Extinction

Stooping to avoid the low ceiling, Quenthel set off in the direction indicated. Jeggred trailed behind her, ducking his head subserviently and silently pointing each time she glanced at him for directions. After a while, the ceiling became higher, and they were able to walk upright. They were going back the way they had come, still following the river. Up ahead Quenthel could hear voices, one male, the other recognizable as Danifae's by the audible pout of the words. Quenthel remembered a larger cavern, just ahead. By the echo of their voices she guessed they were probably standing inside it, talking.

"Why were you alone?" Quenthel asked Jeggred. "Did the others leave you behind after Pharaun failed to return?"

When Jeggred didn't answer immediately, she glanced back at him. The draegloth had a confused frown on his face.

"The wizard did return," he answered.

Quenthel ground her teeth, irritated, and felt her whip-vipers writhing against her hip. Sometimes her nephew could be so thickheaded.

"I know he came back the first time he went to speak to Oothoon," she said. "I was talking about the second time he?"

Hearing a third voice?one she recognized?Quenthel stopped so abruptly that Jeggred bumped into her from behind. So surprised was she by the sound of the voice, she didn't even think to draw her whip and lash the draegloth for this transgression. Instead she swore softly under her breath?a curse that would have invoked the wrath of Lolth, had the goddess been able to hear it?then she rushed forward, scrambling up the incline that led away from the river tunnel, toward the cavern from which the voices came.

The entrance to the cavern was a narrow one, and Quenthel had to squeeze past a mushroom-shaped stalagmite to get inside. Through the opening she saw Valas and Danifae sitting on a natural shelf of rock, sharing a bricklike loaf of pressed fungus. A moment later she saw the third speaker, standing a little apart from them and holding a small spherical object in front of one eye as he chanted the words to a spell.

Quenthel's ears hadn't lied. It was Pharaun, alive, whole, and without a single aboleth tooth mark anywhere on him.

"Ah, Mistress," the Master of Sorcere said, stopping in mid-incantation and lowering the glass sphere. "I was just casting a spell to help me look for you."

Quenthel stood frozen in the cavern entrance, mouth hanging open. Even her serpents had stopped their usual writhing and were rigid with surprise, eyes staring, unblinking. Then, as Valas and Danifae looked up?and gaped back at her?Quenthel realized how foolish she must have looked.

Pharaun tucked the sphere inside a pocket of his piwafwi.

"You're wondering why I'm still alive," he said, addressing the question she hadn't dared to ask. "The answer is simple: a contingency spell that I prepared before visiting Zanhoriloch. I was expecting something like that little surprise you gave the aboleth matriarch, though I'm surprised you were willing to part with one of your beads of force. Still, it served its purpose, I suppose."

"What contingency spell?" Quenthel asked, still not understanding.

Valas, having quickly recovered from the shock of seeing Quenthel alive, bit off a chunk of fungus loaf and chewed. Danifae sprang to her feet and clambered down the shelf of rock toward Quenthel, exclaiming her relief and joy at the fact that her mistress was alive. Quenthel stared at Pharaun, ignoring both the lesser priestess?who was kneeling before her in a bow?and Jeggred, who was crowding close behind her to stare over her shoulder.

"You see?" Jeggred grunted, his foul breath hot in her ear. "He came back."

"Before teleporting to Zanhoriloch I cast a number of spells," Pharaun explained at last. "One of them was a contingency that would teleport me back to these tunnels if certain events occurred. I made the condition simple, and specific. The spell was triggered the moment an aboleth?Oothoon, as it turned out?tried to eat me."

Oothoon ate him? K'Sothra asked.

Be silent! Yngoth shot back. Then, to Quenthel, the viper said, Tell him you knew this would happen?that you were counting on his resourcefulness.

Quenthel smiled and said, "I expected no less of you, Master Pharaun. You are truly resourceful."

Pharaun returned the smile with eyes just as cold as Quenthel's. The looks they exchanged made it clear that knives had been drawn?and would be plunged home when the time was right.

"Thank you," Pharaun said, acknowledging her false compliment. "You are wiser. . Mistress. . than I thought. How clever of you to escape the aboleth. Your 'death' was in fact a ruse of the highest order. You have the very mind of a demon, when it comes to trickery, and I commend you for it. No doubt you managed to get the location of the ship out of Oothoon, in return for my life?"

Quenthel frowned. Had the mage deliberately hissed when using her title? It was almost as if he suspected the idea had come from her serpents all along. Which it only partially had.