Under Fallen Stars

by Mel Odom

  The smaller fliers rode the currents above them. Coral spears and tridents bristled over the railings of all the Serôsian fliers. Crossbowmen peered over their weapons.

  Iakhovas stood before them all, his arms at his sides. He took no cover and he offered no outward threat. Laaqueel glanced at him, then had to turn quickly away. Whatever spell he was using to disguise himself as a sahuagin had gained power. Even though she normally saw him as human, the malenti’s vision clouded painfully, giving different views of human and sahuagin that overlapped so quickly one blurred into the other.

  Occasionally, the view was of something else—something she couldn’t clearly recognize.

  The sight of Iakhovas’s other self sent fear thrilling down Laaqueel’s spine. Nausea twisted her stomach relentlessly. She wasn’t certain if the ill feeling came from the spell or the sight of his misshapen other self. Her curiosity made her want to look again in spite of her reluctance.

  Instead, her attention was riveted to the large sahuagin who strode to the forefront of the closest flier. He wore a prince’s insignia, recognizable even though the markings were different than what Laaqueel was used to. He held a royal trident in one gnarled fist. A three-armed sahuagin in a royal guardsman’s war halter flanked the prince on his left.

  The royal guard beside the prince held Laaqueel’s attention. The guardsman gazed at her with bold viciousness, no hesitation in him at all.

  “Who are you?” the guard bellowed.

  Silently, the other sahuagin aboard Tarjana who weren’t at the oars swam up to take a stand behind Iakhovas. They bared their weapons as well, but Iakhovas waved them still.

  Even with all the fliers they’d brought with them, Laaqueel knew they didn’t have a chance if the Serôsian sahuagin attacked. Despite the awesome destruction the volcano had unleashed, Iakhovas and his followers wouldn’t have been able to stand against them. Unless Sekolah wills, the malenti amended to herself. She kept her gifts at the ready, certain Iakhovas was doing the same.

  “I am Iakhovas.” His voice thundered through the water, punctuated by the shrill clicks and whistles of the sahuagin tongue. “I am king of We Who Eat in the Claarteeros Sea.”

  “Liar!” the black-clawed royal guard roared. “That place exists only in myth.”

  “Most Exalted One,” a sahuagin baron among Tarjana’s crew said quickly, “let me claim the right of blood challenge against this offender. I swear by Sekolah’s blessed fins that I will bring honor to your name.”

  “No,” Iakhovas answered calmly. “No blood will be shed unless I command it. They need every warrior they can muster.” His words resonated and carried through the water.

  Laaqueel quivered inside. Not responding to the royal guard’s accusation could be construed as cowardice. It was an open invitation to attack.

  A four-armed sahuagin, missing one of his arms, who floated next to the Serôsian prince opened his mouth to speak.

  “Silence, T’Kalah,” the prince commanded without looking at the warrior.

  T’Kalah swung on the other man, displeasure evident in his body language. Laaqueel knew if the prince had noted the movement he would have punished the warrior for insubordination.

  The prince studied Iakhovas with his measured gaze. “You are a king.”

  “Yes,” Iakhovas answered shortly but politely.

  Laaqueel watched T’Kalah, feeling that if any attack was launched it would come through that sahuagin first. During her inspection of the royal guard, she noted the fact that the anterior fins on the sides of his head flared back over his skull and merged with the dorsal fin on his back. The anterior fins of the sahuagin in the outer seas didn’t connect. His different coloring had already been noticed. Even as strange as the Serôsian sahuagin looked to her, she knew they fit in more securely with her own people than she did despite Iakhovas’s influence.

  “Among your own people, perhaps,” T’Kalah growled, “but not here.”

  Iakhovas pinned the sahuagin warrior with his glance. “I made myself king through blood, three-arm, and if need be, I will remain so by spilling more. Make no mistake about that.”

  T’Kalah’s black eyes burned with hostility and he stared hard back at Iakhovas. It was not something most sahuagin would ignore. Instead, Iakhovas looked back to the prince, dismissing the sahuagin warrior as if he were nothing. Laaqueel watched the muscles bunch across T’Kalah’s chest, and the amputated stub of his arm jerked involuntarily.

  “No,” she stated forcefully. She held her hands up before her, feeling the power of her gifts. “I am a priestess of Sekolah, warrior, and you would do well to heed my calling and the authority of the Most Exalted One.”

  The prince looked at T’Kalah as well, then moved his trident to face the other sahuagin. “If you move, you shall have to get through me as well.”

  “I seek only to protect you,” T’Kalah argued.

  “Then do it by serving me,” the prince ordered.

  Angrily, T’Kalah held his trident upright in one hand, then folded his other two arms across his chest. “These are ill currents, Maartaaugh.”

  “If so,” Maartaaugh said, “we shall swim through them.” The prince turned his attention back to Iakhovas. “What are you doing here?”

  “I came to see your king,” Iakhovas said.

  “King Kromes is dead. He died when the volcano exploded.”

  Iakhovas remained silent.

  “His death,” Laaqueel stated to fill the uncomfortable void that followed, “was by the will of Sekolah.”

  “Liar!” T’Kalah cried. “He’s dead by your hand! Killed when you came through the volcano!”

  Maartaaugh looked at the royal guard. “They couldn’t have come through the volcano.”

  “I tell you, Exalted One,” T’Kalah stated, “it is as I say. Would you call me a liar?” He took a step away, setting himself into a fighting stance. “I won’t take such an accusation without demanding blood honor.”

  “We came through the volcano,” Iakhovas told them.

  The sahuagin prince faced Iakhovas again. “How?”

  Laaqueel heard the uncertainty and fear in the prince’s voice. She knew Maartaaugh was thinking of the magic involved with such a thing. “We were brought here by the Great Shark’s will.”

  “They spout still more lies,” T’Kalah said. “All true sahuagin know that Sekolah doesn’t meddle in the affairs of his chosen. He expects them to fend for themselves.”

  Maartaaugh’s face grew stony. Laaqueel felt the prince slipping away from them, saw it in the way he folded his arms and closed in on himself.

  “Why,” Maartaaugh asked, “would Sekolah do such a thing?”

  Laaqueel stepped forward, taking her place beside Iakhovas. She lifted her voice and made it strong. “The Great Shark has established certain currents within Most Exalted One Iakhovas. Sekolah started a ripple within the Claarteeros Sea, and through the strength and forethought of Iakhovas, that ripple has spread even unto Serôs.”

  “Brave words,” T’Kalah snarled, “but words are cheap.”

  “He brought an army here,” Laaqueel said.

  “And killed our king.” T’Kalah stepped toward her. “Tell me why the Great Shark would choose a malenti to speak for him.”

  The words stung Laaqueel.

  “Because,” Iakhovas snapped, “her faith is stronger even than your thick-headedness.”

  T’Kalah swam up from the flier’s deck, cutting through the water swiftly. The currents he started slammed against Laaqueel.

  “Most Sacred One,” Iakhovas said softly, “don’t kill this one yet.”

  T’Kalah arrowed toward them, disregarding the prince’s commands to return to the flier.

  Summoning her power, Laaqueel shot out a hand, praying to the Great Shark that her control be strong and sure.

  Little more than halfway between the vessels, T’Kalah’s smooth stroke suddenly shattered. His arms and legs twisted in a vicious convulsion. He flailed
out against the sea as if it was closing in on him.

  Laaqueel held the sahuagin warrior in the spell’s thrall, knowing the pressure she’d created was so great he wasn’t able to breathe properly.

  “Enough,” Iakhovas said.

  Silently, Laaqueel dismissed the spell, feeling terribly fatigued. It was one thing, she knew from experience, to unleash a spell, and quite another to attempt to curtail it and shape it once it had been loosed.

  Released from the crushing pressure, T’Kalah finned weakly in the ocean, barely able to control himself. Weakness showed in every move he made. Angrily, he retreated back to his flier.

  “What do you want?” Maartaaugh asked.

  “If your king is dead,” Iakhovas asked, “who leads?”

  “The remaining princes. We serve as council. For the moment.”

  “How many are you?”

  “Five,” Maartaaugh answered.

  “Then I will speak to them.”

  Glints of anger stirred in Maartaaugh’s black eyes. “Why should I allow it?”

  “You would be foolish to try to stop me,” Iakhovas declared. “I’ve come from an ocean, a world away, and I’ve come here for one thing only. I’ve traveled to Serôs to free you from your prison.”

  * * * * *

  Laaqueel stood at Iakhovas’s side as he spoke at the public forum he’d demanded. She felt the currents eddying around her, tracked by the lateral lines that ran through her body. She watched the five princes gathered at the makeshift table that had been hastily cobbled together by laying a section of flat rock over two stacks of rock in one of the cleared areas in the center of Vahaxtyl. The table was more a show of authority than any furnishing. The princes wore their halters of rank and held their tridents.

  All of the princes were grim-faced. They didn’t even talk among themselves at Iakhovas’s announcement.

  The malenti priestess knew they were of one mind. Maartaaugh had already spoken to them. Even then, Iakhovas had agreed to come to their offered meeting unarmed, with only Laaqueel and a dozen Black Tridents as a token show of force.

  If the princes voted against Iakhovas’s offer, Laaqueel had no doubt that they would all be dead before the sun stabbed down into the water again. She averted her gaze from the princes’ table out of deference, and more nervousness than she wanted to admit.

  Most of the populace of Vahaxtyl ringed them, sitting on broken terrain over the underground sections of the city. Huge gray lava rocks piled high all around. She knew Iakhovas’s voice carried well in the water, but messengers were on hand to relay what was spoken. She heard Iakhovas’s words passed on again and again.

  Most of the sahuagin crowd’s body language registered disbelief and anger. They knew that the outer sea sahuagin had come through the exploding volcano and had emerged unharmed while so many of their city died. That crowd was only a step away from reaching out for vengeance. The rubble of the city lay scattered around them, and the twilight gloom of the depths filled the water above them.

  Laaqueel didn’t know what Iakhovas had been thinking to agree to the princes’ terms. She drew water in through her gills, held it for a moment, then flushed it out again.

  Steady, my priestess, Iakhovas stated calmly in her mind. Trust in your faith. Everything is going to be as it should.

  As it should for them, or for us? she asked.

  Iakhovas didn’t answer.

  Toomaaek stood at the center of the table. He was tall and thick, his body covered in scars from sharp edges and flames, testifying to how closely he’d fought the surface dwellers over his years. “You are responsible for the deaths of our people,” he said.

  “Am I?” Iakhovas demanded. His voice was hard and cutting as coral. “In my belief, only the weak die in mass graves, and those are taken by Sekolah’s sharp fins and ferocious fangs. He wants his people strong.”

  “You twist our beliefs,” Toomaaek said.

  “No.” Iakhovas’s denial was flat, unarguable. “I only embody them with my actions. Sekolah sent me here, gave me the ship that made this possible. He destroyed the inadequate among your people to leave those who would be willing to die fighting for their freedom.”

  A rumble of angry clicks and whistles echoed in from the crowd. Laaqueel studied the sahuagin around them. She’d already overheard several comments about her own heritage and the fact that she was a malenti. Iakhovas’s words struck the crowd harshly, fanning the anger in them to fever-pitch intensity.

  Though the sahuagin didn’t believe in the same concepts of family as the surface dwellers and sea elves did, they did stand for the community as a whole. Refusal to accept the loss and make someone else responsible was natural to them. She felt Iakhovas should have known to handle things better. Silently she prayed, knowing they were only inches away from death.

  “You dare!” Toomaaek thundered.

  “By Sekolah’s blessed wrath,” Iakhovas roared back, “I do dare!”

  Toomaaek slammed the butt of his trident against the stone table. The sound echoed harshly, racing through the water.

  “I dare to stand up for your people against those who would keep them in shackles,” Iakhovas said, finning toward the princes’ table. “I dare to travel here in a manner that I don’t understand, listening to the guiding hand of the Great Shark as he speaks to my priestess, and trusting in the fact that I’m doing Sekolah’s will.”

  “We don’t know that.” Toomaaek remained gruff.

  “I do.” Iakhovas kept swimming.

  Laaqueel fell into motion automatically behind him. The guards around the princes started forward. One of them lowered his trident level with Iakhovas’s chest.

  With blinding speed, Iakhovas snatched the trident’s tines away from his chest, then shoved the sahuagin guard back half a dozen paces. The show of strength caught the attention of everyone watching.

  “Where are you guiding your people?” Iakhovas demanded. “What plans do you have for We Who Eat in Serôs?”

  Toomaaek tried to speak after a moment, but Iakhovas spoke loudly over him.

  “For ten thousand years and more,” Iakhovas said, “you and the barons, princes, and kings before you have let your people languish in this prison built by the hated sea elves and mermen.”

  Another guard stepped forward and thrust his weapon, ordering Iakhovas to halt.

  As if shooing away a bothersome fingerling perch, Iakhovas shoved the trident aside with one hand and caught the sahuagin warrior by his war harness with the other. Iakhovas yanked, and the guard spun back into two sahuagin behind him, knocking them all off their feet so they floated out of control for a moment.

  “Why have We Who Eat not been freed from this place?” Iakhovas demanded.

  “There is no escape,” Toomaaek stated.

  Laaqueel heard the buzz of conversation streak through the crowd of onlookers.

  Iakhovas sounded as if he couldn’t believe it. “Have you not looked at the Shark God’s teachings? Sekolah teaches us that all things are possible if enough blood is shed. They happen more quickly if most of the blood belongs to the enemies of We Who Eat.”

  Toomaaek stood his ground but clearly wasn’t happy about it. Iakhovas leveled an accusatory finger at the table of sahuagin princes.

  “With that kind of thinking,” he said, “you’ve become the jailers of your own people. Not the sea elves and the mermen. You teach your young not to struggle against that perversion of our nature called the Sharksbane Wall.” He shook his head in rage. “Our very natures cry out for struggle and adversity to test us and shape us into the most deadly warriors we can be. We’re supposed to teach our own lesson in turn: that We Who Eat are meant to be the most feared creature in any of the seas.”

  “We have fought against those that man the Sharksbane Wall,” Maartaaugh argued. “For ten thousand years, we’ve shed blood over that construction.”

  “And still you’ve not shed enough,” Iakhovas accused. “When has Sekolah ever declared the price t
oo high to improve the sahuagin people?”

  Unbelieving, Laaqueel listened as some of the anger started to drain away from the crowd’s murmuring. They sounded more interested in what Iakhovas had to say.

  “Instead of tearing that accursed wall down,” Iakhovas went on, “you and those rulers before you have chosen to accept it and live with it as though it were meant to be. It wasn’t! We Who Eat were born free and meant to die free.”

  A few scattered cheers sounded from the crowd. Laaqueel drew in a deeper breath and took heart in the reaction. No matter what else, Iakhovas was right about the sahuagin heritage.

  “The Sharksbane Wall can’t be torn down,” Toomaaek declared. “The sea elves and mermen guard it without reservation. The sea elves use their magic to make it strong.”

  Iakhovas stood across the table from the sahuagin prince. “It can be torn down.”

  Toomaaek shook his head. “It’s been tried.”

  Iakhovas gazed at him fiercely. “Not by me.”

  Pride at Iakhovas’s display of courage and conviction whipped through Laaqueel. He stood before the whole city, sounding as if he was prepared to take them all on. She held onto the feeling as she watched him, praying the whole time to Sekolah. Awe filled her at the audacity Iakhovas showed. He was more sahuagin than any she’d ever met before.

  “You can’t break that wall,” one of the other princes stated.

  “I can,” Iakhovas replied hotly, “and I will. I won’t sit back and quietly be a coward while pretending to be a prince.”

  “You go too far!” Toomaaek roared.

  “I’m going far enough to tear that wall down,” Iakhovas promised, “and I won’t stop short of that. Any sahuagin warrior who wants to take up arms and follow me to freedom is welcome.”

  “The sea elves are too powerful,” Maartaaugh said. “They have magic and numbers and allies.”

  “Then we’ll get our own magic and our own allies.” Iakhovas didn’t move away from the table, but Laaqueel knew he was no longer talking only to the princes. His words were for the ears of the crowd. “Those things are out there. Sekolah gives power to his priestesses, and there are others out there who resent the sea elves controlling so much of Serôs with their machinations. The sea elves have grown fat and lazy, complacent in the inability of We Who Eat of the Alamber Sea to do anything other than send a few groups of warriors across the Sharksbane Wall every now and again.”