“They’re only known as the karsts. Most do not venture here for fear of the rumors alone.” Damien ran a hand along one of the smooth stones that rose up hundreds of feet. Scaling it would be impossible.
Kaz was careful as he crept along, holding his tail up to avoid the water though it was unnecessary, but he actually led the way with some vigor she wasn’t expecting.
“Seems like this might be a pretty serious detour,” she said, leaning out around Damien’s back to spy the imp. “Kaz, you’re okay with this?”
As they worked their way around the lake to the jagged opening in the rock wall, Kaz sneered back at her, but said nothing. There, on the shore at the mouth, sat three small canoes, the lake continuing on to spill into the darkness of the cave.
Damien planted one boot into a boat, the other firmly on the shore. “Kaz has never minded the karsts. There are supposedly other imps here, but they stay hidden away.” He extended a hand to Amma as he held the canoe still.
She hesitated then, unsure why. He’d touched her dozens of times, but mostly to pull her out of danger. “He didn’t like Xander’s imps.” When she slipped her hand into his, she tried to not grip too tightly. It felt right to only use him as temporary leverage, like if she held on, she wouldn’t be able to let go.
“These are fire imps, not shadow,” said Damien as she stepped into the boat with his help. “And not that one can really decipher, but I’m fairly certain most of them are of the female persuasion.”
Kaz pounced off the shore for the far end of the canoe, landing hard enough to rock it and knock Amma off balance. She lost her footing and tumbled into Damien’s chest. He clung onto her hand, other arm around her waist, and the two stood there up against each other as the boat swayed.
Wind swept over the lake and through the mouth of the cave, urging Amma to nuzzle against him. Her hand was already gripping his side and could so easily be tangled up in his tunic if she just slipped it to his neck. Damien wasn’t moving, even when the canoe fell still.
Kaz snickered, and Amma relented squeezing onto him, carefully slipping out of Damien’s grip to take a seat. The blood mage sat at the other end, lips pulled into a thin line, hands flexing as if he didn’t know what to do with them.
There was no oar, but the boat began to float, pushing itself off the shore.
“It knows the way,” said Damien, and they both cast a glance across the lake to the horses, indifferent to their riders’ pending disappearance.
Amma was sat so that she could see where they were headed into the mouth of the tunnel, lined with jagged rocks that hung overhead like so many fangs. The light was slowly doused as they passed under the toothy curtain above, the brightness of the late afternoon slipping away. The echo of running water and a steady drip from deeper within was magnified by the rounded, rocky walls.
But as they came around a gentle curve in the river, there was color. Specks of teal light dotted the cave’s ceiling like stars in a night sky. As they meandered deeper, the lights multiplied until the entire ceiling was clustered with a soft, cerulean glow that reflected back in the lapping water, casting the whole cave in an ever-moving sparkle.
“It’s beautiful,” Amma said, the words pulled out of her with a heavy and wondrous breath.
“Is it?” Damien’s voice was far away, its bass lost in the echo of the cave. “I never quite noticed.”
“How could you not?”
“Well, they’re not what you think.” He raised a hand slowly above his head, and from the darkness, something alighted his fingertips. He brought his arm back down and extended the hand toward Amma. She had to lean in to properly see, bringing her nose about an inch away, and even that almost wasn’t enough. There stretched out over his palm were eight spindly legs attached to a pinprick of a body hovering just in the center.
She inhaled sharply, but didn’t move even as the spider took a careful step toward her over his fingers. “Oh,” she said in a tiny voice, holding her breath so she wouldn’t blow the fragile thing away.
“Their threads are very thin, but if you know what to look for, you’ll see them,” said Damien as if not suggesting that there were thousands of spiders dangling just above their heads in the unseen blackness, but as she glanced upward again, she could just make out how their silky strands were also illuminated in that soft, teal glow, bending with unfelt wind above.
“Those lights are their webs?”
Damien turned his hand over as the spider moved with a delicate grace to its back. Amma watched its needle-like legs, bending to feel for stability before taking each careful step. He nodded. “They catch things that mistake the light for a way out.”
She leaned back carefully, the knowledge that the luminescent webs harbored husks of dead things and nests for insects not really changing how she saw them. “It’s still beautiful.”
Damien hummed a thoughtful noise to himself, and the boat took another turn to reveal a wall of rock where the river split off past it in two directions. The boat bumped gently into a narrow shore, and there, amidst the naturally amorphous and jagged stone, was a distinct carving in the shape of a door.
Kaz propelled himself from the boat, Amma following, and Damien reached up to a low-hanging stalactite where the spider disembarked from his hand. When he stepped up to the image of the door and knocked, it made almost no sound, it was only a carving after all, and it wouldn’t open, surely. But then it did.
CHAPTER 12
INNKEEPERS AND IMBECILES
The rough sound of stone dragging against stone filled the cave like a tomb being opened. The door that had only been a carving moments before, slid out and away from the solid wall of rock, and in the shadowed entry stood the most beautiful woman Amma had ever seen.
Skin as dark as midnight was pulled taught over a tapered jaw and angular temples, and lips full and deeply maroon curled into a smile. “Lord Bloodthorne,” she said, voice as smooth as the silken webs that hung from the cave’s ceiling, “we’ve been expecting you.”
She stepped back from the door, disappearing into the shadows like a figment, and Amma was unsure if she’d imagined her or not. But Damien stepped through the doorway and inside, and she followed, afraid she might be shut out and left alone there on the shore with the ghost of an entrance carved into the rock wall.
