Manners or self-preserving instincts kicked in, and Sartaq continued his approach, hopping down onto the first ledge of the pit to stride the rest of the way.
Houlun rose when he was near, enfolding him in a swift, hard embrace. She cupped his shoulders when she was done, the woman nearly as tall as him, shoulders strong and thighs well muscled, and surveyed Sartaq with a shrewd eye.
“Sorrow weighs heavily on you still,” she observed, running a scar-flecked hand over Sartaq’s high cheekbone. “And worry.”
Sartaq’s eyes shuttered before he ducked his head. “I have missed you, Ej.”
“Sweet-talker,” Houlun chided, patting his cheek.
To Nesryn’s delight, she could have sworn the prince blushed.
The firelight cast the few strands of silver in Houlun’s hair with red and gold as she peered around Sartaq’s broad shoulders to where Nesryn stood atop the lip of the pit. “And the archer from the north arrives at last.” An incline of her head. “I am Houlun, daughter of Dochin, but you may call me Ej, as the others do.”
One glance into the woman’s brown eyes and Nesryn knew Houlun was not one who missed much. Nesryn bowed her head. “It is an honor.”
The hearth-mother stared at her for a long moment. Nesryn met her gaze, remaining as still as she could. Letting the woman see what she wanted.
At last, Houlun’s eyes slid toward Sartaq. “We have matters to discuss.”
Absent that fierce gaze, Nesryn loosed a breath but kept her spine ramrod straight.
Sartaq nodded, something like relief on his face. But he glanced toward Falkan, watching all from his seat. “They are things that should be told privately, Ej.”
Not rude, but certainly not warm. Nesryn refrained from echoing the prince’s sentiment.
Houlun waved a hand. “Then they may wait.” She pointed to the stone bench. “Sit.”
“Ej—”
Falkan shifted, as if he’d do them all a favor and go.
But Houlun pointed to him in silent warning to remain. “I would have you all listen.”
Sartaq dropped onto the bench, the only sign of his discontent being the foot he tapped on the floor. Nesryn sat beside him, the stern woman reclaiming her perch between them and Falkan.
“An ancient malice is stirring deep in these mountains,” Houlun said. “It is why I have been gone these past few days—to seek it out.”
“Ej.” Warning and fear coated the prince’s voice.
“I am not so old that I cannot wield my sulde, boy.” She glowered at him. Indeed, nothing about this woman seemed old at all.
Sartaq asked, frowning, “What did you go in pursuit of?”
Houlun glanced around the hall for any stray ears. “Ruk nests have been pillaged. Eggs stolen in the night, hatchlings vanishing.”
Sartaq swore, filthy and low. Nesryn blinked at it, even as her stomach tightened. “Poachers have not dared tread in these mountains for decades,” the prince said. “But you should not have pursued them alone, Ej.”
“It was not poachers I sought. But something worse.”
Shadows lined the woman’s face, and Nesryn swallowed. If the Valg had come here—
“My own ej called them the kharankui.”
“It means shadow—darkness,” Sartaq murmured to Nesryn, dread tightening his face.
Her heart thundered. Should the Valg be here already—
“But in your lands,” Houlun went on, glancing between Nesryn and Falkan, “they call them something different, don’t they?”
Nesryn sized up Falkan as he swallowed, wondering herself how to lie or deflect revealing anything about the Valg—
But Falkan nodded. And he replied, voice barely audible above the flame, “We call them the stygian spiders.”
CHAPTER
31
“The stygian spiders are little more than myths,” Nesryn managed to say to Houlun. “Spidersilk is so rare some even doubt it exists. You might be chasing ghosts.”
But it was Falkan who replied with a grim smile, “I would beg to differ, Captain Faliq.” He reached into the breast of his jacket, and Nesryn tensed, hand shooting for the dagger at her waist—
It was no weapon he pulled out.
The white fabric glittered, the iridescence like starfire as Falkan shifted it in his hand. Even Sartaq whistled at the handkerchief-sized piece of cloth.
“Spidersilk,” Falkan said, tucking the piece back into his jacket. “Straight from the source.”
As Nesryn’s mouth popped open, Sartaq said, “You have seen these terrors up close.” Not quite a question.
“I bartered with their kin in the northern continent,” Falkan corrected, that grim smile remaining. Along with shadows. So many shadows. “Nearly three years ago. Some might deem it a fool’s bargain, but I walked away with a hundred yards of Spidersilk.”
The handkerchief in his jacket alone could fetch a king’s ransom. A hundred yards of it …“You must be wealthy as the khagan,” she blurted.
A shrug. “I have learned that true wealth is not all glittering gold and jewels.”
Sartaq asked quietly, “What was the cost, then?” For the stygian spiders traded not in material goods, but dreams and wishes and—
“Twenty years. Twenty years of my life. Taken not from the end, but the prime.”
Nesryn scanned the man, his face just beginning to show the signs of age, the hair still without gray—
“I am twenty-seven,” Falkan said to her. “And yet I now appear to be a man of nearly fifty.”
Holy gods. “What are you doing at the aerie, then?” Nesryn demanded. “Do the spiders here produce the silk, too?”
“They are not so civilized as their sisters in the north,” Houlun said, clicking her tongue. “The kharankui do not create—only destroy. Long have they dwelled in their caves and passes of the Dagul Fells, in the far south of these mountains. And long have we maintained a respectful distance.”
“Why do you think they now come to steal our eggs?” Sartaq glanced to the few ruks lingering at the cave mouth, waiting for their riders. He leaned forward, bracing his forearms on his thighs.
“Who else?” the hearth-mother countered. “No poachers have been spotted. Who else might sneak upon a ruk’s nest, so high in the world? I flew over their domain these past few days. The webs indeed have grown from the peaks and passes of the Fells down to the pine forests in the ravines, choking off all life.” A glance toward Falkan. “I do not believe it mere coincidence that the kharankui have again begun preying upon the world at the same time a merchant seeks out our aerie for answers regarding their northern kin.”
Falkan raised his hands at Sartaq’s sharp look. “I have not sought them out nor provoked them. I heard whispers of your hearth-mother’s trove of knowledge and thought to seek her counsel before I dared anything.”
“What do you want with them?” Nesryn asked, angling her head.
Falkan examined his hands, flexing the fingers as if they were stiff. “I want my youth back.”
Houlun said to Sartaq, “He sold his hundred yards but still thinks he can reclaim the time.”
“I can reclaim it,” Falkan insisted, earning a warning glare from Houlun at his tone. He checked himself, and clarified, “There are … things that I still have left to do. I should like to accomplish them before old age interferes. I was told that slaying the spider who ate my twenty years was the only way to return those lost years to me.”
Nesryn’s brows narrowed. “Why not go hunt that spider back home, then? Why come here?”
Falkan didn’t answer.
Houlun said, “Because he was also told that only a great warrior can slay a kharankui. The greatest in the land. He heard of our close proximity to the terrors and thought to try his luck here first—to learn what we know about the spiders; perhaps how to kill them.” A faintly bemused look. “Perhaps also to find some backdoor way of reclaiming his years, an alternate route here, to spare him the confrontation there.”