The Coral Kingdom

by Douglas Niles

  12

  The Warder of Evermeet

  White water surged across the gunwales and showered from the sky in a seemingly endless stream. The dizzying plunge proved brief, but the sleek ship still raced blindly down a crashing wave. The Princess of Moonshae sagged in the water, loaded with the increasing weight of her own liquid ballast. All around, like a forest of massive columns, the pillars of water spewed upward, throwing seawater into the air with volcanic force.

  “Bail! Bail for your lives!” cried Brandon, though nearly everyone aboard the ship was already doing just that.

  The only exceptions were the Prince of Gnarhelm himself, who scanned the heaving water between the cyclones, looking for the safest passage, and Knaff the Elder, who clung to the rudder with a strength that belied his age. He may as well have been a part of the longship, feet nailed in place and wooden arms locked around the shaft with bands of steel sinew.

  The High Queen lay still on a makeshift litter near the transom, her arms calmly crossed on her chest, as if she took no notice of the maelstrom around them. Her cheeks were pale and hollow, her breathing slow and deep.

  “Starboard!” snarled the captain, and Knaff leaned on the rudder. The Princess of Moonshae scored a clean arc around the base of one of the monstrous spouts, racing like a diving bird, the force of the turn rocking the vessel far to the side.

  “Now port—hard, man!” Brandon leaned to the left, as if his own weight would help the longship obey his command. Again Knaff anticipated the order, pressing hard in the opposite direction and hauling the vessel through the reverse of her previous turn.

  They advanced with reckless speed, surrounded by vast whirlpools, water that spumed and swirled with the unleashed energy of the mighty sea. The waterspouts in the distance seemed as inanimate as stone-faced mountains or landscapes. Nearby, however, the cyclones seethed and sprayed like living, flowing things.

  Frantic sailors seized every bucket and cup, everything that could conceivably be used to scoop water. Arms churning, the crew bailed like madmen and madwomen. The water level in the ship remained just barely constant, as the Princess of Moonshae glided around the cyclones with lumbering grace.

  Abruptly the longship hit a great wave, a swell that rose as a monstrous barrier in their path. Wind filled the sail, pressing forward and up, but the sleek vessel’s momentum inevitably slowed. Brand clenched his teeth, looking at the crest that foamed and frothed above the figurehead. Then the Princess of Moonshae heeled away from the height, and for a sickening, drawn-out moment, the ship slid sideways on her keel, slipping down the wave and teetering, on the verge of capsizing. Only Knaff’s skilled use of the rudder—Brandon didn’t even try to command him at this perilous juncture—and the longship’s superb construction and wide beam saved them from total disaster.

  The helmsman guided the ship through a mad plunge down the flowing slope, through a dip between four pillars, and up a lower slope that blocked their path to the north. The vessel’s speed carried them over this ridge, and for a moment, she perched on the brink of two swells.

  Gasping from the strain of bailing, Alicia paused for a moment and looked ahead, awestruck.

  The foaming pillars extended as far as she could see in all directions, intermixed by perilous whirpools, all of it angry seawater, eager to chew up the longship and spit forth pieces of driftwood.

  The only benefit—and it could not be overlooked—was that all sign of the pursuing rafts had been lost. Indeed, the crew took some heart from the fact that they had witnessed one of them destroyed. But now rows of pillars extended to the north and south for a dozen miles. The view to east and west was more restricted—columns of water stood directly before them in many places, and a second row of pillars blocked the view through the gaps.

  Still, there seemed to be a rhythm to the churning mess between the spouts. The water rose into a Whitewater crest, almost like a ridge of land, where each pair of pillars came relatively close together—as a rule, the narrower the gap, the higher the swell.

  Conversely, the areas centered between three or four pillars tended to dip, with water flowing down into these shallow bowls from all sides. Knaff displayed breathtaking skill in guiding the Princess of Moonshae down these slopes, while Brandon studied the two or three gaps leading out of the bowl. Selecting the one offering the easiest passage, he commanded the steersman to turn, and the sleek longship shot upward like an arrow, propelled by the momentum of her downward run.

  Spray filled the air, and often they sailed through blinding mist, but the two northmen looked upward, locating the columns that reached to the sky. Somehow, even with such scant navigational aid, Brandon and Knaff kept the longship afloat. A dozen times, a hundred times they avoided disaster only by the instantaneous press of Knaff’s steady hand on the tiller, or by Brandon’s keen eye spotting the one course allowing them a minimal chance of survival.

  “Look!” cried Brigit from the bow, her voice thrilling with hope.

  Alicia scrambled to her side, moving unsteadily from handhold to handhold through the lurching hull. “What?” she gasped, wiping the spray from her eyes.

  “There! I see blue sky!”

  “Yes!” It was true! A pair of wide, trunklike waterspouts stood before them, and beyond yawned an expanse of azure. They couldn’t see the water below the pillars, for between the waterspouts loomed the largest ridge of heaving sea they had yet encountered. It looked like a precipitous mountain pass perched between two lofty, unassailable summits. Yet there was no choice—to the right and left, virtually converging columns of water formed sheer waterfalls, impossible to traverse.

  “Dead ahead!” shouted Brandon as the Princess raced down the chute leading to the rise. Bobbing and twisting like a canoe in a torrential rapids, the craft plunged dizzily, seemingly out of control. Careening wildly, the longship keeled over, burying the port gunwale in spray. A tiny adjustment by Knaff and she heeled back, dipping the starboard rail toward the surface before bobbing upright.

  Then the heaving slope lay before them, and the Princess of Moonshae raced into the water, climbing steadily but quickly losing the speed she had picked up on the descent. The sail spread wide, bulging with a following wind, but it wouldn’t be enough.

  For a sickening, paralyzing moment, the ship teetered on the brink of disaster, a downward slip that would inevitably turn her beam to the slope and capsize the sturdy craft. Alicia’s heart pounded. Oddly, she felt fear only that they would end the mission before it had had a chance to begin.

  “Father …” she whispered, staring into the churning froth, terrified it would be the last thing she said to him.

  “By the goddess, give me breath!” shouted Robyn. Unnoticed, the queen had pushed herself up from her litter until she stood at the stern, leaning weakly against the transom. The Princess of Moonshae sank backward, and water surged into the hull, nearly sweeping Robyn off her feet. “Blow, wind!” she cried, raising both her hands.

  The longship tipped sickeningly, and then a surge of wind exploded, billowing out the sail, creaking the mast as if it would tear the proud pole from the keel. Groaning from the strain, the vessel reeled at the edge of doom, the weight of the ship and all the water in her hull dragging her downward, but the miraculous wind, the power of the goddess herself, filling the sail steadily.

  Slowly the longship broke from equilibrium, inching through the spray, plowing ever so slowly to the crest of the watery ridge. Then the bow passed the summit, plowing upward into open air. The Princess of Moonshae stood poised, bow pointed toward the sky, stern buried in white water. The Great Druid of the isles stood by the sheer force of will, commanding the power of nature to push the vessel the last few inches to safety. But still the longship teetered.…

  And then Robyn groaned. Her face drained of blood and she dropped like a felled tree, slamming roughly into the deck. Disaster loomed as the ship slipped back toward the slope, but one more gust of wind kicked up, whether from nature or goddess did
not matter. It filled the sail and pushed, and the sleek vessel at long last tipped forward, bow dropping and stern climbing.

  They started down the slope, and Alicia’s eyes were filled with dizzying impressions, all of them fantastic. She saw blue water stretched placidly before them, after this one final slope of spilling spray. They had passed the barrier to Evermeet! And then even more glad tidings, at the limit of the horizon—a long strip of solidity: land! It beckoned them with verdant and pastoral beauty, promising a safe harbor after the nightmare passage of the last day.

  “Evermeet!” cried Brigit, spotting the land at the horizon. “We’ve made it!”

  Cheers broke from everyone—northman, Ffolk, and elf—aboard the Princess of Moonshae. The proud vessel slid with dizzying speed down the last sloping wave, and this time the ride was exhilarating. Gracefully gliding away from the torrent of the waterspouts onto a surface of gently rolling swells, the longship leaned jauntily, once again heeling to the soft press of the wind in her sail.

  As the companions watched, the seething barrier of the cyclones slowly settled as one by one the columns collapsed back to the sea. A swell of water rolled outward from the fading torrent, but the Princess of Moonshae easily cut through that minor disturbance. Finally she slid across a smooth and unmarked sea, with the growing line of the horizon beckoning them forward.

  “They stopped after we passed,” Brandon observed in quiet awe. “As if our presence triggered their appearance, and they lasted as long as we stayed within their domain.”

  Alicia patted the gunwale beneath her hands and smiled softly. “You said you’d sail her to the ends of the earth if you could. Was that close enough?”

  “As close as I’d care to come,” allowed the prince. “I would dare say that no other ship on the Trackless Sea could have made it.”

  “Nor any other captain,” Alicia added, taking the northman’s arm and kissing him quickly.

  Then Alicia made her way back to her mother. Robyn lay senseless, her face as white as a corpse while Tavish cradled the queen’s head in her lap. “She lives,” said the bard softly, “but she’s terribly weak. We must make landfall quickly. She needs a warm bed!”

  “Evermeet!” said the princess softly. “We see it at the horizon. We’ll make landfall before dark!”

  Then something pounded into the Princess of Moonshae from below, crunching the heavy keel and lifting the ship dozens of feet into the air. Men fell to the deck, cursing or stunned, and the sleek vessel tumbled precariously to the side, nearly capsizing.

  But this was no force of water or cyclone. The thing that had struck the ship was solid and powerful, moving very quickly. Alicia rolled across the deck at the stern, trying to draw her sword and get to her feet at the same moment. Even as she did so, her blood chilled to the announcement of Wultha, who stood at the rail and raised his huge battle-axe.

  “Dragon turtle!” he bellowed, driving the blade forward with all the strength in his broad shoulders.

  Alicia twisted to look, gasping in horror as a huge head, blunt-snouted and leathery-skinned, reared into view. Wultha’s axe crunched into the broad nose, but then the creature’s monstrous jaws spread wide. They closed about the bellowing northman, abruptly silencing his cries. When the dragon turtle’s head vanished over the side, only the stumps of the huge warrior’s legs remained standing grotesquely in place, bitten off cleanly at the knees.

  The longship reeled to another crushing attack, and this time timbers splintered and cracked, and water burst through the hull.

  * * * * *

  The man sat in his emerald prison and wondered about the passage of time. He knew—or sensed, in any event—that he hadn’t been here all his life. He remembered things of the outside—a sun, trees, highlands looming overhead, the feel of wind on his face.

  Where were those things now? That was a question he couldn’t answer. There were so many important questions—fundamental mysteries of his own life, his own past—and yet the answers to all of them seemed impossibly distant and unattainable.

  Another important thought came to him then—not so much a piece of knowledge as a bit of a feeling. With a shiver, he looked over his shoulder, recognizing the feeling.

  Menace. There was danger here.

  “But where?” he groaned out loud. “Where am I?”

  Food and water had come, he saw without surprise—the usual tortoiseshell bowls of clear water and raw fish. That had been his sustenance for a long time, he remembered, but not forever.

  Menace. He reminded himself of the danger. But who was his enemy? How was he threatened?

  Suddenly he remembered a huge shape, dark and indistinct of feature, wielding a horrible knife. By the gods, that knife! With a scream, the man seized the stump of his wrist with his other hand, staggering backward and slumping to his stone bed as the memories flooded back.…

  He was screaming in those memories, and his arms and legs were restrained by terrible creatures with brutal claws. The man’s face was bleeding and bruised, but more than one of the monsters had retreated, nursing a broken limb, before he had been fully subdued.

  But then had come that knife!

  And afterward, a drink. Now he was beginning to remember—a steaming goblet of sweet juice, delightful in taste and invigorating in sensation. He had drunk it greedily, and it had brought him some measure of relief.

  But after he drank it, he had begun to forget. Now it had taken him great mental effort exerted over many hours just to remember that much. It was the drink that had made him forget!

  Other memories trickled back, each slowly and reluctantly, like a timid hare lured from its burrow by a patient snaresman. He had been given the drink several times, he remembered vaguely, though only that first time did he recall with clarity.

  Now he resolved, deep within a heart that had known long years of firm resolution, that he would not take the drink again. He didn’t know how he had risen above its stuporific effects, but he knew that he would not willingly suffer those effects again.

  He vowed to himself in the name of … he couldn’t remember. Suddenly movement in the pool of water disturbed his meditations. He barely had time to throw himself backward upon the bed, feigning comatose slumber, before a large creature splashed to the surface and climbed from the pool.

  He looked through narrowed lids and saw a huge sahuagin, the leering face a cross between a lizard and a fish. Bands of gold chain wrapped the creature’s chest and loins. Webbed feet, studded with curving claws, flapped across the smooth floor as the creature advanced.

  The sahuagin’s back, he saw, bristled with long spines connected by thin webbing. The spines stood erect and alert now, and a pointed tongue slipped in and out of the distended, tooth-studded jaws. The man looked lower, to the monster’s hands, which were webbed and clawed like its feet. One of these cautiously clasped the jeweled hilt of a scimitar borne at his waist, and the other held a tall bottle. The creature removed a cork stopper with its teeth.

  From the top of the drinking vessel trailed a thin column of steam.

  * * * * *

  The dragon turtle came at the Princess of Moonshae from below, smashing the bony shell of its back into the hull with another timber-crushing blow, heaving the vessel far out of the water and sending her crashing to the side. Again the tumble very nearly capsized the battered longship.

  Alicia caught a momentary glimpse of a monstrous snout thrashing in the water. A cavernous mouth gaped, and she saw bony ridges instead of teeth. With one bite, those ridges clamped onto the longship’s starboard rail, ripping pieces from several stout planks. Blunt claws, each as big as a tall man’s leg, appeared at the gunwale on either side of the snout, and the Princess of Moonshae rocked violently as the monster pushed against the hull.

  The bowmen fired volleys of arrows at the beast when it showed itself above the gunwale. Most of the missiles bounced harmlessly from the heavy shell, but a few shafts punctured one of the monster’s staring eyes. The tu
rtle closed a leathery lid over the injured organ, effectively blinded on one side, though that did nothing to deter its aggressive attacks.

  Next the raging beast ducked under the water to come up against the port side of the longship. Keane dove out of the way in apparent fright as the blunt head reared into the air, but then he spun and pointed. From his finger burst a lightning bolt that scored a gory wound in the dragon turtle’s good eye.

  The monster bellowed in rage, opening its jaw and belching forth a great cloud of steam. The blast struck the ship with explosive force, hissing through the air, searing flesh in a white fog. Several crewmen, caught in the killing heat, collapsed to the deck, writhing in agony.

  Keane dodged beneath the killing cloud and then quickly scrambled to his feet. Next he cast a blast of cold that ricocheted harmlessly from the monster’s great shell after freezing the water there to a gleaming coat of ice. Again he chanted the words of magic, and a fireball drifted outward, exploding in a hellish blossom of flame. The blistering inferno sizzled the surface of the sea but didn’t affect the monster. The dragon turtle simply dove to avoid the blast.

  For a time, then, nothing disturbed the surface of the gently rolling sea. Endless seconds passed into an eternal minute, then another … and still there was no sign of the turtle’s presence.

  “Is it gone?” asked Alicia.

  “Not likely,” replied the Prince of Gnarhelm tersely. His intense manner prevented the woman from asking any further questions.

  Abruptly the captain stiffened. “To the oars!” he bellowed, his voice booming through the boat and out across the sea. “Stop her in the water! Backward, men—hard!”

  With his first word, the men of his crew sprang into action, seizing the long oars that were drawn into the vessel. The blades struck the water and churned backward with enough force to send Alicia stumbling forward from the sudden shift in the ship’s momentum.

  “Stroke, you weaklings! Full astern!” shouted Brandon, stalking down the center of the hull.