Most tantalizing of his recent memories was the image of a woman-a person of exquisite beauty and great tenderness. Her hair, long and black and silky, he recalled particularly. His mind drifted to images of that hair, of his hand stroking it, of his woman lying in a sun-speckled field of heather, with birds soaring above and towers of white piercing the sky near them.
It was an idyllic sensation, and for a moment, the recollection swept him along, warming his heart and even bringing an unconscious smile to his face. Then the memory dissipated and he looked around at his dank cell, and once again the rage began to swell.
This fury of his became a constant companion. It drove him to restless periods of pacing when he stalked the confines of his surprisingly large cage. He stared at the pool of water that served as the entrance. Where did it lead? How far did it go? The other features of his chamber provided even less promise. The dark green windows, slanting toward the top of the domed ceiling, swept overhead well beyond his reach. The lump of coral that served as bed, bench, and table was the only other object in the circular room.
Gradually he had noticed a pattern of darkness alternated by dim illumination through the panels in the ceiling, a cycle that seemed to approximate day and night. Once each cycle, shortly after the panels grew light-morning? — a monstrous creature brought him bare sustenance. The creature had the scaly skin of a fish, with thick strands of hair hanging across its scalp, and sharp teeth and claws.
The monster always emerged from the water quickly, surprising the man. The beast rose onto two legs, looming high over his head, glaring down at him with pale, emotionless eyes as it filled a shell cup with fresh water and placed a bowl of fishy gruel beside the pool. Then, with a shake of its bristling head, it dove back into the pool. And every time this jailer departed, the human king found himself staring at the rippled surface of the water. Where did it go?
Of course, his memory couldn't help him there, and to this end, he decided to explore. Water held no inherent fear for him. He knew that he was a proficient, if not a great, swimmer. He broke the surface in a dive, swimming through darkness for several seconds. Immediately, however, he realized that the loss of his hand created a severe handicap, rendering his swimming awkward and clumsy. Desperately he turned around, kicking hard to return to his cell, gasping in near panic.
For a full day, he avoided returning to the water, but after his jailer again brought him his miserable food, the man knew he had no choice but to try again. On this attempt, however, he relied mostly on his feet to propel him, while he felt along the dark passage before him with his hand and wrist.
Several times he repeated the dive, swimming carefully along the tunnel away from the pool. Each time his confidence grew, and he compensated more and more efficiently for his wound, mostly by kicking. He soon found that the tunnel branched, no more than forty feet from his cell, into three other passages. All of the corridors were water-filled from floor to ceiling-at least, at the place where they met the other submerged corridors.
At first, the man swam no farther than this intersection, returning to his cell and gasping for air as he emerged. But he found, as he practiced, that he swam a greater distance each time. His lungs expanded with the rigorous discipline of increasingly prolonged dives, until he explored some length of all three tunnels.
Finally, sensing that his guard would soon return with his food and drink, he paused to rest and consider what he had learned.
One tunnel, the straight route, continued to descend as far as he could follow, and he had nearly drowned the time he followed that passage a hundred feet past the intersection. The tunnels to the right and left, however, began a gentle upward slope after the junction, similar to the approach to the prisoner's cell.
It seemed a reasonable assumption, then, that similar cells might lie to the right and left. Would they be filled with air, like his? He had no way of knowing.
He fully understood the risks. He had already gone as far as he could down each tunnel while still making it back to his cell. If he went farther, he would have no choice but to go forward and either find air at the end of the tunnel or perish.
The decision was easy.
The prisoner spent some time in quiet contemplation. Somewhere he had learned to do this, to empty bis mind and allow his body to fuel itself for maximum efficiency. In a flash, he remembered: The black-haired woman had taught him. His skill had never approached hers, for she was … she had been … a druid.
Robyn!
In the instant of recognition, his mind filled with joy, followed by nearly intolerable pain. He groaned aloud as memories came flooding back-delightful memories, each one of which only increased his anguish. He was here, she was. .
Callidyrr! The Moonshaes!
"I am Tristan Kendrick!" he shouted at his unseen jailers. "I am the High King of the Ffolk, and you shall not have me!" Pictures of two small girls-no, they were young women-came into his mind. One was fair, the other dark like her mother. They were his daughters!
Roughly he pushed the tidal wave of memory aside. He focused on the task before him, studying the water, forcibly quelling his emotions. His heartbeat fell, pulsing slower and slower. Tristan breathed deeply, without thinking, filling his lungs with air, forcing extra oxygen into his blood, grimly determined to press forward to the last gasp of his life.
He dove into the pool, cutting the surface like an arrow and allowing his momentum to propel him halfway down the tunnel leading from his cell. When he kicked, he moved his legs slowly, moving through the dark water with a minimum of exertion. Feeling the wall beside him, he traced the path to the four-way intersection. Here he veered to the right.
The tunnel rose slowly, and he allowed his buoyancy to account for some of his speed, though he still kicked gently. Onward through Stygian darkness he swam, feeling a rough wall with his right hand. Occasionally his back would scrape the abrasive ceiling of the tunnel. The pain he didn't mind so much, but the sensation that he couldn't swim upward he found starkly terrifying.
Tristan swam without thinking, slowly draining the air that filled his lungs to bursting. Pain wrapped steel bands around his chest, slowly constricting until a red haze swam before his eyes. His throat tightened, and the urge to gasp for air swiftly approached irresistible proportions.
How long had he been swimming? At least an hour, it seemed to his oxygen-starved brain. More than that, screamed his lungs, his tortured chest that could no longer supply the needs of his body.
Then abruptly the wall to his right ended. Tristan flailed mindlessly as the depleted air exploded from his lungs, but as he thrashed, he realized that rock no longer pressed against his back. Desperately driving himself upward with the last reserves of his strength, he felt his hand, and then his face and torso, break from the water and burst into an enclosed cavern that was filled with air.
He coughed and choked as he dragged himself onto a dry stone slab beside the surface of water. Dimly his awareness returned, and the king realized that he was in another cell, one very much like his own. The same dim green illumination trickled through the ceiling.
It was only when he stopped gasping that he looked up and saw that the room was occupied. He saw a man's face staring at him-a thin, emaciated visage with great dark circles under his eyes. The fellow was seated, chained to a wall, Tristan saw, with shackles around each of his wrists and his arms held spread-eagled to the sides.
The chained prisoner regarded him impassively. When the fellow shifted slightly, Tristan noticed something odd about his legs, and then his jaw dropped in shock.
The man had no legs-but not because he had lost them in an accident. In fact, his body below the waist had never borne a resemblance to humanity. It was a single, powerful limb, covered with green scales and ending in a broad-finned tail.