spent, the mass of spiderweb was nearly half a pace deep, mounded in an oval that re-sembled 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. Heswallowed 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 soddenpiwafwi 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 fin-ger 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 every-thing. Meanwhile, the wind howling through the lines above added a ghastly harmony, and theflap-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 stat-uette 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.
Working quickly, Pharaun reached down - nearly falling into the web as the ship bucked on a wave and only recovering his balance at the last moment - and mired the statue's feet in the outer edge of the web, sticking it to the deck, Then, carefully, he pushed the pin into the deck. It slid home into the bone-white boards as easily as if it was piercing a stick of wet chalk.
Pharaun began the binding. Staring up at the demon that hung far above the mast, he chanted the words of his spell, hands raised above his head with thumbs and forefingers forming interlocking cir-cles. Slowly, he drew his hands down toward the deck - and chuckled with delight as he saw the demon begin to descend toward the ship. Compelled by the spell, it was pulled down past the top of themast, down past where Quenthel and Jeggred clung, down toward the spot where Pharaun stood. Still twisting in the fierce wind, the demon seemed to grow larger and more fearsome as it descended, but that was just a product of the unholy aura that surrounded it. In fact the demon was only a little larger than Pharaun himself. It was, however, powerfully muscled, with claws like yellowed daggers on hands and feet and a tail that looked powerful enough to smash a stalagmite in two. Its face resembled a rat's, and its skin was a mottled, dead-look-ing gray. As it descended to Pharaun's eye level, guided by his hands toward the statue on the deck, Pharaun noted that one of the demon's ears had a half-circlebitten out of it. The wound had festered, and a maggot protruded, unmoving, from the rotten flesh - another victim of the spell that had frozen the demon in time.
Squatting, Pharaun touched the statuette, then ripped the finger-and-thumb links apart. As the symbolic chain parted, a flash of multi-colored magical energy exploded from the opal, melting the statuette.
For a moment Pharaun was blinded - but the sweet tang of melt-ed beeswax told him his spell had succeeded. Blinking away the spots of light that dazzled his vision, he peered at the demon that stood be-fore him, its ankle secured to the deck by a thin length of lead chain. The demon was still frozen in time, but