"And I won't either," the dwarf declared fiercely. "Ye will see I'm a man of me word." Blood seeped from wounds on his body as well, mixing with the bard's in the salty water.
Taareen arrived foremost among the elves mounted on seahorses. He flung himself off the creature and swam toward Pacys.
"Taleweaver!" the sea elf cried, eeling toward him in the particular undulation the sea elves used for cutting rapidly through the water.
"I'm here," Pacys said.
Taareen surveyed him, taking in the damage done with a grimace.
"It's not as bad as it looks," Pacys said, though he felt that it was.
"We should have had guards over you," Taareen said. "We knew how important you were, and that the Taker would strike at you if he could. Now that he's found you here, we're going to have to move you somewhere else."
The other elves mounted on seahorses rode around the giant fish struggling against the black tentacles Pacys had summoned. They fired repeated crossbow bolts into the giant fish, taking care to stay well away from the reach of the tentacles.
"What makes you so sure the Taker has found me?" Pacys asked.
"The ascallion isn't a normal Shallows or Gloom predator," Taareen said, pointed at the creature that had attacked the bard. "Usually that monster is only found in the Twilight depths."
Pacys knew from his understanding of the stratification of Seros' depths that the Twilight was the depth between three hundred to six hundred feet. "Maybe it found its way up here by mistake."
The black tentacles disappeared in the next moment as the magic sustaining them became exhausted. The ascallion tried only a feeble escape. More than a dozen quarrels stuck out of its face, and more were shot into it as the old bard watched.
Taareen shook his head. "There's no mistake. The Taker found a way to send that creature here, and we're lucky that you escaped with your life. By the Dolphin Prince, the things we would have lost had we lost you."
XXIII
26 Kythorn, the Year of the Gauntlet
Laaqueel stood on the deck of the royal flier as it glided through the ocean, powered by sahuagin rowers. She'd never traveled on one of the craft for long distances before, and never at all until Iakhovas had become baron.
She felt proud as she watched the four hundred rowers working in rapid tandem, pulling the sahuagin craft through the underbelly of the ocean at a normal pace that more than doubled anything a surface vessel could do, even with rowers and a favorable wind. A two hundred forty-mile day was a normal average for the fliers. The other two hundred sahuagin that made up the rest of the crew rotated in, taking a shift at the oars as well while spelling another team.
Laaqueel scanned the deep blue of the ocean around them, looking back at all the fliers that followed. Though she couldn't see them all because even her eyes couldn't penetrate the gloom, she knew there were more than two dozen in all.
Satisfied that there was nothing she could do to make the journey more safe, she tried not to think about the possible dangers waiting at the Lake of Steam, where Iakhovas had said they were headed. With a final prayer offered up to Sekolah, she turned and walked the length of the flier to the cabin Iakhovas had ordered constructed in the stern as his personal quarters. None of the other fliers had such a thing.
She stood before the door and raised her hand to rap on the door.
Before she could touch it, Iakhovas's voice rumbled, "Enter, little malenti."
She let herself through the door, having the brief but certain feeling that it would not have opened at all if he hadn't allowed it.
Iakhovas occupied a chair constructed of whalebone that was thronelike in its dimensions. Seaweed draped it, creating a cushion. Lucent algae hung in irregular strips across the ceiling. Shelves held some of the items his spies and troops had gathered since the attacks against the coastal lands had begun.
Laaqueel could sense the power that clung to most of them but didn't know what any of them were.
A crystal brain coral sat in the middle of the table, as tightly furrowed as its namesake. Though she was familiar with all the corals that formed along the Sword Coast, the malenti priestess had never seen anything like it. Motion slithered and twisted in the brain coral's depths.
Iakhovas sat back in the seat, his attention riveted on the crystal brain coral. Some of the glitter on the crystalline surface reflected through the patch covering his empty eye socket.
"What do you want?" he asked, sounding distracted.
"Only to see what it was that took up so much of your attention," she told him. "Our people need to see their king out among them more if they're going to follow him into areas not meant for We Who Eat."
Iakhovas fixed his single eye on her, but she felt something else-a cold and alien glare-settle on her from his missing eye.
"Not meant for We Who Eat?" He shook his head. "Little malenti, there are sahuagin in those waters, and we are on our way to set them free. Come. Let me show you." He gestured toward the brain coral.
Moving closer, Laaqueel stared into the brain coral's depths. Lights spun and glittered there. She knew it was an underwater location from the color around the figures revealed to her. No sky ever held that shade of blue, and no patch of land ever looked like the silt bed of the ocean floor.
One of the figures was an old surface dweller riding in front of a sea elf on a seahorse. They rode toward a city that had parts that looked as ancient as anything Laaqueel had ever seen. Even though she knew she shouldn't involve herself, the malenti priestess couldn't help asking, "Who's this?"
Iakhovas considered her question for a moment. "In all your studies about One Who Swims With Sekolah, did you ever hear the name Taleweaver?"
"No." She didn't remember reading the name, but something turned over in her memory.
"The sea elves have legends about me too," Iakhovas said. "All marine creatures that had a means of recording history when I was last in these waters had stories of me." He laughed, and the sound echoed within the cabin. "All of them are lies. Lies built on misconceptions and prejudiced hatred. Some of them I even started myself through various agents."
"This man is the Taleweaver?" Laaqueel asked.
"Yes," Iakhovas admitted.
Laaqueel scanned the man again, trying to find anything of significance about him. "What part is he supposed to play in all this?"
"In the little drama the sea elves are trying to establish?" Iakhovas asked. "He is supposed to find their savior."
"Their savior?" Laaqueel felt a little uneasy talking of saviors. Her own beliefs were strong, and she knew that other religions, other gods, exercised considerable power across Faerun as well.
"Someone who will stand against me and defeat me," Iakhovas explained. "You know how these legends are. Humans and elves all believe in these great romances of men and elves that are able to triumph against great and overwhelming odds."
"Is it true?"
"Their myth of the savior?"
For a moment, Laaqueel hesitated putting voice to her reply because she didn't know how Iakhovas would react. "Yes."
Iakhovas shook his head and laughed again. "Little malenti, I helped create the myth of their savior. There is no savior. Any human they find who believes he is this one is only a fool one heartbeat away from death."
"Why did you do that?"
Iakhovas raked a talon against the crystal brain coral, causing a tiny, high-pitched ring and said, "Because I could. Because it amused me. Most of all, because it served me. If they didn't have the legend of their hero, they wouldn't do the things I need them to that will insure my success."