Resurrection (20 page)

The male Yasraena had choked cleared his throat and said, "Matron Mother, the basin does not allow for the transmission of sounds. I humbly apologize."

Yasraena stared at the top of the male's head for a moment before turning back to the image. The vision wavered too much for lip readers to be of much use. She would have to rely on observation to keep her apprised of Gromph's plans.

She eyed the sweating male wizard who leaned over the basin, maintaining the image. He would not be able to hold the image for much longer. She looked to Esvena.

"Rotate our mages so that this image is constant. It is imperative that we know what Gromph Baenre is doing at all times."

Esvena nodded.

Yasraena was beginning to think that the temporary Xorlarrin withdrawal was part of some larger ploy by the archwizard. Perhaps he would time his own assault with that of the Xorlarrin, hoping to sneak in under cover of the battle.

We've got you, Baenre, she thought, eyeing Gromph through the basin. With the Dyrr wizards' scrying eye on him, the archmage would not be able to surprise them. If he came, they would be ready.

Yasraena took a deep, satisfied breath. She had asked the Spider Queen for an opportunity. She had been given more time, and that was opportunity enough.

Conscious of his companions' eyes upon him, Pharaun pulled a swatch of bat fur from his
piwafwi,
positioned his fingers in a circle, and spoke a couplet.

An incorporeal, silvery orb took shape before him. With an exercise of his will, he saw through the ball as though it were his own eyes. At his mental command, the ball sped back through the chwidencha tunnel, up the vertical shaft, and through the wall of stone that Pharaun had created to cap the tunnel.

Through the eye, Pharaun saw the surface.

It was night. And raining. Spider carcasses and limbs dotted the landscape. The chwidencha bodies they had left behind lay torn in pieces. Pharaun saw no movement, no spiders. He ceased concentration on the orb, leaving it where it was, and returned his vision to his own eyes.

Quenthel stood near him, waiting. Danifae stood a few steps behind her, her expression veiled. Jeggred hulked over the battle-captive, staring at Pharaun with undisguised hunger.

"It is night, Mistress," Pharaun said to Quenthel. "And raining lightly. The Teeming appears to have abated."

Quenthel nodded as though she had expected nothing less.

"Then we go," she said. "Open the way."

Pharaun nodded. A simple spell would suffice to move them.

He visualized the surface and spoke a magical word that opened a dimensional portal between where they stood and the surface. A curtain of green energy formed in the air.

Pharaun reached out a hand for Quenthel, and her whip serpents reared up with a hiss. Even the snakes were more tense than usual. Pharaun's confrontation with Jeggred had thrown fuel on the fire of the priestesses' war of nerve. Pharaun reminded himself not to get caught in the conflagration when it inevitably blew.

"I must touch you if you are to use the portal," he said to Quenthel.

She nodded and quieted her serpents. He put his hand gently to her shoulder. As he did, he raised his eyebrows and looked a question at her.

The high priestess's expression showed that she took his meaning. They could leave Jeggred and Danifae behind, trapped underground.

Danifae shifted on her feet, as though she sensed the exchange.

Quenthel seemed to consider it before surreptitiously signing,
All go.

Pharaun did not let his disappointment reach his face. He looked past Quenthel to Danifae and said, "Mistress Danifae?"

At her nod, he walked over and put his hand on hers, letting it linger for a moment on her smooth skin. Her flesh felt hot to the touch.

"Jeggred too," she said with a seductive, predatory smile.

Pharaun eyed the draegloth, who offered him a fanged smile and a cloud of foul breath.

"Of course," Pharaun said, wincing at the stink. He stepped to the draegloth, who slavered at his approach.

True to his promise to Jeggred, Pharaun had put a contingency spell on his person that would automatically cast another spell should the trigger be met. Pharaun had cast the spell such that if Jeggred attacked him, even if Pharaun was incapacitated or otherwise made unable to speak or cast, the draegloth would instantly be attacked by a giant, crushing hand of force. The hand was bigger than the draegloth, stronger, and would squeeze him until his bones broke.

"Gently, mage," Danifae warned.

Pharaun said over his shoulder, "Jeggred already knows how gentle is my touch. I won't hurt him, Mistress Danifae."

"Of that I have no doubt," she answered.

In whispered Infernal, the tongue of demons, Jeggred said,
"Only her command keeps me from ripping your head from your shoulders, contingency or not."

Pharaun understood the demonic tongue, as he did many other languages, and he answered in kind,
"Should you even attempt to do so, your end will be rapid and painful. In fact, I wish you would."

He stared a challenge into the draegloth's face. Jeggred's lips peeled back from his yellow fangs, but he did nothing else.

"Enough," Quenthel commanded.

Without another word, Pharaun slammed his fist into the draegloth's shoulder-hard. He might as well have been punching a wall of iron.

Jeggred only smiled

"Mistress," Pharaun said, backing away from Jeggred. "Your nephew remains, as always, an excellent conversationalist." He looked to Quenthel and added, "I believe we're all ready, now."

He stepped near Quenthel, and she took him by the arm.

"Us, first," she said.

"Of course," Pharaun answered.

Together they stepped through the dimensional portal.

They materialized instantly on the surface. All was quiet, and pieces of spider were everywhere. After the chaos of the Teeming, the surface felt eerily still. Eight bright stars like the eyes of a spider beat down on them from the otherwise jet black sky. A light rain pattered against the rocks.

Pharaun hissed, "Do you not think Danifae would look better dead, Mistress? And your nephew would be a fine trophy for-"

Quenthel silenced him with an upraised hand. Her whip serpents hissed.

"Of course she would," said the high priestess, "but she will look better still as a sacrifice. The insolent bitch dies when I will it, mage. And my nephew, for all of his stupidity, remains a Baenre and the matron mother's son."

Before Pharaun could reply, Danifae and Jeggred appeared beside them, both in a fighting crouch. Seeing no ambush awaited them, they relaxed their stances. Jeggred snorted with contempt, as though disappointed that his aunt had not attacked.

Quenthel didn't bother to disguise her own sneer. She held her whip in her hand and nodded at something one of the serpents, Yngoth, whispered in her ear. She looked up to the line of souls in the sky and followed them with her eyes in the direction of the distant mountains. Their darkvision did not extend far enough, and the jagged peaks were lost to the night.

Quenthel said, "Lolth bids us to hurry onward."

The wind gusted; songspider webs sang above the falling rain. Quenthel nodded absently as though the webs had spoken to her.

Pharaun perked up at Quenthel's statement. He asked, "Mistress, if Lolth bids us hurry, perhaps it is time that we make our way across this unfortunate landscape via magical means?"

He was more than a little tired of walking Lolth's wasteland.

"Indeed it is time, Master Mizzrym," answered Quenthel.

Mentally, Pharaun checked through his spells. "With all of the stray energies present here-" he gestured at the vortices of power that still dotted the sky-"I would not recommend teleportation. But I have other spells that might-"

Quenthel held up a hand to silence him and stared at Danifae.

"Call what aid you can, priestess," Quenthel said, "if you would accompany me. Lolth demands the quick arrival of her
Yor'thae."

"Is that the reason, Mistress Quenthel?" Danifae asked with a cryptic smile. She threw back her hood. Spiders crawled along her hair, her brow, her lips. "Or are you concerned that Lolth's mind might change over the course of a longer journey?"

Anger brewed behind Quenthel's eyes. Her whip serpents lunged at Danifae but did not bite. All five of them hissed into the battle-captive's gorgeous face.

"Impudent whore!" said one of the females, K'Sothra.

Jeggred snatched at the heads with an inner arm, missed as they retracted. The draegloth growled. Pharaun couldn't remember ever having heard the serpents speak aloud.

Danifae only smiled innocently and said, "I intended no offense with my question."

"Of course you didn't," Quenthel said, and her whips swirled around her head.

Jeggred growled, as though he could he hear the serpents' mental projections to their mistress.

Pharaun felt very tired all of sudden. He just wanted the whole affair completed. If Lolth wanted it done quickly, all the better.

"Mistress," he said to Quenthel. "I have spells that-"

"Silence!" Quenthel ordered, without removing her gaze from Danifae. "Use what spell you will to follow me, Master Mizzrym, but you are to transport only yourself. Do you understand?"

For emphasis, her whip serpents turned their gaze from Danifae, stared at Pharaun, and flicked their tongues. Pharaun bowed his head in acquiescence.

To Danifae, Quenthel repeated, "I said, summon what aid you can, priestess, if you wish to accompany me further."

Pharaun saw it then and was not sure what to make of it.

Quenthel was taking Danifae's measure, testing her abilities as a priestess. That was why she had ordered Pharaun to transport only himself. All in the group had at least a sense of Quenthel's personal power. No one knew the scope of Danifae's except Danifae. Quenthel meant to find out before sacrificing the battle-captive.

The two priestesses stared at one
another for a moment longer, Quenthel's challenge hanging between them. The wind blew. The rain fell. The webs sang.

"Very well, Mistress Quenthel," Danifae said, and she inclined her head slightly.

Jeggred stared at Pharaun and said to Danifae, "I could remove the ring of flying from the wizard's corpse and-"

Danifae held up her hand for silence, and the draegloth trailed off.

Pharaun answered Jeggred's stare with what he knew to be an annoying smirk. He held up his hand and waggled his fingers to show the draegloth the ring.

Quenthel turned her back on the junior priestess and her nephew and prepared a summoning. She moved away a bit and used her jet disk holy symbol to trace a circle on the blasted rocks-not a binding circle but a summoning circle. Power trailed behind her movements, leaving a distortion in the air. Throughout, she softly chanted a prayer, which Pharaun recognized as the initial words to a spell that would reach into the Abyss.

Quenthel was calling a demon to transport her.

Danifae watched Quenthel's back for a time, listening to her spell. Perhaps Danifae understood Quenthel's play and was attempting to determine an appropriate response. Presently, she began her own spell.

Holding her holy symbol to her breast, Danifae used her heel to trace a second summoning circle into the dirt, away from Quenthel's. She too chanted the while.

Pharaun and Jeggred stood a few paces apart between the dueling priestesses, doing nothing. Pharaun moved a few steps farther from the draegloth. The wind was carrying his stink to Pharaun, and the damp only magnified its foulness.

The voices of the priestesses mingled with the call of the wind and the patter of the rain. Quenthel's voice rose as she began the actual summoning. Danifae's voice, still in the midst of a preparatory chant, rose in answer.

The wind gusted hard and for a moment sang above them both, favoring neither.

Pharaun spared a glance at Jeggred, expecting to see the drooling oaf trying to threaten him with his glare, but the draegloth had eyes only for Danifae. He looked rapt. Pharaun could only shake his head at the simpleton.

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.