Laaqueel's lateral lines picked up sudden motion coming from behind her, disrupting the flow of current over Tarjana's deck. She turned, holding the trident before her.
"We passed through the wall," Maartaaugh cried out in unmistakable disbelief. The prince stared at lakho-vas. "What magic wrought this?"
Laaqueel's throat constricted in momentary panic. All sahuagin hated magic; and the Serosians were no different. By revealing Tarjana's nature as a mudship Iakhovas also risked igniting a mutiny.
"This is not magic," Iakhovas said simply. "This is Sekolah's will, a gift the Shark God gave to my people to free We Who Eat beneath the Sea of FaUen Stars."
Slowly, the dread and fear on Maartaaugh's face drained away, replaced by amazement. "The Sharks-bane Wall can no longer hold us."
Iakhovas regarded the prince with his dark gaze. "The Sharksbane Wall cannot hold me. Soon it won't be able to hold you."
Maartaaugh gazed around the great galley with new appreciation. "This is how you traveled through the volcano and arrived at Vahaxtyl."
"Yes, but only because Sekolah willed it."
Laaqueel relaxed slightly, sensing that the prince offered no threat. She gazed behind Tarjana, barely able to make out the bodies of sahuagin and sea elves hanging in the water near the Sharksbane Wall. Ocean predators had already gathered, stripping flesh from bone.
"Where do we go now?" Maartaaugh asked. "You've never said."
"To Coryselmal," Iakhovas replied. He handed the prince the piece of meat he'd offered Laaqueel.
"The ruins of the elven capital?" Maartaaugh took the meat and chewed only briefly before swallowing it. Blood coated his fangs for a moment. "Why?"
"To do as Sekolah has directed," Iakhovas answered. "There can be no other reason."
"You'll find what you need to destroy the Sharks-bane Wall there?"
Iakhovas nodded. "We will."
Maartaaugh gazed out at the sea around them. "Only twice, both times when I was much younger, have I ever been beyond the Sharksbane Wall."
"Soon," Iakhovas stated confidently, "you'll be living and slaying in these waters."
The headache pounded fiercely at LaaqueePs temples. Despite her prayers, the pain continued unabated, lasting for hours at a time. She swam easily, holding her arms at her sides and undulating her body. Not even the cool currents drifting in from the Vilhon Reach helped take the agony away.
The malenti priestess glided through the water less than twenty feet above the rock-strewn silt that covered the ocean floor. She only had to swim around coral reefs higher than that a handful of times in the last few hours. The older coral reefs had been crushed in the gigantic upheaval that had smashed the elven city of Coryselmal nearly sixteen centuries ago.
According to the conversations she'd heard between Maartaaugh and Iakhovas, the earthquake that had reduced the once proud sea elf city to rubble had struck without warning. Seventy-five thousand sea elves had perished in the carnage that followed. An undersea plateau, shoved by the underground stress, broke through the eastern half of the city and buried the other half in rubble and mud. Few had survived. Like the coral colonies and other sea creatures, undersea vegetation in the area was sparse.
Only the Esahlbane Monolith remained standing. It sat on the westernmost edge of the sea bed at the mouth of the Vilhon Reach, forty feet tall and angled now to hang over the ridgfe where the continental shelf dropped suddenly away for hundreds of feet.
Laaqueel concentrated on the image Iakhovas had imprinted on her mind and felt another wave of torment slam through her head. For a moment, she faltered in the water, her smooth moves turned jerky. She flipped her feet, trying to stay in the same area until she could get past the searing anguish.
She called out Sekolah's name, but it was Iakhovas who answered.
What is it, Most Sacred One?
Nothing, Laaqueel assured him, but she gave up swimming for the moment, drifting down to sink inches-deep in the fine silt. A slight chill embraced her feet as they covered over. The headache remained, and she couldn't help wondering if it was coming to her from an outside source. Perhaps it was some warding against sahuagin that yet remained in the area from the time of the elf occupation of the region.
Perhaps it was something more. There were those who believed, she'd learned from Iakhovas's conversation with Maartaaugh, that no civilized races were supposed to live in the Selmal Basin, another name the Vilhon Reach was known by. Only merrow, koalinth, scrags, and sea hags were rumored to live there now.
Quietly, Laaqueel prayed to Sekolah, asking the Shark God for a sign that she followed the currents he'd put before her.
You're in pain, Iakhovas mused.
Yes.
You should have told me, little malenti. You don't have to suffer.
Even as she drew water in through her gill slits again, Laaqueel felt the quill next to her heart quiver. Almost immediately she started feeling the pain subside.
How do you feel now1? Iakhovas asked.
Better.
Laaqueel peered across the distance to the northeast where Tarjana lay at anchor less than fifty feet above the ocean bed. Her vision wasn't good enough to pick Iakhovas out on the deck, but she knew he was there. He hadn't once left the great galley since they'd arrived at Coryselmal early the day before.
He had imprinted the image of the object he searched for on her mind and relied on the gifts Sekolah had given her to detect the lost article. He'd also drawn the area on maps and divided the search area into grids. Sahuagin scavenger parties shifted silt in various places, turning up scraps left over from the demise of the elf city.
Find the piece I sent you for, Iakhovas stated. I am depending on you and your god-granted abilities, Most Sacred One.
Though she wasn't feeling any pain, Laaqueel's head still felt too full. She wondered if Iakhovas had really dealt with the pain, or if he'd only masked it for her, enabling her to work even though the source of the agony continued unabated.
Still, she finned up from the silt and turned her attention back to the ocean floor. She wasn't sure what she searched for, but she was certain the image would never go away. The object was shaped like a scythe blade, no bigger than her open hand, and made of a distinctive yellow stone she had never seen before. The blade-shape contained rune markings in bright blue.
Even the image felt old, powerful.
Twenty feet above the ocean floor, she leveled off and tried to detect the object again. She'd used the ability granted by Sekolah to find magic items before-usually small things that she'd traded to surface dwellers while passing as a sea elf and serving Baron Huaanton as a spy for the sahuagin-but she'd never searched this long or this hard. She'd never been able to.
She glanced across the mile and more of scattered debris. Columns and pillars stabbed through the ocean floor in a number of places, the skeletal remains of Coryselmal. Half a dozen shipwrecks lay scattered across the seabed as well. Battles and storms had ravaged the ships, breaking them and burying them in the seabed. Experience told her that those remnants had been picked over by sea elves working salvage for surface dwellers.
The priestess watched the sahuagin crews traversing the ocean floor, prying into the silt with their tridents. She knew they felt more overwhelmed by the hunt than she did.
The bloated numbness stirred in her mind. Reluctantly, she turned her attention back to the quest laid before her. More than anything, she wanted to be alone, drawn into prayer and unmindful of anything else.
Minutes, or perhaps more than an hour later-she'd lost all track of time-Laaqueel felt the first vestigial pull of the object she searched for. As quickly as it came, the pull was gone.
Gazing down, spotting a pattern of shells across the sea floor, she marked her position in her mind. Surface dwellers or those not accustomed to living beneath the waves wouldn't have noticed the uniqueness of the shells. Carefully, the priestess stopped and turned. She finned back the way she'd come, going more slowly.