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

exactly what they were doing.
Shemsen sank until the water changed. Heavy, cold, yet tangy with salt, it was
the richest water he'd ever drawn across his gills. He knew that had there been
light, he would have been able to see to the bottom. If there had been light....
The darkness within Umberlee's Cache went beyond an absence of light. There was
silence, too, in Shemsen's ears and in those sensitive places along his flanks.
He couldn't tell if he was drifting up, down, or sideways.
Malenti!
A woman's voice, beautiful and deadly, surrounded Shemsen, and checked his
movement through the water.
Malenti, why are you here? Why do you disturb me? Does the Shark not hear your
feeble prayers?
Shemsen gathered his wits, but the Sea Queen didn't need his words. She flowed
into his mind and took answers from his memory.
Shemsen had told the truth to the mermen two days earlier, just not all of it.
Sahuagin had ambushed his patrol. The sea elves were outnumbered and they were
doomed, yet Shemsen fought with them until it was just him and two sahuagin
left. It had been a better showing than he'd expected from the likes of Peshhet.
One of the remaining sahuagin was a yellow-tailed priestess.
When she gave him her full attention, she knew. By Sekolah's grace, the
priestess had recognized Shemsen for what he was.
Malenti!
She had the god-given power to compel him and, because he'd rather die a
free-willed man than a priestess's plaything, Shemsen had thrown down his
weapon.
Why had he fought them, she'd demanded, and Shemsen had answered defiantly that
she was not from his village, his baron, or his prince. He owed more to the
enemies he lived among than to a stranger. She demanded the name of his village.
Shemsen spat it out along with the names of his baron and prince.
"Prince Kreenuuar chose poorly," the priestess had said. "He became meat and all
those who followed him became meat. You serve Prince Iakhovas now."
Shemsen hadn't recognized the name, which meant little, except that Iakhovas
wasn't a sahuagin name, not even a malenti name. He couldn't easily imagine a
prince with such an unseemly name, until he thought about Prince Kreenuuar's
fate and the black cloud.
"Choose wisely, malenti!" the priestess had said, threatening Shemsen with the
shark's tooth amulet she wore against her chest.
Had he truly believed he'd escape his malenti fate? Sekolah had called up the
sahuagin to magnify His glory. He'd called up the malenti to magnify the
sahuagin. Shemsen could serve this new Prince Iakhovas and his priestess freely
... or he would serve as a spell-blinded thrall. Pride that only another malenti
might understand had raised Shemsen's elven chin, exposing his soft, unsealed
throat as he clasped his hands behind his back in submission.
The priestess accepted Shemsen's wise choice, adding only slightly to the wounds
he'd already borne. She'd reminded him that he was a spy, then asked
what he knew about Waterdeep.
"Prince Iakhovas comes to teach those who dwell on the land a lesson about the
sea. We are charged with finding a safe passage for a single surface ship and
fliers. How do we counter these defenses?"
The priestess had pointed at the shimmering beacon and with no further