The vodyanoi turned its full attention to Iakhovas. It swung its arms, hammering at its attacker. Still stunned, Laaqueel watched as every time Iakhovas touched the vodyanoi or the creature touched him, blood boiled out from a fresh wound on the beast. Pieces of the knobby skin peeled away.
Fins appeared along Iakhovas's cheeks, streamlining his features. He threw another blow filled with claws and sharp fins that landed on the inside of the vodyanoi's arm. Flesh and sinew parted in liquid rushes.
In that one blow, the battle turned. Protecting its wounded arm, the vodyanoi turned and tried to run. It clawed at the cave wall, rapidly tunneling into the packed earth.
'No!' Iakhovas shouted. 'There will be no escape from my vengeance!'
Looking only remotely human, he dived after the vodyanoi. Nearly as large as the creature, Iakhovas wrapped an arm under his opponent's chin, then drove his other fist through the vodyanoi's back. Flesh split and blood spilled. Bone broke with high-pitched cracks. Iakhovas's fist smashed into the vodyanoi past the elbow. The great creature shivered all over, its antennae quivering spasmodically. Losing control over its muscles, the vodyanoi collapsed to its knees.
Screaming in savage triumph, Iakhovas withdrew his bloody arm. He held his opponent's heart in his hand.
'No one may take what is mine. No one!' He held the huge heart up and squeezed, bursting the flesh. With blood spreading from the ruined organ, he thrust the savaged meat into his mouth and swallowed.
Barely standing, Laaqueel tried to fathom what kind of being Iakhovas was. None of his lost legacy was mentioned in the prophecies she'd found and read. His identity was never revealed.
He turned to stare at her, his single eye flaming with passion. Blood dappled his mouth and face. The ridges along his cheeks, chin, and brows looked pronounced in the shadows. The fin on top of his head touched the cavern roof. The fins along his arms and legs looked like razor-edged bone.
'I am Iakhovas,' he snarled, 'and all who know me will tremble in fear of my name.'
Laaqueel stared at him, knowing that of every creature that swam the currents of the sea, Iakhovas was the one to which Sekolah would give his highest approval. He was a natural-born killer, the merciless instincts of the predator honed to a perfect cutting edge.
But he was not sahuagin.
That she knew for sure.
Suddenly aware of the coldness that creeped through her, she sank. Only the buoyancy she kept in her air bladder kept her from dropping to the cave floor. Unable to move, certain that death was stealing over her, she floated loose-limbed in the current.
'Little malenti.' Iakhovas stared at her in surprise.
Laaqueel tried to answer him. He'd been around so much death, she was surprised that he didn't recognize it when it was before him. Weakly, she reached up to her head, wishing the pain that plagued her would abate as easily as most sensations were leaving her. Working hard, she was able to touch the wound at the side of her head. At first she thought the rough object she found there was an embedded claw from the vodyanoi's blow. She pulled it away and turned it over in the uncertain light from the lucent coral to examine it.
It was bone-a piece of her own skull.
She knew she was dying.
'No,' Iakhovas ordered in a tight voice. 'No, little malenti, I'll not suffer you to die. My plans include you. Without you, they'll be much harder to attain. I won't have you leaving my side now. Not when we've come so far together.'
She wanted to tell him there was nothing he could do. Death was the natural order of things. She only hoped that Iakhovas cared enough to order the other sahuagin to eat her as they did all their dead so that she would remain within the community. It was a sahuagin's final service to the race, to be a meal for the others.
'I am Iakhovas,' he said as he strode toward her. 'You don't know the depths of what I can do.'
He stopped at her side, not even needing to bend over to reach her because she floated. As he stood there, the fins went away and he returned to his more familiar human shape.
Laaqueel knew she'd never seen his true self even then. There was more, and she couldn't even guess at it. Darkness started to span her vision, pulling her away. She watched, perplexed, as Iakhovas turned his head to the side then reached into his empty eye socket.
His finger emerged a moment later with a golden half-spheroid that gleamed in the pale light. He held it in one palm, spoke a word Laaqueel had never heard, and touched the half-spheroid with his forefinger. The mechanism scattered into pieces across his palm, sparkling with a dozen different bright colors, no longer only red and gold. He selected one of the pieces and turned toward her, the empty hole in his face holding the blackest shadows the malenti had ever seen.
'You can't go,' he told her. 'I won't let you.'
Numb beyond fear, Laaqueel watched as the small item he'd selected turned into a black, full-sized hu- manoid skull with rubies mounted in its eye sockets.
Iakhovas held the black skull in both hands above her. He spoke a language the malenti had never heard before, the words coming in a definite cadence, rolling into a crescendo of thunder that couldn't have come from a humanoid throat. The quill next to Laaqueel's heart twisted painfully.
A bunding flash of virulent green flooded the cavern.
A voice sounded from far away, serene and pure, and undeniably feminine. 'Go back. You are yet undone.'
Soft and gentle resistance pushed against the malenti. The fragrance of clean salt sea and the pale green of the upper depths rolled over her.
Then there was nothing but blackness.
Laaqueel thought she had died, until her eyes blinked open.
'You're back,' Iakhovas said gently. He still stood at her side though she couldn't tell how much time had passed.
'I was gone?' she asked.
He nodded gravely. 'For a time.'
His answer left Laaqueel cold. Sekolah's faith provided for no afterlife. The only thing the Shark God demanded from his chosen children was that they fight and die bravely. Where had she gone during that time? Whose voice had she heard? She was certain it didn't belong to Iakhovas, but perhaps it had belonged to the skull.
Miraculously, the pain that had quaked inside her head was gone. Hesitantly, she reached up to her temple, expecting to touch splintered bone and blood-slick, jagged flesh. Only smooth skin rewarded her touch.
'You healed me.'
'I rescued you from the hand of Panzuriel himself. Don't underestimate what I have done, my priestess.' Iakhovas looked at her for the first time with something as close to gentleness as she'd ever seen.
The emotion embarrassed and confused Laaqueel. She closed her eyes.
As if knowing what was going through her mind, Iakhovas turned away, the motion read by her lateral lines. 'We must go. You've cost me enough time.' His voice held a hard edge.
'My apologies, Most Honored One.' Laaqueel fanned her arms out at her sides, catching the sea in her webbed hands. She opened her eyes and saw the half-eaten corpse of the vodyanoi slumped on the cave floor, evidence of Iakhovas's great hunger after healing her. Schools of small fish nibbled at it while crabs scuttled back and forth beneath it, tearing strips of flesh away in their pincers.
'The search for the object I seek has continued,' he told her, 'but the scavenger parties have only come back empty-handed.'
The announcement surprised Laaqueel. She was used to Iakhovas knowing what she knew. How could he not know she'd found what they'd searched so diligently for? 'I found the object, Most Honored One.'
Slowly, Iakhovas turned to face her. His single eye narrowed in suspicion while golden highlights glinted in the empty socket behind the patch that he wore. 'Where?'
'Here.' Laaqueel pointed at the pile of bones at the back of the cave. 'It lies somewhere below, buried in the silt and refuse from ruined Coryselmal.'
'You're sure?'
'Yes.'
