Extinction

Valas squinted as the flickering yellow light disrupted his darkvision. The frosted walls of the cavern picked up the illumination and sparkled like a million tiny diamonds. The candles flickered, their flames guttering slightly to one side. Seeing that, Valas nodded. The cavern wasn't completely a dead end. There must have been some tiny fissure, hidden from view, through which air was circulating.

Standing with his hands extended over the hexagram, Pharaun began to chant. As his words echoed back and forth across the confined space, the candles burned at a terrific rate, melting down to puddles of wax against the ice. Yet still the wicks burned, and as soon as they touched the ice, the color of the flames turned a brilliant blue. The flame pulsed out along the lines of the symbol and, mixing with Jeggred's blood, turned a ghastly, glowing purple.

As Pharaun's chant rose to a crescendo the mage clapped his hands together over his head. The boom of thunder that resulted all but obliterated Valas's gasp and Jeggred's harsh grunt. For an instant, the frigid air in the cavern seemed to wrench itself in two. Through the split, Valas could see the roiling red-black clouds and furnace-hot flames of the Abyss. Then came a roar of utter rage and indignation as an enormous, humanoid figure hurtled through the portal between the planes, staggering as though it had been pushed by an invisible hand. Pharaun, facing it, backed up a step or two on the ice, then recovered his composure.

"He's done it," Quenthel said.

"So he has," Danifae agreed, and she sounded impressed.

Valas realized that he was gripping his lucky coin amulet and quickly moved his hand to the hilt of his dagger, instead.

The demon?a glabrezu?was nearly three times as tall as a drow and powerfully muscled. It had four arms?two with hands, and two with enormous, snapping pincers?and a doglike head. Its body emitted a stench that smelled like putrid corpses roasting over a sulfur fire. Its skin was so utterly black it was difficult to see its features clearly, save for a truncated snout filled with gnashing yellow fangs and eyes that glowed with penetrating ntensity, as if all the fury of the Abyss swirled within their violet depths.

"You dare summon me?" it roared in a voice that filled the cavern, shaking loose small stones that tumbled down the slope onto the ice. "You dare!"

In what seemed a mockery of the gesture Pharaun had used to summon it, the demon flung its hands above its head. Intensely bright flame erupted between the outspread fingers, filling the cavern with a blinding light. Leering, the demon thrust its hands at Pharaun, sending the flame at him in a horizontal wave.

Instead of washing over Pharaun, the flame was contained by the lines of the hexagram. It licked along the veins of blood, roaring from point to point of the star in a dizzying blur, then gradually began to slow. Rather than melting the ice, the flame seemed to freeze in place. Then it shattered with a tinkling sound, like breaking crystal.

A corner of Pharaun's mouth twitched up into a half-smile.

"Are you quite finished, Belshazu?" he asked dryly.

The demon's eyes narrowed.

"You know my name," it said, its voice dropping to a deep rumble.

"We do," Quenthel said from behind Valas. "And unless you wish to be trapped inside that hexagram for all eternity, you will tell us where we can find a gate that leads from this realm to the Abyss. Tell us that, and the mage will dismiss you."

Belshazu grunted, then dropped to its knees and sniffed at the symbol that bound it. When the demon looked up, its eyes fastened on Jeggred.

"Draegloth blood," it growled. "So that was why the drow bitch mated with me. What was her name? Tral? Tull? No. . Triel." The demon spat a gob of foul-smelling phlegm onto the ice, then added, in a disdainful rumble, "That whore."

It stared past Pharaun at the group of drow above, its violet eyes burning with a terrible challenge that caused Valas to draw his kukris in readiness.

Jeggred returned the demon's growl. Tensing, he hunched into a crouch. Quenthel's hand darted to his back and clenched the draegloth's tangled mane. She jerked Jeggred back just as he was about to spring.

"Stay beside me," she commanded.

Jeggred complied.

Valas heaved a sigh of relief, glad the draegloth hadn't sprung forward to attack his father. Had Jeggred taken a single step across the symbol that had been wrought with his blood, the lines of magical force that bound the demon would have stretched?and snapped. Which was what the demon had obviously intended, all along.

Pharaun cleared his throat, and the demon returned its attention to him.

"Now then," the mage said. "We need to get to the Demonweb Pits. Where's the nearest gate to the Abyss?"

Belshazu bared yellowed fangs in a smile and stared down at Pharaun as if contemplating which of the wizard's limbs to tear from his body first.

"Right here, in this cavern," it rumbled. "Just beneath my feet. Let me show you."