The Coral Kingdom

Brigit saw a male elf, clad in a dirty, torn cotton tunic, step through the wall, as if he emerged from the heart of the mountain, though she knew that he must have come from far beyond. He blinked in the bright daylight of Synnoria and then gasped when he saw Brigit. He was unarmed, but he clutched a triangle of silvery metal in both of his hands.

'Get out of the way,' Brigit suggested gently. 'The gate will not remain open indefinitely.'

Blinking in surprise, the male quickly nodded and took several steps forward. A female elf, equally dirty and ragged, followed him, clutching a youngster by the hand. The elven child ran forward to clasp the leg of the male who had been the first to emerge.

They came through the shimmering wall in single file, and the elven horsewoman got a good look at them as they emerged into Synnoria: all of them ragged, unkempt, and dirty. Their blond hair was disheveled, trailing back in the wind and plainly revealing the pointed ears of Brigit's elven kindred. She felt no alarm now, only sympathy and a kind of general sadness at the course of advancing history.

The sister knight dismounted, leaving Talloth to wait patiently for her mistress. Brigit advanced slowly toward the leader, whom she marked as a cleric by the golden oak leaf-symbol of Corellon, god of all the elves-embroidered on his sleeves.

The young priest stared at her in mute suspicion-or hope. Brigit held up a hand and advanced at a walk. 'Welcome to Synnoria,' she said in the language of the elves. 'I see that you have traveled the ways of the Fey- Alamtine.'

'Yes-in desperate haste,' replied the priest, stepping forward. He held his hand on the shoulder of the elven boy who had run to him moments before. The youngster looked up at Brigit with palpable hostility, his hand rested on the hilt of a tiny dagger-a kitchen tool, probably-that he wore in his belt. More and more ragged elves came through, until well over a hundred had assembled in the clearing before the dark cliff.

'We are the Thy-Tach,' continued the cleric. Brigit saw that he held the Alamtine Triangle in his hand. She had seen one example of the rare artifact before, the last time a tribe had come through the gate. 'Our village was attacked by some monstrous horror, a three-legged creature as big as a hill. We had no recourse but flight!'

'Easy-you're safe now,' the knight said, reaching out a hand to clasp the priest on the shoulder. Her touch seemed to steady him.

'My name is Pallarynd,' said the priest quietly. 'I thank you for your kind welcome.'

'I've seen tribes come through the gate of the Fey-Alamtine before in my lifetime, and the shock of the transition is always upsetting. That's why you'll need to rest here for some time before you continue on,' Brigit explained.

'It really worked, didn't it?' asked Pallarynd, his tone amazed, looking back at the Fey-Alamtine. The magical gate again looked like a shimmering wall of wet obsidian. 'Torcelly had kept this ancient triangle for centuries. She'd never tell me what it was for, but she said that we might need it sometime. Now it has brought the village here, most of us alive.'

'It's the way we ensure the survival of our race,' Brigit replied. 'Only on Evermeet can the elves reign over all the land. Everywhere else the humans press, or, even worse, other creatures. It is the Fey-Alamtine that gives hope to those elves such as yourselves, too isolated or too threatened to flee on foot.'

'We're halfway there now, aren't we?' mused Pallarynd, to himself as much as the knight.

'Yes,' Brigit said, with a soft smile at the young elf beside the priest. The little fellow squinted, still suspicious, but at least his hand fell away from the knife. The cleric squeezed his shoulder and the boy took the older elf's hand.

Pallarynd turned to his people. The Thy-Tach pressed close to hear his words. 'To think we have come safely to Synnoria, the outpost of our people on the Moonshae Islands! The Fey-Alamtine has led us here, and when it is time, it shall lead us on the final leg of our migration as we travel to the eternal elvenhome, Evermeet!'

The Thy-Tach elves, in their ragged leggings and woods-brown tunics, whispered quietly among themselves. Their losses were too recent, and too horrifying, for the elves to feel any joy. Yet as the sister knight turned back down the valley, their relief was palpable to Brigit. She urged Talloth into a fleet canter. The Thy-Tach would find shelters, beds, and food awaiting them when they reached Chrysalis.

The keen bow of the Coho sliced the smooth waters of Corwell Firth. Under the steady eye of her captain, Brandon of Gnarhelm, the small longship glided toward the narrow harbor mouth a mile or two away. Soon they passed the breakwater, gliding toward the dock at the conclusion of a smooth five-day journey from Callidyrr.

Two women stood in the bow of the ship. One of them was heavyset, with a smile as broad as the sun and a merry twinkle in her eyes, seemingly amused by everything they saw. The woman's hair was gray, tied in a bun behind her neck, and the wrinkles lining her face gave a grandmotherly cast to her age, but she stood at the gunwale with one foot balanced on the rail, as light on her feet as any young sailor. Around her shoulders was strapped a dark-grained harp, silver strings winking in the sunlight, and a smooth, well-polished body shimmering from the reflections of the waves.

The second woman was much younger, and strikingly beautiful. Her fair hair, like straw tinted with copper, trailed behind her in the wind, but though her lips creased into a smile at the sight of her family home, her good humor did not extend to her eyes. She looked up at the castle, rising above the town and the firth on its rocky knoll, and she missed her father more than ever.

'Look-there's Lord Pawldo!' announced Tavish, the bard.

The diminutive figure of the halfling, clad in an elegant blue waistcoat and shiny, high-topped black boots, waved enthusiastically from the wharf. As the skilled northmen crew, with a few strokes of the oars, brought the vessel bumping gently against the dock, the Lord Mayor Pawldo of Lowhill, longtime friend of the Kendrick family, rushed up to the princess and embraced her. Alicia bravely tried not to cry, but this was the first time she had seen her old friend since her father's death. She couldn't bear the embrace of the halfling, such a great companion of her father's, without shedding tears of grief.

'There, there, child,' whispered Pawldo, and for a brief moment, Alicia felt like a little girl. The strength of his shoulder to cry on was a great relief.

But in another moment, she stepped back and wiped her eyes. Pawldo gave her a hand as she stepped up from the hull onto the dock, and again she was a High Princess, returned to the town of her family's clan.

The Ffolk were not a great people to observe formality and ceremony, so there was no turnout of the castle guard or any such display at the wharf. Earl Randolph was present, however, and he quickly joined Pawldo in greeting Alicia and her party.

The earl had been a young captain who fought for King Kendrick twenty years earlier, in the Darkwalker War. When Tristan went to rule in Callidyrr, he appointed the loyal warrior as seneschal in Corwell, and later made him an earl. Now Randolph's eyes, too, were moist as he bowed to the princess. She introduced her companions as they climbed from the Coho's shallow hull.

'Do you recall young Hanrald Blackstone?' she asked Randolph. 'Now the Earl of Fairheight?' Hanrald bowed formally, then extended a hand to his fellow earl.

'Indeed-your service to our lady princess has been well told by the bards!' proclaimed Randolph. 'It is an honor to have you as my guest.'

'And Brandon Olafsson, Prince of Gnarhelm,' continued Alicia. 'He provides us with the fast transport-and more, for without his aid, we would not have broken the thrall of the Stormbringer.'

'King Kendrick has done our people a lasting service when he made peace with the northmen,' said Randolph, bowing with easy grace to the prince. 'My honor is doubled to have such an esteemed ally as another guest!'

Brandon flushed in embarrassment. Such niceties of diplomacy always discomfited him. 'Well, thank you,' he finally remembered to say. 'And the transportation might have been faster,' he reminded Alicia, 'if we'd had the use of my own Gullwing.'

The prince's eyes swept the horizon wistfully, as if he expected that proud longship, sunk by the tempest of Talos the Stormbringer, to come sailing toward them. Alicia knew that one of Brandon's countrymen had willingly given him use of the Coho, but the love he had felt for his own vessel was clearly lacking with the new longship.

'Your mother will arrive soon?' inquired Earl Randolph, drawing Alicia's attention.