The Coral Kingdom - Douglas Niles [83]
Abruptly Alicia grew impatient and stepped to the gunwale. "We come in peace, and we seek an audience with your queen and her council of sages." She spoke in Common, trying to keep her voice light, her face friendly. "We offer no threat!"
She found herself the target of more arrows than she could count, all poised on the brink of launching. If any one of them slips, she thought, I'm dead.
Then Brigit stepped to her side. Again she spoke in that lyrical tongue, and the male replied. Now, however, several other males and a female joined him. All of them were covered by multicolored skin, fading through every shade of blue, green, and aqua in an effect that was really quite beautiful.
The female sea elf, who also rose from the water to sing, addressed Brigit and then the male. She was marvellously beautiful, with silvery hair that hung to the waterline in tight curls, concealing her breasts-but not the fact that she, like the male, seemed to be naked. Then she dove, her webbed feet popping out of the water just briefly. Alicia quickly lost sight of the perfectly camouflaged form as the sea elf disappeared into the dappled waters of the coral shallows.
"That's a little better," Brigit told them, still wary. "This one gave me her name-Trillhalla. She called the other one Palentor. She says that we're fortunate in where we've made landfall. The queen is in the Summer Palace, and that's not far from here. Also the names of Tristan and Robyn Kendrick are not unknown to her. Nor," she added quietly, "is Brigit Cu'Lyrran. Anyway, she'll send word of our arrival. She warns that we have to stay here until she returns."
"That'll be easy enough," Brandon growled, with a belligerent look at the male who had been the first to speak.
Alicia, meanwhile, looked at the sky. The sun had passed into the region of late afternoon, and the magnificent forests of Evermeet, gleaming in a rainbow of colors, glowed beneath it. The water was placid, except for the graceful disturbance caused by the array of elven archers. As she looked, it seemed to her that their numbers continued to swell.
Natural enough, she thought, if humans are unknown here. They've probably never seen a longship before either.
With that not exactly comforting thought, she settled down on the deck with the rest of the crew to await the return of Trillhalla.
* * * * *
"Have you failed me, worm?"
The question posed by Talos was an awkward one for the avatar Sinioth. He answered as deftly as he could.
"We have trailed the humans to their destination. They are far removed from the prisoner, and we have two thousand warriors screening the seas against their escape. Should they try to sail, we shall annihilate them!"
"Very well," rumbled the Destructor. "Even the mirror brings no image of them. I shall be patient-for now."
"Thank you, most merciful master!" pledged the avatar, thrashing his squid body through the depths in an ecstasy of groveling.
"But should you fail me in the end," continued Talos, "it will be more than the pathetic humans who face annihilation!"
13
A Queen of Evermeet
A snarl prowled across Brandon's face as he climbed aboard the stricken Princess of Moonshae. He and Knaff had completed their inspection of the hull, scrambling about on the coral outcrop that now, at low tide, held the longship completely out of the water. The Corwellian bowmen and Keane had stood an alert guard, though they all knew that their presence was for show only. The sea around them was a vast expanse of bobbing heads and torsos. Tavish, in a quick count, concluded that more than a thousand sea elves had congregated by now.
"As I thought, she's splintered in a lot of places where she's not holed clean through." The captain's tone was sad, almost brokenhearted, but also fiercely proud. "No other ship would have survived!"
"Can you patch the hull?" asked Robyn.
"Maybe. Give me two weeks, plenty of tar and timber,