neck.
Mariko screamed. She beat at the creature's face with her fists, but it was no use. She could feel the poison pumping into her body. Her head started to float, and her arms felt heavy. Her legs and stomach cramped up, and she tried to curl into a ball.
Looking up, the spider's eyes seemed to waver, and the dim light in the room flickered.
Her body went limp, and she laid her arms on the ground beside her, unable to struggle any further.
"Claw," she said. "Please… please…"
With her last bit of strength, she reached to her neck, gripping the locket the Claw had given her, and undid the clasp.
+++++
"Where in the Nine Hells could she be?" Jallal Tasca growled. This was not going well.
First the cloakers, then the princess escaped. What else could go wrong?
Coming around a bend in the hallway, Jallal and his guards stepped into an open room-a crossroads with passages leading off in four different directions.
He threw his hands in the air. "Any guesses?"
He turned to look at the others who accompanied him. None of them had been seriously hurt in the cloaker attack, but they just stared at him, not responding, clearly unhappy about their current situation.
The scream came from the hallway to the left.
Jallal lifted his sword and bolted toward the sound. "Come with me!"
At the end of the passage the group entered a high ceilinged room, awash in a pale purple light. Against the right wall, a pair of huge spiders faced each other, hunched over something-or someone.
Drawing closer, Jallal came around a large stone pillar to see the limp body of Princess Mariko, pinned to the ground by a huge spider's fang.
"Damn," cursed Jallal, his anger starting to rise. "The Matron is not going to be happy about this."
Chapter Thirteen
"We're all going to die," Whitman muttered as he left the palace, heading down the darkened road toward the docks. He clasped his hands together, fidgeting with them on the long walk. "We're all going to be eaten, torn to shreds by those… those vile… disgusting… repulsive… repugnant… unseemly… dirty… hairy beasts." His knuckles were white from his own grip, and his palms were damp with worried sweat.
As he went, his mind wandered through all the terrible, disgusting ways a man could be killed. Torn to shreds by slavering, diseased beasts ranked pretty high. He relived the scene in his head, watching from afar, as he had, the death of the entire unit of soldiers who had approached the Obsidian Ridge. He didn't want to end up like one of them. He didn't want anyone else to end up like that either.
Crossing over from the dirt and stone road onto the wooden slats of the wharf, Whitman wrapped his cloak tighter around his chest. It was not particularly cold here. In fact, the damp air coming off the water was quite refreshing on a warm, spring evening. But something about the docks always gave Whitman the shivers.
Down a few blocks, he turned into a darkened dead-end alley. At the end was a single, wooden door with a plaque attached to it. On the plaque was the relief carving of a woman, her long hair flowing around her face, a tiara on her head-the symbol for the temple of Waukeen.
Knocking on the door, the king's scribe waited, his eyes darting around the shadows, nervously watching, assuming someone was waiting in ambush in every corner. After a few moments, the latch on the other side slid noisily across the wood, and the door opened.
"What are you doing here?" asked a voice from the dark interior.
"I'm here to see the Matron," Whitman said in a stern voice. "Let me in."
The door swung wide, the burly guard stepped aside,