The peaceful quiet was belied by an eerie sense of lifelessness. The dust lay undisturbed by footprints, only the scrape of wind and rain. From prior visits, Dwer knew why prudent creatures avoided this place. Still, after the strangling confinement of that tunnel-trail, it felt good to see sky again. Dwer had never much shared the prevailing dread of crossing open ground, even if it meant walking for a short time under the glaring sun.

As they picked their way past the first boulders, the glaver began to mew nervously, creeping alongside Rety to keep in her shadow. The girl’s eyes roved avidly. She seemed not to notice drifting off the trail, at an angle that would skirt the fringe of the lake.

Dwer took several long strides to catch up. “Not that way,” he said, shaking his head.

“Why not? We’re headin’ over there, right?” She pointed to the only other gap in the outer wall of boo, where a narrow, scummy stream leaked through the valley’s outlet. “Quickest way is past the lake. Looks easier, too, except right by the shore.”

Dwer gestured toward a relic webbery of dun strands, draping the nearby jagged boulders. “Those are-” he began.

“I know what they are.” She made a face. “Buyur didn’t only live on the Slope, y’know, even if you wes-ties do think it’s simply the best place to be. We got mulc-spiders over the hill, too, eatin’ up old Buyur ruins.

“Anyway, what’re you so scared of? You don’t think this one’s still alive, do you?” She kicked one of the desiccated vines, which crumbled to dust.

Dwer controlled himself. It’s that chip on her shoulder talking. Her people must have been awful to her. Taking a breath, he replied evenly.

“I don’t think it’s alive. I know it is. What’s more — this spider’s crazy.”

Rety’s first reaction was to raise both eyebrows in surprised fascination. She leaned toward him and asked in a hushed voice — “Really?”

Then she tittered, and Dwer saw she was being sarcastic. “What’s it do? Put out sticky lures full o’ berry-sugar an’ sweet gar, to snatch little girls who’re bad?”

Taken aback, Dwer finally grunted. “I guess you could say something like that.”

Now Rety’s eyes widened for real, brimming with curiosity. “Now this I gotta see!”

She gave the rope at her waist a sudden yank. The formidable-looking knot fell apart, and she took off, dashing past several craggy stones. The gaily squeaking noor pursued with excited bounds.

“Wait!” Dwer yelled futilely, knowing it useless to chase her through the boulder maze. Scrambling up a nearby talus slope of rocky debris, he managed to glimpse her ragged ponytail, bobbing as she ran toward where the rocky slabs converged in a tumbled labyrinth rimming the lake shore.

“Rety!” he screamed into the wind. “Don’t touch the—”

He stopped wasting breath. The same breeze that pushed the lake’s musty pungency against his face stole his words before they could reach her ears. Dwer slid back down to the trail, only to realize — damn! Even the glaver was gone!

He finally found it half an arrowflight uphill, shambling back the way they had come, following whatever instinct sometimes drove its kind to wander doggedly east, away from comfort and protection and toward near-certain death. Growling under his breath, Dwer seized the mare’s tether and sought something, anything, to tie her to, but the nearest stand of gangly boo lay too far away. Dropping his pack, he whipped out a length of cord. “Sorry about this,” he apologized, using his hip to lever the glaver over. Ignoring her rumbling complaint, he proceeded to hobble her rear legs, where he hoped she couldn’t reach the rope with her teeth.

“Pain, frustration — both quite tedious are.”

“Sorry. I’ll be back soon,” he answered optimistically, and took off after the sooner child.

Stay uphill and downwind, Dwer thought, angling to the right of her last heading. This might just be a trick to let her circle around and head for home.

A little later, he noticed he had reflexively unlimbered his bow, cranking the string tension for short range, and had loosed the clamp securing the stubby arrows in his thigh quiver.

What good will arrows do, if she makes the spider angry?

Or worse, if she catches its interest?

Toward the valley’s rim, many stones retained a semblance to their ancient role, segments of whatever Buyur structure once stood proudly on this site, but as Dwer hurried inward, all likeness to masonry vanished. Ropy strands festooned the boulders. Most appeared quite dead — gray, desiccated, and flaking. However, soon his eye caught a greenish streak here… and over there a tendril oozing slime across a stony surface, helping nature slowly erase all vestiges of former scalpel-straight smoothness.

Finally, raising a creepy feeling down his back, Dwer glimpsed tremors of movement. A wakening of curling strands, roused from sleep by some recent disturbance.

Rety.

He dodged through the increasingly dense maze, leaping over some ropy barriers, sliding under others, and twice doubling back with an oath when he reached impassable dead ends. This Buyur site was nowhere near as vast as the one north and east of Dolo Village, where each local citizen dutifully took part in crews gleaning for items missed by the deconstructor spider. Dwer used to go there often, .along with Lark or Sara. That spider was more vigorous and alive than this crotchety old thing — yet far less dangerous.

The thicket of pale cables soon grew too crowded for an adult to pass, though the girl and noor might have gone on. In frustration, Dwer whirled and slapped a rounded knob of rock.

“Ifni sluck!” He waved his stinging hand. “Of ail the bloody damn jeekee…”

He slung the bow over one shoulder, freeing both hands, and started scrambling up the jagged face of a boulder three times his height. It was no climb he would have chosen, given time to work out a better route, but Dwer’s racing heart urged him to hurry.

Mini-avalanches of eroded rock spilled over his hair and down his collar, stinging with a dusty redolence of decayed time. Flaky vines and dried tendrils offered tempting handholds, which he strove to ignore. Rock was stronger, though not always as reliable as it looked.

While his fingers traced one fine crack, he felt the outcrop under his left foot start to crumble and was forced to trust his weight to one of the nearby crisscrossing mule-cables.

With a crackling ratchet, the vine gave but a moment’s warning before slipping. He gasped, suspending his entire weight with just his fingertips. Dwer’s torso struck the stone wall, slamming air out of his lungs.

His flailing legs met another strand, thinner than the first, just seconds before his grip would have failed. With no other choice, Dwer used it as a springboard to pivot and launch himself leftward, landing on a slim ledge with his right foot. His hands swarmed along the almost sheer face — and at last found solid holds. Blinking away dust, he inhaled deeply till it felt safe to resume.

The last few meters were less steep but worn slick by countless storms since the boulder had been dragged here, then left in place by the weakening vines. Finally, he was able to get up on his knees and peer ahead, toward the nearby shore.

What had seemed a uniform hedge, lining the lake’s perimeter, was now a thick snarl of vines, varying from man-height to several times as tall. This near the water, the cables’ gray pallor gave way to streaks of green, yellow, even bloodred. Within the tangle he glimpsed specks of yet other colors, sparkling in shafts of sunlight.

Beyond the thorny barrier, the scummy pond seemed to possess a geometric essence, both liquid and uncannily corrugated. Some areas seemed to pulse, as if to a cryptic rhythm — or enduring anger.