Under fallen stars

XV

9 Kythorrt, the Year of the Gauntlet

Incredibly, at the last moment before the afanc reached him, Iakhovas moved enough to avoid the beast's jaws. He buried a handful of claws in the side of the afanc's face, locking himself onto it. While the afanc swam faster, startled by the effrontery of the creature that dared challenge it, Iakhovas used his hand and foot claws to pull himself to the great creature's back.

Seated behind the afanc's wedge-shaped head, Iakhovas locked his foot claws into the creature's body, then began rending it with his hand claws. Great strips of flesh peeled from the creature, floating away in ribbons. Iakhovas didn't toy with it, going for the kill immediately.

Watching him ride the giant creature to its death, Laa-queel was reminded of the stories of Daganisoraan, the hero and villain of so many sahuagin tales. She knew that was exactly what Iakhovas was after.

Working in a frenzy, Iakhovas raked through one of the afanc's eyes. The creature whipped back and forth, giving vent to screams of pain that sounded very humanlike. Laa-queel had heard the afanc had learned to speak some human tongues and often lured sailors to their own deaths.

Once the eye socket was empty, Iakhovas shifted on the afanc's face. He clung with his toe claws and one hand, reaching his other into the bloody socket. He ripped past the soft tissues that did little to protect the vulnerable brain beyond. He had to shove his head and one shoulder into the socket to get the depth he needed to reach the brain, but he didn't flinch in doing it.

Laaqueel had never seen such savagery, and she knew Sekolah had chosen well his instrument of war against the surface dwellers. The sahuagin in the stands roared in savage anticipation, no longer fearing for their king. They cheered him on instead.

The afanc's movements became erratic, evidence that Iakhovas had damaged the brain. A shudder ran its full length and it died. Withdrawing from the wound he'd made in the eye, Iakhovas leaped from the corpse and swam high into the space above the amphitheater.

"I am Iakhovas!" he roared. "I work the will of Sekolah, the Shark God, to strike fear in the hearts of the enemy of We Who Eat! I will not be denied!"

The sahuagin stood in the stands and slapped their finned feet against the stone. Thunder, spread even more quickly in the water, crashed all around the amphitheater.

"Come eat," Iakhovas invited. "Sekolah has seen fit to give us this bounty. Meat is meat!"

The sahuagin swam from their seats, so close together they looked like a school of fish. The dim light shone from their wriggling scaled bodies as they closed on Iakhovas's kill and fed in a frenzy.

Laaqueel felt moved to join them, to revel in her heritage, but she knew that could never be fully a part of this world. She would always be an outsider, a freak among the sahuagin, but she took pride in them nonetheless.

Iakhovas floated above the scene for a moment, then swam over to join her.

What do you think now, little malenti? he asked as he swam down to stand beside her.

I think you follow the currents given by the Shark God more closely than even you would admit.

Iakhovas laughed. Ah, little malenti, you profess such faith, yet you have so many doubts. I will teach you to believe.

Laaqueel considered telling him that he was the only thing she doubted, not the will of Sekolah. She chose not to. The way looked hard before them. She was convinced they were being divinely led. The sahuagin were going to take back the sea coasts, including the abomination of the inland sea.

Join me, Iakhovas said. I would call others to our cause. He lifted his voice then, launching into the deepsong that the sahuagin used to communicate over enormous distances. He sent forth a song of vengeance and bloodlust, of battle and victory, drawing forth sahuagin as well as all manner of creatures that could heed the sound of his voice.

Normally a deepsong wasn't entered into so easily. Time was required to set up the message, to arrange the way it was sung, but Iakhovas's song was simple. It was an invitation to a slaughter, to a bloodletting that would make histories above and below the waterline of Faerun.

Laaqueel joined him, lending her power to his. The royal guard followed suit, then all the voices out in the amphitheater joined in. As she sang, joy thrilled through the malenti. Usually a king and Royal High Priestess would lead five hundred singers in deepsong, and the words would reach as far out as fifteen hundred miles, but now there were thousands. The whole village sang. Laaqueel knew it was impossible to guess how far the deepsong could be heard, but she knew those who heard it, those for whom it was intended, would answer.

"Friend Pacys, what is it that ails ye?" The old bard blinked, staring at the forest around him. When he and Khlinat had first arrived, he hadn't known exactly where they were, but the woodchopper whose fire they'd found had told them they were in the Gulthmere Forest north of the Orsraun Mountains. The forest was on the western coast of the Sea of Fallen Stars, with Turmish to the southeast and Starmantle and the independent city of Westgate to the northwest. They had begun trekking toward Starmantle rather than crossing over the Orsraun Mountains.

Khlinat stared at him in consternation, backlit by the glow of their campfire.

"What's wrong?" Pacys asked, not understanding.

"Ye were moaning and groaning," Khlinat told him, "like a man being pulled to his grave by a pack of hungry ghouls."

Reluctantly, Pacys sat up. In his older years, he knew sleep no longer returned so casually as it had when he was younger. Some nights sleep had to be wooed like an uncertain lover, and this night he was certain it wouldn't return at all.

"A dream," he told the dwarf.

" 'Tweren't no dream, I'll wager," Khlinat said. His hair hung in shaggy disarray, leaves twisted among it from sleeping on the light pallets they carried.

"A nightmare then."

"Come over here and sit by the fire," Khlinat entreated. "Warm up yer bones a bit and it'll get rid of them nightmares."

Pacys moved a little closer to the fire they kept burning to stave off the chill of the night. Khlinat threw a few more of the branches they'd gathered onto the fire. Stuttering yellow flames licked up anxiously for the dry wood.

"Maybe a bit of that stew I made earlier," Khlinat suggested. "Get your innards warmed up a bit too."

"No, thank you," Pacys said. "The fire will be enough." He held his hands out to the fire, marveling again that they were still in such good shape after all these years. He'd known several bards who'd lost their skill to arthritis or accident.

"So what was this nightmare?" the dwarf asked.

Pacys shook his head. "There were no images. At least, none that I can remember." He hesitated. "There was a song, though, something I could barely understand."

He reached for the yarting in its protective cover beside his pallet. Despite his age, he sat with crossed legs. He'd spent decades on the ground, on tables in taverns, on hassocks in royal chambers, and on ships' decks. The position was natural for him.

Khlinat sat silently beside him, his hands never far from the axe hafts. The rough country had been hard on the dwarf because of his peg leg, but he'd never complained.

It was good, Pacys knew, to be in stouthearted company when the things that lay ahead appeared so uncertain. He slid the yarting from its cover, stroked the strings and tuned it briefly, then reached out for the song.

He closed his eyes, surrendering himself over to it. Since they arrived in the Gulthmere Forest the songs had stayed constantly in his thoughts, almost too many of them to keep track of, yet when he fitted them together, they wove tightly. His fingers found the notes easily, and he wasn't surprised that some of them were new. It was like mining a mountain shot through with veins rich with ore. Despite how many new things were coming to him, he knew there was much more that was not yet his.

Eyes closed in concentration, the old bard smelled the sweet scent of Khlinat's pipe as it smoldered. Though he hadn't thought of it before and didn't know why he hadn't, Pacys reached out for the scent, felt the smooth, wispy nature of it, and blended it into the song as well.

"That's me part," Khlinat said in surprise.

"Yes," Pacys told him, smiling. The music was so vibrant and true, even after hearing only brief pieces and snatches of it in the middle of so many others, the dwarf was able to remember the different verses. He cut out the other music for a moment, leaving only the notes he'd blended for the pipe-weed smoke.

"Me pipe?" Khlinat asked.

Pacys smiled and opened his eyes. "You knew?"

"How could I not?" the dwarf asked. "By Marthammor Duin's long strides, how can ye capture pipe smoke in a song? I've heard bards doing that for people's voices and animals and the like, but not this."

Pacys shook his head. "It's as I've said, my friend, this song is truly meant for my hands and ear alone. I am come into my own." The old bard's heart trip-hammered as he recognized the truth behind the bold statement. He calmed himself through the music, playing out his excitement until he brought it to a steadier place.

The only thing that bothered him was knowing what he was supposed to do next. Narros's story hadn't included that. He paused in his playing, watching embers caught up in the rising smoke die only a short distance above the flames. Moonlight kissed the breakers rolling against the shoreline only a short distance away. He pulled their sound into him and made it his.

"Oghma help me," Pacys whispered to the dwarf, "but I have never in my life felt so alive. It should be sinful to feel this good."

"Aye," Khlinat agreed. "But ye and me, we know the truth of life, songsmith. That every day you trod upon this earth, a bit more of ye dies. Ye soon run out of new things, new places, new people. A wandering man, that's what I always wanted to be, but I've stayed in one place for far too long. This quest ye be upon, now there's a true calling for the measure of a man. That's part of why I wanted to tag along with ye, to sup the dregs from your adventures. Marthammor Duin willing, there'll be no few of those."

Pacys touched the yarting's strings, exploring all that was new to him. "I only wish I knew better where we were supposed to go. Starmantle is the closest city of any size."

"Ye worry too much about things that will take care of themselves," Khlinat said. "When it's a quest ye be following, why ye are the compass rose on the map. Ye can't help but go in the right direction no matter how wrong it may seem at the time. Ye mark me words, songsmith, and mark them well."

The old bard believed in his new friend's confidence, melding it with his own, but a cold tingle touched him as well. With a sense long born of traveling and being on his own, Pacys knew they were being watched. He caught the dwarfs eye and said, "We've attracted attention."

The dwarf slid one of his hand axes free and ran a thumb across the sharp blade. "I thought I felt something nosing around. Maybe 111 go take a look."

Pacys put a hand on the little man's arm. "No. I don't think that will be necessary."

A shadow stood in the forest, lean and somehow regal, part of the dark landscape, yet somehow apart from it as well. Moonlight flashed from the shiny surface of what Pacys believed to be the man's clothing.

When the man first stepped forward and his dark skin and silver-white hair glistened wetly in the campfire light, Pacys thought they'd drawn the attention of a drow elf. The man had the easy, liquid movements all the elves exhibited. He went naked save for a harness that supported a brace of knives and shiny leggings. He carried a long-bladed spear in his right hand.

Khlinat swore fiercely and bounded to his foot, swiveling on his peg as he set himself with axes in both hands. "All right, ye black-hearted backstabber, let's have at ye!"