Moonkind (Winterling) Read Online Free PDF Page A

she said firmly.
    He pulled his left hand out of his coat pocket, where he’d been hiding it. “Fer, look at this.”
    She stepped closer to see.
    He opened his hand. The muck-spiderweb looked like a net of black lines smudged across his palm.
    “What is it?” she asked. She bent her head, inspecting it. “Does it hurt?”
    “It doesn’t feel like anything,” he answered. He explained about how he and his brothers had gone to see the moon-spinner spider. “That’s where glamories come from.”
    “Ohhh,” she breathed, looking up. “Spun out of moonlight. That makes sense.”
    “This,” he said, holding up his hand, “is from another spider, one that spins its web out of shadows.” After they’d left the chasm, he and his brothers had crossed the rock plain again, to the spire where the moon-spinner spider spun its glamorie webs. Just a test, Asher had said, and Rook had bent to touch the glamorie with his web-stained hand. At the touch of the shadow-web, the sparkling silver net had turned black and crumbled away. The rot had spread, creeping across the glamorie and up the web that stretched from the spire to the ground. As the rot reached the moon-spinner spider, it scrabbled away, but then the rot caught it and its body turned black, like glass smudged with soot. All around it, the spider’s web hung in greasy tatters being shredded by the wind.
    Then the wind had gusted, and the last of the glamorie turned to oily dust and blew away over the surface of the rock.
    “We need to test this on a Lord or Lady,” Rook explained, closing his hand around the shadow-web again. “It’ll destroy the glamorie they’re wearing, we think.” His brothers would hate what he was about to say, but he would say it anyway. “We want the same thing, the pucks and you. You don’t like rule, or glamories, and we don’t either. Maybe we can work together.”
    Fer straightened and paced away, looking around at the birch trees that edged the clearing, at their leaves shivering in the breeze and turning gold under the rising sun. Then she looked down, as if she could see deep into the ground under her feet.
    He watched, wary. What would she decide?
    She turned back and took a deep breath. “The glamories are a big problem. You’re right about that. Some of the Lords and Ladies swore to take their glamories off and they didn’t. They’re forsworn—oath breakers. But . . .” She shook her head. “I’m not sure if destroying their glamories is the right thing to do. I don’t know if that will fix the broken oaths.” Her voice lowered as if she was talking to herself. “No, it probably wouldn’t work.”
    He wasn’t quite following. “What wouldn’t work?”
    “Using your web to force the forsworn Lords and Ladies to give up their glamories,” she explained.
    He didn’t get it. “Why not force them?”
    “Because that’s not how I do things. I don’t think it would count as a fulfilled oath anyway, if they were forced. I’ll have to ask the High Ones about it.” Then she narrowed her eyes and pointed at him, and that pointing finger reminded him suddenly of her grandmother. She wouldn’t put up with any trickery, that meant. “If I let you come, will you help me?”
    “If I can, I will,” he answered truthfully.
    She nodded slowly. “All right.” She paused. “If we meet the Lords and Ladies—the forsworn ones—you’ll be able to see what they really are, won’t you? With your puck-vision? Like if they’re stained or wildling, like the Mór was?”
    He nodded.
    “Good. Then you can come, and you can help with that. But we’re there so I can see the High Ones, not for you to test your web. You have to promise that you won’t touch any Lord or Lady with that shadow-web unless I say it’s okay. Do you promise?”
    “I do, Fer. I promise,” he said, and the heart-thread in his chest gave a warm thrum, and he grinned, suddenly and surprisingly happy that she had decided to trust him