Pharaun started casting defensive spells on himself, watching as Quenthel finally looked up and over at her nephew.
The Mistress of the Academy’s eyes widened, then narrowed as she watched Jeggred smash one rat after another in his bigger set of hands, while his smaller hands brushed others off his face. Quenthel slowly rose to her feet, the vipers tangling loosely, affectionately around her legs.
“Jeggred?” she asked.
“Rats,” was the draegloth’s grunted reply.
Pharaun layered more magical protections over himself as Quenthel started toward the draegloth.
“Raashub,” Pharaun said, keeping his voice steely and cold.
The demon flinched at the sound of his name but didn’t look up.
“What are you doing, Raashub?” Pharaun asked between two more spells of protection. “Stop it. Stop it now.”
The demon looked up at him with smoldering eyes and hissed, “It’s not me. They’re not my rats.”
Pharaun couldn’t shake the feeling that the uridezu was telling the truth—at least, a version of the truth.
“Pharaun?” Quenthel said, and the mage detected a trace—more than a trace—of panic creeping into her voice. “What are all these rats …?”
“Pay close attention, both of you,” Pharaun said, at the same time readying a more offensive spell. “There’s ano—”
A globe of darkness enveloped Quenthel.
Any drow could have done it but not only a drow.
The unmistakable sounds of a physical struggle resounded from inside the slowly undulating cloud of blackness. Something hit the deck, and something cracked.
Pharaun changed direction before he’d actually begun casting the spell he’d had in mind. Instead, he formed the words and gestures to a spell he hoped would eliminate the darkness.
From inside the gloom, Pharaun could hear the shriek of metal being dragged across metal—or was it bone against bone?
His spell went off, and the darkness blew into nothingness.
Suddenly visible, Quenthel lay on her stomach on the deck. She was patting the carved bone surface in front of her, reaching for her scourge, which lay just out of her reach. Her nose was bleeding, and she winced every time she bent her back.
Standing over her was another uridezu.
The demon was, like Raashub, a humanoid rat. Smaller than Raashub, thinner, it wore tattered rags that left little of its mottled gray body to the imagination. Its long, pink tail was spattered with pustules. Cold black eyes stared down at the high priestess with murderous intent. Foam gathered at the corners of its fang-lined mouth, and angry yellow claws curved at the ends of its spindly, arthritic fingers.
“Jeggred …” Pharaun said, glancing over at the draegloth.
The half-demon was covered head to foot with rats of every size and description. It was as if all the vermin in the Lake of Shadows had staged some sort of family reunion—one that took place on, under, and all around the draegloth. They swarmed onto him faster than he could kill them, though he was dispatching the rodents four at a time.
Pharaun ran quickly through possible spells, stepping forward a few paces toward Quenthel.
The uridezu smashed her on the back with its tail. The high priestess’s face was forced into the bone-hard deck. Blood sprayed, but not much, and she took the strong hit with a grunt.
Pharaun was impressed. Something made him set aside his first choice of spell.
Too much, he thought, for only one …
The Master of Sorcere looked over at Raashub. The demon captain’s eyes were darting rapidly between Quenthel and the newcomer.
He’s testing us, Pharaun thought. The wily bastard gated in one of his kind and is setting it against us so we can show off, reveal our strengths and weaknesses.
Raashub might have been bound, but he was a demon still, and there was always fight left in a demon—it always had a way out.
The other uridezu clawed at Quenthel’s legs, opening deep gashes, and she kicked back at it. The demon danced out of reach of her boots. The high priestess extended a hand back over her head, but she still couldn’t reach her whip. The vipers seemed panicked and weren’t able to coordinate their movements well enough to crawl to her.
Pharaun pronounced a quick set of rhyming syllables and made a fast motion with his right hand. Pushed by his magic, the viper whip slid along the deck a few inches, well within Quenthel’s reach.
As the high priestess’s fingers closed around the handle of the scourge, Pharaun laughed inwardly. The spell he’d used was no more than a cantrip, a transmutation so simple any first year student at Sorcere could master it. It would tell Raashub nothing about the limits of his power.
The uridezu hissed at Quenthel, backing farther away from her, his tail twitching behind him, and his claws flickering in anticipation. The demon obviously thought he was well out of reach of the whip. He was wrong.
The five vipers that comprised Quenthel’s scourge were five feet long, giving the weapon considerable reach. The high priestess was still on the deck and didn’t bother to stand. She lashed the whip behind her, her jaw set tightly and her eyes wild with rage. When she brought the weapon forward, the snakes whipped outward to their full length. The uridezu flinched, though he seemed confident enough that he was still out of the weapon’s range. The vipers extended farther, though, drawing themselves out, stretching thinner and thinner, farther and farther, adding another few feet to their length.
The uridezu didn’t register what was happening nearly fast enough to avoid the vipers. All but one of them sank needle-sharp fangs into the rat-demon’s flesh. As the whip lashed back, they dug long, bleeding furrows in the uridezu’s leathery hide.
The demon screamed, high-pitched and loud enough to rattle Pharaun’s eardrums.
Anything else would have been dead. Each viper possessed a deadly venom, wickedly potent. Quenthel, wild with a battle-frenzy Pharaun had never imagined, much less seen from her, wouldn’t have let the snakes hold a drop of venom back. It would have been enough to drop a rothé.
The victim of that venomous lash wasn’t a dumb food beast; it was an uridezu, and Pharaun had studied demons long enough to know the traits that all of them shared. Poison would never affect one. The whip had wounded the captain but hadn’t killed him. Pharaun knew he could take more than that. Even a demon as relatively weak as an uridezu—and the rat-creatures were hardly the sturdiest of their kind—could withstand extremes of cold and heat and muster innate magical abilities such as the darkness he had used to ambush Quenthel. Uridezu could call on their rodent cousins, as the one Pharaun faced had set them against Jeggred. There was something about the bite of the uridezu that Pharaun knew he should remember, but that wasn’t coming to him. Of course, like all tanar’ri, lightning only passed through them.
Even as that thought crossed his mind Pharaun had a hand on a wand that would have unleashed lightning bolts. Knowing that was useless, the Master of Sorcere shifted his hand an inch over and drew a different wand.
Pharaun hesitated and watched Quenthel hop nimbly to her feet and face the uridezu. The demon hissed at her, but Quenthel made no sound or sign she’d heard it. The high priestess cracked her whip at the demon again, and three of the five snakes bit deeply into the rat-demon’s chest. The creature lashed out at the snakes with one set of razor-sharp claws, but the vipers withdrew in time, and the talons slashed through empty air.
Ignoring that failure, the uridezu whirled, whipping at the drow priestess with its heavy, fast-moving tail. Quenthel brought the buckler in her left hand up to meet the tail. The appendage hit her with enough force that Pharaun was sure her arm would snap, but instead she managed to bat the tail away.
The uridezu recovered more quickly than Quenthel, though, and the tail reversed and dropped lower, clipping the priestess in the ribs. Pharaun could hear the breath driven from her lungs. She stepped to the side, almost staggering. The demon, a feral smile spread across its face, stepped
in. It meant to bite her and rake her with its claws at the same time.
Pharaun drew a breath to pronounce the command word for his wand even as the demon attacked—and took Quenthel’s buckler full in the face. There was a loud, wet crack! and blood splashed out from between the buckler and the uridezu’s nose. The demon’s hands flailed harmlessly in front of Quenthel and each of the five vipers took their pick of the demon’s most sensitive spots in which to sink their fangs. The uridezu howled in agony.
Well, Pharaun thought, not bothering to activate the magic in his wand, looks like she’s got this well in—
His eyes settled on Raashub, and Pharaun stopped. The bound uridezu was looking at him, his eyes running down the length of the wand. Anticipation was plain on the demon captain’s face.
Pharaun looked at his wand then back at Raashub. Their eyes locked, and Raashub smiled at him.
With a smile of his own, Pharaun slid the wand back into his pack where it belonged. Raashub hid his disappointment well, turning his attention back to Quenthel and his fellow uridezu.
Pharaun made the decision to help Jeggred. Raashub would know what the draegloth was capable of, and if Pharaun could deal with the swarming rats and allow Jeggred to help Quenthel, the unbound uridezu could be dispatched quickly and without Pharaun having to take a more active—and more revealing—role in the fight.
As Pharaun came to that decision, a loud series of cracking and popping noises drew his attention back to Quenthel. The Mistress of Arach-Tinilith pulled up a whole section of railing. Bone and cartilage separated from the deck, snapping off like dried mushroom stems. Her whip was in her belt, the uridezu was staggering in front of her with blood pouring from its ruined snout, and she lifted the ten-foot length of railing over her head.
Pharaun quickly prepared a spell to aid Jeggred, and Quenthel attacked. The high priestess brought the section of railing down on the uridezu fast and hard. The demon, not quite blinded by its bleeding nose, skittered away from the attack and managed to leap out of range at the last second. The railing crashed onto the deck and shattered, sending bone fragments whirling through the air. Several of them bounced off Pharaun’s spell-wards and shields, and he watched a couple of them slice into two of the rats that covered Jeggred.
Quenthel growled in nearly incoherent rage, and Pharaun found the noise unsettling—unbecoming to the Mistress of the Academy.
Pools of blood were collecting where the railing had smashed into the deck. The ship of chaos itself was bleeding. The wizard wasn’t sure if he’d be able to repair it, and any further damage might delay or even prevent their voyage. However, Pharaun didn’t want to say anything out loud, and Quenthel wasn’t looking at him so he couldn’t sign to her to stop damaging the ship.
Pharaun cast a spell at the rats on Jeggred. It was a simple spell, one that conjured a cone of flickering, multicolored Weave energy. Pharaun was careful in his placement of the spell so that the effect brushed along the side of the rat-encrusted draegloth. The magic didn’t affect Jeggred in the least, but a goodly portion of the swarming rodents fell off him and onto the deck, where they lay twitching and writhing in a pile of wet, furry bodies.
Jeggred roared as he shook himself, sending his wild mane of snow-white hair whipping rats, blood, and water across the deck. The draegloth smashed four more of the filthy creatures—one in each hand—and stepped on three others.
Pharaun sneaked a glance at Raashub and was rewarded by a look of disappointed frustration on the uridezu captain’s face. It was another easy spell the Master of Sorcere cast, one he’d learned while still a child, and Raashub knew it.
Pharaun turned his attention back to Jeggred and called, “Leave the rats, Jeggred. Your mistress is having demon troubles.”
With another roar, Jeggred threw more dead or unconscious rats off him and leaped at Raashub, bringing all four of his hands up, ready to shred the uridezu captain. Raashub shrank away from the draegloth, holding up his hands and straining against his bonds.
“No!” Quenthel shouted, her voice hoarse and feral. “Not that one, damn it! Kill this one!” Jeggred whirled, his eyes flashing across the scene of the ongoing struggle between Quenthel and the second uridezu.
The rat-demon, taking full advantage of Quenthel’s momentary lapse in attention, slipped in and raked claws across her midsection, digging deep furrows across her armor and drawing blood. Quenthel grimaced and gritted her teeth against the pain but answered in kind with her scourge. Both of them staggered a bit, their footing treacherous amidst a pile of bone fragments from the shattered railing and pools of blood from the wounded ship.
Jeggred’s lips curled back to reveal a monstrous row of vicious fangs, and the draegloth entered the fray.
Danifae sat on the floor of the gatehouse for what felt like a very long time. She hadn’t allowed herself to think too much about her life before her captivity. There were only a few ways to survive as a battle-captive, including convincing yourself that you’ve always been one.
Before the raid that put her in the hands of House Melarn, Danifae had been taking lessons from the Yauntyrr House Mage. Zinnirit was a capable and detail-oriented teacher, and Danifae had learned much from him, especially in the fields of teleportation, translocation, and dimensional travel. They hadn’t actually begun her study of the arcane Art before her House was overwhelmed, but Zinnirit had familiarized the young daughter of House Yauntyrr with a variety of enchanted items.
Danifae touched her mother’s ring, feeling the cold metal warming against her skin. The ring could bounce her across the Underdark—but just her and one other. Danifae had plans that required more than that.
Her eyes settled on the still hand of the dead wizard.
“More rings,” Danifae whispered, a smile playing at the corners of her mouth.
All she had to do was remember how to work them.
Even as the uridezu was bringing his tail around for another hard slap at Quenthel, Jeggred pounced on him. The draegloth caught the heavy appendage in his larger set of hands. The tail’s momentum, stopped so abruptly by the draegloth’s grip, staggered the uridezu and it toppled in a heap onto the ruined rail. Jagged bits of bone cut deeply into the demon’s already bleeding body. At the same time, all five of the vipers from Quenthel’s scourge bit into sensitive areas, released, then bit again. Waves of agony pulsed through the demon’s body, and it coughed out phlegm and blood.
“We …” the demon gasped. “We will see you in the Abyss … drow bitch!”
We? Pharaun thought, stealing a glance at Raashub, who was watching with keen interest.
“Kill it now, Jeggred,” Quenthel commanded, her voice still husky and mingled with deep, panting breaths. “Kill it before it goes home.”
Feral light flashed in the draegloth’s eyes and he brought a single claw across the uridezu’s midsection. The daggerlike talon disappeared into the demon’s flesh, burying itself six inches deep. Jeggred cut the thing’s belly open wide enough to spill a pile of ropy yellow intestines, steaming with the demon’s hot blood, onto the deck of the ship of chaos.
The demon screamed, the sound echoing unnaturally then fading even as the uridezu itself began to evaporate into nothingness. It was returning to the Abyss while it still lived.
Pharaun had to admit that he wasn’t sure how long a demon might live after it had been disemboweled, but more than one breed of them could regenerate completely from even so grievous a wound.
As the demon began to fade, though, Jeggred quickly withdrew his claw and grabbed the uridezu’s head in both his larger, stronger hands. The draegloth twisted and pulled, hard enough that Pharaun could see veins protrude against his straining muscles.
There was a sickly wet cracking sound and a sicker wet pop! and the uridezu’s head came off in Jeggred’s hands.
The rest of the demon’s body disappeared, but the head and entrails remained. The black eyes stared, dead, at nothing. The demon’s guts slowly sizzled away, being absorbed,
Pharaun noted, by the ship itself. The wizard realized that most of the fragments of bone from the shattered rail had gone as well. The ship was feeding on itself, repairing the damage bone by bone.
Jeggred, obviously taking no notice of the ship of chaos’s convenient regenerative capacities, tossed the uridezu’s head overboard as he turned to face the captain.
Raashub, already backed away as far as his bonds would allow, put his hands up in supplication and looked away.
Jeggred, a low growl rumbling in his throat, started forward, stalking the bound uridezu with unveiled intent.
“I don’t know, nephew,” Quenthel said, her voice and breathing slowly returning to normal. She was bleeding but paid her injuries no heed. “I have yet to make up my mind.”
The vipers seethed at the end of her whip, and Quenthel glanced at one of them as if she’d heard it speak—and certainly she had, though Pharaun was still not privy to that communication.
“Wait,” the wizard said, stepping closer but not foolish enough to move between Jeggred and the uridezu. “I’m afraid we still need him.”
Jeggred growled, not looking at Pharaun, but he did hesitate.
“It was to be expected,” Pharaun said. “You’ve both worked with demons before, haven’t you? So he tried to kill us and failed.”
Quenthel’s head snapped to look at him. The abrupt motion caused the vipers in her whip to shudder and turn on the wizard as well.
“You can’t control him,” she said to Pharaun. “How can you stop him from doing that again?”
“It wasn’t me, Mistress,” Raashub pleaded, his voice reedy and dripping with false humility. “The Lake of Shadows is home to many of my kind.”
Pharaun lifted an eyebrow at that obvious lie then began to cast a spell.
“Let me eat his kidneys,” Jeggred growled, his eyes still locked on the uridezu. “Maybe just one kidney.”
Pharaun, ignoring the draegloth, finished his spell.
Annihilation Page 11
