Rising tide - Mel Odom [55]
Breathing hard, her gills not quite able to meet the demands being made on them, the malenti held her sword under the woman's throat. She looked into the surface dweller's eyes, seeing the fear there and relishing it. Fear meant power.
Tell me-" Laaqueel gasped,"-tell me-what you saw!"
The young woman cried, tears flowing freely from her eyes as she shook her head and panted, "I can't."
Knowing the wererats were going to be on them within minutes, Laaqueel yanked the woman up and dragged her back to where she'd left the first woman. The malenti laid her sword on the ground and held the woman with one hand. She laid her other hand on the unconscious woman's face. She prayed in her tongue, the sahuagin clicks echoing in the alley even over the continued shouts by the people inside the houses.
In answer to her prayers to Sekolah and to the power she wielded in the Great Shark's name, the unconscious woman's face writhed with sudden infection-filled weals. As she finished the prayer, the weals erupted in bloody pus. The woman moaned with the pain even though she was unconscious, barely clinging to her life.
Laaqueel fixed her hot gaze on the woman and shook her. "Tell me!" she roared. "Tell me what you saw or she'll die in agony!"
It took two attempts for the woman to get any words out. "I can't!" she cried finally. "Tymora help me, what I'm telling you is the truth. I was doing a true seeing, looking at an object brought to us by a sailor who wanted to know if it had any magic about it. When we heard the screams coming from the harbor, I went outside. I didn't mean to see you."
"What did you see?"
She shook her head. "The rat men," she said. "You, and-"
"What about the other man?"
She struggled to make her mouth work.
"Better you welcome Umberlee's dark caresses than leave yourself in my hands, child," Laaqueel promised.
"I can't tell you," the woman said, "because I've never seen anything like it."
"What?" the malenti demanded. She heard the slap of feet on the cobblestones, coming closer. Whether they were wererats or Waterdhavian Watch, she was almost out of time.
"It was huge. Fearsome. All fins and teeth and-evil of the darkest sort. It hungers?'
Before Laaqueel could ask anything further, a green glow surrounded the woman. In the next instant her body came apart in thousands of flying sparks.
The malenti leaped back, startled and fearful of getting burned. The green sparks held neither fire nor heat, though, swirling into the air and winking out in a matter of heartbeats. Nothing remained of the woman. Laaqueel forced herself to her feet, seeing Iakhovas at the alley's mouth.
He gave her a baleful glare with his single eye.
The creaking wheels of a wagon drew Laaqueel's attention. She shifted to face the alley, spotting the black plague wagon rolling toward her at once. Ebony sheets fluttered in the wind.
No driver held the reins, and no draft animals pulled the wagon. It rolled slowly at Laaqueel, and the malenti knew she was looking at more of the hated surface dweller magic.
IX
12 Mirtul, the Year of the Gauntlet
"Wake up, boy!"
The stern voice scratched Jherek from the comfortable womb of darkness that had settled over him like a shroud. He wanted to tell Malorrie that he was dead, but he knew it wasn't true. The quarrel still burned deeply in his chest.
"Who did this to you?" Malorrie demanded.
Jherek ignored the question as he opened his eyes. "What are you doing here?" His voice carried a whistle with it, and he knew it was caused by his left lung filling up with blood from the puncture wound. It already felt like rocks had been shoved into his chest, making it harder to breathe.
"You were late home to sup, boy," Malorrie said. "Madame litaar sent me to bring you home. She knew when Butterfly put into port and how long she takes to off-load." He made a sour face. "From the looks of things, she's going to be properly vexed that she didn't send me sooner."
"It's been kind of