"There is no forgiveness for weakness," Laaqueel told her coldly. "Uncertainty can be viewed as weakness."
Saanaa's gills flared in anger. "Make no mistake about my strength, favored one. Just as Thuur died for her convictions, I stand ready to follow you wherever you lead."
"Good." As sahuagin, she knew she didn't have to worry about the other two surviving priestesses joining together to kill her. Their culture provided for one-on-one fighting among the community, and no challenges could be made to one who was wounded.
"Neither of us have heard how you came to find the record of the one you seek."
"I don't need to explain myself to you," Laaqueel said. "It's enough that Senior Priestess Ghaataag saw fit to send you with me. You should have taken that as a compliment."
"I do, but I wish to know more for myself, that I may be stronger," Saanaa said. She crouched, folding her arms in on herself, fitting her fins in tight against her body.
Laaqueel thought briefly of ignoring the other priestess. Though Saanaa's argument had merit, the malenti still had that privilege. The months had worn on Laaqueel, too, though it didn't touch her resolve. After being raised as a malenti, trained to be a spy, and moving among the hated sea elves and surface dwellers the few times she was able to mask her true nature, she welcomed the hunt she was on. No matter how long it took her, where she had to go, or what she had to do to accomplish it, she'd never felt more like a sahuagin than during this quest.
"I found a record regarding Sekolah," she said, talking only because she wanted to hear it aloud again, to strengthen her own resolve, "that was older than anything I'd ever seen before."
"A sahuagin book?"
Laaqueel shook her head and brushed her hair back. It was an all too elven gesture she hated picking up, but the long hair often drifted into her face. If she'd had her way, she'd have hacked the hair from her head, but it was a necessary part of her permanent disguise.
"No," she answered. "I found it during a stay with the sea elves almost five years ago."
The sahuagin books were created of strung bits of stone and shell on knotted thongs, each tied to a ring of bone or sinew. The way the shells, knots, and stones hung together represented sounds in the sahuagin tongue. Just shaking the sahuagin book created a series of sounds that gave the title. That was why many referred to them as "singing bundles."
"An elven book, favored one?" Saanaa asked.
"It was written by a human."
"About the sahuagin?" Disbelief sounded in the younger priestess's voice.
"Yes."
"It had to have been filled with lies."
"Incredibly," Laaqueel said, listening to her own words to further her resolve, "it held many truths."
"The sahuagin who gave our history to whomever wrote this book must have been enspelled." Saanaa shuddered. All sahuagin had an innate fear of anything magical.
Laaqueel shared that legacy. Even her time among the sea elves, who had no magic of their own either, hadn't prepared her to see the things she'd seen in her roving. Humans bent the very elements to their will and threw fireballs through the air when they wished. She'd seen it done. Power granted by Sekolah, however, was never in question. The Great Shark wielded magic and gave it to his most favored and most faithful of priestesses.
"I think so too," the malenti stated. "There was much in there about our communities as they were thousands of years ago." Actually, the community life described in the book hadn't changed much even now, though the places that were described were no longer on any sahuagin maps Laaqueel had ever seen. "I found among the myths of Sekolah a story that captured my eye and my heart."
"It was not about Sekolah?" Viiklee asked. She sat watching, her black eyes gleaming with interest. She had crept much closer to share in the tale.
"No. The book was written by a man named Ronassic of Sigil. He'd already documented other ocean life and marine cultures. He carried forth a treatise concerning the origins of the malenti as being a bridge between the sahuagin race and the cursed sea elves. He held that one evolved from the other, suggesting that sahuagin were created from the time the first sea elves took to the oceans. I find that heretical. I believe that the malenti are Sekolah's chosen sacrifices, the claws to lay bare the throats of the enemies of the sahuagin."
Neither of the other priestesses saw fit to disagree.
"In his book," Laaqueel went on, "he gets a great number of things wrong, but in the creation myths concerning the Great Shark and how the sahuagin were given to the seas, he mentioned another being of power."
"Daganisoraan?" Saanaa asked.
"No," Laaqueel answered, pitching her voice low to fully hold the attention of her audience. Daganisoraan was a common figure in sahuagin tales, featured as both hero and villain depending on the myth. "This was before even Daganisoraan's time, and though I searched the book, the only name I ever found given to him was One Who Swims With Sekolah."
"Maybe," Viiklee said, "One Who Swims With Sekolah was the first sahuagin."
"No." Laaqueel shook her head. "He was someone… something… very powerful."
"Why haven't we heard more about him?" Saanaa asked.
"I don't know. Perhaps he was there in the beginning but gone before Sekolah saw fit to put the first sahuagin into the oceans. Only the thinnest of whispers managed to survive concerning him."
"What happened to him?"
Laaqueel took the small whalebone container from between her breasts. The container was hollowed out, carved in the shape of a shark. She unstoppered it and poured out six red and black stones into her palm. The red was so true, so inviolate, that it was visible even at this depth and in the gathering darkness. All of stones had holes drilled through them. "I don't know. The book mentioned that he was locked away from the rest of the world to be taught a lesson."
"By Sekolah?" Viiklee demanded.
"No. By another of the gods or goddesses that walked this plane of existence during that time. One Who Swims With Sekolah was imprisoned. He's never been seen since."
"Yet this book mentioned him?" Saanaa asked. "No sahuagin records remember him?"
"Our records," Laaqueel reminded, "don't tell of him. I have read them all and consulted with the other priestesses regarding this matter. None remember One Who Swims With Sekolah, but we don't have access to all sahuagin records."
"What makes you think you can find this being?" Viiklee asked.
Laaqueel ran a forefinger through the six red and black stones in her palm, revealing the runes inscribed on them. "I've given the last five years of my life to the search for the truth in this matter. Only a few months ago, I discovered these in a loremaster's keep at Baldur's Gate."
"Where the humans live." Viiklee spat a curse, roiling the water around her angular face.
"Yes. Magic surrounds these stones."
Saanaa and Viiklee drew back, making protective wards against the hated magic. "You should have destroyed them," Saanaa hissed. "To even carry them around with you is sacrilege." The sahuagin coiled restlessly, edging away.
"There is nothing foul about these stones," Laaqueel said, turning them in her palm. She deftly plucked a short length of worked sinew from her trident hilt and with practiced ease threaded it through the stones, making sure they were in the proper order and tying the correct number of knots between them as she'd learned.