Extinction - Lisa Smedman [90]
Quenthel's ears hadn't lied. It was Pharaun, alive, whole, and without a single aboleth tooth mark anywhere on him.
"Ah, Mistress," the Master of Sorcere said, stopping in mid-incantation and lowering the glass sphere. "I was just casting a spell to help me look for you."
Quenthel stood frozen in the cavern entrance, mouth hanging open. Even her serpents had stopped their usual writhing and were rigid with surprise, eyes staring, unblinking. Then, as Valas and Danifae looked up-and gaped back at her-Quenthel realized how foolish she must have looked.
Pharaun tucked the sphere inside a pocket of his piwafwi.
"You're wondering why I'm still alive," he said, addressing the question she hadn't dared to ask. "The answer is simple: a contingency spell that I prepared before visiting Zanhoriloch. I was expecting something like that little surprise you gave the aboleth matriarch, though I'm surprised you were willing to part with one of your beads of force. Still, it served its purpose, I suppose."
"What contingency spell?" Quenthel asked, still not understanding.
Valas, having quickly recovered from the shock of seeing Quenthel alive, bit off a chunk of fungus loaf and chewed. Danifae sprang to her feet and clambered down the shelf of rock toward Quenthel, exclaiming her relief and joy at the fact that her mistress was alive. Quenthel stared at Pharaun, ignoring both the lesser priestess-who was kneeling before her in a bow-and Jeggred, who was crowding close behind her to stare over her shoulder.
"You see?" Jeggred grunted, his foul breath hot in her ear. "He came back."
"Before teleporting to Zanhoriloch I cast a number of spells," Pharaun explained at last. "One of them was a contingency that would teleport me back to these tunnels if certain events occurred. I made the condition simple, and specific. The spell was triggered the moment an aboleth-Oothoon, as it turned out-tried to eat me."
Oothoon ate him? K'Sothra asked.
Be silent! Yngoth shot back. Then, to Quenthel, the viper said, Tell him you knew this would happen-that you were counting on his resourcefulness.
Quenthel smiled and said, "I expected no less of you, Master Pharaun. You are truly resourceful."
Pharaun returned the smile with eyes just as cold as Quenthel's. The looks they exchanged made it clear that knives had been drawn-and would be plunged home when the time was right.
"Thank you," Pharaun said, acknowledging her false compliment. "You are wiser… Mistress… than I thought. How clever of you to escape the aboleth. Your 'death' was in fact a ruse of the highest order. You have the very mind of a demon, when it comes to trickery, and I commend you for it. No doubt you managed to get the location of the ship out of Oothoon, in return for my life?"
Quenthel frowned. Had the mage deliberately hissed when using her title? It was almost as if he suspected the idea had come from her serpents all along. Which it only partially had. The vipers had made a few suggestions, it was true, but it had been Quenthel who had pulled everything together, who had seen the pattern those suggestions wove.
Of course it was your idea, Hsiv soothed.
We are but your servants, added Yngoth.
You are a priestess of the great Spider Queen, and we bow to your wisdom in all things, Zinda said.
Quenthel nodded and absently stroked the largest viper's head.
K'Sothra twisted around to look at Hsiv and said, But she-
Silence, the elder viper interrupted.
Yes, silence, Quenthel snapped, her irritation rising to the surface once more. I can barely hear myself think, with all of you talking at once.
She squeezed the rest of the way into the cavern, Jeggred following close behind.
"I did discover the location of the ship of chaos," she told Pharaun and the others. "It went down in the