Rising Tide

Prologue

Veemeeros Sea (The Shining Sea) 26 Eleasias, the Year of the Bow (1354 DR)

"You have followed a lie all these months, Priestess Laaqueel, or a figment dreamed up by your deformed malenti mind. We have had enough. We go no further."

The harsh words challenged Laaqueel's self-control as she stood in the mud covering the ocean floor. Malenti, uttered like a curse, still cut through her. Her heritage was all sahuagin despite her appearance. As fierce and hard inside as any of her people, her body and face came from the unfathomable tie between the sahuagin race and the sea elves Only her unique mutation had further deformed her Instead of the greenish-silver or blue skin of the aquatic elves, her skin took on the pinkish hue of surface dwellers, setting her even more apart and making her a target among her own people.

Little light from the surface world penetrated the murky depths around her and all that it touched held a bluish cast deepening toward indigo. Reds seldom penetrated the gloom at that depth. She stared at the abyssal hills surrounding the party, created from the line of volcanoes that still racked the savage land of Chult a hundred miles and more to the west.

Crustaceans roamed those hills, moving slowly under the great pressure of the depths. Every now and again one disappeared, seized and dragged into burrows dug into the mud by hidden predators. Manta rays and eels glided through the water, staying well away from the sahuagin party.

Somewhere out there, Laaqueel felt certain, lay the prize she'd come so far to claim. She took a deep breath through her mouth, flushing fresh saltwater into her system and the excess through her gills, and turned to the three sahuagin priestesses assigned to her quest.

"I am senior among you, Thuur," Laaqueel announced. "As long as I remain such, no one may speak to me the way you have."

At a few inches under six feet in height, the malenti was the shortest of the group. She wore her long dark hair tied back in a single braid. Besides her breasts, the long hair was the biggest difference between herself and her tribal sisters. She was cursed with the ugly body of a sea elf as well; all rounded and soft looking, wrapped in that pale complexion. If she spent too long under the sea without spending time in the sun, that color paled to the color of a frog's stomach. On this journey she'd chosen to wear only the traditional sahuagin harness to carry her gear. The decision further flaunted the differences between her and her kin, but she had learned over her long life that those differences couldn't be hidden. She had used them to make herself stronger in her faith and her convictions.

"Senior you may be," Thuur replied, "but you are no longer fit to command us."

Laaqueel felt the sahuagin priestess move through the water behind her. Even though she resembled a sea elf, much of her senses remained those of her own people. The lateral lines that ran from her neck to her hips picked up the motion, and she was already gliding into a defensive position.

"Beware what you say," Laaqueel warned harshly as she turned to face the other priestess. She tightened her grip on the metal trident she carried. "You've already said enough that your words might be construed as a blood challenge between us."

Thuur stood tallest among them. Her anterior fins lay back against her head, and her huge mouth was partially open to reveal her ferocious fangs. Her black eyes gleamed with cruel light. She wore the true colors of the sahuagin race, the nearly black green on her back that turned a truer green on her flat stomach. The fins on her shoulders, arms, and legs were black. Her tail was deep yellow, telling any sahuagin male that she was past the age for mating. As a female now, her worth lay in whatever office she laid claim to. For the last ten years or more Thuur hungered for the senior priestess position Laaqueel now held within the tribe.

Saanaa and Viiklee, the other two priestesses, held their own council, but they didn't stand with Laaqueel as they should have.

"I know what I say," Thuur said. Her broad, finned feet slid through the greasy black mud, assuming an attack stance. "I think we should turn back now." She touched the loaded crossbow hanging from her waist.

The lateral lines in Laaqueel's body turned more sensitive, reading every flicker of movement Thuur made. "We won't turn back until we've found what we've come for," she said steadily.

“You're dooming us to wander these forsaken hills forever."

"Has your faith been shaken, Sister?" Laaqueel made her voice harsh and challenging. With Thuur, she knew there was no way to speak of reason. "Sekolah guides this quest. You should trust that."

"I trust Sekolah, not some diseased abomination who has been given status by Baron Huaanton purely by accident of her birth."

"That status was earned," Laaqueel said, "not given as freely as you say. As a malenti, I was trained to be an assassin from the moment I was born. I've lived among the surface dwellers as a spy and helped our village grow. I've slain our enemies, and I've stolen their secrets. If High Priestess Ghaataag had not seen the promise in me to better serve Sekolah, I would still be among the hated elves as Haaunton's dagger."

In truth, the training spy was somewhat wasted. Laaqueel's deception among the surface dwellers had been limited to brief excursions. With her pale skin, she'd been forced to adopt disguises and pass herself off as a surface dwelling elf among the sea elves, or a sea elf among the surface dwellers. She'd been the least effectual of all the malenti in her tribe. Had Priestess Ghaataag not sensed Sekolah's blessed fin moving in her as a hatch-ling, she'd have been put to death the moment she'd been discovered among the newborn.

Thuur continued moving, turning Laaqueel to put the malenti's back to Saanaa and Viiklee. "You worked a glamour over the high priestess," Thuur accused. "She would never have granted you the position otherwise."

"Sekolah granted my position," Laaqueel argued. "High Priestess Ghaataag only followed his direction."

"You lie!" Thuur declared, sneering and throwing an accusatory clawed hand toward her. "Long have we known Sekolah as an uncaring god. He gave us courage and fierceness in battle, and fertility to make sure that our numbers would always be strong in our wars. How dare you even suggest Sekolah would care enough to intercede on behalf of an ill-bred malenti over his true children. It's sacrilege."

Laaqueel continued moving. The insult cut through to her heart, touching all the insecurities she'd carried for the long years of her life. If not for the calling of the priesthood and her belief in Sekolah, there would have been no place in all the world for her. "We can settle this when we return to our village."

Thuur laughed derisively, the effort causing her to expel bubbles into the surrounding ocean that quickly floated toward the surface. "If we continue on this insane quest, you know we'll never return home." She shook her great head, her black eyes steady on Laaqueel's emerald ones. "No, we'll settle this now."

"There can be only one way between us, then." Laaqueel crouched, her senses flaring. She brought her trident up, the three tines facing the other priestess.

"To the death, malenti," Thuur agreed, issuing the blood challenge. "I say that you are weak and unable to fulfill the duties of your office. Further, I charge that you have no business living among true sahuagin." She kicked free of the mud, taking to the water where her battle skills were most effective. "If you wish, I'll spare your life and you may live it among those elves you say you despise so much."

The offer was a further insult. Laaqueel expected no less. When Ghaataag had assigned Thuur, who was her bitterest rival, the high priestess had explained that the problem would take care of itself during the quest-one way or another.

Laaqueel expanded her trachea and air bladder to increase her buoyancy. Though her legs weren't jointed in two places as well as her ankle like a true sahuagin and she had no tail, her training and experience in underwater combat were extensive. She'd faced more combatants than Thuur and had slain a greater variety of them.

Opposite Thuur in the sea's cold embrace, she held her trident in one hand. "Let Sekolah take the weakest among us that the tribe may grow ever stronger."

Thuur reached for the crossbow dangling from her waist and brought it up. She snapped off her shot as soon as she had it level.

Laaqueel focused on the quarrel as it erupted from the crossbow. She reached into the water with her free hand, spreading her fingers so the webbing between them could be more effective. Her toes spread as well as she kicked her legs. Her body turned, allowing the barbed quarrel to flash past her, missing her by only inches.

Thuur dropped the crossbow as soon as she fired it, seizing her trident and swimming to the attack. Laaqueel met her, choosing not to use any of the spells she had available to her as priestess. There were greater things to fear in the ocean than a jealous rival.

Thuur shoved her trident viciously at Laaqueel's mid-section, intending to impale her. The malenti shoved her own trident at her opponent's weapon, interlocking the tines. Using the momentum of Thuur's greater weight and strength in the water, Laaqueel bent her body and flipped over the junior priestess.

The malenti kept hold of her trident with one hand as Thuur managed to disengage the weapons. Before the other priestess could turn, Laaqueel slipped a broad-bladed knife free of her shin sheath. Coming down behind Thuur, she hacked at the priestess, slashing her across the back and cutting deeply into her dorsal fin. Blood filmed the water in a dark and murky haze.

Thuur screamed in pain and rage. She kicked the water, churning hard, and flipped around. Getting the trident in front of her again, she swam at Laaqueel.

The malenti used her trident to batter the other weapon away, and allowed Thuur to come close. When the priestess was within range, Laaqueel buried the broad-bladed knife between her opponent's ribs. She tried to draw it out, but the ribs and tough muscle trapped the blade.

Laaqueel released the weapon and swam away as Thuur turned on her again. Before she could get completely clear, Thuur landed a backhanded blow against the side of her face. Pain wracked the malenti, but she remained in control of herself.

"You'll die for that, malenti!" Thuur screeched. She tore the knife from her body, then flipped gracefully in the water and threw it at Laaqueel.

The knife sped through the water at the malenti's throat. She lifted the bracer that covered her left arm from wrist to elbow and deflected the knife. The impact still sent a shock wave that partially numbed her arm. She forced herself into motion, drawing the trident back as she flipped. When she came forward again Thuur had moved, but Laaqueel's lateral lines had already picked up the priestess's new position. The malenti hurled the trident with all her strength.

The three-tined weapon sped true, impaling Thuur through the heart. She jerked spasmodically as the blow sent death thundering through her system. Her eyes widened in disbelief as she stared at the trident that claimed her life. She wrapped both hands around it but lacked the strength to pull it free. Her mouth opened, gulping down water, and fresh blood streamed from the gills on the sides of her neck.

"Finish it," Thuur croaked as she held onto the trident's haft. "I deserve that much from you. Don't let me suffer."

"Your heresies condemn you," Laaqueel said as she closed on the priestess. "I am merely your judgment." She popped the retractable claws from her fingers, another physical difference that separated her from the hated sea elves. She stared into Thuur's black gaze.

"Your quest is true, honored one," Thuur gasped as she settled gently onto the ocean's mud floor, no longer able to stand or swim. Silt dusted around her in a small cloud. "May Sekolah grant that you find it."

"And may the Great Shark you take with him into the Wild Hunt that you may forever taste the fresh flesh of our enemies," Laaqueel answered.

"Meat is meat," Thuur said. "Let me make you stronger."

With great speed and care, she raked her claws across Thuur's throat. "Meat is meat. You will never leave us."

Blood misted out at once, spreading through the ocean.

Laaqueel smelled and tasted it even in the saltwater. Hunger pains vibrated in her stomach. She took the dead priestess's knife and began slicing.

"Come, my sisters," she invited. "Meat is meat."

The other two joined her, wolfing down the gobbets of flesh as she sliced them free. More blood stained the water, spreading outward. Even a drop of it in thousands of gallons of water, Laaqueel knew, would draw predators, and they came. Some crawled on multi-jointed legs while others slithered through the water and still more finned their way to the death site.

All stayed back from the sahuagin, acknowledging them as the strongest of predators.

Vibrations through her lateral lines told Laaqueel when the sharks arrived. She glanced up, watching five of the great creatures swim in a circle overhead. She reached out to the predators with her mind, sending out a danger message that would hold them at bay.

The sharks continued to circle until the sahuagin finished eating what they could of Thuur. Meat was meat, and a fallen sahuagin comrade became a meal for the others. That way, the essence of the individual never left the community.

When they were gorged, Laaqueel ordered her party away, allowing the sharks to descend to finish what was left of the corpse. They divided Thuur's possessions and the meager provisions they'd managed to put together three days ago between them. The dead sahuagin was the most they'd had to eat in weeks.

She swam, leading them further south, drawn by the promise of the story she'd discovered almost two years ago. With no other options open to her, the research she'd done offered her the only chance she had at a true and productive future among her tribe.

She had no choice but to believe.

Hours later, Laaqueel stopped the group for the night, camping in the lee of a sunken Calishite sohar. The three-masted merchant ship showed signs of the battle that had sent it to the ocean floor. Blackened timbers thrust up from the dark mud, canting hard to starboard. Wisps of ivory-colored sailcloth still clung to the rigging of the two surviving masts.

Judging from the condition of the wreck and the way the skeletons were picked clean to the bone, the malenti guessed that the ship had been underwater for little more than ten years. Barnacles clung to the broken timbers and sea anemones clustered in small groups. Schools of fish hid inside the broken hold, taking cover from predators.

True dark filled the ocean when the sun sank around the curve of the world. The inky blackness restricted even Laaqueel's sensitive vision until she could see only a few feet in front of her. She sat with her back to the broken ship, her arms wrapped around her knees in a posture the true sahuagin could never manage. In the elf communities she'd infiltrated over the years, she'd learned that such body language in the surface cultures signaled a wish to be alone.

Saanaa and Viiklee maintained their own counsel, sitting apart from her. They'd not spoken to her since she'd slain Thuur.

Finally it was Saanaa, the youngest, who crossed the distance first. Only a few yellow spots showed in her tail. "Favored one," she said, "forgive our uncertainty."

"There is no forgiveness for weakness," Laaqueel told her coldly. "Uncertainty can be viewed as weakness."

Saanaa's gills flared in anger. "Make no mistake about my strength, favored one. Just as Thuur died for her convictions, I stand ready to follow you wherever you lead."

"Good." As sahuagin, she knew she didn't have to worry about the other two surviving priestesses joining together to kill her. Their culture provided for one-on-one fighting among the community, and no challenges could be made to one who was wounded.

"Neither of us have heard how you came to find the record of the one you seek."

"I don't need to explain myself to you," Laaqueel said. "It's enough that Senior Priestess Ghaataag saw fit to send you with me. You should have taken that as a compliment."

"I do, but I wish to know more for myself, that I may be stronger," Saanaa said. She crouched, folding her arms in on herself, fitting her fins in tight against her body.

Laaqueel thought briefly of ignoring the other priestess. Though Saanaa's argument had merit, the malenti still had that privilege. The months had worn on Laaqueel, too, though it didn't touch her resolve. After being raised as a malenti, trained to be a spy, and moving among the hated sea elves and surface dwellers the few times she was able to mask her true nature, she welcomed the hunt she was on. No matter how long it took her, where she had to go, or what she had to do to accomplish it, she'd never felt more like a sahuagin than during this quest.

"I found a record regarding Sekolah," she said, talking only because she wanted to hear it aloud again, to strengthen her own resolve, "that was older than anything I'd ever seen before."

"A sahuagin book?"

Laaqueel shook her head and brushed her hair back. It was an all too elven gesture she hated picking up, but the long hair often drifted into her face. If she'd had her way, she'd have hacked the hair from her head, but it was a necessary part of her permanent disguise.

"No," she answered. "I found it during a stay with the sea elves almost five years ago."

The sahuagin books were created of strung bits of stone and shell on knotted thongs, each tied to a ring of bone or sinew. The way the shells, knots, and stones hung together represented sounds in the sahuagin tongue. Just shaking the sahuagin book created a series of sounds that gave the title. That was why many referred to them as "singing bundles."

"An elven book, favored one?" Saanaa asked.

"It was written by a human."

"About the sahuagin?" Disbelief sounded in the younger priestess's voice.

"Yes."

"It had to have been filled with lies."

"Incredibly," Laaqueel said, listening to her own words to further her resolve, "it held many truths."

"The sahuagin who gave our history to whomever wrote this book must have been enspelled." Saanaa shuddered. All sahuagin had an innate fear of anything magical.

Laaqueel shared that legacy. Even her time among the sea elves, who had no magic of their own either, hadn't prepared her to see the things she'd seen in her roving. Humans bent the very elements to their will and threw fireballs through the air when they wished. She'd seen it done. Power granted by Sekolah, however, was never in question. The Great Shark wielded magic and gave it to his most favored and most faithful of priestesses.

"I think so too," the malenti stated. "There was much in there about our communities as they were thousands of years ago." Actually, the community life described in the book hadn't changed much even now, though the places that were described were no longer on any sahuagin maps Laaqueel had ever seen. "I found among the myths of Sekolah a story that captured my eye and my heart."

"It was not about Sekolah?" Viiklee asked. She sat watching, her black eyes gleaming with interest. She had crept much closer to share in the tale.

"No. The book was written by a man named Ronassic of Sigil. He'd already documented other ocean life and marine cultures. He carried forth a treatise concerning the origins of the malenti as being a bridge between the sahuagin race and the cursed sea elves. He held that one evolved from the other, suggesting that sahuagin were created from the time the first sea elves took to the oceans. I find that heretical. I believe that the malenti are Sekolah's chosen sacrifices, the claws to lay bare the throats of the enemies of the sahuagin."

Neither of the other priestesses saw fit to disagree.

"In his book," Laaqueel went on, "he gets a great number of things wrong, but in the creation myths concerning the Great Shark and how the sahuagin were given to the seas, he mentioned another being of power."

"Daganisoraan?" Saanaa asked.

"No," Laaqueel answered, pitching her voice low to fully hold the attention of her audience. Daganisoraan was a common figure in sahuagin tales, featured as both hero and villain depending on the myth. "This was before even Daganisoraan's time, and though I searched the book, the only name I ever found given to him was One Who Swims With Sekolah."

"Maybe," Viiklee said, "One Who Swims With Sekolah was the first sahuagin."

"No." Laaqueel shook her head. "He was someone… something… very powerful."

"Why haven't we heard more about him?" Saanaa asked.

"I don't know. Perhaps he was there in the beginning but gone before Sekolah saw fit to put the first sahuagin into the oceans. Only the thinnest of whispers managed to survive concerning him."

"What happened to him?"

Laaqueel took the small whalebone container from between her breasts. The container was hollowed out, carved in the shape of a shark. She unstoppered it and poured out six red and black stones into her palm. The red was so true, so inviolate, that it was visible even at this depth and in the gathering darkness. All of stones had holes drilled through them. "I don't know. The book mentioned that he was locked away from the rest of the world to be taught a lesson."

"By Sekolah?" Viiklee demanded.

"No. By another of the gods or goddesses that walked this plane of existence during that time. One Who Swims With Sekolah was imprisoned. He's never been seen since."

"Yet this book mentioned him?" Saanaa asked. "No sahuagin records remember him?"

"Our records," Laaqueel reminded, "don't tell of him. I have read them all and consulted with the other priestesses regarding this matter. None remember One Who Swims With Sekolah, but we don't have access to all sahuagin records."

"What makes you think you can find this being?" Viiklee asked.

Laaqueel ran a forefinger through the six red and black stones in her palm, revealing the runes inscribed on them. "I've given the last five years of my life to the search for the truth in this matter. Only a few months ago, I discovered these in a loremaster's keep at Baldur's Gate."

"Where the humans live." Viiklee spat a curse, roiling the water around her angular face.

"Yes. Magic surrounds these stones."

Saanaa and Viiklee drew back, making protective wards against the hated magic. "You should have destroyed them," Saanaa hissed. "To even carry them around with you is sacrilege." The sahuagin coiled restlessly, edging away.

"There is nothing foul about these stones," Laaqueel said, turning them in her palm. She deftly plucked a short length of worked sinew from her trident hilt and with practiced ease threaded it through the stones, making sure they were in the proper order and tying the correct number of knots between them as she'd learned.

"The runes mean nothing, a false trail laid for the surface dwellers," she continued. "Someone tried to discover the secret of the stones and assigned names to the runes, and some have even used magic to try to read them. Humans and elves don't understand the nature of the sahuagin written language, and none who tried ever learned the truth of the stones."

Finished, she held the ring of knots and stones out, then shook them. They clattered against each other.

The message, to a sahuagin's internal ear and lateral lines, was clear: "Seek out One Who Swims With Sekolah."

"You see?" Laaqueel asked. "Above water where a sahuagin's hearing doesn't operate properly even should one be there, the song of the stones wouldn't be clear. If the book I found hadn't mentioned the existence of the stones, I wouldn't have known. Even then, tracking down the stones was not an easy matter. They were part of a collection assembled by a historian from Skuld, a human city in the land of Mulhorand."

"I've never heard of this place, honored one," Saanaa stated.

Laaqueel knew she had them gripped by the story. If anything, the sahuagin definitely knew the value of a story. There were many concepts new to them, and the stones-with their curse of magic-lay before them.

"Mulhorand is believed to be the oldest continually inhabited human country," she said. "It's located in the ocean the surface dwellers call the Sea of Fallen Stars."

"I know of our home sea, the Claarteeros Sea, the one the humans call the Trackless Sea and the Sea of Swords," Viiklee stated. "I know of the Veemeeros Sea, which they've named the Shining Sea, but I have never heard of the sea you speak of."

"It's an inland sea." Laaqueel watched their eyes widen. As young priestesses, their view of the world was kept deliberately small to encourage strength in their beliefs. Trained as a malenti spy to go into the cities of elves, Laaqueel had been taught early about the geography of the world even beyond what the humans termed the Sword Coast. She remembered how she'd felt when she'd first been told of the Sea of Fallen Stars. The idea of a land-locked sea was frightening.

"How can such a thing be?" Saanaa asked.

Laaqueel turned her hands outward, exposing the webbing between her fingers to show even they were empty. It was a purely sahuagin gesture, not the spasmodic shrug she'd learned of the humans and elves.

"It must be Sekolah's will," Viiklee stated.

"Perhaps."

"Are there sahuagin there?" Saanaa asked.

"I don't know. I've heard stories, but nothing I was able to confirm. The sea elves living along the Sword Coast take very little interest in anything outside their own villages and trading needs. The humans I've had chance to meet were more interested in filling their pockets with gold and silver than in answering questions I might advance, and I was trained not to draw too much attention to myself."

"Living in such a fashion must have been hard," Saanaa said.

"I hated it," Laaqueel admitted. "Elven and human ways are not meant for sahuagin. They are too soft, too greedy. I welcome the day that we are able to push them from the sea and from the coastal lands and take back our world in the waters." She paused. "Still, Sekolah gave each sahuagin the currents of his or her life…"

"… and it is up to each to swim with them," the other two priestesses finished the familiar phrase.

"As we swim with this one now," Laaqueel added.

"Did the book you read mention that Sekolah was within this Sea of Falling Stars?" Viiklee asked.

"As far as I know," the malenti answered, "Sekolah was never there, nor was One Who Swims With Sekolah."

"How did the stones get there?" Saanaa asked.

Laaqueel shook them again, causing them to repeat their message. "It's a mystery, one of many I hope to find answers for."

"How do you know One Who Swims With Sekolah is here?" Viiklee asked. "Why aren't we looking for him in the Sea of Falling Stars?"

"Because the book mentioned that One Who Swims With Sekolah's final resting place was in the Veemeeros Sea. It wasn't called that in the book, but from the description of the land with terrible giant reptiles nearby, it could only be this place."

"If only the sea weren't so large," Saanaa sighed.

Uncoiling, filled instantly with anger, Laaqueel backhanded the younger priestess. An explosion of bubbles erupted from her gills. "Sacrilege! The sea is our life!"

Saanaa cried out in pain, covering her face. "I didn't mean it!" she cried. "Forgive me, favored one. I meant only that our task would be easier-"

"Sekolah never meant for sahuagin life to be easy," Laaqueel snapped, "else he would never have given the sahuagin so many enemies." She was going to add more, a sermon already on her tongue.

Before she could begin, the stones pulled gently from her hand, drifting into a current. Laaqueel watched them, feeling the old fear of magic twisting her stomach into knots around her last meal. Her abilities as priestess, she knew, rivaled those of some mages, but those abilities were given by the Great Shark, awarded to those whose prayers were truest, loudest, and strongest.

Viiklee and Saanaa drew back quickly, raising a murky cloud from the mud floor. They raised their tridents in defense.

The ring of stones rose just out of Laaqueel's arm's reach. They whirled through the water, clicking and resonating their message over and over. A pale scarlet glow gleamed from each of the stones, then grew stronger as the stones spun faster. The message became louder, and the lights turned into a blurred circle of luminescence.

Laaqueel steeled herself, then took a step toward the stones. Immediately, the stones retreated from her, moving the exact distance she did. The message was clear.

"Come," Laaqueel commanded, picking up her trident and adjusting her harness.

The sahuagin priestesses didn't bother to disagree.

Silently, the malenti guided them through the darkness, her eyes focused on the scarlet whirl of the stones. She gave herself over to the current, following her destiny.

Two days later, the whirling stones stopped and hovered over a mound of abyssal hills that radiated heat.

Somewhere below the surface, Laaqueel knew, volcanoes rumbled in uneasy slumber.

Over the last two days, none of them had slept. Their guide had never stopped, pulling them on with the allure of one of Sekolah's savants during a Wild Hunt. Thankfully, the stones had gone relatively slowly, considering how fast sahuagin could swim, allowing them to take turns darting out for prawn, fish, and oysters to provide for the others. A sahuagin's diet required heavy meals anyway to provide the necessary energy to maintain body heat and muscle tone, but the demands of the last two days had drained all their reserves. Even eating along the way, they'd all lost weight during the chase.

Laaqueel watched the wheel of spinning stones slow and glide into position less than a foot above the ocean floor. She knifed through the water, dropping to the mud within easy reach of the stones. Her bare feet slid through the loose silt and she felt the underlying rock strata. She also felt the heat of the volcanoes beneath the surface, warmer than the water around her.

The stones continued repeating their message. In the two days that the priestesses had followed it, the words had never stopped. Now, though, an echoing resonance came from the rock bed beneath the inches of loose silt.

"Nothing grows here, honored one," Saanaa stated quietly, "nor does anything linger."

The malenti gazed in all directions, moving slowly. Her muscles quivered from the continued strain of the last two days spent swimming. What Saanaa said was true: nothing grew within a hundred paces in any direction. Nor did any sea creature make a home or swim within the circumference. The water above her remained clear for the same distance as well.

An uncomfortable feeling, just below the threshold of fear, filled her. It manifested as a vibration that raced through her bones, chilling her to the marrow. Even the water she gulped through her mouth and washed through her gills felt tainted and heavy.

The stones clicked and repeated the message. She felt the words in her lateral lines, then felt them through her webbed toes as the rock beneath her picked up the resonance even more strongly.

Seek Out One Who Swims With Sekolah

SEEK OUT ONE WHO SWIMS WITH SEKOLAH

Seek Out One Who Swims With Sekolah

SEEK OUT ONE WHO SWIMS WITH SEKOLAH

The words drummed into her mind, demanding action.

"Favored one," Viiklee called. "The stones-"

"I hear them," Laaqueel replied. She knelt, dropping to her knees in the heated mud, finding it near scalding.

"Look." Saanaa pointed at the ribs of a giant lizard sticking up through the rock and mud.

Laaqueel was familiar with the creature from her studies and from her time among the sea elves and surface dwellers, knowing it had come from the nearby land of Chult. The creature's huge skull gleamed bright white against the dark water. A man's bones, crushed and twisted, hung in the huge mouth between the teeth. Whatever had killed the giant lizard had been quick.

Laaqueel listened to the savage beat of the command initiated by the whirling stones. She knelt in the mud, ignoring the heat, and bowed her head. She prayed with all her heart to Sekolah, knowing that the Great Shark seldom involved himself even in the affairs of the sahuagin, his children. He was a demanding and ungenerous god.

Saanaa and Viiklee knelt and added their prayers with hers.

SEEK OUT ONE WHO SWIMS WITH SEKOLAH!

Though involved in her prayers, Laaqueel also heard the hollow echo of the sound played in the rock strata beneath her. Her lateral lines echoed with it as well. Despite the sea above and around her, she knew that an empty chamber lay below her, a pocket created by the cooled magma from a volcano. Her knowledge of Chult, the primordial land to the southwest of her current position was slim, but she knew about the massive quakes and volcanoes that had shaped and reshaped the land. It was possible that the bones of the great lizard in the mud nearby had gone down with a piece of what had been Chult at one time; Possibly it was from a small island that had existed in a chain around the major continent.

The great lizard's death had been quick, too quick for it to even finish the meal it had caught. An erupting volcano could cause such a death, the malenti knew. The fires and heat created by some volcanoes could strip the meat from a body, even sour and poison the water.

The abyssal hills themselves were formed from volcanoes that had cooled. These dead volcanoes often left chambers and empty pockets located within them.

Laaqueel rose to her feet and walked away from the spot where the stones whirled. The reflected cadence coming from the rock strata lessened with each step she took. Twenty paces away, she couldn't feel it anymore.

She returned to the stones, feeling the cadence grow again. She experimented in the other directions as well, finding it to be the same with all three. The stones had marked the spot.

"Something lies below, honored one," Saanaa whispered.

"I know." Laaqueel knelt in prayer again, taking the circlet of shark's teeth from a tie to her harness at her waist. Like the singing bundles of her people, and the spinning ring of stones, the shark's teeth had been knotted and tied to reproduce sounds that were a prayer in the sahuagin language.

The shark's teeth rattled as she shook them, crying out Sekolah's name. She listened to the chant, pacing the words of her prayer with the cadence, growing faster as she summoned the power the Great Shark had given her. Feeling it reach its peak within her, she shoved her hand forward.

The power surged through the water from her hand, leaving a wake of brightly colored bubbles. When it struck the rock, a hollow booming gong sounded deep inside the cavern below. In seconds, the rock changed, softening, turning to loose mud. When the power had drained her, leaving her weak and gasping water in big gulps, Laaqueel swam to the site below the stones. She shoved her trident deep into what had once been rock, raking aside what was now mud.

It only took a minute to breach the outer shell of the chamber. Saanaa and Viiklee helped her widen the hole. Darkness gaped up at them, but the echoed resonance of the rattling stones sounded louder, echoing still more as the first chamber funneled the noise into another chamber further on.

When the hole was wide enough, Laaqueel waved the other priestesses back. Even their sahuagin vision couldn't penetrate the gloom trapped inside. She spotted a school of luminous fish out beyond the one hundred pace mark from the open chamber. They glowed pale blue-green. Gathering her trident in both hands, she swam toward the fish, bursting in among them too quickly for them to save themselves. The trident flicked out rapidly, impaling five of the fish.

She adjusted her air bladder and hung motionless in the water. For the first time she noticed that not even the perpetual ocean currents moved through the dead zone. She popped her retractable claws from her fingers and quickly gutted the fish. Saanaa and Viiklee swam close and snapped up the floating strings of intestines.

"Meat is meat," Saanaa said in appreciation. Still, she saved several choice bits of the fish for Laaqueel.

Reaching the light-producing organs of the fish, the malenti carefully freed them. When she had all five, she took a glow lamp from the bag of holding tied to her harness. Carefully, she nicked each of the organs with a claw to open them, then squeezed the liquid contents up into the neck of the translucent bladder of the glow lamp. All five fish barely gave up a handful of the luminous gel. Keeping the bladder tight, she brought it to her mouth and breathed in, further inflating the glow lamp and giving it some buoyancy. At that depth, it was hard breathing enough air into the bladder to inflate it.

Sealing the bladder, Laaqueel swirled the gel around, causing it to glow more brightly. It wasn't enough to hurt her sensitive eyes, but it would serve to illuminate the chambers below the ocean floor. She used a seaweed cord to tie the glow lamp to her trident.

"Here, favored one," Saanaa said, offering the fish pieces she'd saved.

"Meat is meat," Laaqueel acknowledged. She ate the repast quickly, then swam back to the rough-edged opening. She entered without pause, summoning her belief and her courage. There was nothing she wouldn't do to improve her standing among her people. Her findings, she felt certain, would empower the sahuagin race as it had never been before. The surface dwellers would live in fear even on land and never darken the sea with their ships again. That hope gave her more reason to go on than any.

The glow lamp illuminated the chamber, showing the rough, uneven walls created by the cooling lava. The interior looked like a patchwork of blacks and grays even with the light. A narrow fissure in the floor of the first chamber led down into the second. As Laaqueel surveyed it, pushing the glow lamp down inside with the trident, the glowing stones went into motion again. They whirled and clacked, and dropped through the fissure.

Seek Out One Who Swims With Sekolah

SEEK OUT ONE WHO SWIMS WITH SEKOLAH

SEEK OUT ONE WHO SWIMS WITH SEKOLAH

After only a brief hesitation, Laaqueel ventured through the fissure, a prayer on her lips. The light from the glow lamp reflected from the tiny bubbles streaming from her mouth as she prayed.

The next chamber was bigger, and the chant given off by the stones was echoed in basso booms. A tunnel that had been created by an explosion of trapped gases opened the wall to the malenti's right. She stayed alert for anything moving around her, but nothing lived in the chambers.

Eight more chambers came and went, each of varying size. Laaqueel was no longer sure of what direction she was headed in-save down, always down. The water warmed around her, conducting the heat from the trapped volcano around her.

She swam through the next chamber, arriving in an oblong cave that was larger than anything she'd been in so far. The illumination from the glow lamp wasn't strong enough to reach from side to side. She released air from her bladder, losing enough buoyancy to drop herself and the inflated glow lamp through the murk, straining her vision to spot the floor below.

Only a few feet up, she spotted the mosaic in the floor. Squares as long as her arm, reduced only to light and dark by the pale blue glow of the lamp, connected with each other. Even then, the squares were only a remnant of the floor as it had been.

Laaqueel held the glow lamp aloft and paced as she measured the section. Irregularly shaped, and twenty strokes by thirty, the floor section canted across the bottom of the volcanic chamber. Black charring scored the surface. Broken furnishings, furniture as well as crafted coral pieces, piled amid the broken clutter gathered at the lowest end of the floor section.

The malenti sorted through the debris, using the long knife from her shin sheath to shift the broken pieces in case anything dangerous lived in it. However, whatever enchantment kept living things from intruding above also kept them from below. She took four beautiful coral pieces that captured her eye, watching as Saanaa and Viiklee found treasures of their own.

"Beware," she told the other priestesses. "It may be that these are Sekolah's possessions and we'll have to give them back."

"Until then," Viiklee agreed covetously, 'Taut only until that time."

The debris left no doubt that it had come from a civilized place, but whether it was carried a long distance or still more of it lay under the rubble of the chambers, Laaqueel didn't know. She glanced upward, remembering the whirling stones. The constant chanted command had faded into the background of her hearing, but still throbbed inside her mind.

The stones circled above and to her right, waiting. "Come," she told the others, "we'll explore further later." She increased her buoyancy again and swam to the stones. She held the glow lamp before her, the trident still at the ready.

When she neared, the stones fluttered and took off again. They whirled through the water and through a long, narrow shaft. It lead to a small room still and cold as a tomb despite the heat coming from the volcano trapped below. Primitive fear of the unknown prickled the malenti's skin as she neared the mouth of the shaft.

In the light given off by the glow lamp, a shadowy figure took shape out of the darkness. Instead of being illuminated, it seemed to take the darkness into itself, turning darker even than black pearl.

"What is it, favored one?" Saanaa called from behind.

"A man," Laaqueel answered.

"Not a sahuagin?"

"No." The malenti let the disappointment sound in her voice. She knew she'd spoken the truth, yet that didn't explain the fear that cut through her.

"Maybe we should look for another chamber," Viiklee said. "There must be others."

Laaqueel stared at the stones hovering over the top of the still figure of the man.

Seek Out One Who Swims With Sekolah

SEEK OUT ONE WHO SWIMS WITH SEKOLAH

They came to an abrupt stop, and the silence struck as forcibly as a whale sounding.

"No," she replied. "This is where we were led."

She forced herself to go forward. Once inside the room, the chill grew stronger, became an arctic cold. She couldn't fathom how the water wasn't frozen solid by whatever glamour possessed the room. She had no doubt that the room was enchanted.

She lifted the glow lamp and played it over the figure. Resembling a surface dweller, he stood a full head taller than the malenti, and inches above the other priestesses. His hair was pulled back in a cluster of tangles secured by carved bones with intricate runes. Harshness tightened his face, narrowed his single eye and turned it down at the corners. The other eye was a hollow socket surrounded skin puckered by the scar of a long-healed burn. He wore a mustache that ran down to his chin, then flared back up his jawline to join his sideburns, leaving his dimpled chin clean-shaven. Hollow-cheeked, he looked wasted and emaciated, that fact showing even more starkly since he was totally naked, starved yet wiry. In the pale light of the glow lamp, his skin tone was as pale as a bled corpse. Dark tattoos scribed in broad strokes covered his body, creating a mosaic of color and sharp lines on every square inch of skin.

His solitary eye stared through her.

Fearful but needing to know, Laaqueel reached out and touched him with her knife point. The sharp edge grated on the man's petrified skin, not even leaving a mark in its passage.

"He's dead, favored one," Saanaa said. "He's not the one we came for."

"Let's leave this tomb," Viiklee pleaded.

Laaqueel stepped closer to the petrified man who looked so unlike anything she had expected. "No," she commanded, "this is the one we came for."

"This can't be One Who Swims With Sekolah," Viiklee argued. "He looks like a-a surface dweller. A human, not even an elf."

She glanced up at them as they hovered over the petrified man, then back at the statue's hard face." There in his cold grave'" Laaqueel quoted from the text she'd read, " 'barren of life and bereft of the powers he'd once commanded, lost to the luxuries he'd once had, lies One Who Swims With Sekolah. Dead-yet undead, too, turned as hard and as cold as his heart that left love forsaken.' " The common tongue she'd learned as part of her training was sometimes less precise than the sahuagin tongue, so there was a margin for error, but the stones didn't lie.

"What love?" Saanaa asked.

"I don't know," Laaqueel admitted.

"Humans only know to love another human," Viiklee stated. "Their understanding of that emotion is pathetic. Wisdom dictates loving your race, not an individual. The race is what will persevere."

That was the sahuagin view, Laaqueel knew, and one seldom shared by the humans or elves. Those races tended to think individuals first and race second.

"If this is One Who Swims With Sekolah, who did this to him?" Saanaa asked.

"The book didn't say."

"What are we supposed to do with a dead human?" Viiklee demanded.

"He isn't dead," Laaqueel answered.

"The story said he lay in his tomb," Viiklee pointed out.

"It also said he was dead, yet undead. Maybe he can't be killed."

"He's dead," the younger priestess argued. "Even a hatchling would know that." Sahuagin knew about death; the weak died early, eaten by its fellow hatchlings.

"We'll see," Laaqueel said as she opened the whalebone container around her neck again and removed a ring. Cast in gold, the ring was a simple band studded with diamond chips that reflected the pale blue-green luminescence of the glow lamp.

"What's that?" Saanaa asked.

"A ring."

"I can see that, honored one."

"A very special ring." Laaqueel slid the ring onto the petrified man's forefinger. The magic in the ring caused it to adjust to the man's finger with an unsettling fluid grace. It slid into place, then began to glow. "This ring was mentioned in the book," she continued. "It took a year and a half to find. It's supposed to return One Who Swims With Sekolah to life."

"More magic," Viiklee spat in disgust. "Only the magic bestowed by Sekolah is trustworthy."

"I have prayed," Laaqueel said, "that these things be blessed in Sekolah's hungry gaze. We've been brought here without harm."

"Thuur died," Viiklee reminded.

"By choosing to thwart Sekolah's plan for us," the malenti reminded her companion. As Laaqueel watched, the petrified man took on a different pallor, adding color to the bone-hue he wore. She touched him, finding his skin slightly pliable now. "It's working."

"How long will it take, honored one?" Saanaa asked.

"However long it takes, we'll be here," Laaqueel said. "We're not leaving."

Sudden movement sensed through her lateral lines woke Laaqueel, letting her know something had moved in front of her. She blinked her eyes open and searched for the glow lamp. Hours after the discovery of the petrified man, she'd assigned shifts, taking the first one herself. Saanaa and Viiklee had protested, not wanting to stay in the cold tomb. Laaqueel had ignored them. The cold might be uncomfortable, but it wasn't harmful. Still, she'd surprised herself by being able to sleep.

"Saanaa," the malenti called out.

There was no answer, and she couldn't see either of the two priestesses in the illumination given off by the glow lamp.

Laaqueel pushed herself to her feet and leaned toward the glow lamp attached to her trident. Earlier, the luminescence had almost filled the room. Now it covered less than half of it. The gel hadn't lost its ability to illuminate so quickly.

The preternatural chill vibrated through Laaqueel again. Her lateral lines registered more movement, but it didn't feel like either of the two priestesses. She was attuned to their physical motions and would know them even in the dark.

This was different.

She pushed the glow lamp toward the area where the petrified man had been. He was gone, but the light played over the twisted corpses of the two junior priestesses. They lay in pieces across the cavern floor, shredded by a large predator.

Disbelief paralyzed Laaqueel. They'd been killed while she slept-without her waking. She had no clue why she'd been spared. Sensing the movement again, she turned quickly to face it, bringing her hands up to defend herself.

A hand, hard as stone and cold as ice, battered through her defenses and locked around her throat. Hooked fingers painfully invaded her gill slits to further choke her.

The man's face illuminated gradually at the other end of that impossibly thin arm, like he'd allowed the light to finally touch him. He smiled, and it was the cruelest expression Laaqueel had ever seen.

His words touched her mind without being spoken. They were cold and hard, singing like gong notes inside her head, but came across as a whisper. You thought to sneak quietly in here and steal from me, didn't you, little thief, he accused. His words were heavily accented, lilting and almost musical.

Overpowered by the invasion in her mind, Laaqueel couldn't answer.

You couldn't understand the sacrifices I have made in order to insure my continued survival in that ineffectual mind you possess, the man said. Even now, wasted as I am, I am the most powerful being you have ever been in the presence of. Now, by my grace, you will spend your life that I spare so generously that you may serve me, and then only as long as you serve me well, little thief. Long have I been gone from this world, for thousands of years, and I will have back that which was stolen from me. You will give me succor, or I will see you sacrificed toward that end anyway. His single eye bored into hers, mesmerizing and horribly vacant at the same time.

Struggling against the glamour the man projected, the malenti fought, trying to break free of his grip. Her fingers and talons only scraped across the hard flesh, unable to break the skin. Her toe claws raked his chest but skittered harmlessly across.

He plucked an eyelash from his single eye, then said words unlike any Laaqueel had ever heard. The tattoos covering his body glowed with a dim, unearthly light. When it stopped, he held a thin sliver of a black quill in his free hand instead of an eyelash. He let her see it for just a moment, then his hand darted forward and he buried the quill in the tender flesh below her left breast. Laaqueel felt the quill penetrate her flesh, hot and cold at the same time. All resistance faded from her as her body went lax. None of her limbs were her own anymore. The man took his hand back from her flesh and gestured at the sliver's entry point. The malenti felt it move again, sliding more deeply into her body, coiling and nestling next to her heart like a poisonous worm. She stared at the man holding her so effortlessly with one hand.

I am Iakhovas, he told her in his deep, whispering voice. You will call me master.