screamed for help.
The locathah considered the scene for a moment, then one signed, 'May you eat and not be eaten.'
'And may your belly be filled a dozen times,' Tane-toa responded.
He turned and dived deep, ignoring his pain and swimming toward the skiffs. The locathah raced along beside him in ever growing numbers, and it was not long before they saw the boats slicing through the water above them. The bottom of one vessel disintegrated into fragments as a boulder came crashing through the hull. Half a dozen humans suddenly appeared in the water, struggling to unbuckle their armor and sinking to the bottom.
As the locathah shot up to slaughter the humans, they were greeted by a cacophony of eruptions and concussions. A dozen fishmen dropped their weapons to grab for their ears. A like number simply went limp and floated toward the surface. The survivors swarmed the sailors still in the water, clouding the sea with swirling blood. Harpoons and crossbow bolts slashed down from above, piercing locathah chests and puncturing locathah skulls. Within moments, the water became an impenetrable red fog.
Tanetoa came up beneath a skiff and punched a dozen holes in the bottom, then reached out and capsized another. The water broke into a frothing mass of red foam as the locathah swam to the attack. A human grabbed one of the small harpoons still lodged in Tane-toa's back and began to hack at his collarbone with a sword. The giant dived beneath the surface, where a locathah rescued him by slitting the human's throat. A silver bolt of lightning crackled through the water and blasted a head-sized hole through the chest of Tane-toa's rescuer.
Tanetoa whirled toward the surface and ripped the prow off the attacking wizard's skiff. The boat went down in the space of two breaths, pouring humans into the sea like eggs from a spawning grouper. Kani kept up a constant rain of boulders, smashing gunwales and shattering hulls at an ever-increasing pace. Tanetoa grew dimly aware that the battle was drifting closer to the outer reef, but the human flotilla was sinking fast, and the pace of their attack was declining at a steady rate. He dared to believe he and the locathah might drive the emir's landing party back to the ships.
Then the sharks came.
There were only a few at first, slashing through the red water, snapping and chomping and devouring anything they touched. The battle continued until only three skiffs remained, their crews rowing madly for the relative safety of the outer reef. Tanetoa caught one boat from behind, ripping the transom off the stern. A large tiger shark wriggled into the sinking boat and chased the inhabitants into the arms of waiting locathah. Kani sank a second boat, smashing a skiff in two with a porpoise-sized boulder.
The sharks quickly outnumbered the combatants, rising up to bite off the leg or arm of a sinking human, or coming in from behind to snap a surprised locathah in two. A giant mako attacked Tanetoa, ripping a great circle out of the giant's hip before he could drive his dagger through the thing's snout. The locathah, what few there remained, dived for the deep and fled. The humans simply died before they could unbuckle their breastplates- sometimes even before they could drop their weapons. The sole surviving skiff sped toward the reef as fast as twelve men could row with only two oars.
The boat was still twenty yards from shore when Kani lobbed a boulder into the starboard side. The vessel began to take on water and slowed to a snail's pace. The warriors clambered out of their breastplates and leaped toward shore, desperate to reach safety before the sharks took them. Even the fastest managed only three strokes before a big hammerhead caught him by the foot, and dragged him to a watery death.
The skiff's wizard was not so foolish. He remained in the bow, glaring at Kani, yelling in some arcane language and weaving a spell with his fingers.
'No!' Tanetoa swam for the sinking skiff, but was delayed when a frenzied blacktip bit his foot. 'Kani, duck!'
Kani's eyes widened, and she turned to hurl herself from the reef flat as a dozen bolts of magic streaked from the sorcerer's fingertips. The blast caught her in the back of the head and launched her into the lagoon.
Tanetoa kicked free of the blacktip and lunged into the sinking boat. He caught the wizard from behind, dragged him out of the bow, and growled, 'Why?'
'It is war.' The wizard's eyes were burning with hatred, and his fingers were rushing through the gestures of a cantrip. 'People die in wars-even giants.'
'And so do sorcerers.'
Tanetoa tossed the wizard to the sharks, then swam the last few yards to the reef. As he climbed onto th flat, the smell of blood and saltwater saturated his nos trils, and the air was filled with the clatter of wave hurling shattered boat hulls against the reef flat.
'Rani!'
Tan… Tane…'
Her voice was full of pain, and too feeble to finish hi name. Tanetoa rushed across the flat and saw his wif floating in the lagoon, surrounded by a roiling cloud o scarlet blood. Her eyes were open and glassy and star ing into the sky with a vacant expression.
'Kani, I'm here!'
Tanetoa dived into the water and took her in hi, arms. Her breathing was shallow and her flesh cold and he could feel a soft spot where the wizard's spel had shattered the back of her skull.
She grasped his wrist. 'Your promise, Tanetoa. Yoi didn't keep it.'
'I… I tried.' He started toward shore. 'But whei you started throwing boulders, I saw you had fount the way to save the reef.'
'Not the reef, Tanetoa.' Kani's hand fell away. 'You.
Her eyes closed, then her body went limp and hei breathing grew too shallow to feel.
'Kani?'
She didn't answer. Tanetoa carried her up to thei] hut and laid her on their bed of palm fronds. He sa beside her all day and into the night, never looking om the window to see what had become of the emir's fleet or thinking even once of the reef she had saved. H‹ tended her wounds and held her hand and begged al the deities of the giants to save her, but there was t mighty war raging across the seas of Toril and the gods could not hear his prayers. In the heart of the night, t terrible stillness came to her, and Tanetoa sat weeping in the darkness.
At dawn, he carried her body outside. The fleet was gone and the Shining Sea lay as still as a mirror, but the war remained a close and black thing, like a hurricane roaring on the horizon. Tanetoa waded out into the lagoon and lay Kani in the warm water.
The locathah were streaming out through the channel, their silver-green backs flashing just beneath the surface. One circled away from the school and pushed its head out of the water so it could speak in the air-talk of humans.
'Greetings, Reefmaster.' The locathah's voice seemed somehow both wispy and gurgling. 'Your wife will be eaten?'
'Kani is dead,' Tanetoa said, too sad and weary to take offense at what was to any sea creature the simple consequence of dying. 'But she will not be eaten. I will build a tomb for her in the manner of a queen of my people.'
The locathah's glassy eyes seemed puzzled for a moment, then it said, 'Eadro praises her bravery. The humans have fled, and it was much her doing.'
Tanetoa nodded, only half hearing the praise, then eyed the empty sea. 'But why did they come at all? What did they want?'
'What do humans ever want?' The locathah opened its gills in the equivalent of a shrug. 'No one knows.'
10 Flamerule, the Year of the Gauntlet
The summer sun blazed over Cimbar in a cloudless sky. The still air shimmered as waves of heat beat down on Riordan's face. The smell of rotting fish was heavy in the dockyard. Sweat burned in his eyes, but he couldn't take time to wipe it away. He stumbled backward as the Soorenar's blade flickered in front of him, nicking his arm and shoulder in rapid succession.
