Annihilation

I'm here, the Master of Melee-Magthere whispered into her consciousness.

Halisstra opened her eyes and was face to face with the ghostly shadow of Ryld Argith. The drow warrior stood tall and proud in his shadowy armor, his hands at once reaching out for her and pushing her away. Tears burst from her eyes, blurring her vision of her lover's disembodied soul.

I loved you, he said.

Halisstra had been trying not to cry, but with those three words she broke into body-racking sobs that sent her drifting slowly away from him in the Astral aether. She wanted to say a hundred things to him, but her throat closed, her jaw clenched, and her head throbbed.

I gave up everything for you, he said.

"Ryld," Halisstra managed finally to say. "I can bring you—"

He didn't so much say «no» as he imparted that feeling into her consciousness. Halisstra gasped for air.

I go to Lolth now, said Ryld. I don't belong with Eilistraee, even if I belonged with you.

"I didn't choose her over you, Ryld," Halisstra said, though she knew she was lying. "I would have turned away from her if you'd asked me to."

Again, the feeling of "no."

"I wanted you," she whispered.

You had me, he said, for as long as you could.

"Halisstra," Uluyara whispered into her ear. Halisstra realized that the other drow priestess was holding her arm. "Halisstra, ask him where he's going. Ask him where Lolth has gone."

"He's going to her," Halisstra said to Uluyara, then to Ryld: "I love you."

She blinked back her tears in time to see him smile and nod.

"To Lolth?" asked Uluyara. "Where is she?"

"That's why we're here now, isn't it?" Halisstra asked the slowly drifting soul of Ryld Argith. "Because we loved each other."

Because we left our world behind, he said. Because we left ourselves there. You were able to create a new Halisstra, but I was not able to make a new Ryld. I'm here because I deserve to be. If not, the draegloth could never have beaten me.

"And we would still be together," she said.

Tell your friends, he said, that Lolth has taken the Demonweb Pits out of the Abyss. We have been waiting, some of us for months, to feel her pull us across the Astral to her, and only now are we compelled so.

"Lolth," Halisstra said to the other priestesses, her voice tight with regret, anger, hate, and too much more to bear, "is bringing them home."

"The Demonweb Pits is no longer part of the Abyss," Uluyara guessed.

She's changing, Ryld said and his thoughts had the feel of a warning. She's changing everything.

Halisstra felt Uluyara's grip on her arm tighten, and the priestess whispered to her, "Let him go. There is only one way to serve him now."

"W-we can bring him. . bring him back," Halisstra stuttered, watching Ryld turn from her and drift slowly away with the other uncaring shades.

"Not if he doesn't want to go back," Uluyara whispered, and the hand on her arm slipped into a snug embrace.

Halisstra wrapped her arms around Uluyara and wept as Ryld dwindled from sight farther and farther along the line of the damned.

Chapter Twenty-five

"Welcome to the Abyss, corpse," the glabrezu said. His voice was a low, rolling growl. "Welcome to my home."

"Belshazu," Quenthel said, her scourge in her hand, vipers writhing expectantly.

The demon didn't look at her. Instead, he kept his burning eyes locked on Pharaun.

"I'm going to rip your soul from your body, mage, and eat it raw then vomit it up so it drips all over your quivering corpse and soaks into your shriveling skin and runs into your gaping mouth so it knows that you're dead," the demon ranted.

"Well," Pharaun replied, "if you say so."

"You will die," Belshazu said to Pharaun, "in the shadow of your dead goddess's ruined fortress."

The Master of Sorcere saw Jeggred step up next to him from the corner of his eye. The draegloth was growling almost as low and as thunderously as the glabrezu—the demon that happened to be his father.

The glabrezu, its severed legs dripping dark blood onto the ancient battlefield, turned slowly to the draegloth and said, "When I'm done with the drow, son, you can join me—have your freedom from the dark elves at last."

Jeggred drew in a breath, and Pharaun could tell he was ready to pounce, though the glabrezu was hovering well out of his reach.

"Jeggred. ." Quenthel started but stopped when the draegloth whirled on her.

"It's meat to me," Jeggred growled. "Just another tanar'ri scum. That thing is no parent of mine." He turned to the glabrezu. "Call me 'son' again, demon, and it'll still be on your lips when I rip off your head."

"Fear not, draegloth," the demon replied with a feral grin. "Even if you were full-blood I wouldn't give you a second thought. For a half-breed I won't even bother killing you." Belshazu turned his attention back to Pharaun but spoke to the rest of them. "All I want is the summoner. Give me the wizard, and you can go on to meet your Spider Queen."

"Only him?" Quenthel asked.

Pharaun looked at her, and she tried to avoid his gaze, keeping her attention on the hovering glabrezu.

The demon glanced down at his severed legs and said, "The trick with the ice … I had to snip my own legs off." He held up one of his four arms, one of two that ended in a hideous, sharp pincer claw. "They won't grow back. At the very least, the whoreson owes me two legs. Give him to me now, and be on your way."

"Everyone," Quenthel said, her voice faraway and bored, "step aside."

The draegloth growled, and Valas appeared from behind a pile of broken bricks, shifting his feet in an uncharacteristically audible way. Pharaun looked at Quenthel, and she met his gaze evenly.

"Are you serious?" the wizard asked.

"Yes," Quenthel replied. "You summoned him, you bound him, you froze him in ice. The rest of this expedition is too important to waste fighting every monster we stumble across—not anymore anyway, and not to settle vendettas you bring upon yourself with your own simpleminded carelessness."

"Pharaun summoned that demon on your command, Mistress," Valas reminded her, but she didn't acknowledge the scout at all.

Pharaun looked at Belshazu, who was quietly laughing, obviously surprised that Pharaun's companions had so quickly and easily sold him out. The wizard sca

"It's all right," Pharaun said. "All we're talking about here is one legless glabrezu. Go on ahead, and I'll catch up in a minute or so."

The glabrezu roared and moved closer. Pharaun's first impulse was to run, his second to stand and swallow. He forced himself to do neither. Instead he prepared his first spell.

Something drifted past Pharaun's face. He leaned back a bit to avoid it, but something else tapped him under the chin. Dust rose up from the ground all around him—and pebbles, shards of petrified bone, and little bits of twisted, rusted iron. He looked at the glabrezu, who was holding up one of his two proper hands, a knowing grin on his canine face.

Pharaun's stomach lurched, and he felt himself being pulled upward. His boots came off the ground, and he was falling—but falling upward along with the debris around him. The others backed out of the area where gravity had been reversed. Quenthel watched with a look of irritation, as if she were disappointed that the demon was taking so long to kill him. Valas drew his kukris but seemed unsure if he should intercede. Jeggred looked at Danifae, who waved him off but watched expectantly.

With a sigh, Pharaun went to work.

He touched the Sorcere insignia and used its levitation power to counter the gravity reversal. It was disorienting, but he managed to hover at the same level as the glabrezu. He then touched his steel ring and brought forth the rapier held within it.