They strained against the weight of the pair in the water, but the footing in the steeply canted hull proved treacherous. The king and princess started to rise from the water, but then several crewmen slipped and they plunged back into the maelstrom.
"Help!" cried Alicia, choking on spray and turbulence, knowing that her friends already were doing everything in their power to aid them.
Yet one heard that call and answered. The gangly form of the changestaff had slowly pulled itself back into the hull, though several of its limbs still firmly grasped the figurehead. Now the tree extended a long knotty limb down toward the two Ffolk in the water. Alicia and Tristan grabbed at the branch, clinging tightly as the tree being slowly lifted them free of the water, toward the tenuous safety of the longship's hull.
Aided by the frantically straining Keane, in another moment the pair tumbled over the rail of the ship, collapsing in the bow as water continued to thunder downward around them.
"Break her free, men!" shouted Brandon, chopping at one of the frames where the ship was braced into the broken window. Pry bars, axes, and hammers all crunched against the coral surface of the dome, chipping and bashing in a desperate effort to enlarge the entrance.
"The pressure's too great!" Keane shouted over the thunderous cascade. Brandon saw that the water pouring into the dome held them firmly in the gap.
Spray splashed over Alicia and she whirled in surprise, seeing the sleek killer whale leaping from the water that now surged nearly onto the longship's figurehead. The great mammal teetered on the gunwale for a moment, and then the High Queen of the Ffolk tumbled into the hull beside them. Once again in human form, Robyn knelt beside her husband, tears of relief glowing in her eyes.
The pounding cascade slowed as finally the chamber beneath them was fully flooded. They saw no sign of the squid as the crew again pried against the frame jammed around the vessel's bow. Abruptly the Princess of Moonshae lurched. A chunk of the dome wall fell away, releasing the longship but twisting her hull with brutal, unforgiving force. Planks splintered along the keel, and water exploded through the gap, quickly swirling around Alicia and Tristan as they tried to scramble to their feet.
Slowly the longship began to float upward, toward the surface and the sun. Marqillor and his surviving comrades swam out the broken window, diving for the shelter of the coral ridge below. Water continued to flood the hull in a roaring cascade through a gap at least twelve feet long and more than a hand-span wide.
Grimly Knaff took his position at the helm, and the Princess began to move forward, trailing a bubbling wake at the stern. Her bow rose slightly, but so much water sloshed in a large wave toward the stern that the helmsman had to quickly bring the ship back to level. Dank air stung their eyes and caused their lungs to strain for breath as the ship wallowed through the depths.
"We've got to get Brigit and Hanrald!" Alicia shouted to Brandon, who stood near Knaff in the stern.
"Where are they?" demanded the captain, peering through the turbulent seas. They could see no sign of the knightly pair.
"Look!" Tavish called in alarm as a giant shadow moved through the broken window, emerging from the dome to follow them into the sea. The blunt body, the long tentacles-all were dolefully familiar.
Yet even that fact paled against the significance of the ruptured bow. Water gushed around their knees, rising higher every second.
It seemed clear to them all that the Princess of Moonshae was fatally breached.
Through Deirdre's mirror, Talos observed the escape of the human prisoner, and vengeance against his servant's failure crystallized into determination in his evil, immortal mind. His presence, always a shadow when the princess used the crystal, now formed into a conscious thought-knowledge that he projected into the young woman's mind.
"His name. ." came the voice of Talos. Deirdre stiffened, frightened yet at the same time intensely thrilled. She felt the touch from beyond her world, beyond her existence, and she knew that a source of great power reached her.
"His name is Coss-Axell-Sinioth."
The voice faded, but Deirdre's attention had already fixed on a plan-a plan that she could at last put into action.
Finally, now, she had her weapon.
19
Painfully Hanrald grasped at another step, and then one more, pulling himself up as he had for the last half hour-one stone stair at a time. The deep wound in his side wracked his body with waves of agony. He had no idea how much blood he had lost, but from the amount of the crimson liquid that continued to drift around him, he knew that he must be pretty thoroughly drained.
But Brigit still wouldn't leave him. He had tried again to persuade her, halfway up the agonizing climb, when he had been convinced that he couldn't make it. Again she had insisted that she would wait until he was ready. Ultimately the only course left to the earl-the only way to save the elfwoman-was to make this climb.
Meanwhile the sister knight defended them both, fighting below him on the stairway, backing up the steps, holding the scrags at bay if they tried to pursue too closely. Fortunately the great beasts usually hung well back, having learned several painful lessons about the Synnorian warrior's skill with her keen elven steel.
During the duration of his climb, Hanrald noticed steadily growing illumination above him, the promise of escape that had kept him moving, had brought him back from the edge of utter despair. The steps were very steep, and he knew that he had climbed more than a hundred, though he had forgotten to keep an exact count, a fact that he chided himself about as he neared the top.
Finally Hanrald came around a spiral in the staircase that ended in an aperture above him-a rectangular gap that was the source of the pale green light, the illumination that had drawn him this far. Cautiously he raised his head through the hole, discovering that they had indeed reached the top of a tower. Aqua-colored seawater surrounded him, stretching to the far limits of the horizon. Above-and so terribly, impossibly far away-he could see the sun-dappled reflections of the surface.
Without hesitation, the knight crawled onto the floor of the flat stone platform that capped the tower, finding a circle no more than twelve feet across, lofted more than a hundred feet above the floor of the sea. He saw that the tower stood proudly at the rim of the great undersea bowl. Below him, some distance away, he made out the multidomed structure of the huge palace.
Among the towers and domes of that edifice, he observed many companies of scrags and sahuagin, mere dots in the water at this distance. Hanrald crouched flat on the exposed surface, thankful that, for the moment at least, none of the monsters seemed to notice the human's presence. Instead, they swarmed about the palace, clearly focused on an enemy closer to hand.
Brigit scrambled out of the opening beside him and looked back down the stairway. "The scrags are just down the stairs," she warned. "They have no intention of letting us get away."
"Look!" cried Hanrald, spotting a heavy metal trapdoor lying open beside the entrance. With great effort, the two of them lifted the portal and dropped it over the opening, where they swiftly bolted the barrier shut.
"Rest for a moment," the sister knight said quietly, and for once, the man needed no coaxing. He slumped, all but unconscious, onto the flat coral surface.
The elf stood up and studied their surroundings. Sunlight brightened the surface of the sea, reflecting from the waves like multiple facets of diamonds, still at least three hundred feet above her. Many spires like the one they now occupied rose around them, and she noticed numerous shell-covered, domed structures dotting the rolling surface of the great reef below.