"Impudent whore!" said one of the females, K'Sothra.

Jeggred snatched at the heads with an inner arm, missed as they retracted. The draegloth growled.

Pharaun couldn't remember ever having heard the serpents speak aloud.

Danifae only smiled innocently and said, "I intended no offense with my question."

"Of course you didn't," Quenthel said, and her whips swirled around her head.

Jeggred growled, as though he could he hear the serpents' mental projections to their mistress.

Pharaun felt very tired all of sudden. He just wanted the whole affair completed. If Lolth wanted it done quickly, all the better.

"Mistress," he said to Quenthel. "I have spells that-""Silence!" Quenthel ordered, without removing her gaze from Danifae. "Use what spell you will to follow me, Master Mizzrym, but you are to transport only yourself. Do you understand?"

For emphasis, her whip serpents turned their gaze from Danifae, stared at Pharaun, and flicked their tongues. Pharaun bowed his head in acquiescence.

To Danifae, Quenthel repeated, "I said, summon what aid you can, priestess, if you wish to accompany me further."

Pharaun saw it then and was not sure what to make of it.

Quenthel was taking Danifae's measure, testing her abilities as a priestess. That was why she had ordered Pharaun to transport only himself. All in the group had at least a sense of Quenthel's personal power. No one knew the scope of Danifae's except Danifae. Quenthel meant to find out before sacrificing the battle-captive.

The two priestesses stared at one another for a moment longer, Quenthel's challenge hanging between them. The wind blew. The rain fell. The webs sang.

"Very well, Mistress Quenthel," Danifae said, and she inclined her head slightly.

Jeggred stared at Pharaun and said to Danifae, "I could remove the ring of flying from the wizard's corpse and-"

Danifae held up her hand for silence, and the draegloth trailed off.

Pharaun answered Jeggred's stare with what he knew to be an annoying smirk. He held up his hand and waggled his fingers to show the draegloth the ring.

Quenthel turned her back on the junior priestess and her nephew and prepared a summoning. She moved away a bit and used her jet disk holy symbol to trace a circle on the blasted rocks-not a binding circle but a summoning circle. Power trailed behind her movements, leaving a distortion in the air.

Throughout, she softly chanted a prayer, which Pharaun recognized as the initial words to a spell that would reach into the Abyss.

Quenthel was calling a demon to transport her.

Danifae watched Quenthel's back for a time, listening to her spell. Perhaps Danifae understood Quenthel's play and was attempting to determine an appropriate response. Presently, she began her own spell.

Holding her holy symbol to her breast, Danifae used her heel to trace a second summoning circle into the dirt, away from Quenthel's. She too chanted the while.

Pharaun and Jeggred stood a few paces apart between the dueling priestesses, doing nothing. Pharaun moved a few steps farther from the draegloth. The wind was carrying his stink to Pharaun, and the damp only magnified its foulness.

The voices of the priestesses mingled with the call of the wind and the patter of the rain. Quenthel's voice rose as she began the actual summoning. Danifae's voice, still in the midst of a preparatory chant, rose in answer.

The wind gusted hard and for a moment sang above them both, favoring neither.

Pharaun spared a glance at Jeggred, expecting to see the drooling oaf trying to threaten him with his glare, but the draegloth had eyes only for Danifae. He looked rapt. Pharaun could only shake his head at the simpleton.

Power gathered. Quenthel had started her casting first, and she would finish it first.

Orange sparks flared within Quenthel's summoning circle, little mirrors of the vortices that still littered the sky.

Danifae completed her preparations and started the final stages of her summoning.

Quenthel, sweating, chest heaving, stood at the edge of her circle, pronounced the final phrase of her spell, and shouted a name: "Zerevimeel!"

Pharaun didn't recognize the name, but it hung suspended in the air like fog, a foul echo reverberating in Pharaun's ears. A final shower of sparks sizzled in the center of Quenthel's summoning circle and left in its wake a glowing line of orange. The line expanded, and grew into a tall oval. A very tall oval.

A portal.

Through the portal, Pharaun caught a glimpse of night on another world, another plane.

A lush jungle of twisted trees, grasses, and bushes waited beyond the gate, growing from a soil the color of blood. Yellowed bones of all types and sizes jutted from the earth, as though the whole plane was a graveyard. Turgid rivers covered in a brown foam squirmed their circuitous way through the befouled landscape. Thin, twisted forms moved furtively in the shadows, mortal souls trying desperately to hide from something. Pharaun could see the terror in their eyes, and it made him vaguely uneasy.

A blast of humid air escaped the portal. It smelled like a charnel house, as though tens of thousands ofcorpses lay rotting in the jungle heat. It bore groans with it, the soft susurration of agonized souls.

"Zerevimeel, come forth!" Quenthel shouted.

The view in the portal changed as its perspective whipped across the landscape, passing ruined cities of crimson stone, lakes of watery sludge, huge, twisted things prowling the jungle in pursuit of the souls.

A form took shape in the portal, a towering muscular form that dwarfed even Jeggred and blotted out Pharaun's view of the demon's home plane.

Nalfeshnee, Pharaun recognized from the silhouette. Quenthel had summoned a fairly powerful demon.

Not as powerful as she could have but powerful nevertheless.

Pharaun readied to mind a spell that would shroud the demon in lightning should Quenthel not be able to convince it with her offer. He knew that demons, even powerful ones, were vulnerable to lightning.

The huge demon stepped through the portal and solidified fully in Quenthel's circle, naked and slicked in something sticky and red. The creature smelled sickly-sweet, like half-cooked meat.

Behind them, Danifae continued her own summoning, her voice rising. She would complete her own spell soon, but for the moment, Pharaun ignored her and focused on Quenthel's demon.

Huge tusks erupted from the nalfeshnee's muzzle. Burning red eyes dominated its bestial face. With each breath the demon's huge chest, covered in dark, coarse fur, rose and fell like a bellows. Two ridiculously small feathered wings sprouted from its back. Clawed hands at the end of muscular arms clenched and unclenched reflexively. The demon inhaled deeply, nostrils flaring, and wrinkled its snout.

"The Pits of the Spider Bitch," he spat, his voice deep and resonant. "It is bad enough that her stink infests all of the Lower Planes, but now I must abide it directly?" He fixed his eyes on Quenthel, who stood before him, seeming small and insignificant. "You will pay for this, drow priestess. I was swimming in the gore pits of-"

Quenthel's whip cracked, and five sets of fangs sank into the sensitive flesh of the demon's thigh, very near its genitals. The blow was meant to be more a painful threat than injurious.

The nalfeshnee roared and grabbed at the whip heads but was too slow.

Quenthel spoke in a low tone. "Speak another heresy, demon, and I'll offer your manhood to Lolth as penance."

Zerevimeel's burning red eyes narrowed. He looked around for the first time, as though to evaluate his situation. His eyes moved to Pharaun, to Jeggred (at whom he sneered in contempt), to Danifae, who was finalizing her own spell.

Pharaun felt the tingle of divination magic against his skin. The demon was attempting to measure their power, to get a sense of their souls. Pharaun did not contest the spell, though he could have easily enough.

Gently, as though expecting a backlash, Zerevimeel tested the boundaries of the summoning circle. He seemed surprised when it did not hold him within its confines.

He smiled, dripping huge droplets of saliva, and said, "You have left me unbound, drow whore."

He stepped out of the scribing on hoofed legs, towering over Quenthel. Pharaun readied his lightning spell, but the Baenre priestess gave no ground.

"My spell was a calling, dolt," she said. "Not a binding. Are males such fools even among demons?"

All five of her whip serpents stared up at the nalfeshnee, hissing with laughter.

The demon regarded her with the arrogance endemic to his kind and said, "You are either a great fool or have much to offer."

"Neither," Quenthel replied. She brandished her holy symbol, stared up at the towering demon, and said, "You just cast your divination. You know the scope of my power. The Spider Queen once again answers the prayers of her faithful, and I can destroy you at my whim. You can perform willingly, or I can shred your body and summon another of your kind."

The demon rumbled low in his deep chest, a sound reminiscent of Jeggred, but did not dispute Quenthel's claim.

The high priestess went on, "If you accept willingly, you will be recompensed fairly in souls, upon my return to Menzoberranzan."

"If you return," the demon said, and his face twisted in an expression that Pharaun took to be a tusked grin. The creature looked skyward and for the first time seemed to notice the line of souls floating high above them. He eyed them with a predatory gaze and licked his thick lips.

"Souls, you say," he said, returning his gaze to Quenthel.

Quenthel cracked her whip and said, "Souls, yes. But not those. Those belong to Lolth. You will be paid with others, after you have flown me to the base of the mountains thence, to the Pass of the Reaver."

She pointed her whip in the direction of the far mountains, still hidden by night.

Pharaun cocked his head. He had never before heard Quenthel mention the name of their destination atthe base of the mountains, though he had long suspected she knew what they would find there.

"You cannot attempt the pass and live," the demon said.

Quenthel put her hands on her hips and said, "I can and will. As will those who accompany me."

The demon licked his lips, seeming to consider his options. Finally, he said, "I am not a beast of burden, drowess."

"No," Quenthel replied, "but you will bear Lolth's Chosen and be honored to do so."

The demon's lips peeled back from oversized, yellowed canines. He turned his head to the side and spat a glob of stinking spittle onto the dirt. He crossed his arms over his huge chest and said, "Perhaps you are the Chosen, priestess, but perhaps you are not. In either case, let the Reaver claim you in his pass. But for the indignity you ask, my price shall be sixty-six souls."

Pharaun raised his eyebrows. Sixty-six souls was a very modest demand. Quenthel had cowed the demon effectively.

"Done," Quenthel agreed. "Attempt to betray me and you die."

"No betrayal, priestess," said the demon in a low voice. "I am looking forward to the feel of your soft flesh against mine. And when I return again to the blood pools of my home, I will think fondly of your soul being devoured by the Reaver."

Quenthel sneered and her whips laughed.

"Let us leave now, priestess," the demon said. "I wish to return to the familiar gore of my home."

"Not yet," Quenthel said. She turned her back to the demon-a show of supreme confidence-and watched as Danifae finally finished her own calling.

Danifae stood before her summoning circle, her arms outstretched, and called out a name: "Vakuul!"

Power flared in Danifae's circle. The air tore open. A circular portal, outlined in blue light, 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 Danifaeindicated.

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?"