The Sea Devil's Eye - Mel Odom [91]
Tu'uua'col knew the king wasn't referring to his own illegitimate son. but to his own past mistakes.
"Your son does not see himself as an indiscretion, my liege, and I think he would take grave umbrage at your own insistence upon calling him that."
"He would not form an alliance with Iakhovas of the sahuagin."
"My sources suggest he already has."
"They're wrong,7" the merking snapped.
"Remember when your own court of advisors denied that you had made me one of them? Denied, in fact, the friendship that exists between us?" Tu'uua'col sighed heavily, hating the turbulence that formed between him and his friend.
The court rejected him for a number of reasons, and most of them still hadn't changed their minds. First and foremost among their complaints was that he was not a merman. He was a shalarin.
Tu'uua'col stood not quite six feet tall but seemed much taller due to the dorsal fin that started between his full black eyes and jutted up nearly a foot above his head before running all the way down his back to his buttocks. The jadelike sheen of his smooth, scaleless skin further set him apart from the warmer colors of the merfolk and their scaled tails. His gill slits were along his collarbone and ribcage.
All the merfolk knew him as a wizard, and a teacher of the royal princelings. That he had the ear of not only King Miaemas but the royal offspring as well was enough to unnerve most of the other advisors. If the royal court at Voalidru had known he was a Blue Dukar of the Order of Kupav and interested in the protection of Myth Nantar, assassination attempts might have been the order of the day.
"They do not know you as I know you," Vhaemas stated irritably. "They think of you simply as a wild-tider."
The merman nickname came from the prophecy of Selana, the mermaid who rose to prominence after the Tenth Seros War and the fall of Hmurrath, the merfolk empire. The mermaid predicted that the merfolk would one day ally with the shalarin. The wild tide referred to the magical force that brought the shalarin from their homes in the Sea of Corynactis, whose exact location had never been decided.
"Yet they will not listen," Tu'uua'col pointed out. "Some-times the plainest of truths are the hardest to believe. They require acceptance rather than recognition."
Vhaemas shook his head wearily. 'These are difficult currents we face, my old friend.'7
"That is why we must recognize and quickly deal with the dangers that surround us."
"Including Thuridru's king."
"Yes, my liege."
In all the years that they'd known each other, Tu'uua'col had never heard Vhaemas refer to his bastard child by the Kamaar clan as his son.
Vhaemas scoured the palace corridor with a jaundiced eye. As capital of the Eadraal empire, Voalidru was beauty itself, sculpted from the sea. The merman builders had combined stones dug from the ocean's floor with quarried rock lost in shipwrecks. The royal buildings were wide and generous, sporting shells and coral decorations in myriad colors and shapes.
"The ixitxachitl cities of Ageadren and Orildren, as well as their outposts, have fallen to the sahuagin. I have heard that Thuridru was instrumental in destroying Orildren and the outer temples."
"But to join with the sahuagin?" Vhaemas questioned. "Why?"
Tu'uua'col was silent for a moment, weighing his words. "Perhaps, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Thuridru has no alliances in Voalidru and remains trapped between the demon rays and the morkoth, who also attacked the ixitxachitls with the sahuagin."
"The Taker is not to be believed. In our legends he only looks toward his own interests."
"I think that is true," the shalarin Blue Dukar replied. "Still, Thuridru's ruler is willing to set aside merman histories and beliefs in order to forge his own future. He is openly ambitious. This alliance is the only one open to him. At worst, he gets some of the ixitxachitl lands. At best…"
Tu'uua'col shrugged. '"Perhaps he even thinks to have a hand in humbling all