Page 20 of Steeling Light
I follow myguideinto the twisting tunnel in front of us, and as soon as we step past the entryway, it’s like the darkness evaporates. I look behind me and see a black shimmering web covering the entryway. “What is that?” I say in surprise.
“Cadence’s web, of course.” Vellith hasn’t even turned around to look at it. She’s still walking, and I hurry to catch up once again. This place is so much stranger than any other Keep I’ve been in. Even the Keep of Shadows seemed mostly normal. This place is like another world.
We walk at a slow pace, and Vellith’s carapace rubbing with each step is the only sound. It’s like all the chaos of the main corridor has been blocked out. The small tunnel twists suddenly, and we stare at a wooden door, the first that I’ve seen here. Vellith raps on the door twice, and a girlish voice responds, “Is she here? Come in, come in!”
Vellith opens the door, and we walk into a small workroom. Instead of the mud-covered walls like the rest of the Keep, this room looks almost normal. Wooden walls, floor, and ceiling make it seem like we’ve been transported back to the normal world. A small bed lies against a corner, the blankets brightly colored, and a small desk sits next to a wide bookshelf. In the center of the room is a massive worktable filled with strange oddities, much like the trinkets on the silkies’ robes.
Then there’s the spider web that fills up the other half of the room. It’s made of black thread so dark that it seems to devour the light. Dozens of trinkets are tied into the strands of the web, and in the middle is a single clear gemstone that glows with a steady light.
In the center of the room, with hands clasped together across her chest, is a High Fae who seems more a child than an adult. She’s shorter than I am and thin as a rail. Her long, shining black hair bounces along with the rest of her as she can’t seem to stand still. Her movements aren’t like Vellith’s. Instead, she seems toflow.
Her bright yellow dress is just as shimmering and bright as any Lesser House formal wear that I’ve seen. It, along with this room, is the first thing that reminds me of the normal world of Selithar.
The young woman is a stark difference to the world of spiders she lives within. Her soft, pale skin is nothing like the dark carapace of the silkies. Her bright blue eyes are just like mine—not too large for her face, not slightly bulging. There are no strange dancing eyebrows. She is a High Fae just like me, and a bit of relief washes over me at the normalcy.
“Ainslee!” she squeals. “I was so excited when Vellith came to me with news that you’d be coming. I’ve looked into the web so many times this week, and I just… I just want to say that I am very excited to work with you. You’re my first!”
I blink. What in the world did I step into? I wanted to understand why Vellith’s words had stuck in my mind so much and maybe waste a few hours. This is all so much more than that.
“Umm… Cadence, right?”
She laughs a soft, twinkling laugh like a child. “That’s me! And you know my name. Oh, I am so excited. Do you like the web I built? I’ve built webs before. Maerlix says that I’m very good at weaving. Come look!”
She bounds to me and grabs my hand, and I’ve never felt so confused in my life. Vellith stands silently behind us, watching everything we do. I let myself be pulled to the web that takes up almost half the room. “See, it’s a zircon because you’re from the House of Light,” she says, pointing at the gemstone that shines in the center. “It’s in the center because many strands orbit you, and you’re alone right now. I almost put it to the side because you’re tied to many people, but they’re far away.”
She frowns for a moment and looks up at me. “Why are you here all alone? Your strands are bound to so many elsewhere, and they want to be near them. I have not seen so many strands who long so dearly to be near others.” Then she shrugs without giving me a chance to answer. “And here,” she says, pointing toward a piece of gray stone with red lines running through it, “is a strand that is tied to even more, but he longs to be away from them.”
She points to a moonstone bead in another corner. “This one is surrounded by so many, and yet she holds herself alone. And this one,” she gestures to a piece of black metal, “this one had many, but now…”
That’s when I see beyond the trinkets. The black metal has lines of silk dangling from it, broken. So many of the lines are frayed to the point of breaking; hundreds of tiny scratches show just how tenuous their connection to the zircon is.
“Then there are these,” she says, pointing toward most of the trinkets in a corner far from the zircon. A piece of red obsidian that looks like it was hit by a hammer, with fractures extending throughout it. Beside it is a monocle covered in dust. There’s a piece of sea glass that’s been shattered into dozens of shards. Each piece is suspended by silk threads, holding them near each other and only barely touching.
Around those large pieces are dozens upon dozens of smaller items: a piece of fur barely hanging onto the silk, a tiny down feather, a fish scale. Item after item clings to the web as if a single vibration would have it falling. Each of the items is on a piece of silk that’s tied to the zircon at the bottom.
“So many ties,” Cadence mutters. “And so different, each one. That is another oddity. If I were to make my own web, all the strands would be tied to silkies and weavers, but these… these are all different.” She turns to me and smiles. “It is so interesting, but…” She gives the web another look before smiling at me almost bashfully. “You did not come here for this, though. You have questions.”
I nod to her, my eyes trying to take in the details of the web again, as all of them are so minute, so nuanced. How could she know these things about me?
“Where are you on this web?” I ask suddenly. “If you know this much about me, you have to be tied to me, don’t you?”
Cadence beams at me. “So clever! I was three before I realized that! Yes, every weaver must be tied to their charge in some way, and they are the first strand that must be spun. I am here,” she says as she points at a single petal from a marigold. Bound in black silk, it’s nearly hidden from view. “Now,” she says as she moves to the worktable and sits down. “You have questions.”
I follow her to the table where tools that look more like they’d be in a jewelry shop are strewn about chaotically. Bits of wood and metal and gemstones sit beside them, and it occurs to me she had to gather all those items she put into the web in the last week.
The chair and table are simple and unadorned, but they’re comfortable. It’s the kind of chair that you could sit in for hours and not be squirming about by the end.
“I don’t know how Vellith knew things about me. I’d like to understand.” The question seems simple, but it’s a heavy question that digs at what might be a House secret. I know so little about the House of Webs. Are they secretive about their abilities and skills like the House of Earth, or are they open like the House of Flames? And do the Guardians of this House hold secrets even from the High Fae? I know almost nothing about the salamanders even though I lived in the House of Flames for most of my life.
Cadence smiles at me and then Vellith before saying, “Silk spinners taste the webs that they touch, no different from any other spider, feeling all the nuances of the strand they hold. She touched you, and she tugged the strands inside you, feeling the vibrations and how they connect to the web that holds us all. She tasted the emotions and connections of your strands. Vellith is a spider who walks the lines of silk that guide us all, and while she has…”
Cadence thinks for a moment, her head bobbing back and forth as she speaks. “She has limitations. Many, according to her. She does not know which pieces lie on the strands of your connections. She cannot name them, nor give exacting descriptions of them. All she knows are the vibrations and the way the web pulls them.”
I frown and turn toward Vellith, who is staring at us with a smile on her face. “You can read the future?”
She shakes her head, but it’s Cadence who speaks. “No, that’d make them a Greater House on their own, their powers coming directly from a dragon. No, her power is to understand directions and hidden connections. That is all. She cannot tell what you will choose, only that you must make choices. She cannot tell what those decisions are, only that you will have them.”
Cadence's eyes go to the web in the other half of the room, and she smiles. “We web weavers have slightly more information. Vellith and I have worked together all week to create this web, to see the strands that tie you to your past, present, and future, and Ainslee, it is important. The future is dark for so many, and you, of all the lightbringers, will light the way for them. But you’re not ready. It is our job to help you prepare, to find the Light inside yourself so that you may bring it to others.”
