Under fallen stars

XXIII

26 Kythorn, the Year of the Gauntlet

Laaqueel stood on the deck of the royal flier as it glided through the ocean, powered by sahuagin rowers. She'd never traveled on one of the craft for long distances before, and never at all until Iakhovas had become baron.

She felt proud as she watched the four hundred rowers working in rapid tandem, pulling the sahuagin craft through the underbelly of the ocean at a normal pace that more than doubled anything a surface vessel could do, even with rowers and a favorable wind. A two hundred forty-mile day was a normal average for the fliers. The other two hundred sahuagin that made up the rest of the crew rotated in, taking a shift at the oars as well while spelling another team.

Laaqueel scanned the deep blue of the ocean around them, looking back at all the fliers that followed. Though she couldn't see them all because even her eyes couldn't penetrate the gloom, she knew there were more than two dozen in all.

Satisfied that there was nothing she could do to make the journey more safe, she tried not to think about the possible dangers waiting at the Lake of Steam, where Iakhovas had said they were headed. With a final prayer offered up to Sekolah, she turned and walked the length of the flier to the cabin Iakhovas had ordered constructed in the stern as his personal quarters. None of the other fliers had such a thing.

She stood before the door and raised her hand to rap on the door.

Before she could touch it, Iakhovas's voice rumbled, "Enter, little malenti."

She let herself through the door, having the brief but certain feeling that it would not have opened at all if he hadn't allowed it.

Iakhovas occupied a chair constructed of whalebone that was thronelike in its dimensions. Seaweed draped it, creating a cushion. Lucent algae hung in irregular strips across the ceiling. Shelves held some of the items his spies and troops had gathered since the attacks against the coastal lands had begun.

Laaqueel could sense the power that clung to most of them but didn't know what any of them were.

A crystal brain coral sat in the middle of the table, as tightly furrowed as its namesake. Though she was familiar with all the corals that formed along the Sword Coast, the malenti priestess had never seen anything like it. Motion slithered and twisted in the brain coral's depths.

Iakhovas sat back in the seat, his attention riveted on the crystal brain coral. Some of the glitter on the crystalline surface reflected through the patch covering his empty eye socket.

"What do you want?" he asked, sounding distracted.

"Only to see what it was that took up so much of your attention," she told him. "Our people need to see their king out among them more if they're going to follow him into areas not meant for We Who Eat."

Iakhovas fixed his single eye on her, but she felt something else-a cold and alien glare-settle on her from his missing eye.

"Not meant for We Who Eat?" He shook his head. "Little malenti, there are sahuagin in those waters, and we are on our way to set them free. Come. Let me show you." He gestured toward the brain coral.

Moving closer, Laaqueel stared into the brain coral's depths. Lights spun and glittered there. She knew it was an underwater location from the color around the figures revealed to her. No sky ever held that shade of blue, and no patch of land ever looked like the silt bed of the ocean floor.

One of the figures was an old surface dweller riding in front of a sea elf on a seahorse. They rode toward a city that had parts that looked as ancient as anything Laaqueel had ever seen. Even though she knew she shouldn't involve herself, the malenti priestess couldn't help asking, "Who's this?"

Iakhovas considered her question for a moment. "In all your studies about One Who Swims With Sekolah, did you ever hear the name Taleweaver?"

"No." She didn't remember reading the name, but something turned over in her memory.

"The sea elves have legends about me too," Iakhovas said. "All marine creatures that had a means of recording history when I was last in these waters had stories of me." He laughed, and the sound echoed within the cabin. "All of them are lies. Lies built on misconceptions and prejudiced hatred. Some of them I even started myself through various agents."

"This man is the Taleweaver?" Laaqueel asked.

"Yes," Iakhovas admitted.

Laaqueel scanned the man again, trying to find anything of significance about him. "What part is he supposed to play in all this?"

"In the little drama the sea elves are trying to establish?" Iakhovas asked. "He is supposed to find their savior."

"Their savior?" Laaqueel felt a little uneasy talking of saviors. Her own beliefs were strong, and she knew that other religions, other gods, exercised considerable power across Faerun as well.

"Someone who will stand against me and defeat me," Iakhovas explained. "You know how these legends are. Humans and elves all believe in these great romances of men and elves that are able to triumph against great and overwhelming odds."

"Is it true?"

"Their myth of the savior?"

For a moment, Laaqueel hesitated putting voice to her reply because she didn't know how Iakhovas would react. "Yes."

Iakhovas shook his head and laughed again. "Little malenti, I helped create the myth of their savior. There is no savior. Any human they find who believes he is this one is only a fool one heartbeat away from death."

"Why did you do that?"

Iakhovas raked a talon against the crystal brain coral, causing a tiny, high-pitched ring and said, "Because I could. Because it amused me. Most of all, because it served me. If they didn't have the legend of their hero, they wouldn't do the things I need them to that will insure my success."

"What do you need from them?"

He raked her with his harsh gaze. "You know more than any other at this time, little malenti. Don't get any greedier than I can tolerate."

Laaqueel felt a surge of anger thrill through her. Only days ago he'd helped her rebuild her faith, now he was pushing her at arm's length again.

"At ease," Iakhovas told her. "I only want you to remember your boundaries for your own benefit. Not mine."

Carefully, Laaqueel pushed water through her gills and dropped her eyes in deference to his authority. In many ways he was correct. She had her faith, and that would be enough. That strength would serve her as she served Sekolah.

"And to answer your question, the elves believe the Taleweaver will help them rebuild their histories and allow them some measure of a chance to defeat me once the savior is found. However, as the Taleweaver moves to the ripples they feed him, so does he serve the undercurrent I've had in play for thousands of years."

Listening carefully, Laaqueel filed the information away in her mind.

"There are, in the Sea of Fallen Stars-or Seros as they call it there-beings who are unlike any of those elsewhere in all of Toril. They can prove to be somewhat difficult to deal with. And if I-if we-do not move cleverly while we are there, the Sea of Fallen Stars can become a trap. I have no intention of allowing that to happen."

Laaqueel tried to listen to any sign of fear or anxiety in his voice, but there was none. Only the confidence he always exuded sounded in it.

"Now come, little malenti, and let me show you the brethren to We Who Eat that I've spoken of. They are there, and they are kept behind a wall that is meant to keep them from taking over all of Seros, as is their right."

"Sekolah would never allow such a thing," Laaqueel said. The idea of sahuagin penned up, being made to stay in one spot was unthinkable.

"The Great Shark will tolerate it no longer," Iakhovas said. "That's why you and I were brought together here and now. We will bring them their freedom, and the people of Seros will know what it means to have doom suckled to their breasts like a vampiric child."

Curious and a little afraid to find what he was saying was true, Laaqueel peered into the crystal brain coral.

The image of the sea elf and the old surface dweller astride the seahorse floating down into the ancient city faded from the crystal's depths. In seconds it was replaced with the image of a sahuagin hunting party armed with nets and tridents.

"They are different," Laaqueel breathed, surprise filling her and driving away her own fears and doubts. Their anterior fins radiated from the sides of their heads as did the ones in the outer seas, but they flowed longer, reaching back along the skull until they merged with the dorsal fin at the top of their shoulder blades. Also, their coloring tended more toward blue shades than green. In fact some of those Laaqueel saw were teal and turquoise colored. A great number of them had speckles and stripes, like the markings they had as hatchlings.

Iakhovas touched the brain coral and the image changed again. When it cleared once more, it showed a massive wall lying under a stretch of ocean, only a short distance from the surface. The wall looked smooth, obviously manmade and constructed with care. She knew how massive it was from comparing the fish and the hated sea elves swimming nearby.

"We Who Eat of Seros are held captive in a tiny portion of all that is available. The elves and surface dwellers call the area the Alamber Sea. None of the sahuagin trapped inside it have ever been allowed to leave that area in any great numbers. Only hunting groups in twos and threes have escaped through the sea elf guards that man the wall."

Laaqueel was horrified. "But if they're not allowed to migrate, how do they live? If they're not careful, they could over-hunt an area-"

"And die?"

Laaqueel said nothing. It was too ghastly to put into words. When sahuagin over-hunted a region-which was seldom-there were whispered stories of how they'd turned on each other, eating the young and the weak until the region repopulated and the hunting was good again. It was one thing to eat another after death, or after a blood challenge, but preying on each other as a food source wasn't permitted except under the harshest of circumstances.

"Yes, little malenti. Those of your brethren have had to be careful over the years. The horrors you imagine, they've had to live through. That wall is over a hundred miles long, sixty feet tall, and a hundred feet thick. The sea elves and their allies have kept garrisons along it two miles apart to patrol. They call it the Sharksbane Wall."

Laaqueel burned the name into her memory, knowing it would forever live in infamy among the sahuagin.

"Until now, the elves and their allies have believed that wall to be impenetrable, but no more. I'm going to change that."

"You must tell the others," Laaqueel said, knowing the outrage would fire the blood of the warriors.

"I will. When the time is right. Now I am telling you."

"When we free them, what then? They will be hunted."

Iakhovas nodded. "Yes, they will. Probably more hunted than anything ever before in the history of Seros. The sea elves and most of the other underwater races fear nothing more than We Who Eat."

"That is as it should be," Laaqueel stated proudly, "but they will have many enemies."

"Only the inadequate fail, little malenti."

Laaqueel looked at the long wall revealed in the crystal brain coral. "It is as you say, as Sekolah wills."

"Don't be so taken aback," Iakhovas suggested. "I've not come this far merely to free them from their prison that they might be killed. I've arranged allies for them. Other races in Seros who would like to see the haughty sea elves brought to their knees. The elves have a city there-Myth Nantar."

Cold dread closed in around Laaqueel. She'd heard of the city, and of the dangers that lay there. "The lost city of the elves?"

"One of them," Iakhovas acknowledged. "Myth Nantar is special to the Serosian sea elves. What have you heard of it?"

"That its elves were driven from it by wild magic they and their allies unleashed during one of their wars."

Iakhovas gazed into the brain coral. "When Myth Nantar began its fall and the magic ranged out of the sea elves' control, the sahuagin who are now trapped behind that wall raided there often. They helped drive out the last of the sea elves and claimed many treasures as their own."

"Still, they fell against the greater numbers of the sea elves and their allies."

"Yes, but then We Who Eat stood alone. It's not that way now. According to the prophecies of the sea elves, Myth Nantar will be returned to them in time to usher in a new period of greatness for their culture. They even believe they have a weapon there that will defeat me."

"Defeat you?" Laaqueel asked, trying to absorb everything she was being told. "We have no reason to journey to Myth Nantar."

"We will, little malenti. You'll see." Iakhovas gazed at her, resolutely and calm. "We can't free our people without taking the war we'll be waging to Myth Nantar. The sea elves must be broken again."

"What about the weapon they have?"

"That weapon…" Iakhovas mused. "I depend on that weapon of theirs, little malenti, and I depend on their faith to use it against me."

Laaqueel controlled her fears through discipline learned in her calling. Her lack of faith in Iakhovas himself was lessened as he revealed everything to her so calmly. He was undertaking the effort to free the other sahuagin in spite of all the odds against him. There could be no greater task that Sekolah would put before him.

Or her.

The realization of that made her proud. The Great Shark had tested her in the past, given her a birth defect that should have caused her death either as a hatchling or at any time growing up, and he'd given her all her massive doubts to overcome. Now that she knew what it was all for, she realized it had only been to make her stronger-strong enough to go to a land-locked sea and free those who'd never known freedom, to fulfill the future of her people while shattering the prophecies of the hated sea elves.

"Most Exalted One," Laaqueel said, assuming the open and defenseless stance of a sahuagin facing another in a position of authority, spreading her arms out to her sides to leave herself open to attack. She kept her eyes down out of deference to him. "In the past I've been doubtful and borderline rebellious toward you. I now pledge to you my complete allegiance and my promise never to work against you."

"And your doubts? Will those continue to plague you?"

"I swear by Sekolah the Uncaring that I will struggle with those," Laaqueel said. She stared at the wall, and her hatred grew anew for all the surface dwellers. This wall was blasphemy.

"That's good enough for me," Iakhovas said. "In return, I promise that through us the Great Shark will find a way to destroy that wall and free those who have been trapped there for so long." He touched the crystal brain coral.

Slowly, the image held inside dimmed, but Laaqueel knew she would never forget that hateful wall.

Iakhovas pushed himself up from his chair. "Come, Most Sacred One."

The malenti was surprised to hear him use the title with such respect. She straightened herself, accepting the responsibility of the office she'd been thrown into. Her doubts could no longer confine her, no longer take away her strength. She was a child of Sekolah, and the Great Shark had designed a grand current for her to ride. She would follow it with straight fins and without hesitation. Anyone who tried to stop her would die.

"Let us allow our warriors to see us in our coming glory that their hearts may be strengthened before we take them into the land of fire. We have many plans to make."

She followed him, certain with every stroke that she was going toward her destiny.