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 reached 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 rending of scaly skin. The sahuagin's screams slowly gurgled to a halt, but the sharp beak continued to rend the reptilian body.