'Do you think then,' Iakhovas interrupted the sahuagin king, 'that we should back down and fear retribution on part of the surface dwellers?' His words thundered over the assembly.
Instantly, the amphitheater grew quiet as death.
Huaanton turned to Iakhovas and waved the bodyguards away. Iakhovas walked up the steps. To Laaqueel, he appeared to be human, but she knew he wasn't. He stood a full head taller than her, but much shorter than Huaanton. He was broad, yet lithe, filled with long muscles that moved easily. His black hair hung past his shoulders, somehow unmoved by the ocean currents that cycled around the area.
Despite the scars that tracked his face, Iakhovas was handsome as humans considered themselves, but his features held cold cruelty. The short beard and mustache he wore covered part of his face and softened the effect of the scars. He wore a sleeveless deep green tunic that revealed the runic black tattoos that covered his arms, legs, and body. Laaqueel knew they covered his entire body because she'd seen Iakhovas naked the day she'd found him. Black breeches, boots, and a black cape completed his ensemble. A deep green patch covered his missing eye.
Although she'd tried for years to identify the bracelets, rings, and other adornments Iakhovas habitually wore and added to, Laaqueel didn't know anything more than that they were magical in nature. Most of them were weapons or defenses. Her own reticence in the matter had held her back because she was loath to touch them and didn't dare ask after them. All of them, she knew, had been recovered in the years since she'd found him. He and creatures in his service had sought them out. One of those items had been the sole reason Iakhovas had journeyed to Waterdeep.
If Iakhovas had appeared as a human to the sahuagin, Laaqueel knew they'd have killed him on the spot-or died trying. However, thanks to the spells he constantly wove around himself, the sahuagin saw him as one of their own, only slightly less in stature to Huaanton himself.
The malenti had even helped Iakhovas fake his own birth into her community after she'd brought him back. Once there, he'd quickly risen through the ranks by blood challenges and his sheer ferocity. Those traits, she'd decided, were as natural to him as any sahuagin, something no human she'd ever seen could match.
Now Iakhovas was prince among the sahuagin, a war chief they'd relied on heavily for the raid on Waterdeep. He still had his own agenda, and stopping the sahuagin raids conflicted with that intensely.
'Watch yourself,' Huaanton warned softly. He flexed his muscles and intentionally set the trident between Iakhovas and himself. “You swim heavily over the largess I've granted you.'
Iakhovas met the king's gaze directly, something no true sahuagin would do without starting a blood feud. Laaqueel was surprised when Huaanton didn't react to the obvious insubordination. She felt the fear ball up in her stomach and she started praying silently.
'Exalted One,' Iakhovas addressed the sahuagin king in a voice that carried to the masses, 'I am come here at this tide at your direction. A tenday ago, we discussed the possibilities of continuing our war with the surface dwellers. You challenged me to produce a sign from Sekolah that my words be proven true when I said the Shark God wanted us, We Who Eat and Sekolah's Chosen, to take the oceans back from the surface dwellers.'
Low mutterings moved through the spectators and they shifted uneasily. Laaqueel continued her prayers, touching the shark-toothed necklace she wore. Her eyes flickered between Huaanton and Iakhovas.
'Yet now,' Iakhovas continued, 'I am here and I listen to you on the verge of canceling all further attacks on the surface dwellers.'
'Our people shall not die needlessly,' Huaanton announced.
'Sekolah has given me a vision,' Iakhovas said. Only Laaqueel saw the mocking smile that played over his cruel lips. 'There is a new tide upon us, a new time in which the sahuagin will be rejuvenated and made stronger than we've ever been before.'
The spectators stamped their webbed feet in appreciation and yelled out their support.
'Words,' Huaanton snarled. 'You offer us only words. You carry on like some surface dweller who loves the sound of his own voice.'
The smile dropped from Iakhovas's face, and deadly lights glittered in his single eye. 'I offer only words of warning, Exalted One, because I was bade carry them to you as well. Sekolah has made me see the weakness in you.'
Laaqueel stopped praying, knowing that Iakhovas had gone too far. Even an indirect accusation of cowardice among the sahuagin was enough to trigger a blood challenge.
'I told you of Sekolah's will,' Iakhovas went on. 'I told you how we are to continue raiding the world of the surface dwellers. Yet, you concern yourself with thoughts of their retribution. Sekolah says let them come, and let We Who Eat stand against them.'
The spectators roared their approval.
'The tide of the Great Cleansing is upon us,' Iakhovas stated, 'and it shall see the weak and cowardly driven from us or dead as Sekolah wills it. The true warriors of the Shark God shall prevail against our enemies. We shall be unstoppable even though we fill the oceans with blood and drench the dry lands beyond!'
Huaanton raised his trident, instantly quieting all the noise around him. 'You talk brave words, but they're only words. They ring as hollow as an abandoned hermit crab's shell, and are as fleeting as gulls feeding in shark- infested waters. I've seen no sign from Sekolah.'
'How dare you,' Iakhovas said bitterly, his voice cutting as surely as a spinefish's fin. 'Sekolah has never owed We Who Eat anything, yet you choose to view him as one who should be at your beck and call.'
Laaqueel took pride in the fact that the spectators all sat up and took notice of Iakhovas's words. It didn't matter that he'd borrowed them from her from the time they'd last met with Huaanton. They were true, and the sahuagin sitting in the stone tiers recognized them for that.
Huaanton reacted hotly. 'You're putting words in my mouth.'
'No,' Iakhovas said, cutting him off. 'Laaqueel has prayed about this matter ever since that time. And she fought you regarding this issue, telling you how out of place your demands were. You were out of line asking for a sign that we're carrying on as Sekolah would have us do. We survive, and we survive strongly and in numbers. That's all he's ever asked of us.'
'Yet, if we were to follow you, all we would find is our deaths against the surface dwellers.'
Iakhovas looked at him, fire dancing in his single eye. 'Only the inadequate fail!' he shouted.
That was one of the core beliefs for the sahuagin, Laaqueel knew. All of them had been trained since hatchlings that it was true.
'The brave and strong shall flourish,' Iakhovas went on. 'The tide of the Great Cleansing is upon us!' He gestured across the amphitheater. 'Should you want your sign that you so inelegantly demanded of we who choose to follow Sekolah's true way, then behold and tremble at the power of the Shark God!'
Every eye was drawn across the amphitheater. Laaqueel watched as well, noticing the huge mass that took shape out in the distance. At first it blended in with the deep blue of the sea, then it paled as it came closer. In moments, the great albino kraken hovered above the amphitheater.
The kraken's two longest tentacles drifted out at its sides while the other six coiled restlessly beneath its body. The single baleful eye on the arrow-shaped head, reminding the malenti of her master's, glared red even in the dark waters. Its tentacles were over one hundred and fifty feet long, making it the largest of its kind Laaqueel had ever seen or even heard about.
The malenti recognized the kraken as the one that had guarded the tunnels leading to the king's palace. Brought there as a young creature, the kraken had been fed by the royal guards till it was too big to get out through the tunnels it had been brought through. The guards had kept it on a regulated near-starvation diet that guaranteed it would eat anything that came within its reach.
Only it hadn't acted like that with Iakhovas when they'd encountered it a tenday ago. With Iakhovas, the kraken had acted totally docile.
'There is your sign, Exalted One!' Iakhovas shouted, pointing at the great kraken as it continued to drift closer.
Huaanton stared up at the huge kraken in enraged silence.
Every sahuagin in the amphitheater knew the creatures possessed an uncanny intelligence. A kraken wouldn't normally approach a sahuagin community, Laaqueel knew, especially one that had kept it captive. It had also gotten too large to get out of the caverns below by conventional means, leaving her no choice but to accept that Iakhovas had used his magic to arrange it. The kraken's presence was proof again of the arcane abilities Iakhovas
