"What of it?" the wizard asked, his voice sounding as a whisper in her ear too.

"You don't need him," she said.

"Yes, I do," replied the mage. "It's a ship of chaos, Aliisza, and I'm a drow who isn't much for boats. I've never piloted one of these things before. Probably no drow in history ever has."

"It's not that hard," she explained. "The ship is alive. You simply will it to go where you want."

"It's that easy?" Pharaun asked, skeptical.

Aliisza watched the draegloth shred the weakened uridezu with a flurry of claws and fangs and said, "After a fashion, yes."

Barely missing a beat, the half-demon turned on the invisible wall and went at it with claw and fang, wild and feral. The sight made Aliisza's heart race.

The uridezu captain was cowering behind the wall. He didn't bother trying to pretend he didn't know what the draegloth was going to do to him if he got through the invisible barrier.

"Let the draegloth have him, darling," Aliisza said as her spell began to fade. "We can pilot the ship together."

Pharaun opened a dimensional rift and stepped through. In an instant he was standing on the deck of the ship of chaos next to the paralyzed priestess and directly under the hovering, unseen alu-fiend. She began to sink toward him.

"Jeggred," the drow wizard said to the draegloth, "stop it. Stop it, now. We need him."

The wizard turned to the high priestess, who stood, her hand dripping with uridezu gore. The snakes at the end of her whip hissed at Pharaun, warning him away.

"Mistress," he said to her, "tell him to stop it."

"She's paralyzed," Aliisza whispered in his ear, close enough then to do it without a spell.

Pharaun didn't flinch but smiled and said, "He won't listen to me."

"I told you it's all right, Pharaun," whispered the alu-fiend, "we don't need him."

"We?" he asked.

Aliisza blushed, though Pharaun still couldn't see her.

"If Raashub can pilot this vessel," she asked, "why can't we? Could it be that hard?"

Pharaun drew in a deep breath and let it out in a sigh.

"He's only going to keep defying me anyway, isn't he?" Pharaun asked.

"Who are you. ." Quenthel said, her joints jerking as she recovered from the uridezu's paralyzing bite, ". . talking to?"

"Wouldn't you, in his place?" Aliisza whispered, ignoring the high priestess.

Pharaun turned to her and looked her in the eyes, though she was sure he wasn't able to see her. He winked at her then turned back to the priestess.

"Jeggred means to kill the captain," he said.

"Let him," the priestess replied as she scanned the deck apparently looking for something with which to clean the blood off her.

"Well," Aliisza whispered into the wizard's ear, "it's her idea now, isn't it?"

Pharaun waved a hand and dropped the wall.

The draegloth leaped onto the uridezu captain. They both went over the rail. The chain that bound the uridezu to the deck—and to the material plane—snapped as if it were made of mushroom stem. There was a huge, echoing splash that sent lake water rolling onto the deck to mingle with the spilled demon blood.

Aliisza hovered over them as Pharaun and Quenthel ran to the rail and looked over into the black water. Bubbles peppered the surface, and there were ripples that made it obvious that some violence was occurring below the surface.

Then the bubbles stopped. The ripples played themselves out, and there was nothing.

"Go after them," the priestess said to Pharaun.

Aliisza caught herself before she laughed out loud.

Pharaun raised an eyebrow, looked at the priestess, and said, "I'm afraid I had to cancel the spell that allowed me to breathe underwater."

The priestess turned on him angrily, but any further discussion was stopped by the sound of another splash. Something arced out of the water and thumped onto the deck. The uridezu captain's head rolled to the other side of the ship and came to rest looking blankly up at nothing.

"Well," Quenthel breathed, glancing at Pharaun, "never mind."

The draegloth climbed slowly onto the deck behind the two dark elves. The half-demon shook himself hard, spraying water all over Pharaun and Quenthel. The two dark elves turned to regard the draegloth.

"That," the half-demon rumbled, "was almost worth the wait."

Danifae wanted them to meet her in a ruined temple on the edge of a swamp, on the east bank of which a wide river emptied into a sea. Halisstra spent the first night's walk explaining to Ryld what most of those words meant. By sunrise the first day, they had made the coast. The sight of the seemingly endless expanse of cold gray water took Halisstra's breath away. Like most of the rest of the World Above, it had made Ryld uncomfortable, even nervous. Halisstra was confident that he'd eventually get used to it, even grow to like it. He had to.

They followed the western shore of what the surface dwellers called the Dragon Reach for two long nights' march, using Ryld's keen senses, Halisstra's bae'qeshel,and Eilistraeen magic to avoid fellow travelers and unexpected dangers. In the hours before sunrise of the third day they stood at the bank of the wide Lis river delta, the Dragon Reach spreading out in angry, windswept white and gray to their right. To their left—north—was the river and intermittent woods and rolling, snowy hills. The weather was dark and bitterly cold, and Halisstra had to use spells to keep them from losing fingers and toes.

"We have to cross that?" Ryld asked, though he knew the answer.

They were concealed in a copse of sparse, leafless trees. The river delta crawled with boats of all sizes. Halisstra had never seen such vessels. Most bobbed on the angry waves, lanterns on their decks swaying in the chill wind. The drow caught the occasional glimpse of an armed human pacing the decks, wary of what, Halisstra couldn't imagine.

"It's an abandoned temple," Halisstra told him again. "An old temple to the filthy orc god Gruumsh. Danifae said it sits at the western edge of a vast swamp … a flooded place where water covers the vegetation, and many dangerous things hunt. The swamp is on the other side of the river."

Ryld nodded and continued to study the water as the sun's glow began to kiss the horizon.

"Would you know how to work one of those boats?" Halisstra asked.

The weapons master shook his head.

"Then we'll need help getting across," said the priestess. "It's too far and too cold to swim, and we'll attract too much attention using spells. If we keep our piwafwis up and over our heads, a less observant ferryman might not mark us as dark elves."

Ryld let out a sigh that told her he doubted that was possible but that he would try anyway.

They set out along the river's edge, working their way slowly northward in the pre-dawn gloom. Ryld stopped her occasionally to look around or study a boat that was either sitting on or adrift close to the riverbank. He never bothered to explain why he rejected first one then another and another, and Halisstra didn't ask.

Finally, they came upon a wide, square-keeled boat with a single long oar attached to a tall pole. The vessel had been pulled up on the riverbank, and a few feet away there was the indistinct lump of some humanoid creature asleep on the coarse sand. He'd built a fire before he drifted off to unconsciousness, and it sat next to him, the last of the embers quickly fading.

Ryld moved to within a few inches of the ferryman without making a sound. The weapons master slowly, silently drew his short sword and held it in a loose, easy grip. He crouched next to the humanoid, and the sleeper let out an odd sort of sustained, rumbling cough. Ryld half stood, looked at Halisstra, and shrugged. Halisstra returned the gesture. She had no idea what the sound could signify except that maybe the man—if it was a man—was choking.