The Coral Kingdom - Douglas Niles [74]
Abruptly all thoughts of salvation from that quarter were dashed when the mage stiffened, then whirled back to face Brandon and Knaff the Elder, who still manned the helm.
"Turn!" shrieked Keane, more agitated than Alicia had ever seen him. "That way-turn left!" He pointed, the tension in his body transferred in full to his voice. "Now, if you value your lives!"
Knaff hesitated a moment, looking to Brandon, but the captain didn't question the mage's warning. "Do it!" he bellowed, and the helmsman threw the rudder hard to port.
At her leisurely speed, the Princess of Moonshae didn't heel or rock from the force of the turn. Instead, the longship meandered through a sweeping, gradual change of direction. To Alicia, it seemed as though they were mired in mud. She stared at Keane, at the calm sea beyond him, and wondered if he had lost his mind.
A danger of the turn became apparent when she looked backward. The two broad rafts seemed much closer, and now, with the longship sailing across their path instead of away from them, they seemed to advance with shocking speed.
Then she became aware of a sound or vibration-an ominous rumble so deep that Alicia felt rather than heard it. The others, too, sensed the disturbance. All talk ceased, and even the oarsmen cocked their ears at the water as they strained with redoubled efforts toward their task. Alicia saw, with a sickening sense of shock, that the faces of many of the veteran seamen had blanched with terror.
The Princess of Moonshae began to tremble with a vibration that could no longer be doubted. It seized the vessel as if in a giant fist, and the longship quivered helplessly in its grasp. Still Alicia couldn't hear any audible noise, but the rumbling sensation reached into the pit of her stomach.
Then, finally, beginning like the roll of distant thunder, carried like an echo across a series of ridges, the sound came. Swiftly the rumbling gained force, and the hull of the ship shook so that it seemed as if the planks must soon be torn from the hull.
Tavish pounded her harp, tearing across the strings with her fingers, and the music rose up as if to challenge this unnatural disturbance. But it was no contest.
The only consolation came with a look to the rear. The two rafts of sea creatures were drifting as the monsters looked this way and that, obviously seeking the source of the same rumbling that afflicted the longship.
"At least we know they're not causing it," the princess remarked to Brigit, who once again stood beside her.
"They seem to be as worried as we are," the elfwoman agreed. "Though I'm not sure that's good news."
The momentum of the rafts had carried them well forward, into the same area where Keane had first sounded the alarm. Now they came about, veering to port so as to continue to close with the Princess of Moonshae. Like the humans, however, the aquatic monsters remained preoccupied with the mysterious vibrations that seemed to disturb this whole area of the sea.
"Look! On the surface, there!" shouted Keane, pointing toward the waters at the rear.
"Under the water!" Brand corrected. "Something's moving-fast!"
At first, they wondered if it might not be another of the flat rafts, for the appearance of bubbles and movement beneath the water was reminiscent of their arrival. In the stress of the moment, no one remembered that there had been no vibration preceding their surfacing. The current phenomenon also seemed to affect a larger area of water.
The rafts drove closer, propelled by the paddles once again, as the sahuagin and scrags who weren't rowing stood up on their platforms and brandished weapons and fists toward the humans. A trap was about to close. One raft approached the Princess from dead astern, while the other closed from the port quarter.
And then the Princess of Moonshae pitched violently forward, her stern rising into the air, lifted by a powerful force from below. The longship shot ahead, sliding down a frothing wall of white water as if the ocean had been turned on edge. Spray flew upward, propelled