Power gathered. Quenthel had started her casting first, and she would finish it first.
Orange sparks flared within Quenthel’s summoning circle, little mirrors of the vortices that still littered the sky.
Danifae completed her preparations and started the final stages of her summoning.
Quenthel, sweating, chest heaving, stood at the edge of her circle, pronounced the final phrase of her spell, and shouted a name: “Zerevimeel!”
Pharaun didn’t recognize the name, but it hung suspended in the air like fog, a foul echo reverberating in Pharaun’s ears. A final shower of sparks sizzled in the center of Quenthel’s summoning circle and left in its wake a glowing line of orange. The line expanded, and grew into a tall oval. A very tall oval.
A portal.
Through the portal, Pharaun caught a glimpse of night on another world, another plane.
A lush jungle of twisted trees, grasses, and bushes waited beyond the gate, growing from a soil the color of blood. Yellowed bones of all types and sizes jutted from the earth, as though the whole plane was a graveyard. Turgid rivers covered in a brown foam squirmed their circuitous way through the befouled landscape. Thin, twisted forms moved furtively in the shadows, mortal souls trying desperately to hide from something. Pharaun could see the terror in their eyes, and it made him vaguely uneasy.
A blast of humid air escaped the portal. It smelled like a charnel house, as though tens of thousands of corpses lay rotting in the jungle heat. It bore groans with it, the soft susuration of agonized souls.
“Zerevimeel, come forth!” Quenthel shouted.
The view in the portal changed as its perspective whipped across the landscape, passing ruined cities of crimson stone, lakes of watery sludge, huge, twisted things prowling the jungle in pursuit of the souls.
A form took shape in the portal, a towering muscular form that dwarfed even Jeggred and blotted out Pharaun’s view of the demon’s home plane.
Nalfeshnee, Pharaun recognized from the silhouette. Quenthel had summoned a fairly powerful demon. Not as powerful as she could have but powerful nevertheless.
Pharaun readied to mind a spell that would shroud the demon in lightning should Quenthel not be able to convince it with her offer. He knew that demons, even powerful ones, were vulnerable to lightning.
The huge demon stepped through the portal and solidified fully in Quenthel’s circle, naked and slicked in something sticky and red. The creature smelled sickly-sweet, like half-cooked meat.
Behind them, Danifae continued her own summoning, her voice rising. She would complete her own spell soon, but for the moment, Pharaun ignored her and focused on Quenthel’s demon.
Huge tusks erupted from the nalfeshnee’s muzzle. Burning red eyes dominated its bestial face. With each breath the demon’s huge chest, covered in dark, coarse fur, rose and fell like a bellows. Two ridiculously small feathered wings sprouted from its back. Clawed hands at the end of muscular arms clenched and unclenched reflexively. The demon inhaled deeply, nostrils flaring, and wrinkled its snout.
“The Pits of the Spider Bitch,” he spat, his voice deep and resonant. “It is bad enough that her stink infests all of the Lower Planes, but now I must abide it directly?” He fixed his eyes on Quenthel, who stood before him, seeming small and insignificant. “You will pay for this, drow priestess. I was swimming in the gore pits of—”
Quenthel’s whip cracked, and five sets of fangs sank into the sensitive flesh of the demon’s thigh, very near its genitals. The blow was meant to be more a painful threat than injurious.
The nalfeshnee roared and grabbed at the whip heads but was too slow.
Quenthel spoke in a low tone. “Speak another heresy, demon, and I’ll offer your manhood to Lolth as penance.”
Zerevimeel’s burning red eyes narrowed. He looked around for the first time, as though to evaluate his situation. His eyes moved to Pharaun, to Jeggred (at whom he sneered in contempt), to Danifae, who was finalizing her own spell.
Pharaun felt the tingle of divination magic against his skin. The demon was attempting to measure their power, to get a sense of their souls. Pharaun did not contest the spell, though he could have easily enough.
Gently, as though expecting a backlash, Zerevimeel tested the boundaries of the summoning circle. He seemed surprised when it did not hold him within its confines.
He smiled, dripping huge droplets of saliva, and said, “You have left me unbound, drow whore.”
He stepped out of the scribing on hoofed legs, towering over Quenthel. Pharaun readied his lightning spell, but the Baenre priestess gave no ground.
“My spell was a calling, dolt,” she said. “Not a binding. Are males such fools even among demons?”
All five of her whip serpents stared up at the nalfeshnee, hissing with laughter.
The demon regarded her with the arrogance endemic to his kind and said, “You are either a great fool or have much to offer.”
“Neither,” Quenthel replied. She brandished her holy symbol, stared up at the towering demon, and said, “You just cast your divination. You know the scope of my power. The Spider Queen once again answers the prayers of her faithful, and I can destroy you at my whim. You can perform willingly, or I can shred your body and summon another of your kind.”
The demon rumbled low in his deep chest, a sound reminiscent of Jeggred, but did not dispute Quenthel’s claim.
The high priestess went on, “If you accept willingly, you will be recompensed fairly in souls, upon my return to Menzoberranzan.”
“If you return,” the demon said, and his face twisted in an expression that Pharaun took to be a tusked grin. The creature looked skyward and for the first time seemed to notice the line of souls floating high above them. He eyed them with a predatory gaze and licked his thick lips.
“Souls, you say,” he said, returning his gaze to Quenthel.
Quenthel cracked her whip and said, “Souls, yes. But not those. Those belong to Lolth. You will be paid with others, after you have flown me to the base of the mountains thence, to the Pass of the Reaver.”
She pointed her whip in the direction of the far mountains, still hidden by night.
Pharaun cocked his head. He had never before heard Quenthel mention the name of their destination at the base of the mountains, though he had long suspected she knew what they would find there.
“You cannot attempt the pass and live,” the demon said.
Quenthel put her hands on her hips and said, “I can and will. As will those who accompany me.”
The demon licked his lips, seeming to consider his options. Finally, he said, “I am not a beast of burden, drowess.”
“No,” Quenthel replied, “but you will bear Lolth’s Chosen and be honored to do so.”
The demon’s lips peeled back from oversized, yellowed canines. He turned his head to the side and spat a glob of stinking spittle onto the dirt. He crossed his arms over his huge chest and said, “Perhaps you are the Chosen, priestess, but perhaps you are not. In either case, let the Reaver claim you in his pass. But for the indignity you ask, my price shall be sixty-six souls.”
Pharaun raised his eyebrows. Sixty-six souls was a very modest demand. Quenthel had cowed the demon effectively.
“Done,” Quenthel agreed. “Attempt to betray me and you die.”
“No betrayal, priestess,” said the demon in a low voice. “I am looking forward to the feel of your soft flesh against mine. And when I return again to the blood pools of my home, I will think fondly of your soul being devoured by the Reaver.”
Quenthel sneered and her whips laughed.
“Let us leave now, priestess,” the demon said. “I wish to return to the familiar gore of my home.”
“Not yet,” Quenthel said. She turned her back to the demon—a show of supreme confidence—and watched as Danifae finally finished her own calling.
Danifae stood before her summoning circle, her arms outstretched, and called out a name: “Vakuul!”
Power flared in Danifae’s circle. The air tore open. A circular portal, outlined in blue light, took shape. Through it, Pharaun could see only a swirling, thick blue mist. Some of the mist leaked from the portal and brought with it a cloying stink reminiscent of rotting mushrooms.
“Charistral,” observed the Nalfeshnee with unconcealed contempt.
Pharaun assumed the word to be the name of the Abyssal plane viewable through the portal.
“Vakuul!” Danifae called again.
A buzzing sounded. It grew louder, louder . . .
“Chasme,” said Zerevimeel and somehow managed still more contempt.
Pharaun saw that Quenthel was smiling. The flylike chasme demons were a relatively weak type, weaker than the nalfeshnee. Either Danifae had deliberately underutilized her abilities or she simply could summon nothing more powerful.
A winged, insectoid form filled the portal. The blue mist vanished, and the portal closed, leaving a buzzing chasme demon within the summoning circle.
Quenthel’s smile vanished when she saw the creature. Pharaun drew in a sharp breath.
The chasme Danifae had summoned was the largest of the type that Pharaun had ever seen, fully as large as four pack lizards.
“Big one,” Zerevimeel said.
“Silence,” Quenthel ordered, and her whips hissed at the demon. To Danifae, she called, “Is calling the dregs from the bottom of the Abyss what passes for a summoning spell in Eryndlyn?”
Danifae did not turn to reply, but Pharaun read anger in her bunched back.
The chasme ignored Quenthel’s taunt, and its compound eyes, each as big as Pharaun’s two fists, swept the surroundings, lingering for a moment on Jeggred and the nalfeshnee. Its wings buzzed in agitation.
“Why have you disturbed Vakuul?” the chasme demanded of Danifae. Unlike Zerevimeel’s baritone, the chasme’s voice was high-pitched, interspersed with vibrations and buzzing.
In appearance, Vakuul reminded Pharaun of a giant black cavefly, the kind that troubled rothé and whose bite resulted in pus-filled wounds. The demon stood on six legs. The rear four looked insectoid, with hooks and hairs sprouting from the upper segments, while the front two resembled oversized drow arms, both of which ended in hands that jerked and clenched spasmodically. A huge double pair of wings, much larger than those of the nalfeshnee’s, sprouted from the chasme’s back and buzzed at intervals. Each time they did, a breeze that smelled of corpses wafted over Pharaun. The chasme’s head and face sprouted like a tumor from its thorax, and its face combined the features of a fly and a human to form a grotesque profile. Bony black ridges filled its otherwise toothless mouth, and a long horn jutted from where its nose should have been. Thickets of short, coarse black hair stuck out of the demon’s body in irregular bunches.
Danifae stood before the demon and said, “You are to bear me to the far mountains there and the pass at their base.”
The demon turned a circle, its movements jerking and insectoid, and looked in the direction Danifae indicated.
It turned back to her and said, “This is the Demonweb Pits.”
Its wings buzzed again in agitation.
“And I am a priestess of Lolth,” Danifae said, holding forth her holy symbol.
Jeggred stepped up beside Danifae, his eyes boring holes into the fly-demon. Big as it was, the chasme’s wings twittered. It rubbed its human hands together, the same way a fly sometimes rubbed together its front two legs.
“You ask for a service but make no mention of payment,” Vakuul said. “What is to be Vakuul’s payment, priestess of Lolth?”
Quenthel watched intently, as did Pharaun. That would be a true indication of Danifae’s power. The offer and acceptance of payment was a formality inherent to the casting, but the particulars of the bargain reflected the relative power of summoner and summoned. The higher the cost paid, the weaker the summoned believed the summoner to be. Could Danifae compel a favorable offer through threat, as had Quenthel?
Danifae eyed Quenthel before she took a step toward the chasme. She entered the summoning circle, reached up, and ran her fingertips along the horn of the chasme’s nose. The demon’s wings buzzed uncontrollably. His mouth fell open, showing a long, hollow tongue, wet with stinking saliva.
“I believe we will be able to come to some . . . amicable arrangement,” Danifae purred.
A thick, dark fluid leaked from the chasme’s mouth. The demon shifted his gaze past Danifae to Jeggred—himself the spawn of a drow-demon coupling—buzzed his wings, and leered at Danifae. Something long, thin, and dripping slipped out of his thorax.
Pharaun found the scene grotesque but fascinating.
Danifae only smiled, wrapped her hand around the demon’s horn, and said, “I trust you find my offer appealing?”
“Most appealing, priestess,” the chasme answered. With his thick, yellow tongue, Vakuul licked the ridges that served as his teeth. “I will carry you within my arms, carry you close. And afterward,” his wings buzzed with excitement, “closer still.”
Danifae released the demon’s horn and said, “My draegloth must accompany us.”
The chasme’s wings beat in agitation. His voice rose still higher. “No, priestess, no. He is too big, his smell too foul. Just you.”
Jeggred said nothing, merely stared.
Pharaun found it mildly amusing that a giant fly-demon found Jeggred too foul for transport. A cutting quip seemed in order, but he restrained himself.
Danifae smiled and put her hand on Vakuul’s head. The chasme’s wings beat fast as she ran her fingers along the bristles of the demon’s hair.
“You cannot begin to comprehend what I am prepared to do for you,” she said, low and husky, “if you but do this for me and my servant.”
The thing protruding from the creature’s thorax managed to squirm out just a little farther.
“Both then,” the chasme said, drooling from his open mouth. “Come. Come, now.”
Danifae turned and gestured Jeggred forward.
“Come, Jeggred,” she said, even while signing to the draegloth: When we arrive at the mountains, tear off anything that is sticking out of it, then kill it.
Jeggred smiled at the demon and stalked forward.
When Danifae turned back around to face the chasme, she again wore a seductive smile.
Pharaun could not help but admire her. The woman was not as powerful as Quenthel—that was clear—but she was as skilled a manipulator as Pharaun had ever encountered. Pharaun thought back to his encounter with Jeggred in the chwidencha tunnel. Pharaun had said that Danifae was manipulating the draegloth; Jeggred had answered that Danifae was instead manipulating Pharaun and Quenthel.
Pharaun began to suspect that both were likely true. Where Quenthel was raw power, Danifae was skillful subtlety. Both women were dangerous. He was coming to believe that either could be the Yor’thae, or perhaps neither. In truth, he did not care, as long as he came out of it with his life and his position.
Danifae looked back to Quenthel and Pharaun and said, “To the mountains then, Mistress Quenthel?”
Quenthel nodded, her face a mask of impassivity that poorly hid her anger.
Jeggred took the smiling Danifae in his arms, and the chasme wrapped both of them in his legs. Vakuul’s wings beat so fast that they became a barely visible blur.
“Heavy,” the demon said, in his whining voice but managed to get off the ground. “So heavy.”
Quenthel turned to the nalfeshnee and allowed him to scoop her up in his huge arms. His wings too began to beat, and somehow those absurd little appendages bore his huge bulk aloft. “Follow, wizard,” Quenthel called.
Pharaun sighed, called on the power of his ring, and took flight behind them.
They soared high over the Demonweb Pits, flying into the teeth of the wind. They stayed below the souls but above the highest of the tors. The nalfeshnee cradled Quenthel against his mammoth chest. Her hair whipped in the wind. The chasme held Jeggred and Danifae close. The creatu
re pawed at Danifae as best he could while they flew.
Despite their respective loads, the demons moved at speed, and Pharaun struggled to keep up. He could hear nothing over the roar of the wind other than the muted buzz of the chasme’s wings. Rain pelted his face.
Taking flight allowed them to avoid the difficulties of the harsh terrain, and they devoured the leagues quickly. On foot, they would have had a five or six day trek to the mountains. Flying at the rate they were, Pharaun expected to reach the mountains around daybreak, perhaps a bit after.
He surveyed the plane below him as he flew. From above, the surface of the Pits looked like diseased skin—blistered, scarred, pockmarked. Lakes of acid dotted the ground, spider carcasses lay everywhere, and great crevasses split the landscape like scars.
He looked ahead toward the mountains but they remained invisible in the darkness. He could see the glowing souls, though, flying toward the mountains’ base, toward the Pass of the Reaver.
He replayed the demon’s words in his mind: You cannot attempt the pass and live, Zerevimeel had said. Then, I will think fondly of your soul being devoured by the Reaver.
Pharaun decided that he would rather keep his soul than not, but he still flew on.
chapter
ten
The night was hours old, and still Halisstra had not disturbed her sisters’ Reverie. She knew she should. They ought to have used the night to travel, in case the slaughter renewed with the dawn, but Halisstra knew her sisters needed rest. They would have little opportunity for it after they left their makeshift temple atop the tor. Besides, Halisstra wanted them to have a few more hours of peace, alone with her faith. They soon would have little opportunity for that too.
She sat near the edge of the tor praying to the Dark Maiden for the strength to face the challenges ahead.
Above her, swirling vortices of colored energy still dotted the sky. With each passing moment, one or another of the vortices ejected a glowing soul into the air. With each moment, a worshiper of the Spider Queen died somewhere in the multiverse and the soul found its way to the Demonweb Pits. The process
R. A. Salvatore's War of the Spider Queen: Extinction, Annihilation, Resurrection Page 85
