While they'd been in port at Agenais, stories continued flowing in from new arrivals. Sahuagin, koalinth, morkoth, and other sea species continued to raid the surface world nations and take ships. Their goal appeared to be to rid the Sea of Fallen Stars of anything that traveled over the water.
Some of the sea captains even brought news that uneasy alliances between the surface world nations were starting to unravel as realms in turn accused other realms of being involved in the sea-spawned threat. Assassins were rumored to ply their trade on and off the sea. There were still others who insisted the assassins were hired by the different aquatic races.
Trade routes and communication lanes broke down. The Sea of Fallen Stars became a battlefield, something it hadn't been in over four hundred years.
"I've got to get back to my ship," Azla announced. "There's still some trim and other work I want to see to while we're here." She passed the spyglass over to Glawinn, who thanked her for the loan. "Let me know if anything develops."
"I will, lady," the paladin promised.
Sabyna rolled up into a sitting position, still behind the brush and below the ledge so the pirates couldn't see her. She wrapped her arms around her legs and held them tightly. "Ill stay here as well."
Azla nodded. "I'll have two men spell you when it gets dark." She turned and walked away, making her way carefully down the hillside.
Wanting to take advantage of the waning sunlight, Sabyna took out her book of spells and spent time trying to study. Glawinn lay across the ridge, as calm and still as any animal that made its home in the forest. The ship's mage found that irritating.
"Is something wrong, lady?"
"I want to know Jherek is all right." It had been nearly two tendays since she'd last seen him.
"You can look to your own heart for that."
"So you say."
"Trust me, lady. When you feel as drawn to someone as you do to the young warrior, you'll know when something happens to him."
"How do you know?"
"Because it has happened to me."
Startled and embarrassed at her own thoughtlessness, Sabyna glanced up at the paladin. His dark eyes were filled with old pain that time failed to erase.
"I'm sorry," she said.
"As am I." Glawinn returned his attention to the spyglass and said, "Sometimes, in order to love fully and completely, you have to let the other go. When they return, you'll find the bond between you is even stronger."
"I don't know that he will be back. There seems to be so much distance between us."
"Trust," Glawinn urged. "It's all you can do."
"I prefer a much more active solution."
"Then study, lady, that you may get better at your own skills," the paladin suggested. "Wherever you go, however this may turn out between you and the young warrior, you need to be as strong as you can be."
Reluctantly, Sabyna took out her book again and applied herself to her studies. Still, she felt as though she were on the edge of the world, peering down into a bottomless abyss.
"We've not seen the worst of this yet, have we?" she asked.
"No," Glawinn replied softly. "No, lady, I'm afraid we haven't."
Laaqueel stood on Tarjana's deck and stared at the Great Whale Bard. The creature floated in the currents before the broken section of the Sharksbane Wall, flanked by other whales. The great whale was over four hundred feet long from its blunt head to its tail flukes. Gray-blue skin stood out against the blue-green sea so it looked more like a shadow than a solid thing. The whale song continued to echo in shrill squeaks and moans around Hunter's Ridge
He knows you're coming, she told Iakhovas when he joined her.
Of course he does. Iakhovas looked at her and grinned. Can't you smell the fear on him, little malenti?
Laaqueel said nothing. She couldn't smell fear from the great whale, but she sensed the anticipation from the sahuagin who ringed the mountains around her. Not far away, Maartaaugh and Ruubuuiz stood together, out of safe crossbow shot from the few sea elves that still manned the makeshift garrison.
Iakhovas held a harpoon in one fist. The thick shaft bore runes etched in black. The metal blade gleamed as though a fresh edge had just been put on it.
Why didn't you challenge Maartaaugh and be done with it? Laaqueel asked. You could have beaten him easily.
Little malenti, Iakhovas said patiently, there is still much you have to learn when it comes to leading warriors. In Waterdeep, though our forces were turned away, we killed many of our enemies, destroyed their boats, and burned their buildings and homes. Though it was a loss in some respects, I taught We Who Eat of the Claarteeros Sea that, they could win. They knew before that they could fight the surface world, but never before had they known they could win.
The whale song continued unabated, throbbing through the water, racing with the currents. It was hard for Laaqueel to stand there and take the whale's abuse. A few of the sahuagin who came from Vahaxtyl to watch succumbed to the whale song's thrall and returned to their city.
Once I gave them that, Iakhovas continued, Baldur's Gate could not stand against them. The Great Whale Bard will be Seros' Waterdeep. It will teach these warriors here that anything is possible? and it will give notice to the sea elves and others that would stand in our way. He grinned, and his golden eye gleamed. What other creature can sing its death song the length and breadth of the Sea of Fallen Stars?
Iakhovas signaled to one of the sahuagin warriors in Tarjana's stern. The warrior started beating the drum brought up from belowdecks. The basso booms echoed through the water, partially masking the whale song.
The sahuagin warriors aboard the mudship picked up the rhythm, slapping their webbed feet against the deck, creating hollow detonations that amplified the frenetic beat. Within the space of a few heartbeats, the sahuagin warriors along Hunter's Ridge picked up the rhythm as well, slapping their hands and feet against the ocean floor or banging rocks together.
Wish me well, little malenti.
Iakhovas leaped off the mudship. His illusion as a sahuagin warrior for the moment was complete. Not even Laaqueel could tell he was anything else.
He swam strongly, straight for the waiting whales as if propelled by the savage beat of the sahuagin. The long harpoon stayed close at his side.
Just over the broken section of the Sharksbane Wall, unchallenged by the sea elves who knew they were not his targets, Iakhovas halted in the water. He was less than a hundred feet from the Great Whale Bard.
"I am Iakhovas!" he roared. "And I will be your death!"
He swam straight at the great whale like a crossbow bolt.
XVII
2 Eleasias, the Year of the Gauntlet
Confusion consumed Laaqueel's thoughts as she watched Iakhovas close on the Great Whale Bard. The confrontation with the priestesses of Vahaxtyl weighed heavily on her mind. The closest Sekolah came to involving himself in his children's worship of him was when he sent avatars to inspire their blood frenzy, and that almost never happened.
Though she believed Iakhovas when he said he played no part in the matter, she couldn't help questioning whether her defense had come from Sekolah. She couldn't answer why the Shark God would choose to defend a malenti priestess. Malenti birth was only a sign that the sahuagin lived too close to the sea elves, their sworn enemies. There was nothing positive about being a malenti, nothing in their scriptures to suggest that Sekolah would show any kind of special interest.
Her line of thinking pointed her back to Iakhovas. Either he had engineered the priestesses' deaths and gotten away with lying to her, or he was as important to Sekolah's bloody designs as he said he was. Laaqueel's faith was torn in both directions. She was afraid to believe and fool herself, and afraid not to believe and take away the last vestiges of herself she had left, trapped by her own need for understanding.