“I’m not an idiot!” she retorted, backing away. Unfortunately, that took her deeper into the morass.

Dwer’s machete, an artfully reshaped length of Buyur metal, gleamed as he took a swipe at one of the vines between them. It looked lifeless, but he was ready to leap back in case—

It severed neatly, a crumbling, decaying tube, spilling nothing but cloying dust. A good thing he had decided against using it as a foothold, then. This place wasn’t forgiving of mistakes.

He let the machete hang by the pommel loop while he lowered himself one level, to what seemed a stable vine, setting his weight down gingerly; then he sidled along the horizontal span seeking a way downward. The next foothold seemed thinner, less anchored, but he didn’t have much choice. At least it didn’t gush acid or try to wrap his ankle like a snake. How did she get this far in the first place? He wondered, glad that most of the tendrils were dead. The hedge would have been impassable when the mulc-spider was in its prime.

“Dwer!”

He swiveled, wobbling as the ropy strand rocked to and fro. Peering past shadows, he watched Rety climb a chimneylike funnel, offering what seemed a way out. Only now, halfway up the slim gap, she saw something begin twisting into place above. Another clump of living vines… moving in to block the promise of escape. Meanwhile, the chimney’s base was closing the same way. Her face betrayed rising panic. Flushed, she held out her slim blade, eyes darting for some vital spot to stab her foe. But all she could do was saw at some nearby strand, hoping it would not gush vitriol or golden death.

A short way beyond, Dwer saw the bird-thing, still struggling within its own trap.

Let her go, One-of-a-Kind, Dwer thought as he crouched, then leaped with both hands outstretched for another cable-which fortunately held as he swung across a dark opening to land straddling another almost horizontal branch, as thick as a sapling’s trunk. Let her go, or I’ll—

His mind seemed to strangle on the .demand, not knowing how one intimidated a mulc-spider. Could he do more than irritate it with a machete? He might threaten to depart and return with tools to destroy the ancient thing, with flame and explosives, but somehow Dwer knew that would seem too abstract. The spider appeared to have little sense of perspective or cause and effect, only immediacy and avarice, combined with enough patience to make a hoon seem like a cranky noor.

Anyway, by the time Dwer could carry out his retribution, Rety would be sealed in a golden cocoon, preserved for all time… and dead as a stone.

Let’s talk a trade, One-of-a-Kind, he projected as he took up the machete once more. What will you take in exchange for her?

There was no answer. Either One-of-a-Kind was too busy pushing vines and fluids around, acting with unaccustomed haste, or else—

The spider’s silence felt eerie, predatory. Smug. As if it felt no need for conversation when it had two treasures and seemed about to get a third. Grimacing, Dwer sidled deeper into the quagmire. What else could he do?

He hacked at three more vines. The last sent streams of caustic sap arcing between crisscrossing branches. Smoke curled up from the rubbish-strewn floor below, adding to the acrid stench.

“Dwer, help me!”

Rety was fully hemmed in now, and touchy pride no longer suppressed the normal panic of a frightened child. Seen through a matrix of ensnaring mule-twine, her hair glistened like an urrish tinker’s mane on a dewy morning, coated with a fine dusting of golden droplets. A vine parted under her sawing knife — and two more slithered in to take its place.

“I’m coming!” he promised, splitting two more cables, then dropping to the next stable-looking branch. It sagged, then Dwer’s footing went slippery as it seeped a clearish, greasy liquor. He shouted, and his feet slid out from under him.

The same dense tangle he’d been cursing saved him from a broken neck. His windmilling arms caught a vine, wrapping round it desperately as his legs swung in midair. But his sigh of relief turned into a gagging gasp. Under his chin, livid veins pulsed with some vile, crimson solution. Blisters formed as corrosive liquid welled beneath the thinnest of membranes. Dwer’s eyes stung from escaping vapor.

{No, no. Don’t think I would ever harm you so! You are much too precious for that.}

Before Dwer’s tear-blurred gaze, the blisters stopped rising — then reddish fluid seemed to drain out of the throbbing arteries.

{That nectar is for plain stone. For you, my unique one, only the gold.}

Dwer grimaced. Thanks a lot!

Peering to one side, he found another tangle within reach of his feet. Risking that perch, he pushed away from the loathsome branch that had broken his fall.

{Think nothing of it.}

Dwer was almost at Rety’s level now, close enough to see grim determination replace panic in her eyes as she sawed another vine in half. A fine spray rewarded her, gilding the forearm she raised to protect her face. All of a sudden, Dwer realized — She’s cutting in the wrong direction!

Instead of taking the most direct route toward daylight, she was heading deeper into the morass — toward the mechanical bird-thing!

Of all the times to chase an Ifni-slucking obsession!

Sudden liquid coolness brushed Dwer’s wrist. A shimmering meniscus bead lay amid the dark hairs. He moved aside quickly, before another drop could fall from the seep-pore overhead. Dwer shook the droplet off, but even after it was gone, the spot still felt chilled, touched with a not-unpleasant numbness, like when the village dentist spread powdered Nural leaves along a patient’s gums, before spinning his hand-cranked drill.

The machete now wore its own streaked coating, already starting to crystallize in places. Certainly it was an artifact worth collecting, a slab of star-god stuff, adapted by a tribe of primitives to new use in a twilight place, between the gritty earth and urbane sky. Grimly, he raised his weapon and set to with a will.

Concentration was vital, so he ignored the stench and grinding dust with a hunter’s narrow-minded focus. Sweat beaded his brow, face, and neck, but he dared not wipe. No doubt he already looked like Rety, who now glittered like some fairy confection, dusted with beads of honey. Dwer did not bother shouting for her to turn and head toward him. Given her obstinacy, he might as well save his breath.

Glancing back, he saw his escape route still looked clear — a tunnel lined by chopped branches and dangling severed vines. One-of-a-Kind could marshal more, but the mulc-spider was old, slow. As Dwer neared Rety’s cage, he felt sure he could thwart the spider’s move, when it came.

Now he called, hoarsely.

“Okay, Rety. No foolin’. Let’s get outta here.”

The girl was over at the far end of her funnel opening, staring at the bird-thing past the branches that blocked her way. “Hey, it noticed me! It’s turning around!”

Dwer wouldn’t care if it stood on its head and gave Drake’s Farewell Address in Buyur-accented Galactic Three. He sliced another cable and coughed as fumes flowed from both writhing ends. “Rety, we haven’t got time!”

When the smoke cleared, he sidled closer and saw that the bird-thing had risen up within its cell, peering skyward and ignoring droplets that settled, mistlike, on its feathered back. Rety, too, seemed to notice its attention shift. She turned to look upward, as Dwer heard a shrill, chittering sound from the same general direction.

It’s just the bloody noor.

Beyond the diffracting crisscross of vines, he saw Mudfoot, returned from wherever it had fled. Only now the creature stood on its hind legs, sinuous body upraised, whiskered snout pulled back, snarling at something out of sight, to the south.