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
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 killed 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 clue 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 with expressions of clear respect.