The Coral Kingdom tdt-2

by Douglas Niles

  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.

  19

  To Sun and Sky

  Painfully Hanrald grasped at another step, and then one more, pulling himself up as he had for the last half hour-one stone stair at a time. The deep wound in his side wracked his body with waves of agony. He had no idea how much blood he had lost, but from the amount of the crimson liquid that continued to drift around him, he knew that he must be pretty thoroughly drained.

  But Brigit still wouldn't leave him. He had tried again to persuade her, halfway up the agonizing climb, when he had been convinced that he couldn't make it. Again she had insisted that she would wait until he was ready. Ultimately the only course left to the earl-the only way to save the elfwoman-was to make this climb.

  Meanwhile the sister knight defended them both, fighting below him on the stairway, backing up the steps, holding the scrags at bay if they tried to pursue too closely. Fortunately the great beasts usually hung well back, having learned several painful lessons about the Synnorian warrior's skill with her keen elven steel.

  During the duration of his climb, Hanrald noticed steadily growing illumination above him, the promise of escape that had kept him moving, had brought him back from the edge of utter despair. The steps were very steep, and he knew that he had climbed more than a hundred, though he had forgotten to keep an exact count, a fact that he chided himself about as he neared the top.

  Finally Hanrald came around a spiral in the staircase that ended in an aperture above him-a rectangular gap that was the source of the pale green light, the illumination that had drawn him this far. Cautiously he raised his head through the hole, discovering that they had indeed reached the top of a tower. Aqua-colored seawater surrounded him, stretching to the far limits of the horizon. Above-and so terribly, impossibly far away-he could see the sun-dappled reflections of the surface.

  Without hesitation, the knight crawled onto the floor of the flat stone platform that capped the tower, finding a circle no more than twelve feet across, lofted more than a hundred feet above the floor of the sea. He saw that the tower stood proudly at the rim of the great undersea bowl. Below him, some distance away, he made out the multidomed structure of the huge palace.

  Among the towers and domes of that edifice, he observed many companies of scrags and sahuagin, mere dots in the water at this distance. Hanrald crouched flat on the exposed surface, thankful that, for the moment at least, none of the monsters seemed to notice the human's presence. Instead, they swarmed about the palace, clearly focused on an enemy closer to hand
.

  Brigit scrambled out of the opening beside him and looked back down the stairway. "The scrags are just down the stairs," she warned. "They have no intention of letting us get away."

  "Look!" cried Hanrald, spotting a heavy metal trapdoor lying open beside the entrance. With great effort, the two of them lifted the portal and dropped it over the opening, where they swiftly bolted the barrier shut.

  "Rest for a moment," the sister knight said quietly, and for once, the man needed no coaxing. He slumped, all but unconscious, onto the flat coral surface.

  The elf stood up and studied their surroundings. Sunlight brightened the surface of the sea, reflecting from the waves like multiple facets of diamonds, still at least three hundred feet above her. Many spires like the one they now occupied rose around them, and she noticed numerous shell-covered, domed structures dotting the rolling surface of the great reef below.

  A swarm of creatures near the largest of these domes caught her attention, and she saw bubbles and turbulence in the water there. Then a familiar shape-the longship! — moving slowly, emerged from the turbulence. Even from this distance, a mile or more away, it seemed to Brigit that the Princess of Moonshae wallowed heavily in the water.

  Still, the elfwoman's heart filled with renewed hope. She leaped to her feet, her silver breastplate gleaming in the bright water, and frantically began to wave.

  "We're sinking!" Brandon snarled from the stern, angrily watching seawater flood into the longship's hull. It seemed to him a cruel irony: A powerful magical barrier protected the ship from tons of water weighing heavily above them, yet a simple gash in the planking seemed likely to doom them all to a watery grave. Already the vessel wallowed sluggishly, and in a few more minutes, she would inevitably become too heavy to rise through the sea.

  Alicia noticed, for the first time since they had broken free of the dome, that the lanky figure of her changestaff had crawled back into the bow of the longship. It perched, like a gigantic mantis, near the figurehead, as if it tried to crouch out of the way of the frantic voyagers in the hull.