The Coral Kingdom - Douglas Niles [117]
One of the scrags whirled, thrusting a sharp trident through the body of a speeding merman. Air and blood escaped the body in a foaming cloud as the unfortunate creature sank, motionless, toward the bottom. Other mermen slashed in, quickly disarming the scrag and then beating the sea trolls into senselessness.
The crucial count continued, amid darkness and pressure and the eternal chill of the ocean depth. Five, eight, finally ten of the mermen sustained Tristan with the breath of their lungs. They swam above a deep chasm, with cliff walls plummeting to inky black depths below him, and then they crested a low wall. Once again a huge pair of scrags floated before them, but the mermen attacked mercilessly, and by the time Tristan reached the scene of the fight, little more than bubbles floated in the water to indicate where the two sea trolls had stood their guard. Most of the mermen were armed by now, bearing weapons they had acquired from slain guards.
Then the eleventh merman gave Tristan the breath of life, and he tried not to think of the few minutes of air that remained. He knew that one of his escorts had been slain, so he suspected he had one more breath available to him. If they didn't reach some sort of cave before then…
Abruptly he noticed growing illumination in the water around them, and then they plunged through an undersea doorway, bursting into a huge circular chamber. Several monstrous sea trolls, the largest specimens Tristan had yet seen, surged toward them as Marqillor darted upward, dragging Tristan behind him. The human king growled in silent frustration. With his lone hand holding on to the merman's belt, he didn't even have a fist with which to defend himself.
In another moment, however, the merman and the human broke through the surface. Tristan exhaled and gasped for breath, thrashing his arms to tread water. Only after his straining lungs had recovered did he take notice of the fight that raged around him.
A huge ceiling curved overhead, creating a great domed chamber. Only the top portion of the room contained air, but Tristan saw several niches in the walls just above the water level. The human splashed over to one of these while he tried to make out the murky figures below him.
Pale emerald light spilled into the room through crystal panels in the ceiling of the chamber, much like the windows that had illuminated his cell except that these were much larger. In that light, Tristan saw figures darting through the water below, mermen fighting with their tails and captured weapons as they rushed the palace guards.
A monstrous sahuagin, dark green, with a spiny ridge along its back, sprang upward from the dais in the center of the chamber where it had previously floated. Tristan saw golden chains trailing from the creature's neck and suspected that the creature must be one of the masters of Kyrasti-perhaps even Sythissal himself! The human clutched his steel dagger as he saw the beast swimming toward him.
The monstrous beast broke the surface of the water in a cloud of spray, reaching a taloned hand toward Tristan's leg but recoiling as the blade slashed toward the green-scaled limb. The fishman settled back into the water, its spiny dorsal ridge cutting a streak through the brine as it dove out of reach. Whirling, the monster fixed the human with a hate-filled stare.
Tristan felt a hot flush of combative joy. Battle had been joined, and the outcome now depended on speed and strength and skill. The sensation brought back a flood of emotions-not so much memories as impressions. He remembered the fierce delight of hard-won victories, the bleak despair of defeat. Fear and fury, triumph and grief-he was certain he had known them all.
And he knew that most of his battles had been victories.
"Fight me, lizard!" Tristan challenged, ready to battle the creature then and there. His missing hand was insignificant. His righteous rage, he believed, made him