The Coral Kingdom

by Douglas Niles

  “And even if you survive the barriers—an unlikely occurrence, assuredly,” offered the matriarch, “you would be slain as soon as you stepped ashore. Humans are not welcome on Evermeet.”

  “Perhaps … but perhaps not,” noted Robyn thoughtfully.

  “What do you mean?” inquired Brigit, intrigued in spite of herself.

  “Perhaps we could land safely if we had an escort … an elven escort!”

  “Impossible!” shouted Erashanoor, his wrinkled visage flushing indignantly. “It is as I suspected. You seek to seduce us away from our valley! It won’t be—”

  “I’ll go.” Brigit’s voice cut like a blade through the gatekeeper’s ranting. Erashanoor stopped speaking but forgot to close his mouth in astonishment. “I will sail with you to Evermeet. Once there—if we get there—I will act as your agent, presenting your request for aid.”

  “If you don’t believe we can get there, why do you volunteer to come along?” asked Alicia, unable to banish the challenge from her voice.

  “Friendship,” said Brigit bluntly. “And perhaps a measure of gratitude … and respect.”

  Alicia regretted her tone, her face flushing with embarrassment at the sister knight’s generous words. But her mother smoothly moved past the moment.

  “I thank you, my old friend,” Robyn said, stepping forward to clasp both of Brigit’s outstretched hands.

  And as quickly as that, the matter was settled.

  * * * * *

  “Enough of these distractions!” The voice of Talos, backed by thunder in his rage, echoed and resounded through the halls of his smoking realm.

  Even Malar, mortal enemy of elvenkind, would have quailed before that anger, except for the fact that any such display of weakness in the face of a fellow god could have potentially disastrous consequences. So instead, the Beastlord pretended haughty indifference and turned a bored, deathlike eye toward his unholy ally.

  “Very well,” he agreed, his own voice a basso rumble that could be felt to the core of the plane around them. “Ityak-Ortheel was an amusing diversion, but the Synnorian Gate is still closed—and no doubt the Llewyrr have been driven deeper into their shell than ever. I am satisfied.”

  “Good—very good!” Talos grumbled, mollified.

  “Have the humans replied to Sinioth’s demands?” inquired Malar, none too eager to dwell on the previous topic of conversation. Talos shook his head, and the ground rumbled beneath him.

  “The king of the Ffolk …?” Malar mused. “Should he be put to death?”

  “Not yet!” Talos commanded without hesitation. “We hold a vital trump, my ally. We should not be hasty to discard it!”

  “Very well,” agreed the Beastlord, phrasing the central question. “What do we do now?”

  “We have the glass … in the hands of our young tool,” Talos noted.

  “Proven doubly useful,” Malar agreed.

  “So we wait,” said Talos, his voice low, almost bored. “Then later, after the humans have had time to grasp their impotence, we will send them his other hand.”

  The other god smiled. The plan had an appealing ring.

  PART II: EVERMEET

  8

  The Third Princess of Moonshae

  Brandon’s eyes swept the horizon with obvious eagerness as the party drew near Corwell on the return from Synnoria. Alicia attributed the northman’s eagerness to his love for the sea, assuming that the week-long trek into the highlands had been a hard separation for the sailor.

  Of course, the princess herself looked ahead with growing eagerness as their horses alternately cantered, trotted, and walked along the King’s Road of Corwell. The solid bulk of Caer Corwell, atop its rocky knoll, would be a clear sign of their homecoming, looming before them for the last six hours of the ride. At the same time, Alicia reminded herself, pastoral Lowhill would come into sight, a clear reminder of their mission’s grim cost.

  Brigit accompanied the human riders. Her lieutenant, Colleen, had pleaded with her to come as well, but Brigit had agreed that she would be the only elf to accompany the party. This much she was willing to compromise with her mentor, Erashanoor. Despite the fact that a departure from Synnoria—not to mention a sea voyage!—loomed as a major trauma to the Llewyrr, the elf had completed her preparations in the hour following the council in ruined Argen-Tellirynd.

  The matriarch had prevailed on the battle-weary companions to spend one night in the elven vale, which they had done gratefully. The hypnotic splendor of the place Robyn recalled from twenty years before remained absent—a fact that was hardly surprising, considering the chaos that had just wracked the valley.

  By the following dawn, propelled by unspoken urgency, they were saddled and ready to ride. Deirdre, they discovered as they prepared to depart, was nowhere to be found. She had apparently teleported back to Caer Corwell without any farewells.

  The morning of the last day had broken a few hours ago with the promise of Corwellian hearths before nightfall. The absence of Pawldo was a persistent cloud, hovering over members of the party at different times but affecting them all deeply.

  Brandon rode beside Alicia. He had been silent for much of this day. Now, however, the other companions had trailed out before them, and they could talk privately. It was the moment he had awaited.

  “We’re well along the path to your father,” he declared. “I know that—you have to trust me, Princess!”

  “We’re not even started yet, really,” she replied. “It seems like an impossible dream—that somewhere at the end of this, we’ll sail under the ocean and rescue him.”

  “But I know that this is a dream you’ll not abandon, and because of that, neither will I!”

  She felt a deep sense of relief to have his help in this quest. At the same time, his presence caused a real ambivalence in her feelings. What would be the cost—in his own mind, and to her own sense of debt and honor—of his courage and sacrifice? Certainly she knew that he didn’t help her out of any such selfish motives, but could she separate those issues in her own mind, her own heart?

  “When we find your father, will you allow me to ask him for your hand?” pressed Brandon.

  “I … I don’t know!” Alicia replied, suddenly afraid. “I can’t decide that—I can’t even think about it—now! You have to understand that!”

  Unconsciously Alicia picked up the pace so that she and Brandon drew closer to Hanrald and Brigit, who rode in tandem before them. Their nearness, more than Alicia’s reluctance, brought Brandon’s conversation to a halt.

  The two knights, human man and elven woman, were engaged in serious discussion. Though Hanrald loomed over Brigit on foot, the difference was somewhat lessened on horseback. The earl’s war-horse was a heavy steed, capable of charging with the knight in plate armor and the horse fully barded in chain. Yet Brigit had selected for her mount an exceptionally long-legged young mare—naturally of purest white. The horse scampered with such a bounce in her gait that she seemed to float above the road.

  “The chain armor has its place for scouting and speed,” Brigit was saying as Alicia and Brandon drew even with them.

  “But there’s nothing like solid plate for making a charge or mixing it up in a melee,” Hanrald replied.

  “True—to a point,” Brigit allowed. “But then a good shirt of chain can provide nearly the same protection and also give you the speed to cover your back with your weapon, instead of your armor.”

  “You’d be talking about better chain than I’ve seen,” Hanrald said with a rueful laugh. “Even the best armorsmiths in Callidyrr can’t link together anything that’ll hold the bite of a northman’s axe.”

  “And what kind of northman would be striking at your back?” demanded Brandon, in mock offense.

  “I’ll welcome them at my side now,” replied Hanrald seriously. “It’s no small thing you’ve done, offering to take a company of foreigners on a quest for their king!”

  Alicia flinched. The words were too close to the tur
moil she wrestled with so frequently. She turned to Brigit, trying to ignore the men.

  “What do you know about the barriers around Evermeet?” the princess asked.

  “Very little,” admitted Brigit. “And neither Erashanoor nor the sages could tell me much, though I spoke with them about it on the evening before our departure.

  “There are the things called cyclones,” continued the sister knight. “But whether they’re funnel clouds of intense pressure or great masses of storm I can’t tell you. As to the Warders, it seems that their nature has been kept—intentionally—a secret.”

  “We’ll need spare rigging and sails, extra oars,” Brandon mused. “All things we can gather in Corwell Town.”

  Alicia nodded. “We’ll have no dearth of volunteers, I’m sure—enough to crew your vessel.”

  Brandon shook his head. “My own men will go, to the last hand. Best we sail with an experienced company.”

  “There is some hope I can offer,” Brigit added slowly. She didn’t sound terribly enthusiastic. “Erashanoor told me before we left that it’s supposed to be possible to reach Evermeet by sea. There were paths laid through the storm belt, and the Warders are not invincible.”

  “That is encouraging news,” the princess agreed, her hopes fanned into flame.

  “Of course, we don’t have any map of those paths, and if the Warders have a weakness, I’m sure I don’t know what it is!” Brigit reminded her, but Alicia didn’t bother to listen because it wasn’t what she wanted to hear.

  “My ancestors have long avoided a wide stretch of sea a thousand miles to the west of here,” Brandon said. “They tell legends of an elven island, dangerous to approach. That’s the place you call Evermeet?”

  “Yes,” Brigit replied. “A large realm, hundreds of miles from north to south.”

  “With a favoring wind, we might make the voyage in a week or ten days.”

  “And without a favoring wind?” inquired the sister knight.

  This time it was the northman who shook away the question. “We can tack around any wind, and we’ve got oars if it comes to that!”

  “It shouldn’t take us too long to get everything collected once we get to town. And Brand’s crew is there already, plus his longship.”

  At her last word, Alicia frowned, realizing that their vessel was one matter in which they must settle for less than ideal preparations. Brandon’s own ship, the Gullwing, had been lost in a wreck barely two months earlier. As crown prince, he had commandeered the Coho, the longship of one of his countrymen, but the craft was smaller and, even to Alicia’s unpracticed eye, appeared less seaworthy than had Brand’s personal ship. The prince had long before commissioned a new longship, but Alicia had seen the vessel under construction little more than a month before. There would still be, she felt certain, much work to do on the new longship.

  “The towers of Corwell,” announced the High Queen abruptly, and they all cantered ahead to get a look.

  None of the others could make out the shape of the hilltop fortress, but within five minutes, a squat outline began to show through the haze of distance.

  “How did you see that from back there?” asked Brandon, who had always believed his own eyesight to be perfect.

  “Human senses are not always the most acute. Perhaps I borrowed the eyes of something different—a hawk, say. Or perhaps your young eyes are not as keen as you think they are!”

  The towers of Corwell Keep soon stood out in individual relief, and then the stone wall that had begun to replace the castle’s wooden palisade came into view. Soon the waters of the firth glittered on the far horizon, stretching like a blue highway into the haze of the far west.

  The companions unconsciously picked up their pace, allowing the horses to gobble the miles with long, loping strides. The steeds ran as if they could sense the snug stable and fresh oats in their near future.

  As they rode, more and more details became apparent—the buildings dotting the snug town, many puffing small wafts of cooksmoke from their chimneys … fishing ships, a trading galleon, and a pair of longer vessels as well, dotting the placid waters of Corwell Harbor.

  And then Brandon gave a shout of triumph that took them all by surprise. The northman’s face was locked in an expression of fierce joy. Alicia stared at the Prince of Gnarhelm and then followed his eyes to the firth.

  Two longships in the harbor? She squinted, recognizing first the Coho by her battered hull and limp, swaybacked look. The other vessel was anchored just beyond, and though she was the same type of ship, she was as different from the Coho as a galleon was from a canoe.

  The second longship was more than half again as long as the Coho, and her hull planks were so clean that they gleamed. Her gunwales were long and straight, and a proud figurehead rose high above the prow. The ship was quite simply the grandest vessel Alicia had ever seen.

  “She’s here!” shouted the prince of the north, raising his fist triumphantly.

  “Who’s here?” inquired Keane, peevish from the long ride.

  Brandon took them all in with his smile, the wide grin of a man who has just sworn his love for life or has beheld his newborn son for the first time.

  And then Alicia knew. She remembered the partially completed hull she had seen in Gnarhelm that spring, the sleek vessel that Brandon had told her would be his own. Even among the builders’ stays she had been a grand vessel, and the princess had no doubt that the same ship now awaited them in the harbor of Corwell.

  “This is a ship I would take to the edge of the world and sail her along the brink!” declared the northman, his voice thick with pride. “The work was finished in record time, and I left word in Gnarhelm, weeks ago, to bring her here as soon as she was ready to sail.”

  Now Alicia saw that he eyed her seriously, his expression unusually tentative.

  “We shall sail to Evermeet on the grandest vessel of Gnarhelm,” Brandon said, his voice thick with pride. “And that vessel required a name befitting her grandness. I hope you can forgive my presumption.”

  Alicia started at the uncharacteristic humility in his tone. Then her blood thrilled and her throat choked as she understood what he meant.

  “She is called the Princess of Moonshae,” Brandon finished quietly. Deeply touched, Alicia could only nod her thanks, but even through her tear-streaked eyes she could see the warmth and affection shining from the northman’s face.

  * * * * *

  For a long time, Deirdre tried to avoid her mirror, even going to the extent of covering it with the leather wrap and stacking books and scrolls on top of it. In truth, she was terribly tired. She had spent the night in Synnoria relearning her teleportation spell and then, before dawn, she used it to return to Corwell.

  Then she had fallen into a slumber that had lasted for two full days—and even now, on the third day, her mind was reluctant to focus. Instead, she found her thoughts drifting to the mirror.

  Finally she gave up her resistance, slowly lifting the top books from the stack. She quickly pushed the other volumes out of the way and tore away the cover. Palpable relief swept over her when she saw the comforting reflection in the glass.

  Then the picture shimmered, and she settled down to observe her sister and her companions making their plans.

  * * * * *

  The companions’ return to Caer Corwell was marked by an enthusiastic crowd of Ffolk who poured out of the town to line the roadway as soon as the party was sighted. The appearance of the elf among them was greeted by wild cheers.

  Immediately upon reaching the courtyard, Robyn ordered a grand feast for those lords and Ffolk still in Corwell. The occasion was a farewell banquet for those who would embark to Evermeet—and also, a memorial and tribute to the queen’s lifelong friend, Lord Pawldo of Lowhill.

  Tavish sang songs about love and triumphant heroes while the guests mingled about the great hall, beginning the carousing that would go on far into the night. Dozens of kegs were tapped, and ales from palest amber to dark
est mahagony overfilled deep and oft-inverted mugs, while the smells of succulent roasts drifted through the hall. Nevertheless, this was not nearly such a grand gathering as the festival of ten days earlier.

  The entire affair was held within the keep of the palace.

  Keane sensed the preparations for the feast as a vague background confusion against his concentration on the mission before them. The voyage to Evermeet, he guessed, offered the companions a less than fifty percent chance of survival. He had tried to dissuade the queen and the princesses together, and each separately, from participating in the quest. He hadn’t expected to succeed with even one of the accursedly stubborn females, but in the case of Deirdre, he found an ally in the queen.

  Robyn would not allow the entire family to embark on the quest, and she had decreed that it would be Deirdre who remained behind. The younger daughter had agreed with this suggestion too willingly for Keane’s peace of mind. He let his mind consider the younger princess with an undeniable shiver of concern.

  How had she known about the Elf-Eater—its rampage, or the means to vanquish it? And what unerring sense had brought her right to the scene of the fight, just when her presence could make a difference? How much did she know—and how did she learn it? A cautionary part of him wanted to remain in Corwell to observe the frightening development of Deirdre’s power.

  Yet Keane never questioned the importance of his own presence on the mission to rescue the king. Without his spells, the expedition’s slim survival chances would be drastically decreased, in the mage’s well-considered and unemotional opinion.

  He spent many hours in study, and in the transcribing of spells from his great, leather-bound spellbook to a smaller volume that he would take with him aboard the Princess of Moonshae. Abruptly the lean magic-user straightened up and sighed, reminded by a pang of jealousy that they would be placing themselves in Brandon Olafsson’s hands for the duration of their voyage.