The Coral Kingdom

Selecting the one offering the easiest passage, he commanded the steersman to turn, and the sleek longship shot upward like an arrow, propelled by the momentum of her downward run.

Spray filled the air, and often they sailed through blinding mist, but the two northmen looked upward, locating the columns that reached to the sky. Somehow, even with such scant navigational aid, Brandon and Knaff kept the longship afloat. A dozen times, a hundred times they avoided disaster only by the instantaneous press of Knaff's steady hand on the tiller, or by Brandon's keen eye spotting the one course allowing them a minimal chance of survival.

'Look!' cried Brigit from the bow, her voice thrilling with hope.

Alicia scrambled to her side, moving unsteadily from handhold to handhold through the lurching hull. 'What?' she gasped, wiping the spray from her eyes.

'There! I see blue sky!'

'Yes!' It was true! A pair of wide, trunklike waterspouts stood before them, and beyond yawned an expanse of azure. They couldn't see the water below the pillars, for between the waterspouts loomed the largest ridge of heaving sea they had yet encountered. It looked like a precipitous mountain pass perched between two lofty, unassailable summits. Yet there was no choice-to the right and left, virtually converging columns of water formed sheer waterfalls, impossible to traverse.

'Dead ahead!' shouted Brandon as the Princess raced down the chute leading to the rise. Bobbing and twisting like a canoe in a torrential rapids, the craft plunged dizzily, seemingly out of control. Careening wildly, the longship keeled over, burying the port gunwale in spray. A tiny adjustment by Knaff and she heeled back, dipping the starboard rail toward the surface before bobbing upright.

Then the heaving slope lay before them, and the Princess of Moonshae raced into the water, climbing steadily but quickly losing the speed she had picked up on the descent. The sail spread wide, bulging with a following wind, but it wouldn't be enough.

For a sickening, paralyzing moment, the ship teetered on the brink of disaster, a downward slip that would inevitably turn her beam to the slope and capsize the sturdy craft. Alicia's heart pounded. Oddly, she felt fear only that they would end the mission before it had had a chance to begin.

'Father…' she whispered, staring into the churning froth, terrified it would be the last thing she said to him.

'By the goddess, give me breath!' shouted Robyn. Unnoticed, the queen had pushed herself up from her litter until she stood at the stern, leaning weakly against the transom. The Princess of Moonshae sank backward, and water surged into the hull, nearly sweeping Robyn off her feet. 'Blow, wind!' she cried, raising both her hands.

The longship tipped sickeningly, and then a surge of wind exploded, billowing out the sail, creaking the mast as if it would tear the proud pole from the keel. Groaning from the strain, the vessel reeled at the edge of doom, the weight of the ship and all the water in her hull dragging her downward, but the miraculous wind, the power of the goddess herself, filling the sail steadily.

Slowly the longship broke from equilibrium, inching through the spray, plowing ever so slowly to the crest of the watery ridge. Then the bow passed the summit, plowing upward into open air. The Princess of Moonshae stood poised, bow pointed toward the sky, stern buried in white water. The Great Druid of the isles stood by the sheer force of will, commanding the power of nature to push the vessel the last few inches to safety. But still the longship teetered. .

And then Robyn groaned. Her face drained of blood and she dropped like a felled tree, slamming roughly into the deck. Disaster loomed as the ship slipped back toward the slope, but one more gust of wind kicked up, whether from nature or goddess did not matter. It filled the sail and pushed, and the sleek vessel at long last tipped forward, bow dropping and stern climbing.

They started down the slope, and Alicia's eyes were filled with dizzying impressions, all of them fantastic. She saw blue water stretched placidly before them, after this one final slope of spilling spray. They had passed the barrier to Evermeet! And then even more glad tidings, at the limit of the horizon-a long strip of solidity: land! It beckoned them with verdant and pastoral beauty, promising a safe harbor after the nightmare passage of the last day.

'Evermeet!' cried Brigit, spotting the land at the horizon. 'We've made it!'

Cheers broke from everyone-northman, Ffolk, and elf-aboard the Princess of Moonshae. The proud vessel slid with dizzying speed down the last sloping wave, and this time the ride was exhilarating. Gracefully gliding away from the torrent of the waterspouts onto a surface of gently rolling swells, the longship leaned jauntily, once again heeling to the soft press of the wind in her sail.

As the companions watched, the seething barrier of the cyclones slowly settled as one by one the columns collapsed back to the sea. A swell of water rolled outward from the fading torrent, but the Princess of Moonshae easily cut through that minor disturbance. Finally she slid across a smooth and unmarked sea, with the growing line of the horizon beckoning them forward.

'They stopped after we passed,' Brandon observed in quiet awe. 'As if our presence triggered their appearance, and they lasted as long as we stayed within their domain.'

Alicia patted the gunwale beneath her hands and smiled softly. 'You said you'd sail her to the ends of the earth if you could. Was that close enough?'

'As close as I'd care to come,' allowed the prince. 'I would dare say that no other ship on the Trackless Sea could have made it.'

'Nor any other captain,' Alicia added, taking the northman's arm and kissing him quickly.

Then Alicia made her way back to her mother. Robyn lay senseless, her face as white as a corpse while Tavish cradled the queen's head in her lap. 'She lives,' said the bard softly, 'but she's terribly weak. We must make landfall quickly. She needs a warm bed!'

'Evermeet!' said the princess softly. 'We see it at the horizon. We'll make landfall before dark!'

Then something pounded into the Princess of Moonshae from below, crunching the heavy keel and lifting the ship dozens of feet into the air. Men fell to the deck, cursing or stunned, and the sleek vessel tumbled precariously to the side, nearly capsizing.

But this was no force of water or cyclone. The thing that had struck the ship was solid and powerful, moving very quickly. Alicia rolled across the deck at the stern, trying to draw her sword and get to her feet at the same moment. Even as she did so, her blood chilled to the announcement of Wultha, who stood at the rail and raised his huge battle-axe.

'Dragon turtle!' he bellowed, driving the blade forward with all the strength in his broad shoulders.

Alicia twisted to look, gasping in horror as a huge head, blunt-snouted and leathery-skinned, reared into view. Wultha's axe crunched into the broad nose, but then the creature's monstrous jaws spread wide. They closed about the bellowing northman, abruptly silencing his cries. When the dragon turtle's head vanished over the side, only the stumps of the huge warrior's legs remained standing grotesquely in place, bitten off cleanly at the knees.

The longship reeled to another crushing attack, and this time timbers splintered and cracked, and water burst through the hull.

The man sat in his emerald prison and wondered about the passage of time. He knew-or sensed, in any event-that he hadn't been here all his life. He remembered things of the outside-a sun, trees, highlands looming overhead, the feel of wind on his face.

Where were those things now? That was a question he couldn't answer. There were so many important questions-fundamental mysteries of his own life, his own past-and yet the answers to all of them seemed impossibly distant and unattainable.

Another important thought came to him then-not so much a piece of knowledge as a bit of a feeling. With a shiver, he looked over his shoulder, recognizing the feeling.

Menace. There was danger here.

'But where?' he groaned out loud. 'Where am I?'

Food and water had come, he saw without surprise-the usual tortoiseshell bowls of clear water and raw fish. That had been his sustenance for a long time, he remembered, but not forever.

Menace. He reminded himself of the danger. But who was his enemy? How was he threatened?

Suddenly he remembered a huge shape, dark and indistinct of feature, wielding a horrible knife. By the gods,