Page 177 of Quicksilver

Fisher replied,“Yes, I have one.”

“Great. What is it?”

His answered right away.“You.”

“What do you mean,me?” He was joking. If he was, then his sense of humor was almost as bad as Carrion's.

“In a minute,”he said.

I was about to say,no, now,but then we emerged into an opening, and my stomach bottomed out. There, in the center of the opening, was the kind of monster that I thought only existed in nightmares. Zilvaren had plenty of spiders. Sand trap spiders the size of dinner plates that would numb your skin with their saliva while you were sleeping and eat your fingers. But this...this was...

“Holyfuck!”Carrion skidded and slipped onto his ass, nearly colliding with the thing. It was three times the height of a fully-grown man, with more legs than I could count. Its hind abdomen was a fleshy bulb, mottled red and black and covered in coarse long hairs. But then...my insides twisted as I took in the rest of it. Its front half was part Fae. A male torso with a distended, bloated stomach. Thin, emaciated arms. Wisps of greasy black hair stuck to its otherwise bald head. It had no ears. No eyes or nose, either. Its face comprised nothing but a massive circular mouth, with concentric row after row of jagged teeth.

It let out a high-pitched whine, its head whipping toward Carrion, and Fisher spat out a curse. “Don't move, Swift.”

“What the hell are you talking about!” Carrion called back. “I'm one hundred percent going to move.”

“Stay the fuck where you are,” Fisher growled. “It can't see or hear you. It tracks movement.”

“But—”

“You move, you die,” Fisher barked.

“Okaaaayyyy.”

Lorreth pressed his back to the wall, clutching Avisiéth to his chest. “I fucking hate spiders,” he said.

“That's not a spider. That's Morthil. It's a demon. And it’ll stun you with its stinger and eat you alive if it catches you. Slowly. Over a period of days—”

“Please stop talking and tell me how I'mnotgetting eaten,” Carrion whimpered.

Fisher hooked his pinkie finger around mine and blew out a shaky breath. “We've got one chance at this,” he said. “There are three exits to this enclosure. Two of them lead to other enclosures, and we donotwant to go to those. Trust me.”

Lorreth hadn't blinked since he'd laid eyes on the demon. “But you said the walls move. How the hell are we supposed to pick the right one?”

Fisher moved his head a fraction, very slowly, and looked to me out of the corner of his eye. “There's a quicksilver pool at the center of this labyrinth, Saeris. You need to find it.”

“What?”

The spider demon snapped its head in my direction, leaning forward. It took a step, its long, spindly legs working in concert, and Carrion moaned. Its front right leg was raised, hovering in the air, right over him. If it brought it down, it would land right on his head.

“No rush or anything, Fane, but if you could sniff out that quicksilver pretty quickly, I'd sure appreciate it,” he said, his voice three octaves higher than usual.

My initial surprise over what Fisher wanted me to do dissipated. Now, I had a job to do. One I felt fairly confident I could accomplish. “A whole pool of it?” I asked.

Fisher squeezed my hand. “A big one.”

I closed my eyes and concentrated.

It didn't take long to feel the quicksilver. It was there, chanting along with the tortured souls of Gillethrye.

Annorath mor!

Annorath mor!

I opened my eyes and looked in the direction we had to go. “There,” I said. “That way.”

“Whichway?” Carrion called nervously.