its red eyes blazed with fury. Despite the stasis spell that held it, the demon seemed to know it had been bound.
Pharaun waved at Jeggred and Quenthel to join him on the deck. At a nod from Quenthel, who was still clinging to his back, the drae-gloth obeyed. He leaped down from the mast and anchored himselfon the steeply sloping deck by thrusting his hands into the sticky mass of web. Pharaun immediately cast another spell, tossing a pinch of ground diamond into the air. A dome of force shut out the storm, enclosing the three of them, together with the demon, in welcome silence. Sprays of water crashed onto the invisible barrier and ran down it in streams, but inside, all was quiet.
Quenthel clambered off Jeggred's back, but she continued to hold onto his mane, steadying herself against the rise and fall of the deck. She stared at the demon, the serpents in her whip tast-ing the air next to it with flickering tongues, and shewrinkled her nose. Even with its body held in stasis, the demon stank of sulfur and rot.
"It's small," she noted derisively. "Not even a match for Jeggred."
The draegloth, mired in the web up to his elbows, grunted his agreement.
"Don't let its size fool you," Pharaun cautioned, wrinkling his nose at Jeggred's panting breath, which was almost as bad as the stench from the demon. "One bite from those needle teeth, and you'd be paralyzed."
Quenthel tried to back up a step but a lurch of the ship caused her foot to land squarely inside the sticky web. She fell sideways, arms flailing. She landed in an undignified sprawl in a thicker patch of web and immediately erupted into muffled cursing.
"Dispel this!" she spat, struggling to rise from the tilting deck and only getting herself further mired. "Dispel it at once."
Her serpents, too, were stuck in the web and spat violently at each other in frustration. Jeggred tried to help, but was unable to free his hands from the web. Frustrated, the draegloth turned to growl at Pharaun, instead.
With an effort, Pharaun fought down his mirth. It wouldn't do to laugh, not with Jeggred's hackles raised - even though the sight of a priestess of the Queen of Spiders being caught in a web was too good to be true. Instead he inclined his head in a bow.
"As you wish, Mistress. But you're going to need something else to anchor yourself to the deck, or you'll slide right off the ship. Allow me, if you will, to provide an alternative."
He pulled out a second wad of bitumen and broke the gummy mass in half. He passed a piece each to Quenthel and Jeggred, and when they had swallowed them, cast the spell that would allow them to cling like spiders to anything - even a spray-sodden deck. He then dispelled the web.
Clambering to her feet, purple-faced with suppressed rage, Quen-thel looked around the ship.
"I see no mouth," she spat. "Belshazu lied."
"That wouldn't surprise me in the least," Pharaun said dryly.
Indeed, having had a chance to look around, he could see that Quenthel seemed to be right. The deck of the ship was a flat expanse of bone-white board, devoid of a cabin or any raised structure. There were rails at the edges of its deck to prevent crew from falling over-board, but the only other thing rising above the desolate flatness of the deck, besides the three masts with their tattered, patchwork sails, was a tiller at the stern of the ship. Seeing no hatches, he wondered if the ship had a hold - or if its hull was solid bone. He'd heard a faint noise, a moment before, that might have been cargo shifting, but it was probably just the sound of the storm.
"We'll have to ask the uridezu where the mouth is," he said. "Let'sjust hope I can dispel the stasis."
That said, he set to work. Dispellings were among the first spells wizards learned at Sorcere, and a quick incantation and a brief ges-ture were enough to dispel simple spells. But a temporal stasis was tricky. Only the most powerful mages could cast it. That the demon was indeed held by such a spell was readily apparent. Peering into its open, snarling mouth, Pharaun could see red, blue, and green glitters on its tongue - a dusting of the powdered gems that had triggered the spell.
A greater dispelling was certainly needed - one that was tightly focused, so it wouldn't negate the binding