Adon ignored the signal, and Kelemvor ran to his side. "Have you lost your sight this lime, Adon?" he said. When the cleric ignored him and continued to force his horse to plow through the undergrowth, the fighter slapped him on the arm to get his attention. Adon looked down at Kelemvor, nodded, and got off his horse.
"There's death in this place," Adon said, no life in his voice. "We've walked into a charnel house."
"It wouldn't be the first time," Kelemvor said and returned to Midnight.
Farther ahead, Cyric walked with Brion. Although he had been alternately amused and frustrated by the young thief, Cyric sensed an innocence in him that was refreshing. Surely Brion had not been an adventurer very long, although his proficiency with a dagger rivaled Cyric's.
After morningfeast, Brion had challenged Cyric to a test of skill with the dagger, and Cyric nearly lost to the albino. After the challenge was over, Cyric and Brion did a trick using six daggers each, which they first gathered from their friends, then tossed at each other with blinding speed. Each knife Cyric threw was deflected by one of Brion's, then each one Brion threw was deflected in midair by one of Cyric's tosses.
Still, for all his skill with knives, the albino did not reek of blood and madness as so many adventurers did. Even Brion's companions, like the girl who sat with Adon, reveled in the idea of taking a life. Cyric could see it in their eyes.
Cyric could see, too, that the number of times Brion had willingly shed blood could be counted on a single one of his gloved hands, and that the albino had never taken a man's life without regret.
As the adventurers walked along, the woods themselves were misleadingly beautiful, at least at the start. The trees were thick and healthy, covered with rich green leaves. Bright sunlight pierced the openings in the ceiling of the forest, and warm shafts of light fell here and there, occasionally caressing the faces of the heroes who navigated through the thick foliage.
Then, as they moved across a thick bed of gnarly roots, which covered the ground completely in many places, Kelemvor heard twigs snapping in the trees. He turned sharply and motioned to Zelanz and Welch, the mercenaries who brought up the rear, but they hadn't heard the sounds. They looked at Kelemvor and shrugged. Kelemvor saw no hint of movement around the party, so he turned and walked on.
The noises came again and again, and finally the entire company had been alerted. Weapons were drawn, but no one could spot any signs of the creatures in the trees. In the lead, Thurbrand carefully navigated through a small path in the woods. Bounding a tree, the bald man stopped quite suddenly, his body tensing as he prepared for an attack.
A man wearing bone-white armor stood before Thurbrand, stuck to a tree by long, ropy strands of webbing. His helmet had been removed, and the bleached white skin of his face was marked with the symbol of Bane, black over his white features. Sword drawn, the assassin stared at Thurbrand, his face frozen in a wild-eyed grimace.
A few yards away, Thurbrand saw five other men wearing the armor of Bane's elite assassins, stuck to other trees in a large clearing.
"They're dead," Thurbrand said. "But whatever killed them is close by."
The adventurers stood still for a moment as Kelemvor and Thurbrand examined a huge web that was strung in the trees around the assassins. The rest of the party, with the exception of Adon, gathered closer together and watched the trees. The Sunite, on the other hand, simply stood by his horse, staring up at the dark canopy of leaves that blotted out the sun.
As the party stood, listening for something to move in the trees, they noticed that there was no sounds at all coming from the woods. The leaves didn't rustle in the wind. No insects chirped. The woods were completely silent.
Without a single word, Gillian handed the reigns of her mount to the cleric of Tymora, then took to the trees like a monkey. She made no sound as she rose to the highest branch, then surveyed the woods with her practiced eye. The adventurers waited for five minutes as she leaped from branch to branch, carefully taking in the area from every possible vantage, and finally she signaled all clear.
The girl motioned for Thurbrand to come close, even before she leaped down to the ground. "Not even the strongest winds could move these branches. This place is dead, frozen in this state." She made a motion with her fingers to indicate an odd texture. "There is a light film covering everything. That's what causes the stillness."
Thurbrand nodded, and reached out to help her down. She frowned and leaped over and past him, landing in a graceful crouch. But as her feet struck the earth, directly in the center of a tangle of roots that radiated from the spot, there was a harsh, wet sound and the ground gave way just a bit. Before the girl could utter a word of warning, the roots burst from the ground in a shower of displaced earth.
Eight limbs in all burst up to grab Gillian, all of them tall, spindly, and pitch-black. Each limb had four joints, and they culminated in a razor-sharp tip the size of a large sword. The vast underbelly of the creature that the girl stood upon moved from the earth, pitching her off balance before she could leap from the trap. Then the creature's head burst from the ground, and she saw its blazing red eyes and four jagged pincers.
The legs of the giant spider collapsed inward, impaling Gillian from eight different directions. Then the spider flipped over, and the woods came alive. All around the travelers, the knotted roots revealed themselves. Another man had been standing on the belly of one of the spiders and met the same fate as the girl.
Cyric and Brion stood back to back, daggers drawn. One of the spiders attacked Cyric's mount, injecting it with a poison from its mandibles that paralyzed the horse. The spider dropped the animal and waited for the poison to act before it carted the horse off to its web. Cyric cursed as he realized most of his supplies, including his hand axes, were on the horse, but he wasn't about to try and rescue his clothes from the spider that stood guard over his dying mount.
The spiders were everywhere, and the smallest of them was the size of a large dog. Cyric stared into the eyes of one of the creatures as it advanced. Its legs were a pate green, and its body was black with huge orange blotches on its side. The predatory gaze of the spider brought a smile to Cyric's face as he launched a dagger into one of the creature's unblinking eyes.
Cyric's blade found its mark and was enveloped in the quivering mass of the spider's eye. The eye collapsed inward, following the blade, but the spider continued to advance.
"Gods!" Cyric cried, and leaped to a low-hanging branch. The giant spider surged forward, snapping at the air where the thief had stood only moments before. As he climbed higher into the tree, Cyric heard a scream and looked down.
The wounded spider had pierced Brion's side with one of its legs; the daggers he held were little defense against the horror. The spider lifted a second leg, preparing to run its victim through again. Brion's head fell back as he struggled, and he looked up at Cyric.
Cyric could see that Brion's lips were moving, begging him for help.
Cyric hesitated, weighing his options. He knew the man was already dying from the creature's poisons. There was little he could do but die beside him.
The spider struck with its second leg. Life faded from Brion's eyes as Cyric watched.
At the other end of the clearing, Midnight watched as three spiders charged. Kelemvor, Zelanz, and Welch stood beside her, and Adon stood motionless behind them, seemingly oblivious to the threat that was barreling down on them.
Two of the spiders were huge and fat, with black and red bodies and bloated crimson legs. The third was completely black, with sleek sharp legs and a greater agility than the others. The narrow gaps between the trees did little to slow this one, as it pitched at an angle, climbing across the sides of the trees to get at its prey.