illuminated, it seemed to take the darkness into itself, turning darker even than black pearl.
'What is it, favored one?' Saanaa called from behind.
'A man,' Laaqueel answered.
'Not a sahuagin?'
'No.' The malenti let the disappointment sound in her voice. She knew she'd spoken the truth, yet that didn't explain the fear that cut through her.
'Maybe we should look for another chamber,' Viiklee said. 'There must be others.'
Laaqueel stared at the stones hovering over the top of the still figure of the man.
Seek Out One Who Swims With Sekolah
SEEK OUT ONE WHO SWIMS WITH SEKOLAH
They came to an abrupt stop, and the silence struck as forcibly as a whale sounding.
'No,' she replied. 'This is where we were led.'
She forced herself to go forward. Once inside the room, the chill grew stronger, became an arctic cold. She couldn't fathom how the water wasn't frozen solid by whatever glamour possessed the room. She had no doubt that the room was enchanted.
She lifted the glow lamp and played it over the figure. Resembling a surface dweller, he stood a full head taller than the malenti, and inches above the other priestesses. His hair was pulled back in a cluster of tangles secured by carved bones with intricate runes. Harshness tightened his face, narrowed his single eye and turned it down at the corners. The other eye was a hollow socket surrounded skin puckered by the scar of a long-healed burn. He wore a mustache that ran down to his chin, then flared back up his jawline to join his sideburns, leaving his dimpled chin clean-shaven. Hollow-cheeked, he looked wasted and emaciated, that fact showing even more starkly since he was totally naked, starved yet wiry. In the pale light of the glow lamp, his skin tone was as pale as a bled corpse. Dark tattoos scribed in broad strokes covered his body, creating a mosaic of color and sharp lines on every square inch of skin.
His solitary eye stared through her.
Fearful but needing to know, Laaqueel reached out and touched him with her knife point. The sharp edge grated on the man's petrified skin, not even leaving a mark in its passage.
'He's dead, favored one,' Saanaa said. 'He's not the one we came for.'
'Let's leave this tomb,' Viiklee pleaded.
Laaqueel stepped closer to the petrified man who looked so unlike anything she had expected. 'No,' she commanded, 'this is the one we came for.'
'This can't be One Who Swims With Sekolah,' Viiklee argued. 'He looks like a-a surface dweller. A human, not even an elf.'
She glanced up at them as they hovered over the petrified man, then back at the statue's hard face.' There in his cold grave'' Laaqueel quoted from the text she'd read, ' 'barren of life and bereft of the powers he'd once commanded, lost to the luxuries he'd once had, lies One Who Swims With Sekolah. Dead-yet undead, too, turned as hard and as cold as his heart that left love forsaken.' ' The common tongue she'd learned as part of her training was sometimes less precise than the sahuagin tongue, so there was a margin for error, but the stones didn't lie.
'What love?' Saanaa asked.
'I don't know,' Laaqueel admitted.
'Humans only know to love another human,' Viiklee stated. 'Their understanding of that emotion is pathetic. Wisdom dictates loving your race, not an individual. The race is what will persevere.'
That was the sahuagin view, Laaqueel knew, and one seldom shared by the humans or elves. Those races tended to think individuals first and race second.
'If this is One Who Swims With Sekolah, who did this to him?' Saanaa asked.
'The book didn't say.'
'What are we supposed to do with a dead human?' Viiklee demanded.
'He isn't dead,' Laaqueel answered.
'The story said he lay in his tomb,' Viiklee pointed out.
'It also said he was dead, yet undead. Maybe he can't be killed.'
'He's dead,' the younger priestess argued. 'Even a hatchling would know that.' Sahuagin knew about death; the weak died early, eaten by its fellow hatchlings.
'We'll see,' Laaqueel said as she opened the whalebone container around her neck again and removed a ring. Cast in gold, the ring was a simple band studded with diamond chips that reflected the pale blue-green luminescence of the glow lamp.
'What's that?' Saanaa asked.
'A ring.'
'I can see that, honored one.'
'A very special ring.' Laaqueel slid the ring onto the petrified man's forefinger. The magic in the ring caused it to adjust to the man's finger with an unsettling fluid grace. It slid into place, then began to glow. 'This ring was mentioned in the book,' she continued. 'It took a year and a half to find. It's supposed to return One Who Swims With Sekolah to life.'
'More magic,' Viiklee spat in disgust. 'Only the magic bestowed by Sekolah is trustworthy.'
'I have prayed,' Laaqueel said, 'that these things be blessed in Sekolah's hungry gaze. We've been brought here without harm.'
'Thuur died,' Viiklee reminded.
'By choosing to thwart Sekolah's plan for us,' the malenti reminded her companion. As Laaqueel watched, the petrified man took on a different pallor, adding color to the bone-hue he wore. She touched him, finding his skin slightly pliable now. 'It's working.'
'How long will it take, honored one?' Saanaa asked.
'However long it takes, we'll be here,' Laaqueel said. 'We're not leaving.'
Sudden movement sensed through her lateral lines woke Laaqueel, letting her know something had moved in front of her. She blinked her eyes open and searched for the glow lamp. Hours after the discovery of the petrified man, she'd assigned shifts, taking the first one herself. Saanaa and Viiklee had protested, not wanting to stay in the cold tomb. Laaqueel had ignored them. The cold might be uncomfortable, but it wasn't harmful. Still, she'd surprised herself by being able to sleep.
'Saanaa,' the malenti called out.
There was no answer, and she couldn't see either of the two priestesses in the illumination given off by the glow lamp.
Laaqueel pushed herself to her feet and leaned toward the glow lamp attached to her trident. Earlier, the luminescence had almost filled the room. Now it covered less than half of it. The gel hadn't lost its ability to illuminate so quickly.
The preternatural chill vibrated through Laaqueel again. Her lateral lines registered more movement, but it didn't feel like either of the two priestesses. She was attuned to their physical motions and would know them even in the dark.
This was different.
She pushed the glow lamp toward the area where the petrified man had been. He was gone, but the light played over the twisted corpses of the two junior priestesses. They lay in pieces across the cavern floor, shredded by a large predator.
Disbelief paralyzed Laaqueel. They'd been killed while she slept-without her waking. She had no clue why she'd been spared. Sensing the movement again, she turned quickly to face it, bringing her hands up to defend herself.
A hand, hard as stone and cold as ice, battered through her defenses and locked around her throat. Hooked fingers painfully invaded her gill slits to further choke her.
The man's face illuminated gradually at the other end of that impossibly thin arm, like he'd allowed the light to finally touch him. He smiled, and it was the cruelest expression Laaqueel had ever seen.
His words touched her mind without being spoken. They were cold and hard, singing like gong notes inside
