"Damned trolls get to eat the sailors and I got to eat none," the big slaad said.
Azriim cuffed him once across the face, hard, splitting his lip. "No cursing," he said.
Dolgan smiled and licked the blood from his lip.
Riven appeared. Azriim guessed that the assassin would find the water cold. The human foundered, but managed to keep himself afloat. Riven took a fistful of Azriim's shirt, and a sharp prick in Azriim's back indicated that the assassin had a blade at his kidney.
"I trust you have something in mind," Riven said. "Because I'll bleed you out before I drown here."
Azriim could not contain a grin. The assassin reminded him more and more of Serrin.
"Of course I have something in mind."
With obvious reluctance, the assassin removed the blade from Azriim's back.
Azriim removed from his thigh quiver the thin ivory wand with which he had turned a human into a cave shrimp back in Skullport. The wand allowed him to transmogrify a target into whatever shape Azriim desired. He held the wand up out of the water to confirm he had the right one. He did.
He touched it to Riven and said, "Aquatic elf."
The magic flared and the human began to change. Riven's one good eye went wide as gill slits opened in his throat, his body thinned, and his skin turned pale blue. His ears elongated into points, and his eye sockets broadened. The assassin held up a hand to discover flaps of flesh between his fingers.
"There now," Azriim said. "Well enough?"
The assassin grunted acquiescence, dived underwater, and emerged a short time later. He took a deep gulp of air. The new form allowed him to breathe both air and water. His mouth did not smile, but his good eye did.
"Well enough," the human said. "How long will it last?"
"Long enough," Azriim answered.
Azriim did not intend to remain underwater long. The mantle obviously had guardians-scrags at least. Azriim would descend to the provenance of Sakkors's mantle, plant the Weave Tap seed, and use the teleportation rod to exit. He expected it to take no longer than half an hour.
He tried to send a mental message to the Sojourner, to inform him of their progress, but the interference caused by the sentient mantle prevented him from making contact.
"And how will you two travel?" Riven asked.
"Something similar," Azriim answered.
He and Dolgan called upon their innate ability to change shape and converted their human forms into green-scaled, muscular bipedal forms, each with clawed, webbed hands and a mouthful of shark teeth-creatures known as sahuagin.
"I like to keep my fangs," Azriim said to Riven, and smiled a mouthful of razors.
With that, the three turned their faces to the dark deep and began to descend.
* * * * *
Demon Binder's crew, armed with cutlasses, met the trolls as the lumbering creatures tried to scramble over the sides.
Cutlasses hacked into troll flesh and black blood wet the decks. The trolls clutched the ship's rails with one hand and lashed out with claws from their other. Men screamed in pain, shouted in rage. Red blood joined the black. The trolls roared, deep and bestial. Cale did not see the shaman.
Two of the towering creatures clambered over the side and gained the deck. Sailors swarmed the pair, but troll claws tore into two seamen and kept the rest at bay. One sailor's chop with his cutlass brought him too close and one of the trolls caught him up in both of its clawed hands. The crewmen hacked at the creature but the second troll forced them back with a reckless charge, claws flailing. The pinned man screamed and kicked while the troll tore out his throat with his fangs and gulped down the gore. It roared victory to the sky, leaking red blood from its mouth, clutching the crewman's corpse in its arms.
From the other side of the ship, more trolls appeared over the sides.
"The other side too, lads!" shouted Evrel, and charged across the deck. A troll cut off the two sailors who would have joined their captain. Cale and Jak leaped down from the forecastle and joined the captain's charge.
Two trolls climbed over the side and onto the deck just as Cale, Jak, and Evrel arrived. The larger of the two lashed out with a claw that opened Evrel's shoulder, spinning him to the deck, bleeding and cursing. Cale lunged in front of the creature and stabbed it through its gut. It grunted with pain and struck out with its other claw at Cale's face. Cale dodged backward, but too slowly. The tips of the creature's claws tore gashes in his cheek and nearly took out his eye. Blood flowed but his regenerative flesh closed the wound quickly.
Cale twisted Weaveshear, still embedded in the troll's viscera, and the creature roared and bled. Unlike the trolls Cale had encountered on land, the scrags did not appear to be regenerating their wounds. Perhaps they needed to be in the water to do so.
The troll tore a gash in Cale's shoulder, and Cale ducked another rake that would have torn his face from his skull.
Grunting with pain and exertion, Cale jerked Weaveshear free of the troll's gut and bounded back. He spared a glance to his left to see that Evrel had regained his feet. The captain and the little man were fighting the other troll. Jak looked tiny standing before the towering creature, but its futile attempts to grab hold of the halfling, who was much faster, led it to growl with anger. Evrel chopped at its arms, shoulders, and chest at every opportunity.
Cale's troll, still bleeding from the hole in its gut, produced a necklace of shells and stones in its palm and chanted something in its guttural tongue. A globe of darkness formed around Cale, but his shade eyes saw through it perfectly. Darkness was Cale's element.
Thinking him blinded, the troll sniffed at the air and charged.
Cale braced himself and sidestepped the charge at the last moment. He caught a claw rake across his chest, but managed to put a foot under the troll and send it sprawling to the deck. He leaped atop it, driving a knee into its back. The creature bucked, trying to throw him off, but Cale drove Weaveshear into its ribs until he felt the blade dig into the wood of the deck. The troll roared. Cale jerked the blade free and drove another strike into the flailing creature's neck. It lay still, blood pooling around it.
Mags! Where are you? Cale projected as he rose. He had neither seen Magadon nor heard the thump of arrows from the guide's bow.
Cale looked to Jak and Evrel to see the troll knock Evrel flat and loom over the prone captain, fanged mouth wide. Jak darted in, drove his dagger into the troll's chest, and sank his short sword to the hilt into its side. The creature emitted a squeal of agony and struck out with a backhand strike at Jak. The blow hit Jak in his stomach and sent blood spraying, but the little man held his ground. He pulled his short sword free and drove it home again. The troll gave a final squeal and collapsed atop Evrel. The captain, covered in black blood, rolled the corpse off and stood.
"Cale?" Jak shouted, staring at the globe of darkness.
"Here, little man," Cale said, and emerged from the pitch.
Jak grinned, wincing a bit at the pain in his stomach.
Erevis, Magadon finally answered. It calls itself the Source. I think I can take what it's offering and use it to help us.
Cale looked across the deck and saw a troll bodily lift a sailor to its mouth and snap off his head with a single bite. The neck stump sprayed blood onto the creature's face, and the troll eagerly slobbered it up. Two more crewmen lay dismembered on the deck. Cale did not see that any trolls had been felled other than the two he and Jak had put down.
Do it, Mags. They're being slaughtered.
A hesitation. Then, I will pay a price, Erevis.
That gave Cale pause. He scanned the deck for Magadon and finally spotted him standing alone in the darkness near the mainmast. The guide's white eyes were wide, distant. Cale could see the sweat on his face.