The Coral Kingdom - Douglas Niles [95]
Roughly he pushed the tidal wave of memory aside. He focused on the task before him, studying the water, forcibly quelling his emotions. His heartbeat fell, pulsing slower and slower. Tristan breathed deeply, without thinking, filling his lungs with air, forcing extra oxygen into his blood, grimly determined to press forward to the last gasp of his life.
He dove into the pool, cutting the surface like an arrow and allowing his momentum to propel him halfway down the tunnel leading from his cell. When he kicked, he moved his legs slowly, moving through the dark water with a minimum of exertion. Feeling the wall beside him, he traced the path to the four-way intersection. Here he veered to the right.
The tunnel rose slowly, and he allowed his buoyancy to account for some of his speed, though he still kicked gently. Onward through Stygian darkness he swam, feeling a rough wall with his right hand. Occasionally his back would scrape the abrasive ceiling of the tunnel. The pain he didn't mind so much, but the sensation that he couldn't swim upward he found starkly terrifying.
Tristan swam without thinking, slowly draining the air that filled his lungs to bursting. Pain wrapped steel bands around his chest, slowly constricting until a red haze swam before his eyes. His throat tightened, and the urge to gasp for air swiftly approached irresistible proportions.
How long had he been swimming? At least an hour, it seemed to his oxygen-starved brain. More than that, screamed his lungs, his tortured chest that could no longer supply the needs of his body.
Then abruptly the wall to his right ended. Tristan flailed mindlessly as the depleted air exploded from his lungs, but as he thrashed, he realized that rock no longer pressed against his back. Desperately driving himself upward with the last reserves of his strength, he felt his hand, and then his face and torso, break from the water and burst into an enclosed cavern that was filled with air.
He coughed and choked as he dragged himself onto a dry stone slab beside the surface of water. Dimly his awareness returned, and the king realized that he was in another cell, one very much like his own. The same dim green illumination trickled through the ceiling.
It was only when he stopped gasping that he looked up and saw that the room was occupied. He saw a man's face staring at him-a thin, emaciated visage with great dark circles under his eyes. The fellow was seated, chained to a wall, Tristan saw, with shackles around each of his wrists and his arms held spread-eagled to the sides.
The chained prisoner regarded him impassively. When the fellow shifted slightly, Tristan noticed something odd about his legs, and then his jaw dropped in shock.
The man had no legs-but not because he had lost them in an accident. In fact, his body below the waist had never borne a resemblance to humanity. It was a single, powerful limb, covered with green scales and ending in a broad-finned tail.
The creature, Tristan realized, was a merman.
* * * * *
For six days, the men of Gnarhelm labored on the hull of the longship, and gradually her bruises disappeared, her scuffs and scrapes vanished beneath fresh timber and tar. The Princess of Moonshae seemed to sit taller, prouder on the sandy base of the drydock.
Though the rudimentary forge belched out clouds of black smoke while Brandon supervised his men's making of nails and brackets, a constantly fresh breeze whisked through the grotto, clearing the air of fumes and soot. For the most part, the voyagers had taken little note of their splendorous surroundings once the equipment for repairs had been delivered. Good news had come as soon as the drydock was fully drained; Brandon's inspection showed that the longship's stout keel remained undamaged.
Alicia and Robyn both worked with unspoken urgency, knowing that their quest