The Coral Kingdom

Leaking from a dozen holes, listing to her battered starboard side, sail puffing from a few listless gusts of wind, the Princess of Moonshae crept toward Evermeet. Alicia stood beside the elven woman and shared her sense of awe. It seemed impossible that they were here, barely a mile away from the verdant shore.

'Still deep,' came the announcement from the bow, followed by a strangled gasp. 'Wait… I see something. What the-stop! Shallows-coral!'

Brandon whirled, ready to order his men to the oars. Before he could open his mouth, they all felt a wood- splintering crunch. At the same time, the longship stopped moving completely.

'Coral reef came from nowhere, Captain!' stammered the shocked sailor who had been performing the soundings. 'The water was hundreds of feet deep, and then there it was, like a giant spike stuck as a barrier!'

'It may very well be just that,' Brigit noted grimly. 'How badly are we stuck?'

'With luck, the tide'll float us off,' replied Brandon, with a worried look at the water that had started to trickle in through several new cracks.

'That's the least of our problems,' announced Keane, with a meaningful gesture over the side. A quick look showed Alicia what he meant.

The water around the longship teemed with swimming figures-greenish and mottled blue creatures with elven features but webbed hands and feet. Each of the figures held a bow, with an arrow nocked and pointed at the longship.

With a sinking sensation in her heart, the princess looked around. The coastal guards had them completely surrounded. A quick count showed her there were many hundreds of them.

Deirdre returned to the mirror but again met with frustration. When she sought her sister or mother, she saw instead only a gray fog. It had been this way since they had passed the Cyclones of Evermeet. Whatever the nature of the arcane barriers protecting the island, Deirdre deduced that they extended into the realm of the arcane.

Nor did her continuing efforts to discover the location of her father yield any results other than a fruitless search of the limitless depths of the Trackless Sea.

More and more she had found her thoughts moving away from her family, away from any and all the people of her realm. Instead, her mind chased relentlessly after the one she could not find, the one she knew again walked the surface of the Realms.

Sooner or later, she vowed, her mirror would again locate the being she had known as Malawar, and when it did, her vengeance against him would be complete.

For a long, pregnant moment, the creatures in the water made no sound. Sunlight glinted from hundreds of arrowheads, a warlike and ironic contrast to the beautiful coral shallows, the mottled blue and green water reflecting the sunlight in dazzling hues.

The aquatic archers held their weapons horizontally so that both ends of their bows remained out of the water. The archers could shower the longship's hull with their lethal rain at a moment's notice.

'Be careful!' Brigit hissed. 'They've been taught all their lives that humans are their mortal enemies. Don't let anyone do anything to give them cause to shoot!'

The princess studied the creatures in the water, realizing that they tended to be very fair-looking beings, with the pointed ears and narrow, shapely skulls of elves. The skin on their faces and arms, the only parts she could see above the water, varied in color from soft green to deep blue, even shifting through many hues on a single individual. The webbed hands and feet, however, couldn't help reminding the princess of a sahuagin.

'What are they?' she asked softly, realizing that Brigit stood beside her.

'The Aquis-Dulcio. . sea elves,' said the sister knight, her voice heavy with awe. 'I've heard about them. All of us know of our cousins of the deep, but never have I seen one!'

Just then one of the sea elves rose, treading water with his feet. He opened his mouth, and a series of lyrical sounds came forth. To Alicia, it sounded like a pleasant song in which the singer made up nonsense sounds instead of words.

Brigit, however, stiffened and then listened with rapt attention. She responded once in the same language, and then the aquatic elf continued speaking. Despite the musical nature of the speech, the speaker's gestures and expressions convinced the princess he was delivering a harangue. His webbed hands clenched into fists, and he planted them firmly on his hips. Brandon, Robyn, and Keane observed the communication, gathering around the sister knight by the time the sea elf ceased speaking.

'What does he say?' asked the captain impatiently.

'They demand that we leave. They promise to kill us if we don't depart immediately.'

Alicia's heart sank. 'But don't they understand?' she objected.

'They understand that this is a human ship, and they insist that humans are not allowed here.'

'Did you tell them why we're here?' asked Robyn.

'I told them who I am. The Sisters of Synnoria are known throughout elvendom, and being their captain gives me some status. I started to explain about the Synnorian Gate, but he cut me off and told me that it didn't matter-we had to leave.' She didn't repeat the names he had called her, the filthy epithets-traitor and worse-for bringing the eternal enemies of elvendom to this sacred place.

'Does he see that we're stuck on an Abyss-cursed lump of coral?' snarled Brandon, stepping to the rail to glower at the male, who still held himself half out of the water. The northman started to raise his fist, but then apparently thought better of the gesture. With an inarticulate mutter, he turned back to the discussion.

Brigit leaned over the rail again and sang something back to the elf in the water. The sea elf scowled and came back in a minor, threatening key. The sister knight shrugged and turned back to the humans.

'I told him that we're stranded, that we can't get off of here. He … was insulting, but at least he didn't insist that we leave.'

Hanrald listened intently, standing at the gunwale and flushing as he stared at the elf. He sensed that Brigit had been treated very rudely. 'He's a pompous little wart, that one. I'd like to have the chance to teach him a few manners!'

Abruptly Alicia grew impatient and stepped to the gunwale. 'We come in peace, and we seek an audience with your queen and her council of sages.' She spoke in Common, trying to keep her voice light, her face friendly. 'We offer no threat!'

She found herself the target of more arrows than she could count, all poised on the brink of launching. If any one of them slips, she thought, I'm dead.

Then Brigit stepped to her side. Again she spoke in that lyrical tongue, and the male replied. Now, however, several other males and a female joined him. All of them were covered by multicolored skin, fading through every shade of blue, green, and aqua in an effect that was really quite beautiful.

The female sea elf, who also rose from the water to sing, addressed Brigit and then the male. She was marvellously beautiful, with silvery hair that hung to the waterline in tight curls, concealing her breasts-but not the fact that she, like the male, seemed to be naked. Then she dove, her webbed feet popping out of the water just briefly. Alicia quickly lost sight of the perfectly camouflaged form as the sea elf disappeared into the dappled waters of the coral shallows.

'That's a little better,' Brigit told them, still wary. 'This one gave me her name-Trillhalla. She called the other one Palentor. She says that we're fortunate in where we've made landfall. The queen is in the Summer Palace, and that's not far from here. Also the names of Tristan and Robyn Kendrick are not unknown to her. Nor,' she added quietly, 'is Brigit Cu'Lyrran. Anyway, she'll send word of our arrival. She warns that we have to stay here until she returns.'

'That'll be easy enough,' Brandon growled, with a belligerent look at the male who had been the first to speak.

Alicia, meanwhile, looked at the sky. The sun had passed into the region of late afternoon, and the magnificent forests of Evermeet, gleaming in a rainbow of colors, glowed beneath it. The water was placid, except for the graceful disturbance caused by the array of elven archers. As she looked, it seemed to her that their numbers continued to swell.

Natural enough, she thought, if humans are unknown here. They've probably never seen a longship before either.