The Coral Kingdom

by Douglas Niles

  Then the man grabbed the handle of the creature’s knife and sprang away, bringing the wickedly curved weapon with him. The hilt felt rough to the touch, but the weight of a blade seemed natural in Tristan’s hand. The monster, still snarling, reached for him with one talon-studded paw, and the human swung with all his strength. Keen steel sliced scale-covered flesh, a savage blow that lopped the limb off at the forearm. He heard Marqillor’s shout of encouragement, but then his vision filled with the tooth-studded horror springing toward him, the creature’s sharklike mouth gaping wide. Though the bucket still covered the monster’s eyes, it did nothing to block the grotesque mouth.

  As savagely as any beserk northman, the sea troll attacked the insolent human. If the creature felt any surprise at Tristan’s presence, the fact didn’t delay a furious reaction. The High King fell back, whipping the blade this way and that to block the monster’s flailing attacks. Each time the sharp steel bit into the scrag’s flesh, but the wounds did nothing to diminish the fury of the attack.

  In fact, Tristan felt a shudder of piercing horror when he looked at the stump of the thing’s wrist, where moments before the human had severed the hand. Tiny claws already sprouted there, growing longer as he watched. Soon they wiggled grotesquely as the bleeding wound gradually regenerated the hand.

  For a moment, the monster paused, raising its hand to the bucket and tugging at the obstruction. Tristan took advantage of the moment to strike, driving the blade into the scrag’s good arm, chopping deep into flesh and bone—though not with enough force this time to slice off the limb. With an angry howl, the beast kicked outward, and the man barely evaded the blow.

  Both wounds were temporary, but for the moment, the creature’s hands were useless. It could neither attack nor lift the bucket from its head. It paused, gasping for breath, its mouth gaping to reveal rows of triangular teeth, fangs gleaming faintly even in the pale emerald light. For a moment, the sea troll turned its face to the water, obviously considering the merits of a tactical withdrawal. The latter possibility meant disaster, Tristan realized, for if the creature escaped and returned with assistance, they were lost.

  But in the monster’s temporary halt, he saw his chance and dove forward, thrusting the stump of his arm through the large keyring. He used his momentum to carry him past the beast, spinning it in a circle as he charged.

  The scrag dropped its blunt nose to bite this pesky attacker, but the monster’s own steel dagger darted in to stab the creature’s soft tongue. With a strangled gasp, the sea troll lurched backward, and the keys broke free from the belt as the wounded creature thudded heavily to the floor.

  “Don’t let it get to the water!” hissed Marqillor desperately, watching the monster wriggle toward the pool.

  Tristan leaped on the thing’s back and drove the dagger through the scaly skin, into the base of its wicked brain. Instantly the scrag stiffened, jerking reflexively for a moment and then growing still.

  “Hurry!” urged the merman, straining in his iron brackets. “It’ll be up again in a few minutes!”

  Although Tristan had seen the horror of regeneration in trolls, it seemed even more sickening in this monstrous creature from the sea. Desperately he searched through several keys—fortunately there were only half a dozen on the ring—and found the one that clicked the manacle free.

  “Kill it again!” barked Marqillor as the scrag started to kick and groan before the second bracket was released. Tristan left the keys with the merman and returned to dispatch the monster with another thrust to its brain. By the time he finished, Marqillor had succeeded in working himself free of the final bracket.

  “Thank you, friend,” said the merman, using his long tail and his hands to propel himself over to Tristan and the troll. He looked up at the human for a moment. “You wait here,” he said, and then he slipped silently into the water and disappeared.

  For a moment, Tristan was too shocked by the merman’s disappearance to react, and by then it was too late. All he saw were the spreading rings on the surface of the pool.

  And then once again, beside him, the sea troll began to stir.

  * * * * *

  The secret passages through the coral reefs would have been impossible to find, according to Brandon, without the guidance of the sea elf Palentor.

  “The thing is, they look like shallows,” the Prince of Gnarhelm explained in amazement. “And what looks like the passage as often as not is studded with those great spires of rock or coral. That’s what caught us on the way in.”

  The Prince of Gnarhelm had been garrulous and friendly since they had departed from Evermeet, as if on their last night together he and Alicia had settled all of their doubts. To the princess, however, the situation was exactly the reverse. The unease she had felt before was magnified tenfold now, into a raging chorus of tension and anxiety.

  Her disquiet increased as she began to suspect how much her dalliance with Brandon had hurt Keane. The magic-user had spoken barely two sentences to her since they had boarded the ship, but she noticed him looking at her frequently, though he dropped his eyes quickly whenever she tried to meet his gaze. His unhappiness brought guilt into Alicia’s emotional maelstrom, and finally she devoted herself to the voyage, spending a great deal of her time in the bow, watching the sea elves guide them through the narrow channels and gaps.

  For two days, the Princess of Moonshae continued to slip southward, hugging the shoreline and working through the mazelike pattern of reefs, shallows, and channels. The tall trees of the Elvenhome rose off to their right, never more than a mile away. By keeping this close to shore, Palentor informed them, they should avoid observation by any scouts that the seaborne army might have sent to search for them. Palentor told them that he had dispatched squads of sea elves to patrol the seas beside their route in a further attempt to avoid observation.

  So far they seemed to have been successful. There had been sign of neither scrag nor sahuagin. Frequently a blanket of thin mist obscured the reaches of the sea, further securing their progress from detection.

  Now Alicia couldn’t wait to get on with their task, across the open sea and then … down. None of them had talked about it very much, but they all felt some apprehension about the efficacy of the Helm of Zulae. Of course they believed it would work—otherwise the entire mission would have gone for nothing—but nevertheless, the unnatural method of travel couldn’t help but disturb sailors used only to the sunswept expanse of the surface.

  The horizontal rudder installed by Knaff trailed behind them, just above the water level so it wouldn’t impede their progress on the surface. Yet a disturbing fact was forcibly reminded to each voyager when they saw the silver helmet gleaming in the middle of the hull. They would be voluntarily sinking their ship!

  Still, progress remained steady, and always the heavy bank of land lay to the west. Then on the second day out from the grotto, they began to notice that the land swept away, no longer running north to south but instead commencing a great curve away from them—the southern terminus of Evermeet. A low, rocky horizon loomed to the south—the Guardian Isle of Belintholme, according to the sea elf.

  “Sail due south for two or three hours from here,” Palentor instructed the Prince of Gnarhelm. Brandon. “That’ll take you beyond the reefs. Then you can swing your course around to the east and a little south.”

  “Aye—and thanks,” grunted the northman. Brandon had come to respect the sea elf mightily. Also, he fully understood the value of his guidance on this embarkation, for it had saved them from the pitched battle that would have inevitably ensued if they had sailed straight east.

  “It—it has been my pleasure,” replied Palentor, with apparent sincerity. He and Trillhalla took a few moments to say good-bye to the others in the crew, and then the sea elves disappeared over the side into the mottled waters.

  For a few moments, they watched the pair until they vanished. Then, favored by a strong westerly wind, with the sea before them calm and inviting, the P
rincess of Moonshae started on the final leg of her quest.

  * * * * *

  Darkness shrouded the longship, though a dim phosphoresence gleamed in the white water pushed aside by her racing bow. The sail stretched taut, pressed by a steady wind, and Brandon himself had the rudder as they charged through the night. It was a few hours after sunset on the first day of their return to the open sea. Belintholme had vanished astern sometime during the afternoon.

  The Prince of Gnarhelm fixed his eyes upon the waters ahead, and the sleepy lookouts, too, kept their attention on the ocean surface surrounding the boat. None looked for trouble in the shadowed confines of the hull.

  But that was where Luge stirred, once again kindled to the task that he did not understand—or even acknowledge, once the morning sun crested the horizon. Now the little northman crept to the gunwale, undetected by his comrades. His hand reached into the secret pouch, removing one of the tiny bells, as it had done every night of their outbound voyage from Gwynneth. In a quick motion, he cast the object over the side and crept back to his bench.

  Below and behind the speeding longship, sinking steadily into the depths of the ocean, the tiny bell began to ring.

  The vast undersea army hovered in its screen, stretching more than two hundred miles along Evermeet’s coast. Creatures of the deep, the sahuagin and scrags kept their distance from the coastal shallows around that great island. The deadly defenses of the sea elves were well known to these aquatic raiders. Nevertheless, they formed a solid cordon along the drop-off, where the coastal shallows plummeted into ocean depth.

  Coss-Axell-Sinioth slipped along the length of the great formation, unable to dispel a sense of unease, although he was pleased with the alertness, the barely contained killing frenzy, he saw among his minions. His huge squid body loomed great among the teeming scrags and sahuagin, and an escort of giant barracuda cleared the waters before the avatar wherever he went.

  The remaining Manta Sinioth held in the center of the line, crewed by his most powerful sahuagin and several elite corps of sea trolls. Krell-Bane himself, the monstrous sea troll, captained the great raft. The army was poised and ready, prepared to strike any place along that vast front.

  Of course, there was a possibility that the longship had been sunk, but it was a likelihood Coss-Axell-Sinioth did not believe. This belief had nothing to do with sensing the life-force of his enemies or anything like that. Instead, the feeling owed its persistence to Sinioth’s sense of destiny: He couldn’t believe the issue would be settled without a direct battle between the human foe and his own undersea minions.

  The sound of the bell thrumming its basso resonance far to the south came as a rude shock to the avatar of evil. The humans were afloat—and more significantly, they had somehow slipped past his great army!

  Immediately Sinioth mustered his minions, sending them in a great swarm following in the wake of the elusive and speeding longship. The avatar pictured the rage of Talos should his quarry escape them, and he drove his creatures with brutal lashes of his tentacles.

  Then, a day later, another bell followed, and a third on the night after that. The three bells formed a perfectly straight line, and Sinioth had no difficulty drawing that line to its inevitable destination: the underwater city of Kyrasti, the heart of the Coral Kingdom.

  Grimly Coss-Axell-Sinioth left the army of the deep under the command of Krell-Bane. The sea troll king pursued the Princess of Moonshae aboard the speeding Manta, leaving the vast majority of the scrags and fishmen to swim in the raft’s wake. The aquatic monarch slowly narrowed the gap, but it would be a close thing.

  The giant squid, meanwhile, sped southeastward at speeds that far exceeded those that even the Manta could travel. Sinioth would go to Kyrasti, there to prepare for the approaching threat.

  Perhaps, to be on the safe side, it would also be necessary to kill the prisoner.

  16

  The Final Manta

  Deirdre spent her days in Caer Callidyrr idly, when she did not immerse herself in the studying that seemed to expand the horizons of her knowledge on a daily basis. The affairs of the kingdom required little of her attention, and her irritable reaction to any interruption ensured that the servants and advisers sought to solve any problems themselves rather than risk the wrath of the young princess.

  Many times during these days she sat before her mirror, scanning the wastes of the Trackless Sea without success. She did not believe that her mother or sister were dead. Deirdre was certain that, if this were the case, she would know beyond doubt. Still, their disappearance frustrated and concerned her. She wondered if they had established some means to screen the Princess of Moonshae from arcane observation.

  Then, in the sudden revelation of a summer’s dawn, she saw them again, coursing south by east now. The meaning of the course was clear to Deirdre: They had reached Evermeet and now proceeded with the next step of their mission.

  Her first reaction to the discovery of her mother’s party was an upswelling of relief. She knew now that the longship had no defenses against her scrying, although Evermeet did. Nevertheless, now she would be able to follow the continuation of the mission in her glass. She felt a growing measure of excitement as the Princess of Moonshae plunged steadily through the swells.

  Casting forward, using the mirror once again to press below the surface, she looked for some sign, some clue of the Coral Kingdom’s existence. She could find nothing, but she didn’t believe this was because of any such arcane barrier as screened Evermeet. Instead, she suspected that it was simply because she didn’t know where her target lay, nor was she linked there by a bond such as drew her to her sister and mother.

  Yet if her search for the undersea realm failed, her reconnaissance provided her with another bit of information that hit the young princess with a bolt of anger and excitement. There in the ocean depths, she encountered a presence … a thing that was full of menace, and also familiarity. She searched carefully, sensing its nearness.

  She found that essence in the body of a giant squid, but she knew that the flesh was merely a disguise. Immediately she felt the soul of the one she had known as Malawar.

  She had found him again! Deirdre met the news with dark determination, resolving that this time the avatar of her enemy would not escape.

  * * * * *

  Tristan kilted the sea troll for the tenth time, though leaden weights seemed to tug at his arm. The dagger lost more of its edge with each blow, and finally fatigue began to drag him toward the floor. How long could he endure, holding off sleep in order to maintain his grim vigil?

  He reflected on the bitter confines of the submarine lair. Not only did it entrap him, but it limited his air. The only way to permanently kill a troll, as far as Tristan knew, was to burn it. Yet here, even if he had been able somehow to start the creature ablaze, the smoke would probably choke him. A grim joke for the troll, he thought without humor, if the creature reached from beyond death to claim the life of the one who had slain it.

  Where was Marqillor? Would he return? Tristan had no idea how much time had passed since the merman had disappeared so abruptly. If the human had been abandoned, he knew his life would last only until he fell asleep, for then the troll would regenerate uninterrupted, rendering the fate of his sleeping captor inevitable.

  Splashing water, the first due that he had dozed, startled Tristan awake, and he sprang to his feet clutching the dagger.

  “Hold, friend!” declared Marqillor, curling his tail beneath him at the edge of the pool. The merman raised himself to the height of a kneeling human as he spoke.

  “Where were you?” demanded the king, embarrassed at his lack of alertness.

  Abruptly more water splashed upward, and again, and each time the pool disgorged another merman until more than a dozen had gathered around Marqillor, sitting at the edge of the pool with their long tails trailing into the brine. The aquatic creatures examined the sea troll—which Tristan hastily dispatched again—and regarded the human wi
th expressions of clear respect.

  “I went to pay a call on some friends,” Marqillor announced. “They wanted to meet you.”

  “Can we get out of here?” inquired Tristan, knowing it would take a stunning bit of sorcery to transport him to the surface in any state approaching alive.

  “I don’t know. The surface is far away, and if you swam the distance quickly, the rapid change in pressure would surely prove fatal.”

  “What can we—I—do, then?”

  “We can go to the palace of Kyrasti,” explained Marqillor. “That’s the great dome where Krell-Bane and Sythissal hold court. It’s the very heart of the Coral Kingdom. More significantly, a portion of the throne room is filled with air. You will be able to survive there.”

  “Sythissal.” The name was familiar to Tristan. The sahuagin king had been his enemy for more than twenty years. “But who’s Krell-Bane?”

  “The king of the sea trolls, and a very evil monarch he is. Krell-Bane is the most hated enemy of the merfolk, and we have been given a marvelous chance to strike him!”

  “Why is it so marvelous?” Tristan wondered.

  “Because you freed me,” explained the merman prince. “The perimeter of the scrag king’s palace is well patrolled by sharks as well as by his troops. The interior of the castle, secure as he imagines it to be, is not nearly so well protected.”

  “How far is it?”

  “Several miles,” admitted Marqillor, placing a hand on Tristan’s arm as the human’s face fell.

  “I can never swim that far,” Tristan acknowledged with a shrug. To come so close to escaping, and now to be thwarted by such a trivial distance!

  “There might be a way,” offered Marqillor, studying Tristan’s face. “It is not without risk, and it requires great courage on your part, but it may be possible for you to make it.”