The sensation invaded her mind, grinding like a rot grub through flesh, slowly but inexorably. She waved a webbed hand in front of her face, halting her forward momentum without thought as she turned in the direction the pull came from. While turning, she locked onto the sensation. Her skin crawled at the object's power.
By Sekolah's hard-eyed gaze, the sensation thrilling through her mind could belong to nothing else. Could it? She pushed the doubt away, hating that it was there and blaming it on the bloated phantom numbness filling her skull.
She studied the sloping seabed below her as she swam closer. Broken coral and chunks of building so barnacled over it required a trained salvager's eye to know them for what they were jutted from the whorls of silt. None of the sahuagin crews worked nearby.
Closer still, the pull became intoxicating and seemed to empty her mind of the painful bloating. For the first time, she wondered if Iakhovas had instilled the pain in her, intentionally urging her to greater haste in the search.
Drawn by the release from the pain, Laaqueel searched the area carefully. The pull of the object was so strong there was no mistaking where it was. Every time she turned away from it the bloated numbness spilled back into her mind.
She dropped to the seabed near an outcrop of blaze coral standing out bright red against the blue of the depths. She'd learned the name from the Serosian sahuagin. Blaze coral didn't grow in the outer seas, it only grew in the Alamber Sea and the Vilhon Reach in the Sea of Fallen Stars.
The blaze coral clustered in rounded clumps that looked like oval disks. The bright red clumps glowed with an inner incandescence. While in Vahaxtyl, the priestess had seen some of the harvested coral. Once torn free, it lost much of the bright red glow but still glowed pink.
Slowly, one hand holding onto a rough outcropping of coral to offset the pull of the currents that threatened to take her away from the area, Laaqueel slid forward and peered down the slope. Only a few feet distant, she made out the shadowy outline of a cave.
A cold wash of current spread across her shoulders and down her back when she saw the cave. Still, the pull of the object was too strong to ignore. The promise of relief from the numb pressure in her head drew her forward.
Laaqueel tightened her fist on her trident and glided down the slope. Only a few leg strokes later, she reached down and grabbed hold of the rough rock surrounding the cave mouth.
Darkness filled the cave's interior, cold and forbidding.
She thought briefly of calling out to Iakhovas, but the possibility that she was wrong eclipsed that thought almost as soon as it dawned.
Steeling herself, Laaqueel finned forward and pulled herself into the cave mouth, following the sharp tines of the trident. Her heart sped slightly as she twisted in the sea and righted herself to face the cave. The opening was nearly fifteen feet across.
She released air from her trachea and air bladder to lose the buoyancy that helped her swim at chosen depths within the sea. Gravity pulled her to the pebbled sea floor tracking into the cave.
Less than ten feet inside the tunnel, the cave became so dark she couldn't see. The cave drove even more deeply into the seabed's slope, angling down as well. The incline had turned sharply enough that she had difficulty maintaining her footing.
Halting, she reached into one of the several small pouches she carried on the sahuagin warrior's harness she wore. She took a finger-long chunk of lucent coral from the pouch and held it up.
The illumination provided by the coral drove the darkness back nearly five feet. The Serosian sahuagin had brought large pieces of it onto Tarjana for the expedition, then chipped off chunks for the searchers. The large pieces maintained their incandescence for months even after being harvested, but the smaller pieces lost their glow within a tenday.
Laaqueel held the lucent coral up and started forward again. The tunnel walls ran nearly smooth, telling her it had been artificially constructed.
Already, her priestess's curiosity was aroused, seeking to find the answer to another mystery. That which couldn't be proven, yet was still revealed, was the tapestry of faith Sekolah had woven for his chosen people. That had been one of the first lessons Priestess Ghaataag had instilled in Laaqueel when she'd been taken into the temple at Baron Huaanton's command. It was a lesson Laaqueel had never forgotten.
She measured the distance she descended by her steps. Less than forty feet in, the cave ended without warning. Holding the lucent coral high, the priestess studied the blunt end to her search.
The coral's glow also illuminated the white and yellow of old and fresh bones mixed in a pile. Closer inspection revealed those bones to be a scattered collection of human and elf. Laaqueel thought the heap of bones might be as much as ten or fifteen feet deep.
Using the lessons Priestess Ghaataag had given her to remain in control of her fear, Laaqueel made herself take another step forward. Her foot splintered a cracked femur and the sound echoed, trapped within the cave and made even faster by the dense water.
Tooth marks marred the surfaces of all the bones.
She didn't hear the movement of the creature behind her, but she felt the displacement of water that movement created along her lateral lines.
Wheeling, Laaqueel brought the lucent coral chunk around and raised her trident.
The vodyanoi stood almost twenty feet tall even on stumpy, bowed legs. It was hard to tell because the predator stood humped over in the enclosure. Vaguely dwarflike in appearance, with a triangular head set squarely on massive shoulders half as wide as it was tall, the creature moved ponderously toward the malenti priestess. Thick arms hung to the floor, heavily corded with muscle, which ended in heavily clawed, blunt fingers capable of ripping open a ship's hull.
The sheen from the lucent coral revealed the cruel maw filled with triangular fangs. Mandibles nearly as long as Laaqueel's hand curved inward from the sides of the vodyanoi's jaws. Green slime clung to the thick, knobby hide. The cavernous mouth opened reflexively, showing the dark green gullet beyond.
Laaqueel knew vodyanoi were rumored to possess intelligence, but they were solitary creatures and didn't socialize. They dined on human flesh and only settled for other, lesser, creatures when their preferred prey couldn't be found.
Working quickly, a prayer already coming to her lips, Laaqueel slammed the chunk of lucent coral into the tunnel wall as far over her head as she could. The shadows inside the cave whirled and shifted as the angle of the light changed.
The vodyanoi lumbered forward, massive arms swinging as it closed on her. The malenti priestess threw a hand out, summoning up one of the gifts Seko-lah had given her for the faith she'd shown. Immediately the pressure around the vodyanoi increased, doubling and tripling. Laaqueel felt the currents change as they slipped around her, altered by the spell she'd used.
The pressure beat the vodyanoi down to its knees. It roared in articulate rage and the basso cry filled the cave. Laaqueel looked desperately for a chance to slip by the beast, but the vodyanoi's bulk filled the tunnel hi all directions. Incredibly, when the spell dissipated, the huge creature shoved itself to its feet again and lunged forward.
Laaqueel stepped back, lithely avoiding the charge. Bringing the trident up, she blocked a fistful of claws that rammed deeply into the side of the tunnel. Huge clods of earth and rock ripped from the wall. The umber hulks, distant cousins of the vodyanoi, could dig through solid stone and soft earth almost as fast as a man could walk.
The creature swept out another arm. Relying on her skills, Laaqueel flipped backward through the water and took air into her bladder again to make herself buoyant. She rammed the trident into the vodyanoi's chest before it could defend itself. The tines bit deeply into the knobby hide but didn't appear to be more than an annoyance to the huge beast. Blood wept from the wound in thick, globby strings.