Escalla ripped the gem free. She hurled it at the goddess and fired off a spell. It was a tiny spell-one of the first she ever learned. A stream of magic missiles shaped like little golden bees. Lolth laughed to be attacked by such pathetic magic-but the bees struck, smashed, splintered-
And atomized the slowglass gem into a thousand shards.
There was a pulse of magic. A sphere of force shot outward from the gem. The sphere caught Lolth and the Justicar, flashing out fast, then expanding with a dream-like slowness. Inside the globe, all time stopped. Gem shards hung in midair-poison hovered where it dripped from spider fangs.
The sphere continued to expand. Escalla raced forward, grabbed Polk, and tore the portable hole from his belt. She worked feverishly fast. The globe enfolded Recca, Henry-Polk's head, then his body. The spiders pouncing at Henry and Polk all simply hung frozen in midair.
Escalla wept as she ran, shaking, numb, and blank.
She backed away as the sphere slowed its rate of expansion. It ground to a halt and shimmered-freezing the death and destruction of everything the faerie loved. She cried lost, hopeless tears. The girl bit one hand, trying to make the pain focus her. She had thirty minutes-no more. The time sphere would fade, Lolth would be free, and everyone would die. Escalla backed away, her mind racing in mad panic as she tried to form a plan.
Ouch.
The hell hound's voice rang in Escalla's head. She whirled, and there lay Cinders, upside down and crumpled. Escalla sped over to him, her hands shaking as she untangled her friend.
"Cinders!"
Cinders fall down. Spider lady tough. Cinders seemed a little dazed. Cinders want faerie make plan now-kick spider butt! No cry.
"Yeah. Yeah, that's right." Escalla wiped her face. She ran a thousand thoughts through her mind at once. "I'm the faerie. The faerie always has a plan!"
Morag had led them right so far. But there was something else… something at the edge of Escalla's memory. Words spoken in a rhyme…
"Wash away sin… wash away sin!"
Moving fast, Escalla grabbed one of Lolth's gems and waved it above her head, bellowing into empty air.
"Morag! I'll use it! I swear! Come here… now!"
There was a flash. Morag appeared-resentful, fearful, and with a panicked eye at Lolth frozen in time nearby.
"What? What do you want?"
"Help." Escalla pushed Cinders into the portable hole. "Teleport me! Now!"
The tanar'ri blinked in astonishment.
"Where?"
"You know where! Now go!"
Escalla grabbed the portable hole, leaped astride Morag's back, and the demon teleported them both away.
25
The Flanaess. After the dead stench of the Abyss, the smell of grass and dirt struck the senses like a fist. Escalla knew the shadows, the light, and the grass. She hadn't grown up here, but this was home now.
Morag had gone to Lolth's gate in the Abyss. From the Abyss to Keggle Bend, and then to a cave deep in the earth.
Even the dank caves smelled clean and pure compared to where they'd been. Enveloped in gloom, Escalla whirred from Morag's back. She hovered above a floor of hard limestone in a place that had the soft, slow echoes of an underground lake. Escalla levered open the portable hole. Cinders lay with his nose just peeking out into the dark. Escalla took a quick look about the cave and saw a dozen tunnels leading off into the dark.
"Morag, which way?"
"The lower tunnel." The tanar'ri thrashed her tail, undecided. "I can't go with you. Lolth will know I helped you."
"Fine! I don't frazzin' need you!" Escalla was already on her way. "Just stay here! You move one scale, and I use that secret name of yours to blow you open like popcorn!"
The faerie moved fast. Time was racing. With Cinders to guide her, she stormed down a corridor into a darkness that clinked with hidden chains.
"Sis!" Escalla bellowed into the darkness as she flew. "Hey, sis! Expecting a call?"
The sound of her shout echoed though the tunnels. Somewhere in these caves Tielle lurked, and nearby would be the horrible pool Henry had described. Speeding through the air, Escalla swerved madly though tunnels and caves. In the Abyss, time was passing fast and hard.
"Tielle! It's family reunion time!"
They entered a long, low cavern, and Cinders's voice hissed inside Escalla's mind.
Left!
Two chain monks had been hidden by a strip of illusory wall. Escalla detonated a fireball amongst them, blasting the monsters apart. The chain monks flailed forward in a mass of chains, dying as Escalla shot past.
Six more chain monks erupted from the nearest tunnel. They threw chains ahead of them, screeching in eagerness to drink Escalla's blood. She blasted a lightning bolt through the dense-packed tunnel, knocking chain monks into a shattered mass of bone and steel.
Escalla caught the glint of light from behind them, and she flew over the molten wreckage in a red haze of panic, grief, and pain.
"Tielle!"
She burst out into a huge cavern filled with silvery light. A narrow shore of limestone ran about a lake that shimmered an unwholesome quicksilver hue. Sluggish waves moved toward the faerie, as if the lake were a gigantic amoeba yearning after the scent of living flesh. Escalla sped above the lake to the distant shore and an archway of stone that stood conspicuously alone in the cave. It was a teleportation gateway, like a thousand others Escalla had used all her days.
"Keep an eye open!"
Escalla dropped the portable hole, propped Cinders's head on the floor where he could keep watch, and dived past him into the hole. She rummaged in the boxes stored deep in the hole, found Enid's stun parchment, and felt sick as she crushed it against her breast. The parchment still smelled of Enid's spicy, feline scent. She saw the regeneration potion-the tiniest of vials-and weighed it in her hand.
"There's a plan! The faerie always has a plan." Escalla shot up out of the hole and planted the stun parchment beneath the arch. "Trust me, I'm a faerie!"
Cinders suddenly scowled, his eyes burning bright red.
Duck!
The hell hound blasted a huge gout of flames into a rock crevice. Chain monks leaped out of the hollows where they had been hiding, recoiling away from the flames. Escalla flew back to the lake, leaving Cinders and the portable hole where they lay.
"I'm bored, Tielle! One more minute, and I'm gone!"
Motion stirred at the far end of the lake. Emerging from her own luxurious apartments, Tielle posed in midair, attired in leather, gauze, and jewels. She held her magical drinking horn in her hands.
"Escalla! Come to taunt?"
The lightning spell almost caught Tielle square in the stomach, but she hurtled aside with only a hair's breadth to spare, slamming hard against a wall. The girl's magic horn flew off into the gloom. Still thoroughly alive, Tielle wiped blood from her mouth. Over the center of the vampire lake, Escalla hovered inside her anti-magic shield. Naked and coldly savage, the little blonde faerie waited for her sister. She had no lich staff, no sword or dagger, just bare hands, skin, and eyes that glinted murderous green.
"Come on, you fat git! Come over here and drop dead! Make my day!"
Chain monks capered on the banks of the lake, hurling chains into the air to fall well short of Escalla. Tielle looked left to right-saw none of Escalla's friends lurking in the darkness, and came flying low over the lake. Quicksilver fluid surged up at her, hungry for blood, and the whole lake trembled in need.