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 rothe 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.