Читать «Rising Tide (зксм-1)» онлайн - страница 47

"But to take Waterdeep…" Laaqueel said.

"Stand corrected, little malenti, we're not taking Waterdeep," Iakhovas said. "We're presenting the surface world their options, throwing down the gauntlet so to speak. The surface dwellers need to be put on notice that they're living near these waters only on my sufferance. I will take back that which is rightfully mine no matter how many of them have to perish." He touched the patch covering his empty socket unconsciously. "I will be made whole again, and I will reclaim my proper station as the oceans' master."

"If we can't take the city, why send all these sahuagin to their deaths?" she asked.

"More humans will die this night than sahuagin," he told her. "You have my promise on that."

The way that he always referred to the humans as their species, and a despised one at that, let Laaqueel know he didn't consider himself one of them. For awhile she'd thought he might be of elven blood, but he had the gills and webbed hands and feet of a sea elf and used magic as easily as a sahuagin spilled blood. The accursed sea elves knew no magic except for that granted to their priests and priestesses.

He offered no clue as to what he truly was.

His power of illusion was incredible, steeping him in layers of deceit and trickery. She wasn't certain if she'd ever seen the true being she knew as Iakhovas. The sahuagin recognized him as a fellow being, and the wererats and other humanoids saw him as one of their own, even when they were all standing in the same place, and no one questioned it.

"Why should any sahuagin die if it's not necessary?" she asked.

"Because, little malenti, I have need of their deaths, and they must prove their fealty to me if I'm to champion their cause in this world." Iakhovas surveyed the nearing warning lights of Waterdeep Harbor. Anchored buoys clanged in the distance near Deepwater Isle, warning of the shallows there. "Sacrifices must be made. As I've learned, this is the last day in Ches, a time of holidays in Deepwater."

Laaqueel had learned that even as Iakhovas had. The Waterdhavians called the festival Fleetswake. During that time the mariners and the city gave homage to Umberlee, the dread sea goddess. Umberlee's Cache lay in the belly of the sloping bowl of Deepwater Harbor on the other side of Darkwater Isle. In years past, offerings to Umber-lee had been dropped on the harbor floor, then mermaid shamans had broken that floor open to the great cavern system below that no one had ever mapped out. Every now and again, the malenti spotted the magical beam of the lighthouse near Umberlee's Cache skate below the dark waters ahead of them. It was used to guide the merfolk that were part of Waterdeep's defense hierarchy.

"The promise and bounty of Fleetswake convokes ships from over all Faerun, giving the surface dwellers a dream of shared peace and prosperity," Iakhovas went on. "Traders, warriors, craftsmen, bards, and thieves, all will be represented on those cobblestone streets. There will be many in Waterdeep to tell the tale of the battle this night. They will spread that tale to the corners of all Toril, their wagging tongues making the story larger and more intense as it is passed along."