Two sahuagin who'd been close to the one Pacys disemboweled were overcome by the bloodlust that fired their species. Their predatory instincts sent them after the easier prey of their own kind rather than the bard. Their jaws snapped and clicked, biting into the tender flesh released into the sea. They followed their dying comrade toward the seabed below.

Pacys moved the staff in his hands, keeping himself loose, but his head played the song that would be part of the fall of the Sharksbane Wall. It was not a song of victory. The music was a dirge, a song of defeat and death.

A dozen sahuagin surrounded the bard and the dwarf. Pacys swam toward Khlinat, putting his back to the dwarfs.

One of the sahuagin in front of the bard lunged forward.

"I've got 'im, songsmith," Khlinat said. "Mind you watch yerself."

The dwarf sliced his right axe across, shearing off two of the sahuagin's fingers. Before Khlinat could recover his balance, another sahuagin threw one of the barbed nets over him.

Khlinat bawled in rage and pain. He slid his fingers through the openings in the net and tried to pull it away, but succeeded only in sinking a dozen or more of the bone hooks into his own flesh.

Pacys ripped free the keen-edged, dark gray coral knife from his belt and raked the blade at the net strands, parting a handful of them.

A sahuagin swam across the top of the net, grabbed the loose line floating at the top of the seaweed hemp, and dragged Khlinat easily after it.

Another sahuagin swam up from under the net and rammed its trident into the old bard's right thigh. The sahuagin swam backward and yanked hard on the cord. The pain hit Pacys with blinding intensity.

Suddenly, a fan-shaped spray of bright red, gold, green, and red-violet lanced through the water. Pacys experienced a sudden vertigo, then the feeling passed and he only felt slightly dizzy. The sahuagin pulling him lost its bearing and started flailing helplessly in the water.