“Then… what’s out there?” Lief asked hoarsely.

“Dead air,” was Penthos’s sepulchral reply. “Stay close to me and we shall pass through it sustained by the breath of my magics.”

And they had no choice, then, but to advance, because Penthos was certainly striding onward and their continued existence in that place was tied to him. Dion considered—and not for the first time—how lucky they were that the minutiae of most human interactions passed the wizard by. Had he decided to hold them to ransom over demands of his own—and she could think of a few he might own to without stretching her imagination overmuch—then he would have had more than one opportunity to do so.

Then they had passed over the floor of that great chamber, that crunched and fragmented under their feet with its charcoal burden of incinerated spiders. Enth was looking at none of them—looking at nothing, she suspected. Whatever thoughts were stewing in that gray head were nothing she wanted to consider, but she would probably have to. They had slaughtered the monster’s relatives. No doubt it was seething with revenge, and she would have to be on the lookout for any chance that might come its way.

Then they broke out through another narrow passage, that was stubbly with the charred ends of old webs, and entered a further chamber. Here again there were dead spiders, but these were not burned. There was a whole mound of them at the far end, piled up one on another as though some infernal cleaner had gathered them all up into a heap for later disposal. They were intact, for the most part, and Dion realized that they must have suffocated when Penthos’s fires drew all the goodness out of the air. They must have clawed and scrabbled and crawled over each other and up the wall, seeking some air that might sustain them, until at the last they had reached the farthest extent of the chamber and found no succor.

A great many of them, she saw, were far smaller than those that had fought. She saw, also, that the floor of the chamber was stippled with lumpy mounds, some burst open, the nearer ones scorched. Eggs.

Cyrene made a noise, and Dion saw her move partway toward Enth and then stop, held back by the creature’s sullen solitude.

“Enth… ,” she murmured. “I’m so sorry. These must be the young, the…”

Don’t say “children,” Dion asked silently, because of course they weren’t children. Humans had children, just as dogs had pups and horses had foals. Spiders had… well, as far as she was concerned, spiders just spawned more spiders.

Enth glanced at Cyrene. “They are just hatchlings,” the creature said blankly. “They have not learned anything or experienced anything. They are not the loss that the nest has suffered.”