Curse of the Spider King by Wayne Thomas Batson, Christopher Hopper Read Free Book Online Page A

defenses are undone,” he said. “Fall back, flet soldiers! Fall back to the west wall. Alert the Sentinels! Protect the lords!”

    The Elvish High Council in Berinfell was the nerve center of the Elves, who resided across the many continents of Allyra. In the Great Hall of the Western Stronghold, the Elven Lords usually held court—but on this night there was a special celebration. Seven children had been born to the Elven Lords in the same year. It was considered something of a miracle. Now each of the children had reached the first-year mark, and it was customary to have a ullic ceremony.
    The ceremony took place in the center of the hall, a grand, white marble room resembling an arboretum. The sweet notes of harps mingled with the music of flowing water passing through leafy tree branches into dappled pools around the wide chamber.
    Among the marble columns and living trees that grew in the midst of the hall, more than one hundred guests had gathered. Knights and female warriors, flet soldiers and flet marshalls—all who could be spared from their duties on Berinfell’s walls. Among them stood Gwar attendants, those whose families had long ago allied themselves with the Elves. There also stood Berinfell’s mighty Sentinels. Descended from an ancient Elvish bloodline, the Sentinels were known to follow the old ways. Their woodcraft was second to none, and their usual missions took them far and wide on tasks considered too dangerous for the typical knight. Sentinels rarely gathered together in one place, but even they would not miss the historic events of the ceremony.
    Elrain Galadhon, the high cleric, emerged from the back of the hall. He stepped between the tall white thrones of the Seven Lords and approached a white altar marbled with bright silver. He turned around just as the Elven Lords and their spouses approached. They were dressed in white and gird with ceremonial golden swords. And in their arms, they carried their precious children. All eyes turned to the children.
    Perhaps it was the pageantry of the event or the special splendor of the setting; perhaps it was the pristine innocence and beauty of the children; or it might have been the location of the Western Stronghold, almost entirely surrounded by thick trees, two and a half miles—nearly a full league—from the eastern wall and the front gate. For whatever reason, no one in the hall heard the distant sounds of battle. In fact, it wasn’t until just after the high cleric had waved the ceremonial scepter over the last lord’s child that one of the Sentinels noticed something was amiss.
    Elle stepped down from the dais and walked curiously toward the arched entryway of the Great Hall. The Sentinel glanced out the window. The trees outside were still. Odd , she thought.
    Then she heard a steady cadence of boots on a stone floor. And when the shadows appeared at the end of the hall—broad, brutish shadows, perhaps numbering in the hundreds—Elle knew. She turned to warn the others just as Warspider limbs crashed through the stained glass windows in the back of the hall.

    Flet Marshall Brynn and Grimwarden rushed to the long passage leading to Berinfell’s Great Hall. But as they neared it they knew something was wrong. “No music,” said the burly Grimwarden, his square jaw taut.
    There’d always been sweet music cascading from the Great Hall into the surrounding passages. Brynn turned and signaled to the flet soldiers behind her. They silently drew their short swords and siege axes and approached the Great Hall in formation.
    They needn’t have bothered. The massive chamber—normally alive with warm light and sparkling colors—was now darkened by smoke and night. Columns toppled, broken, and charred; ancient trees hewed and burned; once-magnificent windows shattered. And everywhere, corpses. Twisted, broken, burned, or bleeding bodies were piled in great heaps and strewn wildly