by Mel Odom
Pacys judged the snake close to seventy feet long, the biggest of its kind he'd ever seen. As he watched it coil and try to constrict the hand holding it, he didn't doubt that the snake would keep some would-be sailors from ever going to sea again. The snake's presence reminded every watcher of how unknown the depths were and how much of them covered Toril.
The giant disembodied hand squeezed more tightly, holding the snake high overhead with ease despite the creature's struggles to escape. All of the fighting nearby that Pacys could see came to a halt as combatants stared at the strangling snake.
Piergeiron turned in his saddle and lifted his helm. A small smile twisted his lips and his eyes lighted with fire. "Maskar Wands," he said, "hail and well met."
Pacys turned quickly. In all his wanderings through Waterdeep and the rest of Faerun, he'd never met the man, one of the Sword Coast's greatest wizards. He moved away from the men around him, seeking a clearer view.
Maskar Wands stood in a flying chariot drawn by a pair of red firedrakes whose claws struck sparks from the sky as they ran. Though not six feet tall, Maskar appeared regal and grave. The wizard's hairline had receded over the years to reveal his broad forehead, but silver hair still flowed in the wind. He wore the robes of a wizard, with a family crest-three gold stars on a field of purple with a black sleeve-was worked into the chest of the garment.
"Hail and well met, Lord Piergeiron," Maskar called back. His dark gaze never left the strangling snake in the sky above the harbor. "I came as quickly as I was able."
Excited murmuring drifted through the crowd Piergeiron had led into battle. Maskar Wands, though one of Waterdeep's most famous residents, didn't put in many public appearances, but when he did, it was to let everyone know his opinion on the ways magic was being abused. He and Khelben Arunsun had argued extensively on the subject, and bards scattered across Toril waited lustfully for the war everyone was certain would inevitably take place between the two wizards.
Piergeiron turned back to his command. "I want this street secured," he ordered. "Take your men down to East Torch Tower, find those who yet survive there, and get them organized. I want whatever ships are there to be appropriated and used to retake this harbor."
One of the watch captains nodded, then led his command across the intersection of Dock and Ship Streets, through the tangle of corpses.
Maskar gestured at the chariot and firedrakes and they disappeared. From all the legends Pacys had heard about the man, he knew Maskar Wands disapproved of any abuse of magic. The wizard gazed blackly at the snake hanging from the huge hand he'd conjured.
"Now," he said sternly, "now we show these invaders that Waterdeep will never bend, much less break."
He gestured at the fire consuming the building beside the Mermaid's Arms and the flames stopped reaching across the building, bending to the mage's will. Pacys watched as the fire gathered itself, then shot skyward in a whirling mass of colorful pyrotechnics that spread across the dark heavens around the sea snake constricting around the giant, disembodied hand. The pyrotechnics limned the struggle, making it visible for miles, drawing all eyes.
The bard saw Maskar speaking, but his voice seemed to come from high overhead, a thunder of threat. "You've made a mistake in attacking the City of Splendors this night," the mage roared. "Retreat while you can. There will be no mercy."
Even before the echoes of his voice died away, the disembodied hand closed more tightly. The crack of the giant sea snake's vertebrae snapping echoed over the harbor. Still, the great creature struggled, its body refusing to admit defeat or death.
The hand disappeared at a spoken word from the arch-mage. As the writhing mass of coils plummeted toward the water, the wizard pointed again. A fireball scored a direct hit on the snake, wreathing it in flames that burned with white-hot intensity. Only ashes drifted down to hit the storm-tossed water.
“No mercy!" Maskar repeated in that booming voice.
Pacys glanced around him, looking at the smoke-stained, bruised and battered faces, and saw renewed hope glow in the eyes of the Waterdhavians around him. They tightened their grip on their chosen or confiscated weapons. The battle for the city wasn't lost, but it was yet to be won.
Laaqueel stood in the mouth of a sewer drain, the vile water trickling through a channel to her left. After the confrontation with the watch group and citizens had begun filling the city's streets, Iakhovas had guided them into the maze of sewers beneath Waterdeep. The wizard showed an unsettling familiarity with them and brought them quickly to one overlooking the harbor from Coin Alley.
She watched the charred ash from the burned sea snake cascade onto the roiling water of the harbor. Her eyes still ached from the explosion of light only a moment ago.
"Ah, little malenti, that man," Iakhovas declared, "could possibly prove a worthy opponent should the opportunity present itself. There are so few humans who are." He smiled rakishly. "Another time, perhaps."
"When we try to get back across that harbor," Laaqueel said coldly, "you'll get your opportunity then."
Iakhovas shook his head. "See, this is why I've planned everything, why I am the master and you serve me. We're not adventuring out into the harbor any more this night."
"How do you propose to leave?"
In reply, Iakhovas handed her a thin medallion from his cloak. "I've taken care to make my own doors and egresses, little malenti. I give you this and an escape route that goes with it. Accept this, a token of my appreciation for your efforts thus far, and a down payment on those you'll provide again in the future. Say your name when you close your fist on it and you'll be transported back to my castle."
Laaqueel took the medallion and looked at it. About the size of a silver piece and constructed of cut crystal, it bore a compass rose on both sides. "Magic?" she asked derisively.
"Yes."
She let her look of displeasure let him know how she felt about magic.
"Of course, you can always choose to stay here and die," Iakhovas suggested, "but I don't think that will serve Sekolah."
"How do I know this will work?"
"Because I crafted it, little malenti."
One of the wererats strode forward out of the shadows. They'd assumed their hybrid forms while in the sewers to enhance their vision. Laaqueel recognized him as Manistas, the leader of the pack Iakhovas had made his deal with.
"What's going on here?"
Iakhovas faced the wererat leader. "I'm taking my leave," he said. "Your services are no longer needed and your people can go."
"Go where?" The wererat's pink and gray tongue slithered out of its mouth nervously. "There's no place for us to go in this city. Two of us were recognized by members of the Watch. They know we were with you."
"Then I suggest you take your departure of Waterdeep at your earliest convenience," Iakhovas said without sympathy, "or slay the two among you who were recognized. Either way, I've delivered you your gold for tonight's bit of business."
Manistas unsheathed his sword, fell back into a defensive posture, and said, "You're not going to just leave us here."
"Attacking me will be your last mistake," Iakhovas assured him in a low voice, "should you choose to act so unwisely."
Reluctantly, the wererat backed away, but kept his sword out.
"What you do here won't be forgotten," Manistas promised.
"You hired on for mere gold with nothing of yourselves at stake except that which you were willing to risk in your greed," Iakhovas said. "Your loyalty was fleeting at best. You and your people live off the surface dwellers, Manistas, as did your ancestors. You have no love of the sea for what it is. As the humans do, you live in spite of the sea, taking from it what you will with no thought to the needs of the deep. If I have need of you or your people again, I'm sure your greed will let you forget this transgression, or mayhap someone else's will."
The wererat leader tightened his grip on his short sword and said, "If you do contact me again, know now that the price will be higher�
� much higher."
Iakhovas laughed, and the sound of it trapped in the sewer chilled Laaqueel's blood. Looking at her, he said, "Do not tarry long, little malenti. I do fear I shall leave you in unkind company."
He broke the medallion and spoke a word of command. Blue vapor coiled from the two halves of the medallion and wreathed him. A sharp crack of thunder filled the sewer and he disappeared. The broken medallion pieces hit the ground where he'd been standing.
Laaqueel felt the smooth edges of the medallion in her fingers and thought about the magic power inherent in it. Her stomach rolled in nervous fear. What she'd been through with Iakhovas had been terrifying enough, but to trust herself to the spell locked in the medallion was the most fearful consideration she'd ever been forced to make. It would have been better to face an enemy in combat.
Even the deep shadows trapped in the sewer weren't enough to blind her to the small hand gestures Manistas made. In response, the wererats slowly fanned out before her, blocking her way back into the sewer channel. Dozens of red glints from true rats covered the underground tunnel behind them.
"We know you don't like magic, priestess," the wererat leader stated. "He used you as he used us. Perhaps together we might be able to turn the tables on him." He took a step forward, the short sword dropping to his side.
"So you would offer me a partnership?" Laaqueel demanded.
Manistas nodded, his rat's eyes never leaving her face. "Yes. It's more than he offers you."
Laaqueel considered unleashing one of her spells on him, to show him the true error of his ways and his poor judgment, but she was already tired, needing the embrace of the sea around her to return her strength. The other wererats closed in, getting well within springing distance.
"Maybe I'd even offer you more," the wererat leader said. "You're a very beautiful woman, and I can afford to be generous."
Hollow booms sounded outside the barred sewer shaft, and the stench of lightning filled the air, prickling Laaqueel's skin. She didn't respond and tried to break the medallion, only her fingers wouldn't obey her will.
The wererat to her right sprang, a short blade glinting in his pawlike hand.
Afraid then, knowing the wererats would pull her down with their sheer numbers, Laaqueel hurled the crystal medallion at her feet. It shattered against the stone and the blue smoke curled up around her, bringing the strong salty scent of purple seaweed with it. She screamed her name and she was gone, ripped away by Iakhovas's magic.
"There!" a man in a guard's uniform yelled, pointing.
Pacys turned, watching as the sahuagin manta bobbed only inches below the surface. The silvery black eyes of the sahuagin hanging onto their underwater craft gazed up at the humans aboard the great galley the Waterdhavian Guard had appropriated as a staging platform for the battle.
"I see them, I see them!" a sailor yelled. He grabbed a lantern from a peg on the railing and quickly started up into the rigging. "I'll signal the warning!"
In response to the first man's yell, the senior civilar in charge of the group aboard the galley called his men into position. They lined the railing alongside the bard.
Glancing at their faces, knowing the past hour since the battle had begun hadn't been easy, Pacys saw the pride and the dedication on the faces of the men. He'd heard prayers as they worked, from men calling on their gods to protect not only their families and them, but for protection to be offered to friends and neighbors as well.
A steel fishing net stretched between the galley Pacys was on and the one a hundred feet away. Though the storm had finally started dying down, the waves hammered unmercifully against the ship's hull. The deck shuffled erratically beneath Pacys's feet.
The cable supporting the top part of the net remained slack, creating a big U-shape into the harbor. The man in the rigging waved his lantern. A lantern on the other ship waved back in response.
"They see us!" the captain yelled up at his mate. "They have the wind working for them. Tell them to circle around and come into us. We'll scoop these damned sea devils up before they can run!"
Pacys hung onto the railing, not believing the sahua-gin would run. They'd attacked the harbor with the intention of destroying all they could, but there appeared to be no real objective other than destruction. Thinking that way bothered the bard. No military exercise was conducted without some kind of end in mind, and the sahua-gin had to have known they couldn't completely destroy Waterdeep.
The sea creatures had quickly lost interest in the attack during the last several minutes. They'd deserted in earnest, hurried on their way by the Waterdhavian Guard and the wizards and sailors who'd joined their ranks. The huge corpses of dragon turtles, sea snakes, eyes of the deep, sharks, and even a giant jellyfish floated in the harbor and required negotiation by ships. A dead giant squid had even washed up onto Dock Street, taking the defensive line that had been set up there out of the battle until a sufficient number of sturdy draft animals could be used to haul it away.
The other galley's sails filled with wind and it sped up, cutting a half circle through the water as it surrounded the manta. The huge net slithered into place around the sahuagin craft.
"Pull 'em up, boys!" the captain bawled. "Kelthar!"
"Aye, sir!" the first mate called back.
"Prepare that oil and heave it when I tell you."
"Aye, sir."
Pacys watched the silvery shimmer of the steel net as it rose up under the sahuagin manta. The craft was one of the large ones, fully seventy-five feet wide and two hundred feet long. The net couldn't get around all of it, but it settled around two-thirds of it.
The net seized the manta and brought it the rest of the way to the surface. Sahuagin clung to it, looking like crayfish babies that clung to the mother's tail, so thick on it they were crowded in on each other. There were more than he expected.
"Tymora stay with us," one of the sailors cried out. "There must be four, five hundred sahuagin on that craft!"
The galleys each normally carried a crew of a hundred and fifty, but almost twice that number were on them now as the fighting men of Waterdeep took the battle to their enemy. The numbers between sahuagin and Waterdhavian forces were roughly equal, Pacys guessed, but the sea devils pound for pound were the fiercest fighters.
Knowing their craft was tied up in the net, the sahuagin started swarming up the net toward the crews. Tridents flashed in their hands, and several of them loosened the throwing nets they carried. They navigated the steel net easily, their wide feet allowing them to climb with no threat of slipping through.
One of them stopped, hands raised in a beseeching posture. Pacys studied the shells and skulls the sahuagin wore on chains around her body and knew from stories that she must be a priestess. The bard turned to the captain.
"She's preparing a spell," he warned.
"Nonsense," the old man yelled back gruffly. "Damned sea devils don't believe in-"
"She's a priestess," Pacys said. "That kind of magic they understand just fine."
"Galm," the captain called, looking troubled.
One of the guardsmen turned.
"Put a shaft through that one," the captain instructed. "Man here says she could be calling something nasty up our way."
The guard nodded and pulled his bow back. Before he could fire, light around the ship suddenly extinguished, and the night's full darkness descended again, no longer held back by the galley's lanterns. The captain cursed loudly and ordered his men to the railing.
Pacys stared hard into the gloom, unable to detect more than a slither of occasional movement. The vibration of the sahuagin warriors clambering along the steel net lashed through the galley. A slaughter was coming, the bard knew, and the defenders aboard the ship would be fighting among themselves before it ended.
"Hold them back, boys!" the captain bellowed. "You may not be able to see them, but you can by the gods smell them when they come aboard."
Pacys steadied his staff, leaving the hidden blades in pla
ce so he couldn't offer too much threat to his companions. His stomach heaved in fear and his hands slid on the staff.
Without warning, the lights of the ship became visible again while the sahuagin were only yards away, scrambling up the net as quickly as they could. Glancing skyward, Pacys spotted a flying carpet above them.
"Maskar Wands," the captain called up, "thank you for your help. Hail and well met."
"Hail and well met," the wizard called down, then he gestured again and a great font of flames speared from his fingers and rained down over the sahuagin on the net. Most of them died in that instant, but a wave crawled up over the galley's railing.
Like the other men, Pacys was forced back by the desperate sahuagin. He wielded the staff with grim certainty, breaking open heads and tangling the sahuagins' legs where he could. A trident laid his arm open during the battle, but he kept fighting. Men died around him, but sahuagin died in greater numbers.
Incredibly, the sahuagin faltered in their charge and were driven back. Only a few escaped back into the harbor.
Breathing hard, his limbs shaking with effort, Pacys gazed out at the harbor. Only a few skirmishes remained within the breakwater walls, and the guard was making short work of them. He drew in the air deeply, smelling the salt and not knowing if it was from the sea or from the blood, his or someone else's, that covered him.
The torches at the guard stations along the breakwater blazed more brightly, probably magically enhanced. They threw light over the harbor, driving back the darkness that had tried to consume the city.
The bard turned and looked back at Waterdeep, listening to the splashes made as the galley's crew threw the dead sahuagin over the side. Mount Waterdeep soared above the harbor, standing tall and majestically proud.
The melody that had haunted Pacys for the last fourteen years rose inside his head again. He listened to it, not surprised to find that it was still incomplete. If this battle were to be granted to him as his song, his legacy to leave the world, none of the other bards would have been witness to it. He believed now, more strongly than he'd ever believed, that he was meant to make an enduring song with his craft, a song that would fire the hearts and stir the souls of men. It was his destiny, and his life had been spared tonight because of it.
