He saw ahead of him the crack within the rocks that she had emerged from those generations before. She must have been young, then, half the size of her present bulk, to fit through that opening. He waited for the others to catch him up: four of them sweating and straining, with Harathes in his armor little more than a weight at the rope’s end. Penthos had simply ascended, floating into the air like dandelion seed.

“There,” he told them. “Your path is there.”

“And inside? Does it branch? Are there many caves?” Dion asked him, getting her breath back.

He nodded. “The way is known to me.” In saying the words he made it so.

“What’s in there?” Lief asked, and when Nth shrugged he put in, “Want me to take a poke then?”

“Go,” Dion agreed, and the thief began closing the last distance toward the cave mouth, the movement of each hand or foot a careful study in silence, plotting a curving course to bring him unobserved to the opening.

Nth moved before his mind had quite registered what his eyes had seen. Afterward, crouched over Lief with the thief’s terrified eyes staring into him, he identified it only as that instinctive prey-lunge he had once known, in another form. When the lines had been tripped, when the sense of struggle had come to him through his feet along the web, it was almost impossible not to follow that twanging lure and strike.

He had stuck, even in this shape. His mind had been transported back to that simpler age, and he had lunged for Lief and slammed him back against the rock. The others were shouting. Dion was commanding him to back away. For a moment he lacked sufficient control of his body to obey, but then he crept back, with Lief still staring, utterly bewildered.

“What happened?” Cyrene was asking one of them, and: “I told you,” from Harathes. Nth was asking himself what it was, why he had…

“Do not move,” he said, loud enough for them all to hear. Loud enough, because stealth would not work here, and sound would not be heard.

“If you hurt Lief we’ll—” Harathes started and Cyrene told him to shut up.

“What, Enth?” she asked.

He reached out one arm, with Lief’s eyes following his every move in horrified fascination. He touched the thread. Moving it, plucking it like a string, made it visible to them. And spoke to those inside, though in a language his body could not form true thoughts in anymore.