The royal guard surged forward, hooking their webbed hands in the net separating them from the kraken and the dying sahuagin. They shouted out at the giant squid in anger and fear while the men in the back instantly surrounded Huaanton, urging him back into the tunnel.
The king shook them off, chasing them back from him with warnings. The guards pulled back reluctantly, caught between the need to do their job and their responsibility to obey the king.
The kraken chomped again, biting the dying sahuagin in two at the waist. Hunks of meat and entrails spilled out into the water. Slowly, the kraken raised Iakhovas toward its mouth.
Laaqueel shifted, getting ready to loose the magic she had awaiting her command.
As you were, little malenti. Do not try to take any part in this upon pain of death. Iakhovas's voice spoke into her mind. Huaanton has grown over bold these past few years and must be reminded of his true place in the events that are unfolding. I will not suffer him threatening me and undermining my authority while I go off to fight his wars.
Laaqueel forced water through her gills, flushing her body. She didn't act, but her spine became as tight as a bowstring. The wizard's insubordination was going to be the death of them both.
The kraken stopped moving the tentacle holding Iakhovas within a few feet of its maw. The wizard slashed out with a hand that resembled a hard ridge of bone for a moment. The bone ridge sliced through one of the chunks of meat from the sahuagin warrior.
Laaqueel knew the illusion of being a sahuagin that Iakhovas maintained on himself probably translated to using his claws.
Iakhovas opened his mouth wide and ate the gobbet of flesh he'd hacked off. "Meat is meat," he declared.
The royal guard stared at him in awe. The story, the malenti knew, would spread throughout the kingdom, then into the other villages. In the telling, as with all stories, it would grow, making the wizard a creature of myth. The truth itself was incredible, a tale that sahuagin everywhere would enjoy: a warrior prince of their own, held in the embrace of a half-starved kraken, and eating choice bits of a meal almost out of its mouth. She glanced at Huaanton.
The sahuagin king's features gave nothing away even to her practiced eye, but Huaanton had to have known the position the showdown had pushed Iakhovas into.
Iakhovas grabbed an arm that had been torn free of the dead sahuagin's torso and was floating nearby. He offered it to the kraken, feeding it the arm out of his hand. Carefully, the kraken took the gift of food, not even grazing the wizard's skin with its fangs. Once the rest of the sahuagin had been eaten, the kraken brought Iakhovas down to eye level again. A brief communication took place, then the kraken stretched forth its tentacle and replaced Iakhovas on the flier.
Laaqueel stepped back from the white tentacle, barely able to control the fight or flight instinct that filled her. She prayed to Sekolah to grant her the strength she needed and to not let any of her emotions show.
The kraken withdrew its tentacle but remained close, rippling in the currents that filled the huge chamber, Iakhovas turned to face Huaanton, and Laaqueel recognized the challenge the wizard had engineered. Huaanton had used the threat of the kraken against Iakhovas, hoping to show the power he had over him. Instead, Iakhovas had stripped that threat away and converted it into a threat of his own. Everyone in the chamber knew he was protected by Sekolah's blessing, and they knew he had some degree of control over the kraken.
Now it remained to be seen if Huaanton had the courage to drop the net that held the kraken back.
Facing Iakhovas, Huaanton lifted an arm and gave the order. Immediately, the net separated down the middle, drawn in two opposing directions by pulley systems that looked like they'd been salvaged from the ships of surface dwellers. The shrill of the support lines being taken up on the pulley drums echoed through the water with piercing harshness.
Iakhovas deliberately waited until the opening was larger than he needed. Although the royal guard shifted nervously around him, their tails twisting through the water, Huaanton let the net be drawn back even further. He stood, solid as stone, a sahuagin who exemplified the core of all that his people were taught to revere. There was a ferocity that clung to him in defiance of his own mortality.
Another moment passed, then Iakhovas gave the order to the flier's tiller. The flier surged forward and joined Huaanton and his group on the rocky ledge. Even the flier's crew quickly spread out, some of them swimming up to fill in the space in the water above the ledge. All of them held their weapons tightly and faced the kraken.
Swimming from the flier, Iakhovas never glanced back. The shrill of the pulleys sounded again as the net crews drew it closed.
Reacting a little slowly, her own attention divided in three different directions, Laaqueel swam to join Iakhovas. She dropped into place beside him only a heartbeat behind the wizard's own landing. She felt the hard stone of the ledge beneath her feet, worn smooth by centuries of usage.
"Well talk," Huaanton said.
"Of course, Exalted One," Iakhovas agreed. "I'd have this no other way."
Turning, the sahuagin king launched himself upward, his webbed hands and feet catching the water at once. He swam for one of five sahuagin-sized tunnels above him. Iakhovas followed.
Laaqueel joined them, swimming behind three of the royal guard who trailed Iakhovas. Only one of the tunnels would lead to the royal palace, and even it would only provide an entry to the maze of tunnels that eventually took a knowing swimmer there. The sahuagin mind loved mazes, and learning complicated ones was a challenge. The other tunnels led to other places, and some of them would lead only to certain death by traps or creatures. Underwater races knew to fear sahuagin mazes.
She followed their lead, marking each turn in her mind, knowing that she was swimming even deeper into Iakhovas's own maze of treacheries. Those, she felt certain, she'd never learn completely.
XXIII
"Waterdeep was all but destroyed, the way I hear it."
Jherek's attention was riveted to the speaker in spite of the press of people crowding the marketplace around him. He carried a bag of packages over his shoulder, items Sabyna had purchased for the ship or for her own personal use.
"I hear all her ships went down, and all those gathered for Fleetswake," another man said.
Jherek couldn't believe it. A cold tendril of fear arced out from his spine across his shoulders despite the sweltering heat of Athkatla's Waukeen's Promenade. Though not overly far from the Sea of Swords, the fifty foot walls of the marketplace enclosed the stadium and trapped the heat from the noonday sun inside despite the entry arches at ground level.
"What's wrong?" Sabyna asked, looking up at him from the table covered with spices, baking goods, and cooking utensils. She'd wanted to try a new dish that evening while they were in port. Cooking for two had seemed to make her even more adventurous..
Jherek craned his head toward the two seamen standing near one of the supports that held the next level above. The terraced levels were seventy-five feet across and packed with merchants hawking wares of all kinds at tables and booths. Uniformed guards occupied the marketplace in impressive numbers, which helped drive up the cost of the goods being offered.
"Did you hear that?" he asked her.
"What?"
"Those two sailors… they're talking about ships sinking at Waterdeep."
Jherek nodded at the two sailors. Both men were dressed down, looking like they'd just stepped from their ships. Already other sailors were starting to collect around them, eager to hear more.