Since she wanted her hatchlings to feed on this flesh that was making her more than just a spider, she worked to find a way to reach the memories, to see the dreams.
Dragon had shown her before. Why wouldn't Dragon show her now?
Frustrated, she climbed up to Dragon s jaw, anchored a strand of silk, and began to build a web. But as she built the web, she… felt things. So she spun them into the web, ignoring instinct and placing the threads where they needed to be. Sorrow. Pain. Longing. Need. Hope.
As she cautiously traveled the strands of the completed tangled web, warmth flowed through her. She paused, absorbed the feel of this sensation, and added one more small thread. Joy.
Suddenly she saw the caves, the place Dragon had intended to go to do the finest dreaming. And in those caves, she saw golden spiders, much larger than herself, spinning tangled webs.
Sound, faint and fading, filled her.
*You have learned well,* Dragon said. *But heed me, little one. You must guard the webs you weave that make dreams into flesh. Many beings will cherish those webs because they are spun out of magic that lives in the heart. But there will be others who will want to destroy that heart-magic before it can touch the world. Guard the webs…Weaver of Dreams.*
Dragon's breath came out in a long sigh… and then there was silence.
7
The golden spider spun out the last thread of the web that filled the space between Dragon's jaw and shoulder. Most of her offspring had gone away, just ordinary spiders who would spin ordinary webs and catch ordinary prey. But the few who were different, who were like her, had stayed nearby, learning how to spin the tangled webs.
Despite the size of her web, she had caught only one small dream, but that one held a deep well of yearning… and a taste of sorrow that was, somehow, connected to Dragon. So she plucked the thread of yearning, sending it back to the heart it had come from.
As day turned to night, she settled into the most sheltered edge of her web…and wondered about the dreamer.
8
Day had barely touched the sky when she sensed a Presence that resonated with her tangled web. She waited, feeling the faint tremble of footfalls on the earth, the change in the air.
*Sso. My daughter wass able to passs on her gift after all.*
The voice that flowed through her felt like Dragon, but wasn't quite Dragon.
The Presence approached her web. Her offspring plucked the strands of their own webs, trying to ensnare the Presence's mind. But the Presence didn't respond, didn't give any sign that it had felt the tugs and whispers in those webs.
*Blood singss to blood,* the Presence said, leaning over the spider's tangled web. *Remember me.*
A drop of blood fell on a knot of tangled threads, a glistening bead of power.
The spider waited until the Presence went away before hurrying over to devour the offering.
Power flowed through her, a power even stronger and richer than Dragon's had been.
Draca.
Dragon's Mother. Dragon's Queen.
Remember me.
For hours that day, the spider stroked the strands of her tangled web, remembering Dragon, remembering the feel of Draca. Not shaped like Dragon, but still a dragon.
This dream web had done what it was meant to do. Draca would not sorrow for Dragon anymore because she had seen that, in the most important way, Dragon was still in the world. Small now, and golden, but still in the world.
The spider carefully cut the anchoring threads and just as carefully rolled the web into a cocoon. She traveled down Dragon's neck and shoulder until she reached the hole in the chest.
Perhaps it was the way of Dragon's kind, or perhaps it was some last bit of magic that had changed Dragon's flesh into porous rock covered with hard stone scales. Inside Dragon were several chambers where she could spin the first stage of a web, then listen, quiet and protected, while the strongest heart-dreams drifted over her, guiding her as she created her web.
The time would come when she and her offspring would make the long journey to the caves where the golden spiders would protect the webs of dreams that would become flesh. But not yet.
She squeezed through the opening that led to a small chamber and pulled the cocoon in with her.
Dragon's body was hollow stone now, but the heart hadn't rotted like the rest of the organs. It had changed to smooth stone. Whenever the spider came to this chamber and brushed a leg over that stone, the chamber filled with warmth, and she felt Dragon's joy that the Weaver's gift had not been lost.
The day would come when she no longer felt that warmth, and the stone would be no more than a stone. When that day came, she would leave. But even then, whatever bit of heart-memory might remain wouldn't be alone.
Before leaving the chamber, she spun out some silk and attached the cocoon of Draca's dream to Dragon's stone heart.
The Prince of Ebon Rih
ONE
Lucivar Yaslana stood at the far end of the flagstone courtyard of his new home, enjoying the early morning sunlight that had begun warming the stones beneath his feet. The mountain air felt chilly against his bare skin, and the freshly made coffee he sipped from a plain white mug tasted rough enough to make him wince. Didn't matter. The coffee might not have the smooth potency that Mrs. Beale produced for his father's table, but it wasn't any worse than what he made when he went hunting and spent a night out on the land. Couldn't be any worse, since he'd made it the same way.
He looked over his shoulder at the open door that led into the warren of rooms that made up the eyrie. Some of the rooms had been carved out of the living mountain; others had been built from the extracted stone. The result would have been a nightmare for any race that needed predictable lines and angles in a structure, but for anyone born of the Eyrien race, it was perfect.
And this particular eyrie was now his.
Smiling, he closed his gold eyes and tipped his head back to feel the sun on his face. Slowly opening his dark, membranous wings, he savored the feel of sunlight and chilly air playing over his wings and light-brown skin.
In all of his seventeen hundred years, he'd never had a home until three years ago when he'd been reunited with his father…the man who, through the machinations of Dorothea, Hayll's High Priestess, had had his two younger sons taken from him. The man who had never forgotten or forgiven the betrayals that had left scars on all of them.
He'd been happy living in the suite of rooms at SaDiablo Hall, but the Hall was still his father's house. This place was his. Exclusively, totally his.
*Yas?*
Well, maybe not exclusively his.
Sipping his coffee, Lucivar watched the adolescent wolf trot toward him. The youngster had been ready to leave the pack that lived in the north woods of his father's estate but hadn't wanted to go back to the Territory most of the kindred wolves called home. Tassle had grown up near humans and wanted to learn more about them, but there still weren't many places where the wild kindred could safely live in human Territories…and there still weren't many humans beyond Jaenelle An-gelline's court who felt easy about living around an animal who had the same power as the human Blood. Since he now had plenty of land for a wolf to roam in, it was easy enough to share the space.