Page 108 of Sword & Sacrifice

The guards ignored him. Finally, Sanne returned with the book. They compared the seal on the missive to the one in the letter, then nodded.

“Everything seems in order.”

Penn watched, conflicted, as the gates to Castle Arn opened and two villains stepped through.

The spiderwebs so thickly encased one tree, Valerian struggled to see the memory through their silvery filaments. He squinted and cocked his head to the side, peering through the gaps. “What did you find so interesting?” he murmured, hands clenching tighter on the handle of his axe.

A flash of movement in the canopy above caught his eye. Valerian threw himself out of the way just as a spider half his size lunged at him. It arched up from the ground, forelimbs raised and fangs bared in warning. Instead of attacking outright, it waved its legs as if to ward Valerian off.

Is it shooing me? Valerian thought, eyebrows arched at the odd behavior. “You’re the invader,” he reminded the spider.

The spider rubbed two of its legs together to create a warning hiss that echoed through the trees.

As Valerian watched, he realized it wasn’t just defensive—it was afraid. How many spiders had he already killed? And that was before he’d learned to conjure flames.

“If you’re so afraid, run along and fetch your master. He and I have unfinished business.”

Either the spider didn’t understand him, or it didn’t care to do his bidding. When he didn’t heed its warning, it lunged again.

Valerian met it head on, the axe burrowing deep into the spider’s thorax. Its legs twitched and collapsed under it, dropping its large body to the ground in a sad pile. Valerian pulled the axe out and, for good measure, chopped down three more times, until the arachnid shriveled into a pathetic ball.

The end of Valerian’s axe was coated in green gunk. He considered cleaning it off on the ground, but it seemed pointless when he hoped to splatter more spider guts with it.

Now that the spider guardian was dead, Valerian turned his attention back to the memory tree. With the tip of his axe, he cut away a small section—just enough to see the image without allowing the tree to flee from him.

In the bark, he saw his own familiar shop. The image spun, allowing him to take it all in—the counter, the empty shelves, the bare wall where he would one day install a hundred cubbies to store his scrolls.

It was a happy memory, one that filled Valerian with pride. He’d paid for that shop with his own money, earned through a lifetime of struggle.

But he would willingly burn it to the ground if it helped him defeat Alistair.

Valerian dropped the axe to his side and raised his palm, once again envisioning the heat of fire. The webs encasing the tree caught first, smoldering red under his touch before scorching black. They quickly fed the flames, spreading the fire all the way up to the canopy in the blink of an eye.

Valerian stepped back, admiring his handiwork. Pain spiked behind his left eye, and he instinctively covered it with one hand. The pain needled through his brain, sharp and persistent, carving out a tiny piece of him. He gritted his teeth and breathed in carefully through his nose, determined to ignore it as he watched the flames devour the tree.

Whatever memory it held was now only another scar in his mind.

Scurrying through the trees and across the ground warned Valerian that other spiders had come to defend their stolen home. The first one was simply the vanguard.

“That’s right,” Valerian snarled as he swung his axe, slicing straight through the foreleg of the nearest spider. “I’ll burn it all to the fucking ground unless your master stops me!”

The spiders ranged in size—some as tall as him when they reared back on their hind legs—others the size of his thumbnail. He soon realized the smaller ones were the most bothersome as one bit the back of his hand. He flung it off, but already he saw swelling around the tiny wound.

The venom can’t kill me, he thought, firmly inserting this belief into his own mind as he swung the axe again. This time, when it collided with a spider’s thorax, it smoldered and burned against the hairy exoskeleton.

It can sting and irritate but nothing more. As long as he believed it, he could push past the pain in his hand and continue attacking.

More and more spiders converged on him, some large enough to bite his head off if he let his guard down.

Yet none of them went in for the killing blow. They bit him, they tried to ensnare him in webbing, a few even tried to maim him.

Alistair had never killed him. Instead, the mage continuously resorted to trapping Valerian in different memories, no matter how often he escaped.

Because if Valerian died, his body died, and he would take Alistair down with him.

Valerian would fight until the bloody end or until Alistair came out and faced him.

Chapter Forty-Four