Chainfire: Chainfire Trilogy Part 1

But under the cover of the sound of the rain, all around him, Richard could hear branches and limbs slowly pulling past one another. Here and there a few small twigs snapped as something drew in closer all around him. Something touched his left arm. He flinched backed a step, pulling his arm away from the gummy contact. The burn throbbed painfully. Warm blood now trickled down his arm in two places. He felt something catch the back of his pant leg. He tugged his leg away from the sticky contact.

Cara crashed through the trees not far away. Subtle, she was not. She threw open a small door on the shield around the lantern she carried, letting a weak beam of light fall across the campsite.

Richard was able to see what he thought looked like a strange, dark web of something crisscrossed all around him, woven through trees, shrubs, limbs, and brush. It looked like thick cords of some sort, but organic and gummy, he couldn't imagine what it was or exactly how it had gotten itself every where around him.

"Lord Rahl! Are you all right?"

"Yes. Stay where you are."

"What's going on?"

"I'm not sure, yet."

The sound came closer as the still, dark strands all around him again began to draw tighter. One of them pressed against his back. He flinched away, spun, and slashed with the sword.

As soon as he cut it, the whole of the tangle all around him tensed and contracted in toward him.

Cara threw open the entire shield around the lantern, hoping to see better. Richard could suddenly see that the glistening threads were nearly cocooning him. He even saw lines of the stuff crisscrossing overhead. As close in as it all was, he was running out of clear space to maneuver.

With a flash of comprehension, he understood the silken sound he had heard at first. The fluid, continuous movement was something spinning the filaments around him as if he were a meal for a spider. These filaments, though, were as thick as his wrist. What exactly they were, he had no idea. What he did know was that when they had touched him, sticking to his pant leg, his left arm, and his back, they delivered painful burns.

He could see Cara and her lantern as she dodged this way and that, looking for a way to get through to him.

"Cara, stay back! It will burn you if you touch it."

"Burn?"

"Yes, like acid, I think. And, it's sticky. Keep away from it or you're liable to get caught in it."

"Then how are you to get out of the middle of it?"

"I'll just have to cut my way out. You stay there and let me come to you."

When the strands pulled in tighter to the left side, he finally swung the sword and struck out at them. The blade flashed in the light of Cara's lantern, slashing through the enveloping tangle of sticky fibers. As they were parted by the blade, they whipped around as if they'd been undo tension. Some stuck to trees or limbs, hanging down like murky moss. In the light of the lantern, he could see the leaves shrivel up, evidently from being burned when they were touched by the strands.

Whatever was creating the webs of the stuff, Richard didn't see it.

The rain began to come down a little harder as Cara darted from side to side, trying to find a way in. "I think I can.»

"No!" he yelled at her. "I told you-keep away from it!"

Richard swung the sword at the thick, dark ropes wherever they drew in toward him, trying to check their constriction and weaken their integrity, but he was forced not to do so unless he had no choice because the sticky strands were beginning to cling to the blade.

"I need to help you stop this thing!" she called back, impatient to set him free.

"You'll just get caught up in it. If you do that, then you can be of no help to me. Stay back. I told you, let me cut my way out and come to you."

That, at least, looked to have finally dissuaded her from any immediate attempt to try to fight her way through. She stood half crouched, lips pressed tight in frustrated fury, Agiel in her fist, not knowing what to do —not wanting to go against what he told her and realizing the sense of what he'd said-but at the same time not wanting him to have to fight his way out all by himself.

It was a strange, confounding, nonviolent kind of battle. There looked to be no rush. The gashes he inflicted didn't seem to cause the thing any pain. The slow, inexorable approach of the surrounding tangle seemed to be trying to lull him into holding back, inasmuch as there appeared to be plenty of time to analyze the situation.

Despite that quiet appearance, that deceptive calm, Richard found the implacable advance of the surrounding trap alarming in the extreme. Not wanting to give in to that appeal to inaction, Richard swung the sword again, driving into the walls of the tangled web.