“Your time here is finite,” a voice behind her said. “The candles in the other world burn down rapidly.”
Araña whirled to find a woman standing there in the robes of a desert dweller, the fabric concealing all but a dark slash of face and eyes as black as Araña’s own. “Who are you?”
Nineteen
THE woman tugged at the material covering her head, pulling it away to reveal features nearly identical to Araña’s, save for the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and the spidery threads of gray through her black hair.
“I am the one who first gave you life, only to witness your being slain by the god’s warriors, your soul cast back into the fire until a Raven could find the name forged for you, and you could be reborn—not as you once were, but to serve our kind in a different manner.”
“No,” Araña said, denying the woman’s words. She’d accepted the mark, accepted that it tainted her soul by turning her into a tool for the demon, but this—
“No.” She couldn’t be a demon.
“It doesn’t matter whether you believe or not. Your life serves us. You live bound to human flesh by the will of The Prince.”
Ice slid through Araña’s veins at the mention of the name, but also a thin, desperate sliver of hope. How often had she felt the lash of a cane against her back and heard the fervent prayers accompanying it in an effort to drive out the taint placed on her soul by the Prince of Lies, the Great Deceiver? She had no reason to trust the being standing in front of her, no reason to think the demon’s words or appearance were truth.
Araña forced her mind closed to everything but the purpose that had made her seek out the Wainwright witch and freely swallow poison so she could enter this place. “Will you teach me how to use my gift?” My curse.
The demon pulled the folds of material back in place, leaving only the thin strip of flesh and dark eyes revealed. “I will give you the knowledge you need to possess. Come. Not much time remains.”
She turned and walked alongside the tapestry. Araña followed, realizing as she did so that she could sense the passage of time vividly now. They were moving from the past into the present, the babble of indecipherable voices growing louder with each step.
The demon stopped in front of a section of the weave. And somehow, Araña knew if she could find her own soul thread and touch it, she would see herself lying in the center of the witch’s pentacle with the Wainwright matriarch standing guard. She looked ahead, into the future, and the patterns shifted subtly, then shifted again, as if despite what might be done in this place, life could not be so easily controlled.
“Until you are freed from the shackle of human flesh and able to exist in a noncorporeal form,” the demon said, “you won’t enter this place again or see the complete weave of lives. Your gift will remain limited.”
Training and the hardships she’d endured growing up kept Araña from reacting to the comment, from revealing she’d seen this tapestry before, as a carpet sweeping out in front of her.
The demon’s hand lifted to hover just in front of it. “Do you hear the whisper of their true names?”
“I hear a rushing stream.”
“Choose a thread and focus on it, but don’t allow yourself to touch it mentally.”
Araña felt a trickle of sweat down her back. A lifetime of resistance paralyzed her. Acid burned her throat at the thought of destroying a life.
She swallowed and focused on an orange-green thread with hints of brown. It was a struggle not to merge into it. But slowly the babble of voices faded away, leaving only one, an unknown man’s name. It repeated itself over and over again, as if death would come if it ever ceased being spoken.
Araña pulled away from it mentally and turned toward the demon. “How can I find a particular soul if I can’t see the pattern?”
“Your reach is short unless you travel deeper and deeper into the heart of the flame. Physical proximity is compounded by the ties those souls have to others.”
The answer sickened Araña, but it also explained why she’d so often seen the damage she wrought. Those who were close to her would always be at risk if she couldn’t control the gift. “And if I want to change a pattern?”
“Not all of them can be changed. Some are held in place by powers other than ours, just as some threads can’t be seen or, if seen, can’t be touched. To predict how a single change will affect an entire pattern takes centuries of study by those dedicated to it. In your human life span, without the ability to enter this place as you are now, you will never be able to accomplish it. The candles marking your time here have almost burned out. Tell me which weave you wish to alter and I will use it in teaching you.”
Araña’s stomach muscles tightened hard enough to cramp. Ruthless fingers squeezed her heart. She was terrified that telling the demon would lead to something worse for Levi or Rebekka. But there was no real choice. And so she revealed what she’d done when she entered the vision place in an effort to help Rebekka.
“To change his fate you must start at the outcome you wish to undo and work backward, searching through all the strands and picking the one which will divert the course of the Were’s life if it’s touched to his. It’s a complex task and your time is short—as it will always be. Your human body will draw you back to it with pain.”
The demon stepped forward, into the future, and pointed, saying, “Here is the Were’s thread.”
Araña recognized it and understood by its abrupt end that she was looking at the instant of Levi’s death. Another thread ended at the same time, the black-and-gray of the dark-haired stranger tasered along with Levi.
Near them, entangled but not ending, were two threads. The guardsmen.
Jurgen and the stranger.
She focused on them one at a time. The red-mottled-with-black strand belonged to the stranger. Salim.
The purple-twisted-with-blue belonged to the man she’d vowed to kill. Jurgen.
Araña followed Levi’s strand backward, into the past, and found her own at the moment where he and Rebekka had been waiting for her in the woods.
Her thread called to her like a living flame, and it was almost impossible to resist merging with it. She wanted to follow it to the place it originated. To see for herself that the scene following the spider’s birth dream of fire was real, and not a demon trick, a lie meant to turn her into a more willing tool.
Instead she went forward. She saw the blue-black of Tir’s at the place she’d seen him in her vision, then again at the ambush site.
His life thread disappeared and reappeared only when it was alongside hers, often so close it bled into the hues of her flame-colored thread. Some are held in place by powers other than ours, just as some threads can’t be seen or, if seen, can’t be touched. She thought Tir’s supernatural nature was the reason his was so elusive.
Araña moved forward, to the moment where she and Tir and Levi were at the healer’s house. Tir’s thread remained hidden beyond that, what happened after he left to recover the Constellation a mystery.
But in the future she saw how Jurgen’s soul strand paralleled the black-haired stranger who’d died with Levi, crossing it once before both the stranger’s and Levi’s threads ended.
She found the flame of her thread on the tapestry. It didn’t intersect with Levi’s again. Or wouldn’t unless she altered the pattern. And altering the pattern was what she intended, that and killing Jurgen.
Araña held a part of herself back as she mentally touched the gold-brown of Levi’s soul. He was at the brothel door, waiting or leaving or simply standing guard, it didn’t matter.