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 creature 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 was as regular as a clockwork. Halisstra watched it happen time and again, and each time the newly arrived soul fell into the never-ending line of spirits floating toward their dark goddess, their eternal fate.
It would go on that way until the multiverse ended.
Unless Lolth died.
She watched the souls moving methodically toward their doom and wondered if Danifae was among them. With the Binding between them severed, Halisstra would not have sensed Danifae's death. She fervently hoped that her former battle-captive still lived.
Thinking of Danifae sent a surge of hope and fear through Halisstra. Danifae had told her once, as they stood together in some ruins in the World Above, that she had felt Eilistraee's call.
The battle-captive had spoken those words when she had come to warn Halisstra that Quenthel had sent Jeggred to kill Ryld.
Danifae had warned her.
There was a kinship between them, Halisstra knew, something born in the Binding that once had joined them as master and slave. She knew that Danifae could be redeemed. And since
Halisstra had given herself fully to the Lady of the Dance, she would be able to help Danifae along the path of redemption-as long as she wasn't already dead.
An overwhelming sense of regret tightened Halisstra's chest, regret for a life ill-spent inflicting pain and engaging in petty tyrannies. She had wasted centuries on hate. Tears threatened, but she fought them back with a stubborn shake of her head.
The wind gusted, sliced through her prayer, cut through the song-spider webs, and called out for the Yor'thae.
The word no longer held any magic for Halisstra. She felt no pull.
She looked up at the eight stars that seemed so much like the eyes of Lolth and vowed, 'No one will answer your call.'
Halisstra didn't know what Lolth intended for her Yor'thae, and she didn't care. She guessed that killing the Yor'thae would hurt Lolth, possibly weaken her. And she knew that Lolth's
Chosen could be only one person: Quenthel Baenre.
'I'll kill your Chosen, then I will kill you,' she whispered.
The wind died down again, as though quieted by her promise.
Halisstra looked out over the blasted landscape of Lolth's realm, over the piles of torn spider parts and carcasses. She wondered where Quenthel was at that moment. She suspected that the
Baenre priestess was already in the Demonweb Pits, making her way to Lolth, just another of the damned drawn to the Spider Queen.
'I'm right behind you, Baenre,' she whispered.
She sat for a time in silence, alone with her goddess, staring up at the infinite stream of spirits floating to
