Under fallen stars

XX

17 Kythorn, the Year of the Gauntlet

"Come, little malenti, you wished to see what your people spent their blood on. Now I will show you."

Hesitantly, Laaqueel crossed the throne room of the sahuagin palace, walking past the throne carved of whalebone, its jaws distended to hold the seat. Images of sharks and sahuagin stood out in bas-relief on the limestone blocks that made up the walls. She'd stood gazing through one of the windows overlooking the amphitheater.

Sahuagin warriors had assembled there to work on the fliers they'd gathered and built to undertake Iakhovas's latest mission. The fliers were seventy-five feet across at their widest and two hundred feet long, tapering at the ends. Salvaged wood from shipwrecks and surface dweller buildings on shore contributed to the construction. Each flier could hold up to six hundred sahuagin. Currently, there were fourteen fliers in various stages of preparation, and more were supposed to be coming soon. The deepsong had reached sahuagin everywhere-and they had come.

Iakhovas strode to the opposite end of the room where the huge image of Sekolah meeting the sahuagin occupied the wall. The image showed the Great Shark with the clamshell that had contained the sahuagin in his teeth, shaking out the sahuagin and releasing them into Toril's oceans for the first time. When Iakhovas touched the image, it shimmered and vanished.

Fear filled Laaqueel as she watched it vanish. Though she'd never been to the palace before the last year, she knew it had existed for thousands of years. "What have you done?"

"Relax, little malenti. Do not overconcern yourself. Your precious wall is intact. I'm merely using it at the moment for other purposes. Now come."

Woodenly, Laaqueel joined him, watching him step through the wall and vanish. Her gills flared as she drew in more water, then she pushed it through and calmed herself. She took a step forward, and in the next moment she was high in the shallows. Harsh sunlight glimmered silver across the sea surface only a few feet overhead.

"Where are we?" Laaqueel asked.

"Above the sahuagin city," Iakhovas answered. "Don't worry, little malenti, I haven't taken you far from home yet." He reached inside his cloak and took out the bottle the dead thing in the lime pit under Baldur's Gate had given him. "This is our prize."

Curious, Laaqueel swam closer to better see the bottle. It had been cleaned since she'd last seen it, the surface now bright and shiny. Brass capped both ends, gleaming in the sunlight penetrating the shallow depths. Inside was a tiny model of a great galley, one of the long ships the surface dwellers used for trade and war. The three sails were unfurled to catch the wind and tiny oars stuck out the sides in double rows.

"A ship in a bottle?" Laaqueel let acid drip into her words. Before she could say anything more, Iakhovas gestured angrily. In the next instant they both flew out of the water and came to a stop hovering forty or fifty feet above the surface.

"Do not mock me, little malenti," Iakhovas snapped.

He turned from her and threw the ship-in-the-bottle out toward the sea. It twirled and sparked sunlight as it descended. Before it touched the water, Iakhovas shouted a single word. The bottle burst into a spray of a thousand gleaming shards. In the next instant a full-sized great galley floated on the ocean below. Purple and yellow striped sails flared out from the three masts.

"Not just a child's amusement, little malenti. This is a weapon, a weapon I'm going to use to bring the surface dwellers of the Sea of Fallen Stars to their knees."

He gestured again and they floated to the deck. Laaqueel touched down lightly, feeling the ocean rub up against the ship.

"A great galley," Iakhovas stated, walking around the deck. He stroked the butt of one of the large crossbows mounted on the railing on the port side. The starboard side had them too. Racks held the harpoon-sized quarrels the weapons used for ammunition. "One hundred thirty feet long and twenty feet wide, it's a fortress, a place where I can command armies and rain destruction down upon my enemies. It takes one hundred and forty oarsmen, and can comfortably carry another one hundred fifty warriors. There are various other additions I mean to make."

"What?"

"Surprises," he told her, walking the length of the deck.

Despite the fact that she didn't want to, she followed him. She had no way of knowing how long the ship-in-the-bottle had been in the lime pit under Baldur's Gate, but it had weathered the time well. The wood grain of the deck was finished and smooth, showing no signs of warpage or wear.

"She's a mudship, one of only seven in all of Toril. Her name is Tarjana, which translates from an old and almost forgotten tongue to 'Fisherhawk on Wing.'"

Fisherhawks were oceangoing birds of prey. Equipped with a fourteen- to sixteen-foot wingspread, sharp talons, and fangs like a snake, fisherhawks were known to raid seabound vessels of small children, women, halflings, and the occasional dwarf as well as the fish it stripped from the sea.

Iakhovas pulled back his sleeve and revealed the gold bracelet he wore. Laaqueel had seldom seen it, but most of the slots on it that had been empty now appeared to be filled. Iakhovas plucked free the diamond and pink coral talisman they'd gotten in Waterdeep. "And this bauble that I got from Serpentil Jannaxil gives me control over her."

Laaqueel tried to get a better look at it, but he put it away quickly.

"Tarjana is able to run on land and sea," Iakhovas said proudly, "above and below the water. This will be the flagship of the navy I'm going to take into the Sea of Fallen Stars."

"You can't take the sahuagin there," Laaqueel said, unable to stop herself from speaking.

His single eye narrowed to a thin line of malevolence. Despite the patch he wore over his empty eye, something golden shone in its depths for an instant. "Don't presume to tell me what to do. I can lead the sahuagin there, and I will. They're mine to do with as I please. Or haven't you noticed?"

"They think you're working the will of Sekolah." Laaqueel made herself stand her ground as he approached. She squeezed her fear into her belief in the Great Shark, but she trembled inside.

Iakhovas placed a long-nailed finger under her chin, tilting her head back to face him. "Ah, and little malenti, how can it still be that you have any doubts at all that I'm not working the will of Sekolah?"

"Because I don't understand," she told him, wanting desperately for an answer. "Nothing in my training taught me about any of this."

"Your training led you to the legend of One Who Swims With Sekolah."

"Yes."

"It led you to me."

She had no answer.

"Now you falter, when you should be enjoying your greatest success. After all, it was through your efforts you became royal high priestess, a position you would never have attained without your efforts to find the truth your training led you to. You doubt, yet there is more now than ever that should offer you conviction."

"I don't understand why we should involve ourselves in the Inner Sea. Our place is here."

Iakhovas hooked her chin with his talon hard enough to nearly bring blood. "Because it is as Sekolah wills. You're a hypocrite, little malenti. You took Huaanton to task because he wanted a sign from the Great Shark that what we were doing was as Sekolah willed it. Now, here I am, proof of that sign, and yet you refuse to believe. You want still further proof."

"I don't see what the Inner Sea-"

Enough! Iakhovas roared in her mind.

Laaqueel's knees buckled from the pain of the mental shout, and she fell to the deck.

"Do you want proof?" Iakhovas demanded. "Or do you want to believe? One is not the same as the other."

Tears came to Laaqueel's eyes because she knew what he said was true. The difference between knowledge and faith was the first lesson Senior Priestess Ghaataag had taught her when she took her into Sekolah's temple. So often as a child Laaqueel had drawn Ghaataag's wrath for doubting.

"You can have proof standing before you, little malenti, and still doubt what you see. As for belief, once you can weigh it and measure it, that belief becomes knowledge. Belief is something that can't be proven in this world of physical restraint, but it can't be broken either. Yet it is the strongest of things that exist in the world. Believing is much stronger than knowing."

Laaqueel continued crying silently, remembering all the times Ghaataag had made her go pray on her knees on a bed of broken coral until she was able to excise the doubt that had touched her then. She was so, so weak.

"No, little malenti," Iakhovas said more gently. "You're not weak. You're stronger than you know, but you're fighting yourself and you're finding yourself to be a more formidable opponent than any you've ever known. You stood the test of your priestesshood, and you found answers to questions that no one even knew existed until you came along." His voice grew fierce with pride. "How dare you call yourself weak."

His words calmed her a little, and they gave her back a measure of self-respect she'd been missing.

"I saw you stand up to Huaanton when he doubted in Sekolah. He could have taken your head then, claiming you to be mentally unbalanced by the aberration of your birth. You believed Sekolah would spare you then because you were right and you were standing up for him."

"I didn't know that he would."

Iakhovas smiled down at her. "That's what I said, little malenti. You didn't know. You believed. I only ask you to believe now." He offered her his hand and helped her to her feet.

Laaqueel regained control over her emotions with effort. Despite the fact that she wanted him to be wrong, Iakhovas was right. Belief was all she had in her life.

"I am the source of your greatest strength, little malenti," he told her softly. "I shall push you and goad you and shape you into your belief. Because I, by my very nature and the things we must accomplish together, will strip away everything in you that does not believe. Every weakness in you will be worn away by my actions, by the things Sekolah would have us accomplish. Your doubt shall forge us both into our destiny. Mark you that I only mentioned one such destiny. We shall arrive there together, and it will be glorious."

It was so easy to believe his words, but she had no choice really. What was she without her belief? She had the gifts Sekolah had given her, powers that no male sahuagin would ever know. What was there to doubt, except the man who stood before her?

He reached for her, touching her cheek with the back of his hand. It felt smooth and strong, and she found herself drawing away out of embarrassment. The feeling wasn't just out of the familiarity with which he chose to approach her, but because of the feeling his touch stirred within her.

"Ah, little malenti, you find the hungers of the alien flesh you wear have awakened." Iakhovas smiled darkly. "Bloody Falkane must have had quite an effect on you."

"What do you want?" she asked.

"From you, little malenti? Only your assistance. I find myself invulnerable to the charms you possess. Unlike Bloody Falkane, I find myself in no need of a spy within my ranks."

"I don't think his interest was purely for those reasons. He has loathsome habits."

"His reasons, whatever they are, I can guarantee you are anything but pure. So beware his charms, little malenti, because I'm told they're quite considerable."

Angry and embarrassed, Laaqueel turned away.

"Now I've offended you."

"No."

"You can't hide your true feelings from me. You should know that by now." Iakhovas spoke a word.

Instantly, the ship disappeared beneath them and Laaqueel dropped into the ocean. The water closed over her, taking her down and holding her close, the truest and only companion she'd ever known.

Across from her, Iakhovas caught the ship-in-the-bottle again and swam down. "Let's go check on my navy, little malenti. I've got an invasion to get underway."