The Sea Devil's Eye - Mel Odom [111]
Iakhovas strode into the room with the elf woman behind him. One of his eyes blazed.
"I want them dead," he ordered. He pointed, spoke, and three of the columns near the pool shattered as if struck by a battering ram.
Sabyna dropped beside the woman and grabbed her chain in both hands. She pulled fiercely but the spike didn't budge.
"Don't leave us here," the woman begged. "Please."
"I won't," Sabyna promised. She slipped one of her daggers behind the spike's head and tried to lever it from the wall, putting all of her back into the effort.
"At them, you scurvy dogs!" Vurgrom ordered.
Glancing over her shoulder, Sabyna saw Glawinn whirl suddenly and engage a pirate. The paladin blocked the pirate's thrust with his soot-stained shield, then cleaved the man's head in twain. Glawinn kicked the dead man from his blade, sending the body sprawling in the middle of the open.
"Have at you, then," the paladin challenged. "By Lathander's swift justice, here you'll find a warrior tried and true."
Iakhovas raised a hand.
"No," a calm voice called through the shadows.
Recognizing the voice, not believing that she'd truly heard it, Sabyna looked up from pulling on the knife and spotted him standing in the opening leading to the last cave.
Jherek stood in the doorway, the cutlass level before him, the gaze in his eyes defiant. The cut Sabyna had seen on his face was really there, and the ship's mage knew that the times she'd felt he'd spoken her name hadn't been her imagination after all.
The young sailor wore breeches tucked into calf-high boots and a white shirt with belled sleeves. Blood streaked the shirt, proof that he'd come in through the cave's main entrance.
"You should have struck me from behind, boy," Iakhovas rasped, then he smiled. "But you couldn't do that, could you?"
Jherek threw himself forward, revealing the other men behind him. A lightning bolt shot from Iakhovas's finger and struck Jherek in the chest. The young sailor flew back out of the cave, slamming into two men behind him and disappearing over the ledge.
"No!" Sabyna yelled.
The knife blade snapped, and she fell, sliding across the rough stone floor toward the pool. As she started to push herself up, a face surfaced in the water. It was dark green and topped by coarse black hair. Pointed ears framed its head. The mouth was a broad, lipless slash filled with sharp fangs that gleamed in the moonlight.
The koalinth reached for Sabyna even as three other heads surfaced.
* * * * *
"You closed the Great Barrier around Myth Nantar?" Pacys was astounded at Qos's announcement.
The old bard sat on top of the coral in the courtyard south of the Maalirn College. Over the four days they'd talked, the storm giant seemed most comfortable there. Though he'd studied his host in detail, the old bard still hadn't managed to pierce the guise the Green Dukar wore, nor managed to find out why he wore it.
"I had no choice," Qos replied in his great, booming voice. "Myth Nantar represents the promise all Dukars made to each other and all of Seros. When those we sought to protect and guide turned on each other during the Tenth Seros War, I could stand it no longer. None of the Serosian races deserved something as grand as this city and its promise."
The Dukars have faced problems before," Pacys replied. His fingers idly strummed the saceddar, coaxing the tune he'd decided would best represent the storm giant.
"Yes," Qos said. The giant paced, looking at the tall, tiger-coral covered buildings in the Law Quarter. "For nearly eight thousand years, the Dukars held positions of influence. Within five hundred years of our alliance with the sea elves of Aryselmalyr and our triumph over the koalinth, nearly five thousand years of peace ensued." Ho closed his hand into a fist. "Can you imagine what those years must have been like?"
Pacys let his fingers