Читать «Rising Tide (зксм-1)» онлайн - страница 12

The great lizard's death had been quick, too quick for it to even finish the meal it had caught. An erupting volcano could cause such a death, the malenti knew. The fires and heat created by some volcanoes could strip the meat from a body, even sour and poison the water.

The abyssal hills themselves were formed from volcanoes that had cooled. These dead volcanoes often left chambers and empty pockets located within them.

Laaqueel rose to her feet and walked away from the spot where the stones whirled. The reflected cadence coming from the rock strata lessened with each step she took. Twenty paces away, she couldn't feel it anymore.

She returned to the stones, feeling the cadence grow again. She experimented in the other directions as well, finding it to be the same with all three. The stones had marked the spot.

"Something lies below, honored one," Saanaa whispered.

"I know." Laaqueel knelt in prayer again, taking the circlet of shark's teeth from a tie to her harness at her waist. Like the singing bundles of her people, and the spinning ring of stones, the shark's teeth had been knotted and tied to reproduce sounds that were a prayer in the sahuagin language.

The shark's teeth rattled as she shook them, crying out Sekolah's name. She listened to the chant, pacing the words of her prayer with the cadence, growing faster as she summoned the power the Great Shark had given her. Feeling it reach its peak within her, she shoved her hand forward.

The power surged through the water from her hand, leaving a wake of brightly colored bubbles. When it struck the rock, a hollow booming gong sounded deep inside the cavern below. In seconds, the rock changed, softening, turning to loose mud. When the power had drained her, leaving her weak and gasping water in big gulps, Laaqueel swam to the site below the stones. She shoved her trident deep into what had once been rock, raking aside what was now mud.

It only took a minute to breach the outer shell of the chamber. Saanaa and Viiklee helped her widen the hole. Darkness gaped up at them, but the echoed resonance of the rattling stones sounded louder, echoing still more as the first chamber funneled the noise into another chamber further on.

When the hole was wide enough, Laaqueel waved the other priestesses back. Even their sahuagin vision couldn't penetrate the gloom trapped inside. She spotted a school of luminous fish out beyond the one hundred pace mark from the open chamber. They glowed pale blue-green. Gathering her trident in both hands, she swam toward the fish, bursting in among them too quickly for them to save themselves. The trident flicked out rapidly, impaling five of the fish.