"Rising Tide" - читать интересную книгу автора (Odom Mel)

SEEK OUT ONE WHO SWIMS WITH SEKOLAH

They came to an abrupt stop, and the silence struck as forcibly as a whale sounding.

"No," she replied. "This is where we were led."

She forced herself to go forward. Once inside the room, the chill grew stronger, became an arctic cold. She couldn't fathom how the water wasn't frozen solid by whatever glamour possessed the room. She had no doubt that the room was enchanted.

She lifted the glow lamp and played it over the figure. Resembling a surface dweller, he stood a full head taller than the malenti, and inches above the other priestesses. His hair was pulled back in a cluster of tangles secured by carved bones with intricate runes. Harshness tightened his face, narrowed his single eye and turned it down at the corners. The other eye was a hollow socket surrounded skin puckered by the scar of a long-healed burn. He wore a mustache that ran down to his chin, then flared back up his jawline to join his sideburns, leaving his dimpled chin clean-shaven. Hollow-cheeked, he looked wasted and emaciated, that fact showing even more starkly since he was totally naked, starved yet wiry. In the pale light of the glow lamp, his skin tone was as pale as a bled corpse. Dark tattoos scribed in broad strokes covered his body, creating a mosaic of color and sharp lines on every square inch of skin.

His solitary eye stared through her.

Fearful but needing to know, Laaqueel reached out and touched him with her knife point. The sharp edge grated on the man's petrified skin, not even leaving a mark in its passage.

"He's dead, favored one," Saanaa said. "He's not the one we came for."

"Let's leave this tomb," Viiklee pleaded.

Laaqueel stepped closer to the petrified man who looked so unlike anything she had expected. "No," she commanded, "this is the one we came for."

"This can't be One Who Swims With Sekolah," Viiklee argued. "He looks like a-a surface dweller. A human, not even an elf."

She glanced up at them as they hovered over the petrified man, then back at the statue's hard face." There in his cold grave'" Laaqueel quoted from the text she'd read, " 'barren of life and bereft of the powers he'd once commanded, lost to the luxuries he'd once had, lies One Who Swims With Sekolah. Dead-yet undead, too, turned as hard and as cold as his heart that left love forsaken.' " The common tongue she'd learned as part of her training was sometimes less precise than the sahuagin tongue, so there was a margin for error, but the stones didn't lie.

"What love?" Saanaa asked.

"I don't know," Laaqueel admitted.

"Humans only know to love another human," Viiklee stated. "Their understanding of that emotion is pathetic. Wisdom dictates loving your race, not an individual. The race is what will persevere."

That was the sahuagin view, Laaqueel knew, and one seldom shared by the humans or elves. Those races tended to think individuals first and race second.

"If this is One Who Swims With Sekolah, who did this to him?" Saanaa asked.

"The book didn't say."

"What are we supposed to do with a dead human?" Viiklee demanded.

"He isn't dead," Laaqueel answered.

"The story said he lay in his tomb," Viiklee pointed out.

"It also said he was dead, yet undead. Maybe he can't be killed."

"He's dead," the younger priestess argued. "Even a hatchling would know that." Sahuagin knew about death; the weak died early, eaten by its fellow hatchlings.

"We'll see," Laaqueel said as she opened the whalebone container around her neck again and removed a ring. Cast in gold, the ring was a simple band studded with diamond chips that reflected the pale blue-green luminescence of the glow lamp.

"What's that?" Saanaa asked.

"A ring."

"I can see that, honored one."

"A very special ring." Laaqueel slid the ring onto the petrified man's forefinger. The magic in the ring caused it to adjust to the man's finger with an unsettling fluid grace. It slid into place, then began to glow. "This ring was mentioned in the book," she continued. "It took a year and a half to find. It's supposed to return One Who Swims With Sekolah to life."

"More magic," Viiklee spat in disgust. "Only the magic bestowed by Sekolah is trustworthy."

"I have prayed," Laaqueel said, "that these things be blessed in Sekolah's hungry gaze. We've been brought here without harm."

"Thuur died," Viiklee reminded.

"By choosing to thwart Sekolah's plan for us," the malenti reminded her companion. As Laaqueel watched, the petrified man took on a different pallor, adding color to the bone-hue he wore. She touched him, finding his skin slightly pliable now. "It's working."

"How long will it take, honored one?" Saanaa asked.

"However long it takes, we'll be here," Laaqueel said. "We're not leaving."

Sudden movement sensed through her lateral lines woke Laaqueel, letting her know something had moved in front of her. She blinked her eyes open and searched for the glow lamp. Hours after the discovery of the petrified man, she'd assigned shifts, taking the first one herself. Saanaa and Viiklee had protested, not wanting to stay in the cold tomb. Laaqueel had ignored them. The cold might be uncomfortable, but it wasn't harmful. Still, she'd surprised herself by being able to sleep.

"Saanaa," the malenti called out.

There was no answer, and she couldn't see either of the two priestesses in the illumination given off by the glow lamp.

Laaqueel pushed herself to her feet and leaned toward the glow lamp attached to her trident. Earlier, the luminescence had almost filled the room. Now it covered less than half of it. The gel hadn't lost its ability to illuminate so quickly.

The preternatural chill vibrated through Laaqueel again. Her lateral lines registered more movement, but it didn't feel like either of the two priestesses. She was attuned to their physical motions and would know them even in the dark.

This was different.

She pushed the glow lamp toward the area where the petrified man had been. He was gone, but the light played over the twisted corpses of the two junior priestesses. They lay in pieces across the cavern floor, shredded by a large predator.

Disbelief paralyzed Laaqueel. They'd been killed while she slept-without her waking. She had no clue why she'd been spared. Sensing the movement again, she turned quickly to face it, bringing her hands up to defend herself.

A hand, hard as stone and cold as ice, battered through her defenses and locked around her throat. Hooked fingers painfully invaded her gill slits to further choke her.

The man's face illuminated gradually at the other end of that impossibly thin arm, like he'd allowed the light to finally touch him. He smiled, and it was the cruelest expression Laaqueel had ever seen.

His words touched her mind without being spoken. They were cold and hard, singing like gong notes inside her head, but came across as a whisper. You thought to sneak quietly in here and steal from me, didn't you, little thief, he accused. His words were heavily accented, lilting and almost musical.

Overpowered by the invasion in her mind, Laaqueel couldn't answer.

You couldn't understand the sacrifices I have made in order to insure my continued survival in that ineffectual mind you possess, the man said. Even now, wasted as I am, I am the most powerful being you have ever been in the presence of. Now, by my grace, you will spend your life that I spare so generously that you may serve me, and then only as long as you serve me well, little thief. Long have I been gone from this world, for thousands of years, and I will have back that which was stolen from me. You will give me succor, or I will see you sacrificed toward that end anyway. His single eye bored into hers, mesmerizing and horribly vacant at the same time.

Struggling against the glamour the man projected, the malenti fought, trying to break free of his grip. Her fingers and talons only scraped across the hard flesh, unable to break the skin. Her toe claws raked his chest but skittered harmlessly across.

He plucked an eyelash from his single eye, then said words unlike any Laaqueel had ever heard. The tattoos covering his body glowed with a dim, unearthly light. When it stopped, he held a thin sliver of a black quill in his free hand instead of an eyelash. He let her see it for just a moment, then his hand darted forward and he buried the quill in the tender flesh below her left breast. Laaqueel felt the quill penetrate her flesh, hot and cold at the same time. All resistance faded from her as her body went lax. None of her limbs were her own anymore. The man took his hand back from her flesh and gestured at the sliver's entry point. The malenti felt it move again, sliding more deeply into her body, coiling and nestling next to her heart like a poisonous worm. She stared at the man holding her so effortlessly with one hand.

I am Iakhovas, he told her in his deep, whispering voice. You will call me master.