Under Fallen Stars (43 page)

Steady, my priestess, Iakhovas stated calmly in her mind. Trust in your faith. Everything is going to be as it should.

As it should for them, or for us? she asked.

Iakhovas didn’t answer.

Toomaaek stood at the center of the table. He was tall and thick, his body covered in scars from sharp edges and flames, testifying to how closely he’d fought the surface dwellers over his years. “You are responsible for the deaths of our people,” he said.

“Am I?” Iakhovas demanded. His voice was hard and cutting as coral. “In my belief, only the weak die in mass graves, and those are taken by Sekolah’s sharp fins and ferocious fangs. He wants his people strong.”

“You twist our beliefs,” Toomaaek said.

“No.” Iakhovas’s denial was flat, unarguable. “I only embody them with my actions. Sekolah sent me here, gave me the ship that made this possible. He destroyed the inadequate among your people to leave those who would be willing to die fighting for their freedom.”

A rumble of angry clicks and whistles echoed in from the crowd. Laaqueel studied the sahuagin around them. She’d already overheard several comments about her own heritage and the fact that she was a malenti. Iakhovas’s words struck the crowd harshly, fanning the anger in them to fever-pitch intensity.

Though the sahuagin didn’t believe in the same concepts of family as the surface dwellers and sea elves did, they did stand for the community as a whole. Refusal to accept the loss and make someone else responsible was natural to them. She felt Iakhovas should have known to handle things better. Silently she prayed, knowing they were only inches away from death.

“You dare!” Toomaaek thundered.

“By Sekolah’s blessed wrath,” Iakhovas roared back, “I do dare!”

Toomaaek slammed the butt of his trident against the stone table. The sound echoed harshly, racing through the water.

“I dare to stand up for your people against those who would keep them in shackles,” Iakhovas said, finning toward the princes’ table. “I dare to travel here in a manner that I don’t understand, listening to the guiding hand of the Great Shark as he speaks to my priestess, and trusting in the fact that I’m doing Sekolah’s will.”

“We don’t know that.” Toomaaek remained gruff.

“I do.” Iakhovas kept swimming.

Laaqueel fell into motion automatically behind him. The guards around the princes started forward. One of them lowered his trident level with Iakhovas’s chest.

With blinding speed, Iakhovas snatched the trident’s tines away from his chest, then shoved the sahuagin guard back half a dozen paces. The show of strength caught the attention of everyone watching.

“Where are you guiding your people?” Iakhovas demanded. “What plans do you have for We Who Eat in Seros?”

Toomaaek tried to speak after a moment, but Iakhovas spoke loudly over him.

“For ten thousand years and more,” Iakhovas said, “you and the barons, princes, and kings before you have let your people languish in this prison built by the hated sea elves and mermen.”

Another guard stepped forward and thrust his weapon, ordering Iakhovas to halt.

As if shooing away a bothersome fingerling perch, Iakhovas shoved the trident aside with one hand and caught the sahuagin warrior by his war harness with the other. Iakhovas yanked, and the guard spun back into two sahuagin behind him, knocking them all off their feet so they floated out of control for a moment.

“Why have We Who Eat not been freed from this place?” Iakhovas demanded.

“There is no escape,” Toomaaek stated.

Laaqueel heard the buzz of conversation streak through the crowd of onlookers.

Iakhovas sounded as if he couldn’t believe it. “Have you not looked at the Shark God’s teachings? Sekolah teaches us that all things are possible if enough blood is shed. They happen more quickly if most of the blood belongs to the enemies of We Who Eat.”

Toomaaek stood his ground but clearly wasn’t happy about it. Iakhovas leveled an accusatory finger at the table of sahuagin princes.

“With that kind of thinking,” he said, “you’ve become the jailers of your own people. Not the sea elves and the mermen. You teach your young not to struggle against that perversion of our nature called the Sharksbane Wall.” He shook his head in rage. “Our very natures cry out for struggle and adversity to test us and shape us into the most deadly warriors we can be. We’re supposed to teach our own lesson in turn: that We Who Eat are meant to be the most feared creature in any of the seas.”

“We have fought against those that man the Sharksbane Wall,” Maartaaugh argued. “For ten thousand years, we’ve shed blood over that construction.”

“And still you’ve not shed enough,” Iakhovas accused. “When has Sekolah ever declared the price too high to improve the sahuagin people?”

Unbelieving, Laaqueel listened as some of the anger started to drain away from the crowd’s murmuring. They sounded more interested in what Iakhovas had to say.

“Instead of tearing that accursed wall down,” Iakhovas went on, “you and those rulers before you have chosen to accept it and live with it as though it were meant to be. It wasn’t! We Who Eat were born free and meant to die free.”

A few scattered cheers sounded from the crowd. Laaqueel drew in a deeper breath and took heart in the reaction. No matter what else, Iakhovas was right about the sahuagin heritage.

“The Sharksbane Wall can’t be torn down,” Toomaaek declared. “The sea elves and mermen guard it without reservation. The sea elves use their magic to make it strong.”

Iakhovas stood across the table from the sahuagin prince. “It can be torn down.”

Toomaaek shook his head. “It’s been tried.”

Iakhovas gazed at him fiercely. “Not by me.”

Pride at Iakhovas’s display of courage and conviction whipped through Laaqueel. He stood before the whole city, sounding as if he was prepared to take them all on. She held onto the feeling as she watched him, praying the whole time to Sekolah. Awe filled her at the audacity Iakhovas showed. He was more sahuagin than any she’d ever met before.

“You can’t break that wall,” one of the other princes stated.

“I can,” Iakhovas replied hotly, “and I will. I won’t sit back and quietly be a coward while pretending to be a prince.”

“You go too far!” Toomaaek roared.

“I’m going far enough to tear that wall down,” Iakhovas promised, “and I won’t stop short of that. Any sahuagin warrior who wants to take up arms and follow me to freedom is welcome.”

“The sea elves are too powerful,” Maartaaugh said. “They have magic and numbers and allies.”

“Then we’ll get our own magic and our own allies.” Iakhovas didn’t move away from the table, but Laaqueel knew he was no longer talking only to the princes. His words were for the ears of the crowd. “Those things are out there. Sekolah gives power to his priestesses, and there are others out there who resent the sea elves controlling so much of Seros with their machinations. The sea elves have grown fat and lazy, complacent in the inability of We Who Eat of the Alamber Sea to do anything other than send a few groups of warriors across the Sharksbane Wall every now and again.”

Hoarse, ragged cheers started up from the crowd intermittently. Laaqueel struggled to keep a smile from her face. The knot of fear still sitting sourly in her stomach made it easier.

“I will raise up an army,” Iakhovas vowed, “an army the likes of which Seros and the lands around it have never seen before. That army will spend its blood and that of its enemies, and the sea will run red because of it.” He turned and raked his eye over the crowd, his posture proud and erect. “For those of you who will follow me, I will lead you to greater glory than you’ve ever known. I will teach you again what it means to be a warrior, to truly be one of the Great Shark’s chosen.”

The crowd came alive, and the cheering clicks and whistles echoed everywhere. Sahuagin picked up fist-sized rocks and slammed them together to make even more noise. The poundings punctuated the cheers.

The smile broke through Laaqueel’s defenses and spread across her lips. She gazed across the crowd in wonderment. Surely this was a sign. No one could have walked into Vahaxtyl and claimed the city’s populace in so short a time.

Iakhovas flung a hand back toward the princes’ table. “Warriors, blood of Sekolah’s chosen, up until now you have been robbed of the heritage to become true members of We Who Eat as the Great Shark would have wanted. These princes and others like them have held you captive here like prawns in sea elf farms.”

Toomaaek tried to silence the crowd but failed. Laaqueel watched as the sahuagin whipped themselves into a frenzy. Fresh anger fed off the fear and confusion that had been left over by the destruction of their city. Iakhovas offered them enemies and a chance to strike back at those enemies at a time when they felt the need to do something. War came naturally to the sahuagin.

“If you continue to follow them,” Iakhovas went on, “you’ll overpopulate these waters in time. Or you’ll curtail the population so that won’t happen, kill your young yourselves and deprive yourselves of the army you will need in the future to conquer Seros.”

The cheering turned thunderous, but somehow Iakhovas could speak over it even though the Vahaxtyl princes couldn’t.

“Sekolah found the sahuagin,” Iakhovas said, “and he freed them from the shell that was their prison then. Do you think he freed you to find another prison in which to live?”

“No!” filled the water from the throats of thousands of sahuagin.

“We Who Eat were born free,” Iakhovas said. “Our heritage is to die free, cleaving the hearts of our enemies and gnawing the flesh from their broken bones!”

The cheering drowned out all other sound. Toomaaek swam over the table and finned down beside Iakhovas, stirring silt with his splayed feet. The prince raised his trident in an open threat.

Instantly, the cheering started to subside.

Slowly, Iakhovas turned to face the Vahaxtyl prince. He stared at the warrior and waited silently. All voices from the crowd had died away when Toomaaek spoke.

“I say you speak lies, Iakhovas of the Claarteeros Sea. Whatever brought you here, it wasn’t Sekolah. Your purpose isn’t to guide We Who Eat to a greater destiny. You seek only to make our people throw their lives away.”

“I speak the truth,” Iakhovas replied.

“Then pick up your weapon and defend yourself,” the sahuagin prince ordered. “I claim blood combat against any champion you care to name.”

Iakhovas regarded the warrior. The sahuagin prince was head and shoulders taller than Iakhovas and weighed nearly half again as much. His skin was dark blue with places that looked almost black.

Since someone of lesser rank was challenging him, Laaqueel knew according to sahuagin custom that Iakhovas could pick one of his guards to fight for him. The priestess waited tensely, knowing how Iakhovas was going to handle the situation.

“I will stand as my own champion,” Iakhovas said, “that the truth of my words be more accurately measured.”

“Then pick up a weapon.” Toomaaek stepped back, his great feet raking up silt in small clouds from the ocean floor.

Iakhovas raised his hands. Bony claws fully six inches long protruded from his fingers. “The only weapon I’ll need are these.”

“Fool!” Toomaaek snapped.

He backed out into the center of the impromptu meeting area. Without hesitation, Iakhovas followed, gliding up a few feet above the ocean floor with the grace of an eel. He smiled.

“I’m proud of you, Prince Toomaaek,” Iakhovas said. “You’re a fine sahuagin warrior. My only regret is that you can only die once, but it will be for the good of your people.”

Toomaaek didn’t waste words. He became an explosion of action. Pulling his barbed net free of his hip, he expertly flung it out at Iakhovas. The net splayed out and sailed true, wrapping around its target. Toomaaek pushed the trident forward and swam after it, driving it before him.

For a moment Laaqueel thought Iakhovas was dead. Her heart almost stopped its frantic beating. Iakhovas hooked his fingers in the net that had wrapped around him. He’d protected his single eye with one arm. Tugging fiercely, he ripped the net off him, tearing the barbed hooks from his flesh at the same time. He screamed in rage and pain.

Toomaaek closed quickly, the trident aimed directly at Iakhovas’s heart. In motion almost too fast to be seen, Iakhovas shoved his feet against the water. He shot up, curling gracefully over his attacker as the trident tines missed him by inches. Continuing the roll through the water, Iakhovas flipped behind Toomaaek as the sahuagin prince passed. Cruelly, Iakhovas dug his claws lightly across his opponent’s neck, leaving bloody scratches. The claws also sliced through the anterior fins, freeing them from the dorsal fin.

Blood streamed out into the water from the superficial cuts.

Toomaaek threw out his free arm and kicked hard, finning himself into a roll of his own. He tucked forward and under, coming up with the trident again as he faced Iakhovas. The move was designed to catch an enemy from underneath, driving the trident deep into the stomach or crotch.

Either would have been a debilitating wound.

Turned as he was from his own flip through the water, Iakhovas had his back to Toomaaek. Though he didn’t see the sahuagin warrior’s move, Laaqueel knew Iakhovas must have sensed it in some fashion. As the trident sped toward his back, Iakhovas swept out a hand and pushed himself sideways in the water.

The trident tines missed him again by inches. As Toomaaek swam by, already aware he’d missed his opponent, Iakhovas raked claws across the back of the sahuagin prince’s lower leg. The sharp edges cleaved flesh easily, drawing blood in a gust.

Laaqueel watched Toomaaek as he tried to turn. His leg was obviously hamstrung, the foot flopping loosely as the current pushed it. Stubbornly, the sahuagin prince turned in the water again. He appeared surprised to see that Iakhovas hadn’t pursued him.

“You’re wounded,” Iakhovas said, still floating in nearly the same spot he had been since the fight had begun. “Stop now and live to help me set your people free.”

“No.” Toomaaek shook his head. “I’m going to kill you to show them the lies you’ve promised them.”