"We've got to get a look inside that whirlpool," Quenthel shouted, oblivious to the drops of water striking her face.
"And how do you propose we do that?" Pharaun asked. "Dig our claws into the rock and hang on, as Jeggred's doing, then dive into the eye of the storm?"
To his surprise, Quenthel nodded vigorously.
"Yes," she replied. "Valas can do it."
The mercenary's eyes widened.
"Dispel your polymorph spell," Quenthel shouted back. "Valas can swim into the whirlpool and take a look."
Valas's eyebrows rose even higher.
"Swim?" he protested, staring at the violently spiraling water. "Through that?"
He folded his arms across his chest, ignoring the angry twitching of Quenthel's serpents as she drew her whip. His eyes?which for once he did not lower under her glare?said it all. He'd rather die by her lash than embark on such a suicidal mission.
Danifae, meanwhile, gripped Pharaun's arm.
"We're wasting time," she whispered. "Leave these fools behind. Cast your teleportation spell."
Pharaun plucked her hand free?earning a wrathful glare from the battle-captive?and he reached into a pocket of his piwafwi. Pulling out his last pinch of seeds, he held them tightly between thumb and forefinger, wary lest the storm pluck them away. Squeezing past the others, he walked to one end of the narrow ledge to a spot he judged to be well beyond the portal.
"I've got a better idea," he told them all.
Releasing the seeds, he barked out the words of his spell and stabbed a finger toward the rock. A tunnel opened in the wall?at an angle, running in the direction the wind had carried his seeds. Stepping inside it, he motioned for the others to join him.
They needed no urging. The storm was upon them, whipping their hair and piwafwis and soaking them with sheets of water. Stumbling along the slippery ledge, they hurried inside, Quenthel and Jeggred shoving their way past Danifae and causing her to slip on the bat guano that had been soaked by the storm. Pharaun reached out to steady her, but Valas was quicker. Grabbing Danifae's arm, he shoved her forward into the tunnel.
Pharaun tried to convey his apologies in a glance, but Danifae ignored him. Sighing, he waved the others to the back of the tunnel, then pulled out his cone of glass. Pointing it at the open mouth of the tunnel, he hurriedly cast a second spell. A blast of bitterly cold air erupted from the glass cone, turning the water that was spraying into the tunnel into pellets of hail. A sheet of water crashed full-on into the ledge outside?and was instantly turned to solid ice, sealing the tunnel. Pharaun held the spell for a moment or two longer, until the ice wall had thickened sufficiently, then he lowered his hand.
Turning to Quenthel, he bowed, then swept a hand in the direction of the plug of ice.
"Won't you step up to the viewing platform, Mistress?" he asked. "I'm sure the ship of chaos will be along directly."
Quenthel stared at him for a long moment as if trying to decide whether or not she was being mocked. Her whip vipers snapped at each other, then relaxed. Nose in the air, Quenthel strode past Pharaun and stared out through the ice, leaning this way and that as she tried to see beyond the water that crashed against the other side of it. The air inside the tunnel was bitterly cold, and her breath misted in the air. She shivered in her wet clothes. Even so, the high priestess peered with rapt attention?then stiffened.
At that, the others crowded forward. Even Jeggred loped up to crouch and peer out past his mistress's legs.
"That figure," Quenthel gasped. "What is it?"
Pharaun leaned forward for a better look. The wall of ice he was staring through was half as thick as his forearm was long, and beyond it was the waterspout, several paces thick at that point and filled with whirling spray. Dimly, at the very eye of the storm, he could see a twisting shape. It was proportioned like a drow, with head, arms, and legs, but twice the height of the tallest female and with a whiplike tail. It appeared to be naked, its skin a pale gray. Pharaun thought it was flailing against the wind, raking the air around it with wide sweeps of its claws, but then he realized that it was spinning in place. The creature itself wasn't moving?not a muscle. It looked as though it had been rendered immobile by magic, by a spell that must have been cast centuries before.
Beside him, Danifae gasped.
"The uridezu," the battle-captive whispered.
Pharaun nodded.
"And the ship!" Valas exclaimed, standing on tiptoes to peer down over the lip of the ledge outside and pointing.
Pharaun looked down at the point where the waterspout met the whirlpool. The ship was indeed there, its hull stuck fast in the water that formed the inner wall of the whirlpool and its masts angled in toward the eye of the storm. It was difficult to make out details through the wall of ice and the spray whipping horizontally past outside, but Pharaun could see enough to confirm that it must, indeed, be the ship of chaos.
The hull was bone-white in color, as were the three masts, from which hung tattered sails.
Quenthel laughed, shattering the tense silence.
"I've done it!" she said. "The ship of chaos is mine." Abruptly, she turned to Pharaun. "Prepare a binding spell."
"The demon already appears to be 'bound, " observed Phaaun, nodding at the scene outside the ice wall. "Albeit not in the conventional manner. My guess is that it was caught in a temporal stasis spell?a powerful one that I'll have to break once I've imposed a binding of my own. And there's the little problem of the storm."
Quenthel flicked wet hair out of her face, then glowered down the ship of chaos, still whipping around in circles in the whirlpool.
"We're not teleporting away," she told him, a dangerous light in her eye. "Not now, when we're so close."
"No," Pharaun sighed. "I suppose not. But to be quite frank, I'm not sure what to do next. The storm's obviously magical. If a spell created it, the incantation was powerful?and permanent. Even I couldn't control that volume of water?which means any spell I cast won't be powerful enough to dispel the storm."
Valas scratched his head, then said in a thoughtful voice, "Could we sail the ship out of the storm?"
"Possibly," Pharaun said, thinking aloud. "Or rather, the uridezu could. But assuming I'm able to dispel the magic that froze the demon in time there's still the matter of binding it to my will."
"That's easy," Quenthel spat. "Just pull the demon out with one of your grasping-hand spells."
Pharaun sighed. The spell Quenthel had mentioned was unnecessary. The binding spell itself would draw the demon to the deck. The problem lay in the ship itself. Pharaun had pictured it wrecked on shore or perhaps resting quietly at the bottom of the lake?not half awash and buffeted by spray and wind. Drawing a pentagram on the deck of the ship would be an impossible task.
There was an alternative to using a magic diagram, but it presented its own problems. He could render the demon's image in miniature, either on vellum or in the form of a statuette. The latter could easily be done?he had wax and an opal in his enchanted pockets?but as soon as he placed the statuette on the deck, one sweep of a wave would wash it overboard. And how, in the name of the silent Spider Queen, was he going to come up with a length of chain?
Then he remembered the amulet that had protected Valas from the wraiths. Its chain?having faded to the color of lead, a most suitable material indeed?still hung around his neck.