The Coral Kingdom

18

Tristan looked up in amazement. Moments earlier, he had noticed a shadow across the emerald pane over his head, but when he saw the outline of a northman longship there, he thought he was losing his mind. The ship heeled over, presenting her beam to the window, showing a hull filled with humans!

Then Tristan saw his wife and his daughter, faces he had forgotten in the haze of his drugging, but that now poured back with the full force of memory-and he was certain that he had gone mad.

"Robyn! Alicia!" His voice came out in a strangled gasp. Tristan stood up, ignoring the chaos in the room behind him, and reached toward the high window with his one good hand, imploring.

The tentacle grasped his ankle before he saw the giant squid's attack. A powerful force jerked the king backward, toward the floor of the throne room. Never had water terrified him as much as it did now, when the full wealth of his life came flooding back.

Desperately Tristan kicked at the tentacle around his leg, chopping with his dagger, realizing the blade was too dull to have much effect. He cast the useless weapon aside and struck with his bare hand and even the blunt end of his wrist, yet his resistance made no difference. Irresistible strength jerked him from the niche and into the water. Tristan barely captured a breath before the monster dragged him below the surface.

The king ignored the pain flaming through his arm and focused his hatred and rage against the massive beast that sucked him under the water. The creature seemed full worthy of that hatred. Something unnatural lurked in those murderous red eyes, flaming like coals to either side of a beaklike mouth. Smaller tentacles flailed around the beast's horrid maw, but the two massive tendrils securing Tristan had no need of help.

A figure swam before him, and Tristan saw Marqillor approaching the squid. The merman wielded a large trident, acquired from a vanquished scrag, and now he shoved the weapon with full force into the giant head, flexing his powerful tail in a surge that pressed the tines deep into the creature's monstrous body. The squid twisted away, thrashing at Marqillor with a tentacle, movement enough to allow Tristan to fling his head and torso out of the water, gasping a breath of air before the monster once again pulled him down.

Other mermen swarmed around the monstrous beast, striking at the squid with whatever they held, sometimes with merely their hands and tails. Tristan kicked with all his might, struggling to break free. He cursed the mutilation of his left arm, feeling that if only he had two good hands, he would be able to defeat the beast. Even in his oxygen-starved delirium, however, he recognized the thought as madness. The monster was too huge, too mighty to be vanquished by a man and certainly not here, in its natural environment. Finally the air exploded from Tristan's lungs and the fight abandoned his body. It required too great an effort to hold onto his breath.

But then he felt strong arms around him. As his mouth opened reflexively to gasp in water that would choke him, he felt a merman's face before him, and instead of water, he inhaled a life-saving lungful of air.

The merman who saved him paid with his own life, Tristan saw, as the writhing squid wrapped the fellow in looping tentacles, whipping him toward that crushing beak. Other fishfolk tried to save their comrade, but it was too late. The mouth crunched over the victim's midriff, and the sound of breaking bones snapped horribly through the water. The dying merman's mouth gaped, emitting a cloud of thick blood into the water.

Once again Tristan managed to work free, pulling himself to the surface and splashing into the niche, finally, as he watched for tentacles. Alone and unarmed, of course, there was little he could do to defend himself if the squid determined to have him.

But at least, he vowed, the monster wouldn't get him without a fight.

"This way!" Hanrald cried, driving his huge sword through the body of a scrag that swam in his path. The human dove into the narrow passage, closely followed by Brigit, the sister knight stabbing another pursuing sea troll as she guarded their rear.

They darted around a corner in the passageway, and Brigit stopped to pull a metal lever protruding from the wall. Immediately a large rock settled from the ceiling to the floor behind them, pushing bubbling water out of the way and solidly blocking pursuit-but also barring their return along the same route.

The knights paused to catch their breath.

"That worked even better than I thought it would-our diversion," Brigit gasped, flashing a wan smile. Though dark water pressed around them, thanks to Keane's spells they were able to talk and breath as easily as they did on the surface.

"How many were chasing us?" Hanrald wondered aloud, remembering the frantic minutes of pursuit, the fleeing fighters just barely able to outdistance a whole swarm of swimming monsters. All of them, he thought with satisfaction, had been distracted from their original target, the Princess of Moonshae.

The pair had battled their way through a savage cordon of sea troll guards, finding that the enchantment of the spell gave them great freedom of movement. They could slash and parry as if only air blocked their blades. Thus their superior skill outclassed the scrags, who, though they fought in their natural environment, employed little in the way of tactical finesse. Some of the monsters didn't even carry weapons, and those who did used them primarily for thrusting-easy attacks to parry for a skilled swordsman or swordswoman.

Also, the two knights found that they could run at very nearly full speed, thanks to the effects of the spell of free action-their feet found solid purchase on the sea floor, and the water did not obstruct their forward progress.

"I think we diverted a hundred, at least-maybe more," Brigit guessed. "Enough, I hope, to let the others get into the palace." How they would get away again, with the full wrath of the Coral Kingdom aroused against them, remained an unaddressed problem.

"They're still out there," said Hanrald, leaning his ear to the stone. Sounds of prying and scraping came clearly through the water, though as yet the barrier showed no willingness to budge.

"Let's hope they don't break it down for a few minutes," groaned Hanrald, exhausted from the long minutes of battle and flight. They had raced along the circular wall around the undersea palace until they reached this labyrinth of towers and tunnels. Now, in one of those tunnels, they saw the rock that separated them from their enemies start to wobble.

"How long before we should get back to the ship?" Hanrald mused.

Brigit looked at him and shrugged. "Maybe we ought to move on," she suggested. Keane had told them that the spells had a very finite time limit, and neither of them had to stretch his imagination to come up with a picture of what would happen when the magical protection wore off.

Hanrald started down the corridor at an easy lope. Brigit easily kept pace as the passageway curved through a long descent. Abruptly it ended, opening onto a balcony carved into the side of a deep undersea chasm. The far side of the chasm stretched as a sheer cliff no more than a hundred feet away.

"They're coming after us," reported Brigit, spotting the swimming forms of several scrags following them down the winding tunnel.

"Let's go!" shouted Hanrald, raising his sword in one fist and taking Brigit's hand in the other. The pair leaped from the balcony, kicking their feet and swimming with their hands. The force of their jump carried them far from their start, floating through the water like birds soaring through the air. Far below, the base of the chasm darkened to a midnight black-and then they were past, landing on a balcony across the canyon much like the one they had jumped from. Without hesitating, they darted through a doorway into another submarine passage, still racing forward.

Abruptly they came into a large room, domed like many others they had seen. A dozen tunnels opened in the walls of the chamber, and an equal number of diamond-shaped crystal panels spiraled around the ceiling.

"Which way?" wondered Hanrald, at a loss.

"We can't go back," Brigit informed him after a quick look behind. "We'd better move on, quick!"

Hanrald turned to the right and charged down one of the passageways. Immediately a large scrag loomed before him. The creature jabbed with a trident from a darkened niche in the side of the corridor. Surprised, the knight grunted as the weapon pierced his rib cage. Hanrald staggered back in mute astonishment, watching the water around him begin to redden.

Brigit whirled past him, disemboweling the scrag in one vicious slash. The creature floated to the side, but a quick look back showed her that their swimming pursuers were closing in rapidly.

Beside her, Hanrald's eyelids drooped, and his motionless body drifted toward the floor. As gently as possible, the elfwoman nudged the knight into the alcove that had concealed the scrag. Then she turned to face the pursuing sea trolls, deflecting the lead scrag's harpoon and splitting his face down the middle.

More of the monsters swam forward, but the sister knight sliced and slashed so skillfully that each of the beasts felt the edge or the tip of her blade. Warily they backed away from the elfwoman's silver sword, content to hover in the passageway beyond, blocking escape to the right and left but making no immediate move to attack.

Hanrald's eyes fluttered open. The knight's consciousness returned slowly, belaboredly, mainly because of an awareness of crippling pain. Each breath he drew slashed like a hot iron through his chest. He tried to focus his vision on something, anything.

He noticed a brightening of the shadows in the back of their niche. He forced himself to a sitting position, looking closer, increasingly hopeful with what he saw.

"Brigit!" he said, intending to bark commandingly and surprised that his voice came forth as a mere feeble gasp. Nevertheless, the elf woman turned around after checking to see that the scrags remained well back from her blade. "Look-stairs. They must lead to one of those towers above the palace."

The sister knight saw that a tightly spiraling stairway led steeply upward from their alcove. "Let's go!" she exclaimed. "We can try to get the attention of the ship from there!"

Hanrald smiled warmly, grasping one of her hands in his. "A good plan," whispered the earl, "for you. You'll have to leave me here to distract them. You make your escape-get back to the ship!"

Brigit smiled and said nothing. Instead, she leaned over and kissed the human knight on the lips.

"Up! Climb, dammit. I can hold them, but not forever!" groaned the man, struggling to sit up and look around.

"Shhhh," whispered Brigit, holding his head in her hands. Hanrald had lost a lot of blood, but she reduced its flow by pressing a cloth against the wound. "In a little while we'll go together."

Hanrald shook his head, wincing in pain at the movement.

"Don't argue," urged the elf. "Just rest for a moment."

Hanrald looked around wildly, as if he had to change her mind. Then he slumped backward, relaxing with a wan smile. "We took on a good lot of the buggers, didn't we?" said the earl with a low chuckle. "And we led 'em on quite a chase as well."

Brigit looked back into the corridor. She counted at least a dozen scrags, but all of them floated well back from the alcove, having learned the painful lesson taught by the elfwoman's sword.

"We make a good team," she said, turning back to Hanrald. She was horrified by the pallor of his skin, the distant expression in his eyes. Don't die! she urged him silently.

Suddenly, with surprising strength, Hanrald sat up and looked into the sister knight's eyes. "I love you, Brigit Cu'Lyrran!" he pledged, and his own eyes were serious and sane. "And never did I think to be saying that to one who was as good with a sword as myself!"

She smiled and kissed him, wanting to say the same thing to him, but somehow she was unable to speak. The thought, after all these centuries, that she would come to love a human seemed to her like some grand joke of the gods if she thought about it too much.

"Come on," she whispered, after several more minutes. "Let's climb those stairs."

In her mirror, Deirdre watched the desperate approach of the longship. She saw the splendors of the Coral Kingdom, of the Kyrasti, and the savage defenders swarming out to battle for their home. Her inspections drifted downward, and she noticed with interest the presence of her father, the king. The sight of his peril brought a strange thrill to her heart.

Yet her attention focused most intently on the body of the giant squid-or, more accurately, on the corrupt soul encased within that grotesque body. She wanted to strike out at Malawar, to punish him further for the hurts, real and imaginary, he had inflicted upon her. Desperately, grievously, she wanted to return those injuries a thousandfold. And at the same time, she wanted to use him, to exploit his destruction for her own gain.

Deirdre grew more and more fascinated by the avatar of evil, watching the huge body flex through the submarine chamber, thrashing in battle with lesser creatures. Partly her desire was for vengeance, but in greater part it was a lust, a craving for the power that the great beast contained within its unnatural form. Power that could belong to Deirdre, once she prepared the means of mastering it.

Yet, still, she lacked a weapon.

"Down!" commanded Brandon. He pointed, in case Knaff misunderstood his intent, but the bow of the longship already dipped in response to the helmsman's touch. Below, the huge dome of the palace rose through the emerald depths. For the time being, the Princess of Moonshae was free of immediate enemies. Except for the scrags who had charged away in pursuit of Hanrald and Brigit, the monsters who had resisted their initial approach were all dead. Even so, the air in the boat remained dense and fetid. Sweat rolled from each crew member in steaming rivulets.

"Hold on!" the captain shouted in warning. "We're going to ram!"

Alicia clung to the mast, her sword in her hand and her eyes on the huge crystal pane before the Princess of Moonshae's bow. The longship rocked downward as Knaff pressed on the tiller, and then she lunged ahead, the proud figurehead with the gleaming silver helm driving toward the smooth, transparent surface.

The crash nearly tore Alicia loose from her perch, but she held tightly to the stout timber, staring in shock as the emerald plane shattered. A great bubble of air erupted around them as seawater plunged into the space of the huge undersea dome. The longship followed the flood, the narrow bow plummeting through the aperture into the dome. Ten feet of the hull followed, and then the widening gunwales wedged firmly against the sides of the shattered window.

A gangly figure tumbled past Alicia, and she saw the flailing form of her changestaff spilling like a felled tree toward the bow. Branches thrashed out as the thing tumbled past the figurehead, and then the trailing limbs wrapped around the wooden prow. The tree being arrested its fall at the last possible minute, an instant before it tumbled into the maelstrom below.

White water flooded past them, thundering in a cascading torrent into the vast, circular chamber, but still the enchanted blanket of air over the longship maintained its protective presence.

Alicia searched desperately below, seeking her father through a chaos of white water and flailing bodies. Then she saw Tristan in the grip of a writhing snake. She watched in horror, screaming unconsciously, as the king disappeared beneath the surface, and at the same time, she made out the huge creature thrashing there. Appalled, she understood that the thing grasping her father was not a snake but a mere appendage of a much larger monstrosity.

Tristan flailed back to the surface, grasping about with his hand, pounding his arm against the tendrils around him. He reached for something, anything, but nothing met his grip, and once more he vanished.

Robyn dove forward, and once again Alicia saw the sleek form of white and black, the whale's teeth and the powerful, driving flukes. The killer whale dove at the squid, and her wide jaws clamped around the widest tentacle, near the base of the writhing limb. Both sea creatures flailed through the great room, and Alicia saw her father flung free from the squid's grasp.

A huge scrag swam out of the shadows, a long trident extended before him. The beast drove the tines of the weapon into Robyn's flank, and the killer whale twisted reflexively, releasing the squid with an involuntary flexing of her powerful jaws.

The tentacled horror dove away at high speed, coming to rest in a murky cloud at the bottom of the huge chamber. Alicia realized that it had released the cloud, providing its own cover as it retreated from the fight.

But now another wave of sahuagin and scrags attacked the trapped Princess of Moonshae, swarming from the surrounding towers and walls as if they had gathered their strength for this massive rush. In the chamber, Alicia saw things that looked like humans, until she realized that they had huge fishlike tails. Mermen! Several of the aquatic beings swam across the room to circle protectively before Tristan.

Water continued to pour into the cavernous dome through the shattered window, and consequently the air pocket shrank steadily, raising the level of the choppy surface. The High King splashed to one of the niches in the wall, but soon the rising sea forced him out. Swimming, he started through the turbulence toward the Princess of Moonshae's prow, the proud figurehead jutting through the ceiling, now no more than a dozen feet above him.

"Father!" cried Alicia, scrambling down to the bow, holding on to benches and sailing lines to keep her balance on the steeply inclined surface. She barely caught herself at the figurehead, holding tightly to the stout timber as she leaned over the rail. Beside her, she saw the lanky form of her changestaff, also clinging precariously to the prow.

Desperately the princess looked around, gathering a coil of rope and then searching for Tristan's head, but the king once more vanished into the frothing turbulence.

Then she saw two of the mermen and her father's bearded face between theirs. Slowly they made their way toward the longship, circled protectively by the great killer whale.

"Here!" Alicia shouted, throwing the line and securing the end around the trunk of her changestaff.

Then the water bubbled around the trio, and Alicia screamed as one of the mermen rose from the brine, the tines of a scrag trident emerging from his chest. Blood turned the water pink as the brave creature perished.

The lashing limb of a monstrous tentacle suddenly whipped through the water again, and Alicia saw the squid shoot up from the floor. Tristan shouted something, then vanished with shocking suddenness. The princess saw a flash of black and white skin, a tall dorsal fin, and then the powerful killer whale disappeared after the monster.

"No!" cried Alicia, shaking her head in anguish. Then, before she stopped to think, she drew her sword and dove headlong into the water, aiming the blade like a harpoon at the place she had last seen the great squid.

She felt slick, leathery skin before her and drove the blade into the monster's body, feeling it lurch away from the force of the blow. Opening her eyes, Alicia saw nothing but bubbles, but then a hand came into view-a human hand! She reached out and grabbed it, kicking upward and raising her head above the surface in time to gulp one precious gasp of air.

Something wrapped around her leg, and she chopped with her sword, still holding on to the hand. For a moment, she glimpsed Tristan's face as the king broke from the water and drank in a breath, then father and daughter plunged below, caught in the nest of snakelike tendrils.

Alicia saw the darting forms of mermen around them, the black and white skin of the great druid nearby, and she drove her keen blade again and again into the tough body that seemed to drag her and her father ever deeper into the flooded chamber.

And then abruptly they broke free. She swam upward in a frenzy, feeling her father kicking beside her. Just when she thought they must certainly drown, their faces broke from the water only a few feet from the longship's bow.

"Here!" The frantic voice belonged to Keane, who threw a rope toward them. Alicia and Tristan seized the line and hung on for dear life. "Pull!" cried the mage as a dozen crewmen scrambled to help him.

They strained against the weight of the pair in the water, but the footing in the steeply canted hull proved treacherous. The king and princess started to rise from the water, but then several crewmen slipped and they plunged back into the maelstrom.

"Help!" cried Alicia, choking on spray and turbulence, knowing that her friends already were doing everything in their power to aid them.

Yet one heard that call and answered. The gangly form of the changestaff had slowly pulled itself back into the hull, though several of its limbs still firmly grasped the figurehead. Now the tree extended a long knotty limb down toward the two Ffolk in the water. Alicia and Tristan grabbed at the branch, clinging tightly as the tree being slowly lifted them free of the water, toward the tenuous safety of the longship's hull.

Aided by the frantically straining Keane, in another moment the pair tumbled over the rail of the ship, collapsing in the bow as water continued to thunder downward around them.

"Break her free, men!" shouted Brandon, chopping at one of the frames where the ship was braced into the broken window. Pry bars, axes, and hammers all crunched against the coral surface of the dome, chipping and bashing in a desperate effort to enlarge the entrance.

"The pressure's too great!" Keane shouted over the thunderous cascade. Brandon saw that the water pouring into the dome held them firmly in the gap.

Spray splashed over Alicia and she whirled in surprise, seeing the sleek killer whale leaping from the water that now surged nearly onto the longship's figurehead. The great mammal teetered on the gunwale for a moment, and then the High Queen of the Ffolk tumbled into the hull beside them. Once again in human form, Robyn knelt beside her husband, tears of relief glowing in her eyes.

The pounding cascade slowed as finally the chamber beneath them was fully flooded. They saw no sign of the squid as the crew again pried against the frame jammed around the vessel's bow. Abruptly the Princess of Moonshae lurched. A chunk of the dome wall fell away, releasing the longship but twisting her hull with brutal, unforgiving force. Planks splintered along the keel, and water exploded through the gap, quickly swirling around Alicia and Tristan as they tried to scramble to their feet.

Slowly the longship began to float upward, toward the surface and the sun. Marqillor and his surviving comrades swam out the broken window, diving for the shelter of the coral ridge below. Water continued to flood the hull in a roaring cascade through a gap at least twelve feet long and more than a hand-span wide.

Grimly Knaff took his position at the helm, and the Princess began to move forward, trailing a bubbling wake at the stern. Her bow rose slightly, but so much water sloshed in a large wave toward the stern that the helmsman had to quickly bring the ship back to level. Dank air stung their eyes and caused their lungs to strain for breath as the ship wallowed through the depths.

"We've got to get Brigit and Hanrald!" Alicia shouted to Brandon, who stood near Knaff in the stern.

"Where are they?" demanded the captain, peering through the turbulent seas. They could see no sign of the knightly pair.

"Look!" Tavish called in alarm as a giant shadow moved through the broken window, emerging from the dome to follow them into the sea. The blunt body, the long tentacles-all were dolefully familiar.

Yet even that fact paled against the significance of the ruptured bow. Water gushed around their knees, rising higher every second.

It seemed clear to them all that the Princess of Moonshae was fatally breached.

Through Deirdre's mirror, Talos observed the escape of the human prisoner, and vengeance against his servant's failure crystallized into determination in his evil, immortal mind. His presence, always a shadow when the princess used the crystal, now formed into a conscious thought-knowledge that he projected into the young woman's mind.

"His name. ." came the voice of Talos. Deirdre stiffened, frightened yet at the same time intensely thrilled. She felt the touch from beyond her world, beyond her existence, and she knew that a source of great power reached her.

"His name is Coss-Axell-Sinioth."

The voice faded, but Deirdre's attention had already fixed on a plan-a plan that she could at last put into action.

Finally, now, she had her weapon.