Trillhalla remained in the water but allowed her shoulders and arms to emerge as she looked at her visitors curiously. "It took great courage and great skill to reach our shores. It's quite a remarkable achievement, you know."
"There was no other way," replied the princess with a shrug. It was hard now for her to remember the tension and fear of their harrowing voyage.
"Your father is a great man. You must love him very much," noted the sea elf.
Alicia looked at her in surprise. Trillhalla spoke with a frankness that disconcerted the human woman. "That's true, I suppose. I–I just had to do something as long as there was any hope of success. I guess we all did."
"I wish you fortune for the remainder of your voyage."
The talk of their mission made Alicia restless again, and she sat up. "When do you think the supplies will get here?" asked the princess.
"Soon now, I should think," Trillhalla explained. "Palentor was placed in charge of their acquisition, and he's a fast and forthright worker."
"Even to aid those he despises?" asked Brigit wryly.
"He is a loyal servant of his queen," Trillhalla replied. "And besides, do not judge him too harshly. He commands the sea elves who patrol this portion of the shoreline. He was quite mortified that your craft made it so close to land."
As if to punctuate the sea elf's explanation, a long canoe came into view down the water channel that connected the grotto to the sea. A scowling Palentor sat in the bow, supervising the dark-haired elves who paddled the craft. The hull of the vessel, Alicia could see, was piled high with stacks of lumber and materials.
The male sea elf, they soon saw, rode the first of four great boats, each wider and heavier than the canoe that had carried the visitors to the Summer Palace. And each contained supplies necessary to repair the bruised longship-barrels of tar, iron for nails, even a bellows to fan Knaff's makeshift forge.
The females went to join Brandon and the others at the grotto's small dock, where the first canoe drew alongside. The boats were so big that they could only be unloaded one at a time, but eager northmen quickly formed a chain of workers, passing the crates and barrels from the elven craft to the work area, where Knaff supervised their organization and placement.
"You must be finished within five days!" barked the sea elf, standing straight before the prince of Gnarhelm and meeting him with his almond-shaped eyes.
"The queen said we could take as long as we needed!" objected Alicia, drawing the sea elf's angry eyes to herself.
He didn't withdraw from her gaze, but Palentor seemed surprised when the human woman stood up to his aggressive stare. Finally he blinked and cleared his throat. "I shall request independent confirmation of that fact. Your presence here is a disruption to our defenses. You place this entire coast in jeopardy!"
"I thought you said we were the first ship to make it this far. What do you guard against, then?" demanded Alicia, heating up to the confrontation.
"The surface of the sea may be blocked," replied the sea elf, his tone sincere, "and the cyclones may raise a barrier into the sky. But we have no control as to what passes beneath the surface of the sea, and it is the sahuagin and their foul kin, the scrags, who are our most persistent enemies."
"It's a relief to hear that humans don't fill that role all the time!" Alicia retorted. "Think-you've just named our enemies as well as your own!"
Palentor flushed, his mottled skin growing dark green. His lips stretched taut across his mouth, and for a second, Alicia wondered if he would strike at her. Her own fists clenched, reacting to the fury of his gaze. But then his expression softened-albeit minimally.
"It's true. Though we have prepared all our lives for the human menace, the only battles we have fought have been against the creatures of the deep."
"Then can't you see that we're not the enemy?" the princess demanded.
Suddenly Palentor's gaze narrowed, and Alicia felt uncomfortable as she saw his eyes boring into her. When he next spoke, it was with passion, not anger. "But for the elves. . don't you see? Evermeet is everything! You humans will claim all the great continents eventually-Toril, Maztica, Kara-Tur. . The elven populations in those places are shrinking, have been for thousands of years."
His voice dropped, but the princess sensed that he really did want her to see. "We must keep Evermeet secure, else our race will die out."
"I understand," she replied sincerely, and for the first time, she started to grasp the millennia-long conflict that had driven the elves to this island. "Please, Palentor-realize that we are not a threat to your island. We're grateful for the help of your queen.. and yourself, but when we leave we won't be coming back."
"But others-"
"We won't tell people how we got here! And no other ship or captain could make it through your cyclones!" the princess argued, with a touch of exasperation.
Palentor looked at Brandon with a hint of respect mingling with the constant suspicion in his eyes. The sea elf turned back to Alicia, his expression hardening to its familiar lines. "I must see to the debarking of cargo," he said stiffly, turning back to the great canoes.
But the princess was gratified when she looked into those green, almond-shaped eyes, because for the first time, besides the anger and suspicion, she saw a hint of doubt.
The prisoner's mind continued to grow as his body purged itself of the memory-suppressing drug. He recalled things-images and sensations-but still had difficulty attaching names to those memories. He knew that he had been a king and sensed that this was a great thing, but he couldn't name his kingdom or remember his subjects.
The loss of his hand had grown in his mind, becoming more than a wound. It was an affront, an attack against his pride that he could not let stand. He had no clear memory of who had cut it off, but when that memory returned, someone-or something-would die. The man knew that he had killed before, and he remembered that killing was not a pleasant task, but sometimes a necessary one.
Most tantalizing of his recent memories was the image of a woman-a person of exquisite beauty and great tenderness. Her hair, long and black and silky, he recalled particularly. His mind drifted to images of that hair, of his hand stroking it, of his woman lying in a sun-speckled field of heather, with birds soaring above and towers of white piercing the sky near them.
It was an idyllic sensation, and for a moment, the recollection swept him along, warming his heart and even bringing an unconscious smile to his face. Then the memory dissipated and he looked around at his dank cell, and once again the rage began to swell.
This fury of his became a constant companion. It drove him to restless periods of pacing when he stalked the confines of his surprisingly large cage. He stared at the pool of water that served as the entrance. Where did it lead? How far did it go? The other features of his chamber provided even less promise. The dark green windows, slanting toward the top of the domed ceiling, swept overhead well beyond his reach. The lump of coral that served as bed, bench, and table was the only other object in the circular room.
Gradually he had noticed a pattern of darkness alternated by dim illumination through the panels in the ceiling, a cycle that seemed to approximate day and night. Once each cycle, shortly after the panels grew light-morning? — a monstrous creature brought him bare sustenance. The creature had the scaly skin of a fish, with thick strands of hair hanging across its scalp, and sharp teeth and claws.
The monster always emerged from the water quickly, surprising the man. The beast rose onto two legs, looming high over his head, glaring down at him with pale, emotionless eyes as it filled a shell cup with fresh water and placed a bowl of fishy gruel beside the pool. Then, with a shake of its bristling head, it dove back into the pool. And every time this jailer departed, the human king found himself staring at the rippled surface of the water. Where did it go?
Of course, his memory couldn't help him there, and to this end, he decided to explore. Water held no inherent fear for him. He knew that he was a proficient, if not a great, swimmer. He
broke the surface in a dive, swimming through darkness for several seconds. Immediately, however, he realized that the loss of his hand created a severe handicap, rendering his swimming awkward and clumsy. Desperately he turned around, kicking hard to return to his cell, gasping in near panic.
For a full day, he avoided returning to the water, but after his jailer again brought him his miserable food, the man knew he had no choice but to try again. On this attempt, however, he relied mostly on his feet to propel him, while he felt along the dark passage before him with his hand and wrist.
Several times he repeated the dive, swimming carefully along the tunnel away from the pool. Each time his confidence grew, and he compensated more and more efficiently for his wound, mostly by kicking. He soon found that the tunnel branched, no more than forty feet from his cell, into three other passages. All of the corridors were water-filled from floor to ceiling-at least, at the place where they met the other submerged corridors.
At first, the man swam no farther than this intersection, returning to his cell and gasping for air as he emerged. But he found, as he practiced, that he swam a greater distance each time. His lungs expanded with the rigorous discipline of increasingly prolonged dives, until he explored some length of all three tunnels.
Finally, sensing that his guard would soon return with his food and drink, he paused to rest and consider what he had learned.
One tunnel, the straight route, continued to descend as far as he could follow, and he had nearly drowned the time he followed that passage a hundred feet past the intersection. The tunnels to the right and left, however, began a gentle upward slope after the junction, similar to the approach to the prisoner's cell.
It seemed a reasonable assumption, then, that similar cells might lie to the right and left. Would they be filled with air, like his? He had no way of knowing.
He fully understood the risks. He had already gone as far as he could down each tunnel while still making it back to his cell. If he went farther, he would have no choice but to go forward and either find air at the end of the tunnel or perish.
The decision was easy.
The prisoner spent some time in quiet contemplation. Somewhere he had learned to do this, to empty bis mind and allow his body to fuel itself for maximum efficiency. In a flash, he remembered: The black-haired woman had taught him. His skill had never approached hers, for she was … she had been … a druid.
Robyn!
In the instant of recognition, his mind filled with joy, followed by nearly intolerable pain. He groaned aloud as memories came flooding back-delightful memories, each one of which only increased his anguish. He was here, she was. .
Callidyrr! The Moonshaes!
"I am Tristan Kendrick!" he shouted at his unseen jailers. "I am the High King of the Ffolk, and you shall not have me!" Pictures of two small girls-no, they were young women-came into his mind. One was fair, the other dark like her mother. They were his daughters!
Roughly he pushed the tidal wave of memory aside. He focused on the task before him, studying the water, forcibly quelling his emotions. His heartbeat fell, pulsing slower and slower. Tristan breathed deeply, without thinking, filling his lungs with air, forcing extra oxygen into his blood, grimly determined to press forward to the last gasp of his life.
He dove into the pool, cutting the surface like an arrow and allowing his momentum to propel him halfway down the tunnel leading from his cell. When he kicked, he moved his legs slowly, moving through the dark water with a minimum of exertion. Feeling the wall beside him, he traced the path to the four-way intersection. Here he veered to the right.
The tunnel rose slowly, and he allowed his buoyancy to account for some of his speed, though he still kicked gently. Onward through Stygian darkness he swam, feeling a rough wall with his right hand. Occasionally his back would scrape the abrasive ceiling of the tunnel. The pain he didn't mind so much, but the sensation that he couldn't swim upward he found starkly terrifying.
Tristan swam without thinking, slowly draining the air that filled his lungs to bursting. Pain wrapped steel bands around his chest, slowly constricting until a red haze swam before his eyes. His throat tightened, and the urge to gasp for air swiftly approached irresistible proportions.
How long had he been swimming? At least an hour, it seemed to his oxygen-starved brain. More than that, screamed his lungs, his tortured chest that could no longer supply the needs of his body.
Then abruptly the wall to his right ended. Tristan flailed mindlessly as the depleted air exploded from his lungs, but as he thrashed, he realized that rock no longer pressed against his back. Desperately driving himself upward with the last reserves of his strength, he felt his hand, and then his face and torso, break from the water and burst into an enclosed cavern that was filled with air.
He coughed and choked as he dragged himself onto a dry stone slab beside the surface of water. Dimly his awareness returned, and the king realized that he was in another cell, one very much like his own. The same dim green illumination trickled through the ceiling.
It was only when he stopped gasping that he looked up and saw that the room was occupied. He saw a man's face staring at him-a thin, emaciated visage with great dark circles under his eyes. The fellow was seated, chained to a wall, Tristan saw, with shackles around each of his wrists and his arms held spread-eagled to the sides.
The chained prisoner regarded him impassively. When the fellow shifted slightly, Tristan noticed something odd about his legs, and then his jaw dropped in shock.
The man had no legs-but not because he had lost them in an accident. In fact, his body below the waist had never borne a resemblance to humanity. It was a single, powerful limb, covered with green scales and ending in a broad-finned tail.
The creature, Tristan realized, was a merman.
For six days, the men of Gnarhelm labored on the hull of the longship, and gradually her bruises disappeared, her scuffs and scrapes vanished beneath fresh timber and tar. The Princess of Moonshae seemed to sit taller, prouder on the sandy base of the drydock.
Though the rudimentary forge belched out clouds of black smoke while Brandon supervised his men's making of nails and brackets, a constantly fresh breeze whisked through the grotto, clearing the air of fumes and soot. For the most part, the voyagers had taken little note of their splendorous surroundings once the equipment for repairs had been delivered. Good news had come as soon as the drydock was fully drained; Brandon's inspection showed that the longship's stout keel remained undamaged.
Alicia and Robyn both worked with unspoken urgency, knowing that their quest had a greater chance of success than they had previously dared to hope. Now they hauled firewood, stirred tar in large vats, and helped with other tasks wherever they could. Of course, the actual work on the ship was left to Brandon, Knaff, and a few experienced shipwrights among the crew. The prince would settle for nothing less than perfection.
The two women worked to the point of exhaustion, but even then they found it difficult to sleep. Memories of Tristan, imagined pictures of his current peril, drove them to restlessness. While they were sailing, there had been nothing that either of them could do to speed up their progress. Now, however, it seemed that each extra hour of work might bring them that much closer to departure.
Eventually, however, they realized that no matter how fast they piled up fuel or stoked the forge, the work on the vessel would proceed at a careful and methodical pace. Thus it was that one afternoon late in the week, with plenty of firewood stacked beside the fires and a surplus of heated tar available for the hull, Trillhalla prevailed upon the females-Alicia, Robyn, Brigit, and Tavish-to accompany her for a swim. They splashed through the narrow grotto to a secluded, sandy cove where they could enjoy a few hours of relaxation.
Alicia found that her concerns and fears seemed to fade as she lay in the soothing sun or splashed about in the coral shallows of the grotto, chasing schools of multicolored fish.
"Your captain tells us that the rep
airs are nearly completed," Trillhalla announced. "Soon Palentor will bring you the Helm of Zulae, the artifact that will enable your vessel to survive underwater. Then I suppose you will be on your way."
The notion of departing sounded the familiar note of guilt to Alicia, and her mother nodded seriously. "Yes. It becomes urgent that we sail. Tristan, I sense, is in terrible danger."
"Even worse than before?" asked Alicia.
"I don't know…" the queen replied, shaking her head as if to disparage the remark. Alicia, however, saw an expression of grave concern, even fear, hidden in the depths of her mother's eyes.
"I am glad for Evermeet that you have come," said Trillhalla bluntly after a few seconds pause. "There are too many of us who group the humans in with scrags and sahuagin. It is good that they see you are different."
"Too many like Palentor, you mean?" Alicia couldn't resist asking.
Trillhalla allowed herself a slight smile. "My poor compatriot has been thrown into a bit of a quandary by your arrival. You see, you've forced him to rethink a few notions about humans that he's held for more centuries than I've been alive."
"I'm glad!" Alicia declared.
"Such learning can flow in two directions." It was Queen Robyn who spoke, and her words were directed to her daughter. "It would be well for us to remember the acts that have driven elves like Palentor to believe as he does. Humanity is not blameless in this strife."
"No-I didn't mean. ." the princess stammered, embarrassed. Of course her mother was right, but in the Moonshaes, the elves were safe in the sanctity of Synnoria. What did her mother's statement have to do with Alicia?
They heard shouts of greeting from the dockside, hidden from their shallow beach by a small outcrop of forest. Curious, they dressed quickly and started over to see what was happening.
"The helm!" Brandon cried as he saw the women. "Palentor's bringing it to the dock!"
They hurried forward and saw the by now familiar cargo canoe easing to wharfside. The taciturn sea elf was in the water, swimming toward the dock to emerge with a smooth, fluid motion. In the center of the craft was a surprisingly small object, covered beneath a well-padded blanket. Several elves of Evermeet lifted the thing from the vessel and placed it on the dock where Palentor waited.
The Coral Kingdom tdt-2 Page 21
