by Филип Этанс
Quenthel looked away, trying her best to rid her mind of the image. She kneeled on the deck and wrapped her arms around the bone and sinew rail. No sooner had she tightened her grip than the world—or the water—dropped out from under the ship.
They fell, and Quenthel's stomach lurched up into her throat. Her jaw clenched, and all she could do was hold on, her body tense and ready for the inevitable deadly stop at the bottom of whatever they were falling into.
It took a terribly long time for that to happen. Finally Quenthel began to relax—at least a little—even though they were still falling and she continued to hold on to the rail for dear life. Quenthel gathered her wits enough to survey the rest of the expedition.
The ship's deck was elongated and twisted, as if it had been pulled at either end by a strong but careless giant. Pharaun seemed twice as far away, Valas twice as close, and Danifae and Jeggred appeared to be hanging upside down. The draegloth held the battle-captive in one arm and the rail in the other.
All around them black shapes flitted in and around the rigging, up and under the hull, and between the falling dark elves. The air was ribboned with black and gray, and there was a dull roar like wind but not wind that all but deafened her. The flying black shapes were either bats or the shadows of bats. In the Shadow Deep, Quenthel knew, the shadows would be the more dangerous of the two.
We're stopping, Qorra said, and Quenthel knew it to be true.
The sensation of falling had wafted away. It wasn't that they had slowed in their fall, and they certainly hadn't hit bottom, they simply weren't falling anymore.
"Sorry, all," Pharaun apologized, his voice cheerful and bright. "A bit of a rough transition, that one, but you'll forgive my general inexperience with the whole piloting a ship of chaos thing, I'm sure."
Quenthel didn't forgive but also didn't bother to say anything. The ship was perfectly still, as if it had come up on solid ground, and the high priestess risked a glance over the rail.
They hadn't come to rest on the ground, she saw, but had stopped in midair above a rolling landscape of gray cluttered with vaguely translucent silhouettes of trees. The shadowy, batlike things still raced all around them.
"Oh, yes," Pharaun added suddenly, "and don't touch the bats."
Quenthel sighed but never touched a shadow-bat.
Pharaun extended his senses out into the Shadow Deep, using the properties of the ship of chaos in a way that felt natural to one who had become part of the demonic vessel. He did it the same way he would have strained to hear some distant sound.
The Shadow Deep is not unlike your Underdark after all, Aliisza said, and like the Underdark it has its own rules.
Pharaun nodded. He didn't pretend to understand those rules in any but the simplest way. He'd always been smart enough not to linger in the Shadow Deep.
We won't linger now, Aliisza said.
She touched his shoulder, and Pharaun took a deep breath. He was reassured by her touch, and not only for her help navigating and piloting the ship. With Ryld dead, he was alone with a group of drow who'd be as happy to see him dead as not. The alu-fiend might be more enemy than friend, but still Pharaun couldn't help thinking she was the only one he could trust.
Can you feel it? she asked.
Pharaun was momentarily taken aback. He thought she meant—
The gateway, she said. Can you feel it?
There was a lightness in his head and an itch on his right temple that made the ship turn and accelerate. His fingers curled, instinctively gripping the deck.
I feel it, he said. The barrier is thinnest there. The ship will pass through.
Yes,the alu-fiend breathed.
She wrapped an arm around him from behind and pressed into his back. Pharaun's heart beat a little faster, and the wizard was amused with himself. He couldn't see her, but he could feel her, he could smell her, and he could hear her voice echoing in his skull. He liked it.
At Pharaun's unspoken command the ship drifted across vast distances in insubstantial leaps. Like shadow walking, the ship slid across the Plane of Shadow faster than it should have, the distance compressing beneath it.
Will we fall again? Pharaun asked Aliisza as they neared the place where the Shadow Deep gave way directly to the endless expanse of the Astral.
No,she said, it will be different.
It was.
The ship was through in an instant. The darkness of the Shadow Deep with its sky of black and deep gray blazed into a blinding light. Pharaun's eyes clamped shut and were instantly soaked with tears. The ship shuddered. It felt as if the vessel were being battered on its side. Pharaun's breath caught in his chest, and there was a hard pressure there, a tightness. Fear?
Don't be afraid, Aliisza whispered.
Pharaun cringed at the word but had to admit to himself at least that he was afraid.
He blinked his burning eyes open, and his head reeled so he almost fainted. There was such an expanse of nothing on every side of them that he felt too out in the open, too vulnerable, too. . outside to be anything but tense and jumpy.
The sky around them was gray, but it also held what Pharaun could only describe as the essence of light. There was no sun or any other single source of luminescence. The light was simply there, coming from everywhere at once, saturating everything.
Bright streaks of multicolored luminescence rippled across the backdrop of saturated light—brilliant and chaotic aurorae.
The ship rocked and shuddered, and Pharaun tensed again, fully prepared for the thing to shake itself apart. He held his teeth closed, then closed his eyes, and would have closed his ears if he could.
No,Aliisza advised, don't close your eyes. Don't shut yourself off from it.
Pharaun opened his eyes, mentally brushing off the resentment that boiled to the surface. He didn't like being told what to do, even when he knew he needed it.
She squeezed him tighter and whispered in his ear, "Think it. Think the name of it."
It?he thought to her.
Again she whispered with her real voice, her lips so close to his ear Pharaun could feel them brushing against the sensitive skin there: "The Abyss."
The Abyss, he thought. The Abyss.
There it was.
"What is that?" Quenthel asked.
"We're heading right for it," the draegloth said.
Pharaun laughed and moved the ship faster toward the disturbance.
That's it, Aliisza prodded.
They were moving toward a black whirlpool in the sky. It was as big as Sorcere itself, maybe bigger. It was huge. The closer they got to it, the bigger it became, and not only because they were moving closer to it. The thing was actually growing.
"We're not projections here," Valas said. "If we fly into that thing. ."
"We'll end up where we meant to go," Pharaun said.
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, 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.