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.