Under Fallen Stars - Mel Odom [108]
Laaqueel tried to get a better look at it, but he put it away quickly.
"Tarjana is able to run on land and sea," Iakhovas said proudly, "above and below the water. This will be the flagship of the navy I'm going to take into the Sea of Fallen Stars."
"You can't take the sahuagin there," Laaqueel said, unable to stop herself from speaking.
His single eye narrowed to a thin line of malevolence. Despite the patch he wore over his empty eye, something golden shone in its depths for an instant. "Don't presume to tell me what to do. I can lead the sahuagin there, and I will. They're mine to do with as I please. Or haven't you noticed?"
"They think you're working the will of Sekolah." Laaqueel made herself stand her ground as he approached. She squeezed her fear into her belief in the Great Shark, but she trembled inside.
Iakhovas placed a long-nailed finger under her chin, tilting her head back to face him. "Ah, and little malenti, how can it still be that you have any doubts at all that I'm not working the will of Sekolah?"
"Because I don't understand," she told him, wanting desperately for an answer. "Nothing in my training taught me about any of this."
"Your training led you to the legend of One Who Swims With Sekolah."
"Yes."
"It led you to me."
She had no answer.
"Now you falter, when you should be enjoying your greatest success. After all, it was through your efforts you became royal high priestess, a position you would never have attained without your efforts to find the truth your training led you to. You doubt, yet there is more now than ever that should offer you conviction."
"I don't understand why we should involve ourselves in the Inner Sea. Our place is here."
Iakhovas hooked her chin with his talon hard enough to nearly bring blood. "Because it is as Sekolah wills. You're a hypocrite, little malenti. You took Huaanton to task because he wanted a sign from the Great Shark that what we were doing was as Sekolah willed it. Now, here I am, proof of that sign, and yet you refuse to believe. You want still further proof."
"I don't see what the Inner Sea-"
Enough! Iakhovas roared in her mind.
Laaqueel's knees buckled from the pain of the mental shout, and she fell to the deck.
"Do you want proof?" Iakhovas demanded. "Or do you want to believe? One is not the same as the other."
Tears came to Laaqueel's eyes because she knew what he said was true. The difference between knowledge and faith was the first lesson Senior Priestess Ghaataag had taught her when she took her into Sekolah's temple. So often as a child Laaqueel had drawn Ghaataag's wrath for doubting.
"You can have proof standing before you, little malenti, and still doubt what you see. As for belief, once you can weigh it and measure it, that belief becomes knowledge. Belief is something that can't be proven in this world of physical restraint, but it can't be broken either. Yet it is the strongest of things that exist in the world. Believing is much stronger than knowing."
Laaqueel continued crying silently, remembering all the times Ghaataag had made her go pray on her knees on a bed of broken coral until she was able to excise the doubt that had touched her then. She was so, so weak.
"No, little malenti," Iakhovas said more gently. "You're not weak. You're stronger than you know, but you're fighting yourself and you're finding yourself to be a more formidable opponent than any you've ever known. You stood the test of your priestesshood, and you found answers to questions that no one even knew existed until you came along." His voice grew fierce with pride. "How dare you call yourself weak."
His words calmed her a little, and they gave her back a measure of self-respect she'd been missing.
"I saw you stand up to Huaanton when he doubted in Sekolah. He could have taken your head then, claiming you to be mentally unbalanced by the aberration of your birth. You believed