One of the scrags whirled, thrusting a sharp trident through the body of a speeding merman. Air and blood escaped the body in a foaming cloud as the unfortunate creature sank, motionless, toward the bottom. Other mermen slashed in, quickly disarming the scrag and then beating the sea trolls into senselessness.
The crucial count continued, amid darkness and pressure and the eternal chill of the ocean depth. Five, eight, finally ten of the mermen sustained Tristan with the breath of their lungs. They swam above a deep chasm, with cliff walls plummeting to inky black depths below him, and then they crested a low wall. Once again a huge pair of scrags floated before them, but the mermen attacked mercilessly, and by the time Tristan reached the scene of the fight, little more than bubbles floated in the water to indicate where the two sea trolls had stood their guard. Most of the mermen were armed by now, bearing weapons they had acquired from slain guards.
Then the eleventh merman gave Tristan the breath of life, and he tried not to think of the few minutes of air that remained. He knew that one of his escorts had been slain, so he suspected he had one more breath available to him. If they didn’t reach some sort of cave before then …
Abruptly he noticed growing illumination in the water around them, and then they plunged through an undersea doorway, bursting into a huge circular chamber. Several monstrous sea trolls, the largest specimens Tristan had yet seen, surged toward them as Marqillor darted upward, dragging Tristan behind him. The human king growled in silent frustration. With his lone hand holding on to the merman’s belt, he didn’t even have a fist with which to defend himself.
In another moment, however, the merman and the human broke through the surface. Tristan exhaled and gasped for breath, thrashing his arms to tread water. Only after his straining lungs had recovered did he take notice of the fight that raged around him.
A huge ceiling curved overhead, creating a great domed chamber. Only the top portion of the room contained air, but Tristan saw several niches in the walls just above the water level. The human splashed over to one of these while he tried to make out the murky figures below him.
Pale emerald light spilled into the room through crystal panels in the ceiling of the chamber, much like the windows that had illuminated his cell except that these were much larger. In that light, Tristan saw figures darting through the water below, mermen fighting with their tails and captured weapons as they rushed the palace guards.
A monstrous sahuagin, dark green, with a spiny ridge along its back, sprang upward from the dais in the center of the chamber where it had previously floated. Tristan saw golden chains trailing from the creature’s neck and suspected that the creature must be one of the masters of Kyrasti—perhaps even Sythissal himself! The human clutched his steel dagger as he saw the beast swimming toward him.
The monstrous beast broke the surface of the water in a cloud of spray, reaching a taloned hand toward Tristan’s leg but recoiling as the blade slashed toward the green-scaled limb. The fishman settled back into the water, its spiny dorsal ridge cutting a streak through the brine as it dove out of reach. Whirling, the monster fixed the human with a hate-filled stare.
Tristan felt a hot flush of combative joy. Battle had been joined, and the outcome now depended on speed and strength and skill. The sensation brought back a flood of emotions—not so much memories as impressions. He remembered the fierce delight of hard-won victories, the bleak despair of defeat. Fear and fury, triumph and grief—he was certain he had known them all.
And he knew that most of his battles had been victories.
“Fight me, lizard!” Tristan challenged, ready to battle the creature then and there. His missing hand was insignificant. His righteous rage, he believed, made him the match of the larger sahuagin.
But the monster apparently lacked courage to equal its physical size. It turned and dove toward the bottom of the chamber, seeking the great dais or one of the exit corridors Tristan could see in the wall at the base of the dome.
Now, however, all the other sahuagin had perished. Only mermen swarmed around the monstrous fishman. Several of Marqillor’s warriors seized the big sahuagin by its flailing limbs, dragging it to the surface and casting the beast unceremoniously into the niche where Tristan lay.
“This is Sythissal, King of Kressilacc—a prize captive indeed,” Marqillor explained. He cast a scornful look at the enemy lord as the sahuagin backed into the corner, prodded by several tridents in the hands of mermen.
“An old enemy of mine,” added Tristan Kendrick, studying the scaly face. Sythissal bared his teeth in a snarl.
“And of Deepvale,” spat Marqillor, driving himself out of the water with a single flick of his powerful tail. He sat next to Tristan, facing the sahuagin lord.
“Are we trapped here?” asked the human king.
“Sanamarl has barred the doors,” explained Marqillor, gesturing to one of his comrades in the water below their niche. Tristan saw one merman—Sanamarl, obviously—swim a quick circle around the periphery of the dome.
“Even now,” continued the merman prince, “a few of my best men have made a break for freedom, striking out for home before we readied the palace. If they’re successful, they may be able to bring help. Deepvale is not terribly distant, though admittedly it would be a costly venture to send our army against Kyrasti.”
Tristan looked around the great dome. He saw scrags swim past the crystal windows, but he could see no way they could readily enter the chamber short of bashing down the stout stone doors.
“Fools—you’re both insignificant fools!” The words, spoken in a hissing version of the common tongue, came from the great sahuagin. Several tridents, borne by swimming mermen, pressed menacingly against Sythissal’s belly. The creature crouched as far back into the niche as he could, sneering in hatred.
“Perhaps so,” Marqillor replied. “But the fools are holding steel to your skin.”
“I don’t matter,” spat the sahuagin king. “It is my master. When he comes, you will all be destroyed!”
Tristan stared at the savage creature. On many occasions in the king’s own lifetime, this monster had hurled predatory armies against the coasts of the Moonshae Islands. Indeed, it had been the sahuagin whose onslaught had first provided the necessity that linked the northmen and Ffolk in peace. Always those incursions had been thrown back, but at grievous cost in villages burned, helpless people slain.
Yet now that he had the enemy of all those years before him, Tristan felt the rage and fury slowly drain from his body, replaced by a great weariness. What was the point of a lifetime of war? Would it merely bring the adversaries to their shared doom here at the bottom of the sea?
A thunderous force rocked the dome of Kyrasti then, rumbling through the water below, shaking the very foundations of the great structure, seeming to make the very reef itself tremble. Tristan saw long cracks ripple along the walls as something smashed against one of the doors, causing the water to churn with turbulence. When the human looked down, he could barely make out the floor of the chamber. The seawater in the dome grew murky, as if a dark cloud slowly spread through it.
Abruptly the merman called Sanamarl vanished into that murk as the area of opacity continued to expand, obscuring more and more of the floor. Within a few moments, the inside of the chamber was as impenetrable to sight as the silty water of a placid river.
In the next instant, a tentacle lashed out from the murky water, thrashing around the niche and grasping the sahuagin king around the neck. Sythissal screamed, a high-pitched, keening cry of pure terror. Quickly the tendril tightened its grip, dragging the monarch into the water. Tristan gasped and slashed, but his blade struck only hard coral when he missed the whipping, snakelike limb.
The great sahuagin screamed and writhed in the grasp of the heavy tentacle. Then, as Tristan and the mermen watched helplessly, a great form rolled across the surface, ripping and tearing at Sythissal with tentacles and a sharp, chopping beak. They heard the crunch of bone, saw the rendi
ng of scaly skin. The sahuagin’s screams slowly gurgled to a halt, but the sharp beak continued to rend the reptilian body.
In moments, the fishman had been torn to shreds, leaving only gory remnants to float through the turbulent water of the throne room.
“What did that?” gasped Tristan, trying to comprehend the massive size of the tentacled intruder.
“It’s a giant squid,” Marqillor noted, trying to peer through the still murky water. “The biggest one I’ve ever seen.”
Then, as the creature rose to the surface once more, more tentacles—several as big around as a man’s waist—snaked toward the mermen and their human comrade.
* * * * *
The Princess of Moonshae moved with stately grace through depths layered with blue, aqua, and then a deep, cloaking green. The ship had been underwater for many hours, though Brandon could only guess at their course, since Robyn had lain still and unaware since their submergence. Finally the longship entered a realm of dark purple, where the water seemed to press against the wooden hull and its magical dome with ominous and inexorable pressure.
Alicia still knelt beside her mother, relieved to see that the queen’s wounds had healed for the most part with almost miraculous speed.
“It’s the goddess,” Tavish whispered reverently. “Her healing comes to a druid when she changes her form for another’s.”
For hours, the queen lay motionless, while the princess and Tavish washed and bandaged her wounds and tried to soothe her as best they could.
Finally Robyn fell into a restful sleep. Now, as she slumbered, Tavish came back to watch over the High Queen while Alicia climbed stiffly to her feet and began to check the blade of her sword. She would need the weapon very soon, she suspected.
“Look!” came the cry from the bow, where Keane and Hanrald maintained a steady watch. “We’re coming to something.”
It seemed as if the submerged longship had sailed into a forest of widely spaced tree trunks. Tall spires rose around them, and as they passed between two of the columns, they saw undulating terrain below them, dotted with numerous circular objects that almost certainly had to be buildings.
“Those are spires—towers,” announced Keane, studying the shafts rising from the ocean floor all around them. They towered far higher than any surface structures, the sleek proportions of giant needles extending very nearly to the surface. “The sea floor is shallow here, as if this is a high ridge … a mountaintop on the ocean’s bed.”
“Guards!” shouted a northman, pointing into the darkness around the nearest of the pillars. Numerous fishlike forms swarmed toward them, like a great school of humanoid swimmers.
“Stand ready!” called Brandon. The bowmen took up their arrows while the northmen raised their weapons and stood in a protective circle around the hull.
“The spells—now is the time!”
Keane turned, seeing Hanrald and Brigit speaking to him together. The two knights had donned their armor. Silver plate encased them both from the waist up, with chain mail to guard their legs and arms.
“The spells from Evermeet,” Brigit added quickly. “The queen gave you scrolls, with spells for underwater movement and combat. We need them—now! We’ll create a diversion and draw some of the defenders away from the ship!”
The magic-user blinked, trying to think as the aquatic attackers swarmed closer. “I agree,” he concluded after a split second. After all, the two knights were some of the best fighters among them.
Keane quickly unfurled the leather parchment, hurriedly reading over the words to the spells, each of which would provide its target with the ability not only to breathe underwater, but also to move through the sea as if the liquid was no more obstructive than air. In moments, he chanted the brief commands and passed his hand through the careful symbology of the spell.
“We’ll go out and meet them. We’ll try to draw as many of them off as we can,” explained Hanrald. The earl looked up at Alicia, who had joined them in the bow.
“Farewell, princess!” boomed Hanrald, with a bright smile at Alicia. “We battle yon foe; it is the way of the knight, after all!”
Alicia felt a great fear for her friends. “Take care,” she said quietly, stretching upward to kiss the suddenly blushing Hanrald. She turned to Brigit with a wan smile. “Don’t let him get into too much trouble!”
The elfwoman smiled sadly and touched Alicia on the arm. “It is too late for that, I fear,” she said.
Then, as the swarming fishmen were almost upon them, Brigit and Hanrald dove over the side, racing through the water as swiftly as if they sprinted over a grassy field. The two dropped to the surface of the submarine ridge, landing lightly on their feet after a hundred-foot descent. Immediately they began running over the rough terrain, dodging around large outcrops of coral that loomed like giant boulders before them, and within a few seconds, they had disappeared from the view of their companions in the longship.
The voyagers saw scores of the attacking monsters swerve downward, pursuing the two knights. Scrags spread into a wide screen, swimming dozens of feet above the ocean floor, while many sahuagin darted into the ravines and gullies where the two intruders had vanished.
At the same time, the rest of the swarming predators continued to press toward the Princess of Moonshae. The complex of towers and domes was well defended, and more and more of the guards appeared in the distance, swimming toward the fight.
“Phyrosyne!” cried the princess, stamping her changestaff against the longship’s hull. Immediately the shaft grew upward, though the tree creature twisted low to prevent its upper branches from breaking into the water over their heads. Thus propped in the hull, the wooden fighter reached out with knotty branches, ready to defend the ship against the wave of attackers that surged against them from all sides.
For an hour, Alicia’s life became a maze of battle as she joined the crew of Brandon’s ship in a desperate defense of their beleaguered vessel. Only the shock of their appearance and the success of Brigit and Hanrald’s diversion, it seemed, gave them any chance in this battle, for no sooner had they vanquished a company of scrags or sahuagin than a fresh formation arrived to take its place. If the sea creatures had all attacked together, she knew, the battle could have had but one grim outcome.
Robyn recovered her awareness as the battle began and rose to her feet to aid in the fight, remaining in the body of a human this time and wielding spells instead of her own flesh. Tavish frantically played her harp, and as always the enchanted instrument caused the human warriors to forget their fatigue and their fear, striving their utmost to win this all-important battle.
The changestaff fought as steadily as any courageous human warrior. It broke the backs of fishmen and scrags alike, seizing their bodies in its firm branches and twisting with inexorable force, tossing the crippled remains back into the sea as it searched for another foe.
As it was, they battled desperately with spells and steel, arrows and axes, and they just barely managed to hold the swarm at bay. The water in their wake was littered by the torn bodies of the sea creatures, while many brave northmen and Ffolk gasped out their last breaths in the blood-spattered hull of the longship. The air grew thick with the stench of sweat and blood and saltwater, until each breath clogged in the throat, burning lungs and providing precious little oxygen for the breather.
Desperately battling men and monsters crashed over the benches, around the casks of stores, and even up and down the mast, but in the end, every attack was driven off, at a dear cost in blood.
“There—some kind of castle!” announced Brandon, peering through the murk toward a mountainous structure rising before them.
“All around us—a huge compound!” exclaimed Keane, his tone full of wonder that almost succeeded in vanquishing his fatigue.
Spires arose from a sea bottom that undulated through a series of steep-sided ridges, the huge protruberances of the massive coral reef that formed the foundation of this undersea realm. Twisting tower
s of shells, gleaming with mosaics of pearl, silver, and gold, studded the coral hills. Domed buildings, many with panels of emerald-colored crystal set in their roofs, clustered among the towers. There were no walls in this city. They would be no more useful here than they would on the surface against attackers who could fly.
The central feature of the submarine vale was a huge rounded structure that occupied the center of a shallow depression. All around it circled ridges of coral, occupied by towers and other lesser buildings. The huge structure was built as a series of great domes, piled one atop another until they reached their highest point in the center, which consisted of a great rounded chamber with panels of clear crystal set all around the curving wall.
“It’s got to be the palace!” cried Robyn. “Go there—to the top!”
The ship sailed into the great bowl, surrounded by coral towers. The huge dome before them looked like some kind of undersea mountain, except that its surface was marked with turrets and balconies and was broken by many great panels of green crystal, providing glimpses into the shadowed chamber below.
The Princess of Moonshae, free of pestering attackers for the moment, came to rest beside one of the portals. Eagerly Alicia stared through the murk, not sure what she would see but full of more hope than she had felt in months.
Nevertheless, the sight that met her eyes was too shocking for any reaction, at least until a second had passed, enough time for her to confirm her identification and find her voice.
“It’s Father!”
Alicia stared in astonishment as the shapes below the glasslike panel came into view. She saw Tristan in a shallow alcove at the side of the domed chamber. “We’ve found him!” she cried in pure elation.
Then Alicia saw the monstrous creature rolling in the waters before her father and she screamed in horror, for the whirling shape reached toward the king with a pair of grasping tentacles, slithering through the water like eels. She saw Tristan squirm desperately in their clutches, dragged slowly but inevitably toward the water.
The Coral Kingdom Page 27
