Realms of the Deep a-7

by Lynn Abbey

  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-.5v, 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 j
oy, 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 priest
ess 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.