“It was a baby,” Bones hissed. “Oh, gods, that thing is their baby. The rest of them will eat us up in one gulp.”
“Don’t exaggerate,” Braiden said, forcing bravery into his voice. “Now, here. Let’s string your ribs up nice and solid so you can play for the nice spiders.”
Braiden wove his fingers to and fro, extracting the finest threads out of thin air, much like a spider makes it silk. He helped Bones to wrap them around his torso, turning the skeleton into a makeshift musical instrument once more.
They really needed to get him his own lute or lyre soon. It would be hell on their ears, but at least they wouldn’t be leaving their party’s bard so defenseless.
“Friend Bones,” Augustin said, still so polite despite the imminent danger. “Do you have a spell to put these creatures to sleep in your repertoire? Some sort of magical lullaby, perhaps?”
“That’s a great idea,” Newt said. “Maybe move closer to the cinderlings so they can all hear you. As close to the spiders as you dare.”
Bones thumbed at himself confidently, his belly a glowing golden cat’s cradle. “Consider it done.”
He strode into the center of the cavern with all the swagger of an armored warrior twice his size. He looked around the cave, gauging his distance from every spider, then positioned his fingers over his ribcage. With neither lungs nor throat nor lips, Bones inhaled a great gasp of air and prepared to sing.
A long strand of fiery silk thwipped out of the darkness, then another, and then another, encasing Bones in a loose cocoon of cinderling string anchored from every direction.
“Ow!” Bones screamed. “My tibia!”
The skeleton yelped and yowled, dancing like a marionette as he struggled in his restraints. As one, the cinderlings shrieked and chittered, skittering toward the center of the cavern on their spiny bronze-colored legs.
The cavern exploded into chaos, all of the raiding party’s carefully laid strategy thrown out the window.
Augustin loosed a furious gale down the cavern, funneled through the mouth of the cave. The wind made it so Braiden could barely aim his entangling threads. He cursed as he conjured a heavy macramé net instead, yelling over the howling wind for Augustin to stop.
But the cinderlings were barely stalled by the wizard’s winds, issuing high-pitched screeches and clouds of steaming vapor from their backs. Were they too heavy to be thrown off the ground and their cobwebs?
The chatterboxes sprang into action instead, defying their previous promise to stay out of the fight and using their bodies as sentient cannonballs. Every ram against the cinderlings stunned them or knocked them on their backs.
In the confusion, Newt scurried between the angry cinderlings and the tangles of spider silk and Braiden’s threads. With hardened focus and fast hands he gathered the cobwebs straight from the walls, then ran back again, launching himself from the ground straight toward Bones’s suspended body. The impact ripped the skeleton free of his sticky restraints, and together they raced out through the cave mouth.
Braiden didn’t wait for further instruction. He grabbed Augustin’s hand and sprinted for the exit. The chatterboxes lingered long enough to bully the cinderlings for a few more moments before flying out of the cavern themselves, cackling maniacally the whole while.
Not one of them stopped running until they’d penetrated deep into the obsidian forest. Newt stared hard between the trees, the glowing cinderling silk still clutched in his hands, then heaved a sigh of relief.
“The coast is clear. Looks like the cinderlings didn’t care enough to give chase. It’s not like we took anything of value from them.”
Braiden shook his head at Augustin, casting an accusing glare. “Maybe next time warn us before you buffet our enemies with wind in an enclosed space?”
Augustin shrugged. “I’m sorry. I panicked.”
Bones brushed the last remaining strands of cinderling silk from his body. Braiden had expected to find his bones at least singed and charred, but they showed no sign of damage, still gleaming ivory white.
“You used me as bait!” Bones cried, pointing in Newt’s face. “You set me up!”
“For success,” Newt said, wagging a finger.
It was always nice to see Bones make new friends.
Chapter
Twenty-Four
Braiden wincedand sucked on his fingertips, burned by the cinderling silk for the third time in a row. How was he supposed to work with this stuff when it wouldn’t even work with him? He’d never met a more uncooperative fiber.
“This is impossible,” he said. “I thought the Mothergoat wool was hot enough to handle, but this is just ridiculous.”
He threw his hands up in frustration, letting the cinderling silk fall to the ground. It burned a snakelike squiggle into the grass, which was very impressive indeed because the grass itself was functionally already on fire.
