The Coral Kingdom

by Douglas Niles

  “They climb the western valley?”

  “The We of Clouds.” The young sister nodded. She wore the mottled greenish tunic of a scout over her silver breastplate. Her helmet was lashed to the saddle of her horse, while a deep hood attached to her cloak could quickly be pulled up to cover her white-blonde hair.

  “They’ll pass the boundary and turn aside,” Brigit announced, more calm in her voice than she actually felt.

  It disturbed her, this sudden appearance of humans at the borders of Synnoria so soon after she had resolved to be especially vigilant against intrusion. “Still, it’s best if I have a look at them. Lead on!”

  Colleen reversed her gelding and galloped back up the trail, Brigit close behind. The two sister knights rode without taking notice of the wonders around them. Even though the bright flowers and verdant woods were familiar sights, they rarely failed to attract the attention and delight of the Llewyrr who passed among them. But now the elfwomen remained still, intent upon the potential for intrusion.

  But those surrounding wonders were splendorous indeed. Waterfalls trilled from the slopes to either side, while a clear brook collected their spumes and carried them with laughing enthusiasm toward the blue waters of Crystaloch. Columbines, daisies, and fleabane all blinked among lush, windblown grasses, each type of flower blooming in a dozen different shades of brilliant color. Tall pines, their long-needled sprouts blanketing the forest in a soft, blue-green hue, waved from the slopes above them.

  The Llewyrr on their white horses followed a narrow track that generally traced the streambed up the valley bottom. Much of the ride took them through sun-speckled meadow, or among the few pines growing on the valley floor. After several miles, however, Colleen veered to the left, her gelding plunging between two tall pine trunks onto an almost invisible track in the woods.

  The winding path climbed steeply, and the two riders ducked their heads beneath many overhanging limbs. The strong horses bounded over the tangled ground, laboring hard, carrying the two elves steadily upward. After a few minutes, they paused for rest on a shoulder of the valley that gave them a splendid view behind them. The black cliff of the Fey-Alamtine gleamed in the sunlight at the head of the valley.

  Then, for many more minutes, they pressed higher through the enclosing forest. Finally the trees gave way abruptly to a rolling, rock-studded ridge. Below them, the wonders of Synnoria sprawled, pristine and heartbreakingly beautiful beneath the dome of blue.

  “A little farther,” Colleen said. The horses broke into a gallop, approaching the top of the rounded ridge bordering Synnoria on the west.

  As they approached the crest, the jagged tors and rocky promontories of the Myrloch highlands came into view over the ridge and then, as the sisters reached the summit, the forested slopes and flat-bottomed valleys, many dotted with lake or fen. Still they cantered, past the crest of the ridge and down the gradual slope that soon grew steeper.

  Colleen halted, and the two dismounted behind a large rock. Leaving the horses behind, they slipped forward on hands and knees onto an outcrop of granite that jutted into the air over the twisting valley below.

  “I see them,” Brigit announced immediately. The figures were still miles away, but she could clearly count seven of them, on five dark and two white horses.

  As the two observed from their lofty perch, the party of humans reached a small side valley that flowed into the wider vale they had been following. Without visible hesitation, the intruders turned into the narrow valley. Brigit watched them dismount, taking their horses by the bridles to lead them up the steep, treacherous-looking trail.

  “The magic still works,” observed the captain with a wry smile.

  “They believe that they follow the only route available to them?” asked Colleen. Though the illusionary barrier of Synnoria was understood by all adult Llewyrr, the young scout had never seen it in action.

  “Yes. The walls of the main valley appear to merge before them into a tight, cliff-sided draw. The apparent amount of water in the two streams is reversed. A mere trickle comes down the draw, while the humans will think for several miles that they follow a major channel. Imagine their confusion as they move away from Synnoria and it dwindles to its true dimensions!”

  “Then they are gone for now?” The scout studied the diminishing figures until they had disappeared behind the first twist in the narrow passage.

  “They’ll follow that draw until it comes to a little valley with a marsh and a lake. That’s the divide. From there, they descend and expect to find Synnoria. Instead, it puts them in the fenland of Myrloch Vale!”

  The two knights made their way carefully back to their horses, where they relaxed, safely out of sight of the valley. For a long time, they rested beside the sun-swept boulder, drifting toward a midday nap in the soothing warmth.

  Finally Brigit stirred, stretching easily as she stood. “Let’s follow the ridgeline for a while,” she suggested.

  For more than an hour, the two Llewyrr rode the heights, following the border between Synnoria and Corwell until they reached a craggy stretch too rough for the horses. Enjoying the scenery and the silence, they turned back.

  “Let’s go look for those humans again, to make sure they haven’t come back this way,” Brigit said.

  Before Colleen could reply, both sisters stiffened. A long, ululating call reached their ears, carried clearly from the valley of Synnoria. Then the sound stopped abruptly, chopped away in midcry.

  “The Fey-Alamtine!” cried Colleen.

  “Let’s go!” barked Brigit. The sound had been a Llewyrr distress cry reserved for the most dire of emergencies. The two white horses pounded forward, streaking over the crest of the ridge, racing back toward the pastoral Synnorian valley the two riders had left scant hours before. They galloped headlong down the steep trail, back toward the valley bottom.

  As the valley floor came into sight, the two sisters, even from nearly a thousand feet above, could see that something was horribly changed. A great swath marked the middle of the vale where tall trees had been crushed to either side like blades of grass. The setting was no longer pastoral; indeed, so profound was the transformation that Brigit tried to convince herself that she must be dreaming. Trees of great girth lay sprawled about like matchsticks, pushed outward as if some horrifying, destructive force had forged a path between them.

  Colleen gasped in horror. “What happened?” she shouted, clinging to her racing gelding.

  Brigit didn’t reply. She felt sick to her stomach, grimly determined to discover the source of this abomination.

  “Look—the way the trees lie. Whatever did this moved on down the valley,” observed Colleen crisply.

  “Toward Chrysalis!”

  The captain had reached the same conclusion, but to her, it held different significance—not so much where the path was leading, as to where it came from. It originated higher up the valley to their left …

  From the Fey-Alamtine.

  They reached the vantage where they had rested on the climb, and Brigit gazed to the west in uncomprehending shock. The once-shiny cliff no longer gleamed in the morning sunlight. In fact, there was no cliff there to gleam! Instead, a wreckage of splintered obsidian lay at the foot of the slope, as if a horrendous landslide or explosion had ripped open the mountain.

  Brigit spurred her horse, and the fleet mare seemed to sprout wings, so gracefully did she sweep along the forest trail. Colleen held as close as possible, but the gelding couldn’t match the pace of her captain’s mare.

  They reached a shelf in the descending valley, and the horses pounded down the winding trail with abandon. Near the bottom, Brigit’s mare reared back and the sister knight looked down, appalled, at the trail before her.

  A white horse lay there, dead for only moments judging by the steam rising from its freshly exposed bowels. Something had scored a gory wound across the horse’s midsection, nearly tearing the hapless beast in two. The tattered remnants of the saddle remained, but t
here was no sign of the rider.

  “Inger’s horse,” said the white-faced Colleen. She held her longbow across her saddle, her fear-widened eyes darting back and forth among the surrounding trees.

  A loud splintering sound reached them, and the Llewyrr felt the massive pain of trees, rended by some awful force. Shrieks of horror, undeniably elven, rang from somewhere down the trail.

  Immediately the two sister knights spurred their mounts into a gallop, frantic now to intercept the threat that seemed to move like a landslide toward the heart of Synnoria. They ducked under branches, then lay flat along the pitching backs of the racing steeds, thundering several miles in a blur of speed.

  Finally they came through a grove of tall pines into the wide meadow of the trout farm, and here the horses reared back, instinctively terrified.

  The first thing that came into Brigit’s mind was that a gigantic turtle had somehow appeared among the Llewyrr. At a glance, the domed back, covered by a hard carapace, might have belonged to one of that amphibious race.

  But as it moved, the resemblance immediately vanished.

  Three legs flexed beneath the beast, carrying it with bounding speed toward several fleeing elves. It loomed over them, the size of a small barn, then scampered with shocking speed this way and that after the terrified Llewyrr. Tentacles lashed outward, seizing the slight forms and dragging them to an unseen fate beneath the monster’s overhanging shell.

  “The trout farm!” cried Colleen, but Brigit had already seen the damage. The beast stalked among the buildings and sheds, smashing troughs of flowing water, reducing wooden buildings to splinters with a single kick of a tree-sized leg. Panic-stricken Llewyrr fled in all directions. The knights saw several of them seized by the monster’s tentacles and dragged screaming to their doom.

  “Let’s go!” urged Brigit, spurring the frightened Talloth toward the rampaging beast. She wished for her lance, though in her heart, she knew that even that steel-tipped shaft could do little more than prick the monster’s skin. Despite the hopelessness of their courageous gesture, Colleen raced at her side. Both of the sister knights drew their swords, raising the blades in a wild attempt to distract the monster from its helpless prey.

  The beast must have sensed their approach, for it turned from the wreckage of a shed, where it had been burrowing after survivors with its tentacles, and lumbered toward the froth-flecked horses and their determined riders.

  “Break!” shouted Brigit, veering to the right. Colleen, anticipating the command, split to the left. The horses swept around the looming beast, out of range of the awful tendrils, and the monster seemed content to let them pass.

  As they came around to the other side, Brigit looked back and, for the first time, saw the distended gap that was the thing’s mouth. Blood flowed copiously among a grinding nest of tongue protuberances, hard-edged digits that crunched and scraped against each other or against anything else unfortunate enough to be caught between them. The knight gagged at the thought of the elves—her fellow Llewyrr!—who had perished there, ground to pieces by the churning cartilage.

  “Turn back!” she shouted to Colleen, veering sharply toward the creature. A tentacle lashed toward her and she chopped, feeling a grim satisfaction when her steel blade bit into the gruesome flesh. Immediately the limb whipped backward, away from the keen sword.

  Colleen darted in on the other side, slashing at a different tentacle, and then the two riders galloped away, pausing across the field to see if the thing would pursue them.

  Instead, it stood like a small hillock, as if it would never move anywhere again. “Attack again—but be careful!” Brigit commanded.

  Again the two Llewyrr thundered forward, blades at the ready, guiding the sleek horses with the pressure of their knees. Still the three-legged monstrosity remained unmoving, awaiting the charge.

  “Break!” cried Brigit again, and once more the two riders swept past the monster. The captain looked for the lashing tentacles again, ready to parry, but no attack came. She darted closer, stabbing with her blade toward the immense body.

  But the beast sprang away before she could close. For a fierce, triumphant moment, she thought that it feared her, but then she saw the awful truth.

  The monster’s leap carried it full into the side of Colleen’s gelding. One of the huge legs kicked outward, shockingly nimble, crushing the horse’s shoulder with the force of a single blow. With an exclamation of fear, or maybe anger, the scout flew from the saddle, tumbling heavily to the ground. Immediately a lashing tendril whipped over her tumbling body to constrict about her legs. The knight finally stopped rolling, knocked senseless, and the monster tightened its grip.

  Slowly the tentacle grew taut, dragging Colleen feetfirst through the grass toward the gigantic beast. The gaping maw narrowed, becoming an extending proboscis with a small, circular opening in its blunt tip. The aperture resembled a giant sucker as it pulsed open and closed, as if tantalized by the approaching morsel.

  Brigit had rushed in closer when the monster attacked Colleen, but her blade—of the sharpest, hardest elven steel, and enchanted more than a thousand years earlier by a great Llewyrr wizard—merely bounced from the thing’s bony carapace. Talloth fairly flew around the thing, and then Brigit saw the awful doom her comrade faced.

  Colleen regained her senses, but the monster ignored her desperate kicks. She grasped despairingly at the grass, but it tore loose in her hands. The moist sucker that was the beast’s mouth reached closer, almost touching her leather boot.

  The captain of the sister knights sprang from her saddle, landed on her feet between the scout and the creature’s mouth, and drove her longsword downward with killing force. The razor-sharp edge bit into the tentacle, scoring a deep groove but failing to sever the tough limb.

  Still, the wound distracted the monster enough for Colleen to kick against the tendril and squirm free. Brigit jumped backward, grasping her companion’s shoulder and jerking the trembling scout roughly to her feet.

  “Onto my mare! Quickly!” she barked as the faithful Talloth circled back to the two Llewyrr. The elves stumbled away from the looming horror, not daring to look backward. Colleen steadied herself and reached for the mare’s bridle as the steed galloped closer. Suddenly the animal’s eyes widened in fright and it reared back.

  Without thinking, Brigit pushed Colleen to the side, diving behind her companion as the ground behind them—the place where they had just stood—shook to the impact of a monstrous body. Looking upward in horror, the captain of the knights saw two tentacles reach toward the panicked mare. They seized Talloth’s forelegs and pulled, dragging the steed to the ground. One of the tentacles, heavier than the rest, bashed against the mare’s neck.

  Brigit saw blood spurt and heard the gurgling death of her loyal war-horse, but she forced the pain and grief from her mind. They had to move!

  “Run—for all you’re worth!” she ordered, bouncing to her feet with the fleet scout at her side. The two elves dashed across the field toward the dark line of the stream, which here flowed between steep banks that were slightly higher than an elf.

  They heard a thudding noise behind them again, and then they reached the streambed, flinging themselves from the bank to land in the shallow, gravel-bedded stream.

  “This way!” Brigit darted to the left, hearing Colleen behind her. The water barely rose to their ankles, and they sprinted nearly as quickly as they had before.

  But not quickly enough. A shadow loomed over them, blocking out the bright sun, the fiery orb that was so yellow, so cheerful that it certainly must be mocking them, Brigit thought in despair. The huge, rounded beast towered above them, reaching forward with tentacles too numerous to count.

  Colleen collapsed with a groan of despair, sobbing. Brigit shook her head angrily, ignoring the thunderous voice of hopelessness. Instead, she raised her sword in both hands and prepared to meet the monster squarely.

  * * * * *

  The High Queen told none of her
companions of the goddess’s omen, the proud wolf who had spoken to her in the darkest hours of the night. Hanrald mentioned, in the morning, that he had seen the queen sitting beside the dying fire, but that was all. The vision had been for her alone.

  Now she pondered the meaning privately as they progressed farther up the valley that, to the best of her memory, would lead them somewhere near Synnoria.

  “Are you sure the terrain was this rough?” asked Alicia as, afoot, the companions led their horses higher up the steep, twisting draw. The formerly wide vale had compressed into this ravine in a remarkably short period of time.

  “To tell you the truth, it seemed that we rode our horses the whole way,” Robyn admitted. “I can’t imagine we could have come out this way.”

  “And look how quickly this stream has dwindled away,” observed Hanrald, who had been leading the party up the narrow gully. “There was a lot more water in it a mile back, and yet I haven’t seen any tributaries entering the stream since then. How do you explain it being a mere trickle here without the addition of more water?”

  “This whole range responds to a detect magic spell,” said Keane disgustedly, after examining their surroundings with yet another magical inspection. “I can’t tell where any specific effect exists.”

  The mage disliked walking even more than he loathed riding, and the rugged terrain of this morning’s march had done little for his morale. Now he slumped to sit on a boulder, holding the reins of his swaybacked gelding.

  “And look.” Brandon pointed at the sky, where the sun lay off their right shoulders. “We no longer go east. We’ve curved to the north somewhere along the way.”

  “That’s funny. The valley seemed pretty straight to me, even though it was a little steep,” Alicia noted with surprise. The hair at the back of her neck prickled upward as she realized that they had been deceived by sorcery.

  “No doubt we’ll be turned into frogs or something equally hideous if we take a few more steps,” grumbled Pawldo, looking around nervously. He paused, as if waiting for someone to urge him forward.