Rising tide - Mel Odom [46]
"Damned fish-heads!" one of the men bawled in warning.
Laaqueel heard the thrum of crossbows behind her and watched as the short quarrels buried their vicious barbs in flesh and wood. She thrust out a hand and the magic spewed from her palm, plunging the room into total blackness. With their greater night vision, the sahuagin weren't totally blinded. The light spilling in the door leading down to the windlass area was enough.
The crossbow quarrels put another man down at the windlass. Laaqueel vaulted to the floor, silent as her own shadow, and swung her sword. The keen edge hamstrung the man trying desperately to turn the ten-foot tall wheel. He screamed and reached for his injured feet. The malenti ended the screaming by slashing his throat.
Without remorse, she grabbed one of the Waterdhavian Guardsmen on the floor, locating him by the string of curses and pained cries that came from him. She levered the man up in one hand, then unerringly shoved him into the grind of gears operating the nets.
The man screamed anew as the big gears bit into him, but the sounds quickly went away as the gears drew him in. Bone crunched and the metallic strain of the gears trying to mesh filled the basement.
The gears stopped.
Bouundaar's men worked efficiently in the darkness, talking to each other in their own tongue as they covered the floor and tracked down the last of the surface dwellers. All of them were dead by the time Laaqueel reached the top of the stairs.
More sahuagin held the bottom of the dual stairwells. Nets stretched above them, blocking entrance into the room.
Laaqueel ran back out onto the sandy beach in front of Smuggler's Bane Tower. Her gaze raked across Waterdeep Harbor and spied Drifting Eel at once. Mermen attacked the vessel, some of them riding the giant sea horses they used as mounts. Thankfully there weren't as many of them as Laaqueel had feared. The advance party group had struck the mermen hard, as Iakhovas had planned.
The one-eyed prince remained standing in the prow of the pentekonter, his massive cloak billowing in the breeze behind him. The other three ships followed sedately behind, disgorging more sahuagin into the great harbor.
Suddenly the malenti's vision cleared even more and she saw the sorcerer plainly. Ah, there you are, little malenti, her master's voice sounded in her mind. You've endeavored so fiercely these past years to always keep me in your sight, do not give up the race now.
She knew he mocked her. Even diligent as she'd been about her spying on him, he had managed to hide so many things from her.
Iakhovas stretched a hand out at her before she could move.
Nausea twisted through Laaqueel, and it felt like her air bladder had burst. Her vision blanked for a moment and she took a step back even though she knew what was going on. When her foot touched down again, it wasn't on sandy beach, but on Drifting Eel's wooden deck. The quill implanted so close to her heart gave the sorcerer such power over her.
Civilar Noth and his Waterdhavian Guardsmen stood at attention behind the sorcerer.
"Now," Iakhovas said, a malevolent spark in his single dark eye, "now I will educate the surface dwellers in the poignancy of true horror, a skill at which I am a unparalleled. I've forgotten much more than they've ever had the misfortune to experience."
He reached into the folds of his cloak and brought out an ornate headband chipped from a single black sapphire. Long labor had gone into the creation of the circlet. Not only did it have a perfect circumference, but tiny sharks had been chipped into it in has relief, creating a twisting serpentine of figures.
Laaqueel recognized the headband as the one he'd forcibly taken from the mermen fourteen years ago, bringing total destruction to their village and sending the few survivors fleeing for their lives. Laaqueel had traveled with him then, knowing that Iakhovas had somehow managed a magical link with the headband and