The sea devil's eye

XIX

6 Eleint, the Year of the Gauntlet

"He hates you, my liege," Tu'uua'col said, "even though you are his father."

He swam easily at King Vhaemas's side through the palace in Voalidru. As usual, even though he'd been the king's advisor and trusted friend for years, all the other court personnel stayed away from him.

The merman king's face turned bitter, and his eyes wouldn't meet his friend's. Broadened by the sea and battle, a little more than eight feet long from head to tail, the old king's frame remained heavily muscled despite his sixty-eight years. His gold crown, inset with precious gems and rare bits of coral, held back his white hair. Scars decorated his arms and torso. Pink-ridged flesh scored the left side of his face from a koalinth attack years past.

"My blood is in him," King Vhaemas argued.

"And you denied it."

"Because I had to," the merman monarch replied.

"Yet you loved his mother."

Vhaemas put out a webbed hand and stopped his forward motion through the palace hallway. The nearest pages and court attendees scattered. Though he was one of the most favored kings in the history of the Serosian merfolk, his temper was legendary.

"A nation," the king said, "cannot be compromised by a young man's indiscretion without proper perspective."

Tu'uua'col knew the king wasn't referring to his own illegitimate son. but to his own past mistakes.

"Your son does not see himself as an indiscretion, my liege, and I think he would take grave umbrage at your own insistence upon calling him that."

"He would not form an alliance with Iakhovas of the sahuagin."

"My sources suggest he already has."

"They're wrong!" the merking snapped.

"Remember when your own court of advisors denied that you had made me one of them? Denied, in fact, the friendship that exists between us?" Tu'uua'col sighed heavily, hating the turbulence that formed between him and his friend.

The court rejected him for a number of reasons, and most of them still hadn't changed their minds. First and foremost among their complaints was that he was not a merman. He was a shalarin.

Tu'uua'col stood not quite six feet tall but seemed much taller due to the dorsal fin that started between his full black eyes and jutted up nearly a foot above his head before running all the way down his back to his buttocks. The jadelike sheen of his smooth, scaleless skin further set him apart from the warmer colors of the merfolk and their scaled tails. His gill slits were along his collarbone and ribcage.

All the merfolk knew him as a wizard, and a teacher of the royal princelings. That he had the ear of not only King Miaemas but the royal offspring as well was enough to unnerve most of the other advisors. If the royal court at Voalidru had known he was a Blue Dukar of the Order of Kupav and interested in the protection of Myth Nantar, assassination attempts might have been the order of the day.

"They do not know you as I know you," Vhaemas stated irritably. "They think of you simply as a wild-tider."

The merman nickname came from the prophecy of Selana, the mermaid who rose to prominence after the Tenth Seros War and the fall of Hmurrath, the merfolk empire. The mermaid predicted that the merfolk would one day ally with the shalarin. The wild tide referred to the magical force that brought the shalarin from their homes in the Sea of Corynactis, whose exact location had never been decided.

"Yet they will not listen," Tu'uua'col pointed out. "Some-times the plainest of truths are the hardest to believe. They require acceptance rather than recognition."

Vhaemas shook his head wearily. 'These are difficult currents we face, my old friend.'7

"That is why we must recognize and quickly deal with the dangers that surround us."

"Including Thuridru's king."

"Yes, my liege."

In all the years that they'd known each other, Tu'uua'col had never heard Vhaemas refer to his bastard child by the Kamaar clan as his son.

Vhaemas scoured the palace corridor with a jaundiced eye. As capital of the Eadraal empire, Voalidru was beauty itself, sculpted from the sea. The merman builders had combined stones dug from the ocean's floor with quarried rock lost in shipwrecks. The royal buildings were wide and generous, sporting shells and coral decorations in myriad colors and shapes.

"The ixitxachitl cities of Ageadren and Orildren, as well as their outposts, have fallen to the sahuagin. I have heard that Thuridru was instrumental in destroying Orildren and the outer temples."

"But to join with the sahuagin?" Vhaemas questioned. "Why?"

Tu'uua'col was silent for a moment, weighing his words. "Perhaps, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Thuridru has no alliances in Voalidru and remains trapped between the demon rays and the morkoth, who also attacked the ixitxachitls with the sahuagin."

"The Taker is not to be believed. In our legends he only looks toward his own interests."

"I think that is true," the shalarin Blue Dukar replied. "Still, Thuridru's ruler is willing to set aside merman histories and beliefs in order to forge his own future. He is openly ambitious. This alliance is the only one open to him. At worst, he gets some of the ixitxachitl lands. At best…"

Tu'uua'col shrugged. '"Perhaps he even thinks to have a hand in humbling all of Eadraal."

"What would you suggest I do?"

Vhaemas started forward again, following the bend of the halfway to a balcony. The royal palace was built on the lower foothills of Mount Teakal. The vantage point allowed it to overlook Voalidru below.

Most of the citizens of Voalidru lived in stone houses and caves, though some of the merfolk took up residence in ships that had come to rest on the ocean floor. Once, centuries ago, a great naval battle had been fought along the coast of Chondath between the coastal and inland city-states during the Rotting War. Many of the ships had sunk around the Whamite Isles and drifted down to the Lesser Hmur Plateau.

Tu'uua'col hesitated, knowing the advice he was prepared to give wouldn't be well received. "I think you should take the first step in allying the merfolk with the sea elves and the shalarin. I have learned of a caravan journeying toward Myth Xantar. Locathah I have talked to have told me of them. They tell me the Taleweaver is with them."

Vhaemas's answer came immediately. "Never! I would rather cut my own throat than trust the accursed sea elves."

The Blue Dukar maintained his silence. Vhaemas could not be argued with on certain matters, and the Alu'Tel'Quessir was one of those.

"If they had the means and the power, they would take all of Seros for themselves," Vhaemas said.

"But they don't. The Taker, however, has an army of sahuagin, morkoth, and koalinth at his beck and call that are already invading lands that can be used as staging arenas to attack Eadraal."

"Even with all of those, there are not enough to conquer these waters," the merking declared.

"We have not seen everything the Taker has planned. If you add Thuridru, you increase the threat even more."

"I refuse to believe that is possible," the king said.

"Perhaps the ixitxachitl felt the same way."

Tu'uua'col waited, remembering his friendship with the merman and all the years they'd shared between them. It was a lot to risk, and all on the next few words he had to say. "Denial is no defense, my liege."

Vhaemas did not look at him, drifting quietly in the current with his hands on the balcony railing. "Leave me for a time, Col," he said finally. "I need to think on things."

"Of course, my liege."

Pain shot through the Dukar's heart. He couldn't remember when he'd last been dismissed from the king's side so abruptly. He bowed his head and swam away, frustrated and embarrassed.

Pride, foolish, ill-afforded, and dangerous, was a sword pointed at the heart of the kingdom, and Vhaemas couldn't see it. But then, the Blue Dukar supposed, neither could anyone else. Though the High Mages journeyed from the sea elf waters, there were no ambassadors seeking a meeting with the merfolk or the shalarin. Nor were the shalarin seeking audiences to combine their forces.

He wandered alone and aloof from the other palace dwellers and those who had business within the walls. He knew the other advisors talked about what was going on in the Xedran Reefs, but none of them would take the tack he did. They believed themselves inviolate.

Sahuagin raiding parties had spread throughout Seros, attacking coastal lands and ships, and more continued to come from the Alamber Sea, making the waters between there and the Xedran Reefs dangerously close to impossible.

Still, Tu'uua'col knew it would take even more before all parties involved would admit the extent of the peril that existed. It remained to be seen how much would have to be lost before they realized it.

Li'aya'su moved down the long line of shalarin eggs that incubated in the mud of the warm sea cavern of the Aya clan in Es'rath. As one of the provider caste among the shalarin, she was the Heart of her people. Unlike those of the servant or ruler castes, she'd been able to choose what she would work at. Her immediate decision had been caring for the hatcheries.

The cavern followed a twisting tunnel, widened by artificial means to more easily accommodate the eggs. It was twenty feet wide and almost that high.

Her glance roved over the eggs as she turned them in their nest of warm mud. She and three other providers were responsible for caring for and turning the six hundred eggs under their care.

Passing down the line, she turned each egg carefully, aware that her actions were necessary to keep her race healthy in this home they'd found away from home. Even though Li'aya'su had been born in Es'rath and had not been out of the deep waters her people called home, she still felt she was a visitor to Seros. These waters were not her home, and she'd been told that since birth. One day the shalarin would be allowed to go back home, but until that time, she promised herself to make the best of it.

She studied the shells as she moved among them. The rough, dark brown shells would one day add to the ranks of the protector caste. Rust colored shells with striated surfaces signified new members for the scholar caste while the smooth, black shells would give birth to the seeker caste. The seekers swam forever among the currents and searched for meaning beyond the shalarin. The light brown whorled shells belonged to the provider class, and most of the eggs here were that color.

Working quickly and methodically, enjoying the nature of the work as well as the work itself, Li'aya'su touched each unborn child with love and prayed to Ri'daa'trisha, the Wave rider, who was known as Trishina in Seros, for the goddess's blessing on each. It was a simple task, but she had been doing it since she had been a girl forty years ago.

Screams broke her reverie.

Startled, Li'aya'su turned from the eggs and swam back toward the hatchery's entrance. Li'ola'des, another of the providers, stood at the entrance and gazed fearfully out.

"What is it?" Li'aya'su asked, joining her.

"The sahuagin," the other provider replied in disbelief. "They have come here to Es'rath."

Cold fear hammered the elder provider as she looked out over the shalarin city. She had heard about the war that raged the length and breadth of Seros, but she had hoped her people lived too deeply for the sahuagin to bother.

Hundreds of the vicious sahuagin swam from above, engaging the shalarin protectors at once. Though the protectors fought bravely, there simply weren't enough of them. The protectors stood as the Hand of the shalarin taught the ways of war and battle from the time they were newly hatched.

The providers and scholars couldn't help much even in their own defense. A warrior was a warrior and a provider was a provider. According to caste thinking and training, one could not be the other.

Long minutes after the battle began, Li'aya'su heard their battle cry. "Long live King Iakhovas the Deliverer! Meat is meat!"

Horrified, the shalarin provider watched as the sahuagin not only killed her people, but ate them as well. Blood tainted the water in a way she had never seen before.

A group of sahuagin swam toward the hatchery', clicking and whistling in savage glee.

Not knowing what else to do, Li'aya'su stepped forward, intending to somehow protect the hatchery and the defenseless unborn that lay within the cavern.

The sahuagin didn't pause at all. The lead warrior lowered his trident. Li'aya'su felt the impact of the weapon piercing her chest, but surprisingly she didn't feel any pain. The sahuagin's powerful legs drove her backward through the water. She slammed against the wall behind her, feeling the rock tear her skin but again there was no pain.

"Please," she gasped, feeling the incredible pressure squeezing the life from her. Her gill slits flared open in a vain attempt to breathe. "Please don't harm the children."

She lifted her hand in supplication. One of the sahuagin raked his claws against Li'ola'des's neck, ripping her throat out. The provider died without a sound.

Holding the trident to keep her pressed back against the wall, the sahuagin grinned at her and growled, "Meat is meat."

His great head snapped forward suddenly and his jaws opened to crunch down on Li'aya'su's wrist. When he pulled away, he took her hand with him, chewing it between bared fangs.

"No mercy, finhead."

Peering through a cloud of her own life's blood. Li'aya'su watched helplessly as the sahuagin ravaged the hatchery. They lifted the blessed eggs that nurtured the future of the shalarin race and ate them, one after the other. Pieces of broken shell littered the gentle currents that helped keep the cavern warm. The sea devils' terrible roars and laughter filled the cavern even as the shalarin providers life was spent.