the sea elf drifted toward the ocean bed. If one of his companions didn't free him, the smaller scavengers in the area would nibble him to death in hours or days.
Iakhovas spun again, sliding an arm over Laaqueel's shoulders and shoving her to the side. A trident slammed into the deck where she'd been standing.
The priestess kept her footing with difficulty. Even as she realized how inflexible and coarse Iakhovas's skin was in spite of his appearance, he took his arm back. No man or even sahuagin felt that tough.
Iakhovas ducked and ripped the arm-ridge across the front of a sea elf, disemboweling him. Glistening intestines spilled into the water in ropy snakes that wrapped around another sea elf guard.
Laaqueel spun, meeting a sea elf's swimming charge with a raised trident.
'Die, you traitorous bi-' The sea elf s scream ended abruptly as the trident tines crashed through his chest.
Laaqueel felt the man flopping like a fish at the end of the trident. She popped the claws of her left hand free and ripped them down the sea elPs face and across his throat, then she slung the trident and twisted it viciously, yanking it free of her opponent's chest.
In only a few moments, Tarjana cleared the attack zone. The last of the captured sea elves were put to death. With savage joy, the sahuagin crew ripped their enemies apart.
'Meat is meat!' they screamed as they dined on gobbets of flesh.
Even Prince Maartaaugh and his retinue joined in the post-combat festivities. The savage glee the Serosian sahuagin exhibited mirrored that of the outer sea sahuagin.
'Will you eat, Most Sacred One?' Iakhovas held out a bloody chunk of flesh that had once been part of a sea elf s face.
'No,' Laaqueel replied, feeling her stomach unsettled despite the hunger that gnawed at her. She didn't know what was causing the unaccustomed sensation, but she had noticed her diet changing over the past few days since their arrival in the Inner Sea. 'Thank you, Most Honored One.'
For a moment she thought she saw confusion travel across Iakhovas's face, but as quickly as it had arrived the expression was gone-if it had ever really been there.
Laaqueel's lateral lines picked up sudden motion coming from behind her, disrupting the flow of current over Tarjana's deck. She turned, holding the trident before her.
'We passed through the wall,' Maartaaugh cried out in unmistakable disbelief. The prince stared at lakho- vas. 'What magic wrought this?'
Laaqueel's throat constricted in momentary panic. All sahuagin hated magic; and the Serosians were no different. By revealing Tarjana's nature as a mudship Iakhovas also risked igniting a mutiny.
'This is not magic,' Iakhovas said simply. 'This is Sekolah's will, a gift the Shark God gave to my people to free We Who Eat beneath the Sea of FaUen Stars.'
Slowly, the dread and fear on Maartaaugh's face drained away, replaced by amazement. 'The Sharks-bane Wall can no longer hold us.'
Iakhovas regarded the prince with his dark gaze. 'The Sharksbane Wall cannot hold me. Soon it won't be able to hold you.'
Maartaaugh gazed around the great galley with new appreciation. 'This is how you traveled through the volcano and arrived at Vahaxtyl.'
'Yes, but only because Sekolah willed it.'
Laaqueel relaxed slightly, sensing that the prince offered no threat. She gazed behind Tarjana, barely able to make out the bodies of sahuagin and sea elves hanging in the water near the Sharksbane Wall. Ocean predators had already gathered, stripping flesh from bone.
'Where do we go now?' Maartaaugh asked. 'You've never said.'
'To Coryselmal,' Iakhovas replied. He handed the prince the piece of meat he'd offered Laaqueel.
'The ruins of the elven capital?' Maartaaugh took the meat and chewed only briefly before swallowing it. Blood coated his fangs for a moment. 'Why?'
'To do as Sekolah has directed,' Iakhovas answered. 'There can be no other reason.'
'You'll find what you need to destroy the Sharks-bane Wall there?'
Iakhovas nodded. 'We will.'
Maartaaugh gazed out at the sea around them. 'Only twice, both times when I was much younger, have I ever been beyond the Sharksbane Wall.'
'Soon,' Iakhovas stated confidently, 'you'll be living and slaying in these waters.'
The headache pounded fiercely at LaaqueePs temples. Despite her prayers, the pain continued unabated, lasting for hours at a time. She swam easily, holding her arms at her sides and undulating her body. Not even the cool currents drifting in from the Vilhon Reach helped take the agony away.
The malenti priestess glided through the water less than twenty feet above the rock-strewn silt that covered the ocean floor. She only had to swim around coral reefs higher than that a handful of times in the last few hours. The older coral reefs had been crushed in the gigantic upheaval that had smashed the elven city of Coryselmal nearly sixteen centuries ago.
According to the conversations she'd heard between Maartaaugh and Iakhovas, the earthquake that had reduced the once proud sea elf city to rubble had struck without warning. Seventy-five thousand sea elves had perished in the carnage that followed. An undersea plateau, shoved by the underground stress, broke through the eastern half of the city and buried the other half in rubble and mud. Few had survived. Like the coral colonies and other sea creatures, undersea vegetation in the area was sparse.
Only the Esahlbane Monolith remained standing. It sat on the westernmost edge of the sea bed at the mouth of the Vilhon Reach, forty feet tall and angled now to hang over the ridgfe where the continental shelf dropped suddenly away for hundreds of feet.
Laaqueel concentrated on the image Iakhovas had imprinted on her mind and felt another wave of torment slam through her head. For a moment, she faltered in the water, her smooth moves turned jerky. She flipped her feet, trying to stay in the same area until she could get past the searing anguish.
She called out Sekolah's name, but it was Iakhovas who answered.
What is it, Most Sacred One?
Nothing, Laaqueel assured him, but she gave up swimming for the moment, drifting down to sink inches-deep in the fine silt. A slight chill embraced her feet as they covered over. The headache remained, and she couldn't help wondering if it was coming to her from an outside source. Perhaps it was some warding against sahuagin that yet remained in the area from the time of the elf occupation of the region.
Perhaps it was something more. There were those who believed, she'd learned from Iakhovas's conversation with Maartaaugh, that no civilized races were supposed to live in the Selmal Basin, another name the Vilhon Reach was known by. Only merrow, koalinth, scrags, and sea hags were rumored to live there now.
Quietly, Laaqueel prayed to Sekolah, asking the Shark God for a sign that she followed the currents he'd put before her.
You're in pain, Iakhovas mused.
Yes.
You should have told me, little malenti. You don't have to suffer.
Even as she drew water in through her gill slits again, Laaqueel felt the quill next to her heart quiver. Almost immediately she started feeling the pain subside.
How do you feel now1? Iakhovas asked.
Better.
Laaqueel peered across the distance to the northeast where Tarjana lay at anchor less than fifty feet above the ocean bed. Her vision wasn't good enough to pick Iakhovas out on the deck, but she knew he was there. He hadn't once left the great galley since they'd arrived at Coryselmal early the day before.
He had imprinted the image of the object he searched for on her mind and relied on the gifts Sekolah had given her to detect the lost article. He'd also drawn the area on maps and divided the search area into grids. Sahuagin scavenger parties shifted silt in various places, turning up scraps left over from the demise of the elf city.
Find the piece I sent you for, Iakhovas stated. I am depending on you and your god-granted abilities, Most Sacred One.
