"The runes mean nothing, a false trail laid for the surface dwellers," she continued. "Someone tried to discover the secret of the stones and assigned names to the runes, and some have even used magic to try to read them. Humans and elves don't understand the nature of the sahuagin written language, and none who tried ever learned the truth of the stones."
Finished, she held the ring of knots and stones out, then shook them. They clattered against each other.
The message, to a sahuagin's internal ear and lateral lines, was clear: "Seek out One Who Swims With Sekolah."
"You see?" Laaqueel asked. "Above water where a sahuagin's hearing doesn't operate properly even should one be there, the song of the stones wouldn't be clear. If the book I found hadn't mentioned the existence of the stones, I wouldn't have known. Even then, tracking down the stones was not an easy matter. They were part of a collection assembled by a historian from Skuld, a human city in the land of Mulhorand."
"I've never heard of this place, honored one," Saanaa stated.
Laaqueel knew she had them gripped by the story. If anything, the sahuagin definitely knew the value of a story. There were many concepts new to them, and the stones-with their curse of magic-lay before them.
"Mulhorand is believed to be the oldest continually inhabited human country," she said. "It's located in the ocean the surface dwellers call the Sea of Fallen Stars."
"I know of our home sea, the Claarteeros Sea, the one the humans call the Trackless Sea and the Sea of Swords," Viiklee stated. "I know of the Veemeeros Sea, which they've named the Shining Sea, but I have never heard of the sea you speak of."
"It's an inland sea." Laaqueel watched their eyes widen. As young priestesses, their view of the world was kept deliberately small to encourage strength in their beliefs. Trained as a malenti spy to go into the cities of elves, Laaqueel had been taught early about the geography of the world even beyond what the humans termed the Sword Coast. She remembered how she'd felt when she'd first been told of the Sea of Fallen Stars. The idea of a land-locked sea was frightening.
"How can such a thing be?" Saanaa asked.
Laaqueel turned her hands outward, exposing the webbing between her fingers to show even they were empty. It was a purely sahuagin gesture, not the spasmodic shrug she'd learned of the humans and elves.
"It must be Sekolah's will," Viiklee stated.
"Perhaps."
"Are there sahuagin there?" Saanaa asked.
"I don't know. I've heard stories, but nothing I was able to confirm. The sea elves living along the Sword Coast take very little interest in anything outside their own villages and trading needs. The humans I've had chance to meet were more interested in filling their pockets with gold and silver than in answering questions I might advance, and I was trained not to draw too much attention to myself."
"Living in such a fashion must have been hard," Saanaa said.
"I hated it," Laaqueel admitted. "Elven and human ways are not meant for sahuagin. They are too soft, too greedy. I welcome the day that we are able to push them from the sea and from the coastal lands and take back our world in the waters." She paused. "Still, Sekolah gave each sahuagin the currents of his or her life…"
"… and it is up to each to swim with them," the other two priestesses finished the familiar phrase.
"As we swim with this one now," Laaqueel added.
"Did the book you read mention that Sekolah was within this Sea of Falling Stars?" Viiklee asked.
"As far as I know," the malenti answered, "Sekolah was never there, nor was One Who Swims With Sekolah."
"How did the stones get there?" Saanaa asked.
Laaqueel shook them again, causing them to repeat their message. "It's a mystery, one of many I hope to find answers for."
"How do you know One Who Swims With Sekolah is here?" Viiklee asked. "Why aren't we looking for him in the Sea of Falling Stars?"
"Because the book mentioned that One Who Swims With Sekolah's final resting place was in the Veemeeros Sea. It wasn't called that in the book, but from the description of the land with terrible giant reptiles nearby, it could only be this place."
"If only the sea weren't so large," Saanaa sighed.
Uncoiling, filled instantly with anger, Laaqueel backhanded the younger priestess. An explosion of bubbles erupted from her gills. "Sacrilege! The sea is our life!"
Saanaa cried out in pain, covering her face. "I didn't mean it!" she cried. "Forgive me, favored one. I meant only that our task would be easier-"
"Sekolah never meant for sahuagin life to be easy," Laaqueel snapped, "else he would never have given the sahuagin so many enemies." She was going to add more, a sermon already on her tongue.
Before she could begin, the stones pulled gently from her hand, drifting into a current. Laaqueel watched them, feeling the old fear of magic twisting her stomach into knots around her last meal. Her abilities as priestess, she knew, rivaled those of some mages, but those abilities were given by the Great Shark, awarded to those whose prayers were truest, loudest, and strongest.
Viiklee and Saanaa drew back quickly, raising a murky cloud from the mud floor. They raised their tridents in defense.
The ring of stones rose just out of Laaqueel's arm's reach. They whirled through the water, clicking and resonating their message over and over. A pale scarlet glow gleamed from each of the stones, then grew stronger as the stones spun faster. The message became louder, and the lights turned into a blurred circle of luminescence.
Laaqueel steeled herself, then took a step toward the stones. Immediately, the stones retreated from her, moving the exact distance she did. The message was clear.
"Come," Laaqueel commanded, picking up her trident and adjusting her harness.
The sahuagin priestesses didn't bother to disagree.
Silently, the malenti guided them through the darkness, her eyes focused on the scarlet whirl of the stones. She gave herself over to the current, following her destiny.
Two days later, the whirling stones stopped and hovered over a mound of abyssal hills that radiated heat.
Somewhere below the surface, Laaqueel knew, volcanoes rumbled in uneasy slumber.
Over the last two days, none of them had slept. Their guide had never stopped, pulling them on with the allure of one of Sekolah's savants during a Wild Hunt. Thankfully, the stones had gone relatively slowly, considering how fast sahuagin could swim, allowing them to take turns darting out for prawn, fish, and oysters to provide for the others. A sahuagin's diet required heavy meals anyway to provide the necessary energy to maintain body heat and muscle tone, but the demands of the last two days had drained all their reserves. Even eating along the way, they'd all lost weight during the chase.
Laaqueel watched the wheel of spinning stones slow and glide into position less than a foot above the ocean floor. She knifed through the water, dropping to the mud within easy reach of the stones. Her bare feet slid through the loose silt and she felt the underlying rock strata. She also felt the heat of the volcanoes beneath the surface, warmer than the water around her.
The stones continued repeating their message. In the two days that the priestesses had followed it, the words had never stopped. Now, though, an echoing resonance came from the rock bed beneath the inches of loose silt.
"Nothing grows here, honored one," Saanaa stated quietly, "nor does anything linger."
The malenti gazed in all directions, moving slowly. Her muscles quivered from the continued strain of the last two days spent swimming. What Saanaa said was true: nothing grew within a hundred paces in any direction. Nor did any sea creature make a home or swim within the circumference. The water above her remained clear for the same distance as well.