Page 248 of The Cradle of Ice

—From The Rue of the Penitent by Anagorac hy Damoa

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NYX AND THE others gathered around the chrysalis. Emerald fire raged across the inside of the dome. Nyx hummed under her breath and cast forth a few glowing strands, testing the energy, searching for a way through the flames to reach Shiya.

Overhead, the raash’ke screamed and battered the air with their wings, terrified, skimming away from the coruscations and waves of the emerald fire that had enslaved them. Daal swept among them, doing his best to calm and reassure them. He was slowly having some success, relying on his own innate ability to commune with others, to sympathize and soothe.

Nyx had her own challenge before her.

She waited for one of the waves of fire to pass, then darted her thread to the cocoon’s glass. She managed to touch it for less than a heartbeat. A glimpse of Shiya reached her. Not an image seen with the eye. Shiya was a golden corona of bridle-song, whipped and lashed by malignant fire. It was like with Bashaliia back at the Mouth. The spider fought to break her, to bridle her with his false, corrupted song. Nyx could sense not only the enemy’s fury, but also its terror of Shiya.

Nyx urged the bronze woman to hold out. While Shiya was far stronger than Bashaliia, the spider was wielding the full power of this entire dome against her.

Shiya will break.

Then a snap of fire cracked into Nyx’s strand. The recoil struck her hard enough to knock her back a few steps. The strength was unnerving, formidable. She rubbed the fiery sting in the middle of her chest.

“What do we do?” Rhaif pleaded. “We can’t leave her in there.”

“She’s strong,” Graylin said.

Nyx shook her head, firm about what she had sensed. “Not strong enough.”

“What about Daal?” Rhaif pleaded. “Maybe with his added power you could break through.”

Nyx stared up. Daal continued to sweep arcs through the raash’ke. She also noted her mount, Metyl, who remained on the floor. He was at the edge of panic, too, ducking his head low whenever a tide of green fire swept overhead, keening his distress.

“No,” she answered Rhaif. “The raash’ke need Daal. If we lose those wings, we’ll never leave here. And even with Daal’s strength added to mine, I don’t think it would help, not against the full power of this dome.”

“What about brute force, then?” Jace asked, hefting his Guld’guhlian ax.

Darant and his men nodded at the wisdom of such a course.

Vikas looked skeptical, and rightly so.

Nyx stared at the chrysalis, catching glimpses of Shiya convulsing within. “Not yet. That cocoon is the lock, and Shiya the key to whatever it is we’re supposed to do here. Damage either and we’ve lost already.”

Krysh spoke off to the side, where he had been studying the giant crystal sphere hanging over the bottomless hole. “Something’s happening here.”

They all turned.

Up until now, the sphere had seemed unaffected by the fiery storm around the dome. It remained latched and suspended in bronze, resting silently in its cradle, a crystal eye staring back at them with a pupil of pulsing gold.

But now the crystal shook. It was just a small vibration, but in an object that massive, it was disconcerting enough. The golden sea inside sloshed, lashed by an unseen tempest. The bronze cradle groaned. The rigged archways that suspended it creaked with the strain of holding that trembling sphere.

“What’s causing it?” Jace asked.

Nyx looked back at the chrysalis. She pictured the bronze woman quaking in her prison. “It’s Shiya. The sphere is responding to her assault.”

“Then we must break her loose,” Jace warned. “Take the chance.”

All eyes turned to Nyx—but the answer came from elsewhere.

“It is too late,” a voice called over in a sibilant, grating voice, as if it were the speaker’s first attempt to communicate aloud. There was no amusement, no satisfaction, just a cold statement of fact. “It is done and cannot be reversed.”

They all swung to a curve of the dome a short way off. A bronze figure stepped out from the depths of one of the massive sinuous extensions. It was the spider, come out of hiding.

He rounded past the giant cable that dove under the floor and continued toward the sphere. As with the quality of his speech, there was no hostility or threat in the spider’s approach, more a vague indifference, maybe a touch of curiosity.