Douglas Niles - The Coral Kingdom

Brigit scrambled out of the opening beside him and looked back down the stairway. "The scrags are just down the stairs," she warned. "They have no intention of letting us get away."

"Look!" cried Hanrald, spotting a heavy metal trapdoor lying open beside the entrance. With great effort, the two of them lifted the portal and dropped it over the opening, where they swiftly bolted the barrier shut.

"Rest for a moment," the sister knight said quietly, and for once, the man needed no coaxing. He slumped, all but unconscious, onto the flat coral surface.

The elf stood up and studied their surroundings. Sunlight brightened the surface of the sea, reflecting from the waves like multiple facets of diamonds, still at least three hundred feet above her. Many spires like the one they now occupied rose around them, and she noticed numerous shell-covered, domed structures dotting the rolling surface of the great reef below.

A swarm of creatures near the largest of these domes caught her attention, and she saw bubbles and turbulence in the water there. Then a familiar shape-the longship! — moving slowly, emerged from the turbulence. Even from this distance, a mile or more away, it seemed to Brigit that the Princess of Moonshae wallowed heavily in the water.

Still, the elfwoman's heart filled with renewed hope. She leaped to her feet, her silver breastplate gleaming in the bright water, and frantically began to wave.

"We're sinking!" Brandon snarled from the stern, angrily watching seawater flood into the longship's hull. It seemed to him a cruel irony: A powerful magical barrier protected the ship from tons of water weighing heavily above them, yet a simple gash in the planking seemed likely to doom them all to a watery grave. Already the vessel wallowed sluggishly, and in a few more minutes, she would inevitably become too heavy to rise through the sea.

Alicia noticed, for the first time since they had broken free of the dome, that the lanky figure of her changestaff had crawled back into the bow of the longship. It perched, like a gigantic mantis, near the figurehead, as if it tried to crouch out of the way of the frantic voyagers in the hull.

Her mind seized upon a desperate idea, and it was obvious no one else had another plan to suggest. "There!" the princess commanded, speaking to the creature of wood, the powerful servant of the goddess. . and herself. Would it comprehend? The princess pointed to the gash in the ship's hull, addressing the animated tree. "Can you seal that hole-stop the leak?"

Slowly, deliberately, the creature extended a limb into the water gushing through the gap, and then another. Finally it reached into the hole with its remaining branches, gaining solid purchase on the outside of the hull. Then those sturdy limbs contracted, pulling the trunk of the tree into the long, narrow crack, compressing the flow of water until the spurting leak had slowed to no more than a thin trickle. The changestaff pressed itself even more tightly into the gap, blending into the planks of the hull, and in another moment, the leak stopped entirely.

"By the gods!" Knaff grunted in gruff appreciation. "We might make it yet!"

They had no time for congratulations, however. A quick look in any direction showed huge schools of swimming scrags and sahuagin, rapidly closing in to attack. Columns of sea trolls formed the vanguard of the onrushing force, while vast waves of sahuagin followed quickly in the wake of their larger cousins. The creatures might have been schools of minnows when viewed from a distance, but they rapidly closed the gap, quickly expanding to more menacing dimensions.

It seemed the creatures of the sea had the Princess of Moonshae dead to rights. The longship wallowed in the depths of the sea, short of air and slowed by the unnatural environment. Everywhere the crew of Brandon's vessel faced a teeming collection of hungry monsters of the sea, while the humans had difficulty even drawing enough breath to stop panting and gasping.

The air in the magically enclosed longship continued to grow increasingly foul. The crew had been underwater for nearly a full day, and the strain showed on faces streaked with sweat, mouths hanging open, reflexively gasping for oxygen that was not to be had.

And yet, under these conditions, the northmen and Ffolk prepared to fight their most desperate battle yet. Never before had they encountered nearly the number of beasts that now swarmed toward them. Above and below them, to port and starboard and astern-indeed, everywhere but directly in front of the ship-the gathering schools of warriors approached. The crew could clearly see that they faced far more attackers now than had gathered to block their initial approach to Kyrasti.

Yet no one would even acknowledge the possibility of defeat.

The voyagers universally rejected the thought that now, after their miraculous rescue of the High King, they might fail to reach the surface or see the shores of Moonshae again. Every man and woman aboard vowed quietly that he or she would see that sky, breathe the fresh air that hovered so close above them.

Besides the warriors thronging through the water, the humans faced the reality of yet another grim threat. Brandon and Knaff, in the stern, saw clear evidence of the ominous form that slowly followed in their wake.

The image of the giant squid grew ever larger, emerging from the darkness of Kyrasti to advance toward the still-sluggish longship. The Prince of Gnarhelm saw that the creature delayed beginning its attack, obviously waiting until the troops surrounding the vessel had a chance to initiate the assault.

"Look there, to the west!" shouted Knaff the Elder, his voice booming through the hull of the longship. They followed his pointing figure past the bow to the one region where they had previously seen no threat, gradually discerning another mass of warriors advancing rapidly toward the Princess of Moonshae. These submarine troops swam through the water in long ranks, ranging across the full depth of the reef waters from surface to floor. Hundreds of fresh warriors surged toward them, still far away but closing the distance quickly, approaching from the only path of escape that had lain before them.

"More of them?" groaned Alicia, following the loyal helmsman's indication. The additional figures emerged from the haze of distance, swarming toward them as quickly as the palace guards.

Alicia's eye, however, was drawn to a flickering point of brightness in the direction of this new advancing force, yet not so far away. She looked more closely, positive she had seen the flash of silver or some other bright metal. Then she was certain.

"It's Brigit!" the princess cried, gasping for enough breath to shout in the foul atmosphere of the hull. She pointed to the spot of radiance, barely making out the desperately waving arm. "There! We've got to get to her!"

Slowly, with noticeable reluctance, the Princess of Moonshae pushed through the water, cutting a course toward the knight, but unable to avoid hundreds of savage enemies on all sides.

Luge huddled behind his shield, a wet and bloody sword in his hand. The terrors of this undersea journey continued to assail him, yet like any true man of Gnarhelm, he stood ready to follow his captain wherever Brandon led. He had slain sahuagin, sliced deep wounds into scrags, battled sharks and worse, all for the love of his prince.

But now he felt something even more horrifying, darker and far more sinister than any of the mortal foes he had battled to this point. The evil centered in the giant squid that pursued them. The beast had terrified Luge when he had first witnessed it in the flooding dome, and even then somehow it had reminded him of a black-bearded man who had come to him in The Black Salmon Inn.