Rising tide - Mel Odom [108]
Laaqueel watched, hypnotized by the sight of the man looking so diminutive against the kraken's huge mass. She forced herself to stand in the flier, but she had a spell at the ready, willing to strike the creature with a scalding jet of heated water. If Iakhovas died, her ambitions and privileges died with him, and so did her ability to better serve Sekolah.
The kraken floated upside down, its arrowhead-shaped body pointed down toward the cavern floor so its tentacles splayed out around it. Iakhovas floated near one of the eyes, looking like he was locked in some kind of conversation with the giant squid.
Without warning, the kraken started glowing, outlined by a soft purple-blue light that shifted and moved like fiery flames. Iakhovas reached out and placed a hand next to the kraken's huge eye. The wizard grinned as he turned to face Huaanton.
"Just as I perceived," Iakhovas said confidently. "I, and my mission, have been given Sekolah's blessings.
Laaqueel has brought me the message and kept me in line with the Great Shark's desires."
Laaqueel believed the wizard was magically controlling the kraken. She didn't want to believe that he had some kind of bond with them that had existed before he'd been turned into stone and left for dead, or that Sekolah had offered the wizard protection. She wished she didn't have her doubts.
With a lightning quick flick, the kraken reached out a tentacle and stripped one of the sahuagin warriors from the flier. The warrior never had a chance, although he succeeded in burying his trident in the creature's flesh. While the warrior still struggled, the kraken brought him to its mouth and bit down, shredding the sahuagin's legs. Blood clouded the water, running in black swirls against the white limestone background.
The royal guard surged forward, hooking their webbed hands in the net separating them from the kraken and the dying sahuagin. They shouted out at the giant squid in anger and fear while the men in the back instantly surrounded Huaanton, urging him back into the tunnel.
The king shook them off, chasing them back from him with warnings. The guards pulled back reluctantly, caught between the need to do their job and their responsibility to obey the king.
The kraken chomped again, biting the dying sahuagin in two at the waist. Hunks of meat and entrails spilled out into the water. Slowly, the kraken raised Iakhovas toward its mouth.
Laaqueel shifted, getting ready to loose the magic she had awaiting her command.
As you were, little malenti. Do not try to take any part in this upon pain of death. Iakhovas's voice spoke into her mind. Huaanton has grown over bold these past few years and must be reminded of his true place in the events that are unfolding. I will not suffer him threatening me and undermining my authority while I go off to fight his wars.
Laaqueel forced water through her gills, flushing her body. She didn't act, but her spine became as tight as a bowstring. The wizard's insubordination was going to be the death of them both.
The kraken stopped moving the tentacle holding Iakhovas within a few feet of its maw. The wizard slashed out with a hand that resembled a hard ridge of bone for a moment. The bone ridge sliced through one of the chunks of meat from the sahuagin warrior.
Laaqueel knew the illusion of being a sahuagin that Iakhovas maintained on himself probably translated to using his claws.
Iakhovas opened his mouth wide and ate the gobbet of flesh he'd hacked off. "Meat is meat," he declared.
The royal guard stared at him in awe. The story, the malenti knew, would spread throughout the kingdom, then into the other villages. In the telling, as with all stories, it would grow, making the wizard a creature of myth. The truth itself was incredible, a tale that sahuagin everywhere would enjoy: a warrior prince of their own, held in the embrace of a half-starved kraken, and eating choice bits of a meal almost out of its mouth. She glanced at Huaanton.
The sahuagin king's features gave nothing away even to her practiced eye, but Huaanton had to have known