by Mel Odom
“If they didn’t decide to come looking for me.”
“By the end of the day,” Azla said, “you’ll know.”
Resolutely, Jherek kept the spyglass trained on the shore. Azla had ordered the helmsman to keep Azure Dagger far enough away from the evil kelpie beds that the haunting melody they sang was barely audible. There was no hope in his heart, but he wasn’t ready to go back to the small room where Sabyna lay just yet. He wasn’t helpful there and the rasp of her strained breathing tortured him. At least here he could search for someone who could help her.
“Survivors!” the pirate in the crow’s nest shouted. “Survivors starboard!”
Reflexively, Jherek swung his gaze around and spotted the small boatload of people a quarter of a mile or more out to sea.
Azla gave orders to pick them up and the crew hung the sails. Silently, Jherek hoped one of them would be a priest or a healer. Unfortunately, priests had proven extremely susceptible to the call of the kelpie beds.
XXIV
14 Marpenoth, the Year of the Gauntlet
Laaqueel swam above the army advancing northeast to Voalidru, lost in her own thoughts and fears. The two previous merman cities had fallen after a considerable amount of bloodshed.
The sea zombies Iakhovas had raised from the shallows around the Whamite Isles had proven to be the turning point of the sweep through Eadraal’s holdings. Despite their fierceness and their familiarity with the terrain, even the strong-willed merman warriors had given ground. The once-dead were harder to kill the second time around.
The malenti priestess also knew that, as large as the army was, it was also extremely vulnerable—not from external forces, but from internal pressures. T’Kalah and the other sahuagin princes grew steadily more displeased with Iakhovas’s decisions.
What had once been jealousy over the crown turned now to unrest with how the war progressed. That feeling was spreading through the sahuagin of both the inner and outer seas as they marched to the very eye of the storm between all the nations of Serôs. If they chose to unify, they could attack the sahuagin from three sides. Only the retreat back to the Xedran Reefs seemed secure.
Adding the legions of undead from the Whamite Isles had been strategically the best move to increase the army’s strength, but the sahuagin didn’t believe Sekolah had anything to do with the sudden appearance of the sea zombies. Scouts that had ventured too close to the kelpie beds had succumbed to the ancient magic as well, becoming undead themselves. Those were the hardest of all to bear, and Laaqueel had destroyed them as soon as she’d discovered them.
If it hadn’t been for Laaqueel, the sahuagin wouldn’t have been put back to take care of the flanks, away from the undead. The koalinth saw the sea zombies as flesh-and-blood battering rams that softened up the merman defenses so they could roll over them more easily.
She gazed down through the murky water, watching the drowned ones swim through the currents toward Voalidru as Iakhovas had commanded them. They looked like a school of scavenger fish hugging the sea floor along the shallows.
“Little malenti, you think too much. Your thoughts cause doubt instead of hope.”
Startled, Laaqueel looked up in time to see Iakhovas glide into position beside her.
“There’s much to think about,” she said, then glanced back and saw Tarjana in the distance.
“On the contrary, the time for thinking is almost over. Voalidru will be mine within hours.”
“Perhaps, but the merfolk will continue to fight to win it back.”
“I’m not intending to hold it,” Iakhovas said. “It will only be a staging area for the attack on Myth Nantar.”
“Then what happens?” Laaqueel asked because she knew it was expected. She no longer really cared, but Iakhovas enjoyed taunting her.
“Then the High Mages save the world,” Iakhovas replied, “just the way their legends say they will—but not before I get what I came for.”
Laaqueel studied him, noting how confident he was of himself. His manner was so sahuagin it hurt, yet he talked casually of defeat while hinting that everything was going as he’d planned.
“How can you be so sure Myth Nantar won’t prove your undoing?” she asked.
“Because I know how those people think. They care more for their precious City of Destinies than anything else. The whole idea of unity in Serôs is based around Myth Nantar.”
“But it didn’t work,” Laaqueel protested. “I’ve read some of their histories. In the end, Myth Nantar failed because they fought over it as well.”
“As it might fail again. But for now, they’ll believe, and they’ll attempt to save it and themselves. You’ll see. Every step of this war has been carefully orchestrated. None have been born, little malenti, who will ever get the best of me.”
Laaqueel was silent for a moment, knowing he wouldn’t like what she next had to say. She didn’t pause out of fear for herself; there was none of that left. She let the pause add weight to her words and glanced at Iakhovas to see his reaction.
“You hadn’t planned on the boy in the cave, had you?”
With a mocking smile, his golden eye gleaming, Iakhovas gazed at her.
“No,” he admitted, “I hadn’t. He was a surprise engineered by someone else.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know, nor do I care. He is no threat to me. He is too lost in his own pain to look past that.”
“His sword cut you when you thought it wouldn’t.”
“There’s not much that can now,” Iakhovas said. “I am almost whole.”
“But he did.”
“It’s no matter. Don’t irritate me, little malenti. I’ve got victories to arrange and a war to lose.”
In the next instant he faded from the water.
Laaqueel assumed he’d teleported back to Tarjana. The fact that he no longer bothered to hide his magic bothered her as well. She reached up to touch the white shark symbol between her breasts and tried to feel the connection to the Shark God she’d once had.
It wasn’t there. Still, the powers granted by her love and devotion to Sekolah worked. When a priestess truly lost her faith, those went away as well. How was it then, she wondered, that she could doubt so much yet still retain them?
She had no answers and nowhere to turn. So she swam, heading to Voalidru because there was nowhere else to go.
“Lady, I do hope that Glawinn was right and that you can hear me,” Jherek whispered.
He took a fresh compress from the water pitcher by Sabyna’s bed and placed it across her fevered brow. Even the paladin’s daily attempts to heal her and Arthoris’s attentions with his waning supply of healing potions didn’t stave off the infections that wracked her body. She enjoyed a brief respite from the fevers, but the bite marks deepened, turning black around the edges, drawing in the flesh around them as they consumed her. Both of the wounds were the size of one of his hands now. It had been seven days and still she had not regained consciousness.
Azla had ordered Azure Dagger to sail north but they lingered still around the Whamite Isles. At present the nearby seas were filled with drowned ones, morkoth, koalinth, and sahuagin. Once they’d even been turned back by a merman patrol claiming the waters as something called “Eadraal’s.”
The young sailor ministered to Sabyna with care. Tears filled his eyes as he listened to her harsh breathing and his hands shook as he touched her hot flesh. Over the days he’d cared for her, he’d found he talked incessantly. He’d told her of his life aboard Bunyip and in Velen, of Madame Iitaar and Malorrie, and of the mysterious voice that had led him this far by speaking the cryptic, Live, that you may serve. And he’d talked of her; what she’d shown him, what she’d come to mean to him.
In the quiet moments of the long nights when he’d sat by her bed working to keep her fever down, he couldn’t help recalling how her face had looked before the drowned one had grabbed her and dragged her into the sea. Had she been about to forgive him, or about to condemn
him? He didn’t know and the waiting was unbearable—only second to knowing whether she would ever awaken.
“I love you, lady,” Jherek whispered.
He told her that several times a day, hoping that she might seize onto it and return to them. That was the declaration she’d challenged him for, but he felt it wasn’t enough to truly turn her from the dark path she walked into the shadowlands. Still, he told her because she’d asked and because he did love her and wanted her to know even if she was taken from him.
A knock sounded at the door, then Glawinn’s voice said, “Young warrior.”
Jherek brushed his eyes free of tears and cleared his throat. “Aye.”
“May I enter?”
“Aye.”
Glawinn entered the room carrying a plate of food. He didn’t ask if she’d awakened, and Jherek was grateful for that. If Sabyna opened her eyes, the young sailor didn’t doubt that everyone on the ship would know.
“I brought you something to eat,” the paladin said.
“I’m not hungry.”
Glawinn put the plate on the chest of drawers against the wall and asked, “When was your last meal?”
“Not long ago,” Jherek answered, applying a fresh compress to Sabyna’s fevered forehead.
“Not long for a camel, perhaps,” Glawinn replied. “I know you’ve not eaten in two days. It will do no good for you to get sick as well.”
“I won’t get sick. I haven’t so far.”
“When was the last time you slept?”
Jherek looked at the man’s eyes and said, “I don’t remember.”
“This isn’t healthy. Others can care for her.”
“I know,” the young sailor whispered, “but I would rather.”
For a moment he was afraid Glawinn would argue with him, then the paladin got down beside the bed on his knees and prayed to Lathander, asking for the Morninglord’s guidance and succor.
Jherek joined him on his knees but couldn’t join in the prayer. No gods were interested in him. He was cursed by the fates, and now that curse had spread to Sabyna. He only wished that he might die soon after she did. He truly believed he wouldn’t be able to live after that.
Before the battle was joined at Voalidru, Laaqueel sensed that Vhaemas the Bastard’s loyalties would not stay with Iakhovas. She saw the pained look in the eyes of Thuridru’s ruler as they marshaled the skirmish lines just south of the merman capital. His father hadn’t abandoned the city as the regular citizens had, and stood proudly among the army he’d assembled.
Vhaemas the Bastard held Thuridru’s forces to the west, awaiting Iakhovas’s signal. The drowned ones marched in first, shoving the front line of the mermen back and opening holes that the koalinth rushed to fill. The killing went on in the lowlands for more than an hour before the merman line really began to cave. Still, the warriors didn’t run, staying in and doing battle as the drowned ones and koalinth ground them down. Bodies floated in the water, drawing marine scavengers that weren’t too afraid of the combatants.
Iakhovas rode Tarjana’s forecastle deck as the mudship bore down on King Vhaemas’s waiting forces in the second wave of battle. Laaqueel stood beside him. They hadn’t talked since earlier in the day, and she was comfortable with that.
Sahuagin packed the deck around them, armed with heavy crossbows.
King Vhaemas controlled his army from a rock shelf, relaying orders through his commanders. Even as Tarjana raced for him, the merman king held his ground, staring back at Iakhovas.
The line of attacking koalinth hammered into the mermen at the same time Iakhovas gave the order to fire the crossbows. The heavy quarrels took down rows of merman warriors.
Iakhovas leaped over the mudship’s side and swam toward the merman king. The sahuagin followed him, advancing rapidly on the royal guard.
Having no heart for the battle, Laaqueel still followed and defended herself as she needed to.
Flanked by one of his daughters, Vhaemas swam to meet Iakhovas. The merman king had been in his share of battles while holding Eadraal together, and it showed in his ability as he engaged Iakhovas.
A merman wearing Voalidru’s colors attacked Laaqueel. Distanced from the danger, the malenti priestess battled flawlessly, turning the other man’s trident then using her finger talons to open his throat. Survival still took precedence over the absence of fear.
When she glanced back at Iakhovas, she wasn’t surprised to see Vhaemas the Bastard had joined his father in battling Iakhovas. Merman king, son, and daughter all swarmed on Iakhovas, who barely held his own against their combined might.
The koalinth and merman warriors spread out, battling around the four of them.
Little malenti, to me.
Laaqueel felt the black quill next to her heart quiver demandingly. She gutted the latest merman warrior that had engaged her and swam toward Iakhovas.
The trident Iakhovas used was magical in nature. Through it, he’d been able to affect the outcome of past battles, affecting the luck that his army had. It had been one of the many items his searchers had found for him around the Sea of Fallen Stars.
Waiting for a chance to reach his side, Laaqueel darted in and engaged Vhaemas while his son and daughter sped toward Iakhovas. Vhaemas the Bastard caught Iakhovas’s trident in his own even as his half-sister, Princess Jian, swam in with her sword.
Jian swung the sword as she passed, breaking the trident haft with a thundering crack that rolled over the hills. When the broken trident fell away, Vhaemas the Bastard pulled his own back and rammed it at Iakhovas.
“No!” Iakhovas shouted in rage.
His shape blurred, becoming the thing Laaqueel remembered from the cave near Coryselmal. Fins appeared on Iakhovas’s head and face, arms and legs, back and chest. If she hadn’t already seen the form before, the malenti priestess knew she would have thought it was a trick of the sediment and sand swirling around Iakhovas.
Before Vhaemas the Bastard could shove his trident tines through his opponent’s head, Iakhovas grabbed it with superhuman speed and shoved the weapon to one side. He rammed the broken haft of his own trident through the bastard king’s torso. Iakhovas continued to push until his talons reached Vhaemas’s abdomen. He ripped out the merman’s entrails and strung them through the water. Vhaemas the Bastard struggled only briefly before going limp.
Still in motion, Iakhovas pursued Jian, who turned to confront him. The mermaid warrior lashed out with her sword, scoring a slash across Iakhovas’s chest. Iakhovas kept going, driving himself at the mermaid and receiving another wound to his arm.
Vhaemas redoubled his efforts against Laaqueel, driving her back so that he could disengage. He swam through the water, stopping only long enough to pick up the end of Iakhovas’s broken trident. Still in motion, the merman king slammed the mystic trident into Iakhovas’s back, burying the points deeply.
Roaring in pain and rage, Iakhovas batted Jian’s sword aside and seized her head in an impossibly huge hand covered in sharp edges. Holding her head, he raked the long fin from his other arm across her midsection, ripping her into halves—one belonging to a beautiful girl and the other to a fish.
King Vhaemas tugged at the trident tines imbedded in Iakhovas’s back, trying to free them. Iakhovas whirled, closing his massive fist and hammering the merman king on the head. Partially senseless, Vhaemas tried to retreat but couldn’t move away fast enough. Iakhovas made a fist and brought it down on top of the king’s crown.
Before the dazed merman king could move or defend himself, Iakhovas dived at him, grabbing him around the throat. Blood and sand misted the water around the two combatants, obscuring the view as the battle raged around them.
Laaqueel kicked out, flicking her toe claws out and gutting the merman warrior who swam at her. She whirled and brought up the barbed net hanging at her side, whipping it out to drape over another merman warrior she narrowly avoided. She gloried in the battle, embracing the thought of death because then there could be no more doub
ts. A smile twisted the corners of her mouth, and she felt more alive than she had in days.
Little malenti, you’ve come back into your own.
The malenti priestess didn’t bother to reply. The exhilaration she felt was only temporary, and she knew it. As the merman warrior fought the net, the barbs buried themselves in his flesh. She choked up on the trident haft and raked the tine across another merman’s face, taking out his eyes.
NO!
The female voice echoed in Laaqueel’s head, driving her to her knees in the loose sand. The malenti priestess put her hands to her temples, willing away the pain and the vertigo.
This is not your path, Laaqueel. Not anymore.
“Stop!” the malenti priestess pleaded, gazing out at the battle before her. “This is what I was born and bred for. This is Sekolah’s purpose for me.”
Little malenti, are you hurt?
Laaqueel looked at Iakhovas. “I am all right.”
“Then get up. There’s a battle to be won here before we lose the war.”
Iakhovas held the unconscious merman king by the throat. King Vhaemas’s head bled profusely, bits of gold and bone glinting amid savaged flesh. Iakhovas’s blow had driven the crown into the merman king’s head.
Staving off the vertigo and uncertainty, Laaqueel picked up her trident, taking the fight to the merman warriors.
I will not allow you to take the lives of these people, the feminine voice stated.
“I am sahuagin.” Laaqueel engaged the nearest merman, thrusting her trident at his face.
No.
Laaqueel’s trident thrust stopped short. The merman warrior moved to take advantage of his luck. As he thrust, though, a wild current sprang up from below him and pulled him away.
Nor will I allow you to be harmed. Not unless you make me.
“Then strike me down if you can.” Laaqueel gazed around the depths. “Come out of hiding. I will fight you. My life has not been my own, and I’ll spend it gladly.”
I come to give you your life, Laaqueel.