prolonged contact as well, then hurried across the busy street.
Jherek stood and watched her, admiring the smooth roll of muscle shown by her breeches and the easy way that she moved, not showing much of a sailor's rolling gait when on land. Apprehension flared through him, though, when she disappeared from sight down an alley leading deeper into the Amman city. It was like a small, cold voice had whispered that he'd never see her again.
He almost went after her then, but he stopped himself. He'd given his word he'd try to find the captain. He turned and went down the street toward the docks where the festhalls and taverns thrived.
XXIV
7 Tarsakh, the Year of the Gauntlet
'We need to make another attack.'
Huaanton regarded Iakhovas silently after the statement. The sahuagin king's stance made it clear to Laaqueel that wasn't something he wanted to hear.
The malenti waited tensely, knowing Iakhovas should have reacted to the king's unspoken displeasure. For the last twelve years he'd lived among them as one of their own and the wizard knew enough to recognize the body language. By rights, he should have avoided eye contact at any cost and perhaps even swum up over Huaanton's head, baring his midriff to possible attack as a rebuke and a show of his loyalty.
Iakhovas merely stood there, his back to one of the four thick crystal windows that peered out over the sahuagin city in the chasm. In fact, he not only appeared unrepentant but mutinous, and Laaqueel was certain that attitude ran over into the illusion he wore for the king.
Huaanton's throne room and audience chamber was huge. Thousands of years had gone into the planning and construction of it. Made of limestone blocks each over an arm span wide and more than that tall, the sahuagin castle looked like another bump on the canyon wall from the outside. It was seven stories tall inside, the lower three sunk into the ledge of outthrust rock spurring from the chasm side, and the other four looking like a natural rock projection.
The throne room was on the second floor down, below Huaanton's personal quarters and treasury. A massive throne carved from whale bone in the shape of a shark leaping from the water with its jaws distended occupied one end of the room. The open mouth contained the seat, large enough even for Huaanton's massive girth.
Images of sharks and sahuagin were cut in bas-relief on the limestone blocks of the walls. The largest stones depicted battles from sahuagin history, myth interwoven with truth until it was all memory. The largest piece, on the opposite end of the room from the throne, showed the meeting of the sahuagin and Sekolah, whom they chose as their god.
The carving of Sekolah, the Great Shark, held a shell in his teeth, shaking it. Tiny sahuagin finned away from him in all directions, coming from the shell. According to history, Sekolah had been victorious in chosen battle against a behemoth of the deep. The Great Shark had gone forth, singing his song of joy and been pleasantly surprised to hear other voices singing back to him. The shell containing the sahuagin had floated up to him on a spray of bubbles, drawn by the joy coming from Sekolah. Once the Great Shark had spread them across the sea, the sahuagin had prospered and multiplied even further.
'More than two thousand sahuagin died in the attack on Waterdeep,' Huaanton stated.
'Easily twice that many surface dwellers perished,' Iakhovas said. 'The sahuagin who died served their purpose in killing the enemy, but they were weak. The strong members of our people came back from that war, and our race will be the stronger for it. The next hatchlings will all be of true warriors' blood, a legacy wrought by the testing of our mettle in battle.'
Huaanton's magnetic black gaze pinned Iakhovas, but the wizard didn't flinch from the eye contact.
Laaqueel silently prayed that Iakhovas wouldn't overstep his bounds. If he did, he'd bring swift and certain death down on them both. Twenty sahuagin guards ranged around them, their faces impassive, but the malenti knew they'd act at once if their king rightfully called them into action.
'They died,' Huaanton agreed, 'and by that proved they were inadequate to survive, but another strike against the surface dwellers right now might not be the wisest thing we could do.'
'Would you have them think they've broken the sahuagin spirit?' Iakhovas asked.
Laaqueel respected the wizard's ability to choose his words well. They were borderline on accusing Huaanton of cowardice, but they were presented so that the perception was on the part of the surface dwellers, not Iakhovas.
'We still take their ships,' the sahuagin king pointed out.
'Only because they foolishly continue to believe they maintain control over the seas,' Iakhovas replied. 'In this we need to be thankful for their own egotistical designs. We do not have to take the fight to them; they bring it into our home territory with every ship they sail. Still, they must be broken of this inflated view of themselves.'
'But the ships appear in less numbers than before.'
'In what they call the Sea of Swords,' Iakhovas said, 'your summation is true. However, even that is too much. All that is needed is for a few ships, or perhaps only one, to brave the sea successfully and they will forget the message that has been delivered to them. A human's memory isn't as long or as gifted as that of a sahuagin's. A human will forget and believe again that they can venture out onto the sea. We need to raid their shores, raze their communities, and see them run broken and splintered before us.' He paused. 'Sekolah demands no less of his children if they are truly to be his children.'
'You claim the ear of Sekolah,' Huaanton said, 'when none of my priestesses claim any such contact.'
'Not his ear,' Iakhovas responded, 'his voice. He speaks to me through my priestess. I seek only to obey, as should any true sahuagin.'
The sahuagin king turned slowly toward Laaqueel, his tail flipping through the water in annoyance. That slight gesture was enough to emphasize the difference between him and her.
Huaanton spoke slowly, giving his words weight. 'Why speak through such a… flawed vessel?'
Laaqueel instantly dropped her eyes as was the sahuagin custom. She let her arms drift away from her body at her sides, leaving herself defenseless. 'I don't know, Exalted One,' she replied, and that was partially the truth. As Iakhovas had pointed out, how could she have found him without Sekolah's intervention? Why hadn't another found the story of One Who Swims With Sekolah? What had made him choose her over the two true sahuagin priestesses who had been with her?
'Have you heard the Great Shark?' Huaanton demanded.
'No,' Laaqueel answered, 'though I have been given visions.'
Those visions of combat and strife, of the sahuagin killing surface dwellers at the sides of massive beasts, had been constant for the last year. It could have been nightmares, brought on by listening to Iakhovas's plans for the sahuagin, but they could have been visions as well.
'Do you believe in these visions?'
Next to her heart, the black quill Iakhovas had inserted under her breast stirred in warning. A chill ran down her spine and her face went numb. 'Yes,' she replied. She knew to answer in any other fashion would have meant sudden death. She believed in Sekolah and she believed in her place in the Great Shark's plans.
Wherever Iakhovas led, she believed it would only strengthen the sahuagin. He was a harsh taskmaster, and his chosen war would only strengthen her people.
She felt Huaanton's eyes on her, but she knew he could go no further without opening the way to a challenge from either herself or Iakhovas.
'I live only to serve the will of Sekolah,' Iakhovas stated. 'Should anything try to stand in the way of that, I would be honor bound to see that thing-that person- destroyed as one of the Great Shark's enemies.'
When her lateral lines signaled that Huaanton had turned from her, Laaqueel glanced back up and saw Iakhovas squarely meeting the sahuagin king's gaze.
'Since you've been among us,' Huaanton said, 'you've been overly ambitious.'
'You lay that ambition so easily at my fins,' Iakhovas replied slowly, 'but I claim no part of it. The ambition, as you incorrectly call it, is merely the doctrine I've been given by my god to obey. I will not turn away from it.'
