The Coral Kingdom - Douglas Niles [104]
Tristan leaped on the thing's back and drove the dagger through the scaly skin, into the base of its wicked brain. Instantly the scrag stiffened, jerking reflexively for a moment and then growing still.
"Hurry!" urged the merman, straining in his iron brackets. "It'll be up again in a few minutes!"
Although Tristan had seen the horror of regeneration in trolls, it seemed even more sickening in this monstrous creature from the sea. Desperately he searched through several keys-fortunately there were only half a dozen on the ring-and found the one that clicked the manacle free.
"Kill it again!" barked Marqillor as the scrag started to kick and groan before the second bracket was released. Tristan left the keys with the merman and returned to dispatch the monster with another thrust to its brain. By the time he finished, Marqillor had succeeded in working himself free of the final bracket.
"Thank you, friend," said the merman, using his long tail and his hands to propel himself over to Tristan and the troll. He looked up at the human for a moment. "You wait here," he said, and then he slipped silently into the water and disappeared.
For a moment, Tristan was too shocked by the merman's disappearance to react, and by then it was too late. All he saw were the spreading rings on the surface of the pool.
And then once again, beside him, the sea troll began to stir.
* * * * *
The secret passages through the coral reefs would have been impossible to find, according to Brandon, without the guidance of the sea elf Palentor.
"The thing is, they look like shallows," the Prince of Gnarhelm explained in amazement. "And what looks like the passage as often as not is studded with those great spires of rock or coral. That's what caught us on the way in."
The Prince of Gnarhelm had been garrulous and friendly since they had departed from Evermeet, as if on their last night together he and Alicia had settled all of their doubts. To the princess, however, the situation was exactly the reverse. The unease she had felt before was magnified tenfold now, into a raging chorus of tension and anxiety.
Her disquiet increased as she began to suspect how much her dalliance with Brandon had hurt Keane. The magic-user had spoken barely two sentences to her since they had boarded the ship, but she noticed him looking at her frequently, though he dropped his eyes quickly whenever she tried to meet his gaze. His unhappiness brought guilt into Alicia's emotional maelstrom, and finally she devoted herself to the voyage, spending a great deal of her time in the bow, watching the sea elves guide them through the narrow channels and gaps.
For two days, the Princess of Moonshae continued to slip southward, hugging the shoreline and working through the mazelike pattern of reefs, shallows, and channels. The tall trees of the Elvenhome rose off to their right, never more than a mile away. By keeping this close to shore, Palentor informed them, they should avoid observation by any scouts that the seaborne army might have sent to search for them. Palentor told them that he had dispatched squads of sea elves to patrol the seas beside their route in a further attempt to avoid observation.
So far they seemed to have been successful. There had been sign of neither scrag nor sahuagin. Frequently a blanket of thin mist obscured the reaches of the sea, further securing their progress from detection.
Now Alicia couldn't wait to get on with their task, across the open sea and then… down. None of them had talked about it very much, but they all felt some apprehension about the efficacy of the Helm of Zulae. Of course they believed it would work-otherwise the entire mission would have gone for nothing-but nevertheless, the unnatural method of travel couldn't help but disturb sailors used only to the sunswept expanse of the surface.
The horizontal rudder installed by Knaff trailed behind them, just above the water level so it wouldn't impede their progress on the surface. Yet a disturbing fact was forcibly reminded to each voyager when they saw the silver