Realms of the Deep

LOST CAUSE

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.

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?"

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.