Annihilation

by Athans, Philip

  As he led a string of the vile-smelling fiends into the gnashing jaws of the demonic ship’s hold, Pharaun let his mind wander back to the rest of that sending. Ryld hadn’t made it to Menzoberranzan, but that could mean anything. He could be dead anywhere between that cave on the World Above and the City of Spiders, or he could still be on his way. There was no straight line between any two points in the Underdark, and he could be only a few miles as the worm bored from Menzoberranzan and still have a tenday’s travel ahead of him.

  Ryld might still hold a grudge for Pharaun’s having abandoned him all those days before, back in the city, but Pharaun knew he still had a powerful ally in the Master of Melee-Magthere. The warrior might have fallen under the spell of the First Daughter of House Melarn, but if Halisstra herself still lived, surely she would be on her way to Menzoberranzan herself. Pharaun couldn’t imagine the homeless priestess had anywhere else to go.

  Without Ryld at his side, Pharaun had given Quenthel and her draegloth nephew Jeggred as much room as the cramped deck allowed. They hadn’t appreciated Pharaun leaving them to spin while he’d gone to pick up Valas and Danifae first. Even Valas and Danifae had been surprised by that one, but Pharaun had long ago learned that whenever possible a cautious drow lets his enemies twist for a while, if only to remind them that he can.

  Still, the Mistress of Arach-Tinilith had been more than a little displeased, and Jeggred had made another serious attempt at a physical assault. Quenthel had held him back, if reluctantly, and charged the draegloth with guarding the uridezu. They were two of the same: demons on the wrong plane, pressed into the service of drow who were ready to take them back to the Abyss that spawned them. Pharaun let himself sigh at that thought. He knew it was a bad idea on its surface, going to the Abyss, but they had passed up the acceptable a long time before. They were in new territory. They were headed for the Spider Queen herself, and right when Lolth seemed least inclined to greet them.

  Pharaun was sure he wasn’t the only one who had second thoughts about the expedition, even as strenuously as he’d argued for their going forward. For a Master of Sorcere, it was a mission that could make him Archmage of Menzoberranzan. For her part, Quenthel had already achieved the highest post she could hope for. As Mistress of Arach-Tinilith, Quenthel was the spiritual leader of all Menzoberranzan and the second most powerful female in the city. Some would argue that she was indeed more powerful than her sister Triel.

  Of all drow under Faerûn, she would surely be welcomed into Lolth’s domain—assuming there was either a Lolth or a Demonweb Pits at all anymore—but still the high priestess was on edge. Her normally stern countenance had gone nearly rigid, and her movements were jerky and twitching. Any talk of the journey ahead made her pace around the deck, all but oblivious to the lesser demons that often snapped at her or reached out to grab her.

  Even Pharaun, cynical as he was, didn’t want to believe that the Mistress of Arach-Tinilith might be losing her faith.

  The fact that Jeggred also noticed Quenthel’s unease didn’t make the wizard feel any better. The draegloth’s expressions weren’t always easy to read, though the half-demon was the least intellectually capable of the party, but since coming to the Lake of Shadows—perhaps even before—Jeggred had looked at his aunt quite differently. He could see her agitation, though he might have thought it fear, and he didn’t like it. He didn’t like it at all.

  Pharaun closed his eyes and took a deep breath as the last of the day’s manes went down the ship’s gullet. He felt tired enough to sleep like a human. Without even bothering to cross the deck to the place where he’d set his pack, Pharaun sank to the fleshy planks and sat.

  “Before you slip into Reverie,” Valas Hune said from behind him, “we should discuss practical concerns.”

  Pharaun turned to look at the Bregan D’aerthe scout and offered him a twisted smile.

  “Practical concerns?” the wizard asked. “At this point I’m too tired for any kind of concerns … other than … the … ones that are …”

  Pharaun closed his eyes and shook his head.

  “Are you all right?” the scout asked, his tone comfortably devoid of real concern.

  “My wit has failed me,” Pharaun replied. “I must be tired indeed.”

  The scout nodded.

  “We’ll need supplies,” he said, addressing all four of them.

  Quenthel didn’t look up, and Jeggred only glanced away from the chained demon for a second.

  The draegloth shrugged and said, “I can eat the captain.”

  Pharaun didn’t bother to look at the uridezu for a response, and the demon, sensibly, didn’t offer one.

  “Well, I can’t,” Valas replied. “Neither can the rest of us.”

  “There will be no opportunity to stop along the way?” Danifae asked.

  Pharaun regarded the beautiful, enigmatic battle-captive with a smile and said, “We’ll travel from this lake across the Fringe and into the Shadow Deep. From there to the endless Astral. From there to the Abyss. Any roadhouses along the way will be … unreliable to say the least.”

  “Which is to say,” Valas cut in, “that there won’t be any.”

  “What did you have in mind, Valas?” Pharaun asked. “How much are we talking about?”

  The scout made a show of shrugging and turned to Quenthel to ask, “How long will we be away?”

  Quenthel almost recoiled from the question, and Jeggred turned to stare daggers at her back for a heartbeat or two before returning his attention to the captured uridezu.

  “One month,” Pharaun answered for her, “sixteen days, three hours, and forty-four minutes … give or take sixteen days, three hours, and forty-four minutes.”

  Quenthel stared hard at Pharaun, her face blank.

  “I thought your wit had abandoned you, Master of Sorcere,” Danifae said. She turned to Quenthel. “An impossible question to answer precisely, I understand, Mistress, but I assume an educated guess will do?”

  She looked at Valas, her white eyebrows arched high on her smooth black forehead. Valas nodded, still looking at Quenthel.

  “The simple fact is that I have no idea,” the Mistress of Arach-Tinilith said finally.

  The rest of the drow raised eyebrows. Jeggred’s eyes narrowed. It wasn’t what any of them expected her to say.

  “None of us do,” she went on, ignoring the reaction, “which is precisely why we’re going in the first place. Lolth will do with us as she pleases once we are in the Demonweb Pits. If we must be supplied, then we will need supplies for the length of our journey there and perhaps our journey back. If Lolth chooses to provide for us while we’re there, so be it. If not, we will need no sustenance, at least none that can be had in this world.”

  The high priestess wrapped her hands around her arms and hugged herself close. All of them saw her shiver with undisguised dread. Pharaun was too taken aback to see the further reactions of the others. A low, rumbling growl from Jeggred finally drew his attention, and he looked over to see the draegloth’s eyes locked on Quenthel, who was successfully ignoring her Abyssal nephew.

  “You talk like humans,” the draegloth growled. “You speak of the Abyss as if it was some feral dog you think might nip at your rumps, so you never rise from your chairs. You forget that for you, the Abyss has been a hunting ground, though you do most of your hunting from across the planes. Are you drow? Masters of this world and the next? Or are you …”

  Jeggred stopped, his jaw and throat tight, and returned his steely gaze to the uridezu. The demon captain looked away.

  “You assume much, honored draegloth,” Danifae said, her clear voice echoing across the still water. “It is not fear that prepares us for our journey, I’m sure, but necessity.”

  Jeggred turned slowly but didn’t look at Danifae. Instead, his eyes once more found the Mistress of Arach-Tinilith. Quenthel appeared, to Pharaun’s eyes at least, to have succumbed to the Reverie. Jeggred blew a short, sharp breath through his wide nostrils and tu
rned a fang-lined smile on Danifae.

  “Fear,” the draegloth said, “has a smell.”

  Danifae returned the half-demon’s smile and said, “Fear of the Spider Queen surely smells the sweetest.”

  “Yes,” Valas broke in, though Danifae and the draegloth continued to stare at each other with expressions impossible to read. “Well, that’s all well and good, but surely someone knows how long it will take us to get there and how long to get back.”

  “A tenday,” Pharaun said, guessing for no other reason than to get on with it so he could rest and replenish his magic. “Each way.”

  The scout nodded, and no one else offered any argument. Jeggred went back to staring at the captain, and Danifae drew out a whetstone to sharpen a dagger. The vipers of Quenthel’s scourge wrapped themselves lovingly around her and began, one by one, to sink into slumber.

  “I’ll be off then,” Valas said.

  “Off?” Pharaun asked. “To where?”

  “Sshamath, I think,” the scout replied. “It’s reasonably close, and I have contacts there. If I go alone, I can be there and back quickly, and no one who doesn’t fear Bregan D’aerthe will even know I was there.”

  “No,” Danifae said, startling both Valas and Pharaun.

  “The young mistress has a better suggestion?” Pharaun asked.

  “Sschindylryn,” she said.

  “What of it?” asked Pharaun.

  “It’s closer,” Danifae replied, “and it’s not ruled by Vhaeraunites.”

  She sent a pointed look Valas’s way, and Pharaun allowed himself a smirk.

  “I’m tired,” the Master of Sorcere said, “so I will weaken enough to speak on Valas’s behalf. He is Bregan D’aerthe, young mistress, and his loyalty goes to she who is paying. I don’t believe we’ll have trouble with our guide jumping deities on us. If he can get to, through, and out of Sshamath faster, then let him do what he’s been hired to do.”

  “He will go to Sschindylryn,” Quenthel said, her voice so flat and quiet that Pharaun wasn’t certain he’d heard correctly.

  “Mistress?” he prompted.

  “You heard me,” she said, finally looking up at him. She let her cold gaze linger for a moment, and Pharaun held it. She turned to Valas. “Sschindylryn.”

  If the scout had any thought of arguing, he suppressed it quickly.

  “As you wish, Mistress,” Valas replied.

  “I will accompany you,” Danifae said, speaking to Valas but looking at Quenthel.

  “I can move faster on my own,” the scout argued.

  “We have time,” said the battle-captive, still looking at Quenthel.

  The high priestess turned to Danifae slowly. Her frigid red eyes warmed as they played across the girl’s curves. Danifae leaned in ever so slightly, eliciting a smile from Pharaun that was as impressed as it was amused.

  “Sschindylryn….” the wizard said. “I’ve passed through it a time or two. Portals, yes? A city crowded with portals that could slip you in an instant from one end of the Underdark to another … or elsewhere.”

  Danifae turned to Pharaun and returned his smile—impressed and amused.

  “How much time do we have?” Valas asked, still ignoring the more subtle, silent conversation-within-a-conversation.

  Pharaun shrugged and said, “Five days … perhaps as many as seven. I should have provided the ship with adequate sustenance by then.”

  “I can do it,” Valas replied. “Barely.”

  The scout looked to Quenthel for an answer, and Pharaun sighed, pushing back his frustration. He too looked at Quenthel, who was gently stroking the head of one of her whip vipers. The snake swayed in the air next to her smooth ebon cheek while the other vipers slept. Pharaun got the distinct impression that the snake was speaking to her.

  A sound caught Pharaun’s attention, and he saw Jeggred shifting uncomfortably. The draegloth’s eyes twitched back and forth between his aunt and the viper. Pharaun wondered if the draegloth could hear some silent, mental exchange between the high priestess and her whip. If he could, what he heard was making him angry.

  “You will take Danifae with you,” Quenthel said, her eyes never leaving the viper.

  If Valas was disappointed, he didn’t let it show. Instead, he simply nodded.

  “Leave when you’re ready,” the high priestess said.

  “I’m ready now,” the scout replied, perhaps a second too quickly.

  The viper turned to look at the scout, who met its black eyes with a furrowed brow. Pharaun was fascinated by the exchange, but exhaustion was claiming him all the more quickly as the discussion wore on.

  Quenthel slid back to rest against the bone rail of the undead ship. The last viper rested its head on her thigh.

  “We will take Reverie, then, Pharaun and I,” the Mistress of the Academy said. “Jeggred will stand watch, and the two of you will be on your way.”

  Danifae stood and said quietly, “Thank you, M—”

  Quenthel stopped her with an abrupt wave of her hand, then the high priestess closed her eyes and sat very still. Jeggred growled again, low and rumbling. Pharaun prepared himself for Reverie as well but couldn’t help feeling uneasy at the way the draegloth was looking at his mistress.

  Danifae slipped on her pack as Valas gathered his own gear. The battle-captive walked to Jeggred and put a hand lightly on the draegloth’s bristling white mane.

  “All is well, Jeggred,” she whispered. “We are all tired.”

  Jeggred leaned in to her touch ever so slightly, and Pharaun looked away. The draegloth stopped his growling, but Pharaun could feel the half-demon watch Danifae’s every move until she finally followed Valas through a dimensional portal of the scout’s making and was gone.

  Why Sschindylryn? Pharaun asked himself.

  It was the battle-captive’s calming touch with the draegloth that accounted for the wizard’s uneasy Reverie.

  A little more than half a mile under the ruins of the surface city of Tilverton, two dark elves ran.

  Danifae breathed hard trying to keep up with Valas, but she stayed only a few strides behind him. The scout moved in something between a walk and run, his feet sometimes appearing not even to touch the slick flowstone of the tunnel floor. As they’d emerged from the last in a rapid, head-spinning series of gates, Valas had told her they were more than halfway to Sschindylryn, and it had been only a single day. Danifae admired the mercenary’s skill in navigating the Underdark, even as she dismissed his obvious lack of ambition and drive. He seemed content in his position as a hired hand—scout and errand boy for Quenthel Baenre—and the idea of that sort of contentment was utterly alien to Danifae.

  After all, she thought in time, Valas is only a male.

  The scout came to an abrupt halt, so abrupt in fact that Danifae had to stumble to an undignified stop to avoid running into him. Happy for the chance to pause and rest, though, she didn’t bother to complain.

  “Where—?” she started, but Valas held up a hand to silence her.

  Even after all her years as a battle-captive, a servant to the foolish and slow-witted Halisstra Melarn, Danifae hadn’t grown accustomed to shutting up when told to. She bristled at the scout’s dismissive gesture but calmed herself quickly. Valas was in his element, and if he wanted silence, both their lives might well depend on it.

  He turned to her, and Danifae was surprised to see no hint of annoyance or irritation on his face, even as her one word still echoed faintly in the cool, still air of the cavern.

  Another portal up ahead, he told her with his fingers. It will take us to Sschindylryn, but it’s not one I’ve used in a very long time.

  But you’ve used it before, she replied silently.

  Portals, especially portals like this one, Valas explained, are like waterholes. They attract attention.

  You sense something? she asked.

  Danifae’s own sensitive hearing detected no noise, her equally sensitive nose no smell but her own and the scout’s. That didn
’t mean they were alone.

  As if he’d read her mind, Valas replied, You’re never alone in the Underdark.

  So what is it? she asked. Can we avoid it? Kill it?

  Maybe nothing, he answered in turn, probably not, and I hope so.

  Danifae smiled at him. Valas tipped his head to one side, surprised and confused by the smile.

  Stay here, he signed, and keep still. I’ll go on ahead.

  Danifae looked back along the way they’d come then forward in the direction they were going. The tunnel—twenty-five or thirty feet wide and about as tall—stretched into darkness in both directions.

  If you leave me behind…. Danifae threatened with her fingers and with her cold, hard eyes.

  Valas didn’t react at all. He seemed to be waiting for her to finish.

  Danifae again glanced to the seemingly endless tunnel ahead, only for half a heartbeat. When she turned back, Valas was gone.

  Ryld drew the whetstone slowly along Splitter’s razor edge. The enchanted sword hardly needed sharpening, but Ryld found he was always better able to think when he was performing the simple tasks of a soldier. The sword had no outward signs of an intelligence of its own, but Ryld had convinced himself some years before that Splitter enjoyed the attention he gave it.

  He was alone in the crumbling, weed-choked hovel he shared with Halisstra. The sounds and smells of the forest all around him managed to invade even that personal time with his sword and his thoughts. He knew he was as relaxed as he would ever be on the surface in the daylight under the endless sky—at least, when Halisstra wasn’t with him.