The Coral Kingdom - Douglas Niles [107]
He reflected on the bitter confines of the submarine lair. Not only did it entrap him, but it limited his air. The only way to permanently kill a troll, as far as Tristan knew, was to burn it. Yet here, even if he had been able somehow to start the creature ablaze, the smoke would probably choke him. A grim joke for the troll, he thought without humor, if the creature reached from beyond death to claim the life of the one who had slain it.
Where was Marqillor? Would he return? Tristan had no idea how much time had passed since the merman had disappeared so abruptly. If the human had been abandoned, he knew his life would last only until he fell asleep, for then the troll would regenerate uninterrupted, rendering the fate of his sleeping captor inevitable.
Splashing water, the first clue that he had dozed, startled Tristan awake, and he sprang to his feet clutching the dagger.
"Hold, friend!" declared Marqillor, curling his tail beneath him at the edge of the pool. The merman raised himself to the height of a kneeling human as he spoke.
"Where were you?" demanded the king, embarrassed at his lack of alertness.
Abruptly more water splashed upward, and again, and each time the pool disgorged another merman until more than a dozen had gathered around Marqillor, sitting at the edge of the pool with their long tails trailing into the brine. The aquatic creatures examined the sea troll-which Tristan hastily dispatched again-and regarded the human with expressions of clear respect.
"I went to pay a call on some friends," Marqillor announced. "They wanted to meet you."
"Can we get out of here?" inquired Tristan, knowing it would take a stunning bit of sorcery to transport him to the surface in any state approaching alive.
"I don't know. The surface is far away, and if you swam the distance quickly, the rapid change in pressure would surely prove fatal."
"What can we-I-do, then?"
"We can go to the palace of Kyrasti," explained Marqillor. "That's the great dome where Krell-Bane and Sythissal hold court. It's the very heart of the Coral Kingdom. More significantly, a portion of the throne room is filled with air. You will be able to survive there."
"Sythissal." The name was familiar to Tristan. The sahuagin king had been his enemy for more than twenty years. "But who's Krell-Bane?"
"The king of the sea trolls, and a very evil monarch he is. Krell-Bane is the most hated enemy of the merfolk, and we have been given a marvelous chance to strike him!"
"Why is it so marvelous?" Tristan wondered.
"Because you freed me," explained the merman prince. "The perimeter of the scrag king's palace is well patrolled by sharks as well as by his troops. The interior of the castle, secure as he imagines it to be, is not nearly so well protected."
"How far is it?"
"Several miles," admitted Marqillor, placing a hand on Tristan's arm as the human's face fell.
"I can never swim that far," Tristan acknowledged with a shrug. To come so close to escaping, and now to be thwarted by such a trivial distance!
"There might be a way," offered Marqillor, studying Tristan's face. "It is not without risk, and it requires great courage on your part, but it may be possible for you to make it."
"I'm ready to try anything," said Tristan-and he meant it.
* * * * *
"Dead ahead, Brandon," Robyn quietly announced to the Prince of Gnarhelm. The northman nodded. For five days, he had followed no compass but the intuition of the Great Druid, yet he didn't begin to doubt the acuity of her direction.
The wind had favored them for the first two days but then faded to a lackluster breeze. They made headway, but their listless wake sliced placid waters, a far cry from the white slash trailing the Princess of Moonshae when she was under full sail.
"Look-in the water!" announced Brigit, her voice terse and commanding.
The others saw them, too-sharks, in a great school gathered around the longship. Schools of the ugly fish, triangular fins slicing the surface of the water in menacing patterns,