Under Fallen Stars (31 page)

Glawinn held up a hand. “I’ll not desert you, nor her. For all I know, you’re why I’m here.”

“Why are you here?” Jherek gladly shifted the conversation away from him.

“I’m on a quest, commanded by Lathander himself.”

“He speaks to you?”

“Not in words,” Glawinn admitted. “He found me when I was lost and brought me into his temple. I was not always as you see. As a young man I was uncertain and lacking. My love and understanding of the Morninglord, and my eventual dedication to him has made me what you see now. Not that you should be impressed. A paladin’s life isn’t exactly what you read in those romances.” He chuckled.

“But to serve a god,” Jherek said. “That would be-“

“A humbling experience, let me assure you. Though I serve him with my convictions, my teaching, and my sword arm every day, we don’t converse. He fills my heart with a wanderlust that is as true as any compass, and I ride. When I arrive, then I discover where I’m supposed to be. It doesn’t take long before I figure out what it is I’m supposed to do.”

“Now you’re bound for Westgate.”

“Yes, and perhaps beyond. I don’t know yet. I only know that I itch to travel, and that’s the direction I must go.”

Jherek tried to fathom that. “But you don’t know why?”

“Not yet.” Glawinn gave more of the apple to his horse. “What are you to do then?” Jherek asked, not really expecting an answer.

“I’m no teller of fortunes, young warrior. I’m much more a man of action. Like yourself.”

Jherek shook his head. “I’m no man of action.”

“Sure you are,” Glawinn said. “I can see it in the way you hold your eyes, the way you balance yourself on your feet when you move. You’re no stranger to the sword, are you?”

“I’ve had some training,” Jherek admitted.

“You must have to have survived the wounds I see on you now.”

“I’ve only a mean skill at best.” Jherek felt bad about that because it undercut all the training Malorrie had given him over the years.

“Then strip out of that wet armor and let’s have a look at it.” Glawinn got lithely to his feet.

“Now?”

The knight took a long sword from his saddle and tossed it to Jherek. “Of course now. There’s no better time. When we arrive in Westgate either your quest or mine may see us crossing sword blades with others. Perhaps I’ll even need someone to stand at my back.”

Jherek flushed with the honor he was being given. He took off the leather armor and hung it carefully from a tree so it would better dry. He also took off his wet shirt, not wanting it to slow his movements and so that it wouldn’t get torn any more than it was because he had no other clothes. He also took off the kerchief he’d had tied around his head, being careful not to let the paladin see his tattoo when he lifted his arm.

“You’ve a wound on your head,” Glawinn said. “Have you had it tended?”

“Aye.”

“It doesn’t appear to be healing well.”

Jherek felt self-conscious, remembering that the wound was the reason Sabyna was there. “Circumstances haven’t allowed it to heal at its best.”

“Let me see it.” Glawinn crossed over to him and examined it more closely. “It’s healed some, but I can help still more if you’ll allow me.”

Jherek remembered the tales he’d been told, of how a paladin could heal and cure diseases with but a touch. He smiled and said, “I guess not everything in those romances are fantasy.”

“A gift from Lathander, young warrior, and no doing of my own.” Glawinn placed his hands on Jherek’s head.

The young sailor experienced a moment of disorientation, a flicker of pain, then he immediately felt better than he had in days.

Glawinn stepped back. “How’s that?”

“Good,” Jherek answered. “Thank you.”

“Your thanks may be premature, young warrior.” Glawinn grinned and paced back to the center of the clearing. He raised his broadsword into an en garde position. “Move too slowly or awkwardly and I may bequeath you another rap on the skull for your trouble.”

Jherek saluted him, then cut with the long sword to get the heft of it. The balance was good and it moved well, like it had been made for his hand. “All right,” he said.

The paladin came at him without a word, and the sound of steel on steel rang out. Hesitant at first, Jherek held up a defense, then he started in with his attack, pushing at Glawinn’s defenses.

After long moments, the knight stepped back, a smile on his face. He saluted the young sailor. Jherek saluted back, startled by the sound of clapping. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw Sabyna standing there. Her copper-colored eyes held the glitter of excitement.

“Very good,” she complimented.

“Lady,” Jherek said, bowing slightly. Then, aware that he was shirtless, he went to the tree to get his clothes. He pulled his shirt on with his back to her, covered with sweat and breathing hard from his exertions.

“The boy is good,” Glawinn said, sheathing his sword with a flourish. “With the proper training and time, he stands a chance of becoming an accomplished swordsman.”

“I see. While the two of you were so gainfully engaged, did either of you happen to think about dinner?”

Jherek glanced up, noticing the deep plum color darkening the eastern sky where Westgate lay. “No, lady, I’m sorry. I’ll take care of it straight away.” He felt embarrassed, knowing he should have remembered how hungry she would be after getting no sleep last night and traveling all day.

“Actually,” Sabyna said mischievously, “there’s no reason to worry. I’ve already taken care of it.” She held up a stringer of catfish. “I took a little time off from my studies.”

A gin split Glawinn’s short-cropped beard. “And a profitable time it was too, lady. You have our humblest appreciation.”

“I caught them,” Sabyna announced, “but I’m not cleaning or cooking.”

“I’ll take care of it, lady,” Jherek offered.

He studied her face as he took the fish, noticing the fatigue clinging to her features. She hadn’t said anything about Tynnel’s actions or what they meant to her. She and Tynnel had been together for awhile. He couldn’t help feeling that he’d torn them apart. If he hadn’t shipped aboard Breezerunner none of the resulting confusion would have happened. He carried bad luck with him, just as Aysel and Tynnel had said.

“Are you all right?” she asked him.

Jherek smiled at her. “I’m fine. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

“I could help. I really don’t mind cleaning fish.”

“No,” he said. “You’ve done enough, and I’d like some time to myself. Maybe when no one’s looking I could grab a quick bath.”

She nodded, and turned away from him, walking back to the knight and the campfire.

Too late, Jherek realized he might have hurt her feelings by rejecting her offer. She’d just walked away from everything she’d known out of a debt she felt she owed him. He thought of calling out to her, then decided not to. If she grew angry with him, maybe she would accompany Glawinn while he pursued Vurgrom the Mighty. Maybe he could even persuade the paladin to see her back to the River Chionthar and find a ship that would take her back to the Sea of Swords.

He walked down the hillside where the stench of the fish cleaning wouldn’t overpower the campsite. One thing he was certain of: Where he was headed was no place for a woman.

XX

“Come, little malenti, you wished to see what your people spent their blood on. Now I will show you.”

Hesitantly, Laaqueel crossed the throne room of the sahuagin palace, walking past the throne carved of whalebone, its jaws distended to hold the seat. Images of sharks and sahuagin stood out in bas-relief on the limestone blocks that made up the walls. She’d stood gazing through one of the windows overlooking the amphitheater.

Sahuagin warriors had assembled there to work on the fliers they’d gathered and built to undertake Iakhovas’s latest mission. The fliers were seventy-five feet across at their widest and two hundred feet long, tapering at the ends. Salvaged wood from shipwrecks and surface dweller buildings on shore contributed to the construction. Each flier could hold up to six hundred sahuagin. Currently, there were fourteen fliers in various stages of preparation, and more were supposed to be coming soon. The deepsong had reached sahuagin everywhere-and they had come.

Iakhovas strode to the opposite end of the room where the huge image of Sekolah meeting the sahuagin occupied the wall. The image showed the Great Shark with the clamshell that had contained the sahuagin in his teeth, shaking out the sahuagin and releasing them into Toril’s oceans for the first time. When Iakhovas touched the image, it shimmered and vanished.

Fear filled Laaqueel as she watched it vanish. Though she’d never been to the palace before the last year, she knew it had existed for thousands of years. “What have you done?”

“Relax, little malenti. Do not overconcern yourself. Your precious wall is intact. I’m merely using it at the moment for other purposes. Now come.”

Woodenly, Laaqueel joined him, watching him step through the wall and vanish. Her gills flared as she drew in more water, then she pushed it through and calmed herself. She took a step forward, and in the next moment she was high in the shallows. Harsh sunlight glimmered silver across the sea surface only a few feet overhead.

“Where are we?” Laaqueel asked.

“Above the sahuagin city,” Iakhovas answered. “Don’t worry, little malenti, I haven’t taken you far from home yet.” He reached inside his cloak and took out the bottle the dead thing in the lime pit under Baldur’s Gate had given him. “This is our prize.”

Curious, Laaqueel swam closer to better see the bottle. It had been cleaned since she’d last seen it, the surface now bright and shiny. Brass capped both ends, gleaming in the sunlight penetrating the shallow depths. Inside was a tiny model of a great galley, one of the long ships the surface dwellers used for trade and war. The three sails were unfurled to catch the wind and tiny oars stuck out the sides in double rows.

“A ship in a bottle?” Laaqueel let acid drip into her words. Before she could say anything more, Iakhovas gestured angrily. In the next instant they both flew out of the water and came to a stop hovering forty or fifty feet above the surface.

“Do not mock me, little malenti,” Iakhovas snapped.

He turned from her and threw the ship-in-the-bottle out toward the sea. It twirled and sparked sunlight as it descended. Before it touched the water, Iakhovas shouted a single word. The bottle burst into a spray of a thousand gleaming shards. In the next instant a full-sized great galley floated on the ocean below. Purple and yellow striped sails flared out from the three masts.

“Not just a child’s amusement, little malenti. This is a weapon, a weapon I’m going to use to bring the surface dwellers of the Sea of Fallen Stars to their knees.”

He gestured again and they floated to the deck. Laaqueel touched down lightly, feeling the ocean rub up against the ship.

“A great galley,” Iakhovas stated, walking around the deck. He stroked the butt of one of the large crossbows mounted on the railing on the port side. The starboard side had them too. Racks held the harpoon-sized quarrels the weapons used for ammunition. “One hundred thirty feet long and twenty feet wide, it’s a fortress, a place where I can command armies and rain destruction down upon my enemies. It takes one hundred and forty oarsmen, and can comfortably carry another one hundred fifty warriors. There are various other additions I mean to make.”

“What?”

“Surprises,” he told her, walking the length of the deck.

Despite the fact that she didn’t want to, she followed him. She had no way of knowing how long the ship-in-the-bottle had been in the lime pit under Baldur’s Gate, but it had weathered the time well. The wood grain of the deck was finished and smooth, showing no signs of warpage or wear.

“She’s a mudship, one of only seven in all of Toril. Her name is Tarjana, which translates from an old and almost forgotten tongue to ‘Fisherhawk on Wing.’”

Fisherhawks were oceangoing birds of prey. Equipped with a fourteen-to sixteen-foot wingspread, sharp talons, and fangs like a snake, fisherhawks were known to raid seabound vessels of small children, women, halflings, and the occasional dwarf as well as the fish it stripped from the sea.

Iakhovas pulled back his sleeve and revealed the gold bracelet he wore. Laaqueel had seldom seen it, but most of the slots on it that had been empty now appeared to be filled. Iakhovas plucked free the diamond and pink coral talisman they’d gotten in Waterdeep. “And this bauble that I got from Serpentil Jannaxil gives me control over her.”

Laaqueel tried to get a better look at it, but he put it away quickly.

“Tarjana is able to run on land and sea,” Iakhovas said proudly, “above and below the water. This will be the flagship of the navy I’m going to take into the Sea of Fallen Stars.”

“You can’t take the sahuagin there,” Laaqueel said, unable to stop herself from speaking.

His single eye narrowed to a thin line of malevolence. Despite the patch he wore over his empty eye, something golden shone in its depths for an instant. “Don’t presume to tell me what to do. I can lead the sahuagin there, and I will. They’re mine to do with as I please. Or haven’t you noticed?”

“They think you’re working the will of Sekolah.” Laaqueel made herself stand her ground as he approached. She squeezed her fear into her belief in the Great Shark, but she trembled inside.

Iakhovas placed a long-nailed finger under her chin, tilting her head back to face him. “Ah, and little malenti, how can it still be that you have any doubts at all that I’m not working the will of Sekolah?”

“Because I don’t understand,” she told him, wanting desperately for an answer. “Nothing in my training taught me about any of this.”

“Your training led you to the legend of One Who Swims With Sekolah.”

“Yes.”

“It led you to me.”

She had no answer.

“Now you falter, when you should be enjoying your greatest success. After all, it was through your efforts you became royal high priestess, a position you would never have attained without your efforts to find the truth your training led you to. You doubt, yet there is more now than ever that should offer you conviction.”