Extinction

Standing again, he stared our through the ice wall at the ship of chaos, locking the position of its upper deck in his mind.

"Faer z'hind!" he cried.

As his spell took effect, the stone floor vanished from under his feet. An instant later he, Quenthel, and Jeggred were falling through the air toward the deck of the rapidly moving ship. The wizard checked his descent by levitating, but the water stinging his eyes made it difficult to see. He'd aimed for a pace or two above the deck?the only sane option, with the ship rising and falling so violently and listing at such a sharp angle?but without anything solid under his feet he was in danger of being hurled into the eye of the storm. He floundered about, trying to find the deck with his feet as sprays of water lashed him and the wind tore at the hood of his piwafwi, nearly strangling him. A gust of wind caught him, slamming him into the main mast and knocking the air from his lungs, Desperately, Pharaun grabbed at the closest thing to hand: one of the lines that formed the ship's rigging.

The line compressed as his hands tightened around it. Inside the line was something soft and wet?and warm. An instant later, as something pulsed through it, Pharaun realized that the line was made not of rope but of a strand of intestine. He curled his lip, hoping the line wouldn't rupture. Pharaun didn't relish the thought of being spattered by its contents.

He wedged one foot against the base of the mast, the other against the tilted deck, and he glanced up. Jeggred and Quenthel had halted their fall a pace or two above him. The draegloth had grabbed the mast and was hugging it with his fighting arms. Rigid as a statue, muscles bulging, he easily held himself in place against the wind that tore at his mane. Quenthel clung to his back, supported by the draegloth's smaller arms.

Quenthel stared down at Pharaun, her hair writhing in the wind like the vipers that thrashed furiously in her whip. She shouted something, jerking her head up at the demon that floated at the eye of the storm, far above the mast to which they clung.

Pharaun had no idea what Quenthel was saying, but the need for urgency was certainly clear.

With his feet securely braced, he released the line with his left hand and reached into his pocket for the twig he'd used to collect a spiderweb, so many days before. Pointing it at the deck of the ship, he chanted a spell.

A spray of web filaments erupted from the twig and struck the deck. Several twisted away in the howling wind, but the majority of them stuck. They formed a sticky smear across the bone-white deck?a smear that gradually built in thickness as yet more web pulsed out of the twig. By the time the spell was spent, the mass of spiderweb was nearly half a pace deep, mounded in an oval that resembled a cocoon.

Letting the twig go?it was instantly snatched away by the wind?Pharaun fished a wad of bitumen out of a pocket and popped it into his mouth. He swallowed the gummy mass down, gagging slightly as the spider hairs embedded in the bitumen scratched the back of his throat, then he curled his fingers into the shape of a spider and tapped fingertips lightly against his chest. Immediately his hand grew sticky?gummy enough to pluck at his sodden piwafwi when he pulled it away.

Tentatively, still holding the line of intestine, Pharaun moved one foot away from the mast and felt his boot stick to the deck. Then, walking slowly and with one hand touching the tilting deck, he worked his way over to the patch of web.

Standing erect was impossible?the ship was canted at an acute angle, sailing in crazy circles around the inside of the whirlpool with its hull half in and half out of the water and its masts pointing at the eye of the storm. The deck shuddered under Pharaun's feet like a live thing as the ship twisted around and around in the whirlpool, its planks groaning like a chorus of undead. The wizard heard what sounded like a weight shifting in a space under his feet, but there was something more to the sound that he couldn't quite put his finger on.

Forced to stand at an angle that made his knees and ankles ache, Pharaun fought to keep his balance. To fall then would ruin everything. Meanwhile, the wind howling through the lines above added a ghastly harmony, and the flap-flap. .flap-flap. .flap-flap of the tattered sails pounded like an off-kilter heartbeat.

Pharaun opened the pouch he'd hung around his neck. The statuette inside it had held up well under the buffeting the storm had given the pouch. The only damage was that its tail had been bent slightly. The length of chain Valas had provided was still fastened securely around one ankle, and the pin was still in place at the end of the chain.