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"I don't know. Perhaps he was there in the beginning but gone before Sekolah saw fit to put the first sahuagin into the oceans. Only the thinnest of whispers managed to survive concerning him."

"What happened to him?"

Laaqueel took the small whalebone container from between her breasts. The container was hollowed out, carved in the shape of a shark. She unstoppered it and poured out six red and black stones into her palm. The red was so true, so inviolate, that it was visible even at this depth and in the gathering darkness. All of stones had holes drilled through them. "I don't know. The book mentioned that he was locked away from the rest of the world to be taught a lesson."

"By Sekolah?" Viiklee demanded.

"No. By another of the gods or goddesses that walked this plane of existence during that time. One Who Swims With Sekolah was imprisoned. He's never been seen since."

"Yet this book mentioned him?" Saanaa asked. "No sahuagin records remember him?"

"Our records," Laaqueel reminded, "don't tell of him. I have read them all and consulted with the other priestesses regarding this matter. None remember One Who Swims With Sekolah, but we don't have access to all sahuagin records."

"What makes you think you can find this being?" Viiklee asked.

Laaqueel ran a forefinger through the six red and black stones in her palm, revealing the runes inscribed on them. "I've given the last five years of my life to the search for the truth in this matter. Only a few months ago, I discovered these in a loremaster's keep at Baldur's Gate."

"Where the humans live." Viiklee spat a curse, roiling the water around her angular face.

"Yes. Magic surrounds these stones."

Saanaa and Viiklee drew back, making protective wards against the hated magic. "You should have destroyed them," Saanaa hissed. "To even carry them around with you is sacrilege." The sahuagin coiled restlessly, edging away.

"There is nothing foul about these stones," Laaqueel said, turning them in her palm. She deftly plucked a short length of worked sinew from her trident hilt and with practiced ease threaded it through the stones, making sure they were in the proper order and tying the correct number of knots between them as she'd learned.

"The runes mean nothing, a false trail laid for the surface dwellers," she continued. "Someone tried to discover the secret of the stones and assigned names to the runes, and some have even used magic to try to read them. Humans and elves don't understand the nature of the sahuagin written language, and none who tried ever learned the truth of the stones."

Finished, she held the ring of knots and stones out, then shook them. They clattered against each other.

The message, to a sahuagin's internal ear and lateral lines, was clear: "Seek out One Who Swims With Sekolah."

"You see?" Laaqueel asked. "Above water where a sahuagin's hearing doesn't operate properly even should one be there, the song of the stones wouldn't be clear. If the book I found hadn't mentioned the existence of the stones, I wouldn't have known. Even then, tracking down the stones was not an easy matter. They were part of a collection assembled by a historian from Skuld, a human city in the land of Mulhorand."