The Sea Devils Eye (25 page)

Jherek tried to imagine anything the whales would need him to champion for and couldn’t. Anything that could kill the creature he now walked on would be far too powerful for him to combat.

You have only just begun your revelations, Jherek Whalefriend. You do not yet know what you will be.

“Then tell me.””

I cannot.

For a moment, the young sailor faltered. Was this going to be another false trail? Another game played by the voice that had haunted him? Or had he been lured to his death this time?

Look to your heart for strength and you will find it, Jherek Whalefriend. You have always been much stronger than you have thought. This is one of the things Song Who

Brings Bright Rains has always told us of you.

“How did he know?”

With quiet determination, Jherek resumed his search. The sheer savagery that had torn the great whale continued unabated, and the young sailor knew the sahuagin had eaten their fill of the whale when the Taker had slain it.

He has always known. The whale bard that trained him told him, and the. story came from the whale bard before him.

“They knew about me?” Jherek couldn’t believe it.

They knew someone would come, the sapphire whale replied, and they knew you would be recognized when the time came.

Jherek struggled with what he was being told even as he skidded and slipped across the great whale’s corpse.

“How could they know?”

The whale bards of Seros have always been powerful in the ways of knowing. We choose to remain apart from most of those who live below and above because most ignore us. In times past, we have been ostracized for being harbingers, and even the surface folk hunted us for the ambergris. You arc a sailor, Jherek Whalefriend, and you have ties to the sea. You can feel in your heart the twists and turns of wind and sea. How can you know these things?

Some of the larger birds challenged Jherek as he advanced. The young sailor drew his cutlass and used the flat of the blade to knock the more aggressive ones aside. He didn’t want to kill them. The birds served a purpose in disposing of the body.

“Where is this thing I am supposed to find?”

You are looking for it. You will never find it that way. Close your eyes and feel for it as you felt for the whale song.

Doubt gnawed at Jherek’s thoughts. He felt as though he was in a dream, that he might wake up at any moment to find himself in a hammock aboard Steadfast. If he’d really believed what was going on, what he was taking part in, he didn’t know how he would have reacted. The numbness inside allowed him to remain focused.

The young sailor stopped and closed his eyes. It was hard to concentrate with all the angry cries of the birds around him.

Feel with your heart, Jherek Whalefriend. Your heart will always guide you if you listen to it.

Growing frantic with frustration, Jherek tried to relax. The birds distracted him, but the feel of the dead, rubbery flesh underfoot distracted him more. Still, with everything that had happened, how could he walk away?

He felt it. The small tugging pulled at the center of his chest. He concentrated on the sensation and slowly opened his eyes. Following the tug, he shoved his way through the large, ungainly birds, shooing them into the air.

Only a few feet farther on, he dropped to his knees, knowing whatever he searched for was below him. Water occupied pockets torn from the whale’s flesh, mixed with ropes of congealed blood. A few hermit crabs occupied the small pools, drawing back tightly into their borrowed shells at his approach.

“It’s inside the body,” the young sailor rasped.

Yes, the whale replied. That is where Song Who Brings Bright Rains carried it, as did the whale bards before him. You must cut it out.

Jherek surveyed the dead flesh, knowing the whale was long past any suffering. He raised the cutlass and prepared himself to drive it down into the corpse. His hands shook with the effort, then he lowered the blade.

“I can’t.”

The birds shrilled angrily all around him, fluttering through the air above. Feathers flew as the scavengers battled each other for access.

Place your hand on the spot where the gift is, the sapphire whale encouraged. Perhaps there is another way. The tie between it and you is very strong.

Hesitantly, given strength by the numbness and desire within him, Jherek placed his hand over the spot where he believed the gift to be. Vibrations tingled against his palm. For a moment he believed it was only the ocean rocking the great carcass.

Iridescent tendrils shot up from the whale flesh and encircled Jherek’s left wrist. Panicked, he tried to yank his arm back. On the third attempt, the tendrils still crawling around his forearm, a silvery mass of red, crimson, scarlet, yellow, and pink tore free of the whale’s body.

Do not fear, the sapphire whale encouraged. This is the gift-nothing more.

Unable to get away from the wriggling rainbow-colored mass shifting along his arm, Jherek stared at it. His reflection in the polished sheen stared back at him. The mass smoothed out, becoming a thick bracer that covered him from his wrist almost to his elbow. A protective cuff flared out over the back of his hand to his knuckles. The colors twisted in stripes, each leading to the other. Instead of feeling cold and heavy, the bracer felt warm and light, like another coat of skin though it was nearly an inch thick.

“What is this?” he asked.

Designs surfaced on the rainbow bracer, distinct whorls and loops that looked like nothing the young sailor had ever seen.

It is your gift, Jherek Whale friend. A gift that makes you one of our pod, a gift that will protect you in your direst need, and it. is a weapon that will serve you against the Taker. It is also the first step you must take on the path to your destiny.

Turning his attention from the shiny bracer to the sapphire whale, Jherek demanded, “What destiny?”

Again, it is not for me to say.

“I won’t accept that,” Jherek declared.

He pulled at the bracer, managing to get a finger down inside the tight fit along his arm. Even then he thought the bracer only allowed him to do that so he wouldn’t hurt himself. As he continued to dig, the bracer turned liquid under his questing finger-for just a heartbeat-and he pulled through. The bracer flowed back together almost instantly and was solid once more.

You have no choice.

“I will always have a choice,” Jherek said.

You came here. You are the one, the sapphire whale told him. You are the Taker’s Bane. Every choice you make will be right for you and for your destiny. There is no wrong way for you to go. You have only to accept the power and responsibility that will be yours.

“And if I don’t?”

That will be your choice, and it will be the right one.

Jherek looked around at the dead whale and the scavengers covering it. The birds grew bolder, hissing and crying out as they closed on him. He beat them away with the flat of his blade.

“I don’t understand,” Jherek said. “I won’t accept anything without understanding it first.”

You have accepted the bracer, and it has accepted you.

Jherek barely restrained his angry frustration. ‘T’here was no acceptance,” he claimed. “It attached itself to me.”

If it had not been time, if you had not been right, that would not have happened. Only the One may wear Iridea’s Tear.

Jherek held up his arm and the sunlight glinted off the rainbow bracer.

“Is this thing alive?” he asked.

No, but it will serve to help keep you living. It will shield you and be a weapon. As you become accustomed to it, you will find that you can shape it to fit your needs. Now be silent, for we must finish the Binding.

The sapphire whale lifted its true voice in song, an ululating chorus that echoed over the water. The other whales joined in and the prickly sensation of an approaching storm blanketed the area.

Questions flooded Jherek’s frenzied mind, but before he could ask the first one, blinding pain flared along his left arm where the bracer touched him. Unable to stand, he dropped to his knees, certain that someone had set his arm on fire.

He howled in agony and crawled toward the edge of the whale’s carcass, scaring birds from his path. As the song continued, he reached the edge of the corpse and thrust his arm into the seawater, sure the wound he was undoubtedly suffering would kill him-or cost him his arm at the very least.

After what seemed an interminable time, the pain lessened, then went away.

Jherek drew his arm from the water expecting it to be burned clear through the flesh down to the bone. Instead, his arm seemed perfectly healthy, as if nothing had ever happened. Even the multi-colored bracer was gone.

Not gone, the sapphire whale corrected. The Binding has been completed. You and Iridea’s Tear will never be separated as long as life remains within you.

Still on his knees, the young sailor held his bare arm up for the whale to see. Water droplets clung to his skin.

Iridea’s Tear will be your badge, Jherek Whalefriend. In time, you will come to be known by it. But there will be times that you won’t want to be known at all. The Binding allows this to happen. Think of the bracer upon your arm.

Jherek didn’t want to, but once the thought was in his mind he couldn’t help remembering the image.

Crimson, scarlet, yellow, and pink strands erupted from his skin. The strands quickly wove themselves into the bracelet, again running from his wrist to his elbow, the iridescent surface showing no fractures or lines.

The bracer can be easily hidden again when you wish.

Jherek willed the bracer to go away, but it remained upon his arm.

There is much you have to learn, the sapphire whale said. We will take time to teach you until you are ready to become.

“Become what?” Jherek persisted.

That which you are destined to be. Nothing more, nothing less.

XVIII

“To me!”

Laaqueel heard Iakhovas’s thundering battle cry over the din of war even as she twisted from the path of an attacking ixitxachitl. The malenti priestess swept the barbed net from her hip and threw it at her attacker as it spun gracefully around in the ocean.

The weighted net flared out and enveloped the ixitxachitl, sinking barbed hooks into the creature’s flesh. It screamed in rage and pain. Even as the net tangled its wings, Laaqueel drove her trident deep into its body. The ixitxachitl shuddered through its death throes.

“Most Sacred One, let me be of assistance.”

Turning, Laaqueel found one of the sahuagin warriors from the outer seas swimming toward her, his movements already registering on her lateral lines. Bleeding from several wounds inflicted by the ixitxachitl fangs, the sahuagin warrior offered her another net. Bits of flesh clung to the coral and steel barbs woven into the strands.

“I will strip the net from this one,” the warrior offered. “King Iakhovas will have need of you. The demon rays are attempting to rally their forces.”

Laaqueel accepted the net and swam for Iakhovas. She gazed around the ocean floor, studying the buildings that comprised the ixitxachitl community of Ilkanar. Ageadren was the closest ixitxachitl city, but Ilkanar was an outpost town. The tallest structure in the community was the temple, built of coral and stones by the locathah, merrow, and koalinth slaves the ixitxachitls kept.

Iakhovas stood at the forefront of the invading sahuagin forces, ripping apart his foes with trident and claws. Corpses littered the city, including ixitxachitls and the slaves who hadn’t quickly chosen sides. Iakhovas’s wrath was unforgiving. As the invading army rolled through the resistance put up by the demon rays, the slaves scattered in full revolt, driven before sahuagin who would kill them if they tried to flee.

The oceans’ currents darkened with blood.

Even as she drifted down and took her place at Iakhovas’s side, he glanced up at her. Gold gleamed in his eye socket.

“Ah, little malenti, come to join the celebration?” he said, holding a bloody chunk of dead ixitxachitl out to her.

“I came to fight at your side.”

A cruel smile twisted his lips in both his human and sahuagin guises as they flickered back and forth in Laaqueel’s vision.

“As you can see,” he said, “there are many who believe in me these days-many ready to fight at my side. I searched for believers, little malenti, and they have found me.”

Feeling the spongy surface below the layer of sand at her feet, Laaqueel drove her trident down. Blood spewed up and the ixitxachitl crouched in hiding there flapped in pain. The malenti priestess slit its belly with a talon and watched it swim away to die.

Sharks and sahuagin finned by overhead, chasing all that fled before them that weren’t of their kind. It was a whirling maelstrom of slaughter, a true vision of sahuagin power and savagery the like of which Laaqueel had never seen before. By rights, by her heritage, she should have been in bliss-or in a blood frenzy as so many of her brethren were-but she wasn’t.

“What about you, little malenti?” Iakhovas asked. “Why do you fight?”

“I live to serve you,” she answered. Fear filled her as she gazed at him, knowing he had the power to see through her and the lies she told.

“But do you believe?” Iakhovas asked. “Do you believe in me, or do you fight only to save your own life?”

Laaqueel gazed around them, aware of the fighting taking place. Sahuagin invaded buildings on either side of the thoroughfare, yanking ixitxachitls out and putting them to death where they found them. The slaves died as well. There was no rescue.

Even though the temple stood in the city, very few ixitxachitl priests stood against them. The sahuagin priestesses fought them spell for spell and emerged victorious even if they had to swim over the bodies of those who’d gone before them.

“I believe,” Laaqueel replied, “as best as I am able.”

She waited, thinking he was going to strike her down where she stood. Over the past few days, he’d been distant from her while plotting his intricate conspiracies.

“In Sekolah or in me?” he asked.