Rising Tide Read Online Free Page A

fear, filled her. It manifested as a vibration that raced through her bones, chilling her to the marrow. Even the water she gulped through her mouth and washed through her gills felt tainted and heavy.
    The stones clicked and repeated the message. She felt the words in her lateral lines, then felt them through her webbed toes as the rock beneath her picked up the resonance even more strongly.
    Seek Out One Who Swims With Sekolah
    SEEK OUT ONE WHO SWIMS WITH SEKOLAH
    Seek Out One Who Swims With Sekolah
    SEEK OUT ONE WHO SWIMS WITH SEKOLAH
    The words drummed into her mind, demanding action.
    “Favored one,” Viiklee called. “The stones-“
    “I hear them,” Laaqueel replied. She knelt, dropping to her knees in the heated mud, finding it near scalding.
    “Look.” Saanaa pointed at the ribs of a giant lizard sticking up through the rock and mud.
    Laaqueel was familiar with the creature from her studies and from her time among the sea elves and surface dwellers, knowing it had come from the nearby land of Chult. The creature’s huge skull gleamed bright white against the dark water. A man’s bones, crushed and twisted, hung in the huge mouth between the teeth. Whatever had killed the giant lizard had been quick.
    Laaqueel listened to the savage beat of the command initiated by the whirling stones. She knelt in the mud, ignoring the heat, and bowed her head. She prayed with all her heart to Sekolah, knowing that the Great Shark seldom involved himself even in the affairs of the sahuagin, his children. He was a demanding and ungenerous god.
    Saanaa and Viiklee knelt and added their prayers with hers.
    SEEK OUT ONE WHO SWIMS WITH SEKOLAH!
    Though involved in her prayers, Laaqueel also heard the hollow echo of the sound played in the rock strata beneath her. Her lateral lines echoed with it as well. Despite the sea above and around her, she knew that an empty chamber lay below her, a pocket created by the cooled magma from a volcano. Her knowledge of Chult, the primordial land to the southwest of her current position was slim, but she knew about the massive quakes and volcanoes that had shaped and reshaped the land. It was possible that the bones of the great lizard in the mud nearby had gone down with a piece of what had been Chult at one time; Possibly it was from a small island that had existed in a chain around the major continent.
    The great lizard’s death had been quick, too quick for it to even finish the meal it had caught. An erupting volcano could cause such a death, the malenti knew. The fires and heat created by some volcanoes could strip the meat from a body, even sour and poison the water.
    The abyssal hills themselves were formed from volcanoes that had cooled. These dead volcanoes often left chambers and empty pockets located within them.
    Laaqueel rose to her feet and walked away from the spot where the stones whirled. The reflected cadence coming from the rock strata lessened with each step she took. Twenty paces away, she couldn’t feel it anymore.
    She returned to the stones, feeling the cadence grow again. She experimented in the other directions as well, finding it to be the same with all three. The stones had marked the spot.
    “Something lies below, honored one,” Saanaa whispered.
    “I know.” Laaqueel knelt in prayer again, taking the circlet of shark’s teeth from a tie to her harness at her waist. Like the singing bundles of her people, and the spinning ring of stones, the shark’s teeth had been knotted and tied to reproduce sounds that were a prayer in the sahuagin language.
    The shark’s teeth rattled as she shook them, crying out Sekolah’s name. She listened to the chant, pacing the words of her prayer with the cadence, growing faster as she summoned the power the Great Shark had given her. Feeling it reach its peak within her, she shoved her hand forward.
    The power surged through the water from her hand, leaving a wake of brightly colored bubbles. When it struck the rock, a hollow