"Jeggred."

Pharaun blinked, wondering if he'd heard Quenthel correctly.

"Jeggred," she repeated. "We'll use his blood. You can draw the summoning diagram with that."

"Ah. ." Pharaun cursed silently as he realized that Quenthel was, unfortunately, right. The blood of a draegloth could indeed bind a demon, but only one: the demon who had sired Matron Mother Baenre's half-demon son. The demon that was Jeggred's father.

Pharaun had no desire to meet him, in the flesh or otherwise, but he could see he had little choice in the matter. Not if he wanted to maintain his delicate balancing act of apparent loyalty to Lolth?necessary if he was to keep his position as Master of Sorcere. Just as Valas had done, Pharaun bowed.

"As you command, Mistress," he said?with just enough of a sarcastic twist on the final word to remind her that her title was a hollow one. Mistress of Arach-Tinilith she might be, back in Menzoberranzan, but he was hardly one of her quivering initiates. He swept a hand in the direction Valas had indicated earlier. "Let's do the spellcasting below ground, shall we? I'd like to get out of this wretched sunshine."

As Valas and Quenthel set off, Pharaun pretended to follow them. He paused, picked up a twig, and used it to collect a bit of spiderweb from the trail. Lolth might be silent, but the sticky nets woven by her children were still useful; spiderweb was a component in more than one of his spells. Tucking the web-coated twig into a pocket, he hurried after the others.

Chapter Two

Halisstra stood on top of the bluff, staring out across the forest. Snow-blanketed trees stretched as far as the eye could see in every direction, here and there dimpled by a lake of an impossibly bright blue or divided by a road as neat and straight as a part through hair. For the first time, Halisstra understood what the word «horizon» meant. It was that distant line where the dark green of the forest met the eye-hurting, white-streaked blue of the sky.