The Coral Kingdom

Brigit looked at him and shrugged. 'Maybe we ought to move on,' she suggested. Keane had told them that the spells had a very finite time limit, and neither of them had to stretch his imagination to come up with a picture of what would happen when the magical protection wore off.

Hanrald started down the corridor at an easy lope. Brigit easily kept pace as the passageway curved through a long descent. Abruptly it ended, opening onto a balcony carved into the side of a deep undersea chasm. The far side of the chasm stretched as a sheer cliff no more than a hundred feet away.

'They're coming after us,' reported Brigit, spotting the swimming forms of several scrags following them down the winding tunnel.

'Let's go!' shouted Hanrald, raising his sword in one fist and taking Brigit's hand in the other. The pair leaped from the balcony, kicking their feet and swimming with their hands. The force of their jump carried them far from their start, floating through the water like birds soaring through the air. Far below, the base of the chasm darkened to a midnight black-and then they were past, landing on a balcony across the canyon much like the one they had jumped from. Without hesitating, they darted through a doorway into another submarine passage, still racing forward.

Abruptly they came into a large room, domed like many others they had seen. A dozen tunnels opened in the walls of the chamber, and an equal number of diamond-shaped crystal panels spiraled around the ceiling.

'Which way?' wondered Hanrald, at a loss.

'We can't go back,' Brigit informed him after a quick look behind. 'We'd better move on, quick!'

Hanrald turned to the right and charged down one of the passageways. Immediately a large scrag loomed before him. The creature jabbed with a trident from a darkened niche in the side of the corridor. Surprised, the knight grunted as the weapon pierced his rib cage. Hanrald staggered back in mute astonishment, watching the water around him begin to redden.

Brigit whirled past him, disemboweling the scrag in one vicious slash. The creature floated to the side, but a quick look back showed her that their swimming pursuers were closing in rapidly.

Beside her, Hanrald's eyelids drooped, and his motionless body drifted toward the floor. As gently as possible, the elfwoman nudged the knight into the alcove that had concealed the scrag. Then she turned to face the pursuing sea trolls, deflecting the lead scrag's harpoon and splitting his face down the middle.

More of the monsters swam forward, but the sister knight sliced and slashed so skillfully that each of the beasts felt the edge or the tip of her blade. Warily they backed away from the elfwoman's silver sword, content to hover in the passageway beyond, blocking escape to the right and left but making no immediate move to attack.

Hanrald's eyes fluttered open. The knight's consciousness returned slowly, belaboredly, mainly because of an awareness of crippling pain. Each breath he drew slashed like a hot iron through his chest. He tried to focus his vision on something, anything.

He noticed a brightening of the shadows in the back of their niche. He forced himself to a sitting position, looking closer, increasingly hopeful with what he saw.

'Brigit!' he said, intending to bark commandingly and surprised that his voice came forth as a mere feeble gasp. Nevertheless, the elf woman turned around after checking to see that the scrags remained well back from her blade. 'Look-stairs. They must lead to one of those towers above the palace.'

The sister knight saw that a tightly spiraling stairway led steeply upward from their alcove. 'Let's go!' she exclaimed. 'We can try to get the attention of the ship from there!'

Hanrald smiled warmly, grasping one of her hands in his. 'A good plan,' whispered the earl, 'for you. You'll have to leave me here to distract them. You make your escape-get back to the ship!'

Brigit smiled and said nothing. Instead, she leaned over and kissed the human knight on the lips.

'Up! Climb, dammit. I can hold them, but not forever!' groaned the man, struggling to sit up and look around.

'Shhhh,' whispered Brigit, holding his head in her hands. Hanrald had lost a lot of blood, but she reduced its flow by pressing a cloth against the wound. 'In a little while we'll go together.'

Hanrald shook his head, wincing in pain at the movement.

'Don't argue,' urged the elf. 'Just rest for a moment.'

Hanrald looked around wildly, as if he had to change her mind. Then he slumped backward, relaxing with a wan smile. 'We took on a good lot of the buggers, didn't we?' said the earl with a low chuckle. 'And we led 'em on quite a chase as well.'

Brigit looked back into the corridor. She counted at least a dozen scrags, but all of them floated well back from the alcove, having learned the painful lesson taught by the elfwoman's sword.

'We make a good team,' she said, turning back to Hanrald. She was horrified by the pallor of his skin, the distant expression in his eyes. Don't die! she urged him silently.

Suddenly, with surprising strength, Hanrald sat up and looked into the sister knight's eyes. 'I love you, Brigit Cu'Lyrran!' he pledged, and his own eyes were serious and sane. 'And never did I think to be saying that to one who was as good with a sword as myself!'

She smiled and kissed him, wanting to say the same thing to him, but somehow she was unable to speak. The thought, after all these centuries, that she would come to love a human seemed to her like some grand joke of the gods if she thought about it too much.

'Come on,' she whispered, after several more minutes. 'Let's climb those stairs.'

In her mirror, Deirdre watched the desperate approach of the longship. She saw the splendors of the Coral Kingdom, of the Kyrasti, and the savage defenders swarming out to battle for their home. Her inspections drifted downward, and she noticed with interest the presence of her father, the king. The sight of his peril brought a strange thrill to her heart.

Yet her attention focused most intently on the body of the giant squid-or, more accurately, on the corrupt soul encased within that grotesque body. She wanted to strike out at Malawar, to punish him further for the hurts, real and imaginary, he had inflicted upon her. Desperately, grievously, she wanted to return those injuries a thousandfold. And at the same time, she wanted to use him, to exploit his destruction for her own gain.

Deirdre grew more and more fascinated by the avatar of evil, watching the huge body flex through the submarine chamber, thrashing in battle with lesser creatures. Partly her desire was for vengeance, but in greater part it was a lust, a craving for the power that the great beast contained within its unnatural form. Power that could belong to Deirdre, once she prepared the means of mastering it.

Yet, still, she lacked a weapon.

'Down!' commanded Brandon. He pointed, in case Knaff misunderstood his intent, but the bow of the longship already dipped in response to the helmsman's touch. Below, the huge dome of the palace rose through the emerald depths. For the time being, the Princess of Moonshae was free of immediate enemies. Except for the scrags who had charged away in pursuit of Hanrald and Brigit, the monsters who had resisted their initial approach were all dead. Even so, the air in the boat remained dense and fetid. Sweat rolled from each crew member in steaming rivulets.

'Hold on!' the captain shouted in warning. 'We're going to ram!'

Alicia clung to the mast, her sword in her hand and her eyes on the huge crystal pane before the Princess of Moonshae's bow. The longship rocked downward as Knaff pressed on the tiller, and then she lunged ahead, the proud figurehead with the gleaming silver helm driving toward the smooth, transparent surface.

The crash nearly tore Alicia loose from her perch, but she held tightly to the stout timber, staring in shock as the emerald plane shattered. A great bubble of air erupted around them as seawater plunged into the space of the huge undersea dome. The longship followed the flood, the narrow bow plummeting through the aperture into the dome. Ten feet of the hull followed, and then the widening gunwales wedged firmly against the sides of the shattered window.

A gangly figure tumbled past Alicia, and she saw the flailing form of her changestaff spilling like a felled tree toward the bow. Branches thrashed out as the thing tumbled past the figurehead, and then the trailing limbs