There were no reefs in Waterdeep harbor, no kelp forests or gardens, and despite the concerted efforts of all those living above and below the waterline, an unpleasant taste or texture wasn't uncommon. Shemsen never forgot he was a refugee. Even his home-quarters reminded him. When sea elves first sought sanctuary here, the mage-guild had carved straight-lined niches into the cliffs that gave the harbor its name. A woven net was fastened over the niche, lest the scouring tides steal what little he'd accumulated during his ten-year exile.
Shemsen shared the niche with another sea elf. Eshono had been shark-mauled during their long retreat to Waterdeep. Their surviving healer had done her best, but what Eshono had needed most, a month's rest and regular meals, were beyond provision. Eshono's leg had withered. He got around well enough in the harbor, but he couldn't handle the long patrols that the refugees claimed as both right and obligation. Instead, he'd trained himself as an advocate who labored on the lubber's dry ground, mediating the disputes and confusions that plagued the sea elf refugees in their safe, but utterly strange, sanctuary.
They were an odd pair, Shemsen and Eshono, with little in common but a destroyed village and a harrowing journey to cold water. These days, though, that was enough.
To Peshhet," Eshono said, saluting the dead sea elf with a paste-filled shell. "While we live, we remember him."
He swallowed the paste. Shemsen mirrored the other sea elf's movements.
"I tell you, my friend, you must take a wife before there's no one left to remember us," Shemsen joked bleakly.
Him, Shemsen the Drifter, telling jokes! His gill slits fluttered in disbelief. Against all odds, he'd come to think of crippled Eshono as a friend.
"When you do," Eshono replied, scooping another portion of paste from the bowl floating between them. "And not a day sooner."
Too old."
"How old? Four hundred? Five?"
"I feel older," Shemsen replied honestly.
"All the more reason. Take a wife. Make a family before it's too late."
Shemsen lowered his head, a gesture most refugees understood. All carried scars and secrets and guilt for surviving what so many others had not. Shemsen had more than most. His friendship, such as it was, with Eshono survived because the other man had a keen understanding of where the uncrossable boundary lay.
"I have salve," Eshono said, changing the subject. He retrieved a pot from beneath his hammock. "I got it from one of the lubber temples. It's not as good as Auld Dessinha made, but it seals you up. This one's almost empty. Take what's left, if you wish."
Eshono had lost so much meat to the shark that his wound would never quite heal. His over-taut skin seeped and cracked whenever he exerted himself. He went through pots of salve and had become a connoisseur of priests, healers, and potions.
Shemsen, who'd been slashed to the bone in several places, accepted the fist-sized pot. "I'm going out."
"So soon? Your body needs rest-"
"My mind needs it more. I'll be back when I'm back." Shemsen took up his trident and kicked toward the open corner of the netting. He was halfway through before turning back to say, "Thanks for the salve. You're a good man, Eshono. Don't follow me."
"I wouldn't ever," Eshono assured him, a look of boyish anxiety across his face. "Be careful, Shemsen. We're so few now. Everyone's precious."
Shemsen kicked free of the niche. His thoughts were heavy, and he sank down and down, until he passed the deepest of the niches. Here, a man needed a lantern to see past his own feet, unless his eyes weren't his only navigation senses. Of course, such a man who didn't rely on his eyes, even though he might look exactly like a sea elf, couldn't possibly be a sea elf.
Shemsen daubed a bit of Eshono's paste on the least of his gouges. A man who wasn't a sea elf couldn't tolerate Auld Dessinha's salves. But a lubber's salve-a pitchy salve that stung but didn't burn-wouldn't harm him if it didn't harm Eshono. Shemsen slathered his wounds and let the emptied jar sink to the harbor bottom. When the sting was gone, he swam away.
Ships cast shadows through the water. Shemsen hid in darkness until he reached the main channel. Stealth, even deception, was habit with his kind. No one, including Eshono, suspected him. Entering Waterdeep for the first time, he'd been touched by one of Faerun's mighty mages-all the refugees were before they were granted sanctuary. He'd raised his heartbeat, relaxed his skin, and expected to die, but the mage had passed him through.
And why not? In the water and above, most folk didn't believe his kind could exist. A sahuagin shaped like a sea elf? That was a cautionary tale for disobedient children. Among sahuagin, the elf-shaped malenti were tolerated, rarely, because sahuagin needed spies. Even among sahuagin the elf shape was accounted a curse rather than a blessing. Hatchlings were swum through the gardens where malenti quartered and trained.
Give glory to Sekolah that He provides all that His worshipers need to serve Him. Give thanks to Sekolah that He did not shape me malenti.
The word itself meant "grotesque" and Sekolah in His wisdom, if not His mercy, understood that malenti torment should not endure for long. The elf-shape was lethal. By the measure of sun and tide, Shemsen was younger than Eshono, yet Eshono was counted a youth and Shemsen for a man nearing the end of his prime. In his bones, Shemsen felt older still.
Merfolk appeared overhead. Pilots, it was their job to guide the ships through the channel to open water. Shemsen dived to avoid the eddies as the rudder beat against the estuary current. Safe below the roiled water, he swam toward Deepwater Isle, and the underwater lighthouse that marked the rift called Umberlee's Cache.
With Fleetswake scarcely a tenday away, folk of all types were making preparations for the moment when Waterdeep made its annual gift to Umberlee, Goddess of the Sea. Twenty barges, maybe more, had been lashed and anchored into a ring above the lighthouse. Already they rode low in the water, laden with offerings from landlubbers and sailors, guilds and shops, wizards and priests.
It was no different below. Most of the sea folk passed their tokens up to the barges or tied them to the great funnel net being strung even now below the hulls. On Pleetswake Eve, when the offerings were cast into the water, every sea-dweller would swim to the net and make sure nothing drifted free. There was no worse omen than a gift meant for Umberlee not falling into Her Cache.
Lubbers arranged their pantheon in alliances and tried-for the sake of their fears-to bind Umberlee in a controllable place. Those who dwelt in the sea knew better. No sea-dweller worshiped the Queen of the
Oceans. She was the oceans personified, and She always triumphed.
Net weavers hailed Shemsen as he approached. Did he know where he was? Was he lost? Inebriated? Bent on self-destruction? He told them, in words gleaned from the rough edges of the harbor, to tend their own affairs. A few responded in kind. A sea elf-a woman he didn't know-hauled the funnel net aside, allowing him to swim through an as-yet-unsewn seam.
"Peace to you," she called from above. "Peace for your pain."
The words were not a traditional sea elf greeting. Shemsen was impervious to those. By the time he'd left the sahuagin garden to steal a place in a sea elf village, he'd known all their traditions and despised them without exception. For almost a century he'd lived among them, his malaise and nausea relieved only when he slipped away to drop a cunningly knotted string where another sahuagin might find it. He wore his orders around his neck and the sea elves- the thrice-damned fools-admired his treachery so much they'd ask him to fashion similar ornaments for them.
Then, on a moonless night when the sea had been too quiet, miasma, like ink from all the cuttlefish that had ever swum, had descended on the village. It clung to gills and nostrils alike. Suffocation wasn't the worst part. The miasma had talons, or teeth, or knives- Shemsen never knew which. He never saw what slashed at him. He'd assumed it was some new boon the sahuagin priestesses had sought from Sekolah. Certainly, he'd survived because he was sahuagin, tougher than any sea elf and blessed with true senses beneath his malenti skin.
Shemsen had expected to find sahuagin beyond the miasma, but there were only sharks so wrought with blood frenzy that no malenti could hope to dominate them. It had taken Shemsen's remaining strength to resist their call as they tore through the sea elf survivors. He couldn't say, then or now, why he'd resisted, except that however much Shemsen had despised his neighbors, he hadn't wanted to be anyone's last living vision.
Exhausted from his private battle, he'd fallen to the sea floor in a stupor. When he'd opened his eyes again the miasma was gone and he was neither alone nor among sahuagin. A handful of villagers had survived. They were numb and aimless with grief. Shemsen had easily made himself their leader and led them west with the prevailing current, toward the sahuagin village he hadn't seen in decades. He anticipated the honor that would fall around his shoulders when he, a malenti, finished what the miasma and sharks had left undone.
Ten days later, they swam above deserted, ruined coral gardens. A year, at least, had passed since Shemsen's kin had swum through their ancient home and he, suddenly more alone than he'd imagined possible, did not tell his look-alike companions what had happened. True, there had been no entwined instructions waiting for him the previous spring, but that hadn't been unusual. In Shemsen's centuries of spying on the sea elves, he'd often gone four years, even five or six without contact. He'd never considered that something might be wrong.
He'd never know what happened to his kin. If there'd been survivors, none had thought to leave him a message. Shemsen didn't think there had been sur vivors. Knowing what had been there, he saw the scars of violence and destruction. Sahuagin did war against each other, for the glory of Sekolah, who decreed that only the best, the strongest and boldest, were meant to survive, but in none of the many tales Shemsen knew by heart did sahuagin abandon what they'd won or lay it to waste.
It had seemed possible that both villages, sahuagin and sea elf, had fallen to an unknown enemy, a shared enemy. A mortal mind did not want to imagine an enemy that was shared by sahuagin and sea elves.
Shemsen hadn't embraced the sea elves that day above the ruined sahuagin village. Neither compassion nor mourning were part of the sahuagin nature, which was Shemsen's nature, if not his shape. Still, a sahuagin alone was nothing and faced with a choice between nothing and sea elves, Shemsen chose the elves. He made them his own, his sacred cause, and led them north, to fabled Waterdeep. By the time they arrived, his loathing had been transformed into something that approached friendship.
So he rolled over in the water and called, "And peace with you, for your pain," to the woman before making himself heavy in the water.
Shemsen had heard that as recently as sixteen years ago, the Cache was a maelstrom that spewed or sucked, depending on the tide, and chewed up any ship unfortunate enough to blunder across it. Then the merfolk had arrived in Waterdeep. In the name of safety, their shamans had gotten rid of the maelstrom and poked a ship-sized hole in a goddess's bedchamber.
That was the merfolk. Half human, half fish, half mad. Except they, too, were refugees with tales of black water and annihilation weighing their memories. Perhaps they'd known exactly what they were doing.
Shemsen sank until the water changed. Heavy, cold, yet tangy with salt, it was the richest water he'd ever drawn across his gills. He knew that had there been light, he would have been able to see to the bottom. If there had been light…
The darkness within Umberlee's Cache went beyond an absence of light. There was silence, too, in Shemsen's ears and in those sensitive places along his flanks. He couldn't tell if he was drifting up, down, or sideways.
Malenti!
A woman's voice, beautiful and deadly, surrounded Shemsen, and checked his movement through the water.
Malenti, why are you here? Why do you disturb me? Does the Shark not hear your feeble prayers?
Shemsen gathered his wits, but the Sea Queen didn't need his words. She flowed into his mind and took answers from his memory.
Shemsen had told the truth to the mermen two days earlier, just not all of it. Sahuagin had ambushed his patrol. The sea elves were outnumbered and they were doomed, yet Shemsen fought with them until it was just him and two sahuagin left. It had been a better showing than he'd expected from the likes of Peshhet. One of the remaining sahuagin was a yellow-tailed priestess.
When she gave him her full attention, she knew. By Sekolah's grace, the priestess had recognized Shemsen for what he was.
Malenti!
She had the god-given power to compel him and, because he'd rather die a free-willed man than a priestess's plaything, Shemsen had thrown down his weapon.
Why had he fought them, she'd demanded, and Shemsen had answered defiantly that she was not from his village, his baron, or his prince. He owed more to the enemies he lived among than to a stranger. She demanded the name of his village. Shemsen spat it out along with the names of his baron and prince.
"Prince Kreenuuar chose poorly," the priestess had said. "He became meat and all those who followed him became meat. You serve Prince Iakhovas now."
Shemsen hadn't recognized the name, which meant little, except that Iakhovas wasn't a sahuagin name, not even a malenti name. He couldn't easily imagine a prince with such an unseemly name, until he thought about Prince Kreenuuar's fate and the black cloud.
"Choose wisely, malenti!" the priestess had said, threatening Shemsen with the shark's tooth amulet she wore against her chest.
Had he truly believed he'd escape his malenti fate? Sekolah had called up the sahuagin to magnify His glory. He'd called up the malenti to magnify the sahuagin. Shemsen could serve this new Prince Iakhovas and his priestess freely… or he would serve as a spell-blinded thrall. Pride that only another malenti might understand had raised Shemsen's elven chin, exposing his soft, unsealed throat as he clasped his hands behind his back in submission.
The priestess accepted Shemsen's wise choice, adding only slightly to the wounds he'd already borne. She'd reminded him that he was a spy, then asked what he knew about Waterdeep.
"Prince Iakhovas comes to teach those who dwell on the land a lesson about the sea. We are charged with finding a safe passage for a single surface ship and fliers. How do we counter these defenses?"
The priestess had pointed at the shimmering beacon and with no further persuasion Shemsen had told her how the power she wielded with Sekolah's blessing could destroy it. Shemsen did not add that one surface ship and all the sahuagin-crewed fliers in the sea would not be enough against the might of Waterdeep. He doubted the priestess would have believed him. One of the few traits sea elves and sahuagin shared was a bred-in-the-bone disdain toward magic, and it was magic that fueled Waterdeep's greatest defenses.
Shemsen thought he'd done well, serving the unknown prince without truly betraying the cold water harbor that had become his most unlikely home, but the priestess hadn't finished.
The ship and the fliers aren't all. Prince Iakhovas commands a second army…"
Many years had passed since Shemsen's survival had depended on his ability to read emotions from a sahuagin's rigid face, still he would swear-even to the goddess as She ransacked his memories-that the priestess feared the new prince's second army, and feared the prince even more. He'd begun to wonder what he'd do if she'd demanded that he swim away with her. Death, he'd thought, might be a wiser choice than serving a prince who put that kind of fear in a yellow-tailed priestess.
In the end, she hadn't asked him to make that choice.
"Prince Iakhovas commands the attack in eleven days' passing. There will have been a festival?"
Shemsen had nodded, and wondered how many other malenti were spying in Waterdeep. "The Eve of Fleetswake. The harbor will be thronged and drunk. A good time for a surprise attack."
"Of course," the priestess had countered, reminding Shemsen of the contempt properly shaped sahuagin directed at malenti. "I will wait for you here as the sun sets after this Fleetswake, and you will guide the second army into the harbor. Fail me, and Sekolah will find you-in death. He will find you and bring you to Prince Iakhovas."
The memory echoed hi Shemsen's mind, overriding the scenes that followed: the destruction of the beacon, the feast on fallen comrades. He'd been gone too long. His gut rebelled against the taste of sentient flesh. He'd chosen to die rather than serve Prince Iakhovas. Yet Shemsen had not told the whole truth to the mermen, nor spilled his conscience to the harbor guard. With the priestess's dire threats swirling hi his memory, Shemsen had come here, to Umberlee.
Umberlee showed no mercy. With blinding, numbing speed She unraveled the strands of Shemsen's life back to the hatchling pools and the garden where he'd learned what it meant to be malenti. She compelled him to relive the black-cloud night in such detail that he cried out and lost consciousness. He recovered with the strange name, Iakhovas, vibrating in his skull and a thumb-size conch shell hung before his eyes, glowing with its own light.
Take it.
Shemsen needed both hands to grasp the goddess's token, but as soon as its warmth was against his flesh the darkness was lifted. He saw himself in a chamber of wonders: of gold and gems enough to sate the greediest pirate, of weapons to stir the blood of any warrior, and magic of the most potent sort. In the corners of his eyes, Shemsen saw life, men and women stripped naked and helpless. He closed bis eyes, but the images lingered.
Ask no questions, the goddess warned. You will do as Sekolah expects. You may guide the priestess, her prince, and his army to the harbor's heart with My blessing. Fear not, you will know the moment to reveal My gift. You will lead them to Me, and I will reward them.
Then come to Me yourself, malenti, for your own reward.
Return to me.,
A man's mind was never meant to hold the voice of a goddess, much less Her mirth. The insensate blackness returned. Shemsen awoke in his own niche, his own hammock. Eshono hovered beside him, a lantern in one hand and a wad of kelp in the other.
"Shemsen? Shemsen? You've given us all a scare. Tell me you know me."
1 know you, Eshono," Shemsen whispered. He tried to rise, but lacked the strength. "How long?" he asked. "How did I get here?" His last clear memory was of the Cache and Umberlee's voice in his head. Seizing Eshono's wrists, Shemsen hauled himself out of the hammock. "What day is it?"
"The harbor guard found you days ago, drifting near the docks."
"Days!" Shemsen shivered, and not because of the cold, outgoing tide flowing past their niche. "What day is it?"
"You've lain here like the dead for six days, and you'd been missing five days-"
"The day, man! Tell me what day it is. Have I missed Fleetswake?"
Eshono tried to pull away, but Shemsen's strength was already returning.
"It's Fleetswake morning, Shemsen. The offerings were made last night. Umberlee is placated for another year and Waterdeep is drunk with celebration."
"It's not too late… I must go." He released the sea elf and realized, belatedly, that he was naked. "My garb! Eshono, was I like this when you found me?"
"I didn't find you, friend,''
"Was I empty-handed? Pray to all your gods, Eshono, that I was not found empty-handed."
The sea elf's eyes widened dangerously. "You were fully garbed when the guards brought you here, but your hands were empty. There was a bag, though…" Eshono gave a kick to the slatted crates where they kept their belongings. "I didn't open it."
Shemsen snatched the small sack from the crate, tore the knot, and shook the contents out. The small conch shell, Umberlee's gift, drifted toward the net. He caught it. Unnaturally warm in his hand, the shell rejuvenated Shemsen completely.
And just as well, the ruined beacon was a day's swim away, even with the tide on his heels. He dressed quickly in eel skin leathers, ignoring Eshono's pleas that he needed rest, food, and a visit to the healers. When he'd strung the small sack to his belt and snugged his belt around his waist, Shemsen took up his trident.
"Wait!" the sea elf protested.
Shemsen brought the tines level with Eshono's heart.
"Listen to me, Shemsen, you're not well. Come with me. We'll go to the temple."
Shemsen shook his head slowly, "Move aside, Eshono. I don't want to hurt you, but I have to leave."
Eshono made a wise choice and drifted to the other interior corner. Two kicks and Shemsen was outside the net, which he drew up and hooked over the pegs. It was a strictly symbolic act. The net was meant to confine objects, not elves, but the meaning wasn't lost on the pale, wide-eyed Eshono.
"Whatever happens tonight," Shemsen said earnestly, "know that I have come to think of you as a friend, as I had never imagined I would have a friend, and I would be angry-unhappy-if I thought something happened to you. Stay here. Lie low, and be safe."
"What are you talking about?" Eshono shouted after him, but Shemsen had found the estuary current and was headed for open water.
The conch shell restored Shemsen whenever his strength faltered, and he used it often. Remembering what the priestess had said about the sahuagin plans, Shemsen took a longer route that steered him clear of both ship channels and long-range patrols.
The sun was setting when he emerged from a shortcut rift. Its light turned the overhead surface into a dazzling mirror pocked with dark splotches. Shemsen was heaving too hard-drawing too much water over his labored gills-to focus his eyes clearly. He dug out the shell and clutched it against his heart. Calmed and restored, he looked up again.
One ship, yes-a wallowing pentekonter with a gaping hole amidships where its sahuagin crew could arrive and depart without breathing air. Behind the pentekonter, a single file of oval, wooden fliers, each capable of holding several hundred warriors. Shemsen did the arithmetic. Waterdeep would survive-he'd seen demonstrations of what the lords of the city could bring to a battle-but the harbor would run red first.
And this, if Shemsen believed the priestess, was only the first army. He shaped a prayer to the Sea Queen and breathed it into the conch shell.
Then, what? He could have swum to a working beacon and told them that several thousand sahuagin were headed up the main channel. Assuming he was believed, the beacons could give Waterdeep a few hours to prepare. What could even Khelben Black-staff, his Lady, Maskar Wands, Piergeiron Paladinson, and all their ilk do to forestall the sahuagin attack, Shemsen asked himself. Notions leaped to his mind, but none stronger than the memory of Umberlee's voice.
You will do as Sekolah expects…
Shemsen rose from the seaweed and swam toward the outpost. The yellow-tailed priestess was waiting. She berated him for being late. Between his kind and hers, it was usually wisest to answer contempt with contempt. He snarled that he saw no signs of a second army.
There were others, the priestess admitted, leading the second force across open water. They weren't expected until twilight. Then they'd await a signal from Prince Iakhovas.
The conch shell weighed like iron against Shemsen's hip. You will know the moment… Did Umberlee expect him to intercept the prince's signal? No. You will lead them to me…
The priestess-she gave her name as Quaanteel offered Shemsen meat. He declined and settled against the same stones where he'd waited for the mermen. With a final, reddish flash, the day ended. Night gloom settled quickly as clouds massed above to block the moon and stars. Sekolah's power did not reach above the waves, but Umberlee could summon a storm, if She chose.
And so could any great mage of Waterdeep.
Shemsen nestled deeper into his lair. The sea was cold and full of shadows. Every slight change in the water brought them all to attention. The priestess invariably looked to the southwest, so Shemsen chose a different stone and spotted the army himself.
The shapes Shemsen watched were wrong for surface ships or fliers. They didn't seem to be on or near Hie surface, either. It was almost as if Prince lakho-vas' second army were a school of giant fish. Sahuagin kept sharks, and some good-sized sharks at that, but not giants and not this far north. The only giants that swam in these cold waters were whales. If the prince had persuaded whales to swim against Waterdeep then, perhaps, the city was in trouble.
Quaanteel leaped up. She funneled her webbed hands around her mouth and emitted a series of chirps and clicks, less than words or language, but enough to reach the vanguard of the second army and bring it to a halt before she led Shemsen and several other sahuagin out to meet it.
Three priestesses of considerable rank swam out to meet them. Quaanteel engaged the largest of them in an animated, private conversation that, from Shemsen's distance, did not seem to go well on either side. He had an idea why they might be arguing. The shapes weren't ships or fliers. As best he could make out, the second army was composed of abyssal beasts. He counted aboleths and dragon turtles near the front and had a bad feeling there was worse swimming in the rear.
Fierce as they were, sahuagin steered clear of the abyssals and none of the abyssals were known to school together. Their combined presence implied that a power greater than, or at least significantly different from Sekolah was involved in this attack. That, in turn, implied a few things about Prince Iakhovas, things no self-respecting priestess would accept without an argument.
The men who'd swum with Quaanteel stayed well away from the quarreling priestesses. Those who'd swum with the second army did likewise. There weren't many times when being malenti brought advantages, but this was one of them. Shemsen frog-kicked his way into their conversation. Eight angry, silver eyes focused on his elflike face.
"Go away," Quaanteel commanded.
"Impossible. You named me your guide to Water-deep harbor. If I'm to succeed-for the glory of Sekolah-I must know what I'm meant to guide through the channel currents. I seek only to serve you well, most favored one."
There was a chance Quaanteel was unfamiliar with sarcasm, and there was a chance she understood it perfectly and meant to put it to her own use. Either way, she flashed her teeth before turning to the larger priestesses.
"The malenti speaks the truth. A guide must know what he is guiding. Show him," she demanded.
If he lived past midnight, which he very much doubted, Shemsen knew he'd never forget swimming among the abyssals. It wasn't just the aboleths, dragon turtles, great crabs and seawolves, eyes of the deep, sea snakes and giant squids massed in one small space, though that was eerie and unnerving in itself. At every heartbeat, Shemsen expected them to come alive with a viciousness that would put blood frenzy to shame, but the beasts were oblivious to their neighbors and surroundings, enthralled by Prince lakho-vas, or so the large priestess explained in an anxious whisper.
"Our orders were to herd them here and wait for his signal."
Shemsen didn't know Khelben Blackstaff personally. Harbor rumor said the man was among the most powerful wizards on the land, and his consort, Lady Laeral, nearly so. Shemsen doubted that even the two of them together could hold so many beasts in thrall.
"And that signal will be?" Quaanteel asked, her fins flared in irritation.
"Prince Iakhovas said we would know it when it came."
That sounded uncomfortably like Umberlee's instructions to him! "I cannot guide these beasts once they awaken," Shemsen protested. "Begging mercy… no one could. All we can do is swim toward Waterdeep harbor until we are overtaken."
Quaanteel nodded. "That, undoubtedly, is the prince's plan. For the glory of Sekolah!" Her fist shot above her head. "The land-dwellers shall know fear as they have never known it before. Waterdeep shall be ours!"
Not ours, Shemsen thought as he sculled backward, easing his way slowly out of the uncanny school. We are bait, not even meat.
They'd all reached the same conclusion, though no one spoke aloud. The priestesses fussed with their amulets while the men stropped their weapons on the sea stone. Shemsen thought of Umberlee's conch and the insignificance of any one man's life. He settled in the silt, both eyes on the somnambulant beasts- morbid curiosity. He wanted to know what would eat him.
An hour passed, then another and another. If they'd successfully ridden the tide all the way in-and Shemsen had no reason to think they hadn't-the pen-tekonter and fliers should be near the harbor. They should have been noticed, but a wizard who could enthrall an army of abyssal beasts could delude a few pilots and guards, especially the night after Fleetswake. Shemsen wasn't worried, not any longer, not about anything. His arms grew heavy, his vision clouded.
He was suffocating in unnaturally calm water. A malenti's gill slits were relatively small. They relied on currents to speed water over their gills, or they made currents with their hands, or-when all else failed-they used the last of their strength to breach the surface. Shemsen breached like a shark-chased dolphin and gulped air like a drowning lubber.
Except for his thrashing, the air above was as calm as the water below, and just as dark. Shemsen couldn't see the storm clouds, but he felt them pressing down on the air and the ocean. There were no waves. The surface was a midnight mirror, flat and quiet. In all his life, Shemsen had never experienced the surface without a ripple.
His companions appeared nearby, ready to mock his malenti weakness but they weren't fools. They knew wizard weather when they felt it. The priestesses clutched their amulets, invoking Sekolah. Green lightning flashed in the northeast, over Waterdeep.
"Below!" the large priestess shouted.
They needed no second warning as clouds and beasts both came to life.
"Come," a smooth, cruel voice sang as the sea rose. "Obey my words and destroy my enemies. Unite with We Who Eat in our labors."
Lightning struck the surface, drawing up a wave that waited for the wind that surged out of Waterdeep. It buffeted the beasts, enraging them. One of the men struck a sea snake and disappeared. Shemsen cast aside his trident and swam against the surge. At full strength, he slid backward, into a dragon turtle's •shadow.
The cruel voice-Prince Iakhovas' voice-energized the ocean. It flowed over Shemsen's gills, seducing his senses. He saw his friend, Eshono, with a gash across tiis belly and his innards trailing red in clear water. It was an invitation to feast.
You will know the moment… You will know the moment…
Umberlee's voice came to Shemsen from the depths of his spirit, and from the southwest, on a wind that calmed the wizard weather. While others, beast and sahuagin, cast about in confusion, Shemsen withdrew the conch shell, held it against his lips, and blew.
The eyes of an evil army placed Shemsen at the center of their vision. His strength faltered. He'd hoped for a different sort of miracle, but malenti were used to disappointment. He found a rhythm-water drawn over his gills, air blown into the shell-that left little room for consciousness. His memories of
Umberlee's Cache broke free. Flowing from the conch shell, they mixed uneasily with Prince Iakhovas's commands.
"Obey my words!" the wizard's voice echoed through the sea.
Return to me… for your reward…
Images of wealth, power, and prey danced among the beasts, caressing their hot minds. The sea crackled with its own lightning as greed warred against obedience. Another moment and blood frenzy would have consumed them all, but the tide changed and, with the southwest wind behind it, rolled toward Waterdeep in a single, wall-like wave.
No choices were required. The abyssal beasts and their puny sahuagin escort rode the tidal surge while Shemsen poured his spirit into Umberlee's shell. Faster than any fish could swim, they raced up the channel, catching the last of the sahuagin fliers as they entered the harbor. The wave rose higher-too high-and began to crest.
"Destroy my enemies!" the wizard's command swirled within the wave.
Return to me… for your reward…
Shemsen's work wasn't done. When the tumbling wave had drawn even with Deepwater Isle, he blew till his innards bled. With his dying strength, Shemsen dived down, through wave, air, and harbor water, straight into Umberlee's Cache.
Cold shock ripped the shell from the malenti's grasp. His hands were numb, bloodless. The abyssals- not all of them and only a few of the sahuagin-had followed him. Enough, he thought, to insure that Waterdeep would emerge from this battle with its substantial strength intact.
Return to me…
Umberlee welcomed Shemsen with glimpses of wealth beyond measure and Her minions reaching out to the abyssals to tear them apart. He fell away from the carnage. There was a woman swimming toward him. Through fading vision, Shemsen knew her instantly.
Return for your reward.
She took Shemsen's weakening body gently in her arms. His heart stopped. There was darkness and, at the end, there was peace for one malenti.
Fire is Fire
Elaine CunningHam
30 Ches, the Year of the Gauntlet
What did you do when the Sea Devils attacked, Grandsire?
Oh, how I savored that question! I could hear it in my mind even as I ran toward the battle. The words were as real to me as the stench of smoke that writhed in the sky above the West Gate, and they rang as loudly in my mind's ear as the boom and crash of wooden beams giving way under wizard fire. No matter that the question would be many, many years in coming. A wizard's apprentice learns that all things must first be conjured in the mind.
As I ran, I conjured apace. Wouldn't the little lad's face be expectant, his eyes bright with the pride that comes of a hero's bloodline? Wouldn't the bards leave off their strumming and gather near, eager to hear once again the tale of the great wizard-that would be me-who'd fought at Khelben Arunsun's side?
That's what it would come down to, of course. That would be the first question to come to everyone's lips: What did Khelben Arunsun do during the battle? How many monsters fell to the Blackstaff's might? What spells were employed?
I must admit, I myself was most anxious to know the end of this tale.
"Above you, Sydon"
Panic infused my companion's voice, lifting it into the range normally reserved for elf maidens and small, yapping dogs. Without breaking pace, I followed the line indicated by Hughmont's pointing finger.
The threat was naught but a goodwife at the upper window of the building ahead. She was about to empty a basin of night water out into the back street-a minor hazard of city life that did not abate even during times of conflict. Hughmont was at best a nervous sort. Clearly, he was not at his best, but he was my training partner nonetheless, so I snagged his arm and spun him out of the way. He tripped over a pile of wooden crates and sprawled, but if his landing was hard at least it brought him beyond reach of the fetid splash.
A word from me sent the tumbled crates jostling into line like soldiers who'd overslept reveille. They hustled into formation, then leaped and stacked until a four-step staircase was born. I whispered the trigger word of a cantrip as I raced up the stairs, then I leaped into the air, flinging out my arms as I floated free. My exuberant laughter rang through the clamor of the city's rising panic, and why should it not? What a day this was, and what a tale it would make!
Hughmont hauled himself upright and trotted doggedly westward, coming abreast of me just as my boots touched cobblestone. The look he sent me was sour enough to curdle new cream. "You'd best not waste spells on fripperies and foolishness. You'll be needing all you've got, and more."
"Spoken like the archmage himself!" I scoffed lightly. "That bit of excitement is more danger than you'll face at the West Gate, 111 warrant."
Hugh's only response was to cast another worried glance toward the harbor. Smoke rose into the sky over southern Waterdeep, visible even in the darkness, and it carried with it the unsavory scent of charred meat and burning sailcloth. "How many ships fuel that blaze?" he wondered aloud. The harbor itself must be aboil!"
"A dismal caldron to be sure, but no doubt many sahuagin flavored the chowder," I retorted.
Not even Hughmont could dispute this excellent logic, and we hurried along in mutual silence-his no doubt filled with dire contemplation, but mine as joyfully expectant as a child on midwinterfest morn.
I will confess that I am vastly fond of magic. My lord father paid good coin to secure me a position at Black-staff Tower, and I have learned much under the tutelage of the archmage and his lady consort, the wondrous Laeral Silverhand. But not until this night did I fully understand how impatient I'd become with Lord Arunsun's cautions and lectures and endless small diplomacies. By all reports, the archmage hoarded enough power in his staff alone to drop the entire city of Luskan into the sea, yet I knew few men who could bear witness to any significant casting. The spells Khelben Arunsun used in the daily course of things were nothing more than any competent but uninspired mage might command. Mystra forgive me, I was beginning to view the archmage's famed power in the same light as I might a courtesan of reputed beauty and unassailable virtue: of what practical use was either one?
Then we rounded the last corner before West Wall Street, and the sight before me swept away any disgruntled thoughts. The Walking Statue was at long last making good on its name!
Each footfall shook the ground as the behemoth strode down the northernmost slope of Mount Water-deep. My spirits soared. No one but Khelben could create a stone golem ninety feet tall, fashioned of solid granite with an expression as stolidly impassive as that of the archmage himself.
But the statue faltered at Jultoon Street, stopping in the back courtyard of a low-lying carriage house as if made uncertain by the swirling chaos of the panicked crowd. After a moment the great statue crouched, arms flung back and knees bent for the spring. People fled shrieking as the golem launched itself into the air. It cleared house and street and landed with a thunderous crack on the far side of Jultoon. Shattered cobblestone flew like grapeshot, and more than a few people fell to the ground, bloody and screaming, or worse, silent.
A flash of blue light darted from the gate tower, and the Walking Statue jolted to a stop. The golem glanced up at the tower and shuffled its massive feet like an enormous, chastened urchin. In apparent response to an order only it could perceive, the statue turned toward the sea. Its stone eyes gazed fixedly upon thi cliffs below.
"I wonder what it sees," murmured Hughmont.
I had no such thoughts, nor eyes for anything by the source of that arcane lighting. It came from the West Gate, a massive wooden barricade that soarec fully three stories high, surrounded on three sides by i stone lintel fancifully carved into the face of an enormous, snarling stone dragon. Atop this gate was i walkway with crenellations and towers contrived to look like a crown upon the dragon king's head. Wizards lined the walkway, flaming like torches with magica fire. Brightest of all burned my master, the great arch mage.
I broke into a run, no longer caring whether Hugh mont kept pace or not. My only thought was to take my place with the other battle wizards, and hi the tales that would be written of this night.
These shores stank of magic. I could smell it even before I broke clear of the water. The scent of it was bitter, and the taste so metallic and harsh that my tongue clove to the roof of my mouth. I did not remarls on this to any of my sahuagin brothers. Though I called the source of my discomfort "magic," they might name my response by another, even more despised word: fear. To me, the two were one.
I broke the surface. My inner eyelids slid closed, but not before a bright light burst against the endless dome of sky. Half blinded, I waded toward the shore.
Hundreds of sahuagin were on the sand, and scores of them already lay in smoking piles. We expected this.
We had trained for it. Avoid magic-users, storm the gate, breach the walls.
Good words, bravely spoken. They had sounded plausible when spoken under the waves, but what was not easier underwater? I felt heavy on land, dangerously slow and awkward. Even as the thought formed, my foot claws caught on a fallen sahuagin's harness and I tripped and fell to my knees.
It was a most fortunate error, for just then a bolt of magic fire sizzled over my head and seared along my back fin. I threw back my head and shrieked in agony, and none of my dying brothers seemed to think the less of me. Perhaps no one noticed. In the thin air sound lingered close and then dissipated into silence. How, then, could there be so much noise? If a hundred sharks and twice a hundred sahuagin entered blood frenzy amidst a pod of shrieking whales, the clamor might rival the din of this battle.
It took all the strength in my four arms to push myself to my feet. I stumbled toward the place where the baron, our warleader, stood tall with his trident defiantly planted as if to lay claim to this shore. Two paces more, and I saw the truth of the matter. A large, smoking hole had opened and emptied the baron's chest, and through this window I could see the writhing bodies of three more of my dying clan. One of them clutched at my leg as I passed. His mouth moved, and the sound that came forth was thin and weak without water to carry it.
"Meat is meat," he pleaded, obviously fearing that his body would be left unused on this shore.
I was hungry after the relentless journey to this city-desperately so-but the stench of burning flesh stole any thought of feeding. Meat is meat, but even good sahuagin flesh is rendered inedible by the touch of fire.
I kicked aside his clinging hand and looked around for my patrol. None had survived. All around me lay the carrion that had been sahuagin. Their once proud fins were tattered and their beautiful scales were already turning dull and soft. Meat is meat, but there were not enough sahuagin in the north seas to eat this feast. Our leaders had promised a great conquest, but there was nothing to be gained from this, not even the strength to be had from the bodies of our fallen kin.
Anger rose in me like a dark tide. Orders were orders, but instinct prompted me to turn back to the sea, to flee to the relative safety of the waves. As my eyes focused upon the black waters, what I saw drew another shriek from me. This time, the sound was triumphant.
The pounding waves stopped short of the sand, piling upon each other and building up into a massive creature born of the cold sea and magic new to Sekolah's priestesses. A water elemental, they called it. Like a great watery sahuagin it rose, and as it waded to shore each pace of its legs sent waves surging onto the black and crimson sand. The sahuagin yet in the water took heart from this. Some of them rode the waves to shore and hit the sand running. They, too, died in fire and smoke.
The water elemental came steadily on. Blue light- endless, punishing, hellish light-poured from the flaming wizards. A searing hiss filled the air as the elemental began to melt into steam. The magic that bound it faltered, and the watery body fell apart with a great splash. It sank back into the waves, and where it had stood the waters churned with heat.
For a moment I was again tempted by retreat, but there was no safety in the sea, not when steam rose from it. So I lifted one of my hands to shield my eyes from the blinding light, and I studied the gate tower.
There were many, many wizards-far more than our barons had led us to expect. In the very center stood a dark-bearded human, tall by the measure of humankind and strongly built even to my eyes. If he were a sahuagin, he would be a leader, and so he seemed to be among the humans. All the wizards threw fire, and the dark circles on the smoking sand were all about the same size-ten feet or so, the length of a sahuagin prince from head fin to tail tip. All fire killed, but the fire thrown by the tall wizard turned sahuagin into fetid steam, and melted the sand beneath them into oil-slicked glass.
I turned tail and padded northward toward those wizards who merely killed. Great piles of stinking, smoking corpses were beginning to rise. Soon they would reach the wall, and those who survived would swarm over them and into the city beyond. That part of the plan, at least, was going as expected.
As planned, no sahuagin approached the great gate. No corpses added their weight to the wall of wood. As I began to climb the mountain of carrion, I prayed to almighty Sekolah that none of the humans would fathom the reason for this.
Just then a new wizard took his place along the wall and hurried northward toward the spot I planned to breach. Judging from his size he was young. He was as small and thin as a hatchling and lacked utterly the hair that so disfigured the other humans. I was close enough now to see his face, his eyes. Despite the strangeness of his appearance, his eagerness was apparent to me. This one regarded battle with the joy of a hungry shark. A worthy foe, if any human could be so named.
Ignoring the searing pain of my burned fins, I readied myself for battle.
I raced up the winding stairs and onto the ramparts, smoothing my hand over my head to tame the curly red locks before I remembered that my head was newly shaved – I had grown tired of the taunts that had dogged me since childhood. A bald pate, which I contemplated decorating with tattoos as did the infamous Red Wizards, was more befitting a man of magic.
But the sight before me drove such trivial thoughts from my mind, freezing me in place as surely and as suddenly as an ice dragon's breath.
The sea roiled, the sand steamed, and enormous green-scaled creatures advanced relentlessly through a scene of incredible horror,
"Sydon, to me!"
Khelben Arunsun's terse command snapped my attention back to the task at hand. I edged along behind the spell-casting wizards to the archmage's side.
Before he could speak, the largest elemental I have ever seen burst from the waves like a breaching whale. Up, up it rose, until it was taller by half than even the great Walking Statue. Its shape was vaguely human in such matters as the number and placement of limbs, but never have I seen so terrifying a creature. Its wide, shark-toothed mouth was big enough to swallow a frigate. Translucent, watery fins unfurled along its arms, back, and head like great sails.
"Sweet Mystra," I breathed in awe. "Wondrous mystery, that mortals can wield such power!"
"Save it for your journal," Khelben snapped. "Hugh, mind the gate."
Hughmont hurried to the center of the dragon head rampart. He was not an accomplished mage, and his fire spells were as limited as festival fireworks-all flash and sparkle, but little substance. Even so, I had to admit that the effects he achieved were quite good. His first spell burst in the sky with rose-colored light- a titanic meadow flower budding, blooming, and casting off sparkling seed, all in the blink of an eye. It was most impressive. A few of the sea devils hesitated, and I took the opportunity to pick several of them off with small fireballs.
A spear hissed through the air. Instinctively I ducked, though it would not have hit me regardless, nor the man next to me. The man next to him was less fortunate. He jolted as the spear took him through the chest. The blow spun him around, and he lost his footing and toppled over the guard wall. He was falling still when the sea devils began tearing at him with ravenous hands.
Khelben pointed his staff at the grim tableau and shouted a phrase I'd never heard used in any magical context-though it was no doubt very common during tavern brawls. Before I recovered from this surprise, a second, greater wonder rocked me back on my heels. The dead man's wizardly robes turned crimson-no longer were they spun of silk, but fire. The flames did not seem to touch the fallen wizard, but they seared the creatures that dared lay hand on him. The sea devils blackened and almost melted, like hideous candles tossed into a smithy's forge.
The archmage seized my arm and pointed to the burning robe. "Fire arrows," he commanded, then he turned his attention to the next attack.
This was my moment, my spell-a new spell I had painstakingly committed to memory but had never had occasion to cast. I dipped into my spell bag for a handful of sand and flint pebbles, spat into it, and blew the mixture toward the sea. Excitement raced through my veins and mingled with the gathering magic-so potent a brew!-as I rushed through the chant and gestures.
The fire that enrobed the unfortunate mage exploded into a myriad of gleaming arrows, each as orange as an autumn moon and many times as bright. These flaming darts streaked out it all directions. Sea devils shrieked and writhed and died. It was quite wonderful to behold. This, then, was how my grandson's tale would start, with a partnership between the great archmage and myself to cast a devastating feint and thrust.
Before I could fully celebrate this victory, an enormous tentacle rose from the waves and slapped down on the beach. My eyes widened as my disbelieving mind tried to guess the measure of the creature heralded by that writhing limb.
Such mental feats were not required of me. Before I could expel the air gathered by my gasp of astonishment, another tentacle followed, then a third and a fourth. With heart-numbing speed the entire creature worked its way from the water. I had never seen such a thing, but I knew what it must be: a kraken, a titanic, squid-like creature reputed to possess more cunning than a gem merchant and thrice the intelligence.
The creature humped and slithered its way toward the gate. Khelben thrust his staff into my hands and began a series of rapid, fluid gestures I did not recognize and could not begin to duplicate. Silver motes sparkled in the air before us, then shot out in either direction and formed into a long, shin, solid column.
I could not keep the grin from my face. This was the Silver Lance-one of Lady LaeraPs fanciful spells.
Khelben reached out and closed his fist on empty air. He drew back his hand and pantomimed a toss. The enormous weapon followed each movement, as if it were in fact grasped by the great wizard's hand. He proved to be a credible marksman, for the lance hurtled forward with great force and all but disappeared into one of the kraken's bulbous eyes.
The creature let out a silent scream that tore through my mind in a white-hot swath of pain. Dimly I heard the shrieks of my fellow wizards, saw them fall to their knees with their hands clasped to then* ears. Dimly I realized that I, too, had fallen.
Not so the archmage. Khelben snatched the Black-staff from my slack hand and whistled it through the air as if writing runes. I could see the pattern twice- once, as my eyes perceived it, then again in the cool dark easing of the pain that gripped my mind.
The silent scream stopped, and the pain was gone. Where it had gone was apparent. The kraken thrashed wildly in an agony I understood all too well. Somehow Khelben had gathered the force of that foul mind spell and turned it back upon the creature.
The kraken seemed confused by its great pain. It began to drag itself along the sand in a hasty retreat to the sea, yet one of its flailing tentacles probed about as if seeking something important. The tentacle suddenly reared up high, then slammed straight toward the gate. I caught a glimpse of thousands of suction cups, most at least the size of a dinner plate and soim larger than a northman's battle targe, and then a greal length of the sinuous arm slammed against the wooden door and held firm. The kraken did not seem to notice this impediment to its own escape. It sank into the sea, still holding its grip on the door. Wood shriekec as the gate bulged outward.
I took this as happenstance, but my master was more versed in the ways of battle. His brow knit in con sternation as he divined the invaders' strategy.
"Brilliant," muttered Lord Arunsun. "The gate thick and well barred-no ram or fuselage could shatter it. But perhaps it can be pulled outward."
He gestured toward the Walking Statue. The golen vaulted over the city wall, and its feet sank deep into pile of sea devil corpses. Lady Mystra grant that some day the sound of that landing will fade from my ears!
With a noise distressingly like a thousand boot! pulling free of mud, the golem extricated itself an‹ strode to the shore. Huge stone fingers dug into the kraken's stretched and straining tentacle. The golen set its feet wide and began to pull, trying to rip the tentacle free of the gate-or the kraken. Terrible popping sounds filled the air as one by one the suction cups ton free of the wooden door. Then the flesh of the tentacle itself began to tear, and enormous bubbles churned thi water in explosive bursts as the submerged and possibly dying kraken struggled to complete its task. The gate bulged and pulsed in time with the creature' frantic efforts. I did not know which would yield first the gate or the kraken.
A splintering crash thrummed out, blanketing thi sounds of battle much as a dragon's roar might diminis birdsong. Great, jagged fissures snaked up the massive wooden planks of the gate. The statue redoubled its efforts. Stone arms corded as the golem strove to either break the creature's hold or rend it in twain.
Finally the kraken could bear no more. The tentacle came loose suddenly, abandoning the gate to wrap snake-like around the golem's stone face. The Walking Statue struggled mightily and dug in its heels, but it was slowly drawn out into the water, leaving deep furrows behind in the sand. The water roiled and heaved as their battle raged. Great stone arms tangled with thrashing kraken limbs for many long moments before both sank beneath the silent waves.
Lord Arunsun did not look pleased by this victory. "We are winning," I ventured.
"When there is so much death no one wins," he muttered. Too much corruption in the harbor… this sort of victory could destroy the city."
A terrible scream sliced through the air. Somehow I knew the voice, though I had never heard it raised in such fear and pain. I spun toward the sound. Finella Chandler, a lovely wench who was nearly my equal in the art of creating fire, had apparently grown too tired to control her own magic. A fireball had exploded in her hand, and she flamed like a candle. She rolled wildly down the slope of the inner wall and ran shrieking through the streets, too maddened by pain to realize that her best hope was among her fellow wizards.
A second shriek, equally impassioned, rang out from a young fellow I knew only as Tomas. He was a shy lad, and I had not known that he loved Finella. There was no doubting it now. The youth spent his magic hurling quenching spells after his dying love, but her frantic haste and his made a poor match. I shuddered as I watched Finella's last light fade from sight.
Khelben gave me an ungentle push. To the north the sahuagin have nearly broken through."
For a moment I stood amazed. This possibility ha not once occurred to me. I had no idea how I woul fight sea devils in the streets of Waterdeep. The god had gifted me with a nimble mind and a talent for th Art, but I was not a large man and I was unskilled i weapons. My fire spells would not serve in the city. All timbers and thatched roofs blazed like seasoned kirdling, and as Finella had learned to her sorrow, fire were far easier to start than to quench.
New urgency quickened my steps, and with new striousness I reviewed the spells remaining to me, prayed they would suffice. The sea devils had to be stopped now, here.
I ran past Hughmont and seized his arm. "Com with me," I said. "Frighten them with your sparkle and purchase me time."
He came along, but his hand went to his sword be! rather than his spell bag. I was alone in the possession of magic, and I spent my spells freely as we pushed northward. I tried not to contemplate what I might d when my purse was emptied.
When we reached my assigned post two dire thing occurred in one breath. Just as exhaustion dwindlei my last fireball into harmless smoke, two enormous webbed, green-black hands slapped onto the rim of th guard wall directly before me.
Six fingers, I thought numbly. The sea devils hav six fingers. The malformed hands flexed, and the crea ture hoisted itself up to eye level.
I forgot everything else as I stared into the black ness of those hideous eyes. They were empty, endless merciless, and darker than a moonless night.
So this is what death looks like, I mused, then all thought melted as mindless screams tore from my throat.
The hairless wizard began the undulating chant of a spell. It was a fearsome noise-more ringingly powerful than I would have thought possible without water to carry it. For a moment fear froze me.
A moment of weakness, no more, but the wizards were quick to exploit it. A second wizard, this one pale as a fish's underbelly, ran forward with upraised sword. This was a battle I could understand.
My first impulse was to spring onto the parapet, but I remembered that none of the humans seemed to carry my particular mutation. They all had but a single pair of arms. I held my place until the fighting wizard was almost upon me, but with my unseen hands I reached for two small weapons hooked to my harness.
He came in hard, confident. I lifted a knife to catch his descending blade. The appearance of a third arm startled him and stole some of the force from his attack. It was an easy thing to throw his sword arm high, so simple to slash in with a small, curved sickle and open his belly.
The sweet, heavy, enticing scent of blood washed over me in waves. I heaved myself up and lunged for the proffered meal. Strictly speaking, this was still an enemy and not food, but that was easily resolved. I thrust one hand deep into the human's body and tore loose a handful of entrails. Life left him instantly, and I tossed the food into my mouth.
"Meat is meat," I grunted between gulps.
Blessed silence fell as the hairless wizard ceased hi keening chant. He began to back slowly away. His eyei bulged and ripples undulated through his chest am throat. A moment passed before I recognized this strange spellcasting for what it was: sickness, horror fear. In that moment, my personal battle was as gooc as won.
Nor was I alone. Other sahuagin had breached the walls and were fighting hand-to-hand with th‹ humans on the wall. Some wizards still hurled weap ons of magic and flame, but most of them seemed tc have emptied their quivers.
Triumph turned my fear into a shameful memory. 1 gulped air and forced it into my air bladder to fuel speech. "Where is your magic fire, little wizard? It is gone, and soon you will be meat."
The wizard-now nothing but a human-turned and fled like a startled minnow. For a moment I hesitated, frozen with surprise that any warrior would turn tail in so craven a fashion. This was what their magic-wielders came down to in the end. They were as weak and as soft as any other human. This pathetic coward was the monster I had feared?
The irony of it bubbled up into laughter. Great, gulping, hissing laughter rolled up across my belly in waves and shook my shoulders. I chuckled still as I followed the cowardly not-wizard as he half ran, half fell down a winding flight of stairs.
Despite my mirth, my purpose was set. I would eat my fear, and thus regain my honor.
Sweet Mystra, what a sound! Next to that hideous laughter, everything else about the battle cacophony was as sweet music. I ran from that sound, ran from the death in the sea devil's soulless black eyes, and from the memory of brave Hughmont's heart impaled upon a sea devil's fangs.
In the end, all who fought and fell at West Gate would find the same end, the same grim and lowly fate. Be he shopkeeper or nobleman wizard, human or sahuagin, in the end there was little difference.
Behind me the sounds of booming thunder rolled across the sands. I sensed the flash of arcane lighting, the distinctive shriek of a fire elemental, but I no longer cared what magical wonders Khelben Arunsun might conjure. I no longer thought. I was animal, meat still living, and I was following animal instinct and running from death.
Death followed me through the city, running as swiftly as the sea devil behind me. The cataclysm of defensive spells had sparked more than one blaze. To my right a corduroy street caught fire, and flames licked swiftly down the row of tightly-packed logs. On the other side of the street a mansion blazed. There would be nothing of it come morning but a blackened shell, and the charred bones of the aged noblewoman who leaned out of the upper floor window, her face frantic and her hands stretched out imploringly. These things I saw, and more-more horrors than I could fit into a hundred grim tales. I noted them with the sort of wordless, mindless awareness that a rabbit might use to guide its path through a thicket as it flees the fox. Screams filled the city streets, and the scent of death, and the crackle of fire.
Fire.
For some reason, a measure of reason returned to me as my benumbed mind took note of the rising flames. I remembered all I knew of sea devils, and how it was said that they feared fire and magic above all things. That was why I had been chosen for the West Gate, why I had been summoned to the walls to fight beside the archmage. I possessed a number of fire spells. There was still one remaining to me, encased in a magic ring I always wore but had in my fear forgotten.
But where to use it? There was fire enough in the streets of my city. Ah, there was the answer. The building beside me already blazed-I could not harm it more. I tore up a set of stairs that led to a roof garden, and I could feel the heat through my boots as I ran. The sea devil followed me, its breath coming in labored, panting little hisses.
When I reached the roof I whirled to face the sahua-gin. It came at me, mindlessly kicking aside blackened stone pots draped with heat-withered flowers. All four of its massive green hands curved into grasping claws. Its jaws were parted, and blood-tinged drool dripped from its expectant fangs.
I would not run. Hughmont-the man whom I had regarded so smugly and falsely-had stood and fought when he had no magic at all remaining. I tore the small ring from my finger and hurled it at the sea devil.
A circle of green fire burst from the ring, surrounding the creature and casting a hellish sheen over its scales. From now until the day I die, I will always picture the creatures of the Abyss bathed in verdant light. The sea devil let out a fearful, sibilant cry and dropped, rolling frantically in an attempt to put out the arcane flames.
I looked about for a weapon to finish the task. There was a fire pit on the roof, and beside it several long iron skewers for roasting gobbets of meat. They would suffice.
Never had I attacked a living creature with weapons of steel or iron. That is another tale that will remain untold, but by the third skewer the task seemed easier. With the fourth I was nearly frantic in my haste to kill. The sahuagin still lived, but the green fire was dying.
Suddenly I was aware of a rumbling beneath my feet, of a dull roar growing louder. The roof began to sink and I instinctively leaped away Right into the sahuagin's waiting arms.
The sea devil rolled again, first tumbling me over it and then crushing me beneath it as it went, but never letting go. Frantic as the sahuagin was to escape the fire, it clearly intended that I should end my days as Hughmont had.
Though the creature was quick, the crumbling building outpaced its escape. The roof gave way and fell with an enormous crash to the floor far below. I felt the sudden blaze of heat, the sickening fall… and the painful jerk as we came to a stop.
Two of the sea devil's hands clasped me tightly, but the other two clung to the edge of the gaping hole. The creature's vast muscles flexed-in a moment it would haul us both away from the blaze.
It was over. No magic remained to me. I was no longer a wizard-I was meat.
My hands fell in limp surrender to my sides, and one of them brushed hard metal. It was the sickle blade that had torn Hughmont.
I grasped it, and it did not feel as strange in my hands as I'd expected. The sahuagin saw the blade to late. I thought I saw a flicker of something like r‹ spect in its black eyes as I twisted in its grasp an slashed with all my strength at the hands tha grasped the ledge. I had no more fire spells, but i mattered not.
"Fire is fire," I screamed as we plunged togethe toward the waiting flames.
Somehow, I survived that fall, those flames. The tei rible pain of the days and months that followed is als something that will never be told to my admiring de scendents. The man Sydon survived, but the grea wizard I meant to be died in that fire. Even my passioi for magic is gone.
No, that is not strictly true. Not gone, but tempered A healing potion fanned the tiny spark of life in me and gave a measure of movement back to my charrei hands. Khelben Arunsun visited me often in my con valescence, and I learned more of the truth behind tb great archmage in those quiet talks than I witnesse‹ upon the flaming ramparts of the West Gate. With hi encouragement, now I work at the making of potion and simples-magic meant to undo the ravages o magic. While there are wizards, where there is wai there will always be need for such men as I. Fire is fire and it burns all that it touches.
Grandsire, please-what did you do when the sei devils attacked?
Someday I might have sons, and their sons will asl me for the story. Their eyes will be bright with expec tation of heroic deeds and wondrous feats of magic
They will be children of this land, born of blood and magic, and such tales are their birthright.
But Lady Mystra, I do not know what I shall tell them.
Messenger to Seros
Peter Archer
10 Tarsakh, the Year of the Gauntlet
Shafts of golden sunlight drove down through the blue-green water, sparkling and flickering. Fish darted in and out, between and through them, their scales gleaming, then turning dark. Along the clean, sandy bottom, a manta glided, stirring a soft cloud of silt in its wake. Above a red and yellow coral bed, a grouper lazed in the afternoon sun, while smaller fish hovered in its shade.
The sea currents bent and changed, and the grouper started from its place and ponderously swam around the coral. A large school of glistening silverfins swayed and parted like a curtain as the merman darted through, his long, blue hair streaming behind him, his tail flicking back and forth, propelling him on. Streams of tiny bubbles flowed back from his arms and upper body. He scythed through the water and was gone. After a few moments the grouper returned to its original position, and all was as it had been.
The merman darted on. In his mind, he could hear the commands of Narros as clearly as they'd reached his ears.
"You must travel to Seres," the shaman told him. "Warn our people there of the peril of the sahuagin invasion. Tell them of the disasters that have befallen us in Waterdeep. Your message must reach them-and in a timely fashion. Otherelse they may come here only to find a sea of the dead."
"But, Narros, how can I travel there in time to do any good? Serds is hundreds of miles inland, and we are sundered from our kindred there. Even if I reached there in time, and even if they were willing to listen to me, would they really send aid?"
They must," the shaman said grimly. "This is no mere skirmish with the sea devils this tune. This time it is an age-old prophecy that rises from the depths of the sea against us. If it triumphs, all Faerun is in peril."
Narros took Thraxos's arm and guided him to the edge of the chamber. Beyond the door, seaweed eddied and swirled with the currents.
"It has been long rumored among our people that to the south of Waterdeep, in the depths of the cliffs that line the shores, there may be found passages that join in some waterway leading beneath the land. Perhaps in one of those passages you may find a dimensional gate to our brethren in the Sea of Fallen Stars. You must do the best you can. We are depending on you."
Thraxos's mouth twisted. Depending. Thraxos was nothing if not dependable. Not heroic. Not dashing. Not brilliant. Just… dependable.
And now, to be sent by Narros on this hopeless mission…
After traveling south from Waterdeep, Thraxos had scoured the coastal cliffs for two days. For two solid days he had swum back and forth, probing caverns, exploring crannies, hoping each would be the one to lead him to the underwater way to Seros.
All had proved false.
He had begun to think that the old legends were but garbled tales of a far-off past in which perhaps such a passage had existed, only to be destroyed in some gargantuan upheaval that tossed about sea and land alike.
Now the rocks beneath the sea's edge loomed up before him again, black and forbidding. They reared themselves into a great cliff, fifty feet high. About halfway up was a black spot.
Another cave.
With a sigh, Thraxos shot upward. The cave door was roughly ten feet wide, worn smooth by the passage of the tides. Its sides were cloaked in mossy growth that wavered in the pale light that shone about the entrance from the sunlight streaming from above. Thraxos entered, his body adjusting to the sudden chill of the waters around him. The passage was pitch black, and Thraxos felt his way cautiously along its sides, which were rough and irregular. Once or twice he felt an empty space on one side or another, as if the main passage had intersected with smaller ways, but he continued to follow the large tunnel.
The tunnel bent sharply to the right, and Thraxos, bending with it, encountered a cold surface in front of him. Rock. Another dead end.
He almost wept with anger and despair. In a rage, he slammed his hand against the side of the passage.
Something gave way under the blow. The blocking wall, on which he had rested one hand, fell back, and the water around him leaped forward into the narrow tunnel beyond. Thraxos had barely time to put his hands above his head and make himself as thin as possible before the current swept him into the opening.
The water propelled him along the tunnel with increasing speed. He could feel the rush of movement all around him, yet he was helpless to control his progress. Instinctively he knew that the way had widened somewhat. The water carrying him grew faster and rougher, and several times he was banged against the walls of the passage. He smelled blood in the water and knew it was his own. Once or twice his head struck against the walls of the passage. He felt as if he had lost consciousness, but he could not be sure. When he opened his eyes, everything was exactly the same as it had been: the same hurtling motion, the same blur of water and walls around him.
Faster and faster. Now he had no conception of the speed at which he was traveling. His body felt as if it were being stretched before and behind, as if he were being pulled to an infinite thinness that could only end with him shattering into a myriad of pieces.
From ahead of him came a dim light that grew stronger. Suddenly the rocky walls fell away, and space and light surrounded him.
He looked behind him. A shaft in the dark wall was slowly closing by some unseen mechanism. In a moment the edges ground together with a resounding boom, and the rocky wall looked as impervious as the barrier he'd encountered on the other side of the passage.
How far have I come, he wondered, and where in all Faerun am I?
As far as a preliminary look could tell him, he was in a shallow lake of some sort. Twenty or thirty feet above, the surface was flooded with light, almost blinding to him after the darkness of the passageway. He rose toward it, and hi a moment his head burst above the water.
Nearby was the shore against which soft waves were lapping, while dark firs ringed the water. Their tops whispered softly together and made a kind of accompaniment to the sound of weeping.
Thraxos looked about. Some ten yards beyond the water's edge was an overturned caravan. Smoke smoldered from the ashes of a nearby campfire, while various bags and bundles were scattered roughly about the ground. They had been torn open and the contents plundered-by human robbers, Thraxos suspected. In his travels along the shores of the Sword Coast he'd seen enough to realize the extent of human barbarity practiced against other humans. But where was the crying coming from?
A young girl, scarcely more than eight or nine, her golden hair twisted around a tear-stained face, sat next to two of the bundles. They were bigger and more compact than the others, and it took Thraxos a moment to realize they weren't bundles after all but bodies. From where he floated on the water's surface, he could see the rivulets of red that ran along the stony ground from beneath them and found then- meandering way to the waters of the lake.
Thraxos had little interest in the details of the affair, but he urgently needed to know where his unexpected journey had brought him.
"Hey," he called softly.
The crying did not cease, so he tried again. "Hey, there!"
Now the girl lifted her face from her hands and looked about wildly, fear suffusing her face. Thraxos flipped his tail and glided up against the rocks that ringed the lake.
"Girl… where am I?"
She stared at him, her eyes wide, then a fresh storm of sorrow seized her. She threw herself on the mossy ground, kicking her heels, screaming and wailing.
"Stop it!" Thraxos yelled. "Stop it at once, do you hear?"
His voice, which contained every ounce of force he could put into it, seemed to shock her back to some semblance of calm. She sat up and rubbed her eyes with grubby fists.
"Where am I?" Thraxos asked again.
"Mummy and Daddy are…" Her voice trailed off, and she looked as if she might burst into tears again.
Thraxos's scales itched with impatience, but he tried to keep his voice even. "Yes. I'm sorry. Were you attacked?"
She bobbed her head. "Robbers. Mummy told me to hide under the bed in the wagon. I did, and I heard Daddy yelling. Then Mummy screamed, and then the robbers were laughing, and then the wagon fell over and I was under the bed. I almost couldn't breathe. I don't remember anything else for a while. Then I crawled out, and Mummy and Daddy…" She began sobbing again, punctuated by hiccups.
Some part of Thraxos's mind noted that bein knocked unconscious had probably saved the girl's lif The robbers had evidently been in too much of a hun to search the caravan thoroughly. They'd ransacke what they could easily find and fled, leaving the bodic of their victims for whatever scavengers prowled th; land.
The girl had finished her crying and was now lool ing at him more calmly. "Are you a ghost?"
"What?"
"Are you a ghost?" Her tone was matter of fac "Mummy told me this grove and this lake wer haunted. We wanted to get through here quickly, bi our horse went away and we had to wait before gettin a new one."
Thraxos realized that she had no idea of his tru nature. All she saw was the head and shoulders of man protruding above the water. He shook his hea‹ "No, child, I am no ghost. I do not even know where am. Can you tell me?"
This is the Frahalish Grove."
The name meant nothing to Thraxos. "How far ar we from Seros?"
She said nothing, but looked puzzled. Clearly th name meant nothing to her.
Thraxos remembered Narros calling the sea b some other name, the name the surface dwellers i Waterdeep had used. What was it?
The… Sea of… Falling… Fallen Stars. That's i How far from here?"
"A long way." She shook her tresses briskly. "A lonj long, long way. We were going to Cormyr. Daddy tol me we wouldn't get there for days and days an days."
Thraxos looked around him. The lake was really not much more than an extended pond. The far shore, rocky and looking very much like that against which he leaned, was not more than a mile away. He sighed inwardly and tried again.
"How far are we from the Sword Coast?"
She considered gravely. "Ever so far. My Uncle Aelias lives in Waterdeep, and we never see him because Daddy says it's too far away to travel."
Thraxos's heart sank. The passage he'd been through, though evidently not a gate in the precise meaning of the word, had deposited him at incredible speed in this lake in the middle of-nowhere. He was trapped here as surely as if he'd swum into a fisherman's net. The passage behind him was blocked. There might, of course, be an exit elsewhere in the lake, but the gods only knew where it would take him.
The girl was watching him with solemn eyes. "Why don't you come out of the water?" she asked abruptly.
Thraxos ignored the question, and she asked it again more loudly. He turned back to her with a sigh. "Because I cannot. I am a merman."
Her mouth fell open, and several high-pitched squeaks emerged before she got her voice.
"Really? I've never seen a merman. My Uncle Aelias says there are mermen who live near Waterdeep and who help protect it. My friend Andriana says that if you catch a merman by his tail he'll give you three wishes, but I don't think I believe that. I mean, if you caught a merman by the tail you'd have to swim faster than him, and no one can do that, because everyone knows that merfolk swim faster than anything, even than fishes, but I don't know about that because I had a pet fish once, its name was Berf-"
"Silence, child!" Thraxos roared. His head was splitting. The little girl stared at him in astonishment for a moment, then burst into tears again.
"Oh, for Tyre's sake!" Thraxos flipped his tail impatiently. "Child, I did not mean to be angry, but you must understand, I have an urgent message to be delivered to the ruler of our people in the Sea of Fallen Stars. The fate of all Faerun may easily depend upon it, but now I do not see how I am to accomplish this mission."
Bile rose in his throat. "They trusted me! They depended on me. I have let them down. That is what they will say of me! They will say Thraxos was given an important task, and he failed miserably. No one ever even found his body. He was lost somewhere in the distant waters of-'"
"Wait!"
The little girl had stopped crying and was looking at him again, her eyes large. "Why don't we take a mount?"
Thraxos shook his head. The pounding behind his eyes grew stronger. He plunged his head beneath the surface, drawing a deep breath of water before returning to the surface. "What do you mean, child? I have no mount, and even had I the fastest dolphin in existence, it could no more get out of this lake than I can. No, the matter is lost. I shall linger here, despairing, while songs are sung up and down the Sword Coast of my sad fate, and-"
The girl, whose eyes had been wandering about the lake during this peroration, suddenly interrupted. "Why don't you ride a horse?"
Thraxos stared at her, dumfounded by her stupidity. Then, in the voice he might use to address a simpleton, he said patiently, "I cannot ride a horse. I have told you, I am a merman. How would I mount? Besides, a horse would travel far too slowly. I must be in water every hour or so, or I will die. Breathing is difficult for me after even a few minutes. You see-"
The girl shook her head impatiently. "No, no. Not a regular horse-a flying horse. They travel much faster, and you could see lakes from the air. You could take a bath in them and feel ever so much better."
Thraxos snorted. "And where, pray tell, would I get a flying horse?"
The girl nodded solemnly. "Wait there a minute." She dashed over to the wreckage of the wagon, dived beneath a jutting spar of wood, and rummaged energetically.
Thraxos remained where he was, grumbling quietly to himself. An unnatural rustling in the leaves a hundred yards away startled him, and he wondered if the robbers might have come back.
The girl returned, something long and slender clutched in her chubby fist. "It's Daddy's magic rod," she said calmly. "He used it to make a horse when ours died."
Thraxos glanced at the wagon where the corpse of a slaughtered animal lay between the traces. The girl followed his gaze and shook her head. "Oh, no, not that one. We bought that one in town a long, long time ago. Last tenday, I think. But it wasn't a magical horse."
In spite of himself, Thraxos was impressed. "What happened to the magic horse?" he asked.
"It went away, but I can make another one."
"Was your other magical horse a pegasus?" He saw her brow wrinkle in puzzlement and amended hastily, "A flying horse?"
"No, but watch."
She took the rod between both hands and pointed the end toward a dear spot of grass nearby. Thraxos saw that the rod was smooth, wooden, and had some sort of metal wire binding both ends. The girl closed her eyes and bowed her head in concentration. After a moment, Thraxos fancied he saw the end of the rod begin to glow. In another moment he was sure of it.
With a startling suddenness a beam of white light shot from the end of the rod and spread across the grass. It brightened to an intense flash, and Thraxos blinked, spots swimming before his eyes.
When he blinked, the spots went away. In their place was an enormous hedgehog, standing on the grass with an expression of vague surprise. From its shoulders sprouted two slender wings. They resembled those of an emaciated bat and were obviously inadequate to bear the animal's considerable weight. The hedgehog stretched its snout over its shoulder and subjected its unusual appendages to a prolonged snuffle. Having exhausted whatever interest they held, the creature examined its surroundings, grunted cynically, and set off for the woods at a gentle, though earth-shaking trot.
Thraxos looked at the little girl in exasperation. "For goodness sakes, child, be careful. Objects like this usually have a limited number of charges. We cannot afford to waste any on foolish mistakes."
She stared back, her lower lip thrust out in a pout.
"Well, it's not my fault," she said. "I've never used it." She turned her back on him.
The merman put out a hand. "Never mind. Better give it to me. Perhaps I'll have better luck with it."
"No! It's mine! It belonged to my daddy." He could hear tears trembling at the edge of her voice.
Thraxos made a careful effort to keep his voice calm.
" Did your dadd-father tell you how many charges the rod contained?" – -.:
She thought a moment, then said, "Three. That was it. He said we could use it three more times."
Thraxos winced. "Very well, but you've already used one, so only two remain. Try again, and please try to get it right this time."
She nodded and held the rod out before her again. This time Thraxos turned his head away as the light emanating from the rod grew brighter. When he turned back to the patch of grass, a magnificent white horse stood on it, quietly champing at the meadow. Folded along its back were a pair of the finest wings the merman had ever seen, surpassing even those of the pegasi that occasionally dipped and swooped above the skyline of the City of Splendors.
The girl approached the animal without any trace of fear. It watched her with liquid eyes and bent its graceful neck toward her. She stroked it, patted its mane, and whispered softly in its ear. Then she looked at the merman.
"Well, come on."
He asked, amazed, "How do you know what to say to it?"
She looked puzzled for a moment, then replied, "Whoever summons the creature controls it. That's what my daddy said." Daddy was evidently an oracle whose words were unquestioned.
All the elation Thraxos had felt at seeing the magical appearance of this mount dissolved in an instant. He shook his locks despairingly. "How can I mount? How could I hold on for such a flight?"
She considered the question gravely, then went back to the rubbish around the wagon, dived into a pile, and came up with a length of rope. With fingers remark ably sure in one so young, she twisted it into a rougl halter, which she cast about the unresisting pegasus She led the animal next to the rocks on which Thraxoi rested his arms, and handed him the end of the rope.
"Catch hold of that and hang on."
Before the merman had time to reply, she slappec the animal's rump. It backed suddenly and Thraxos was drawn in an instant from the water and lay flop ping absurdly on the dry, hard ground.
The girl laughed, and Thraxos felt the blood rising to his cheeks. No merman feels more helpless than or dry land, and Thraxos was no exception.
"What are you doing?" he shouted irritably at the child. Raising himself on his arms, he began struggling painfully back toward the inviting, cool waters of the lake.
"No, no!" The girl caught him by the shoulder "Wait."
She looked at him critically, from his majestically muscled torso, to his long, brilliantly scaled tail. Turning back to the pegasus she busied herself with the rope, hiding what she was doing with her body.
Thraxos felt his lungs contract painfully. The sun scaled his tail, used to the cooling waters. He flicked il across the dry ground and marveled that humans and others could manage to exist on anything so unpleasant.
There!"
The girl stood back, and Thraxos could see she had fashioned a kind of rough harness that was suspended across the beast's side. He felt a sinking sensation in his stomach as he asked, "What is that for?"
"For you, silly!" In obedience to the girl's command, the flying horse trotted over to Thraxos and knelt beside him. "Now," said the girl, "catch hold of that rope"-she touched a dangling line-"and Freyala will pull you up. Ill bind the harness around you so you won't slip, and well be off."
There were so many objections to this scheme that Thraxos had no time to voice them. The girl placed his fingers firmly around the rope. The pegasus-when had she named the damned thing, Thraxos wondered-rose, and Thraxos felt the lines of the harness gather around him, supporting him. The girl pulled another rope and the harness tightened around him.
"There," she said triumphantly. "Comfy?"
It was hardly the word Thraxos would have used. He had never been caught in a fisherman's net, but he imagined the sensation was similar.
The girl ignored his growls of discomfort. She walked over to the bodies of her parents and tenderly drew blankets over them. Then, without further ado, she picked up a lantern, opened it, and poured the oil over the corpses. She searched until she found flint and tinder, struck a spark, and stood back as the fire took hold. Watching the flames for a moment, she gave a keening cry in some language Thraxos did not understand. Then, resolutely turning her back on the pyre, she climbed nimbly up the side of the horse and grasped the improvised reins.
"Let's go," she said. Without further command the horse sprang into the air, spread its wings, and soared away.
Thraxos concluded very quickly that travel by air was at least as uncomfortable as he imagined travel by land must be. The wind whistled continually in his ears, making conversation all but impossible, and the rushing air dried out his scales and skin until they stung as if a thousand needles were being pressed into them. At the end of an hour, he could stand it no more. The girl, who had given him an occasional glance, understood and ordered the pegasus to swoop lower. She half rose hi her seat, looking over the beast's shoulder, then she pointed ahead and down.
There!"
The pegasus dived, and Thraxos heard the wind's cry rise in a deafening crescendo. In a moment he realized it was his own shrieking voice.
They landed with a bump, and the horse folded its wings and trotted smoothly for some dozen yards. Every step painfully jarred Thraxos, and the ropes dug into his skin with agonizing force.
The girl dismounted easily, and the pegasus trotted forward. Thraxos was about to ask what was going on, when he realized the horse was walking through water that was steadily rising around them. In another moment he was immersed in a clear, cold mountain pool.
The relief was overwhelming. Thraxos breathed in great gulps, thrashed his tail to and fro, and let the blessed cool sink in around him and over him. Looking around he could see the sides of the pool nearby. It was scarcely more than a magnified puddle, perhaps five feet deep and twenty across. The water was fresh and felt as if it had come from melting snow. At another time Thraxos might have found it too cold, but now it seemed an oasis of peace.
He was still constrained by the harness, and he could feel the gentle rise and fall of the pegasus's breathing as he pressed against the creature's side. It felt so real it was hard to believe it was the product of magical conjuration.
The animal shook its head and trotted briskly out of the pool until the water rose only to its chest and Thraxos was still partially immersed. He felt refreshed and laughed aloud with pleasure.
The girl, sitting idly by the water's side, laughed with him. He looked at her with new respect and asked, "What's your name, girl?"
"Amelia. What's yours?"
"Thraxos, of the merfblk of Waterdeep."
She nodded, absorbing this information.
"How far have we come, Ariella?"
She shook her head briskly and said, "I don't know. Before we came down I saw a big forest… over there." She gestured vaguely to the right. "I don't know how far away it is. I think we've come an awfully long way, but not as far as we need to go because I haven't seen the sea anywhere, but if I look behind us I can't see the sea either so there must be a lot of land between the sea and the sea, don't you think?"
Thraxos's headache, which had disappeared while he was beneath the water, showed signs of reappearing. He twisted around in the harness and splashed water on his face and shoulders. The girl chattered heedlessly on for a few more minutes before suddenly turning businesslike.
"Well, we'd better go on."
Once again they rose into the air and soared over Faerun. Thraxos found that time did not reconcile him to the experience of being out of water. Again, after an hour or so they descended, this time on the shore of a small lake. This time Thraxos insisted the girl release him from the harness, and for half an hour he swam around in the water, loosening his stiffened limbs. The girl seemed oddly impatient, and at times seemed almost frantic when Thraxos delayed as long as possible resuming his position in the restraining harness.
The odd group continued their journey in the same manner, rising and falling with the air currents. The sun, which had been rising in the east when they began their traveling together, reached its zenith, then set slowly in the west. They set down about every hour, though once or twice they flew longer. On these occasions Thraxos felt sick and dizzy and spent longer in the pools of water in order to recover.
Night fell, and they flew in utter darkness. They had traveled for about an hour and Thraxos felt the familiar sinking in his stomach that told of descent. His discomfort was, as usual, mixed with anticipation for the water, though the travails of the journey had eased somewhat since sunset.:
Lower and lower they drifted, and the wings of the pegasus seemed to beat more gently against the soft night breezes. Then, suddenly, Thraxos felt the familiar warmth of the horse's flank vanish. The next moment he realized he was tumbling end over end through the air. He had a moment of gut-wrenching panic before he plunged into water.
The pool was extremely shallow, more so than any they'd encountered. Fortunately, Thraxos had fallen only a dozen feet, but even so the sudden impact knocked his breath from him. He rolled in the mud at the bottom of the pool, breathing in the life-restoring water, then surfaced quickly.
"Ariella!" he called.
There was silence, broken by a rustling, then a small voice called out, Thraxos?"
"I'm here. What happened?"
More rustling, then by the dim starlight he saw a tiny figure emerge from the bushes into which it had fallen. The girl's face was dirtier than ever, and there seemed to be several long scratches along her forehead, but Thraxos saw with a surge of relief that startled him with its intensity that she seemed otherwise unhurt.
"What happened?" he asked.
She snuffled a few moments, then replied, "Freyala went away."
"Went away? What do you mean? How could she fly away from under us?"
"She didn't fly away," Ariella said impatiently. "She just went away. They all do."
Thraxos shook his head in an effort to clear it. "What do you mean?"
"They all go away after a day."
Thraxos sighed. Things had obviously been going too well to last. He should have realized that a magical mount would have only a limited span of existence.
"Can you conjure her back?" he asked.
She nodded. "Yes, but let's rest a while here. Besides, I'm hungry. I'm going to look for some food."
Thraxos glanced around. As far as he could tell they were on some sort of plateau. Before them the land fell away to an unguessable depth. The forest lands had given way to bare rock and scrub, with little shelter.
"What sort of things do you expect to find here?" he asked.
"I don't know," she answered. "I think there might be some wild strawberries back there. I smelled something like that when I fell in the bushes." She giggled despite herself.
Thraxos shook his head. "I don't think you should g wandering around in the dark. We're better off contii uing the journey."
"I'm hungry." Her voice turned sulky and petulan She rose from where she had crouched to convers with the merman and walked back into the shadows.
"Ariella!" Thraxos shouted. "Don't do that! I… forbid it! It's dangerous…"
There was no reply.
"Ariella!"
Still silence. Thraxos cursed softly to himsel Human children were obviously no easier to deal wit than the children of merfolk.
A sudden squeal rent the stillness of the night, an a bright torch suddenly flared. Thraxos shielded hi eyes from the vision-obscuring flame. When he dare glance in its direction, he saw Ariella scamperin toward him. Behind her, over a low crest, came thre hulking figures. One carried a flaming brand, and aj three wielded clubs. They were clad in ragged gai ments, and their faces, low-browed and brutal, wer crisscrossed with scars. Drool dripped in streams fror yellowing tusks.
Ogres.
Ariella dodged behind the pool that shelterei Thraxos, while the ogres stared greedily at her. The; charged forward. Two skirted the pool, chasing he around it. The third stalked straight into the watei None of them seemed to notice Thraxos, his head alom protruding from the water.
The brute in the pool was allowing his club to drai in the water. Thraxos reached up unseen as the erea ture passed and snatched the club from its hands.
"Urgh?*
The ogre stared vaguely up in the air and all around, evidently convinced its weapon had been taken by some spirit of the air. Thraxos rose as high as possible and swung the club against the creature's knee with all his strength.
The ogre dropped into the pool with an enormous splash and thrashed about, howling and clutching its broken kneecap. Thraxos struck again at its head, but only grazed it. The monster seized the merman by the throat and squeezed, pain giving force to its grip.
The world swam before Thraxos. The night filled with colors, and he heard a loud roaring. Before his eyes he saw the horrid face of the ogre fade in and out af focus. In desperation, he brought up the slender end›f the club and jabbed it-at the monster's eye.
The ogre dropped the merman and fell back shrieking, covering its face with its hands. Streams of blood ran down its body and flowed into the pool. Thraxos swung the club again, and the screams stopped abruptly. The ogre fell, half in and half out of the pool.
Thraxos looked around for Ariella. She had taken shelter behind a small scrubby tree and was dodging around it as the two monsters slowly pursued her. Her slight build and speed had saved her thus far, but Thraxos knew the chase could only end in one way.
He cast desperately about for a plan. He shouted, hoping to attract the attention of the ogres, but they ignored him, intent on their smaller, more vulnerable prey. If they had seen their companion fall, they gave no sign of caring.
One of them caught Ariella's ragged dress. The girl screamed and twisted away, the cloth tearing. The ogre gave a horrid laugh and raised its club.
Groping about on the side of the pond in which 1 was imprisoned, Thraxos's hand touched somethir long and slender. The magic rod. He lifted it, and sonn thing Ariella had said earlier during the first part i their journey came back to him. The animal conjured under the control of whoever conjures it. Without fu ther thought, he pointed the rod and concentrated.
For a long moment nothing happened, and thought flickered in the back of his mind that the ro was out of charges. Then the tip glowed and flared bri liantly. The ogres, distracted by this unusual sigh looked at the merman, growling. Then another grow louder and angrier, added itself to theirs.
A tiger stood before them.
With a shriek, the largest ogre turned to flee. The tiger swept its clawed paw up and out, and the mor ster's head was torn from its shoulders. The other ogr ran, but the tiger ran faster. It leaped, there was horrid tearing sound, and the death scream of the ogr echoed in the night air.
Ariella ran to Thraxos and flung herself into hi arms, sobbing. He stroked her hair, surprised at ho\ soft it was. After a while, her crying ceased, and sh looked at him solemnly.
"Why did you do that?"
The merman shrugged. "It seemed the only thing t do. I couldn't get out of the water to attack them, an‹ they were about to kill you." He looked at the tiger, wh was calmly sitting at some distance, cleaning a paw Thraxos almost fancied he could hear the big ca purring. The merman turned back to the girl. "We'l rest here and be on our way in the morning."
She looked away, and he sensed something wrong "What is it?"
That was the last charge in the rod."
Thraxos sank back into the pool and ducked beneath the surface. His mind was churning. There had to be a way. They could not have come this far, only to fail.
In a few moments he rose. The night was still black but in the far distance, where the land sank away, he could see a few tiny pinpricks of light. He pointed them out to Ariella and said, "You must go toward there. Take the tiger with you for protection. Nothing would dare attack you as long as the beast is beside you. When you arrive at a settlement, you must tell them your name and where you are from. Tell them you have a message to take to the kingdom of the merfolk in the Sea of Fallen Stars. Tell them Waterdeep has been at-acked by armies of sahuagin, and they must prepare themselves for an assault from the sea devils. Tell them they must send whatever aid they can to the Sword Coast before it is overrun. Can you remember all that?"
The girl shook her head. Tears were close to the surface of her eyes. "You have to come too," she insisted. "Ill stay here with you. Somebody will come and find us. Youll see."
Thraxos shook his head. "No, Ariella. This is more important. When you've delivered the message, you can send someone back for me, but this word must get to the Sea of Fallen Stars. Now, repeat the message."
She had to repeat it many times before he was satisfied. All the while, he was conscious of the passing moments and of the expiring life span of the tiger she needed for protection. At last she was ready.
He pointed into the darkness. "There seems to be a trail along there leading downward. It probably goes off the plateau into the valley. When you get to th bottom, strike due west and you should find the settle ments. Hurry, now. I'm relying on you and…" Hi paused a moment, then brought out triumphant!} "Sheeraga."
"Sheeraga," she said thoughtfully, looking fondly a the great cat. "That's a nice name. Yes. I'll call you that Come on, Sheeraga."
The tiger rose, walked over to Thraxos, licked hii hair, then followed Ariella into the darkness.
Thraxos sank back into the pool and surveyed hi! surroundings. The body of the ogre, in falling, ha‹ splashed more of the water out of the pool and tha which was left was an unpleasant compound of blooc and mud, only a few feet deep.
The night passed slowly, and the sun rose, burning in the east. The pool grew hot, and tiny wisps of stean rose from its surface. By noon it had shrunk to half its size. Thraxos's body lay half in the remaining water but the pool grew steadily smaller. With a final effort the merman rolled on his side and gazed out over the rolling hills of Faerun. From where he lay, he could see far in the distance, at the very edge of sight, a thin line of blue. The sea, he thought, the Sea of Fallen Stars.
He dreamed that he dived deep into the water laughing, crying with joy, chasing fish in and out oi reefs, clinging to dolphins as they skimmed along the surface. Above him, below him, all around him was his world. Slowly it faded, and Thraxos felt a great peace.
To the west, a little girl with a dirty face and a torn dress marched stalwartly up to a cottage door and knocked. The stout peasant woman who opened the door stared at her in amazement as the girl said, "Hello. My name is Ariella. I have a message for the merfolk of the Sea of Fallen Stars. It's really quite urgent. Hadn't you better let me in? Then perhaps you can help me to get there."
Pausing, she looked behind her, where the setting sun turned the hills blood-red, and smiled.
The Place Where Guards Snore at Their Posts
Ed Greenwood
9 Kythorn, the Year of the Gauntlet
Their jaws were clamped shut, forefin muscles puls ing in the tightening that signified irritation or disap proval. The orders and judgment of Iakhovas evidently weren't good enough for these sahuagin. Bloody minded idiots.
Sardinakh uncoiled his tentacles from the halberds and harpoons he'd been oh-so-absently caressing since their arrival, and settled himself a little closer to th(map on the chartroom table. He did this slowly, to shov the fish-heads just how little he feared them, anc tapped the lord's seal on the dryland map of Mintarn- the seal of the sahuagin lord Rrakulnar-to reminc them that their superiors, at least, respected the authority of a "mere squid."
The orders I was personally given by Iakhovas," he said gently, driving the point home a little deeper, "were to blockade Mintarn, allowing nothing into, or more importantly, out of, its harbors. Taking the island would be a bold stroke-and I frankly find it an attractive one-but it cannot be our main concern. Before all else, we must prevent ships from leaving Mintarn to go to the aid of Waterdeep, Baldur's Gate, and the other coastal cities."
"And that isss bessst done," the larger and burlier of the sahuagin hissed, affecting the invented accent of Crowndeep, the fabled-and perhaps mythical- cradle-city of Sword Coast sahuagin, "by capturing the entire isle." He spoke as if explaining bald facts to a simple child, not his commanding officer.
Fleetingly, but not for the first time, Sardinakh wondered if Iakhovas derived some dark and private amusement from putting seafolk who hated each other together, one commanding the other. Perhaps it was merely to make treachery unlikely, but it certainly made for some sharp-toothed moments.
The tako slid a lazy tentacle across the map, to let the fish-heads know he was no more frightened now than when they'd begun drifting forward from the other side of the table to loom close in beside him, fingering their spears and daggers.
"We'll discuss this at greater length as the bright-water unfolds," he told them. "I see that Mlawerlath approaches."
The sunken ship that served Sardinakh as a headquarters lay canted at an angle on a reef that had grown over it, claimed it, and now held what was left of it together. Those remains did not include most a the landward side of the hull, which left the hulk opei to the scouring currents-and provided a panorami view of the gulf of dappled blue water across whicl Mlawerlath was swimming.
Mlav was impetuous and ambitious, more like th‹ sahuagin than his own kind, and so ran straight int‹ the jaws of his own reckless impatience far too often Yet unlike the fish-heads menacingly crowding Sardi nakh's office, his hide still wore the dappling of rav youth. Their overly bold ways were long years set, am a problem he was going to have to contend with.
Sharkblood, he was contending with it now! Like al tako, Sardinakh could dwell ashore or beneath th(waves, though he preferred warmer waters than these He knew Mintarn's worth. To drylanders it was ar island strategic to Sword Coast shipping, offering ar excellent natural harbor and independence from th‹ shore realms' laws, feuds, and taxes. Sardinakh alst knew he hated these two sahuagin officers even mor‹ than he hated all fish-heads, and must contrive to gei them killed before they did as much for him. Unfortu nately, they commanded a strong and able fighting force of their own kind that outnumbered all others here at Downfoam six to one, or more. His momenl must be chosen with extreme care.
Thankfully, "extreme care" was a concept most take embraced, and no sahuagin really understood. If onlj Mlav could be taught to use some measure of it before it was too late.
"Perhapsss we could now deliver our important re portsss," the sahuagin Narardiir said, in a tone thai made it clear he was neither requesting nor waiting foi permission to do so.
Sardinakh carefully did not glance at Mlawerlath's approaching form as he said in a cool, almost flippant tone, "Why don't you?"
Both sahuagin hissed to show their displeasure at that, but when he neither looked at them or made any reaction, they were forced to move on. Their black eyes were staring, always staring. Ineffectual gogglers. He turned his back on them to show fish-heads held no fear for this wrinkled old tako.
"There is newsss both good and bad from our ssspiesss assshore," Narardiir began stiffly. "The dragon Hoondarrh, the one called 'the Red Rage of Mintarn,' has not long ago begun a Long Sssleep in his cave. Ssshould we invade, he won't intervene."
"The good news," Sardinakh agreed calmly, his eyes now on Mlawerlath as the tako passed over the outermost sentries, regarded but unchallenged. "And the bad?"
The other sahuagin spoke this time-and, by the mercy of whatever god governed sea refuse, did so plainly. "Recent dryland pirate smuggling and slaving has driven the human Tarnheel Embuirhan, who styles himself the Tyrant of Mintarn and is the dryland ruler of the isle, to hire a company of mercenaries to serve Mintarn as a harbor garrison. A human force, and highly-trained, by name the 'Black Buckler Band.' It is thought, and we concur, that they won't hesitate to wake the dragon if beset by foes who seem on the verge of victory."
"There isss little elssse to report," Narardiir added, "but-"
"That is a good thing," Sardinakh interrupted smoothly, "because Mlawerlath is here."
As he spoke, the younger tako flung out his tentacles in all directions, to serve as a brake to his powerfu journeying, and slid into Sardinakh's office with hi: tentacles rippling, water swirling around them, am grace hurled to the currents.
Befitting an underling in disgrace, Mlawerlatl passed between the hissing sahuagin and Sardinakh': desk, and struck the far wall of the chamber with i solid thump. The old but coral-buttressed bulkhea(scarcely quivered.
"Hail Sardinakh, master of all our voyages, Mlawerlath said hastily, venting many bubbles in hii haste and nervousness. This one salutes you and a the same time humbly beseeches your pardon at nr lateness. This one has devised a cunning plan, a! promised, and has come to unfold it before you."
He glanced at the two sahuagin and blushed a littli in his nervousness. His purpling promptly deepene‹ when the fish-heads hissed mockingly, "Cunning plan cunning plan," and leaned forward to hear with exag gerated sculling of their webbed claws.
"My officers are somewhat excited," Sardinakh ex plained in dry tones, ignoring fish-head glares. "Ignon them, and speak freely. Keep me not waiting."
Mlawerlath jetted forth bubbles in a sigh, slid somi tentacles around the nearest mast-pillar, more for thi reassurance an anchor-point brought than for any thing else, and said, "This one's plan should eliminati both the merfolk who dwell in the harbor, and the nev dryland garrison of human mercenaries."
The sahuagin hissed loudly at the thought tha their news was obviously old tidings elsewhere ii Downfoam, and Sardinakh took care that the beak fluttering that signified tako mirth was well hiddei from his underling. Mlawerlath's tone of speech woul‹ have better matched the announcement: "This one has devised a plan that this one hopes will win this one back a place in good favor with Sardinakh."
"Please excuse this one's plain recitation of simple facts," Mlawerlath began haltingly. "It is intended as no insult, but to anchor the scheme. Thus, then; for some years, the merfolk of Mintarn have praised and hungrily devoured oysters brought from the Shining Sea nigh eastern Calimshan and the Border Kingdoms, where the waters are warmed by the outflow of the Lake of Steam. Suldolphans-the humans of the city whose dwellers harvest most of the oysters-like these oysters, which have somehow acquired the name 'Mabadann,' done in lemon. So, too, do the merfolk of Mintarn."
The two sahuagin showed their fangs in unison, hen, in great yawns designed to display their bore-lorn. Sardinakh ignored them, but Mlawerlath, obviously flustered, continued his speech in stammering haste. "I-in the friendship feasts th-they hosted to welcome the new garrison, whom after all they must trust ind work with, the merfolk fed the human warriors these oysters."
In his quickening enthusiasm, the young tako forsook his anchor to flail the canted deck with his tentacles as he moved restlessly across the room, then back again. The humans so dote on these oysters now that the water-filled barrels of live Mabadann oysters are the most eagerly awaited shipments into Mintarn. The drylanders have even taken to sneaking some shipments past the merfolk to get more for themselves."
The sahuagin were drifting a little closer now, their heads turning to hear better; a sure sign of interest.
Mlawerlath wanned to his telling. "Now, in coasta caves nigh Suldolphor dwells a malenti, Jilurgah Rluroon by name, who owes this one a debt. Long age she perfected a magic that puts creatures into stasis- unbreathing, unseeing, as if dead-for short times with set trigger conditions."
The tako's tentacles were almost dancing with ex citement now. "If she can be induced to cast her spell or a hundred or so armed bullywugs," Mlawerlath added his voice rising, "of those who dwell near at hand, or the Border Kingdoms coast, south of Yallasch-anc Jilurgala sets its trigger to awaken them when theii barrel is opened, they can be the next shipment of oys ters smuggled past the merfolk and into the drylandei kitchens of Mintarn."
It is rare for a tako's mirth to be loud, but Sardi-nakh's quivering, loud venting of raging bubbles was uproarious laughter. It drowned out the amused hooting of the sahuagin, and left the commander of Down-foam barely able to signal his approval to his flushed and quivering underling.
To it, O Master of Oysters!" Sardinakh roared, tearing apart a waterlogged bench with a sudden surge oi his tentacles. "Go, and come back victorious!"
"Truly," Brandor muttered, as two of the tallest, most muscular Black Buckler warriors minced out oi his way, twirling their hands in mockeries of spellcast-ing and crying out as if in mortal fear as they rolled their eyes and grinned at him, "this is The Place Where Guards Snore At Their Posts."
He ignored their shouts of laughter and the inevitable bruising of hilt-first daggers bouncing off his slender shoulders-insulting reminders that as a Black Buckler himself, Brandor had recently been publicly reminded by a senior warrior that he must be ready to do battle with his fingers and dagger, should his spells prove too pitiful. The apprentice pounded down the slippery steps that led to the kitchens… and his current punishment.
Brandor was forever collecting punishments. Since the arrival of the Bucklers on seawind-swept Mintarn, his daily acquisitions of reprimands and duty-tasks had reached a truly impressive rate, even for the youngest weakling ever to wear the Black Buckler badge.
It did not help that he was the sole apprentice of the accomplished but aging Druskin, supreme sorcerer of the Black Buckler Band. That made the other two band mages see "the little grinning fool Brandor" as a future rival, to be ridiculed and discredited at every opportunity. Most of the strapping Buckler warriors, he knew, saw him as a pitiful excuse for a man, to be made sport of until he fled into the sea and rid them of his face and his pranks.
Ah, yes, his pranks-his only source of fun, and his only weapons. Long ago he'd fallen into the habit of responding to bullying with his quick wits and nimble fingers. Those who pestered Brandor the Fool paid the price, be they ever so mighty-and their colleagues roared with laughter.
Mintarn was small and mostly bleak, its folk suspicious of armed outsiders and guarded in their deeds, slow to welcome curious wanderers-and slower still to welcome one who wore both the Black Buckler badge and the robes of a wizard. Boredom had led
Brandor to dub the island The Place Where Guards Snore At Their Posts," and that arch observation had earned him no love among the Tyrant of Mintarn's own warriors.
It had done so just as Brandor's boredom was chased away forever by the sight of dark-eyed, darker-browed Shalara, her hair the hue of the sun as it kissed her slender shoulders and vanished down her beautiful back. He began to hurry down the steps at the thought of her. She often stopped to talk with Halger; she might be down there right now.
The Tyrant's daughter slipped around Mintarn's ramparts and windswept stairs like a shy shadow, free to wander at will. Folk said she was the image of her dead mother-who'd never had any use for brawn and bluster, but had admired a keen mind. Hence her voyage from far Suldolphor to the meager splendors of this lonely isle, despite the coughing chills that had finally claimed her.
The Tyrant was said to dote on Shalara, but Bran-dor was utterly smitten with her. He would wait on bone-chilling ramparts for hours just to catch a glimpse of her, and Halger had finally forbidden him the kitchens-save when he was working therein for punishment-after he'd lurked and loitered for the better part of a tenday, staring intently at Shalara whenever she poked her head in.
She'd obviously been reluctant to enter and speak freely with him swallowing and staring at her, and Halger had said so. Yet he'd have done anything-anything, even endured a public beating from the fists of the hairiest, most sneering of the brutish Buckler warriors, or foresworn his paltry magic-to have earned her smile and friendship.
Instead, he'd fallen back on the only way he had to get noticed. Pranks.
Brandor the Fool had staged a series of increasingly spectacular pranks to impress Shalara Embuirhan. He'd begun with guards' boots stealthily hook-spiked to the flagstones as they dozed at their posts, just to prove the fitness of the catch-phrase he'd coined, then he switched around all the garrison stores orders.
That had been followed by the switching of officers' undergarments, then the swapping of those same smallclothes with those of the haughtiest ladies of the Tyrant's castle. Then all of the shields hung on the castle walls had mysteriously begun changing places, and the castle chamberlain's usual feast welcoming speech had been hilariously rewritten, just on the night when the chamberlain had taken ill and the understew-ard had been called upon to read out the speech in his place, with the stem admonition to "change not a word."
Not a night later, the moaning ghost of Mintarn had been heard again, just outside the windows of the shuttered house near the docks where the Buckler warriors were wont to take their coins and their restlessness to the doors where plump and smiling lasses beckoned. Then someone had let out a paddock-full of mules to clatter and kick around the docks, and…
The inevitable results had come down upon Bran-dor's head. He'd seen kitchen duty and more kitchen duty, washing mountains of dishes, pickling jars upon jars of fish, and staggering down the long, spray-slippery path out of the castle, to dump slimy basket after slimy basket of kitchen-scraps in the breeding pools where the tiny silverfin boiled up like fists reaching out of the water, their miniature jaws agape, to greet his every visit.
All of these panting, sweaty tasks had been done under the watchful eye of the old cook of Castle Mintarn, and Halger was not a man to miss noticing 01 tolerate a single moment of prank-preparation or malingering. A fat-bellied, greasy ex-pirate whose left arir ended in a stump (which he usually fitted with a blackened, battered cooking-pot), Halger stumped and huffed around the lofty, smoke-filled hall that was his domain, somehow contriving to keep no less than three cooking-hearths alight and a steady stream of food going forth on dome-covered platters to feed the folk oJ the Castle, the Tyrant's guards, the Bucklers, and whomever was in port and at the Tyrant's guest table
Down the years, Halger had also found the time tc be Shalara's confidante, trusted confessor, and wise old guide to the wider world. He knew her secret thoughts and yearnings, and her judgments of the world around her and the people in it. The amused look in his eyes when they fell upon a mutely staring Brandor made the apprentice squirm and sometimes want to shriek in sheer frustration.
As he ducked through the dogleg of archways designed to keep gusting storm winds from blowing oul the kitchen-hearths, Druskin's apprentice let out a sigh of relief. Someone had piled too much wood on the blaze in the corner hearth. The smoke and sparks were roaring up the tallest chimney, the one that soared up through the thick walls of the beacon tower for a long bow shot, into the skies. Halger was shouting and red-faced men were running hither and yon with fire-tongs and soot-blackened aprons, while the women bent grimly over their pots and waited for the tumult tc blow over. The lofty, many-balconied kitchen was ruled by swirling smoke and chaos.
There among it all was his waiting pile of potatoes, blessedly bereft of the old pirate cook standing with arms folded across his mighty chest and a soft but razor-edged query as to the tardiness of a certain apprentice. Thankfully Brandor snatched up the peeling-knife Halger had left waiting on the stool, eyed the waiting bucket of similar knives that he was supposed to turn to whenever the knife he was using grew dull, and realized he was doomed.
The corner hearth had held leek-and-potato soup, almost certainly scorched down the insides of its caldrons and ruined. Halger was going to be striding over here all too soon, in his flopping sea boots, expecting to find thrice his own weight in fresh-peeled potatoes waiting. If a certain diligent apprentice worked in frantic, finger-cutting haste, he might-might-have six potatoes ready by then.
Brandor swallowed, sat down on the stool, and closed his eyes. If he changed the incantation of the dancing dagger spell just so, it should serve to cause the blade to cut in a curve. Add four… no, six would be better… such phrases to the casting chant, and the cuts should come around the surface of a single roughly spheroid object. Treble the crushed mosquitoes and the iron filings, and add the trebling phrase to the summation, and he should have four knives whirling in their own dance, peeling his potatoes for him. All he need do was stand back-with stool and bucket-out of harm's way, and watch for idiots blundering into the field of flight. A simple snap of his fingers would still cause the knives to fall to the floor in an instant. By Azuth, it couldn't fail!
Casting a quick look around at the subsiding chaos to make sure Halger wasn't watching, Brandor drew in a deep breath, then performed the spell in mumbling haste. He almost lost a finger when the knife in his hand tugged its way free to plunge into the waiting mound of potatoes, but it worked. By Mystra, it worked!
He was drawing breath for a satisfied laugh when he saw that the knives were whirling ever faster, and the brown, wet shavings they'd been strewing in all directions were now pale white. The air was full of wet slivers of potato! The-oh, gods!
He snapped his fingers, but the cloud of carving before him only whirled faster. Desperately he stammered the summation chant backward-and with a gasp of relief that was almost a sob, Brandor saw the knives plummet to the floor. Their landings made no clatter, because that floor was now knee-deep in fresh, wet potato hash.
Staring at this latest disaster, Brandor suddenly became aware that he was drenched-covered hi slivers of cold, wet potato that were slowly slithering down his face, off the ends of his fingers, and past his ears- and that a vast and sudden silence had fallen in the kitchen.
He hardly dared lift his eyes to meet Halger's gaze, but there was no ducking away now. Shaking diced potato from his hands, Brandor reluctantly raised his head.
And found himself looking into the eyes of Shalara Embuirhan-eyes in which mirth was swiftly sliding into disgust.
"Uh, well met, Shalara," he mumbled, hope leaping within him when there should have been no hope. Gods, but his humiliation was complete.
"When are you ever going to grow up and stop wasting your wits?" those sweet lips said cuttingly, anger making them thin. "Pranks are for children- grown men foolish enough to play pranks end up very swiftly dead."
No, he'd been wrong a moment ago. Now his humiliation was complete.
She stood staring at him with contempt for what seemed like an eternity before whirling away in a storm of fine gown and long, flared sleeves, storming back out of the kitchen.
Brandor hadn't managed to do anything more than blush as red as a boiled lobster and nod grimly at her words. He was still standing crestfallen, covered in wet slivers of potato, when the entire kitchen heard the dull boom of the door to the beacon tower stairs slamming. It was a crash that could only have been made by a young lady deep in the grip of anger.
Brandor looked down at his hands, and discovered they were shaking. A pair of all too familiar battered sea boots came into view as they stopped in front of him. He raised his eyes with no greater enthusiasm, this time.
Halger was standing with his hairy arms folded across his chest, and a twinkle in his eye. Of course. He met the miserable gaze of the apprentice, chuckled, then grunted, "Want to impress the ladies, do we? Peel yon mountain before we finish, and I'm sure she'll be impressed."
A familiar knife flashed out of his fist, spinning down to an easy catch. Brandor fielded it grimly, looked glumly at the mound of untouched potatoes beyond the slippery heap of hash, and made his sliding way across it, to set to work peeling-the old way.
Tve nothing of import to pass on to you, goodsirs," the Tyrant of Mintarn said quietly. "You know as well as I that no ships have called here, or even been sighted from atop the beacons, these six days past. It's as if the seas have swallowed every last ship, and given us-silence."
They reached for their goblets in grim unison: the white-bearded ruler of Mintarn; the robed, white-haired sorcerer Druskin; and the handsome, saturnine leader of the Black Bucklers, Oldivar Maerlin, who looked every inch an alert, dangerous battle commander.
It was Maerlin who lifted his eyebrow then, in a clear signal to the mage. Druskin cleared his throat, sipped his wine, and cleared it again before saying, "Spells give us some feeble means of piercing such silences, lord. Last night I worked an experimental magic, seeking to touch the mind of a night-flying seabird, and see through its eyes. The experiment was largely a failure. My probing confused the birds, and they tended to tumble out of the air and strike the waves, but I did snatch a temporary seat, undetected, in the aft cabin of a caravel running swiftly north out of Amn, bound for Neverwinter or, failing that, a safe harbor anywhere."
The Tyrant raised his head to fix the wizard with a hard stare. Those last words were clear talk of war.
"A seat at a table where sailors were discussing…?" he prompted. His voice was as quiet as before, yet the room seemed suddenly as tense as the waiting moments before foes who are glaring at each other charge forward, and a melee begins.
"Dark tidings, but heard secondhand," Druskin replied. "There was an attack on the harbor at Water-deep-an attack in force, by all manner of marine creatures. Ships were sunk, crews slaughtered fighting to defend their own decks… that sort of thing. Something similar befell at Baldur"s Gate. The sailors spoke of ships putting out from there being 'sunk by the score'… in some cases being 'dragged down from below.' One of them had heard talk of merfolk communities along the coast being overwhelmed by sahuagin, with bodies drifting in the depths so thick that engorged sharks were dying of sheer weariness, sinking to rest on the bottom."
The wizard regarded the empty bottom of his goblet in mild surprise, and added, "How much of this is fancy remains to be seen, but it seems clear that forces from beneath the waves have struck at ships and settlements ashore up and down the Sword Coast, and perhaps elsewhere, too, as if all that live in the sea have risen up at once to slaughter those who breathe air and dwell up in the dry Realms."
A little silence fell after those words, as the three men traded glances. The Tyrant looked longest at Maerlin, who stirred and said grimly, "My duty to you and your people, lord, is to see to the best defense of Mintarn. We can no longer trust in the merfolk, it seems. Simple prudence demands we shift our garrison duties so as to keep watch for forces from the depths coming ashore unseen elsewhere in Mintarn, and attacking us here from unforeseen places and ways."
The Tyrant nodded. "So much I was thinking. Watches and ready arms, guarded food stores and water I know well… what of magic?"
The ruler and the commander both looked at
Druskin, who smiled faintly and replied, "Warning spells may well be needed, to watch where even trained warriors grow weary. I shall establish a web of such magics by next nightfall, and a duty watch rotation among all Buckler mages, myself and my, ah, wayward apprentice included."
The Tyrant reached to refill their goblets and said in dry tones, "Ah, yes, the valiant Brandor. My daughter has told me of some quite clever, but dangerous pranks that he's been pulling. Daring, for so young an apprentice."
"Daring? Perhaps, lord. I'd rather use the term 'foolish,' " said Druskin, his voice sharp with sudden anger. His hand came down on the table in a loud slap. "We dare not let him continue with such foolishness, when all our lives may be at stake. I should have curbed him, I own, long ago, but I must break him of these habits now. Right now."
He rose in a swirling of robes, refusing another goblet with an imperiously raised hand-only to turn in surprise, a stride short of the door, at the unmistakable sound of boots striding along firmly behind him. Two pairs of boots.
"My lords," Druskin protested, "it's customary for disciplinary dealings between master and 'prentice to be conducted in private."
The Tyrant smiled. "Nay, Sir Mage, I want to watch this little confrontation. After all, we starve for excitement… in this place where guards snore at their posts."
The senior mage of the Bucklers reddened. "You may be assured, lord, that I shall make Brandor apologize to you, on bended knee and as prettily as he knows how, for that little remark."
He turned again to the door, and in a swirling of robes, fine tunics, and ornate sleeves, they hastened out together.
The little green door in the darkest alcove of the kitchen opened, as he'd known it would, and Shalara came out, eyes bright and cheeks flushed. Her talks with Halger, and the wine that accompanied them, always left her emboldened. Brandor loved to talk with her then, when her mood made her tongue outrun her reserve and let her swift wit shine. They'd laughed together many a time, with Halger smiling his slow smile nearby.
He'd been awaiting this moment, knowing that Shalara would stop to look in on the potato-peeling miscreant on her way back to her own rooms. With the cook striding along in her wake, the Tyrant's daughter swept imperiously past the feasting-spits and the cutting tables to where Brandor should have been hard at his peeling-and came to an astonished halt. Her lips twisted.
The pile of potatoes stood almost untouched, very much as she remembered it. Brandor Pupil-of-Druskin was standing in front of that earth-caked mound wearing a satisfied smile, his arms folded across his chest in the manner of a conqueror.
Shalara put her hands on her slender hips, eyes snapping on the amused edge of anger. "And what by all the good gods, Sir 'Prentice, have you been up to?"
Brandor flung out a proud hand toward a long row of large barrels on the roll-rails behind him. "Lady fair, the latest shipment of the oysters we all love so much has just been delivered, and in the brief time 'twixt then and now, I've devised a spell to cook all of them inside the barrels."
Despite herself, Shalara was interested. She was always fascinated by new ways and ideas. "Oh? How so?"
Brandor caught up Halger's long tongs-heavy, man-length metal pincers used for raking coals and setting wood into the large hearth fires-and gestured at the stop-log that held the barrels in place.
"With yon spar removed," he explained, "the barrels will roll, prodded along with these tongs. My spell creates an enchanted space-or 'field'-of intense heat, but no flame to scorch the wood. We wait, the oysters cook, with luck the barrels don't burn, and-there we have it! I'm just about to try it on the first barrel now. Would you care to watch?"
The Tyrant's daughter shrugged and smiled. "I've no doubt you're going to pay dearly for this, Brandor," she said, as Halger looked at the apprentice over her shoulder, amusement warring with interest on his weathered face, "but the fiasco should be… entertaining."
"One barrel only, mind," Halger growled. "Ruin an entire shipment, lad, and they'll have me cooking you for evenfeast! And what good are barrels turned to ash? We reuse them, you know."
The cook's words rose like angry arrows to the ears of the Tyrant, the wizard Druskin, and the Buckler commander as they came out onto a balcony overlooking the mound of potatoes. The mage stiffened, but the Tyrant put a firm hand on his arm and murmured, "Hold peace and silence for now. Let us watch and learn for a bit."
Druskin gave him a glare of mingled astonishment and embarrassment, but clamped his lips together and turned his burning gaze to the scene below.
Brandor saw that movement, and glanced up. At the sight of the three most powerful men in all Mintarn looking back down at him, two faces coolly calm but his master quivering with suppressed rage, the apprentice went pale.
The Buckler commander-his commander-leaned forward and said calmly, "Pray proceed, Brandor. One last prank? Or a clever stratagem that can benefit us all? For your future, I hope 'tis the latter. The true value of a warrior is less often bold innovation than minstrels would have us believe. More often, 'tis in carrying out the drudge duties of potato peeling-or, yes, of watching at our posts without snoring-than in all the glorious charges and bloodily victorious attacks that all too many bards sing about… but I'm sure your master will have more pointed words to address to you in the near future. Cast your spell and redeem yourself, if you can."
Brandor trembled, managed a sickly smile, and stared down at his hands. What else could he do but cast the spell?
He drew in a deep breath, turned his back on them all, and raised his hands to work his latest magic.
His fingers were still poised, the casting not begun, when something moved inside the first barrel. It rolled forward-just an inch or so, shoving the heavy stop-log with it-and the faint reek of swamp water wafted to Brandor's nose. He swallowed, and turned to Shalara. "D-did you see…?"
She nodded, face as pale as his own. Something that could move that barrel would have to be big. Not a thousand-odd oysters, but something very much larger…
"Well, 'prentice?" Druskin's voice was as angry as his expression had suggested. He leaned over the balcony rail. "Is there a particular reason why you hesitate to carry out Commander Maerlin's order? Or is this yet another prank?"
Brandor tried not to shake nor look as pale as he felt as he looked up and blurted, "P-please, sir-the barrel moved! There's something alive in there."
"Well, of course there is, boy! Oysters aplenty, hmm? Cos* your spell!"
Brandor looked helplessly at Shalara in the unhappy silence that followed, and she came to his rescue.
"Sir Mage," she said crisply, looking up, "Your apprentice speaks the truth, and I saw him fall from confidence to… dread in but a breath. I also saw why. The barrel moved. Something within is trying to get out."
Druskin's eyes narrowed, and he said softly, "Trying to play the hero and impress a lady again, lad? A spell of yours moved that barrel, 111 warrant. Have done. Stand away, cast no more spells, and take yourself to my quarters without delay. I shall have words to impart to you there."
In the silence that followed, the barrel gave a slight groan, then things happened very fast.
The end of the barrel bulged, then hissed open, coming slightly askew. A swampy reek rolled across the kitchens and before anyone could say or do anything, the end piece was sent flying.
A green torrent of stinking water poured forth. Brandor saw a glistening wet hide, staring froglike eyes, then a curve-bladed cutlass vying with a short spear for the pleasure of enthusiastically ending a certain apprentice's life. Something the color of an olive, that had the head of a giant frog, lumbered forth and stood upright on webbed feet. It was taller and broader of shoulders than any man Brandor had ever seen. Corded muscles rippled under glistening slime as it thrust viciously at Brandor with its spear. It wore armor made of the carapaces of sea turtles and a murderous expression. Its long red tongue lapped forth hungrily from between jagged-toothed jaws, and its breath stank.
"A-a bullywug?" Brandor asked Faerun around him in utter astonishment.
As the cutlass whistled past his head, he ducked, raced three frantic paces to the long tongs, and spun around again-just in 'time to strike aside the spear and end up with the tongs wedged between them.
The bullywug towered over him, its fetid tongue slapping his face and hair. Shalara screamed. Brandor shrank back from a snapping bite, clung desperately to the tongs, and tried to set his feet on the wet, slippery floor. He could hear startled curses from Halger and from the balcony, and the slap of the cook's boots… running away.
Then he had no time to pay attention to anything else but staying alive. The bullywug was upon him, hacking and biting.
"Get away from it, boy!" Druskin shouted. "I can't cast a spell with you there."
Almost shoved off his feet by the bullywug's writhing and head-down charging, Brandor clenched his teeth and fought back, becoming suddenly and acutely aware that the only thing keeping the swamp monster from leaping around the kitchen to slay at will were his own hands on the long tongs, and what ever skills he might acquire in its use in, say, his nexi five panting breaths or so.
"Hold on, lad!" Halger shouted, his thundering boots now growing closer again. Til be right there!"
He wasn't strong enough to hold it. He was going t(die. He was Abruptly the thing gave a roar of rage or disgust and clawed Brandor sideways, sending him skidding helplessly on the wet flagstones. He fell hard on his behind, saw the cook sprinting across the kitchen with a harpoon in his hands, heard the men on the balconj strike alarm gongs with enthusiasm-and saw the bul-lywug pounce on Shalara.,,,
She tried to run, slipped and fell, and screamed in utter terror. Up on the balcony, Druskin was cursing like a sailor, hands raised to unleash a spell he dared not cast.
Brandor scrambled up, swung the tongs with all his might, and rushed forward with his swing. The hearth girls chose that moment to scream.
He blundered clumsily into the bullywug's side, managed to make it hiss and stagger, then was flung free, losing his grip on the tongs, by one slap of a webbed hand.
The metal tongs bounced on the floor with a clang like a forge anvil, and the bullywug's hiss rose into a sort of a roar as it flung its spear, taking Halger in the shoulder and spinning him around. The harpoon that Brandor would barely be able to lift bounced away.
The apprentice gulped, found his feet again, and ran like he'd never run before in his life. The cutlass was already sweeping up. When it came down, Shalara's life would end.
The bullywug had fought men on pitching ship decks, beaches, and on wet, rock-strewn shores. It had faced down sharks in its time, and even slain sahua-gin, but its experience of weak, clumsy, and recklessly stupid apprentices was limited. It chose to ignore the puny youth's charge as its blade swept down to lay open the she-thing.
That blade went wide, striking sparks from the flagstone floor, as Brandor lost his footing and crashed helplessly into the bullywug's legs. The frog-monster staggered, then turned to hack this persistent annoyance to pieces.
Brandor stared up into cold, goggling eyes, saw his death in them, and as he wriggled sideways in wetness, remembered slipping about in slivers of diced potato, and-of course! Mystra aid me, he thought. The potato-peeling spell!
"Get away, Shalara!" he cried, frantically rummaging in his robes for the components, and continuing to wriggle sideways on the floor, away from the Tyrant's sobbing daughter. The bullywug made a chuffing hiss that could only be laughter. Gods, he must look like a fish flapping out of water. Go on, goggle-eyes, laugh at me just a moment longer…
He snapped out the spell with haste but precision, as the cutlass swept up again, then rolled aside, throwing his hands up in front of his eyes. He doubted diced bullywug blood would be something he wanted to ingest.
The squalling, hissing, and wet slicing sounds were truly grisly, and the smell made him gag, but to Bran-dor they might have been a minstrels' symphony, embroidered with trumpets-well, one blast at least: the clang of the cutlass striking the floor.
He was drenched, he was rolling desperately, col‹ shine was everywhere… and it seemed an eternity o sweaty, desperate rolling before he ran into somethinj lying on the floor that groaned at him. Halger.
"Easy, lad," the cook husked in a weak echo of hi, normal voice. Brandor stopped rolling and opened hi eyes. He was looking up at a ring of angry faces: thi Tyrant, Commander Maerlin, his master Druskin, an‹ a growing army of men-at-arms with drawn swords ii their hands.
"Your cooking spell," Druskin snapped, "an‹ quickly!"
A dozen hands hauled Brandor to his feet before thi apprentice could do more than blink. Druskin slappec a hand across Brandor's forehead to wipe away bully wug blood and slime, no one let him look at what was spattered all over the floor, and the apprentice fount himself frog-marched-if that wasn't too unfortunate an expression-across the chaos of the kitchen floor.
An army of hard-faced warriors in full armor wai watching him. He was drenched and stinking witl dead bullywug. Anger and fear glared forth at hin from scores of tight, white faces. Oh, gods, he was in foi it. They looked about two breaths away from executing an apprentice…
The spell, lad," Druskin said flatly. "Now."
Brandor saw six gauntleted hands bring the long tongs up and hold them ready by his side. He let out Ј long, unhappy breath, swallowed, felt for the components he'd need, faced the empty space in front of the stop-log, and did his duty.
Warriors snatched the log aside and wrenched the empty barrel out of the way. The others began to roll The tongs were handed wordlessly to Brandor, and he steadied the first full barrel squarely in the midst of the field only he could see.
Steam rose from its staves, and an evil smell. When he rolled the barrel along, warriors with axes hastened to break it open. A bullywug sagged out, dark and slimy, with steam pouring from its gaping mouth. It sagged to the stones even before their axes bit down in bloody unison. The smell made Brandor retch.
Commander Maerlin barked an order Brandor did not catch, and the armsmen surged forward. They swarmed up around the barrels, rolling them into Brandor's field and breaking them open with axes. Squalling bullywugs were pierced with spears and pinned in place to cook with brutal speed and efficiency. The slaughter went on and on, and more than one person in the kitchens was noisily sick. Several spewed in unison when Halger looked up from the priest tending to his shoulder and told the room gruffly, "No, I don't know any recipes for bullywug soup… but I'm willing to improvise."
Brandor rolled barrels into the heat with the heavy, unwieldy long tongs like a madman until someone- the Tyrant of Mintarn himself-took him by the shoulder and shouted at him to stop and stand easy.
When he let the long tongs fall, Brandor found that he was shaking with weariness. He looked across a kitchen that stank with carnage. Shalara, Druskin, and the other two Buckler mages were on their knees, white-faced and retching, and grim armsmen were clambering about knee-deep in wet, bloody bullywugs. Oh, he was going to catch it now…
Commander Maerlin was wading grimly through the remains toward him. Brandor closed his eyes and waited for the cold words that would end his Buckler career and direct him to a cell.
The hand that came down on his shoulder grippec warmly, and out of a dizzy fog Brandor heard Oldivai Maerlin say, "Well and bravely done, lad. My thanks."
From his other side came the sound of Druskir clearing his throat. The wizard sounded a little breath less as he said, "You'll teach us all both of those spells I hope. 111 exchange four of comparable power for eact of them, of course."
"Moreover, Mintarn you've saved," the Tyrant saic from nearby, his voice rolling out to carry to everj corner of the lofty room, "and Mintarn is in your debt I see no reason that we cannot reward you fittingly in the days ahead."
Brandor lifted his head, then, to stare at the ruler oi Mintarn in astonishment, but somehow his gaze was caught and held by the shining eyes of Shalara. Thej stared at each other for a long, wordless time, and suddenly the Tyrant's daughter raced across the space between them, heedless of heaped bullywug remains, and threw her arms around him.
Her kisses were warm and fiercely eager, and it was some time before she drew back, her eyes shining. It was longer still before Brandor could look at anything else but the look of adoration on her smiling face. The first thing he saw was the bullywug slime and gore that had soaked all down the front of her fine gown, and even its flared sleeves where she'd embraced him.
"I've… I've ruined your dress," he mumbled, reaching forth a tentative hand to brush away slime from her bodice, letting it fall without touching her.
Shalara glided up to him again, and murmured into his chest some words only he could hear: "Let it be the first of many of mine you ruin, lord of my heart," before whirling away from him.
It was about that time that Brandor became aware that the movement he'd been noticing out of the corner of his eye was a broad and knowing smile growing across the Tyrant's face.
Brandor*s face flamed, and he looked down quickly. Then he bent, fished around in the gore at his feet, and came up with something that was small and bloody, but unmistakably a weapon.
"Hold hard!" said the Tyrant in alarm, stepping back. "What's that for?"
"The drudge duty of potato peeling," Brandor replied in a voice that quavered only a little. He waved with his knife at the mound of potatoes. "The true value of a warrior, sir."
A slow smile grew on, the Tyrant's face. "Really?" he replied, "and here I thought it was doing guard duty… snoring at posts."
Shalara's high, tinkling laughter rose over the chorus of deep warriors' chuckles. Brandor, who was busily turning all shades of red as the Tyrant dealt him a friendly slap on the back, thought it was the most glorious sound he'd ever heard.
Lost Cause
Richard Lee Byers
17 Kythorn, the Year of the Gauntlet
Resplendent in his burnished plate armor, jaunty scarlet plume, and matching cape, Sir Hylas rode his roan destrier down the white sand beach. A dozen militiamen and I, their sergeant, trudged along after our new commander, each of us carrying one of the pickaxes we'd borrowed from the quarrymen. The young knight had sneered when he saw them, but we'd found them more useful than short swords against our current foe.
Gray on this overcast morning, the surf murmured, filling the air with the smells of seaweed and saltwater. Granite cliffs towered on our left, and, dead ahead, a colossal mass of rock extruded across the beach and into the waves.
The closer we got to the promontory, the edgier the men became. At last, Hylas reined in his steed.
"So that's it, is it," he said in his cultured baritone voice. The castle of mine enemy."
"Yes," I said, "and you can see that it would be as difficult to take as any keep built by man. We certainly couldn't seize the place with fifty men-at-arms." In reality, we were already down to forty-two. Three were dead and five more too sorely wounded to serve.
"It might be impregnable if we were fighting other humans," Hylas said, "but surely these crabmen of yours are no better than beasts."
That may not be true," I replied. "Even if it is, they're formidable beasts, and the caves are full of them."
The knight grimaced. "There has to be a way," he said, and at that moment, a crabman scuttled forth from one of the narrow fissures in the birdlime-spattered crags.
The creature was ten feet tall with an orange shell. Like all its kind, it walked on two legs, and held two sets of pincers before it, the greater above and the lesser below. The intricate mandibles comprising its mouth twitched, and its eyestalks swiveled back and forth.
Hylas grinned and couched his lance.
"No!" I cried. But Hylas was already charging, with never a thought to spare for directing his command. It fell to me to give the order the men were dreading: "Forward!"
The irony was that I'd prayed for a new officer t arrive. I'd been in charge since the crabmen killei Haeromos Dothwintyl, the previous First Captain and I was sick of it. In my nigh unto thirty years as, mercenary, I'd occasionally borne the responsibility o command before, but never under such grim circum stances.
Still, as soon as I saw Hylas, I had misgivings. It wa dusk, and I was sitting cross-legged atop a chunk o crumbling stonework, one of the few surviving trace of Port Llast's ancient walls, keeping watch. When thi knight rode out of the twilight, I was struck by hi youth and a certain hauteur in his expression.
"Sergeant Kendrack?" he asked
I slid down from my perch. "Sir."
"I'm Hylas of Elturel," he said, dismounting, "lough bachelor and a rider of Term's Fury." A company o high-born cavaliers serving the Lords' Alliance, thi riders of Term's Fury were renowned for their prowes: with lance and sword. "I've come to take command."
"Yes, sir. We've been expecting someone ever sine* we sent word of the First Captain's death." I hesitated "It's quiet this evening. A company of armed mei couldn't march into town without me hearing them."
"I came alone," he said. "I don't know how mucl news you get in this backwater." He gestured towan the low stone houses and narrow streets that made uj the village of seven hundred souls. "The sahuagin have attacked Waterdeep itself. The Alliance needs ever} warrior it can muster to defend the great cities farthei south."
"I gathered as much, since the lords pulled all theii troops out of Port Llast, leaving us militiamen to hole on by ourselves."
"I am needed in the south as well, fighting the real war, and I have leave to rejoin the Fury as soon as I solve your little problem. I intend to do so expedi-tiously. Tell me exactly what you're facing."
"Well," I told him, "a bit more than a month ago a party of sahuagin, aided by some sort of huge sea monster no one's gotten a good look at, started waylaying fishing boats and merchants ships offshore. Eventually the sahuagin disappeared, seemingly leaving the other beast to carry on alone, and we took comfort in the thought that at least folk ashore were safe from attack.
"Alas, we'd reckoned without the colony of crabmen that dwell in a cave to the south. In times past, they'd never hurt anyone, and we had no reason to expect them to throw in with the sea devils, but a couple of tendays ago they assaulted the town. We only barely nanaged to drive them back, and not before the First Captain perished in the fighting. Since then we've been fending them off as best we can." Hylas snorted. "No wonder the hamlet is still in peril. You can't simply allow the foe to attack repeatedly, then Tend' him of. You have to carry the fight to him. We'll dean out this nest you spoke of."
"With respect, Captain, that might not be as easy as you think."
Hylas frowned. "And why is that?"
"Let me show you in the morning."
The men hesitated, and I feared they weren't going to follow me. They'd come to escort their new commander-who'd scarcely even bothered to greet them-on a scouting mission, not to follow as the crabs lured him into an ambuscade. They were good lads though, and after only an acceptable hesitation the ran after me up the beach. The soft sand sucked at ou boots.
Up ahead, Hylas closed with the crabman. His lane crunched into the creature's chest. The brute fell wrenching the weapon from its attacker's steel gaunl let. Whooping, Hylas turned his war-horse and drew his sword, a curved blue blade that shimmered wit] enchantment.
Behind him, the cracks in the granite vomited crab men, who clambered down toward the sand with terrible speed. In a heartbeat, the cliff face was crawlin, with them.
I rushed one of the first to reach the ground, inter cepting it before it could attack Hylas from behind. I pivoted toward me, its serrated fighting pincer gaping. I avoided the creature's grab and swung m. pick at its midsection. The point crunched through it carapace, and the crabman fell. I dealt it another blow that split its triangular head, then peered about to se how my comrades were faring.
We militiamen had prevented the crabs from over whelming Hylas, who had just finished off another c the creatures. Smiling fiercely, guiding his destrie with his knees, he turned to ride at a third. Which is t say, he meant to stand and fight.
"Retreat!" I bellowed.
The militiamen did so hastily. Hylas shot me a glare but, recognizing the impossibility of rallying the mei now that they were in flight, he wheeled and gallopei after us. Thanks be to Tempus, we eventually left th pursuing crabmen behind.
The barracks was a long hall with a pitched roof, smoke-darkened rafters, and a plank floor. It smelled of the lye soap we used to scrub it down. Rows of bunk beds flanked the aisle that ran from front to back. In happier times, the room had echoed with laughter and the clatter of dice. Since the advent of the sahuagin and their minions, it had become quieter, as the men glumly contemplated the likely outcome of the ongoing conflict: Now it buzzed like a hive of angry hornets, at least until I stepped through the door.
"Don't fall silent on my account," I said, setting my pickax on a scarred, rickety table. "If something wants discussing, let's chew it over together." No one spoke up, so I fixed my eye on the hulking, ruddy-faced fellow, who, of all of them, was least prone to hold his tongue. "Come on, Dandrios, what's wrong?"
"Well… you said that when the new captain came, he'd bring reinforcements."
"I thought he would. Evidently the lords have decided their other warriors are needed elsewhere."
"Better that no one had come than the one popinjay who did," muttered Vallam. A small, green-eyed fellow of about my own age, he'd grown to manhood as a slave in Luskan before escaping, and bore a fearsome collection of scars from the abuse he'd endured.
"He is a bit overdressed," I said. "The last time I saw so much scarlet and glitter, it was on a streetwalker in Neverwinter." The feeble jest elicited a laugh, momentarily breaking the tension. "But he must be fit to lead, else the Lords' Alliance wouldn't have sent him. He wields a lance and sword ably enough."
"Perhaps," Dandrios said, "but he nearly led us to disaster on the beach today. It's a wonder we all madi it back alive."
"Yet we did," I said, "and now that he's taken th(measure of the crabmen, he'll be warier henceforth."
"I hope so," said Vallam glumly.
"By Tempus's bloody wounds," I snapped, Tve neve heard such whining. Are you warriors or timid ok women?" Startled, they stared at me. "Answer me curse you!"
"Warriors," Dandrios growled.
"Then behave like it," said I. "Remember how w‹ routed those hobgoblins two summers ago? We'vt beaten every foe we've ever faced, and we can handle the crabs, too, as long as we don't lose our nerve."
I continued for a while in the same vein, bucking them up as best I could. Afterward, and with a certair reluctance, I crossed the street and rapped on the dooi of the two-story house opposite the barracks. The maid, who, with her red, puffy eyes, looked as if sht hadn't stopped weeping since the previous master ol the household perished, ushered me into the Firsl Captain's oak-paneled study. It seemed odd to behold Hylas sitting there, especially since Haeromos's collection of scrimshaw still cluttered the room.
I came to attention. Hylas kept me standing thai way for several seconds before saying, "I imagine you know what I want to discuss."
"Yes, Captain. When we scouted the crabmen's lair you were in command, but I ordered the retreat. I offei no excuse. I can only say that I actually have been in charge here for a while, and in the heat of the moment I forgot myself."
He raised an eyebrow. "I expected you to argue thai you were right and I was wrong."
"No, Captain," I said. "I assumed you were about to order a retreat yourself, considering it was obvious that the crabs would have slaughtered us if we'd stood our ground."
His mouth tightened. "If I'd had the rest of Term's Fury riding beside me, we would have slaughtered them."
"But you didn't," I said, "and as long as you're here, you won't. You'll have to make do with militiamen, local boys mostly, trained as well as the previous First Captain and I could manage, but not the kind of elite warriors you're used to."
He grimaced. "You're telling me I can't trust them to fight?"
"No, sir. They're game enough. I'm saying you can't expect them to do everything that scores of knights could do. Also, I'm reminding you that you have only forty-two of them, with no one to replace them if they fall."
"Hence your strategy," Hylas said sourly. "Don't attack, simply repel the enemy when they make a foray."
"As you say."
"Had it occurred to you that the crabmen were simply going to whittle down your force a bit at a time until they overwhelmed you and massacred the townsfolk in the end?"
"I thought I was buying time until reinforcements could arrive," I said. "Even now, knowing they won't be coming, I can't see a sound alternative. If you can, I'd rejoice to hear it."
He scowled. "When I do, you will. Dismissed." As I turned away, I heard him murmur, "Curse this wretched place."
Hylas was taken aback when I led him to the window and showed him the line of folk waiting in the street.
"Petitioners," he said flatly, repeating what I'd told him a moment before.
"Yes, sir," I replied. "As First Captain, you hold authority in all matters, civil and military alike."
"I know that," the knight said irritably, "but isn't there a bailiff or reeve to attend to this sort of thing?"
There were, but I'd instructed them to make themselves scarce. "As you keep remarking," I said blandly, "Port LJast is a small town."
"Very well," he sighed. "Show them in one at a time.
The first supplicant, a young but careworn widow, smelled of blood and hobbled in with the aid of a crutch. A crabman had maimed her, and the wounds were slow to heal. Six children with pinched, hungry faces followed along in her wake.
When she stood before Hylas, she tried to curtsey, and nearly lost her balance. The knight sprang from his chair, darted around his desk, and took hold of her arm to steady her.
That isn't necessary, mistress," he said. He looked at me. "Fetch a chair." I did, and we saw her safely seated. "Now, how can I help you?"
The widow swallowed. "It's the dole. We don't want to ask for more than our fair share, but it's never enough to see us through the tenday. I have so many little ones," she concluded apologetically.
"Now that the fishing boats can't go out, First Captain Dothwintyl thought it prudent to ration the food supply," I explained.
"Well, I want this woman and her family…" Hylas faltered as his head caught up with his heart. "Do we know exactly how much food there is, and how quickly the village is running through it?"
"Ill get the ledgers," I said.
My notion was that by rubbing Hylas's nose in the town's woes, I'd show him that the defense of Port Llast was a mission worthy of his talents. To some extent, it seemed to work. Over the course of the next few days, he received the villagers courteously, and did his best to ameliorate their difficulties.
Yet it was plain that he was still impatient to return south, where a dashing cavalier could win renown. Indeed, it was possible that my efforts only made him even more eager to crush the threat to the settlement quickly. I feared that, his'previous experience notwithstanding, he'd eventually insist on assaulting the crab-men's lair, and the men shared my apprehension.
Instead, he hit on another plan. Alas, it was just as reckless.
The broad-beamed merchant cog was no warship, but at least it could carry more men than a fishing boat and was more maneuverable than a barge. As, sail cracking, timbers and rigging creaking, we put out to sea, the catapults on the cliffs looked down on us. The contraptions might well have annihilated a flotilla of pirates, but they were useless against the present foe.
I peered over the side, saw what I'd feared to see, and went to speak to Hylas. He stood at the bow, his red plume and cape fluttering in the wind, seemingly oblivious to the resentment in the faces of the men.
"Have you looked at the water?" I asked. Tester day's storm stirred up the bottom, just as I predicted You can barely see below the surface."
"The murk may hide ordinary fish," he replies serenely, "but I'm sure we'll be able to spot a sea monster."
"Not necessarily," I said, "not soon enough. This if the wrong day for this venture."
"The town is hungry," he snapped. "We have to kil the creature so the fishermen can fish. You and I have already had this discussion."
"Yes, Captain." Then, wondering why I even both ered, I added, "At least take off your armor." I'd left my helmet and brigandine in the barracks and so had the other militiamen.
"This is how knights of the Fury go into battle,' Hylas replied. "I'll be fine."
Very well, I thought. Whatever comes, it's on youi head. Harpoon in hand, I returned to the gunwale and studied the gray-green, heaving surface of the ocean.
For the next hour, nothing happened, and I dared to hope that nothing would. Then we heard the scratching. When I went below to investigate, the ship had already begun to take on water. I scrambled back up the ladder and found Hylas waiting to hear my report.
"Something's clinging to the hull," I told him, "picking it apart."
"The leviathan?" he asked.
"I doubt it," I said. "As best as anyone could judge observing from shore, it attacks a ship ferociously, not surreptitiously. I think we have crabmen trying to scuttle us."
"I…" He hesitated, and I could see how he hated acknowledging that, landlubber that he was, he didn't know what to do next. "What do you recommend?"
"I see only one way to deal with them as long as they're on the bottom of the boat. Some of us will to have to dive down and dislodge them."
He nodded. "See to it."
I picked three men to accompany me and gave instructions to the rest, then it was time to pull off my boots and slip over the side.
The frigid water shocked my flesh, and the salt stung my eyes. Clutching my harpoon, kicking, I impelled myself beneath the barnacle-studded hull, and my comrades trailed after me.
It was little easier to peer through the cloudy water now that I was immersed in it, but I eventually made out the crabmen dangling from the keel, ripping and prying at the caulked timbers. Grateful there were only two, I swam to the nearest and thrust with the harpoon.
The water stole some of the force from my attack, but I still pierced a joint in the crabman's natural armor. Caught by surprise, the creature twisted toward me, just in time for one of my companions to spear it in the mouth, whereupon it relinquished its grip on the hull.
Jabbing, relying on the length of our weapons to keep us clear of its claws, we drove the crab from beneath the ship, while the other militiamen did the same to its fellow. As soon as the beasts were in the open, harpoons showered down into the water, several finding their mark.
By now my chest ached with the need to breathe, but I didn't care to venture out into the rain of lances, so I turned to swim back under the boat. Just in time to behold our true quarry streaking upward from, the depths.
It was like a jellyfish with a soft, white, undulating body half the size of our vessel. Scores of thin, translucent tentacles swirled around it. Even startled as I was, I wondered that such a creature could be so cunning. How had it known to attack precisely when every single member of the crew had his eyes turned in the opposite direction? Then I noticed the crabman swimming along at the larger monster's side, and surmised that it was directing the creature's efforts.
No sane man would care to swim closer to this duo, but with my lungs ready to burst, I had no choice. I kicked upward, and luck was with me. None of the jellyfish's arms flailed into me.
As I broke the surface, glistening tentacles did the same. Shooting up into the air, they lashed back and forth across the deck above me. From my vantage point, I couldn't tell precisely what they were doing up there, but I could tell from the screams that they were wreaking havoc.
The next instant, a figure of shining steel and gaudy scarlet tumbled over the rail, his glimmering sword flying from his grasp when he struck the water. Weighted by his armor, Hylas sank like an anvil.
If I balked, it was only for a second, then I dropped the harpoon, drew a deep breath, and dived after him.
By rights Hylas should have plummeted all the way to the bottom, but he managed to grab hold of a section of one of the jellyfish's tentacles. Bubbles boiling from his mouth, he clung with one arm and tore at his armor with the other.
My ears aching from the pressure, I hovered at his side, helping him, fumbling with the clasps and buckles. The ornate regalia of Term's Fury fell into the depths, one piece at a time. When it seemed we'd disposed of enough-and in any case, our air was all but gone-I half dragged him to the surface, then to the side of the boat. A line dangled in the water, and I put it in his hand.
To my relief, men were still fighting on deck. The jellyfish had wrapped some of its tentacles around the cog itself, and appeared well on its way to capsizing her or tearing her asunder.
"Hang on to the rope," I said.
Hylas tried to answer but could only cough. I drew my knife and swam away from the boat, weaving my way through a mesh of writhing tentacles.
As before, the jellyfish didn't molest me. Even the crabman didn't notice me at first. Perhaps the monsters were too intent on the destruction of the ship, or perhaps the cloudiness of the water, and the effort I made to come in on their flank, helped conceal my approach.
As I prepared to attack, the crab sensed my presence and turned, grabbing for me with its pincers. Somehow I twisted out of the way, then raked my knife across the soft orb at the end of one of its eyestalks.
The crab recoiled and fled into the depths, and the jellyfish broke off its assault on the cog. Realizing that the colossal beast would be all but indestructible, I'd Tioped to deter it by disposing of its handler, and my tactic had paid off. Still, I'd accomplished very little. No doubt the jellyfish would resume its depredations soon enough.
When I paddled back to the cog, I learned that three militiamen had perished in the battle. Under the circumstances, that was fewer than we had any right to expect. The ship itself was crippled but capable of limping back to port. On the way in, Hylas's face was bleak. I wondered bitterly if he was grieving for our fallen comrades or his lost gear.
That night, when we were still exhausted and dispirited, the crabmen attacked the settlement. Four more warriors died, along with sixteen of the townsfolk.
I knew more or less what the men were going to say. It was clear from their conspiratorial air, to say nothing of the lookout posted at the barracks door, but I judged it wiser not to let on.
"Very well," I said, "what did you want to talk about?"
"Captain Hylas," Vallam said. Some trick of the wavering candlelight made the old scars on his face look raw and new. "You told us to give him a chance, and we did, but he isn't working out. These… schemes of his are killing us like flies."
"We lost a few men before he arrived, and we've lost a few since. Considering what we're up against, we could expect nothing better."
Dandrios shook his square-jawed head. "It's different now. That high-born lunatic doesn't care about lowly militiamen. He'd sacrifice us all to rejoin his precious Fury. Well, Talona wither me if I'll die for that. We want you to lead us, Sergeant. Hylas can disappear."
Vallam smirked. "We'll tell everyone the crabmen got him."
"No," I said. I'd seen mutiny before, and no matter how wretched the deposed officers had been, it was always a disaster. Once a company of warriors decided they had the option of pulling down their commander, discipline decayed until they were no longer an army but a rabble.
Vallam scowled. "Sergeant-"
"No!" I repeated. "Whatever mistakes the First Captain has made, he's our leader, and we'll follow him in accordance with our oath."
"I won't," Dandrios said. "If we cant get rid of Hylas, I'm leaving." He turned away, presumably to gather his belongings.
Wishing he weren't so much bigger than I, I yanked him back around. "No one's deserting, either. The town needs us."
"Bugger the town," he said.
"All right. If you've no backbone, it comes down to this. Run, and 111 hunt you down and make you wish the crabs had gotten you."
He snarled and swung at me, a haymaker fit to break my skull. Happily, a man has to wind up for a punch like that. I saw it coming and sidestepped. In any common brawl, I would then have kicked my opponent in the knee, but Dandrios wouldn't be able to serve if I lamed him. I hooked a blow into his belly, then a second into his kidney.
The punches didn't faze him. Spinning, he clipped my jaw with his elbow. My teeth clacked together, and I stumbled back into one of the bunks. He scrambled after me and grappled, immobilizing my arms. I butted him twice in the face, and his grip loosened. I twisted free, then kneed him in the stones.
He gasped and doubled over. I kicked him, laying him out on the floor, then, careful not to damage him too severely, went on kicking for a while. I didn't like playing the bully, but matters had reached such a pass that the only way to maintain order was to make the garrison more afraid of me than they were of the crabs.
When I finally stepped back from my victim, I judged from the militiamen's wide eyes and white faces that I'd made my point. But it was only a temporary remedy. Ere long they'd be talking of making me disappear, or simply start slipping away in the dark.
They might have been surprised to learn that afterward, as I wandered the benighted streets, trying to calm down, I flirted with the notion of desertion myself. I didn't want to die for a lost cause, either.
Musty-smelling books and scrolls littered the First Captain's desk, and Aquinder perched on a stool beside it. A gray-bearded old man with a nose like a sickle, clad in a ratty scholar's gown, he was Port Llast's closest approximation to a sage, and in truth, had considerable skill as a herbalist and chirurgeon.
He gave me his usual curt nod as I stepped through the door. Hylas greeted me with the constraint that had entered his manner since the battle on the water. I didn't know what the change portended, but I preferred it to the cocksure posturing of yore.
"Please, take a chair," the young knight said. "I've asked Master Aquinder to come and ponder with me, and it occurred to me that it would be worthwhile to hear your thoughts as well."
"If I can help," I said, "I will."
"As serious a problem as the jellyfish is," said Hylas, pacing restlessly about, "the crabmen are the greater threat. Unfortunately, as you warned me, they're too numerous to exterminate, but if we could figure out why they've allied themselves with the sahuagin, perhaps we could somehow sever the bond."
I cocked my head. "I confess, that tack never occurred to me."
"Sadly," said Aquinder, "those sages who've studied the crabmen agree that they're insular creatures, with no ties to any other race. None of the available texts provides the slightest insight into the local colony's anomalous behavior."
"So I hoped you might have an idea," Hylas said. He gazed at me with a hint of desperation in his eyes.
Wonderful, I thought. He finally wants my opinion, and I haven't got one. Then, however, a notion struck me. I suspected it was a stupid one, but I offered it anyway. "We have fresh carcasses from last night's skirmish. We could cut one up."
Aquinder's gray eyes narrowed. "You mean, dissect it?"
"If that's what you call it," I said. "I've heard that's what sages do when they want to learn about a creature."
Hylas and Aquinder exchanged glances. The scholar shrugged and said, "Why not?"
We dissected the carcass where it had fallen. Stripped to the waist, I used an axe, mallet, and chisel to break open the dead crabman's shell. His sleeves rolled to the elbow, Aquinder probed the creature's stringy gray flesh with a lancet and tongs. It wasn't long before both of us were spattered with reeking slime. Meanwhile Hylas looked on anxiously.
None of us knew what we were searching for, nor did we actually expect to find anything. Yet when it appeared, it was unmistakable. A coin-like disk of pol ished red coral, wedged between two of the chitinous plates that armored the crabman's head.
Aquinder wiped it clean with a linen kerchief, then inspected it with a magnifying lens. He grunted, and Hylas asked what he'd found. Ignoring him, the old man extracted a pink quartz crystal from his pouch and touched it to the disk. The crystal glowed Uke a hot coal.
Having seen Aquinder perform the same test before, I knew what the light meant. "Magic," I said.
The scholar nodded. The faces of the medallion are graven with glyphs of subjugation devised to turn a creature into some magic-wielding entity's willing thrall. I daresay all the crabmen have been enslaved in the same way."
"But how could a handful of sahuagin force scores, perhaps hundreds, of such powerful beasts to submit to such a thing?" I wondered aloud.
"If the brutes have a chieftain," Hylas said, "perhaps the sea devils captured and enslaved it, then bade it command the other crabmen to accept the talismans. At any rate, they managed somehow. I trust you see the implications."
"Yes," I said, though I didn't like them much.
I assembled the men on the training field, and Hylas explained the plan. "It would be impossible to invade the caves and slaughter all the crabmen," he said, "but Sergeant Kendrack and I believe that, if someone else created a diversion, a small force might be able to slip inside, locate the magic-wielding creature controlling the crabs, and kill it."
Not that we actually knew for certain that the slave driver in question was even in the tunnels, but it seemed likely.
"Here's what we'll do," Hylas continued. "The majority of you will march to the headland and entice the crabmen out. Once they appear, you'll make a fighting withdrawal, endangering yourselves no more than necessary, but luring the creatures after you. Meanwhile, the rest of you, Kendrack, and I will slip into the caves from the other side.
"Both tasks will be perilous, but infiltrating the tunnels, particularly so, and I won't compel anyone to go. Instead I ask for volunteers."
The men stood still and silent. My heart sinking, I stepped forward to harangue them, but Hylas lifted his hand to forestall me.
"I don't blame you for declining," he said to the men. "Since I arrived, I've blundered repeatedly. I led you recklessly, stupidly, and good men died as a result. I regret that more than I can say. Though I've finally learned the error of my ways, I don't ask you to follow me on that account. I've forfeited any claim on your loyalty, but Port Llast hasn't. Many of you were born here. You all have kin or friends here. I beg you, don't let your home perish when we still have one final chance to save it."
For several seconds, none of them responded, then Dandrios, of all people, his face bruised from the beating I'd given him, stepped from the ranks. "I'll come," he rumbled. "What the hells."
Vallam and six others followed his example.
Giving the crabmen's promontory a wide berth, we circled around to the other side of it, hid in some brush, and settled down to wait. After a quarter of an hour, we heard our comrades shouting and generally raising a commotion on the other side of the rock. Then came the long, wavering bleat of a trumpet to tell us the enemy had taken the bait.
On our side of the headland, the largest and thus most promising entrance to the caves opened offshore in the foaming surf. On Hylas's command, we ran toward the shadowy archway, our dash becoming a laborious floundering once we entered the waves.
Finally we made it into the cavern. The first granite vault seemed empty. If a lookout had ever been stationed here, it had evidently forsaken its post to join the battle our diversionary force had started.
I looked at the walls, hoping to find a ledge we could use as a path, but in this chamber at least, the wet rock surfaces were too steep, jagged, and generally treacherous for a human being to negotiate, though I suspected the crabs could manage nicely.
"Well have to keep wading," said Hylas, echoing my thought.
Vallam nodded. "At least-" he began, then something snatched him down into the water. His hand flailed above the surface for an instant, then disappeared again.
I hurried toward him and the others did the same. Suddenly, I too plunged downward. For one panicky instant, I imagined that something had pulled me under, then realized I'd stepped in a hole. Fortunately, none of us was wearing armor this time, and, despite the encumbrance of my pickax and lantern, I clambered out without too much difficulty.
I was virtually on top of Vallam before I finally made out what was attacking him. When I did, I cursed in shock, for he was squirming amid a tangle of writhing dark green seaweed. I'd heard traveler's tales of man-eating plants, but never dreamed I'd be unlucky enough to encounter such myself.
Beneath the water, slimy fronds sought to slip around my limbs and torso. I dropped the objects in my hands, drew my short sword, and began hacking and sawing at them.
The fronds could draw as tight as a strangler's noose, and it seemed that for every one I severed, two more slithered forth to take its place. Finally the weed yanked my legs from under me, and, as I splashed down into the water, slapped another length of itself around my neck. I groped behind my back, but couldn't find the member that was crushing my throat.
The plant let me go. When I found my feet and – looked at the panting warriors around me, it was plain that it had released everyone. Evidently, working together, we'd finally done enough damage to persuade it to abandon the fight.
But alas, we hadn't done so quickly enough to save everyone. Somehow, Vallam himself had survived, but the weed had broken another lad's back.
When it was clear that nothing could be done for him, Hylas murmured a terse prayer to Torm, then turned to Vallam. The scarred little man was a mass of scrapes and bruises, and his eyes were wild. Hylas gripped his shoulder. "Are you fit to go on?" he asked, holding the militiaman's gaze. "I hope so, for we need every hand."
Vallam grimaced and gave a jerky nod. "Yes, Captain," he croaked, "I'll stick."
"Good man," Hylas said. He pivoted toward the others. "Is everyone else all right?" The militiamen indicated they were. "Then let's keep moving."
Those of us who had dropped pieces of gear recovered what we could, and we slogged on.
I won't recount every moment of our trek through the caves. Suffice it to say, it was hellish. We felt we had to use the hooded lanterns sparingly, lest they give our presence away. A bit of light leaked in through chinks in the rock, but we still crept through gloom at the best of times and near absolute darkness at the worst. Moreover, only occasionally did we find a dry track to walk on. Often we waded in cold, murky water, while currents and uneven places on the bottom strove to dunk us. The crash of the surf outside echoed ceaselessly, deafening us to the stirrings of hostile creatures.
And such menaces abounded. Evidently the diversion had worked, and most of the crabmen were busy fighting on the beach, but they hadn't all departed, and sometimes one would pounce out of the darkness. So would other threats, like gray lizards that blended with the rock, leeches the length of a man's forearm, and sea urchins that hurled their venomous spines like darts.
We slew or evaded the beasts as best we could, but the most demoralizing thing was the mazelike nature of the passages. We kept running into dead ends, or realizing we'd inadvertently returned to some spot we'd visited before. The men began to whisper that we'd never find the puppeteer before the crabs returned. Some even worried that we were so completely lost we wouldn't even be able to find our way out.
Hylas and I did our best to brace them, speaking with a matter-of-fact confidence, harshly, or jocularly as the moment demanded. Meanwhile, I wrestled with my own unspoken fear.
Finally Hylas came up to me and murmured, too softly for the men to hear, "We've explored everywhere, haven't we?"
"So it seems to me," I replied. "Perhaps the master really isn't here, but out in the ocean somewhere."
Hylas shook his head. "If so, Port Llast is doomed, so we must assume it is here. So why can't we find it? This is a cavern, not a manmade fortress. It shouldn't have hidden doors or secret passages."
"True." Then a notion struck me. "Curse us all for a troop of idiots!"
"What is it?" Hylas asked. The men clustered around us.
"Of course a sea cave' can have hidden passages," I said, "if the entrances are under the water."
"You're right," Hylas agreed, then turned to the men. "Well go through the tunnels again, searching for such a passage."
And so we did, peering and probing for something that might well have proved difficult to locate even hi good light. Though I was reasonably sure we were on the right track, I very much doubted we were going to discover the opening before time ran out.
It was Dandrios who called, "I found it!"
We all hastened to join him where he stood waist deep in water by the left wall. Ducking down, I groped about and took the measure of a hole four feet high and twice as long. Large enough to admit even a crab if it didn't mind cramped quarters.
"Good work," said Hylas to Dandrios. "Of course, we don't know that this is the right opening. We'll need to send a scout in."
I said, "111 do-"
A vast rustling sounded through the cavern. The rest of the crabmen were returning. The men cringed and gathered themselves to flee in the opposite direction.
"All right," Hylas said briskly. "Apparently we've no time for reconnaissance. Everyone through the opening. Quickly, before the crabs have a chance to spot us."
The men gaped at him. "But Captain," one of them quavered, "you said yourself, we don't know this is the right hole… or if there's even any air on the other side!"
"True enough," Hylas said. He wore a soaked, plainly tailored wool tunic and breeches like the rest of us, and the water had plastered his artfully barbered chestnut curls to his head. Somehow, at that moment he didn't need burnished armor or a magic sword to look like a cavalier. "We do know this is our last chance for victory. Our last chance to save the village. I'm not going to throw that chance away, and if you're the warriors I think you are, you won't either." He discarded his pick and lantern and disappeared beneath the water.
"You heard him," I said.
I dropped my own more cumbersome gear, followed my commander into the hole, and for the next while, wondered if any of the militiamen had been fool enough to come after me. In the lightless passage, I couldn't tell.
I swam on and on, periodically bumping my head or extremities against the rocky sides of the tunnel. My lungs soon burned with the need for another breath, and I had to fight a panicky urge to turn and swim in the opposite direction. Even had I been willing to turn tail, I'd already come too far to make it back alive.
After some time I could dimly make out Hylas, silhouetted against an oval of lesser darkness. He passed through the opening and swam upward. I did the same, and my head came up into air. Gasping, I peered about.
We'd emerged in a high-ceilinged chamber whose sloping sides formed a sort of natural amphitheater around the pool in the center. Part way up the rock perched an altar of crimson coral. Poised in front of it, green-black, scaly arms upraised, its delicate fins weirdly beautiful, a sahuagin was performing some sort of ritual. It seemed entranced with ecstasy or simple concentration.
Turning his head in my direction, Hylas pressed his finger to his lips, expressing his desire to take the creature by surprise. As silently as we could, we swam in its direction.
Alas, we'd forgotten that there might be other foes about, and if so, they were as likely to be lurking under the dark water as wandering about on the rocks. I suddenly sensed something rising at me and wrenched myself around to face it, but I was too slow. The crab-man grabbed me by the leg and pulled me under. Kicking, I struggled to break free before it snipped off my limb or drowned me.
It convulsed and released me. When I got my head above water, I saw that Dandrios had stabbed it. He and the others had followed me.
Hylas bobbed up beside me, blood streaming from a gash on his jaw. "Get the sahuagin!" he panted to anyone who could hear.
We swam for the shore. Another crab darted at us, and Dandrios turned to intercept it and keep it off our backs. In the end, only Hylas and I managed to drag ourselves up onto the slope. Everyone else was busy fighting the creatures in the water.
By now the sahuagin was well aware of our intrusion, and so were two more crabs that scuttled down the rocks to meet us. Still starved for air, blinking the stinging salt water from my eyes, I scrambled up and yanked my short sword from its scabbard. I evaded the crab's first attack, stepped in, and thrust, wounding it in the flank. The monster hopped backward and poised its claws to threaten me anew.
I could see Hylas from the corner of my eye. He too had made it to his feet and was battling the other crab.
The beasts fought well. Still, I fancied that Hylas and I would prove a match for them. The sea devil, who'd remained before the altar, began to weave its webbed hands in mystic passes and chant in its sibilant, grunting, inhuman tongue.
Plainly, it was indeed the sorcerer-thing we'd come to slay, and if we didn't do so immediately, it was likely to strike us down with a spell. Hylas and I attacked our opponents fiercely, striving to kill them so we could rush their master before it completed its incantation. They, conversely, played for time, adopting a defensive posture that posed less of a threat but made them damnably hard to get at.
I dropped my guard, inviting an attack, and my crab couldn't resist the opportunity. It grabbed for me, and I recklessly dived under its pincers and plunged my sword into its belly.
The creature fell, and I charged up the incline- until a gigantic invisible hammer struck me down.
I felt as if a huge hand were squeezing me. It was all I could do simply to expand my chest and breathe, and
I feared the pressure would crush me to pulp in time.
The magic was assailing Hylas as well. He was staggering and seemed about to crumple. In no hurry now, his opponent reached for him.
Grunting with pain and effort, Hylas threw his short sword at the sea devil. The blade spun like a wheel, and the point plunged deep into the monster's globular eye. As the brute fell backward onto the altar, the power that gripped me faded away.
By that time, the crabman's claws were about to snap shut on Hylas. I shouted, and, startled, the creature faltered. Hylas scrambled back from the beast and we killed it together.
After that, aching and exhausted though we were, we had to aid the men still fighting in the water. In the end, our side prevailed. In fact, once we hauled ourselves up onto the shore, we determined we'd been lucky. Only two more men had died. Others were cut up pretty badly, but I thought they could recover with proper care.
Not that they were likely to receive it. A minute later, scores of crabmen began to surface in the pool.
"No," Vallam moaned. "It isn't fair!"
Clumsy with the pain of his gory wounds, Dandrios floundered around toward Hylas and me. "We killed the sahuagin that enslaved them," he said. "They aren't supposed to want to hurt us anymore."
"We're still intruders in their nest," said Hylas, rising. "I fear all we can do is sell our lives as dearly as possible."
We formed a circle to guard one another's backs, but though the crabs climbed up onto the slope, they kept their distance.
A particularly large specimen ascended to the altar, picked up the dead sahuagin, and cast it aside, thus uncovering two red coral carvings I hadn't noticed before. One represented a crabman, the other a jellyfish. Evidently these were instruments of subjugation that worked in concert with the disks.
The crabman broke them in its pincers. Its fellows clacked their claws together in what seemed a frenzy of celebration, then the big one gestured to us, inviting us to make our way back to the pool.
"You were right," Hylas said to me, wonder in his voice. "They are more than animals. They understand that we liberated them, and they're letting us go."
"Apparently," I said, scarcely daring to believe it. "Let's get out of here before they change their minds."
After our escape, we learned that the majority of the diversionary force had survived their mission. Port Llast still had a functional garrison, if only barely so. Hylas spent another three days in town, long enough to make sure the jellyfish was truly gone. On the morning of his departure, we conferred in his study, attending to a few final pieces of business.
"It's strange," he said when we'd finished. "Now that it's time to go, a part of me wishes to linger. But you no longer need me." He grinned. "If you ever did."
I grinned back. "No common man-at-arms would ever admit to needing an officer, but you did come in handy once or twice."
"Thank you," he said, becoming serious. "For everything." We shook hands, then went out to review the men. He had a jest or a word of praise for each of them, and they gave him three cheers as he rode away.
Afterward I wondered when the Lords' Alliance would appoint a permanent First Captain, and what sort of master he'd prove to be. Finally a messenger brought the answer. Hylas had praised me to his superiors, and in consequence, they'd promoted me.
Forged in Fire
Clayton Emery
22 Kythorn, the Year of the Gauntlet
"Have at 'em, me hearties! Sweep 'em into the sea, me brave ones!"
Screaming, swinging cutlasses and scimitars, pirates boiled over the side. Bounding from the deck of their dromond onto the merchantmen's cog, bare feet slapping the deck, the pirates rushed the quarterdeck.
Clustered on the quarterdeck were a captain and first mate who shouted encouragement at a dozen sailors. Simple merchantmen, they looked reluctant to fight.
Clambering carefully over the foaming, gnashing space between the ships, came the corpulent pirate chief who urged on his cutthroats with a cyclone of words. Heart of a Lion no longer fought toe-to-toe with enemies, but kept to the rear to supervise. Someone had to watch the two ships lest they ran aground, after all.
"Take 'em, me fearsome children!" he hollered. "A swift attack brings a short battle!"
Howling, thirty pirates split into two packs like wolves and surged up the short companionways to the quarterdeck. With luck, terror would make the merchantmen drop their arms and surrender. Heart of a Lion noticed the merchant captain, a skinny black-bearded man, had been born with a scowl, and the first mate's face was tattooed like a desert nomad's. Too, the other companionway was guarded by a lean woman in bright pinks and yellows, and such people were always trouble.
Sure as taxes, he saw, the ship's officers offered the pirates straight-thrust steel.
A pirate swung his cutlass to bat the first mate's scimitar aside, but an arm like oak simply riposted. The pirate yelped and jumped, pinked in the thigh. Hampered by the narrow stairs, another pirate sliced his cutlass at the mate's ribs, but that blow too was deflected, and the mate drew blood from a forearm. Below, in the waist, Heart of a Lion hollered useless instructions. Why would his crew never listen at sword practice? The chief was glad to see a tall pirate finally reach past his fellows and ram hard with a boarding spear. The first mate dodged, but banged into his captain alongside. The spear split his throat. Gargling blood and spraying his enemies red, the first mate dropped.
Pirates hollered in triumph, and pushed across the red-slick deck after the rangy captain. He bore a worn scimitar and a small round shield with a nasty spike. He swiped viciously to fend two pirates back, then lunged at a third. A fast chop cut a pirate's wrist to the bone. As blood fountained and the pirate screamed, a shipmate behind rammed him with a shoulder. The wounded pirate blundered into the merchant captain, tangling him. A boarding pike hooked the captain's leg. Tripped up, the captain crashed on his back. Quick as cats, two female pirates jammed blades in his belly and throat. With their officers dead, already the sailors were throwing down their rusty scimitars while the pirates hooted.
"Excellent! Your captain is proud!" yelled Heart of a Lion.
He swiftly marked the progress of the two ships. The pirate's dromond, a long, lean, lateen-rigged, many-oared vessel named Shark's Fang, was bound to the merchant's cog by stout ropes tipped with chains and iron grapnels. Locked, the two ships pitched and yawed in the lee of a big island to the south. Tharsult of the Shining Sea had many rocky clefts deep-shadowed by dawn, an excellent spot for ambushing the sea lanes. Waves burst into spray against a shore covered in seaweed. With a full day of bright sun burgeoning, the pirate chief exulted. They could loot this vessel's cargo and be hidden again by sundown.
Heart of a Lion carried no weapon, only a hollow tube of brass that he waved while exhorting his crew. "Press on, sons and daughters of seven devils! Conquer like kings! Drive-eh? Curse me for a camel boy!"
In a heartbeat, the second pack of pirates had run into a tigress.
Blocking the starboard companionway was the lean woman in pinks and yellows-the colors of the Nallo-jal, the Navy of the Caleph of Calimshan. Her white cork helmet, wrapped with a purple turban and sporting a brass bill, identified her as a lieutenant of the Imperial Marines. She hefted a straight sword like some northerner, and fire flashed from her eyes as she hollered, "Glory to the Caleph!"
Down in the waist, Heart of a Lion groaned. He may need his brass tube, despite the danger of burning the ship to the waterline. Didn't anyone simply surrender anymore?
Charging the lieutenant came a huge pirate named Tasyn, famed for his brawling and swordplay. He leered as he feinted with his cutlass, relying on a trick to distract her. While the swordsman feinted, the lieutenant struck. Cruel as- a dragon's claw, her straight-bladed sword skimmed his knuckles and chunked into a knee carelessly put forward. Tasyn's leg crumpled. As the big pirate tilted to the wounded side, the lieutenant slammed the side of his neck. Blood pinwheeled into the sky and striped the lieutenant's blouse and vest.
Another pirate, a woman, attacked as the lieutenant dispatched her first victim. The pirate squatted so low her hams brushed the deck, then she stabbed upward to spear the marine's groin. Fast as thought, the lieutenant's blade spanked the pirate's cutlass so hard the tip bit the deck, then the straight blade bounced back up. The female pirate saw the sword tip fly for her face like an arrow, then the point pierced her eye and brain.
Ducking herself, using the dropped bodies as a barrier, the lieutenant flicked her sword tip at pirates who suddenly hung back. She taunted, "Come closer, jackals. Taste the iron tongue of the Imperial Marines!"
"Ilmater made me to suffer," sighed Heart of a Lion. His pirates' attack had stalled, and might even fail if the sailors rallied around that devilish lieutenant. "But Sharess finds favor for those who love life."
Raising the brass tube in his hand, Heart of a Lion sighted down its hollow length at the ducking, weaving lieutenant, then stroked his fingers down the tube, invoking, "As'tal rifa!"
Like a wyrm's belch, from the tube billowed flame that coalesced into a sphere and sizzled through the air. Big as a fistful of flaming pitch, the fireball bounced off the lieutenant's turbaned helmet. Purple silk scorched and ignited, as did hanks of short blonde hair below her cork helmet. Panicked, the lieutenant flipped off her burning helmet, and was in turn slammed alongside the head by a cutlass blade. She dropped, face down in blood.
Yet Heart of a Lion's attack had worked too well. The fireball ricocheted from the sturdy cork helmet and lodged amidst tarred ropes and deadeyes in the standing rigging. Tar sputtered and flared like kindling. Paint on woodwork blistered and peeled, smoked and curled, and burst into flame. Within seconds the fire streaked up the rigging and set ablaze the mizzen sail.
"Fire aloft!" hollered a pirate.
Instantly seamen chopped at stays to bring the sail down. The merchant sailors joined in, a tacit surrender, because everyone afloat feared fire at sea. Slipping in blood, they loosed belaying pins to free the running rigging. Let go, pushed by the wind, the flapping, flaming sail flopped over the taffrail and hissed to extinction in the pitching waves. Pirates and sailors alike lowered buckets on ropes and sloshed the quarterdeck to douse stray sparks. Blood swirled with seawater and ran out the scuppers.
As the emergency passed, and sailors and pirates caught their breath, Heart of a Lion puffed his way up the short companionway. Graced with a glorious black beard combed and perfumed-and rubbed with soot to disguise gray hairs-the pirate chief wore a flowing red shirt that minimized his potbelly, blue trousers cut off at the knee, and a wide silk scarf of gold that matched a yellow turban.
Spreading his hands, he announced, "Gentlemen, ladies! Fellow Brethren of the Brine! The gods decreed we possess your worthy vessel, and so it came to pass. You should find no shame in surrender. Tell me, if you please, who among you is leader?"
With the captain and'first mate dead, the worried sailors turned to a grizzled man with a salt-and-pepper beard and scarred cheek. Like most sailors, he wore patched baggy trousers and a plain sturdy shirt, but laced across his chest was a red leather vest wildly embroidered with slant-eyed dragons and doe-eyed maidens. Heart of the Lion noticed most of the sailors wore similar exotic vests. Obviously, this ship returned from far over the eastern horizon.
"I'm Bollus, esteemed sir, humble boatswain of Eight Lightnings out of Calimport. Two-hundred sixty-four days out of Kozakura. You shan't kill us, will you, honorable rysal? We were ordered to defend the ship, and hope we didn't offend."
"Eh? Oh, no, we shan't kill you." Heart of a Lion was distracted. Where under Father Sky lay, what had he called it? Koza-koonit? What kind of outlandish cargo would they carry? "In fact, we welcome new recruits, so you have a choice: join us or be put ashore. Take your time and think it over. In the mean, spruce up this mess, if you please. Flake those lines, dress the sails, holystone the decks. A busy man is a happy man."
Relieved to be spared, the sailors jumped to work. First to get pitched over the side were the bodies of fallen pirates and merchanters, once they'd been stripped of weapons, jewelry, and saleable clothing.
A surprised shout went up as the pirates discovered the marine lieutenant was still alive. She was dragged before the captain, head hanging and mouth drooling. Her cheek and neck were singed and wept a sticky fluid, and her hair was burned away on one side. Heart of a Lion noted her blond hair and fair skin under the dark tan. Probably born of foreign mercenaries, she was nevertheless a daughter of the desert. Typically Cal-ishite, whose people were united in a mongrel heritage.
"Shall we cut her throat, captain?" asked a pirate. "She killed Tasyn and Nureh."
Heart of a Lion squinted, considering. "That's no big loss. Tasyn was a bully and Nureh cheated at cards. No, I believe we'll chain her to an oar. If she survives the row to port, we'll ransom her back to the navy."
Down in the waist, Harun, the pirates' first mate, had stripped the canvas covers off the hatches to scout the cargo. This merchant's cog was a general-purpose vessel with moveable bulkheads below, fat and beamy as a wooden shoe, with a wealth of square sail. Eight Lightnings could easily sail beyond Faerun, and obviously had.
"Captain! You'd best see this!" bellowed Harun.
Broad-shouldered and brown, the first mate favored a black mustache curled with beeswax, perhaps because his pate was bald as a bollard. Being an authority on a notoriously undisciplined pirate ship, Harun always sounded disgusted, but especially bitter now. With a sigh over a captain's busy lot, Heart of a Lion plodded down the companionway.
"Cast your eyes on this filthy muck."
The gaping hold contained cask stacked upon cask. Crewmen hefted a dozen barrels up and plunked them on the deck, but they all held the same thing, to judge by the identical calligraphs branded on the ends. Harun pried out a bung with his iron knife and let liquid gurgle into his palm. It was clear and faintly golden, like the wines of Waterdeep.
Heart of a Lion dipped his finger and sniffed. The liquid smelled faintly like burnt honey mixed with turpentine or cedar resin. Gingerly the pirate chief touched his tongue: it burned like spicy pepper. "What is it?"
"Flog me like a dog if I know," Harun scowled, waving callused hands. "But we've got plenty of it. Three holds full. The master cabin has some raw silk and silver, and more of these frilly clothes and painted dishes, may Oghma take my sight. We can sell them for a small profit, but these casks… they're worthless."
Heart of a Lion waggled his brass tube for Bollus. Treading lightly, the captive boatswain shook his head.
"A thousand pardons, gracious sirs, and a hundred apologies, but we don't know what these barrels hold either. Our captain and mate kept it a secret. They were part owners in this vessel, which is why they fought so ferociously to defend her, while we simple sailors are paid by the day. They didn't trust us to know the cargo, and none of us could speak the language in Kozakura. I think the liquid is pressed from rice, or else juice of the sugar cane, or both. Our captain claimed he'd market it overnight in Cal-imshan, but how, we don't know."
"Where is your ship's log?"
"Again, ten score apologies, but the captain threw it overboard when you attacked. It had lead covers so t'would sink."
"A secret cargo from an unknown land…" Heart of a Lion smelled his fingertips again. "It's not lacquer, nor vinegar. 'Haps it's lamp oil, like the spermaceti they press from whale blubber at Luskan."
Pirates had gathered to gauge their luck, and now looked glum. Several dipped their fingers in the strange brew. One offered, "It's too thin for lamp oil." Another opined, "It might've spoiled in the hold, lost its body soaking up heat." "If it tastes putrid, it must be medicine." "Did you shake the cask? Perhaps it's separated, like unchurned camel milk." " 'Haps it's camel piss."
"This voyage is cursed," growled Harun. "Without the owners' connections in Calimport, we'll never sell this stuff. Who'd buy something the sellers can't even identify? What with having to lay in food and water casks and new sails, and these slim pickings, we won't win enough on this voyage to make our expenses. Some pirates. We can't even profit by stealin'!"
Silently, Heart of a Lion agreed. These past three months, ocean traffic had mysteriously thinned, so even the busy sea lane spanning Tharsult and Alm-raiven lay deserted. A couple more tendays of bad luck, the pirate chief knew, and his crew would grow restless and angry, and blame their captain for ill fortune. Heart of a Lion would be voted out of his post- if he weren't forcibly retired over the side on a windy night.
Yes, he sighed, pirating was a dodgy business. Especially since Heart of a Lion no longer wielded a scimitar. A growing prosperity around his middle had slowed him as well. These days he preferred to exercise his brain, and to even experiment with mystical gewgaws. Hence the brass wand of fire-casting, which he'd acquired in the market of Memnon, a city besmitten by efreet. The tube was a handy weapon, though some of the crew thought magic-wielding was sissified, and hinted darkly that their captain might fare better in another profession. Like flower-drying, or fish-mongering…
So, sighed Heart of a Lion, he better make some cap-tainly decisions before the crew entertained doubts. Stumping around the deck, he checked the million details a mariner must attend at all times. The two ships were still linked by iron and hemp. The tide was flowing, so they drifted safely away from the rocks of Thar-sult. The day was barely begun-his ample stomach growled for breakfast-so they had plenty of light to work by, but what to do next? Should he order some of these mysterious barrels transferred to Shark's Fang, or just jettison them? Without this heavy load, the weed-encrusted Eight Lightnings would ride higher. Perhaps by painting out the name and sailing her to Suldolphor, they could gain a quick profit that might satisfy the crew. Unless the ship had already visited Suldolphor, where it would be recognized "Ho, Captain! Our pardon, but the pink tiger demands to speak to you."
Braced by two brawny pirates, scorched, bloody, and dazed, the marine lieutenant was still undefeated. She snarled at the pirate chief like a rabid tiger. "Are you mad? Why are you fools doing this?"
Perplexed, Heart of a Lion asked, "Doing what?
Raiding ships? What do you expect pirates to do?"
"Ptah!" The lieutenant spat blood off a split lip. Having been clubbed upside the head, she strained to focus. "I am Lieutenant Belinda Destine of the Caleph's Imperial Marines. Are you really the pirates' captain? How can that be, a quivering tub of lard fat as a manatee?"
"Did you never hear of Heart of a Lion?" he asked with great dignity. "The boldest pirate of the Trackless Sea, fearless and feared up and down the Sword Coast? Who in the Year of the Shadows stole the Tethyrian tribute ship from under the Syl-Pasha's very nose? Who, during the Darkstalker Wars, looted the bottomless coffers of the Dark Dagger's stronghold, carrying off the Goblin King's crown before Ralan El Pesarkhal even knew it was gone?" Out of breath, the pirate chief paused, then patted his great girth. "Admittedly, those adventures occurred before you were born, but my mighty mind is ever-sharp and even today my name strikes terror-"
"Shut up, you blithering baboon!" The officer snarled in a parade ground voice. "Haven't you heard, you sheep-headed shearwater? We're at war!"
"Oh. Again?" Heart of a Lion shrugged, both hands in the air. "Someone's always at war, bless the dark dabbling of Shar. War is good. Pirates prosper when countries clash and supplies are shipped-"
"Not countries," she barked. The kingdoms of the coast are at war with the deep! The swimming races vie against the speaking races. At every coast fish-men and water-harpies, whales and whatnot, spring from the waves and scuttle ships and massacre shore-dwellers. No village or city that touches water is safe from assault, nor any vessel."
All the pirates, and sailors too, had gathered to hear the news. Her head ringing, the lieutenant rasped on. "No one knows why they attack or who leads them. The navy admirals posit that a war between ocean-dwellers has spilled onto dry land. A spy claims a coven of ixitxachitls, the flying devil-rays, oppose a mad sea monster whose identity is not known. Or else they support him. It's all unclear. I came aboard this vessel in the Border Kingdoms when I heard the news. Calimshan needs me. Our homeland needs all its citizens, to fight. The land races must band together or else we'll be driven from the-"
A scream interrupted. Turning, more people screamed, and cried, and gibbered with fear.
Alongside the ship, rising, writhing, shedding sea-water by the gallon, reared an octopus tentacle higher than the mast and thicker around than a hogshead barrel. The flesh was a mottled green and brown, the colors shimmering and shifting in the bright spring sunshine. The largest suckers on that gigantic arm were wide as a man's chest. As the watchers stepped back in fear, another tentacle arose alongside, then a third.
Heart of the Lion had sailed the seas for thirty years, as boy and man, and seen many fantastic sights, but nothing like this. He had time for only one chilling thought-octopuses had eight arms-so was not surprised to see three more tentacles rising from the depths alongside the dromond. Like loathsome, sea-spawned trees, the six arms formed an obscene cage that threatened to block the sun and trap the ships.
The tentacles toppled and crashed on the wooden decks. People scattered in all directions, some even jumping overboard. Severed rigging snapped and pinged. Loose sails flapped all which way. Barrels stacked around the hold flipped and rolled like dice, and several split to spill resinous liquid running in streams down the deck. Half a dozen pirates and sailors were killed outright, crushed by the massive tentacles. Two victims screamed as trapped, broken limbs were pulped further.
The marine lieutenant, her captors, and two other pirates were hemmed in with Heart of a Lion, trapped between living walls of slimy flesh as tall as hedgerows and stinking of the sulfurous sea bottom. The ships shuddered and groaned like over-laden donkeys-as Heart of a Lion knew they were. Another minute and both ships might shatter. Sucked into the depths, drowning, the crew would be minced like minnows by the yellow parrot's beak the giant octopus sported beneath its bulbous head.
Buoyant as a cork, the merchant vessel yet shuddered as the deck tilted alarmingly to starboard. Barrels skittered, timbers groaned, and planks popped. The pirate captain wondered frantically how to fend off an attack by a giant octopus. Strong men would need an hour to hack through these rubbery limbs.
More noises, odd ones. From beyond the fleshy prison Heart of a Lion heard shouts, curses, and the clank and ring of steel. Mixed in were guttural roars like the rush of surf and the hooting of seals. What where they? How could the ships suffer another attack? Could some fiendish master have ordered a giant octopus to enwrap the ships, then sent unseen soldiers of the sea swarming aboard?
"Don't stand there gawking like a sea bass-fightr Lieutenant Destine shouted, then shook off her panicked captors and snatched her sword from one's belt.
Whipping it overhead, both hands on the pommel, Belinda Destine sank the sharp blade to the hilt in an octopus limb. Shearing flesh made a sucking sound ghastly to hear. Jumping high and hanging on the blade, she carved a furrow a cubit long that bled dark red. She called to the pirates, "Bestir yourselves! Wedge in your blades!"
Dazzled by rapid events, and wondering what else menaced his crew, Heart of a Lion attacked with what came to hand. The fire-casting wand. With no better plan, he jammed the tube against the giant, pulsing tentacle, then whisked his hand along the polished brass. "As'tal rifar
The flashback almost killed him.
Heart of a Lion was hurled backward as flame as big as a bonfire blossomed from the brass tube, filling his vision like a sun and blinding him. His head and shoulders thumped the opposite limb, and he sprawled on his broad rump. The huge limb didn't quiver now, but twisted and writhed. Rubbing his dazzled eyes, he discovered his shirt cuffs had been singed off.
A hole as big as a man's head was scorched in the octopus limb. Charred flesh rimmed a green hole that now gushed red blood like a hole in a dam. At the center of the wound glowed an inferno. The fireball, composed of mystical dweomer, continued to burn and bore into wet flesh.
All this damage he glimpsed for a second, then the limb was gone. Like a flying carpet, the never-ending arms ascended into the air. Evidently the octopus was bee-stung. It made sense, thought the dazzled pirate chief. An octopus was unlikely to feel fire on the sea bed.
One arm retreated so quickly the marine lieutenant was hoisted into the sky, for she single-mindedly clung to her sword pommel. Only when her boots ticked a canted mast did she let go to thump on the deck. Quick as a mink, she grabbed a dropped scimitar and raced to the attack before the nature of her enemy was even certain.
Berserk as a northern bobcat, Heart of a Lion thought. The woman was battle mad. Crawling to his feet, feeling old and slow, he made a mental note to stay out of her way. What did they feed Imperial Marines anyway? Dragon's blood and wolf guts? Wiping his brow, making sure he retained his fireball wand, Heart of a Lion cast about to see what force attacked his ship and crew.
He wished he hadn't looked.
Green, weedy giants, a dozen or more, raged across both ships leaving chaos in their wake. Heart of a Lion recognized the creatures, having seen one dead, caught in a fisherman's net. Sea ogres, called merrow by mariners, loomed ten feet tall yet ran thin as barracudas, with elongated necks and bear-trap jaws. Naked, with flesh pale as a drowned corpse, the beasts were stippled with hair like seaweed. Every ogre was inscribed with twisted tattoos and hung with necklaces, bracelets, and anklets cobbled from sharks' teeth, swordfish swords, tarnished brass and silver, broken bottle necks, and other sea wrack. Teeth and nails black as chert were tough enough to rend humans in half, and the monsters reveled in an orgy of bloodlust.
As Heart of a Lion watched, an ogre drove a spear through a sailor's guts, hoisted the squirming woman by the haft and her hair, then bit out her throat so her head flopped against her spine. Two ogres swatted a pirate flat, then grabbed him by both arms and yanked.
The limbs dislocated, then tore from their sockets in gouts of blood. Many sailors and pirates didn't fight at all, just ran in terrified circles, and Heart of a Lion couldn't blame them. Others fought back. Harun swung a wicked boarding axe to slice a merrow across the waist and spill its guts, then swung the other way to hamstring another rampaging monster and bring it crashing to the deck.
Maddest of all was the berserk Belinda Destine. Since conditions changed rapidly and unexpectedly at sea, Imperial Marines were trained to improvise in battle, to attack with whatever came to hand. Bereft of her sword, Belinda hefted one of the many barrels that rolled and careened across the deck. Gargling her own battle cry, she smashed the barrel into the muzzle of a marauding merrow. Oak slats cracked and liquid gushed over both combatants. Oddly, the sharp reek set the merrow stumbling backward, clawing at its eyes, gasping and retching. Belinda merely shook her streaming blond bangs from her eyes, hefted the empty cask again, and walloped the merrow in the breast. When it fell, Belinda beat the cask to fragments on its hard head. Heart of a Lion grunted at her mindless ferocity, and reminded himself to sheer clear of Imperial Marines.
As humans struggled and died, Heart of a Lion was disheartened to see more merrow swarm over the sides, rapacious as rats. A pirate swung a scimitar to lop off a black-nailed hand against the gunwale, but another merrow seized his sash and yanked him overboard like a pike on a line. A tall and comical head reared suddenly alongside, with goggling eyes like lamps, a long nose like a flute, and raddled brown skin segmented like a scorpion's carapace. A seahorse, Heart of a Lion realized, fully as big as a land steed from the great plains of Amn. Two merrow had wrapped long arms around its neck, and now used the seahorse's curved back to vault onto the ship.
On this benighted day of strange sights, Heart of a Lion was astonished to see that Belinda had spoken true and he'd guessed right. This assault was controlled by a single mastermind.
By the cog's prow, farthest from the fighting, a single octopus tentacle remained suspended in the air, jigging and bobbing as the giant bottom-dweller writhed in pain. Poised on the tip of the tentacle, like a canary perched on a finger, squatted a sahuagin. Tall as a man, hunched like a pelican, with a head like a cod and the body of a frog, finned and spined, the sea devil waved a narwhal tusk as it exhorted its queer troops to attack. It croaked and squawked and waved both crooked arms wildly. Only the barbs of its froglike feet, clamped tight, kept it from toppling. A shaman invoking magic, thought Heart of a Lion, elsewise the pain-wracked octopus would flick it off. Perhaps it hurled more magic to goad the merrow in their attack, not that the bloodthirsty enemies of mankind needed much prodding.
Heart of a Lion's only magic trick was the fire wand, and he had no idea how much dweomer still charged the tube. He should conserve his shots, he thought, except the battle could end within minutes, with the merrow the victors.
"What shall we do, master?" wailed a sailor.
Heart of a Lion shook his head. Chaos whirled like a cyclone around him, and people died before he could think, let alone act. Up on the quarterdeck, three sailors were clubbed down by four merrow who flailed their spear butts again and again on the bloody carcasses. At the prow, the sahuagin shaman made a tearing motion with green, scaly claws, and a pirate dropped dead, clutching his heart. The feisty Belinda's luck ran out, for as she belabored one merrow with a broken boarding pike, another dropped a fist like an anvil that hammered her to the deck, which was awash in the turpentine-reeking fluid.
All this Heart of a Lion glimpsed in seconds, then the attack stalled. Surviving sailors and pirates clustered around their captain. All hunkered at the starboard side of the cog, with the pirates' tethered dromond dipping and pitching alongside. More merrow rose to the attack, some climbing the sides of the dromond and tramping across the deck, trailing water. The defenders were surrounded-twenty weary fighters and their aging captain, who wanted only to go below and take a nap. Their future was bleak. Stand and die under bludgeoning fists and claws, or jump over the side to drown, or be crushed between the ships' hulls, or else be eaten by more denizens of the depths.
Unless…
"Grab that barrel!" barked Heart of a Lion. Half a dozen casks tumbled and rumbled along the deck. "And that one-broach the ends! The rest of you, strip your shuts or sashes."
Not comprehending, but glad to follow any orders that might save them, the knotty-armed seamen righted the barrels and stove in the ends with belaying pins. Ripe fumes of sap and sugar wafted around the survivors. As blood-spattered merrow closed on the humans like a wolf pack, Heart of a Lion ordered the shirts and sashes sopped in the liquid until it puddled around their feet. One man hissed as the fiery fluid stung in a long gash down his shin.
"Fling the juice in their faces-hurry!"
Bare-chested men and a few women hopped forward and whipped the wet clothing at the merrows' evil, elongated faces. Wincing, flinching, the sea ogres shielded their sea-green eyes from the spatters, and shied away, shoving back their bloodthirsty mates.
"They hate the stuff," crowed Heart of a Lion. "It offends their noses!"
"So what? It's their claws and teeth that'll kill us!" Always grumpy, Harun snapped a shirt at the monsters and drove them back, but had to soak his shirt while the creatures surged in. "We can't flick laundry at them all day. How do we stop them? Or escape?"
Heart of a Lion shook his head, black beard waggling. He hadn't planned that far ahead. Once the repugnant liquid ran out, or the merrow girded their courage, they'd be massacred. What to do? It didn't help his concentration that the leader of this murder spree, the fish-headed sahuagin, was still perched on its tentacle, raised higher now to observe them. The shaman croaked and rasped like a demented seagull, urging the merrow on with curses and charms.
"I don't know what else," growled Heart of a Lion, "but I'll fry that fish-fiend and bear it to the Nine Hells with us."
Sighting down his fire-casting wand, Heart of a Lion eyeballed the crooked sea devil as he stroked his fat hand down the polished brass. "As'tal rifa!"
Came a VA-VOOMF! like a volcano coughing, and the whole world exploded into flame.
Heart of a Lion hooted as the sahuagin shaman was smashed in the gut by a flaming fist. The foul creature bled red as it tumbled off the octopus tentacle and splashed in the sea. As he lowered the brass tube,
Heart of a Lion saw that his enemies, crew, and both ships were ablaze,
"Memnon immolate my soul! Who knew the stuff was flammable?"
Heart of a Lion goggled. Across two decks raged fire white-hot and glimmering blue. Flames scurried like rats across deck furniture and wreckage, soared up ratlines, rimmed the sails, and ran rings around the scuppers and gunwales. High above, rigging sparkled and winked like fireworks, and black jots of burning tar rained. Some pirates yelped as their clothing or hair burned, but cooler heads knocked them down and beat out the flames, or else hurled folds of canvas over them. Pirates and sailors leaned far over the side, braving the grinding hulls, to sop their clothing in sea-water. They slapped the cool brine on sparks atop people and ships.
Mindless, the merrow suffered and died. Many were ablaze. Flames licked up their legs as if they waded through a grass fire. Some beat at the flames and only ignited then: hands and seaweed hair. Many galloped, bellowing in pain, to the sides of the ships and dived headlong. One broke its neck ramming the brown armored hide of a giant seahorse. Another merrow hanged itself by snaring its long neck in rigging while jumping overboard. A few, unable to act for the searing pain, fell on the decks and rolled and writhed. Further saturating themselves in flammable liquid, they were incinerated. Evil, oily smoke wafting from charred corpses stank like burning garbage. Only a couple of merrow had yet to catch fire, and they ran in panicked circles below dripping ratlines and falling sails ripe with flame.
"To the dromond! Board Shark's Fang!" A true captain again, Heart of a Lion shoved people headlong up onto the gunwale, even picked up a few and lobbed them bodily into the low-built dromond. "Harun, make ready to set sail! Saida-no, she's dead-Kalil, pull a hatchet and cut the grappling ropes! Jassan, helm the rudder to haul us away from the cog! You sailors, beat out those flames!"
A slave to custom, Heart of a Lion refused to leave the deck until his crew was safe. Once all the living were aboard, he cast a last look around the cog to see if anyone remained.
The ship was a vision of hell. Smoke roiled and billowed across the deck like thunderclouds. Through dark curtains he glimpsed burning, dying merrow like ghosts condemned to torment, staggering or crawling or writhing in thrashing balls. Paint curled and burned in long, uneven stripes. All the rigging, dried by the fierce southern sun, blazed like tinder. Glancing aloft, the pirate chief saw that the standing and running rigging would soon collapse the burning sails and smother everything. Barrel after spilled barrel burned madly, and Heart of a Lion wondered if the sealed barrels would soon explode like the fire from his wand. If so, he needed to get many sea miles distant. Turning to mount the gunwale with a grunt -he paused.
Something had caught his eye. Movement where it shouldn't be. Whirling, he faced the billowing fire. The horrific heat dried his face and eyes, making him squint, but somewhere…
There!
"Shar shield her most shameful son!" prayed the pirate. Clutching his fire wand, he ducked his head and charged the flames.
What he'd seen was a huddled, crawling figure, not a dying merrow, but the marine lieutenant Belinda Destine. She'd been hammered to the deck but not killed, too tough to die. Sweating buckets in fright, barely daring to breathe, he zigzagged past knee-high flame, skirted a rolling, burning barrel, stopped, dashed under a flaming flap of sail, then-his heart stopped cold-leaped over the open hatchway and crashed clumsily on one knee. An ankle popped like a old twig, and agony coursed up his leg.
Still, the fat pirate reached the lean lieutenant by skittering clumsily to her side. Dazed, she crawled aimlessly away from the nearest fires. Her pink silk shirt smoldered and her yellow sash was ablaze. With no breath to explain, Heart of a Lion ripped off his turban, beat out the fire, then dropped the greasy, burning folds. Kneeling/ gasping, he hooked a meaty arm around her slim middle and rolled her to his broad shoulder. With a grunt, and a grimace of pain from his sprained ankle, the pirate chief squinted in smoke and fire and staggered toward the dromond, which seemed to lay a hundred leagues across a burning wasteland that would put all nine of the Nine Hells to shame.
Limping, cursing, praying, Heart of a Lion groped toward safety and cool, sweet air. His burden mashed his shoulder and his sprained ankle. He had to circumvent the mainmast, then the mizzen, because the entire starboard side of the cog seemed engulfed in flame. If he couldn't get past the fire at the prow, he'd have to risk the ocean-and he'd never learned to swim, an instance of laziness he regretted now, but perhaps not for long.
"Come-uh!-daughter of disaster! We can't- oww!-tarry here!" Heart of a Lion gabbled at the unconscious girl to keep up her courage, or his. "My, they must feed you marines-uh!-oats and hay! Come, this is no worse than a forest fire, or so I hear-what?"
Rearing from the smoke, tall as a flaming volcano, like a ghost from his haunted past, loomed a merrow scorched black along both its sides. Mad with pain, the monster lunged into the mizzenmast, bounced off, then saw the humans and roared a challenge.
Heart of a Lion had no weapon, neither scimitar or even dagger, and was saddled with an unconscious woman besides. Lacking anything else, he used what came to hand-the brass fireball wand.
"Begone!" Craning back one thick arm, Heart of a Lion slammed the tall merrow across the jaw with the brass tube. The sea ogre's mouth shut with a clack! as the creature was bowled sideways. The pirate wasn't sure, but guessed he'd broken the thing's neck, a feat more suited to his lusty youth than a middling age. Dropping the bent tube, he staggered on blistered feet for the dromond.
One last sheet of blue-white flame blocked his path to the dromond, and through it pirates turned and pointed, their images rippling in the heat above the fire. A roaring in his head wouldn't let him hear what they called. With no strength left, only heart, the pirate chieftain charged.
In five limping strides, he bulled into the cog's gunwale, pushed headlong, and dived.
Fire filled his vision, then blue sky, then green water -then he crashed on his shoulder against a pine deck.
At the last second he'd twisted away from the shoulder bearing Belinda Destine. Exhausted, pain throbbing in every part, roasted as if on a spit, he lay gasping while willing hands laid him flat. Blessed cool water was slapped on him and the lieutenant. A hand tilted his head and poured fresh, sweet water-truly the nectar of the gods!-down his parched throat, then the hero was left alone as pirates and sailors set sail.
Dimly, Heart of a Lion heard the thunk of axes. Under his back, he felt the dromond come alive and pull free of the burning cog. At more shouts, the decks canted slightly. The captain, thirty years at sea as boy and man, felt the dromond's rudder bite the waves as she gained headway. Squinting aloft, he saw sails billow, snap into place, and fill their tan bellies. His ship was safe, and he could rest, lying at ease and staring at the blue sky.
"You… saved my life."
"Eh?" Rolling his head, "Heart of a Lion found the blue eyes of a northerner staring into his. Lieutenant Belinda Destine of the Caleph's Imperial Marines was scorched, smoke-grimed, half cooked, but alive. She croaked like a crow. "You waded through flames and… carried me out. You… coldcocked a merrow with… one punch. You truly do have… the heart of a lion."
"Oh, that was nothing. I did that every day when I was young. Even on holy days." Used to boasting about himself, Heart of a Lion was suddenly embarrassed, yet it was pleasant to see a pretty young woman smile. To show off, he pushed to his elbows and casually studied the sails.
"Still," he rubbed his running nose, "pirating has slipped into a lull as of late. Tell me, what do they pay captains in the Caleph's Navy?"
One Who Swims With SekolaK
Mel Odom
4 Flamerule, the Year of the Gauntle
"Stop this ship before we smash against the wall!"
The sahuagin prince-one of the surviving four of the recently destroyed Serosian city, Vahaxtyl-lifted a hand bristling with thick, jagged claws and surged forward menacingly.
Laaqueel, High Priestess of the Claarteeros Sea sahuagin kingdom, crossed Tarjana's wooden deck without hesitation, putting herself between the sahuagin prince and her king.
The prince stood over seven feet tall on splayed webbed feet, dwarfing Laaqueel's slight frame. The priestess knew the sahuagin were thought ugly and cruel in appearance by the surface dwellers, but to her they were perfection-something she'd never achieve.
Fins stood out from the prince's scaled body, jutting from forearms and legs. The anterior fins on the sides of his great-jawed head joined together on the dorsal fin down his back in the Serosian way instead of remaining separate the way Laaqueel was accustomed to. His coloring wasn't the greens and blacks of the sahuagin of the outer sea. Instead, his scales shone teal, marked with splotches, the dominant colors in the world of Seros.
The prince was broad and powerful, a predatory creature the harsh sea had bred to withstand the depths and combat. He wore only the sahuagin warrior's harness that provided carrying places for the few personal items he had as^well as trophies he claimed in battle. The harness also bore the prince's insignia. He carried a royal trident chipped into shape from greenish-gray claw coral.
Little more than an arm's reach behind Laaqueel, Iakhovas stood unmoved and faced the angry prince. A small smile twisted Iakhovas's lips. "Maartaaugh, do not make the mistake of threatening me." He spoke in a low voice that traveled only to the nearest ears. "I've already killed one of Aleaxtis's princes. Though it wouldn't trouble me in the slightest to kill another and glut myself on your flesh and gnaw on your bones, I would see you live. If you remain intelligent enough."
Laaqueel knew she was the only one who saw Iakhovas as he truly was. He looked human, tall and broad now, with dark hair held back by bones with carved runes. A carefully groomed mustache ran down each side of his mouth then joined his sideburns, leaving his chin and cheeks clean-shaven. Runic tattoos covered his body. He wore black breeches and a silk shirt, black leather boots, and a heavy sea-green cloak that held magical secrets and weapons in its depths. He was missing an eye, but these days the empty socket somehow gleamed golden, as if something buried in its depths was beginning to surface.
Everyone but Laaqueel believed Iakhovas was a sahuagin. The magic spell he wove around himself prevented them from seeing anything else. Laaqueel had seen him at his weakest, and now she knew him at his strongest, but even she didn't know what he truly was.
Laaqueel seized Maartaaugh's wrist in her powerful grip, halting the movement. Surprise glinted in the prince's oily black eyes as he felt her strength. His great mouth snarled in warning, revealing proud fangs.
It was a face Laaqueel would have loved to wear.
"Stand back, malenti," Maartaaugh spat.
The word "malenti" slammed into Laaqueel, carrying all the savage disrespect and pain that she'd borne all of her years. The pain-the incompleteness and the stench of the outcast-remained sharp.
She was malenti-the unwanted offspring of true sahuagin caused by the nearness of the hated sea elves. Many priestesses thought the curse of the malenti-birth was one of the Shark God's gifts, a built-in warning that drove them to seek out their enemies and destroy them. Malenti were usually destroyed at birth, but a few of them were saved to serve as spies, masquerading as the hated sea elves.
Laaqueel was only a few inches short of six feet. She wore her long black hair tied back in a single braid. Rounded curves and full breasts that she knew attracted the eyes of sea elven males and surface dwellers made her body ugly to her. She preferred the harsh angularity of the sahuagin form. To further compound the curse she'd been given, her skin wasn't the greenish or bluish cast of the sea elves. Instead, it was the pale complexion of a surface dweller.
The priestess turned her voice to steel, using the pain that she felt but never letting it touch her words and make them weak. "Don't speak disrespectfully of me, Prince Maartaaugh. Sekolah has chosen me priestess of his faith. You may keep your opinions of me, and of my birth, but never of my calling. I live to serve Sekolah, and I will die in that service if I need to." With the merest thought, she flicked out the claws sheathed in her slender elflike fingers, baring sharp edges.
"Most Sacred One," Iakhovas addressed her.
Laaqueel kept her gaze locked on Maartaaugh. "Yes, Most Honored One." She watched the prince's guards over his shoulders. They were no problem. The sahuagin crew who worked under her had already surrounded them.
"Release him," Iakhovas ordered.
"As you command." Carefully, Laaqueel stepped back, setting free the wrist she'd captured so quickly and forcefully. She felt the currents flowing over Tar-jarea's deck, wrapping around her, spinning warm and cool water together. She kept her eyes on Maartaaugh. "You will understand this, prince. No one may lift a hand against my king while I live."
Maartaaugh gazed at her angrily but didn't say anything. In the sahuagin culture, the females fought alongside the males with the same ferocious skill. However, the only positions of importance the females held within the sea devil society were as priestesses.
Laaqueel had often thought it was only that way because the males didn't like the idea of handling the hated magic that was contained even in Sekolah's gifts.
Maartaaugh threw his arm toward the wall growing ever larger as Tarjana hurtled forward. "Even if we survive the crash, you'll doom us to the untender mercies of the sea elves manning the garrison."
Iakhovas looked past the man and said, "We won't touch the wall."
"By Sekolah's unending hunger," Maartaaugh exploded, "we can't miss!"
Laaqueel stared at the wall, watching as it loomed over them. The Sharksbane Wall had been constructed thousands of years ago by the sea elves and mermen of Seros. The sahuagin-true to their nature-had warred almost incessantly with the other underwater races. As a result, the sea elves of the Aryselmalyr Empire and other races joined to build the Sharksbane Wall.
The wall was one hundred and thirty-five miles long and stopped sixty feet short of the surface of the Sea of Fallen Stars. Sea elves and their comrades manned the garrisons strung along the top of the wall. It had been constructed to confine the Serosian sahuagin to the Alamber Sea, the easternmost arm of the Inner Sea.
For thousands of years, the Sharksbane Wall had stood as proof against-and insult to-the Serosian sahuagin. Now, Iakhovas had sworn to bring it down and free the sahuagin trapped behind it.
Laaqueel felt the steady strokes of the rowers as they powered the great galley beneath the sea. With sahuagin manning the oars, the big ship shot through the water. The wall was now less than two hundred yards distant. Even if the rowers worked at it, she didn't think they could keep Tarjana from breaking up against the barnacle- and coral-infested wall. She focused on Iakhovas's words, holding them as truths the way Sekolah had indicated she should.
Without another word, Maartaaugh turned to glare at the huge wall.
All of the prince's life, Laaqueel knew, Maartaaugh had lived in the shadow of the Sharksbane Wall, letting it define so much of his life. Personally, she found even the thought of that confinement horrible. Sahua-gin were meant to be free, able to go where they wanted and kill what they pleased.
Her priestess training let her know Iakhovas was working powerful magic. She felt the rush of soundless noise vibrating in her ears.
Tarjana shot to within fifty yards of the Sharksbane Wall. The vessel contained magic, Laaqueel knew, Iakhovas put great store by the ship. It was a mudship, capable of traveling on or beneath the sea, and even across dry land. Precious little more than a handful had ever been created by magic all but forgotten.
Iakhovas had attacked Waterdeep, the stronghold of the surface dwellers on the Sword Coast, to get the talisman of diamond and pink coral that controlled the ship. He'd arranged the near destruction of Baldur's Gate to get the ship itself.
Despite her confidence in Iakhovas, Laaqueel's gills still froze, locked tight as they plunged to within ten yards of the Sharksbane Wall. She prayed, calling out to Sekolah though she knew those prayers fell on deaf ears. The Shark God had freed his chosen people into the currents of the seas, but he'd never intervened directly hi sahuagin lives.
Maartaaugh stood resolute, his attention snapping back between the unforgiving wall towering over them and Iakhovas. His men stared at him as if awaiting his order to abandon ship.
The rhythm of the oars remained steady. The ship's crew had learned to obey Iakhovas during the wild ride through volcanic fissures from the Lake of Steam to the Sea of Fallen Stars. Perhaps that voyage had even caused the volcanic eruption of the mountain peak known as the Ship of the Gods when they'd arrived and destroyed Vahaxtyl in the process.
Without warning, Laaqueel felt the surge of magic washing over her, as sudden and as biting as heated slivers rammed under her nails. She struggled to bring in water through her gill slits.
Tarjana's prow suddenly pierced the Sharksbane Wall like a claw coral's edge through unprotected flesh. The magic galley sped through the wall unchecked, pulling her crew after. It took all of Laaqueel's willpower to stand on the deck as the rough wall rushed at her. She watched the sahuagin in front of her seem to melt into it, then she followed. A chill like none she'd ever known knotted her muscles and made her joints ache. In the blink of an eye clear ocean suddenly spread before her and she knew they were on the other side.
"Elves!" a lookout croaked.
Feeling her heart hammering inside her chest, Laaqueel glanced up. Limned against the lighter cast of the pale green sea above, the priestess spotted dozens of sea elves swimming through the water in pursuit. Like the sahuagin, the sea elves of Seros had differently colored skins from the sea elves she was familiar with, most of them reflecting blue splotches ac well. They swam, closing rapidly. '• "Prepare to defend and repel boarders!" Iakhovas roared, racing back to the stern of the ship and up the stairs. "I don't want any of them who reach us to survive!"
Laaqueel followed her king but her eyes never left Maartaaugh. No matter what else happened during their quest, the priestess knew, she'd made a powerful enemy.
The sahuagin crew rushed to do Iakhovas's bidding. All of them had tridents and nets, but dozens of others carried crossbows made from whalebone. Less than a moment later, the royal guardsman in charge ordered them to fire.
The quarrels sped through the water. Several of them buried deep in sea elf bodies. Streamers of scarlet blood twisted through the water as the sea elves kicked out their lives.
More elves overtook Tarjana, locking onto the galley with their fingers as some of them tried to secure ropes to the railing. Sahuagin sawed the ropes in half with the sharp edges of their tridents. Others lopped off fingers and hands mercilessly. Still other sea elves were captured and torn apart, their flesh divided equally between every sahuagin within reach.
Come, little malenti, Iakhovas said into Laaqueel's mind. When she'd discovered him, he'd planted one of his eyelashes deep into her side. It had traveled by magic and lodged next to her heart. The quill also allowed them to talk unheard by anyone else. She still wasn't sure how much control it gave him over her, but he had used it to threaten her in the past when she'd still doubted him.
In the years before she'd risen to high priestess, her faith had been all she had. She'd been strong in it because she'd had to be. In the end, that faith and refusal to accept anything less had led her to the prophecy of One Who Swims With Sekolah.
Yet when it seemed her faith would be strongest because she had found the truth in the prophecy, lakho-vas had stepped forward and assumed kingship of her people. Nothing but war had ensued. Now he was bringing it here to Seros. He'd told her their journey to the Sea of Fallen Stars had been to free the Serosian sahuagin.
And I will, priestess. Iakhovas's deep voice echoed inside Laaqueel's mind.
The malenti spun around and glanced at her king. He stood in the galley's stern and plucked a sea elf from the attackers swimming overhead as easily as harvesting a clam from the ocean bed. A thrown trident vibrated when it sank into the wooden deck. Laaqueel's lateral lines registered the discordant sensation even amid the other disturbances taking place in the water around her.
Between heartbeats Iakhovas's right arm blurred, becoming something edged and sharp, something that somehow looked more right on him. The razor edge sliced the captured sea elf's throat. Blood sprayed into the water, drifting into a fine mist.
Laaqueel drew in more water through her gills and tasted the coppery flavor of blood. The hunger that rose in her was the part of her that was most sahuagin. She took a trident from the railing near the steering section, then half walked and half swam to join Iakhovas.
Still having doubts, Most Sacred One? Iakhovas asked. battle raged around them. Sahuagin fought vi-.5\v, raking sea elf flesh to the bone with claws, fangs, and tridents. Even as savagely as the sahuagin fcoght, casualties floated away with spears and knives m them, yanked from Tarjana by the current.: Less, Laaqueel admitted, than I've ever had. And her words were true. The doubts were less. What bothered her was that they existed at all after everything lakho-vas had done.
Doubts are fear, little malenti, Iakhovas told her gently. He seized another sea elf that dared attack him and sliced off one of the elf s arms with hardly any effort at all. The amputated limb floated away, attacked almost immediately by a nearby barracuda that had joined the battle. Not ever fearing doesn't test you. Having fear and conquering it, that's what makes you strong.
Laaqueel knew what he said was true. Her studies had shown her that, but it was frustrating that prayer to the Shark God couldn't take those doubts from her completely. She whipped the sahuagin net from her side, spun it expertly, and threw it at a nearby sea elf.
The sea elf yelped in pain and surprise as the net wrapped around him and sank barbed hooks deep into his flesh. In the space of a drawn breath, he was tightly bound and bleeding from dozens of small wounds. Helplessly, the sea elf drifted toward the ocean bed. If one of his companions didn't free him, the smaller scavengers in the area would nibble him to death in hours or days.
Iakhovas spun again, sliding an arm over Laaqueel's shoulders and shoving her to the side. A trident slammed into the deck where she'd been standing.
The priestess kept her footing with difficulty. Even as she realized how inflexible and coarse Iakhovas's skin was in spite of his appearance, he took his arm back. No man or even sahuagin felt that tough.
Iakhovas ducked and ripped the arm-ridge across the front of a sea elf, disemboweling him. Glistening intestines spilled into the water in ropy snakes that wrapped around another sea elf guard.
Laaqueel spun, meeting a sea elf's swimming charge with a raised trident.
"Die, you traitorous bi-" The sea elf s scream ended abruptly as the trident tines crashed through his chest.
Laaqueel felt the man flopping like a fish at the end of the trident. She popped the claws of her left hand free and ripped them down the sea elPs face and across his throat, then she slung the trident and twisted it viciously, yanking it free of her opponent's chest.
In only a few moments, Tarjana cleared the attack zone. The last of the captured sea elves were put to death. With savage joy, the sahuagin crew ripped their enemies apart.
"Meat is meat!" they screamed as they dined on gobbets of flesh.
Even Prince Maartaaugh and his retinue joined in the post-combat festivities. The savage glee the Serosian sahuagin exhibited mirrored that of the outer sea sahuagin.
"Will you eat, Most Sacred One?" Iakhovas held out a bloody chunk of flesh that had once been part of a sea elf s face.
"No," Laaqueel replied, feeling her stomach unsettled despite the hunger that gnawed at her. She didn't know what was causing the unaccustomed sensation, but she had noticed her diet changing over the past few days since their arrival in the Inner Sea. "Thank you, Most Honored One."
For a moment she thought she saw confusion travel across Iakhovas's face, but as quickly as it had arrived the expression was gone-if it had ever really been there.
Laaqueel's lateral lines picked up sudden motion coming from behind her, disrupting the flow of current over Tarjana's deck. She turned, holding the trident before her.
"We passed through the wall," Maartaaugh cried out in unmistakable disbelief. The prince stared at lakho-vas. "What magic wrought this?"
Laaqueel's throat constricted in momentary panic. All sahuagin hated magic; and the Serosians were no different. By revealing Tarjana's nature as a mudship Iakhovas also risked igniting a mutiny.
"This is not magic," Iakhovas said simply. "This is Sekolah's will, a gift the Shark God gave to my people to free We Who Eat beneath the Sea of FaUen Stars."
Slowly, the dread and fear on Maartaaugh's face drained away, replaced by amazement. "The Sharks-bane Wall can no longer hold us."
Iakhovas regarded the prince with his dark gaze. "The Sharksbane Wall cannot hold me. Soon it won't be able to hold you."
Maartaaugh gazed around the great galley with new appreciation. "This is how you traveled through the volcano and arrived at Vahaxtyl."
"Yes, but only because Sekolah willed it."
Laaqueel relaxed slightly, sensing that the prince offered no threat. She gazed behind Tarjana, barely able to make out the bodies of sahuagin and sea elves hanging in the water near the Sharksbane Wall. Ocean predators had already gathered, stripping flesh from bone.
"Where do we go now?" Maartaaugh asked. "You've never said."
"To Coryselmal," Iakhovas replied. He handed the prince the piece of meat he'd offered Laaqueel.
"The ruins of the elven capital?" Maartaaugh took the meat and chewed only briefly before swallowing it. Blood coated his fangs for a moment. "Why?"
"To do as Sekolah has directed," Iakhovas answered. "There can be no other reason."
"You'll find what you need to destroy the Sharks-bane Wall there?"
Iakhovas nodded. "We will."
Maartaaugh gazed out at the sea around them. "Only twice, both times when I was much younger, have I ever been beyond the Sharksbane Wall."
"Soon," Iakhovas stated confidently, "you'll be living and slaying in these waters."
The headache pounded fiercely at LaaqueePs temples. Despite her prayers, the pain continued unabated, lasting for hours at a time. She swam easily, holding her arms at her sides and undulating her body. Not even the cool currents drifting in from the Vilhon Reach helped take the agony away.
The malenti priestess glided through the water less than twenty feet above the rock-strewn silt that covered the ocean floor. She only had to swim around coral reefs higher than that a handful of times in the last few hours. The older coral reefs had been crushed in the gigantic upheaval that had smashed the elven city of Coryselmal nearly sixteen centuries ago.
According to the conversations she'd heard between Maartaaugh and Iakhovas, the earthquake that had reduced the once proud sea elf city to rubble had struck without warning. Seventy-five thousand sea elves had perished in the carnage that followed. An undersea plateau, shoved by the underground stress, broke through the eastern half of the city and buried the other half in rubble and mud. Few had survived. Like the coral colonies and other sea creatures, undersea vegetation in the area was sparse.
Only the Esahlbane Monolith remained standing. It sat on the westernmost edge of the sea bed at the mouth of the Vilhon Reach, forty feet tall and angled now to hang over the ridgfe where the continental shelf dropped suddenly away for hundreds of feet.
Laaqueel concentrated on the image Iakhovas had imprinted on her mind and felt another wave of torment slam through her head. For a moment, she faltered in the water, her smooth moves turned jerky. She flipped her feet, trying to stay in the same area until she could get past the searing anguish.
She called out Sekolah's name, but it was Iakhovas who answered.
What is it, Most Sacred One?
Nothing, Laaqueel assured him, but she gave up swimming for the moment, drifting down to sink inches-deep in the fine silt. A slight chill embraced her feet as they covered over. The headache remained, and she couldn't help wondering if it was coming to her from an outside source. Perhaps it was some warding against sahuagin that yet remained in the area from the time of the elf occupation of the region.
Perhaps it was something more. There were those who believed, she'd learned from Iakhovas's conversation with Maartaaugh, that no civilized races were supposed to live in the Selmal Basin, another name the Vilhon Reach was known by. Only merrow, koalinth, scrags, and sea hags were rumored to live there now.
Quietly, Laaqueel prayed to Sekolah, asking the Shark God for a sign that she followed the currents he'd put before her.
You're in pain, Iakhovas mused.
Yes.
You should have told me, little malenti. You don't have to suffer.
Even as she drew water in through her gill slits again, Laaqueel felt the quill next to her heart quiver. Almost immediately she started feeling the pain subside.
How do you feel now1? Iakhovas asked.
Better.
Laaqueel peered across the distance to the northeast where Tarjana lay at anchor less than fifty feet above the ocean bed. Her vision wasn't good enough to pick Iakhovas out on the deck, but she knew he was there. He hadn't once left the great galley since they'd arrived at Coryselmal early the day before.
He had imprinted the image of the object he searched for on her mind and relied on the gifts Sekolah had given her to detect the lost article. He'd also drawn the area on maps and divided the search area into grids. Sahuagin scavenger parties shifted silt in various places, turning up scraps left over from the demise of the elf city.
Find the piece I sent you for, Iakhovas stated. I am depending on you and your god-granted abilities, Most Sacred One.
Though she wasn't feeling any pain, Laaqueel's head still felt too full. She wondered if Iakhovas had really dealt with the pain, or if he'd only masked it for her, enabling her to work even though the source of the agony continued unabated.
Still, she finned up from the silt and turned her attention back to the ocean floor. She wasn't sure what she searched for, but she was certain the image would never go away. The object was shaped like a scythe blade, no bigger than her open hand, and made of a distinctive yellow stone she had never seen before. The blade-shape contained rune markings in bright blue.
Even the image felt old, powerful.
Twenty feet above the ocean floor, she leveled off and tried to detect the object again. She'd used the ability granted by Sekolah to find magic items before-usually small things that she'd traded to surface dwellers while passing as a sea elf and serving Baron Huaanton as a spy for the sahuagin-but she'd never searched this long or this hard. She'd never been able to.
She glanced across the mile and more of scattered debris. Columns and pillars stabbed through the ocean floor in a number of places, the skeletal remains of Coryselmal. Half a dozen shipwrecks lay scattered across the seabed as well. Battles and storms had ravaged the ships, breaking them and burying them in the seabed. Experience told her that those remnants had been picked over by sea elves working salvage for surface dwellers.
The priestess watched the sahuagin crews traversing the ocean floor, prying into the silt with their tridents. She knew they felt more overwhelmed by the hunt than she did.
The bloated numbness stirred in her mind. Reluctantly, she turned her attention back to the quest laid before her. More than anything, she wanted to be alone, drawn into prayer and unmindful of anything else.
Minutes, or perhaps more than an hour later-she'd lost all track of time-Laaqueel felt the first vestigial pull of the object she searched for. As quickly as it came, the pull was gone.
Gazing down, spotting a pattern of shells across the sea floor, she marked her position in her mind. Surface dwellers or those not accustomed to living beneath the waves wouldn't have noticed the uniqueness of the shells. Carefully, the priestess stopped and turned. She finned back the way she'd come, going more slowly.
The sensation invaded her mind, grinding like a rot grub through flesh, slowly but inexorably. She waved a webbed hand in front of her face, halting her forward momentum without thought as she turned in the direction the pull came from. While turning, she locked onto the sensation. Her skin crawled at the object's power.
By Sekolah's hard-eyed gaze, the sensation thrilling through her mind could belong to nothing else. Could it? She pushed the doubt away, hating that it was there and blaming it on the bloated phantom numbness filling her skull.
She studied the sloping seabed below her as she swam closer. Broken coral and chunks of building so barnacled over it required a trained salvager's eye to know them for what they were jutted from the whorls of silt. None of the sahuagin crews worked nearby.
Closer still, the pull became intoxicating and seemed to empty her mind of the painful bloating. For the first time, she wondered if Iakhovas had instilled the pain in her, intentionally urging her to greater haste in the search.
Drawn by the release from the pain, Laaqueel searched the area carefully. The pull of the object was so strong there was no mistaking where it was. Every time she turned away from it the bloated numbness spilled back into her mind.
She dropped to the seabed near an outcrop of blaze coral standing out bright red against the blue of the depths. She'd learned the name from the Serosian sahuagin. Blaze coral didn't grow in the outer seas, it only grew in the Alamber Sea and the Vilhon Reach in the Sea of Fallen Stars.
The blaze coral clustered in rounded clumps that looked like oval disks. The bright red clumps glowed with an inner incandescence. While in Vahaxtyl, the priestess had seen some of the harvested coral. Once torn free, it lost much of the bright red glow but still glowed pink.
Slowly, one hand holding onto a rough outcropping of coral to offset the pull of the currents that threatened to take her away from the area, Laaqueel slid forward and peered down the slope. Only a few feet distant, she made out the shadowy outline of a cave.
A cold wash of current spread across her shoulders and down her back when she saw the cave. Still, the pull of the object was too strong to ignore. The promise of relief from the numb pressure in her head drew her forward.
Laaqueel tightened her fist on her trident and glided down the slope. Only a few leg strokes later, she reached down and grabbed hold of the rough rock surrounding the cave mouth.
Darkness filled the cave's interior, cold and forbidding.
She thought briefly of calling out to Iakhovas, but the possibility that she was wrong eclipsed that thought almost as soon as it dawned.
Steeling herself, Laaqueel finned forward and pulled herself into the cave mouth, following the sharp tines of the trident. Her heart sped slightly as she twisted in the sea and righted herself to face the cave. The opening was nearly fifteen feet across.
She released air from her trachea and air bladder to lose the buoyancy that helped her swim at chosen depths within the sea. Gravity pulled her to the pebbled sea floor tracking into the cave.
Less than ten feet inside the tunnel, the cave became so dark she couldn't see. The cave drove even more deeply into the seabed's slope, angling down as well. The incline had turned sharply enough that she had difficulty maintaining her footing.
Halting, she reached into one of the several small pouches she carried on the sahuagin warrior's harness she wore. She took a finger-long chunk of lucent coral from the pouch and held it up.
The illumination provided by the coral drove the darkness back nearly five feet. The Serosian sahuagin had brought large pieces of it onto Tarjana for the expedition, then chipped off chunks for the searchers. The large pieces maintained their incandescence for months even after being harvested, but the smaller pieces lost their glow within a tenday.
Laaqueel held the lucent coral up and started forward again. The tunnel walls ran nearly smooth, telling her it had been artificially constructed.
Already, her priestess's curiosity was aroused, seeking to find the answer to another mystery. That which couldn't be proven, yet was still revealed, was the tapestry of faith Sekolah had woven for his chosen people. That had been one of the first lessons Priestess Ghaataag had instilled in Laaqueel when she'd been taken into the temple at Baron Huaanton's command. It was a lesson Laaqueel had never forgotten.
She measured the distance she descended by her steps. Less than forty feet in, the cave ended without warning. Holding the lucent coral high, the priestess studied the blunt end to her search.
The coral's glow also illuminated the white and yellow of old and fresh bones mixed in a pile. Closer inspection revealed those bones to be a scattered collection of human and elf. Laaqueel thought the heap of bones might be as much as ten or fifteen feet deep.
Using the lessons Priestess Ghaataag had given her to remain in control of her fear, Laaqueel made herself take another step forward. Her foot splintered a cracked femur and the sound echoed, trapped within the cave and made even faster by the dense water.
Tooth marks marred the surfaces of all the bones.
She didn't hear the movement of the creature behind her, but she felt the displacement of water that movement created along her lateral lines.
Wheeling, Laaqueel brought the lucent coral chunk around and raised her trident.
The vodyanoi stood almost twenty feet tall even on stumpy, bowed legs. It was hard to tell because the predator stood humped over in the enclosure. Vaguely dwarflike in appearance, with a triangular head set squarely on massive shoulders half as wide as it was tall, the creature moved ponderously toward the malenti priestess. Thick arms hung to the floor, heavily corded with muscle, which ended in heavily clawed, blunt fingers capable of ripping open a ship's hull.
The sheen from the lucent coral revealed the cruel maw filled with triangular fangs. Mandibles nearly as long as Laaqueel's hand curved inward from the sides of the vodyanoi's jaws. Green slime clung to the thick, knobby hide. The cavernous mouth opened reflexively, showing the dark green gullet beyond.
Laaqueel knew vodyanoi were rumored to possess intelligence, but they were solitary creatures and didn't socialize. They dined on human flesh and only settled for other, lesser, creatures when their preferred prey couldn't be found.
Working quickly, a prayer already coming to her lips, Laaqueel slammed the chunk of lucent coral into the tunnel wall as far over her head as she could. The shadows inside the cave whirled and shifted as the angle of the light changed.
The vodyanoi lumbered forward, massive arms swinging as it closed on her. The malenti priestess threw a hand out, summoning up one of the gifts Seko-lah had given her for the faith she'd shown. Immediately the pressure around the vodyanoi increased, doubling and tripling. Laaqueel felt the currents change as they slipped around her, altered by the spell she'd used.
The pressure beat the vodyanoi down to its knees. It roared in articulate rage and the basso cry filled the cave. Laaqueel looked desperately for a chance to slip by the beast, but the vodyanoi's bulk filled the tunnel hi all directions. Incredibly, when the spell dissipated, the huge creature shoved itself to its feet again and lunged forward.
Laaqueel stepped back, lithely avoiding the charge. Bringing the trident up, she blocked a fistful of claws that rammed deeply into the side of the tunnel. Huge clods of earth and rock ripped from the wall. The umber hulks, distant cousins of the vodyanoi, could dig through solid stone and soft earth almost as fast as a man could walk.
The creature swept out another arm. Relying on her skills, Laaqueel flipped backward through the water and took air into her bladder again to make herself buoyant. She rammed the trident into the vodyanoi's chest before it could defend itself. The tines bit deeply into the knobby hide but didn't appear to be more than an annoyance to the huge beast. Blood wept from the wound in thick, globby strings.
Still moving back, watching anxiously for any opening that might allow her to get through the vodyanoi's clutches, Laaqueel drew the power of Sekolah's gift into her and mouthed a prayer.
Before she could release the power, the vodyanoi surged forward, stepping ahead of the lucent crystal imbedded in the tunnel wall. The creature seemed to disappear, becoming a two-dimensional shadow that blocked out nearly all of the illumination behind it. A massive fist slashed out, connecting with Laaqueel's shoulder.
The priestess flew backward through the water, tumbling as the uneven currents resisted the burst of speed. Skipping like a stone across the ocean, she smashed into the knot of skeletons.
Laaqueel!
Iakhovas's startled scream ripped through Laaqueel's mind, re-igniting the headache. The intensity of the pain was almost blinding. Fear made her move, though, and she pushed her way free of the tangled bones of past victims, hearing their echoing clacks as they banged against each other.
The vodyanoi surged forward again, reaching for her.
Ducking under her attacker's arms, Laaqueel seized the trident haft sticking out from the creature's huge chest. She ripped the tines free, pulling a cloud of blood with it.
"Foul creature!" she shouted, half in fear and half in anger. "You're not getting a defenseless human or elf to feast on! My blood, my soul, is of We Who Eat! I am one of the greatest terrors in the seas. Set free by the Shark God, guided by Sekolah's merciless will that all his children might be strong and fierce. / will dine on youT
Even though the vodyanoi gave no indication of understanding Laaqueel's words, it obviously understood her intent. It stood to most of its height, held back from full stature only by the cavern roof. Mouth gaping, the creature roared out a challenge of its own.
Laaqueel swam forward, following the trident's line. The tines sank deeply into the vodyanoi's stomach. The malenti had hoped that the area was less protected than the chitin-covered chest. The impact almost numbed her arms.
The vodyanoi snapped the trident in half with its claws. It bellowed angrily but didn't sound injured. It reached for her, claws snapping hollowly in its eagerness to get at her.
Dodging but unable to maneuver well in the tight quarters, Laaqueel couldn't avoid the blow that struck her head. She flew backward again, smacking up against the rear wall of the cave. For a moment she thought her air bladder had ruptured. Pain filled her head as blood eddied out from her flayed skin to muddy the water. She tasted the salt of her own blood as she drew in water through her gills.
Laaqueel!
The concern in Iakhovas's mental voice was readily apparent. Dazed, Laaqueel's thoughts chose that fact to center on rather than the hulking brute that moved toward her. In all their years together, in all the twisted webs of planning Iakhovas generated, she'd never thought he'd cared about her. The only one he'd ever seemed to care about was himself.
She struggled to move, watching as the vodyanoi reached for her, but her limbs wouldn't obey her, somehow couldn't hold her weight even in the water.
Hold on, little malenti. I am almost there.
Laaqueel knew Iakhovas would be too late. Nothing save Sekolah-who never directly interfered in any of the trials or tribulations of his chosen people-would prevent her death at the creature's hands.
The vodyanoi opened its claws expectantly until they were wide enough to encompass her head.
Fighting the nausea and miasma of pain that swirled within her, Laaqueel seized the creature's claws. Immediately, her hands were cut to the bone. Ligaments flayed, parting like the tender intestines of newborn squid that were considered a delicacy among the sahuagin. Numbness claimed her hands and took them from her. Still, she didn't give up. She fought as Sekolah would have her fight, intending to strike her opponent dead even as she drew her final breath if she had to.
Twisting away, trying not to look at the tattered remains of her hands, Laaqueel brought up her slim legs and popped the claws free of their sheaths in her toes. Still twisting, letting the currents do some of the work for her, she slashed at the vodyanoi's face, scoring wounds from ear to chin that left the flesh hanging open.
The great beast roared in hurt and anger this time, and the savage scream filled Laaqueel with pride.
Lashing out, the vodyanoi pinned her against the tunnel wall, its outspread claws wrapping around the malenti's upper body. It leaned in closer, opening its mouth.
With nothing else to do, Laaqueel prayed. She didn't pray for herself because that would have been selfish and sahuagin were trained from birth to think of their race first. She prayed instead for her people, for those who'd rejected her because of her physical deformity. She had no legacy to leave to anyone save them, and even then it was only prayer.
You're not dead yet, malenti. Iakhovas's voice burned through her mind. Nor shall I allow anyone to take your life without my consent.
Barely lit by the lucent coral, the shadows swam and twisted over the vodyanoi's massive shoulders, Iakhovas was there, hanging in the water just behind the creature.
Savage rage masked Iakhovas's face. The emotion pulled at the empty socket that held the gold gleams, at the scars and tattoos that ran in spidery lines across his features. Without hesitation, he wrapped his arms around the vodyanoi's head, barely avoiding the gaping mouth full of triangular teeth.
You will bend, loathsome abomination, Iakhovas snarled. The uncaring hunger in your stomach will still your heart.
Incredibly, Iakhovas pulled the creature back from Laaqueel. Less than half the vodyanoi's size, his strength was obvious. Iakhovas stood with his feet against the creature's back, using its own body to gain the leverage he needed to turn its head.
Released, Laaqueel stood shakily and tried to join in the battle.
Stand aside, little malenti, Iakhovas ordered. I will show you the worth of a true warrior of the sea. He yanked once more on the vodyanoi's head, jerking it back and off-balance again.
The beast roared and tried to scrape Iakhovas from its broad back. With its long arms, the reach was simple.
Only Iakhovas wasn't there when the claws closed. He kicked away from his opponent, throwing himself into the water. Even after everything she'd seen him do since they'd been together, Laaqueel stared at Iakhovas in disbelief. He fought like a thing possessed. In the uncertain light of the lucent coral, she thought she saw him change shape.
Long, ridged fins covered Iakhovas's arms and legs, ripping through his clothing. Another ridge of bone and cartilage rose from the top of his head and swept back. He grew to ten feet tall, then twelve.
The vodyanoi turned its full attention to Iakhovas. It swung its arms, hammering at its attacker. Still stunned, Laaqueel watched as every time Iakhovas touched the vodyanoi or the creature touched him, blood boiled out from a fresh wound on the beast. Pieces of the knobby skin peeled away.
Fins appeared along Iakhovas's cheeks, streamlining his features. He threw another blow filled with claws and sharp fins that landed on the inside of the vodyanoi's arm. Flesh and sinew parted in liquid rushes.
In that one blow, the battle turned. Protecting its wounded arm, the vodyanoi turned and tried to run. It clawed at the cave wall, rapidly tunneling into the packed earth.
"No!" Iakhovas shouted. "There will be no escape from my vengeance!"
Looking only remotely human, he dived after the vodyanoi. Nearly as large as the creature, Iakhovas wrapped an arm under his opponent's chin, then drove his other fist through the vodyanoi's back. Flesh split and blood spilled. Bone broke with high-pitched cracks. Iakhovas's fist smashed into the vodyanoi past the elbow. The great creature shivered all over, its antennae quivering spasmodically. Losing control over its muscles, the vodyanoi collapsed to its knees.
Screaming in savage triumph, Iakhovas withdrew his bloody arm. He held his opponent's heart in his hand.
"No one may take what is mine. No one!" He held the huge heart up and squeezed, bursting the flesh. With blood spreading from the ruined organ, he thrust the savaged meat into his mouth and swallowed.
Barely standing, Laaqueel tried to fathom what kind of being Iakhovas was. None of his lost legacy was mentioned in the prophecies she'd found and read. His identity was never revealed.
He turned to stare at her, his single eye flaming with passion. Blood dappled his mouth and face. The ridges along his cheeks, chin, and brows looked pronounced in the shadows. The fin on top of his head touched the cavern roof. The fins along his arms and legs looked like razor-edged bone.
"I am Iakhovas," he snarled, "and all who know me will tremble in fear of my name."
Laaqueel stared at him, knowing that of every creature that swam the currents of the sea, Iakhovas was the one to which Sekolah would give his highest approval. He was a natural-born killer, the merciless instincts of the predator honed to a perfect cutting edge.
But he was not sahuagin.
That she knew for sure.
Suddenly aware of the coldness that creeped through her, she sank. Only the buoyancy she kept in her air bladder kept her from dropping to the cave floor. Unable to move, certain that death was stealing over her, she floated loose-limbed in the current.
"Little malenti." Iakhovas stared at her in surprise.
Laaqueel tried to answer him. He'd been around so much death, she was surprised that he didn't recognize it when it was before him. Weakly, she reached up to her head, wishing the pain that plagued her would abate as easily as most sensations were leaving her. Working hard, she was able to touch the wound at the side of her head. At first she thought the rough object she found there was an embedded claw from the vodyanoi's blow. She pulled it away and turned it over in the uncertain light from the lucent coral to examine it.
It was bone-a piece of her own skull.
She knew she was dying.
"No," Iakhovas ordered in a tight voice. "No, little malenti, I'll not suffer you to die. My plans include you. Without you, they'll be much harder to attain. I won't have you leaving my side now. Not when we've come so far together."
She wanted to tell him there was nothing he could do. Death was the natural order of things. She only hoped that Iakhovas cared enough to order the other sahuagin to eat her as they did all their dead so that she would remain within the community. It was a sahuagin's final service to the race, to be a meal for the others.
"I am Iakhovas," he said as he strode toward her. "You don't know the depths of what I can do."
He stopped at her side, not even needing to bend over to reach her because she floated. As he stood there, the fins went away and he returned to his more familiar human shape.
Laaqueel knew she'd never seen his true self even then. There was more, and she couldn't even guess at it. Darkness started to span her vision, pulling her away. She watched, perplexed, as Iakhovas turned his head to the side then reached into his empty eye socket.
His finger emerged a moment later with a golden half-spheroid that gleamed in the pale light. He held it in one palm, spoke a word Laaqueel had never heard, and touched the half-spheroid with his forefinger. The mechanism scattered into pieces across his palm, sparkling with a dozen different bright colors, no longer only red and gold. He selected one of the pieces and turned toward her, the empty hole in his face holding the blackest shadows the malenti had ever seen.
"You can't go," he told her. "I won't let you."
Numb beyond fear, Laaqueel watched as the small item he'd selected turned into a black, full-sized hu-manoid skull with rubies mounted in its eye sockets.
Iakhovas held the black skull in both hands above her. He spoke a language the malenti had never heard before, the words coming in a definite cadence, rolling into a crescendo of thunder that couldn't have come from a humanoid throat. The quill next to Laaqueel's heart twisted painfully.
A bunding flash of virulent green flooded the cavern.
A voice sounded from far away, serene and pure, and undeniably feminine. "Go back. You are yet undone."
Soft and gentle resistance pushed against the malenti. The fragrance of clean salt sea and the pale green of the upper depths rolled over her.
Then there was nothing but blackness.
Laaqueel thought she had died, until her eyes blinked open.
"You're back," Iakhovas said gently. He still stood at her side though she couldn't tell how much time had passed.
"I was gone?" she asked.
He nodded gravely. "For a time."
His answer left Laaqueel cold. Sekolah's faith provided for no afterlife. The only thing the Shark God demanded from his chosen children was that they fight and die bravely. Where had she gone during that time? Whose voice had she heard? She was certain it didn't belong to Iakhovas, but perhaps it had belonged to the skull.
Miraculously, the pain that had quaked inside her head was gone. Hesitantly, she reached up to her temple, expecting to touch splintered bone and blood-slick, jagged flesh. Only smooth skin rewarded her touch.
"You healed me."
"I rescued you from the hand of Panzuriel himself. Don't underestimate what I have done, my priestess." Iakhovas looked at her for the first time with something as close to gentleness as she'd ever seen.
The emotion embarrassed and confused Laaqueel. She closed her eyes.
As if knowing what was going through her mind, Iakhovas turned away, the motion read by her lateral lines. "We must go. You've cost me enough time." His voice held a hard edge.
"My apologies, Most Honored One." Laaqueel fanned her arms out at her sides, catching the sea in her webbed hands. She opened her eyes and saw the half-eaten corpse of the vodyanoi slumped on the cave floor, evidence of Iakhovas's great hunger after healing her. Schools of small fish nibbled at it while crabs scuttled back and forth beneath it, tearing strips of flesh away in their pincers.
"The search for the object I seek has continued," he told her, "but the scavenger parties have only come back empty-handed."
The announcement surprised Laaqueel. She was used to Iakhovas knowing what she knew. How could he not know she'd found what they'd searched so diligently for? "I found the object, Most Honored One."
Slowly, Iakhovas turned to face her. His single eye narrowed in suspicion while golden highlights glinted in the empty socket behind the patch that he wore. "Where?"
"Here." Laaqueel pointed at the pile of bones at the back of the cave. "It lies somewhere below, buried in the silt and refuse from ruined Coryselmal."
"You're sure?"
"Yes."
"Then come." Iakhovas stepped into the sea and swam out of the cave. He followed the line of the slope upward until he reached the point above the cave. He landed on his booted feet.
For the first time, Laaqueel noticed that Iakhovas's clothing was no longer ripped where the fins had come through. He looked as human as he ever had, only one of the lies he wove so skillfully around himself.
"Swim away from here, Most Sacred One," he addressed her. "This is going to be very dangerous."
Remembering how he had fought for her, how he'd even stayed death's hand, Laaqueel hesitated. "Will it be dangerous for you?"
Iakhovas glanced at her, his single eye glowing with a feral light. "Do you care then?"
"Yes."
Deep laughter rolled from Iakhovas's throat. Laaqueel turned away and leaped up into the sea. Confusion swirled within her. She never knew for certain how to best handle Iakhovas. Any care on her part seemed to be perceived as weakness.
"Little malenti," he called out gently behind her.
She floated in the ocean above him, looking at how small he seemed against the great expanse of the sea floor. Yet his destruction had ravaged the Sword Coast, won him a savage kingdom, and that was only what she knew for certain about him. Even now there were other intrigues she knew he had underway with the pirates of the Nelanther Isles and their counterparts in the Inner Sea.
"I offer my apologies," Iakhovas whispered for her ears only. "I thank you for your kindness. It is truly something I've never become accustomed to. Now go farther."
Laaqueel swam higher. When she was more than a hundred yards away, she felt the thunderous ripple that started on the ocean floor below. She floated, adjusted the air in her bladder, and started downward.
Great sheets of silt-filled clouds roiled up from the seabed, all but obscuring Iakhovas. Around them, the other sahuagin immediately scattered, flitting through the water like a school of frightened fish.
Piles of coral smashed thousands of years ago, dozens of feet of accumulated silt from the mouth of the Vilhon Reach, debris from smashed buildings and homes, and shipwrecks all boiled up. In seconds, the area was forever changed.
Wanting to stay away from the clouds of silt so she wouldn't breathe them into her gills and irritate the membranes there, Laaqueel swam higher. She hung in the water above the edge of the contaminated sea.
Long minutes passed. The sahuagin search parties gathered close as the debris settled well enough to see the sea floor again. Where the slope had been, a deep hole plunged straight down into the earth. It resembled an anthill, the earth and other debris piled up concentrically around the opening.
Laaqueel wondered if Iakhovas had somehow gotten trapped in a landslide below the surface. Maybe he wasn't as infallible as she'd believed, or, perhaps, feared. She tried to sort through the confused knot of worry and relief that filled her, but had no success.
Only heartbeats later, Iakhovas emerged from the raw womb opened into the earth. The smile on his face told Laaqueel everything.
"That is the Akhageas Garrison," Maartaaugh declared. He stood in Tarjana's bow, at Iakhovas's side. "It's one of the oldest garrisons the cursed sea elves built when they erected the wall."
Laaqueel stood on the other side of her master. Night had purpled the sea over the garrison atop of the Sharks-bane Wall. Still, her vision was good enough for her to spot the sea elves patrolling the area in scout groups.
The garrison was constructed of coral, stone, and shells, the same building materials used in the construction of the wall. It stood two stories tall and had heavily shielded arms that branched out in each direction across the top of the wall. Huge nets lay in piles, ready to use against any sahuagin transgressors that dared try to cross the wall. The elf and merman guards wore silverweave armor and carried spears and tridents. Heavy wardings also protected the structure, complemented by the mages assigned there.
"It is one of the sea elves' most heavily fortified and manned garrisons," Maartaaugh continued. "We could choose another that isn't so well equipped and supplied."
"No," Iakhovas stated without hesitation. "This is the place. We do not have our choice in this matter."
Maartaaugh turned his-black eyes to Iakhovas. "You suggest that Sekolah is not powerful enough to accomplish this?"
Iakhovas coldly met the man's gaze full measure. "This is the nature of the Shark God," he stated coldly. "Sekolah put this object in our hands to accomplish what we're setting out to do, but there is a blood price attached to that success that must be met. Only the strong shall survive, as Sekolah wills."
Maartaaugh scowled deeply, obviously not happy with the situation.
Laaqueel watched the two men, aware of the shift in power that had occurred between them. The Serosian prince had been awed by the display of power at the mouth of the Vilhon Reach, but he hadn't given himself over entirely to Iakhovas's way of thinking.
"I can't guarantee the other princes will agree to this," Maartaaugh stated. "The last time We Who Eat attempted to overrun the Sharksbane Wall, the sea elves turned us back with their magic, then hunted my people mercilessly for more than a tenday. Thousands died. We had no place to run."
"Then we will persuade them," Iakhovas said confidently. He held up the scythe-shaped object. This is their freedom. They'll fight for that."
"Only if they truly believe."
Iakhovas turned his single eye on the sahuagin prince and said, "They'll believe."
Despite the passage of days since the city's destruction, Vahaxtyl still resembled a war zone. Huge cracks ripped through the terrain, leaving shelves of rock and ridges overlapping each other. Huge coral stands lay tumbled and gnarled. Laaqueel searched the rubble as she stood at Iakhovas's side.
The sahuagin populace of the city and kingdom sat along the jumbled ruins and ridges. The city's amphitheater had been buried when the Ship of the Gods had exploded in volcanic fury. No true gathering place remained so they held their meeting among the ruins of the city. Some cleaning had been attempted, but the priestess knew the general consensus was that the city had been lost. With that loss, over the last few days, some of the sahuagin belief that Sekolah had made them strong enough to survive their present circumstances had begun to die.
Iakhovas's voice boomed out across the distance, carried by the currents. He stood at the makeshift table the four surviving princes had ordered built when they'd convened with him during his earlier meeting after the arrival in Seros. It was also where Iakhovas had killed and rended Toomaaek, one of the princes who'd stood against him.
Gravely, Iakhovas declared, "It is time that We Who Eat were once more set free."
Unease drifted through the sahuagin ranks. Laaqueel listened to the cautious clicks and whistles of the hesitant among the crowd. Fear gnawed at her stomach, afraid that, despite all the lengths they'd gone to, the Serosian sahuagin wouldn't be able to rise to the challenge Iakhovas presented them with. It was one thing to dare to dream, but another to act. The Serosian sahuagin had been penned up for thousands of years, exposed to a way of living that went against their very natures. How could they be touched by that and not be affected? She prayed silently to Sekolah, asking only that the true natures of these people assert itself.
"You won't be alone in your battle to take the wall," Iakhovas promised. "I will lead you, and I will teach you to be true warriors once more. There will be no more barriers to your destinies. This I swear. All of Seros will tremble again at the knowledge that We Who Eat are free as Sekolah meant for us to be."
The hesitant clicks and whistles died away in the crowd, but Laaqueel knew the doubt still lingered. As priestess of the Shark God, she felt she needed to say something to shore up their belief. Before she could, Iakhovas raised the scythe blade he'd dug out in Cory-selmal.
The strange metal caught the green light streaming down from the ocean's surface above, and the blue-cut runes flashed like lightning.
"I bring you power!" Iakhovas roared. "A gift from Sekolah himself. A fang in the throat of our enemies.
With this, I will bring down the Sharksbane Wall." He thrust the scythe blade up.
Without warning, crimson fire exploded from the twin tips of the scythe blade and shot a hundred feet and more upward. The crimson fire pooled above the meeting place, above the ruin that had been left of Va-haxtyl. The fire twisted and roiled, turning outward and inward at the same tune, steadily growing larger even as it continued collapsing in on itself.
A chill spread over Laaqueel as she recognized the six sleek, brutal shapes that finned from the depths of the rolling underwater fire cloud. They looked like sharks, but her instinct told her they were much more than that.
"Look!" Iakhovas cried. "Let there be no more doubts. Sekolah sends us his blessings. Behold, his avatars!"
Laaqueel watched the six sharks as they pinwheeled through the water, creating a show of dazzling complexity and grace. Never in her life had she seen the avatars of Sekolah, though High Priestess Ghaataag had instructed her about them. The Shark God used the avatars to guide his people and to hone their battle lust during events Sekolah wished to influence.
Even as the sahuagin populace shoved themselves to then- feet and pointed, the avatars began the deepsong that touched every sahuagin spirit. Laaqueel lifted her voice, joining in with the avatars, drawn in by the hypnotic effect. In seconds, the frenzy induced by the presence of the avatars and their deepsong took over the community. Total bliss and urgency combined in Laaqueel as Ghaataag had told her.
Iakhovas's basso booms joined in with the thousands of other sahuagin voices as he added to the deepsong that resonated through the ocean. In seconds, the deep resonance twisted through the sahuagin community, spinning all the individuals into one mind.
Abruptly, the avatars spun over the fallen city once more, then headed west. Laaqueel instinctively knew they were swimming for the Sharksbane Wall. As one entity, the sahuagin swam from Vahaxtyl, led by the avatars Sekolah had sent, drawn by the power the Shark God kept over his chosen people.
Most Sacred One.
Iakhovas's words burned through Laaqueel's mind. For a moment, she fought against them, obeying her nature to give herself over to the avatars' deepsong.
You will come with me, Iakhovas commanded.
The quill next to Laaqueel's heart quivered, bringing a sharp pain that filled her chest and made her air bladder feel as if it were about to burst. Her sahuagin nature and her tie to Iakhovas warred within her. Then her mind cleared from the fog induced by the hypnotic song sung by the Great Shark's avatars. She felt troubled and lost, angry that she wasn't allowed to fully experience the euphoria that came from riding as one with the avatars.
Now.
Reluctantly, Laaqueel turned from the crowd swimming after the avatars. She swam toward the outskirts of the city, following Iakhovas who swam easily before her. Tarjana lay anchored in that direction, but obeying Iakhovas went against her nature and that troubled her. Even though she believed him to be sent by Sekolah no matter what his own plans were, she didn't think she should be torn about her actions. It was confusing.
The defenders battled fiercely to hold the Akhageas garrison. They swam out to meet the oncoming tide of sahuagin, closing in battle with them. Even outnumbered as they were, the sea elves and mermen didn't lose ground readily. The spells and wardings that protected the Sharksbane Wall held the sahuagin back as well.
Laaqueel watched in horror as the sahuagin closest to the Sharksbane Wall suddenly burst into green and yellow flames, victims of the magic that guarded the structure. The blackened cinders of the corpses drifted toward the seabed or were pulled in orbits around nearby combatants. The priestess clung to the mudship's railing with one hand as the rowers propelled it through the midst of battle. She held her trident in the other.
"Save them," she pleaded, turning to Iakhovas who stood only a few feet away.
He didn't look at her, gazing intently at the wall they rapidly approached. "I can't, little malenti." He held his arms at his sides, the scythe blade in one fist. "This is Sekolah's way, the winnowing out of existence of those who are too weak to follow the currents he has set forth for his chosen."
Laaqueel held tightly to the railing, feeling Tar-jana's deck buck and twist beneath her as the mudship fought the torrential pull of the battle being fought along the Sharksbane Wall. Magic showered lightning throughout the depths as the sea elf mages gave vent to their power.
Still, the sahuagin horde closed in for the kill. Despite their losses, sahuagin claws, jaws, and tridents opened up sea elven flesh. Blood muddied the waters and carried the scent of salt and fear in every breath that flooded in through the malenti's gill slits.
In the next moment, Tarjana was in the whirling maelstrom of life and death. Gobbets of flesh, torn free or stripped by greedy sahuagin jaws caught in the full frenzy of the avatars' presence, swirled in the currents around Laaqueel. Some of them were still warm to the touch when they brushed up against her.
Hold steady, Most Sacred One, Iakhovas told her. Within these next few moments, we weave a new future and new destiny for We Who Eat.
Desperately, Laaqueel hung onto his words and to her belief that it would be true.
Tarjana knifed through the water toward the wall like a dorsal fin slicing through the shallow surface. A small cadre of sea elves on the backs of seahorses sped toward the mudship. Hoarse cries of alarm rang out around Laaqueel.
"Stand your ground!" the priestess ordered in a harsh voice. She held onto the railing with one hand while she spun around and brought up the whalebone crossbow that hung at her side. A quarrel was already notched in the groove. "Archers at the ready! Fire on my command!"
Quickly, the sahuagin warriors on Tarjana's deck pulled themselves into formation. They raised their weapons.
The seahorse riders didn't flinch from their attack. Lances, powered by the arms of the elves and the speed of their mounts, arced through the water from less than thirty feet away. The coral tips slammed into the wooden deck, sending out vibrations that Laaqueel picked up through her lateral lines.
Hold them, Most Sacred One, Iakhovas encouraged. Give me only the time that I need. He spoke softly and smoothly in her mind.
For the moment, Laaqueel's fears and doubts faded from the front of her mind. She held the crossbow steady as the lead seahorse riders broke away to let the rest of the cavalry through. They moved like the currents themselves, suddenly there, then not there, gliding effortlessly.
The second wave of seahorses swam forward without hesitation, obeying the will of their riders. The sea elves had their spears and tridents lowered like lances, intending to bring the battle to a completely personal level aboard Tarjana.
"Fire!" Laaqueel ordered, squeezing the trigger of her crossbow. The quarrel leaped from the crossbow and sped across fifteen feet of distance to bury itself in the chest of the sea elf warrior directly in front of her.
Stricken through the heart, his silverweave armor no match for the shaved coral head of the quarrel, the sea elf released the reins of the seahorse. Instead of the smooth fluidity of rhythm exhibited by most underwater creatures Laaqueel knew, the sea elf jerked spasmodically as life left him and the troubled currents drew him away.
Riderless, the seahorse continued charging at Laaqueel. The malenti priestess swung aside, dropping the crossbow from the path of the seahorse. As the creature passed, Laaqueel flicked out her finger claws from their recessed areas and slit the seahorse's throat.
The sound of flesh striking flesh echoed across Tar-jana's deck as the line of seahorses struck the sahua-gin groups. Seahorses and sahuagin ricocheted away, torn from the deck and from their path.
Laaqueel quickly reloaded, slipping her elven-shaped foot into the stirrup in front of the crossbow and drawing the string back. She hooked a foot under the railing so she wouldn't float free of the mudship. A corpse slammed against her unexpectedly, nearly tearing her from the precarious position she was in.
Pain filled her body from the impact. Still she brought the crossbow up and fired again, putting the quarrel through the open mouth of a yelling sea elf bearing down on her.
Unable to avoid the seahorse carrying the dead rider, Laaqueel dropped the crossbow and let herself go limp. The impact knocked the breath from her but she wrapped her arms around the creature's neck. It carried her toward the railing and she was certain it was going to sweep her over the side. At the speed Tarjana was making, she knew she'd never catch up again.
Then the seahorse and its dead rider were bathed in a greenish glow. In the next heartbeat, they were gone and a soft hand offeree wrapped around Laaqueel and drew her back to the deck.
I'd rather you stayed, Most Sacred One.
Gasping for breath, steadying her trembling limbs, Laaqueel pulled herself along the railing and grabbed her trident from where she'd left it. She brought it into line and stabbed another sea elf from his mount. Before she had time to strip the struggling elf impaled at the end of her trident, Tarjana surged through the line of defenders.
A clear line of vision opened up to the Sharksbane Wall less than forty feet away.
Laaqueel felt the magic surge through the mudship a split second before the imminent impact. One moment she was aware of the deep blue of the sea around her. In the next there was only blackness as they slid through the Sharksbane Wall.
Now it begins, little malenti.
Expecting the deep blue of the sea to reappear on the other side of the wall, Laaqueel was totally unprepared for the sudden ruby flare that temporarily blinded her. Through eyes slitted against the pain of the light, she watched as the Sharksbane Wall came apart while they were still inside it.
Time seemed to move so slowly that she saw the fissures and fractures thread throughout the structure. Great chunks and blocks of the Sharksbane Wall blew away and the sea rushed in to replace the vacuum left behind.
A moment more and the blue of the sea surrounded her again.
Come, Most Sacred One.
With only a little hesitation, Laaqueel turned and followed Iakhovas up the stairs to the stern castle. She felt the mudship slowing beneath her. Standing at Iakhovas's side, she peered back at the wall.
The explosive force that Iakhovas had unleashed while within the Sharksbane Wall continued to rip through the structure. Huge pieces of it fell to the seabed below, leaving only ruins behind.
Ah, little malenti. Iakhovas held a savage grin on his face. For a savior, I have come to be a most destructive one, have I not?
Laaqueel didn't reply. She stared at the destruction, at the scores of dead sahuagin, sea elves, and mermen that had slowly started floating down to the sea floor. Battles still raged among the survivors, but not with as much vigor as before.
The Sharksbane Wall lay in fragments farther than Laaqueel could see. She didn't know how badly the structure had been damaged, but she knew it would never again be the same.
And it will never again hold We Who Eat penned like livestock, Iakhovas declared. The time of this abomination is over. These sahuagin will be free.
Roiling dust eddied around the broken pieces of the Sharksbane Wall. For a moment, Laaqueel thought no one had survived the destruction, then the avatars surged through the sand-clouded waters. Behind them, drawn by the irresistible force that filled Sekolah's representatives, came the sahuagin kingdom that had only known the Alamber Sea as home.
They flooded into the Sea of Fallen Stars, savage warriors whose destiny was going to be written in blood, sung about in song, who were going to create a new legacy for their descendants. Laaqueel watched them and a feral pride filled her, not held back by the quill so close to her heart.
It is done, Most Sacred One, Iakhovas said. As / have promised.
Yes, she replied. She didn't speak of the doubts that still filled her as she thought of the countless sacrifices made by the sahuagin. Iakhovas had lost nothing. Even as that thought struck her unbidden, she immediately felt guilty. He'd risked his life to save her, pulled her back from death itself, yet the doubts that plagued her wouldn't go away.
The Sharksbane Wall has fallen. Iakhovas threw the twisted and burned remnants of the scythe blade over the side of the ship. The sea elves' precious Myth Nantar will fall next. As will all of the Sea of Fallen Stars.
Laaqueel silently prayed, knowing Iakhovas meant what he said, and fearful of all the sahuagin lives that remained yet to be lost in those coming confrontations. She knew Iakhovas was out to win this war, no matter how many sahuagin had to die to do it.
A cold, bitter chill raced through the malenti priesl ess as she considered how much of a hand she hersel had in the coming war. She remembered the word she'd heard while she was so close to death. "Go bacl You are not yet undone." The chill turned even colde as she wondered whose voice that might have been.
Not undone. Not yet. But perhaps soon. Sh wrapped her arms around herself, feeling small an alone in the currents that swirled through her lif now.
War had come to the Sea of Fallen Stars, and sh stood near the eye of it all.
The Crystal Reef
Troy Denning
8 Flamerule, the Year of the Gauntlet
The isle lay well west of Tharsult. It was a tiny disk of palm-covered sand raked by hot subtropical breezes, barely a harpoon throw across and two hundred miles from the nearest shipping lane. Its single spring produced only one cask of fresh water a day. There were no fruit trees or meat animals to provide provisions on a long voyage, nor any sheltered bays or secret lagoons in which to hide pirate ships. The oyster beds never produced pearls. The island's sole treasure was a delicate ring of coral known as the Crystal Reef, a stony garden of twisted fingers and intertwined spikes whose entire value lay in the dazzling beauty of its thousand luminous colors.
So when the reef giant Tanetoa awoke one morning to find a fleet of war carracks anchored offshore, he did not know what to think. There were eight of them, with ballistae on their forecastles, catapults on their after-decks, and archers standing watch in their crow's nests. Their sails were furled and secure, their decks were crammed with landing skiffs and supply casks, and their hulls sat low in the water. Warriors stood fore and aft, armored in helmets and breastplates, staring at the Crystal Reef with eyes wide and mouths gaping.
Tanetoa called his wife to the hut window and asked, "Kani, what is that fleet doing here?"
Kani stared out the window for a long time. At just over two hundred years of age, she was still young for a reef giant, with a svelte figure, long ivory hair, and copper-colored skin. She was as beautiful as the Crystal Reef and as tranquil as the Shining Sea. Like Tanetoa himself, she much preferred the sound of the rolling surf to that of her own voice.
When Kani finally replied, her tone was mocking. "They must be pirates come to rob us of our treasure." She waved at the one room hut, which contained a palm-frond bed, a giant conch shell, a table, two sturdy chairs, and not much else. "I fear you must swim out and sink their ships, my courageous husband."
Tanetoa gave her a sidelong look. "You are sure you didn't call them to take you away?"
"From all this?" Kani gave a short laugh, then touched Tanetoa's elbow with genuine affection. "You know better. I'm afraid you'll just have to go out there and ask them what they want."
Tanetoa cast a wary glance at the carracks' ballistae. He was the type of giant who much preferred peaceful isolation to trafficking with humans, especially when those humans came heavily armed. Still, they appeared to have every intention of staying, and that meant he would have to deal with them sooner or later.
He sighed. "If I must."
"It's probably nothing." Kani patted him lightly on the shoulder. "Invite one back to have a look at the island. They'll leave soon enough after that."
"A good thought," agreed Tanetoa.
He stepped through the door into the golden sunlight. On the ships, warriors scurried along the gunwales, shouting to each other and pointing in Tanetoa's direction. Crewmen began to appear behind the ballis-tae, loading tree-sized harpoons into the weapons and ratcheting tension into the firing skeins.
"Wonderful." Tanetoa raised a hand and waved, hoping human eyes were acute enough to see his smile. "This is going well."
"Don't look frightened," Kani advised from the doorway. "Act like a giant, and you'll be fine."
"Right. I'll strike fear in their hearts if it kills me."
Tanetoa lowered his arm and stepped down to the beach, then waded out into the shallow lagoon between the shore and the Crystal Reef. Alarm bells began to clang on the ships, and the tall masts swayed back and forth as men rushed to their battle stations. Tanetoa wondered if it would be wiser to wait for the humans to send an envoy to him, but they would undoubtedly approach in boats, which would scrape long furrows into the reef and kill whole swaths of delicate coral.
When the water reached his chest, Tanetoa took a deep breath and dived. The lagoon floor was sandy and flat, littered with orange clams and rosy conches. A
L nt A ni\Lj-vi school of blue tang flashed past, herded along by the snapping jaws of a hungry barracuda, and a red-tinged jellyfish drifted by in a mass of fluttering membrane. As he neared the reef, thickets of jewel-colored staghorn coral rose from the bottom, filling the water with a luminous garden of tangled scarlet branches and sapphire starbursts. The giant swam closer to the surface now, so he would not brush any of the delicate formations and break them off. The coral was a living thing, and even the slightest damage could take centuries to repair.
Eventually, the luminous garden grew so tall and tangled it formed an impenetrable wall of color and motion. There were dozens of different corals: pink staghorn and golden elkhorn, diaphanous finger coral and tiger-striped fan, contorted spheres of brain coral, sweeping sheets of queen's lace, and more than even Tanetoa could name. Hiding among the corals were hundred-tentacled anemones, furtive clown fish, sponges of every shape and form-a profusion of different creatures that looked more like plants than animals.
Tanetoa swam along bare inches above the coral. Finally, he began to feel the rise and fall of the waves breaking over the reef. He entered a narrow, winding channel. Alongside him, the coral thickened into a solid mass, reaching the water's surface and forming a broad flat of dead, rocklike reef that served as a breakwater for the lagoon. It was the only ugly part of the reef, but one that teemed with crabs, starfish, and three-foot sea cucumbers.
Tanetoa reached the end of the channel and struck out into the open sea. The warships were anchored less than two hundred yards away. As he approached, the sound of alarm bells and screaming voices echoed across the water all the more loudly. He tried to take comfort in their fear, though he knew it was also their fear that made them swing their ballistae in his direction.
Tanetoa swam to the largest of the ships, stopping twenty yards off her starboard side so the sailors would not think he meant any harm.
"Ahoy, little people!" He waved his hand, which caused a great rustling among the men and prompted the flaunting of several dozen harpoons. Tanetoa scowled at the display of weapons. "There is no need to be frightened. I come in peace."
A bearded man in a white turban stepped forward and stood between two harpooners. "Then you declare for us?"
"Declare?"
"Declare your side." The man narrowed his eyes suspiciously, then motioned the ballistae crews to stand ready. "In the war. Surely, you know about the war?"
"I have heard the whales sing of it," Tanetoa answered, "but this is not my war."
"Of course it is," the man retorted. "This war is everybody's war. Now, where do you stand?"
Tanetoa considered this, then shrugged. "What are my choices?"
The man scowled. "You dare mock an officer of the caleph's fleet?"
Tanetoa started to apologize, then remembered he was a giant and clenched his jaw. He kicked his feet, raising himself high enough to display his mighty shoulders and chest. "Do you speak of the Caleph of Najron?"
The officer paled and could not help retreating a step. "The very one, may the One grant him all blessings."
"And where does the caleph stand?"
"On the side of j-justice and honor, uh, of course," answered the officer.
"On the side of justice and honor," Tanetoa repeated, trying to disguise his disbelief. He had heard the whales sing of this Caleph of Najron and knew the man to be a Cyric-worshiping blackguard who thought nothing of pouring his city's filth into the sea. "Truly?"
"Truly," answered the officer.
Considering the ships and their ballistae, Tanetoa decided a diplomatic answer might be best. "I have always favored justice and honor."
The officer smiled, displaying a huge gold tooth, and spread his arms magnanimously. "Then we are allies!"
"If you stand on the side of justice and honor," Tanetoa answered carefully. He touched a hand to his breast. "I am Tanetoa of the Reef."
The crowd at the rail parted, and a new man in a golden turban stepped forward. Like the first, he had a long black beard, but his face was much more stern, more hawkish.
"And I am the emir Bahal yn Nadir, Admiral of the caleph's fleet." The newcomer gestured with a bejew-eled hand, and the harpooners lowered their weapons. "I have come to occupy your island in the name of the caleph."
"Occupy it?" Tanetoa glanced around at the eight carracks, trying to guess how many hundreds of men they held. "The island can barely sustain my wife and me."
"We have brought supplies," said the emir.
Tanetoa eyed the overburdened ships, trying to imagine the humans ferrying tons of casks and chests through the winding channel into the lagoon. There would be accidents-and even if there were not, the mere presence of so many humans would poison the reef. Tanetoa shook his head vigorously.
"No. It will be bad for the reef."
"The reef?" The emir scowled, clearly confused. "What does a reef matter? We are at war!"
"This is the Crystal Reef," Tanetoa explained. There is no other like it in the Shining Sea."
The emir looked unimpressed. "And?"
"And its death would be a great loss to the world." Tanetoa spoke in a stern voice. "I have sworn to protect it."
The emir surprised him with a broad smile. "Then you should be glad for our presence. That is the very reason the caleph sent us-to protect this island."
"Protect it from what?"
"From the Enemy Beneath, of course," the emir replied. "Already, the sahuagin and their allies have raided Waterdeep, Baldur's Gate, and many other places along the Sword Coast."
"But Waterdeep and Baldur's Gate are wealthy places," said Tanetoa. "So the whales tell me."
The emir's brow rose. "The whales tell you?"
"We sing to each other," Tanetoa explained. "They tell me the sahuagin are stealing human treasure."
"The whales tell you correctly." The emir and his officer exchanged meaningful glances. "What else do they tell you?"
"Only that the war is spreading," said Tanetoa. "But what could the sahuagin want from my island? Those other places have things worth stealing. My island is too poor to even have a name. Let me take you ashore,