low hiss of the vipers in Quenthel's whip. Their mistress's voice was equally impatient.
"Pharaun! Stop wasting time. Compel the demon to tell us what we need to know."
Pharaun gave a brief bow in Quenthel's direction, then turned to Belshazu, who had sagged into a crouch on the frozen pond, feet still bound by the ice. The demon was wheezing from his exertions and held his severed wrist tight against his chest. He appeared to be sulking - but by the blaze in his violet eyes Pharaun could see that the demon had not been tamed. Yet.
Like asava grand master, Pharaun put his final piece into play.
"Here's something else I think you should know," he told the demon. "My spell not only froze the pool, but also crystallized the water vapor in the air. That's what you can feel inside your lungs ... thousands of tiny hexagrams, sawing away at your flesh. Tell us what we want to know, and I'll release you before they do any fur-ther damage. Keep stalling, and you'll die."
As Belshazu considered that, Pharaun carefully kept his face composed. He had no idea whether the ice crystals inside Belshazu's lungs could actually harm the demon - but it sounded good.
Belshazu roared in anger, but the roar ended in a wheeze. The demon gave Pharaun a pained look, then grudgingly nodded.
"I do not know of any gate," he growled.
Behind Pharaun, one of the vipers in Quenthel's whip gave a soft hiss of frustration.
"But there is a way to reach the Abyss from this plane," the de-mon continued. "There is a demon ship that will carry you there . . . if you can find it."
"A demon ship?" Quenthel echoed.
Belshazu glared at her.
"Have you heard of the Blood War?" Belshazu asked.
His voice was heavy with scorn, as if he expected the drow to be ignorant of the doings of his kind.
"Of course," Quenthel answered. "It is a contest between the Abyss and the Nine Hells - a glorious war that has raged for millennia."
"Glorious?" Pharaun scoffed. "More like loud, sloppy, and point-less. Neither side remembers what they're fighting about - let alone has the slightest hope of winning."
"The devils of the Nine Hellswill bedefeated!" Belshazu bellowed.
"In due time, I'm sure," Pharaun interjected dryly. "But for the moment, you were telling us about a ship?"
Still snarling, the demon wrenched his attention away from Pharaun and addressed himself to Quenthel.
"In ages past, my kind found a fresh way to launch our attacks against the Nine Hells. We built ships of bone bound with strands of spirit stripped from the manes who serve us, and hung with sails of flayed skin. These ships sail between the planes, blown by the winds of chaos.
"Centuries ago, one of these ships of chaos set out into the Plane of Shadow, seeking a new route to the Nine Hells. It sailed down the River of Shadows to a place where that river touches upon this plane, and there it was lost. Of its crew of thirteen, only one returned: a groveling mane. It babbled something about the uridezu who cap-tained the ship being overcome and of a terrible storm. We subjected the mane to the fiery lash and the torments of boiling oil, but it was able to give us only one useful piece of information. Just before the ship was lost in the storm, it had visited a city of your world. The city's name meant nothing to us, but perhaps you will know it - Zanhoriloch."
Unlike Quenthel, who was listening avidly as the demon spoke, Valas seemed not to be listening; his attention was focused on clean-ing the sticky black streaks of demon's blood from his dagger. Danifae stood behind them, an openly skeptical look upon her face, toying with a ring. Jeggred, bored, was licking the wound on his wrist.
"This information is useless," Quenthel said. "How are we to find this ship - assuming it exists? I've never heard of a city by that name."
"I have," Valas said. As the others turned to the mercenary, he gave a final polish to the kukri, then shoved it back into its sheath. "It's an aboleth city."
Pharaun rolled his eyes and said, "It just gets better and better, doesn't it? Those fish-folk are the last creatures I want to deal with."
Danifae suddenly stirred.
"Mistress," she said, "Pharaun's right. Shouldn't we be - "
"Silence," Quenthel spat. "I've noted your cowering - how you kept to the rear, like a whimpering male - and am tired of it. If