Annihilation

Something was missing.

Halisstra could feel it-or rather, she couldn't feel it. She couldn't feel the Binding. She couldn't feel Danifae.

Having a captive bound to her by that obscure drow magic wasa strange and subtle experience. It wasn't something she was conscious of really, not on a moment-by-moment basis. Rather it was always there, in the background, like the sound of her own breathing, the feeling of her own pulse.

She was dancing when it stopped. The priestesses who had welcomed her intotheir circle danced often. They danced in different combinations of certain females and danced in different places both sacred and mundane. They danced naked most of the time, clothed some of the time. They danced wearing armor and weapons and danced with offerings of fruit or works of art. They danced around fires or in the cold. They danced at night-in the dark that Halisstra still found comforting-or in the day. She was still learning the significance of each of those different venues, every subtle shift in components and approach, rhythm and movement.

When the feeling came upon her, Halisstra stopped dancing. The other priestesses took no notice of her. They didn't even pause, let alone stop their joyous ritual.

Halisstra stumbled out of the circle and made her way quickly and with a sense of impending doom back to where she had left Ryld. The weapons master wasn't included in the circles of priestesses, and she could tell that was wearing on him. Halisstra was gone hours at a time, and returned to questions she couldn't always answer. She had no way to be sure Ryld loved her-she wasn't entirely certain yet what "love" was, though she thought she was learning, but the warrior stayed. He stayed there in the cold, light-ravaged forest with her, surrounded by worshipers of what to him must have still felt like a traitor goddess.

She staggered into the cool, dark chamber they shared, interrupting him in a meditative exercise she'd seen him do before. He was standing on his hands, eyes closed, toes pointed, legs bent back at the knee. The weapons master held that position for hours sometimes. Halisstra couldn't do it for more than a second or two.

He opened his eyes when she came in and must have seen something in her expression. He rolled forward in a single, smooth motion and was on his feet. There was no sign he was dizzy or disoriented.

"Halisstra," he said, "what happened?"

She opened her mouth to reply, but no words would come.

"Something happened," he said, and he looked around the room.

"Ryld, I ..." she started to say, then watched as he began to arm himself. He grabbed Splitter-his enormous greatsword-first then quickly buckled his sheathed short sword to his belt. He had his armor in his hands when she touched his arm to stop him. His skin felt warm, almost hot, but there was no sweat. Deep black skin was stretched over muscles so hard he felt as if he were chiseled from stone.

"No," she said, shaking the cobwebs from her head finally, "stop it."

He stopped, and looked at her, waiting. She could see the impatience in his eyes, impatience mixed with frustration.

"What is it?" he asked, and she could see him comprehending even as he spoke. She smiled and he sighed.

"It's Danifae," she said finally. "I can't feel her anymore. The Binding has been broken."

His eyes widened, and she could tell he was surprised. Not surprised, necessarily, that the Binding had been broken, but it was as if he were expecting to hear something else.

"What does that mean, exactly?" he asked, leaning his breastplate against the wall next to the bed they shared.

Halisstra shook her head.

"She died?" he asked with no trace of emotion.

"Yes," Halisstra replied. "Maybe."

"Why does that frighten you?"

Halisstra stepped back-was literally taken aback by that question, though it was a logical one.

"Why does that frighten me?" she repeated. "It frightens me ... concerns me, that she's free of me. One way or the other, I'm no longer her mistress, and she's no longer my battle-captive."

Ryld frowned, shrugged, and asked, "Why does that matter to you?"

She opened her mouth to respond and again could form no words.

"I mean," the weapons master went on, "I'm not sure your new friends would approve anyway, would they? Do these trait-I mean, other . . . these priestesses even take battle-captives?"

She smiled, and he turned away, pretending to be deeply involved in returning Splitter to its ready position under their bed.

"They aren't traitor priestesses, Ryld," she said.

He hung his head briefly in response then sat down on the bed and looked at her.

"Yes they are," he said, his voice as flat and as beaten as his eyes. "They're traitors to their race, as surely as we are. The question I keep asking myself now is, is it so bad to be a traitor?"

Halisstra stepped to him and knelt. Draping her hands on his knees. He put out a hand and brushed her long white hair from her black cheek-the gesture seemed almost instinctive.

"It's not," she said, her voice barely audible even in the quiet of their little room. "It's not so bad. We can really only be traitors to ourselves anyway, and I think we're both finally being true to ourselves . . . and each other."

Halisstra's heart sank when she saw the look on his face, his only response to those words. He didn't believe her, but she couldn't help thinking he wanted to.

"How does it feel?" he asked her.

She didn't understand and told him so with a twitch of her head.

"Not being able to feel the Binding?" he said.

She shifted her weight onto her hip, sitting on the floor, and leaned her head against his strong leg.

"I can feel everything about my old life being replaced piece by piece with something new."

He touched her again, one finger gently tracing the line of her shoulder. Her flesh thrilled at his touch.

"Lolth has been replaced by Eilistraee," she said. "Dark has been replaced by light. Suspicion has been replaced by acceptance. Hate has been replaced by love."

An unfamiliar warmth and wetness filled her eyes. She was crying.

"Are you all right?" he asked, his voice a concerned whisper.

Halisstra wiped the tears from her eyes and nodded.

"Hate," she repeated, "has been replaced by love, and apparently slavery has been replaced by freedom."

"Or was it that life was replaced by death?" Ryld asked.

Halisstra sighed.

"Maybe it was," she answered, "but either way, she's free. She's gone to whatever afterlife awaits her. For her sake, I hope it's not that empty, ruined shell of the Demonweb Pits. Maybe she still wanders the Underdark, alive and strong. Alive and free, or dead and free, she's free just the same."

"Free. . . ." Ryld repeated, as if he'd never spoken the word before and needed practice at it.

They sat like that for a long time until Halisstra's legs started to grow stiff and Ryld sensed her discomfort. He lifted her into the bed and drew her close to him as if she weighed nothing at all. His embrace was like a shell around her, a life-sustaining cocoon.

"We have to go back," she whispered.

His embrace tightened.

"It's not what you're thinking," she whispered because she knew he wanted to go back underground and never come back. "The time has finally come to find Quenthel and her expedition."

"And stop them?" he asked, the words touching her neck with each exhalation of his hot breath.

"No," she whispered.

"Follow them?" he said into her hair, his hand pressed into the small of her back.

Halisstra moved into the warrior until she felt as if she were flattening herself against him, disappearing into his night-black skin.

"Yes," she said. "They'll take us with them, whether they want to or not. They'll take us to Lolth, and we can end it."

Halisstra knew that he began to make love to her then because he didn't want to think about it, and she let him because she didn't want to think about it either.

Pharaun stood at the rail of the ship of chaos, staring into the empty darkness of the Lake of Shadows, because he couldn't think of anything else to do. Valas and Danifae hadn't returned from their supply mission, he had fed the ship enough petty demons to satisfy it, the uridezu captain was cowed and quiet, and there was no sign of Aliisza.

The Master of Sorcere went over their conversation again in his mind and was still convinced that the alu-fiend had managed to tell him nothing but had gone away having learned nothing from him. Still, she'd found him and had seen the ship. She knew where they were going and what they hoped to accomplish there-but anyone who'd been at the fall of Ched Nasad could figure that out easily enough.

He put the alu-fiend out of his mind and peered deeper into the darkness, though there was still nothing to see. Pharaun didn't have to turn around to know that Quenthel was sitting against the rail, absently chatting in some kind of silent telepathy with the bound imps that gave her venomous whip its evil intelligence. He couldn't imagine the substance of a conversation someone might have with a demon trapped in the body of a snake that was stuck to the end of a whip.

Whatever they talked about, it didn't seem to be helping Quenthel. The high priestess, as far as Pharaun could tell, was going quietly mad. She had always been sullen and temperamental, but recently she had become . . . twitchy. Her half-demon nephew grew angrier and angrier the more bored he became. Jeggred sent a large portion of his hatred out through his eyes and into the uridezu. Raashub did an admirable job of ignoring him.

Something caught Pharaun's attention, movement out of the corner of his eye, and he stepped back from the rail as an emaciated, soaking-wet rat scurried along the bone-and-cartilage rail in front of him.

Pharaun watched the rat run, absently wondering where it thought it was going. Anywhere dry, he thought.

Noises echoed from behind him-Jeggred fidgeting.

Pharaun stepped back to the rail and was about to let his eyes wander through the impenetrable darkness again when another rat crawled quickly past.

"Damn it," the Master of Sorcere whispered to himself.

He turned to voice some impotent complaint to Jeggred, but the words stuck in his throat.

There were more than the two rats that ran past him. There were dozens of them, hundreds perhaps, and they swarmed over Jeggred.

Something's wrong, thought Pharaun, marveling even as the words formed in his head at how slowly his mind was working after days of tedium aboard the anchored ship.

The draegloth looked more annoyed than anything else. The rats were crawling over him, tangling themselves in his hair, nibbling at any loose fold of skin, but they could not pierce the half-demon's hide. More of them were climbing onto the deck. Pharaun could hear splashing in the water on the other side of the demonic vessel. It sounded as if dozens, even hundreds more rats were swimming up to the ship.

Pharaun started casting defensive spells on himself, watching as Quenthel finally looked up and over at her nephew.

The Mistress of the Academy's eyes widened, then narrowed as she watched Jeggred smash one rat after another in his bigger set of hands, while his smaller hands brushed others off his face. Quenthel slowly rose to her feet, the vipers tangling loosely, affectionately around her legs.

"Jeggred?" she asked.

"Rats," was the draegloth's grunted reply.

Pharaun layered more magical protections over himself as Quenthel started toward the draegloth.

"Raashub," Pharaun said, keeping his voice steely and cold.

The demon flinched at the sound of his name but didn't look up.

"What are you doing, Raashub?" Pharaun asked between two more spells of protection. "Stop it. Stop it now."

The demon looked up at him with smoldering eyes and hissed, "It's not me. They're not my rats."

Pharaun couldn't shake the feeling that the uridezu was telling the truth-at least, a version of the truth.

"Pharaun?" Quenthel said, and the mage detected a trace-more than a trace-of panic creeping into her voice. "What are all these rats . . . ?"

"Pay close attention, both of you," Pharaun said, at the same time readying a more offensive spell. "There's ano-" A globe of darkness enveloped Quenthel.

Any drow could have done it but not only a drow.

The unmistakable sounds of a physical struggle resounded from inside the slowly undulating cloud of blackness. Something hit the deck, and something cracked. Pharaun changed direction before he'd actually begun casting the spell he'd had in mind. Instead, he formed thewords and gestures to a spell he hoped would eliminate the darkness.

From inside the gloom, Pharaun could hear the shriek of metal being dragged across metal-or was it bone against bone?

His spell went off, and the darkness blew into nothingness.

Suddenly visible, Quenthel lay on her stomach on the deck. She was patting the carved bone surface in front of her, reaching for her scourge, which lay just out of her reach. Her nose was bleeding, and she winced every time she bent her back.

Standing over her was another uridezu.

The demon was, like Raashub, a humanoid rat. Smaller than Raashub, thinner, it wore tattered rags that left little of its mottled gray body to the imagination. Its long, pink tail was spattered with pustules. Cold black eyes stared down at the high priestess with murderous intent. Foam gathered at the corners of its fang-lined mouth, and angry yellow claws curved at the ends of its spindly, arthritic fingers.

"Jeggred . . ." Pharaun said, glancing over atthe draegloth.

The half-demon was covered head to foot with rats of every size and description. It was as if all the vermin in the Lake of Shadows had staged some sort of family reunion-one that took place on, under, and all around the draegloth. They swarmed onto him faster than he could kill them, though he was dispatching the rodents four at a time.

Pharaun ran quickly through possible spells, stepping forward a few paces toward Quenthel.

The uridezu smashed her on the back with its tail. The high priestess's face was forced into the bone-hard deck. Blood sprayed, but not much, and she took the strong hit with a grunt.

Pharaun was impressed. Something made him set aside his first choice of spell. Too much, he thought, for only one . . .

The Master of Sorcere looked over at Raashub. The demon captain's eyes were darting rapidly between Quenthel and the newcomer.

He's testing us, Pharaun thought. The wily bastard gated in one of his kind and is setting it against us so we can show off, reveal our strengths and weaknesses.

Raashub might have been bound, but he was a demon still, and there was always fight left in a demon-it always had a way out.

The other uridezu clawed at Quenthel's legs, opening deep gashes, and she kicked back at it. The demon danced out of reach of her boots. The high priestess extended a hand back over her head, but she still couldn't reach her whip. The vipers seemed panicked and weren't able to coordinate their movements well enough to crawl to her.

Pharaun pronounceda quick set of rhyming syllables and made a fast motion with his right hand. Pushed by his magic, the viper whip slid along the deck a few inches, well within Quenthel's reach.

As the high priestess's fingers closed around the handle of the scourge, Pharaun laughed inwardly. The spell he'd used was no more than a cantrip, a transmutation so simple any first year student at Sorcere could master it. It would tell Raashub nothing about the limits of his power.

The uridezu hissed at Quenthel, backing farther away from her, his tail twitching behind him, and his claws flickering in anticipation. The demon obviously thought he was well out of reach of the whip. He was wrong.

The five vipers that comprised Quenthel's scourge were five feet long, giving the weapon considerable reach. The high priestess was still on the deck and didn't bother to stand. She lashed the whip behind her, her jaw set tightly and her eyes wild with rage. When she brought the weapon forward, the snakes whipped outward to their full length. The uridezu flinched, though he seemed confident enough that he was still out of the weapon's range. The vipers extended farther, though, drawing themselves out, stretching thinner and thinner, farther and farther, adding another few feet to their length.

The uridezu didn't register what was happening nearly fast enough to avoid the vipers. All but one of them sank needle-sharp fangs into the rat-demon's flesh. As the whip lashed back, they dug long, bleeding furrows in the uridezu's leathery hide.

The demon screamed, high-pitched and loud enough to rattle Pharaun's eardrums. Anything else would have been dead. Each viper possessed a deadly venom, wickedly potent. Quenthel, wild with a battle-frenzy Pharaun had never imagined, much less seen from her, wouldn't have let the snakes hold a drop of venom back. It would have been enough to drop a rothe.

The victim of that venomous lash wasn't a dumb food beast; it was an uridezu, and Pharaun had studied demons long enough to know the traits that all of them shared. Poison would never affect one. The whip had wounded the captain but hadn't killed him. Pharaun knew he could take more than that. Even a demon as relatively weak as an uridezu-and the rat-creatures were hardly the sturdiest of their kind-could withstand extremes of cold and heat and muster innate magical abilities such as the darkness he had used to ambush Quenthel. Uridezu could call on their rodent cousins, as the one Pharaun faced had set them against Jeggred. There was something about the bite of the uridezu that Pharaun knew he should remember, but that wasn't coming to him. Of course, like all tanar'ri, lightning only passed through them.

Even as that thought crossed his mind Pharaun had a hand on a wand that would have unleashed lightning bolts. Knowing that was useless, the Master of Sorcere shifted his hand an inch over and drew a different wand.

Pharaun hesitated and watched Quenthel hop nimbly to her feet and face the uridezu. The demon hissed at her, but Quenthel made no sound or sign she'd heard it. The high priestess cracked her whip at the demon again, and three of the five snakes bit deeply into the rat-demon's chest. The creature lashed out at the snakes with one set of razor-sharp claws, but the vipers withdrew in time, and the talons slashed through empty air.

Ignoring that failure, the uridezu whirled, whipping at the drow priestess with its heavy, fast-moving tail. Quenthel brought the buckler in her left hand up to meet the tail. The appendage hit her with enough force that Pharaun was sure her arm would snap, but instead she managed to bat the tail away.

The uridezu recovered more quickly than Quenthel, though, and the tail reversed and dropped lower, clipping the priestess in theribs.

Pharaun could hear the breath driven from her lungs. She stepped to the side, almost staggering. The demon, a feral smile spread across its face, stepped in. It meant to bite her and rake her with its claws at the same time.

Pharaun drew a breath to pronounce the command word for his wand even as the demon attacked-and took Quenthel's buckler full in the face. There was a loud, wet crack! and blood splashed out from between the buckler and the uridezu's nose. The demon's hands flailed harmlessly in front of Quenthel and each of the five vipers took their pick of the demon's most sensitive spots in which to sink their fangs. The uridezu howled in agony.

Well, Pharaun thought, not bothering to activate the magic in his wand, looks like she's got this well in- His eyes settled on Raashub, and Pharaun stopped. The bound uridezu was looking at him, his eyes running down the length of the wand. Anticipation was plain on the demon captain's face.

Pharaun looked at his wand then back at Raashub. Their eyes locked, and Raashub smiled at him.

With a smile of his own, Pharaun slid the wand back into his pack where it belonged. Raashub hid his disappointment well, turning his attention back to Quenthel and his fellow uridezu.

Pharaun made the decision to help Jeggred. Raashub would know what the draegloth was capable of, and if Pharaun could deal with the swarming rats and allow Jeggred to help Quenthel, the unbound uridezu could be dispatched quickly and without Pharaun having to take a more active-and more revealing-role in the fight.

As Pharaun came to that decision, a loud series of cracking and popping noises drew his attention back to Quenthel. The Mistress of Arach-Tinilith pulled up a whole section of railing. Bone and cartilage separated from the deck, snapping off like dried mushroom stems. Her whip was in her belt, the uridezu was staggering in front of her with blood pouring from its ruined snout, and she lifted the ten-foot length of railing over her head.

Pharaun quickly prepared a spell to aid Jeggred, and Quenthel attacked. The high priestess brought the section of railing down on the uridezu fast and hard. The demon, not quite blinded by its bleeding nose, skittered away from the attack and managed to leap out of range at the last second. The railing crashed onto the deck and shattered, sending bone fragments whirling through the air. Several of them bounced off Pharaun's spell-wards and shields, and he watched a couple of them slice into two of the rats that covered Jeggred.

Quenthel growled in nearly incoherent rage, and Pharaun found the noise unsettling-unbecoming to the Mistress of the Academy.

Pools of blood were collecting where the railing had smashed into the deck. The ship of chaos itself was bleeding. The wizard wasn't sure if he'd be able to repair it, and any further damage might delay or even prevent their voyage. However, Pharaun didn't want to say anything out loud, and Quenthel wasn't looking at him so he couldn't sign to her to stop damaging the ship.

Pharaun cast a spell atthe rats on Jeggred. It was a simple spell, one that conjured a cone of flickering, multicolored Weave energy. Pharaun was careful in his placement of the spell so that the effect brushed along the side of the rat-encrusted draegloth. The magic didn't affect Jeggred in the least, but a goodly portion of the swarming rodents fell off him and onto the deck, where they lay twitching and writhing in a pile of wet, furry bodies.

Jeggred roared as he shook himself, sending his wild mane of snow-white hair whipping rats, blood, and water across the deck. The draegloth smashed four more of the filthy creatures-one in each hand-and stepped on three others.

Pharaun sneaked a glance at Raashub and was rewarded by a look of disappointed frustration on the uridezu captain's face. It was another easy spell the Master of Sorcere cast, one he'd learned while still a child, and Raashub knew it. Pharaun turned his attention back to Jeggred and called, "Leave the rats, Jeggred. Your mistress is having demon troubles."

With another roar, Jeggred threw more dead or unconscious rats off him and leaped at Raashub, bringing all four of his hands up, ready to shred the uridezu captain. Raashub shrank away from the draegloth, holding up his hands and straining against his bonds.

"No!" Quenthel shouted, her voice hoarse and feral. "Not that one, damn it! Kill this one!"

Jeggred whirled, his eyes flashing across the scene of the ongoing struggle between Quenthel and the second uridezu.

The rat-demon, taking full advantage of Quenthel's momentary lapse in attention, slipped in and raked claws across her midsection, digging deep furrows across her armor and drawing blood. Quenthel grimaced and gritted her teeth against the pain but answered in kind with her scourge. Both of them staggered a bit, their footing treacherous amidst a pile of bone fragments from the shattered railing and pools of blood from the wounded ship.

Jeggred's lips curled back to reveal a monstrous row of vicious fangs, and the draegloth entered the fray.