"Realms of the Deep - Philip Athans.2.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Anthologies)

And why not? In the water and above, most folk didn't believe his kind could
exist. A sahuagin shaped like a sea elf? That was a cautionary tale for
disobedient children. Among sahuagin, the elf-shaped malenti were tolerated,
rarely, because sahuagin needed spies. Even among sahuagin the elf shape was
accounted a curse rather than a blessing. Hatchlings were swum through the
gardens where malenti quartered and trained.
Give glory to Sekolah that He provides all that His worshipers need to serve
Him. Give thanks to Sekolah that He did not shape me malenti.
The word itself meant "grotesque" and Sekolah in His wisdom, if not His mercy,
understood that malenti torment should not endure for long. The elf-shape was
lethal. By the measure of sun and tide, Shemsen was younger than Eshono, yet
Eshono was counted a youth and Shemsen for a man nearing the end of his prime.
In his bones, Shemsen felt older still.
Merfolk appeared overhead. Pilots, it was their job to guide the ships through
the channel to open water. Shemsen dived to avoid the eddies as the rudder beat
against the estuary current. Safe below the roiled water, he swam toward
Deepwater Isle, and the underwater lighthouse that marked the rift called
Umberlee's Cache.
With Fleetswake scarcely a tenday away, folk of all types were making
preparations for the moment when Waterdeep made its annual gift to Umberlee,
Goddess of the Sea. Twenty barges, maybe more, had been lashed and anchored into
a ring above the lighthouse. Already they rode low in the water, laden with
offerings from landlubbers and sailors, guilds and shops, wizards and priests.
It was no different below. Most of the sea folk passed their tokens up to the
barges or tied them to the great funnel net being strung even now below the
hulls. On Pleetswake Eve, when the offerings were cast into the water, every
sea-dweller would swim to the net and make sure nothing drifted free. There was
no worse omen than a gift meant for Umberlee not falling into Her Cache.
Lubbers arranged their pantheon in alliances and tried-for the sake of their
fears-to bind Umberlee in a controllable place. Those who dwelt in the sea knew
better. No sea-dweller worshiped the Queen of the
Oceans. She was the oceans personified, and She always triumphed.
Net weavers hailed Shemsen as he approached. Did he know where he was? Was he
lost? Inebriated? Bent on self-destruction? He told them, in words gleaned from
the rough edges of the harbor, to tend their own affairs. A few responded in
kind. A sea elf-a woman he didn't know-hauled the funnel net aside, allowing him
to swim through an as-yet-unsewn seam.
"Peace to you," she called from above. "Peace for your pain."
The words were not a traditional sea elf greeting. Shemsen was impervious to
those. By the time he'd left the sahuagin garden to steal a place in a sea elf
village, he'd known all their traditions and despised them without exception.
For almost a century he'd lived among them, his malaise and nausea relieved only
when he slipped away to drop a cunningly knotted string where another sahuagin
might find it. He wore his orders around his neck and the sea elves- the
thrice-damned fools-admired his treachery so much they'd ask him to fashion
similar ornaments for them.
Then, on a moonless night when the sea had been too quiet, miasma, like ink from
all the cuttlefish that had ever swum, had descended on the village. It clung to
gills and nostrils alike. Suffocation wasn't the worst part. The miasma had
talons, or teeth, or knives- Shemsen never knew which. He never saw what slashed