His own voice sounded strange in his ears, as if he hadn’t spoken in ages.
Tell them to hold on again, Aliisza said. They won’t need to, but it’ll reassure them.
“Hold on,” the wizard repeated. “Hold onto something, and hold on tight or you’ll be tossed overboard and lost in the limitless expanse of the Astral Plane for all eternity, set adrift for all time to come, never to be seen or heard from again.”
Aliisza giggled quietly in his ear, her breath tickling him.
They made straight for the whirlpool, and when the tip of the bow hit the trailing end of the disturbance, all Hell broke loose.
Literally.
Pharaun couldn’t help but scream as the ship was whirled so madly around that his head snapped back and forth. His hands threatened to come away from the deck. Something hit him in the back of the head. Aliisza squeezed him, then let go, then squeezed him again. Pain flared in his legs and side, and he didn’t know precisely why. The others were making noises as well: screaming, growling, calling out questions he couldn’t understand, much less answer.
“This is it,” Aliisza shouted into his ear. He still couldn’t see her. “This is what you came for. This is where you’re going. You brought yourself here, but now it’s time for the Abyss to decide if you live to walk its burning expanse. The Abyss will decide if you get what you want.”
“What?” Pharaun asked. “What do you mean?”
“The Abyss decides, Pharaun,” the alu-demon said, her arms slipping away from him, “not you.”
“We’re almost there,” the wizard said. “I feel it. It’ll let us in.”
Not me, Aliisza whispered into his mind. I leave you here.
“Why?” he asked, then thought to her, Come with me.
The alu-demon giggled then was gone, and Pharaun screamed again.
Until the roaring of the whirlpool dropped to nothing and his own screaming rattled his eardrums.
The ship stopped spinning but continued to fall, accelerating down and down while Pharaun struggled to regain control. Aliisza was gone, and the subtle help she provided, the extra consciousness at the helm, was gone with her. He tried to think of some spell to cast, but his mind, tied to the ship that was damaged in ways he was only dimly aware of, wouldn’t form the list of spells.
The sky had gone red, and there was a sun, but it was huge and dull. The heat was stifling, and Pharaun had trouble drawing a deep breath. Sweat poured from him, stinging his eyes and soaking his forearms.
“Pharaun,” Quenthel screamed, her voice shrill and reedy, “do something!”
Pharaun formed a number of replies as they continued to dive, faster and faster downward, but he didn’t bother with any of them.
“Do something?” he repeated.
The wizard started to laugh, but the laugh turned into a scream when the ship rolled over upside down.
Below them was a level plain that went on and on forever in all directions with no horizon. Tinted red by the dull sun, the sand shimmered with heat. Scattered all over were deep black holes—thousand of them . . . millions of them.
He knew where they were. He had heard it described.
They had come to the Abyss. To the Plain of Infinite Portals.
They were falling and falling and screaming and screaming until they hit the ground.
The ship of chaos shattered into a thousand shards of bone and sinew, the human-skin sail ripping to shreds. The sound was a wild cacophony of snapping and booming and tearing and cracking. The four drow and the draegloth aboard the ship were sent spinning into the air, rolling and tumbling to a stop on the burning sand.
chapter
twenty two
It was raining souls.
All around Pharaun, one after another, transparent wraiths dropped from the burning sky onto the blasted sand of the Plain of Infinite Portals. He could pick out representatives of a thousand different races. Some he recognized, and some he didn’t. There was everything from the lowliest kobold to enormous giants, humans by the hundreds, and no shortage of duergar. Pharaun could only hope that the latter were coming straight from the siege of Menzoberranzan.
Someone stepped close to him, and the Master of Sorcere turned to look. It was then that he realized he was lying on his back on the uncomfortably hot sand looking up. The wispy shade of a departed soul passed by him. The newly dead orc looked down but didn’t seem to see Pharaun. Maybe the creature didn’t care. It was headed to some porcine hell to serve its grunting god or demon prince, probably as a light supper. So what if it passed a sleeping dark elf along the way?
Pharaun blinked, expecting the passing orc to at least kick sand in his face, but the thing’s feet were as insubstantial as they looked, and it made no sign of its passing on the dead ground. The Master of Sorcere slowly rose to a sitting position under painful protest from a dozen muscles, at least three of which he hadn’t realized he possessed.
Taking a deep breath, he looked around.
The wreckage of the ship of chaos seemed oddly suited to their surroundings. Jagged fingers of bleached-white bone stood up like a more substantial line of souls against the red sky. The parts of the ship that had been alive with blood and breath sat shriveled and gray on the unforgiving sand.
Jeggred stood slouched in the center of the wrecked ship, his wild mane of white hair blowing madly in the hot wind. The draegloth stared at Pharaun expectantly. He looked even more battered and bruised, and he was bleeding again from a number of small wounds.
Danifae stepped out from behind the enormous half-demon. She held a long shard of broken bone and was dusty and disheveled but otherwise looked no worse for wear. The battle-captive looked down at the bone fragment she carried then absently tossed it to the ground where it clattered to a stop amid a myriad of shards like it. Danifae followed Jeggred’s eyes to Pharaun.
The sound of a sigh startled the mage, and he spun, still sitting, to see Valas crouched next to him. He hadn’t seen or heard the scout approach.
“Are you injured?” the mercenary asked him.
The scout’s voice rose and fell on the wind, sounding distant though it came from only the few inches between his lips to Pharaun’s ear.
“No,” Pharaun answered, hearing his own voice echo in the same way. “I’m quite fine, actually. Thank you for asking, Master Hune.”
“I’m no one’s master,” Valas replied, not looking the mage in the eye.
He stood and began to wander slowly back in the direction of the debris field.
Pharaun asked of all three of them, “Has anyone seen Quenthel?”
“I will thank you,” Quenthel said from behind him, “to refer to me as ‘Mistress.’ “
Pharaun didn’t bother to turn. Quenthel walked past him, looking all around, apparently not giving the mage a second thought.
“My apologies, Mistress,” he said. “I will extend Ma . . . Valas’s question to the rest of you. Are you all all right?”
Quenthel, Danifae, and Jeggred variously shrugged, nodded, or ignored him, and Pharaun decided that was good enough.
“Frankly,” Pharaun added, “I’m utterly shocked we survived that crash. That was impressive, even by my standards. What an entrance.”
The others only sneered at him, except Valas, who shrugged and began to shift though the wreckage.
“Yes, quite an entrance, but I’m getting worried about our exit,” Danifae said. “How do you plan to get us back?”
Pharaun opened his mouth to speak then clamped his teeth shut.
He didn’t say anything to Danifae but assumed his silence was explanation enough. Pharaun had no idea how they were going to get back to their home plane, home world, and home city without the ship of chaos.
“Lolth,” Quenthel said, “will provide.”
No one looked at the high priestess or commented on how little faith was evident in her voice.
Danifae scanned around her and up into the air as the phantasms continued to drop from the sky
, only to form columns then pitch themselves headlong into one of the endless array of black, puckered pits that looked like bottomless craters scattered around them as far as the eye could see in all directions. None of them were marked in any way that Pharaun recognized, and he hadn’t the faintest clue which of the pits would take them to the Demonweb Pits, the sixty-sixth layer of that endless infernal plane.
“What are they?” Danifae asked, looking around at the falling apparitions.
“The dead,” Quenthel answered, her voice barely audible through all the unnatural echoes that the air around them threw in and around her words.
“Departed souls from all over the Prime,” Pharaun added. “Anyone who served one of the Abyssal gods in life will pass through here then jump into the appropriate portal and they’re on their way. Each of these pits leads to a different layer, almost an entirely different world. There are an endless number of them. This plain literally goes on into infinity in all directions.”
Jeggred snorted, stood, and shook blood, water, and sand from his fur.
“So?” the draegloth asked.
Pharaun shrugged and said, “Actually I was hoping you could tell us more, Jeggred. After all you were sired by a native of the Abyss, and even a half-blooded tanar’ri should have some sensitivity to—”
“Never been here,” the draegloth grunted. “You’ve mentioned my sire for the last time, too, wizard.”
Pharaun was interrupted before he could answer the draegloth’s unsubtle threat.
“How do we find the right one?” Danifae asked. “The right portal, I mean.”
Jeggred growled once and said, “There is only one entrance for each layer, but there are an infinite number of layers. We could be standing right next to the pit that will take us to the Demonweb Pits, or it could be a thousand miles or more in any direction . . . a million miles even.”
“Not likely, actually,” said Pharaun, “but thank you for the vote of confidence anyway, honored half-breed—” Danifae put a hand on Jeggred’s arm when the draegloth lurched for Pharaun at the sound of that word—“but I was guiding the ship, at least up until the very end there, and I was willing it not simply to take us to the Plain of Infinite Portals but to the one portal that would take us where we wanted to go. Even though we crashed, we must be close by it. The ship was moving us at least in its general direction before things went astray.”
“Well it’s good to know that you’re not entirely inept, Pharaun,” Quenthel said, her voice louder and oddly more confident than it had been in a long while, “but I will take it . . . take us, from here.”
Pharaun watched another ghostly orc step past him. It dropped into a deep back hole in the ground. There was no sound, nothing at all to signal that it had hit bottom or that anything had happened to it at all. It was gone.
“My first instinct,” Valas said, “would be to pick out a column of drow and follow them.”
“Do you see any drow?” Quenthel asked.
“No,” Danifae whispered.
The sound of her voice made Pharaun’s skin crawl.
“So what do we do?” the draegloth asked.
“Follow me,” the high priestess replied. “I’ll know the right pit when I see it.”
“How?” Pharaun asked.
Quenthel said, “I’ve passed through it before.”
The Mistress of Arach-Tinilith set out before any of them realized she meant to leave right away. Danifae and Jeggred watched her go then shared a look that made it obvious that neither of them believed the high priestess.
Valas followed her, as did Pharaun, albeit as reluctantly as Danifae and Jeggred.
Aliisza watched from a safe distance as the dark elves brushed themselves off and regrouped.
Have I underestimated you? she thought, watching Pharaun struggle to his feet.
She whispered, “Probably not,” to herself and mulled over her next move.
Kaanyr Vhok’s instructions were clear, even if they hadn’t included helping the drow get to the Abyss in the first place. She was supposed to watch them, so she would do that at least until she got bored.
Aliisza looked out over the Plain of Infinite Portals, the gateway to the Abyss, and sighed. It had been a very long time since she’d been home, and at first it looked the same. She watched the ship of chaos fall through a red sky she used to fly through as a girl, then crash on sand she once sculpted into monsters from faraway universes—monsters like solars, ki-rin, and humans. It looked the same, but it wasn’t—not quite.
Perhaps she had spent too much time with the goddessobsessed dark elves, but Aliisza was sure there was something different about the Abyss, as if a piece of it were missing.
The feeling didn’t make sense, and it confused the alu-fiend and made her uncomfortable, so she pushed it out of her mind.
Aliisza forced herself to smile even though she didn’t feel like smiling, as she followed the drow from a safe distance and invisible.
The alu-fiend wasn’t the only demonic creature that watched the drow just then. Another looked on from a similar far vantage point, cloaked in invisibility and other defensive spells. The creature seethed with hatred.
Floating in the air high above the Plain of Infinite Portals, the glabrezu touched the ruined stump of its legs and growled, “Soon, drow. Soon . . .”
Halisstra ran a finger along the warm, glowing edge of the Crescent Blade and marveled at its beauty. It was a magnificent weapon, and one she would never feel worthy of. Ryld should have drawn that blade, not her. Ryld would have known what to do with it.
The Melarn priestess felt the absence of her lover in a physically painful way. There was an emptiness in her chest that burned, that ached, that throbbed with uncertainty and longing, and a host of other emotions both alien and familiar.
“If you can’t do it,” Feliane whispered to her, “you need to tell me now. Now, before we go any farther.”
Halisstra looked up at Feliane and her eyesight blurred with tears.
“Tell me,” the Eilistraeen prodded.
Halisstra wiped her eyes and said, “I can do it.”
The elf priestess stared at her, waiting for Halisstra to go on.
Halisstra looked down at her tear-soaked hand with blurred vision. Her eyes were hot, her throat so tight it was painful. She hadn’t done much crying in her life and had certainly never cried over the fate of a male, a soldier . . . anyone.
I’ve changed, she thought. I am changing.
“He didn’t want me to,” Halisstra whispered.
“He wanted you to go back to the Underdark,” said Uluyara, “if not to Lolth.”
Halisstra looked up at the drow priestess. Uluyara stood in the doorway, framed by the blinding twilight behind her. She was dressed for battle, covered in tokens made of feathers, sticks, and shards of bone. Halisstra nodded, and Uluyara stepped in.
The drow priestess crossed to the bed that Halisstra had once shared with Ryld Argith and kneeled. She took Halisstra’s chin in one rough-fingered hand, holding her gently and forcing their eyes to meet.
“If they killed him,” Uluyara said, “it’s but another reason to do what you’ve been doing, another reason to leave them behind at least and defeat them forever if possible.”
“By killing Lolth?” asked Halisstra.
“Yes,” answered Feliane, who still stood leaning against the weed-covered wall, also dressed for battle and for a long journey.
“I need you to tell me something,” Halisstra asked, her eyes darting back and forth between the two women. “I need you to tell me that this is possible, I mean even remotely possible.”
Uluyara smiled and shrugged, but Feliane said, “It’s possible.”
Both Halisstra and Uluyara looked over at her.
“Anything is possible,” Feliane explained, “with the right tools and with a goddess on your side.”
“Eilistraee can’t go where we’re going,” Halisstra said, “not to the Demonweb Pits.”
“No, she can’t,” Uluyara agreed. “That’s why she’s sending us.”
“If we die there,” Halisstra asked Uluyara, who dropped her hand from the priestess’s chin, “what becomes of us?”
“We go to Eilistraee,” Uluyara replied.
Halisstra could hear the certainty in the drow’s reply and see it in her eyes.
“I don’t know that for sure,” Halisstra said.
“So,” said Feliane, “what do you know for sure?”
Halisstra looked at her and the elf returned the gaze with almost perfect stillness.
“I know . . .” Halisstra began even as she was thinking it through. “I know that Lolth abandoned me and was a cruel mistress who let our city, our way of life fall into ruin, perhaps simply to satisfy some whim. I know that her temple on the sixty-sixth layer is sealed and there are no departed souls there. I know that eternity is closed off to me, thanks to her.”
“What has changed?” asked Feliane.
Halisstra looked at Uluyara when she said, “Eilistraee.”
“Eilistraee hasn’t changed,” Uluyara whispered.
“No,” Halisstra agreed, “I have.”
Uluyara smiled, and so did Halisstra, then the Melarn priestess began to cry.
“I miss him,” she said through a sob.
Uluyara put a hand on Halisstra’s neck and drew her closer until their foreheads touched.
“Would you have been able to miss him,” asked Uluyara, “if you were still Halisstra Melarn, First Daughter of House Melarn of Ched Nasad, Priestess of Lolth? Would that ever have entered into your mind?”
“No,” Halisstra replied without hesitation.
“Then Eilistraee has touched you,” said Uluyara. “Eilistraee has blessed you.”
Halisstra looked up at Feliane and asked, “Do you believe that too?”
Feliane looked at her for the span of a few heartbeats then said, “I do. You wield the Crescent Blade, if for no other reason . . . but there are other reasons. Yes, I think Eilistraee has blessed you, indeed, and blessed us all with your presence.”
Halisstra nodded then looked to Uluyara. The other drow female nodded and hugged her. The embrace was a quick one, sisterly, warm, and reassuring.
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