Free Annihilation by Philip Athans Page A

possibly make?”
    “It could bleed,” she said, still looking down at the deck. “If it can bleed, it can die. If it dies when we’re …”
    Pharaun could tell she didn’t finish that thought because she was afraid to. He hated it when a high priestess was afraid. Things rarely went well if they started with that.
    “Not everything that bleeds dies,” he said with a forced smile.
    She looked up at him, and their eyes met. He expected her to be angry at least, maybe offended, but she was neither. Pharaun couldn’t tell what she was thinking.
    “It troubles me,” she said after a pause, “that we know so little. A ship like this … you should have studied it in the lore, shouldn’t you? At Sorcere?”
    “I did,” Pharaun said. “I’ve been feeding it a steady diet, I’ve cowed its captain, and we’re nearly ready for our little interplanar jaunt. I know what it is and how it works, which means I know enough. For a priestess you can be overly analytical. Will it grow skin? If it wants to. Will it bleed to death if your spike heels slice a vein? I doubt it. Will it behave exactly the same way every time for everyone? Well, if it did, it wouldn’t be very chaotic, now would it?”
    “Some day,” Quenthel said without a pause, “I will sew your mouth shut so you’ll stop talking long enough for me to kill you in peace.”
    Pharaun chuckled and rubbed cool sweat from his forehead. “Why, Mistress,” the mage replied with a smile, “whatever for?”
    “Because I hate you,” she replied.
    Pharaun said nothing. They gazed at each other for a few moments more then Quenthel stood and looked around. “I’m getting bored,” she said to no one in particular. You’re getting scared, Pharaun thought. “I’m getting angry,” Jeggred cut in.
    Both Pharaun and Quenthel looked over to where the draegloth sat. The half-demon was slowly, methodically, skinning a rat. The rodent was still alive.
    “No one asked, nephew,” Quenthel said with a sneer.
    “My apologies, honored aunt,” the draegloth said, his voice dripping with icy sarcasm.
    “Valas and Danifae will be back soon,” Pharaun said, “and we will have the ship ready when they get back. We will be on our way presently, but in the meantime we mustn’t let the tedium of this cursed lake get the better of us. It wouldn’t do to have a party of dark elves fighting among themselves.”
    “It’s not the lake I find tedious, mage,” Jeggred shot back.
    Pharaun rejected his first half-dozen retorts before speaking, but his face must have revealed something. He could see it reflected back at him in the draegloth’s amused sneer.
    “Yes,” the wizard said finally, “well, I will accept that gracious threat in the spirit in which it was offered, Jeggred Baenre. Nonetheless, I—”
    “Will shut up,” the draegloth interrupted. “You will shut your damned mouth.”
    Jeggred licked the dying, squealing, flayed rat, leaving blood dribbling from his cracked gray lips.
    “I don’t like this,” the half-demon said. “This one—” he tipped his chin to indicate the captive uridezu—“is planning something. It will betray us.”
    “It’s a demon,” Quenthel replied quietly.
    “Meaning?” the draegloth asked, almost shouting.
    “Meaning,” Pharaun answered for her, “that of course it will betray us—or try to. The only thing you can trust about a demon is that it will be untrustworthy. It might cheer you to know we feel the same way about you, my draegloth friend.”
    Pharaun had expected some reaction to that comment but not the one he got. Jeggred and Quenthel locked stares, their eyes boring into each other’s. There was a long silence. It was Quenthel who looked away first.
    Jeggred actually seemed disappointed.

Aliisza nuzzled close to Kaanyr Vhok, her long ebony tresses mingling with the cambion’s silver hair.
    “Have you been entertaining ladies while I was away?” the alu-fiend cooed into her lover’s neck.
    The cambion