Rising Tide (14 page)

Feeling the hammer fading from her, slipping through her mental grip, she flung it one last time, knocking a surface dweller from the circular staircase. He flew backward, then smashed against the torch and the wall behind him and dropped lifeless to the floor. The torch sconce dropped from the wall, showering him with sparks and filling the foyer with the stink of burned hair.

Laaqueel regretfully let go of the hammer offeree, feeling it disappear from the physical plane. She started another prayer and pushed her way through Bouundaar. She pointed at the staircase, telling the chieftain to put sahuagin on guard there. By the time she reached the flight of stairs leading down into the area where the windlass that controlled the nets was, she had her next spell ready.

The windlass room was large, forty feet by forty feet, she estimated. The device was in the center of the room, constructed of several ratcheting gears that clanked hurriedly as the three men operating it tried to raise the nets again. The nets held wards that normally repelled most fish from the harbor, allowing no sharks or other predatory marine creatures, but they wouldn’t stop the sahuagin forces.

“Damned fish-heads!” one of the men bawled in warning.

Laaqueel heard the thrum of crossbows behind her and watched as the short quarrels buried their vicious barbs in flesh and wood. She thrust out a hand and the magic spewed from her palm, plunging the room into total blackness. With their greater night vision, the sahuagin weren’t totally blinded. The light spilling in the door leading down to the windlass area was enough.

The crossbow quarrels put another man down at the windlass. Laaqueel vaulted to the floor, silent as her own shadow, and swung her sword. The keen edge hamstrung the man trying desperately to turn the ten-foot tall wheel. He screamed and reached for his injured feet. The malenti ended the screaming by slashing his throat.

Without remorse, she grabbed one of the Waterdhavian Guardsmen on the floor, locating him by the string of curses and pained cries that came from him. She levered the man up in one hand, then unerringly shoved him into the grind of gears operating the nets.

The man screamed anew as the big gears bit into him, but the sounds quickly went away as the gears drew him in. Bone crunched and the metallic strain of the gears trying to mesh filled the basement.

The gears stopped.

Bouundaar’s men worked efficiently in the darkness, talking to each other in their own tongue as they covered the floor and tracked down the last of the surface dwellers. All of them were dead by the time Laaqueel reached the top of the stairs.

More sahuagin held the bottom of the dual stairwells. Nets stretched above them, blocking entrance into the room.

Laaqueel ran back out onto the sandy beach in front of Smuggler’s Bane Tower. Her gaze raked across Waterdeep Harbor and spied Drifting Eel at once. Mermen attacked the vessel, some of them riding the giant sea horses they used as mounts. Thankfully there weren’t as many of them as Laaqueel had feared. The advance party group had struck the mermen hard, as Iakhovas had planned.

The one-eyed prince remained standing in the prow of the pentekonter, his massive cloak billowing in the breeze behind him. The other three ships followed sedately behind, disgorging more sahuagin into the great harbor.

Suddenly the malenti’s vision cleared even more and she saw the sorcerer plainly. Ah, there you are, little malenti, her master’s voice sounded in her mind. You’ve endeavored so fiercely these past years to always keep me in your sight, do not give up the race now.

She knew he mocked her. Even diligent as she’d been about her spying on him, he had managed to hide so many things from her.

Iakhovas stretched a hand out at her before she could move.

Nausea twisted through Laaqueel, and it felt like her air bladder had burst. Her vision blanked for a moment and she took a step back even though she knew what was going on. When her foot touched down again, it wasn’t on sandy beach, but on Drifting Eel’s wooden deck. The quill implanted so close to her heart gave the sorcerer such power over her.

Civilar Noth and his Waterdhavian Guardsmen stood at attention behind the sorcerer.

“Now,” Iakhovas said, a malevolent spark in his single dark eye, “now I will educate the surface dwellers in the poignancy of true horror, a skill at which I am a unparalleled. I’ve forgotten much more than they’ve ever had the misfortune to experience.”

He reached into the folds of his cloak and brought out an ornate headband chipped from a single black sapphire. Long labor had gone into the creation of the circlet. Not only did it have a perfect circumference, but tiny sharks had been chipped into it in has relief, creating a twisting serpentine of figures.

Laaqueel recognized the headband as the one he’d forcibly taken from the mermen fourteen years ago, bringing total destruction to their village and sending the few survivors fleeing for their lives. Laaqueel had traveled with him then, knowing that Iakhovas had somehow managed a magical link with the headband and with the other items he searched for so diligently.

The malenti’s attention was drawn to the mermen trying to encircle Drifting Eel. A crossbow shaft leaped from one of them, speeding toward her face. She turned slightly, letting it go past, not caring that it struck one of the wererats. The creatures could only be harmed by silver or magical weapons. The quarrel that buried itself in the creature’s back was only a momentary inconvenience that drew a squeal of pained rage.

Twisting again and moving across the deck, Laaqueel continued praying, putting her skills to use. Taking a pinch of sulfur from one of the waterproof pouches on her harness, she directed the spell at the merman who’d shot at her. A luminescent column formed in the air before her, not even as bright as a glow lamp. It leaped at its target.

Hit by the magical stream of scalding heat, the merman cried out, his skin drying out and blackening. His corpse tumbled through the water, disappearing.

Casting again, knowing how much danger the mermen represented, Laaqueel touched the shark talisman that represented her faith to Sekolah and cast her next spell. She threw a hand outward and a pale lavender stingray burst into being. It sailed through the air and took to the water, attacking the mermen at once. Most of those it touched succumbed to the magic, freezing up in fear and disappearing beneath the water. The remaining mermen were routed, chased off by the crossbows in the hands of the wererats.

Iakhovas put the circlet on and turned to face the open Smuggler’s Bane Tower. Laaqueel wasn’t sure of the extent of the power the headband gave the sorcerer over those he chose to influence, but she’d seen that the effect could be all-consuming, uniting those with intelligence as well as animals who normally didn’t get along well.

“Come,” he crooned, “obey my words and destroy my enemies. Unite with We Who Eat in our labors.”

Laaqueel knew he was projecting his voice, making sure it reached the hearing of the army he’d amassed for the night’s raid. Even Huaanton and the other sahuagin didn’t know the extent of the destruction Iakhovas planned. They knew only about the joined sahuagin tribes. They knew nothing of the aboleths, giant turtles and dragon turtles, eyes of the deep, giant crabs, and dozens of sharks, more than any sahuagin could ever hope to control. She was sure there were others even she didn’t know about.

With the presence of all those creatures she knew the sahuagin would assume Sekolah was aiding in their attack, Iakhovas would become even more favored among her people for being aided by the Great Shark, while she was only tolerated while he looked upon her with generosity. Part of the small hope she’d nurtured inside herself for the last fifteen years, that her own position among her tribe would improve, died then. Every advance she got was at Iakhovas’s behest. She would forever be his puppet. As long as Sekolah willed it, so she would remain alive.

Fatigued from the spellcasting, she gazed out through the open gates, aware of the Waterdhavian Watch galleys and rakers converging on the area. In the dark distance beyond the reach of the harbor lights, Iakhovas’s navy moved in. She saw the flat shapes of the sahuagin mantas break water near the naval harbor, followed by the sleek heads of giant creatures that broke the surface behind them. Even more creatures, Laaqueel knew, swam beneath the harbor’s waves.

Conch horns echoed across the harbor, sounding a general alarm. A Waterdhavian raker plunged across the harbor, aiming itself at the sahuagin flagship. Slender and top-armored, the battle vessel carried fire-pot catapults and large deck-mounted crossbows. Less than a hundred yards away, the raker crew opened fire with one ballista.

The six foot shaft sped through the air and ripped into the pentekonter’s side. Vibrations shuddered through the vessel as it penetrated just above the waterline. From the location of the damage, Laaqueel was sure some of the sahuagin rowers below had been injured or killed.

Iakhovas threw out an arm and said something that arcane language of his that Laaqueel had never understood. His tattoos glowed and his arm changed, becoming a hard-ridged fin almost four feet in length. Her feminine intuition told Laaqueel this shape was closer in truth to the real nature of the sorcerer than any she’d seen him use.

He slashed the jointed fin at the three Waterdhavian Guardsmen, slicing their heads from their bodies. The fin changed back to his arm as he turned to the malenti.

“Do not forget yourself here, my little malenti,” he said, “I’ve a battle to win. Hie you below and inspire those rowers to work harder. We’re found out now and time works against me. I want to make the shoreline before this vessel is seized.”

She ran to the hold and got the drum beater’s attention.

“Yes, most favored one?” the warrior inquired.

“As fast as you are able,” she ordered. She saw the damage the giant crossbow bolt had done, impaling the two sahuagin who’d shared an oar. Their bodies still twisted on the shaft as they continued dying.

“Yes, most favored one.”

She returned to the deck, following Iakhovas as he ran back to the stern. The wererats scattered before the sorcerer, snarling in their high-pitched voices. Iakhovas held onto the railing as the pilot brought Drifting Eel around.

“We’re leaving the harbor,” Laaqueel said.

“Good. You are not as blind as I sometimes feared.” Iakhovas seemed distracted, concentrating on the small bloodstone globe nestled in his palm.

Wererat archers stood at the railing and exchanged fire with the crew aboard the Waterdhavian raker.

“But leaving the harbor means leaving our forces here,” Laaqueel protested.

Iakhovas gave her a harsh look. “Little malenti, you fear for your warriors when in truth Sekolah bred them and birthed them to die,” he told her. “They are not alone in this struggle; it’s my war and I’ve found them shield mates and comrades. I’ve done what I can do. There are matters that demand my attention. You’re welcome to remain here if you so choose.”

She looked at him, knowing he was certain she wouldn’t stay. She would lose her chance to see what he was up to. “No,” she said.

“So be it,” he replied, “but you will allow me the necessary time to work the spells I’ve set up. I’ll not suffer any interruptions. Even from you, my little malenti.”

Iakhovas placed his other hand on top of the small bloodstone gem, then drew it slowly back. The gem enlarged like a bubble, the surface becoming even less stable.

One of the wererat archers staggered back from the railing, transfixed by one of the giant crossbow bolts that had crashed through his thin chest. Bone shards glinted in the moonlight.

Iakhovas tossed the bloodstone bubble into the air and it promptly disappeared. Laaqueel noticed the harbor breezes died suddenly. A moment more and a sudden wave erupted from under the harbor’s surface and drank down the Waterdhavian raker. There were no survivors.

The spell was subtle in other respects, spreading out across the harbor without giving away where it had started. Laaqueel knew none of the magic-fearing sahuagin would attribute it to Iakhovas, only to Sekolah.

Storm winds and crashing waves continued striking the Waterdhavian crafts as Drifting Eel pushed toward the Dock Ward shoreline. The battle in the harbor had reached the docks. Mariners bolted from taverns and from the Helmstar Warehouse, the Mermaid’s Arms festhall, and Arnagus the Shipwright’s building. Lights blossomed up and down Dock Street. The streets started to fill, and sahuagin were filling them as well.

Some of the Fleetswake revelers had pitched tents along the docks and others had even gone so far as to place tents across their boat decks. Lanterns blazed at some of them, throwing shadows across the tents as the drunken sailors and merchants tried to rally against the invading sahuagin forces.

Drifting Eel raced for an empty loading berth among the docks as lantern lights from ships at anchorage played over the deck. Iakhovas called down the hailing tube himself, ordering the sahuagin rowers to reverse direction. The sorcerer dropped the anchor himself with a wave of his hand that sent the man-sized weight spinning through the air, stopping the play of chain as soon as the anchor touched the harbor bottom. Drifting Eel halted too late, slamming into the dock pilings and knocking them loose from their moorings.

Laaqueel fell but rolled to her feet while the wererat deckhands went sprawling. She brandished her sword as she pursued Iakhovas, who hadn’t lost his footing at all, standing as surely as an outcropping of coral.

The sorcerer bolted over Drifting Eel’s side and dropped four feet to the splintered dock. He reached inside his cloak and drew out a rapier with an ornate handle fashioned from an impossibly large shark’s tooth.

The malenti hesitated only a moment before following the sorcerer. She dropped to the dock, trailed immediately by two dozen wererats. Iakhovas was already in motion, leaving her no doubt that he was already moving on whatever hidden agenda he’d planned for the night.

She turned and glanced back out into the harbor in time to see the first fiery catapult launches from Waterdeep Castle high overhead. The flaming loads arced across the black sky like comets, then crashed down amid the three sahuagin ships with uncanny accuracy. Two of the ships broke under the onslaught and started sinking as Waterdhavian rakers closed in.