"Douglas Niles - Druidhome 2 - The Coral Kingdom" - читать интересную книгу автора (Niles Douglas)

"Do you claim that my husband is alive?" she asked with deadly calm.
"Very much so, albeit a trifle sore. After all, we needed to carry positive proof to you of his existence.
He is our guest, and we shall keep him safe until such time as he can return to his home."
"And what is the ransom?" Robyn asked. Only her daughter heard the slight tremor in her mother's
voice. Alicia's own heart had soared for a brief moment, until the grim reality of the situation became clear.
The fat man's visage shimmered, and slowly his human appearance melted away, as if his features were
wax, heated by an intense flame. They distorted, a grotesque mask of slimy meat, to a chorus of gasps and
screams from all sides. People scrambled away in horror, toppling tables and benches to the ground, while
the creatures eyes dripped streaks of ichor as they blazed with infernal hatred.
"You, the humans of the Moonshaes, must abandon the seas to us," hissed the now featureless horror.
The mouth was a mucus-streaked gap in the flowing ooze that had replaced its face. "And you must furnish
slaves, five hundred in numberтАФhumans that we will take to the Coral Kingdom and put to work in our
mines! Only when your shipsтАФall of themтАФhave been drawn onto the shores and the slaves have been
delivered to our warriors will the king of Moonshae be returned to his people."
"This is madness!" shouted Alicia, fury overcoming self-discipline. Quickly she sprang to her feet,
wishing she wore a weapon.
"Wait." Robyn's hand, on her daughter's arm, had the effect of a calming spell upon the princess. Alicia
stood still, breathing deeply but slowly, as the High Queen confronted the messenger from the depths.
Robyn's demeanor accented the sudden pallor of her face with an expression that might have been etched
into the surface of an icy cliff.
"Your ghastly missive cannot be met with other than loathing," Robyn declared, pure force running like
bedrock in her voice. "Presuming for the moment that I were willing to deliver my people into certain death,
the High King himself would never consent to such an exchange. But even more contemptibly, you seek to
inflame with a bit of a corpse the hopes of a widow and a kingdom. You tell us that he who is dead lives,
and for this you deserve worse than scorn!"
Alicia noticed that her mother's left hand had remained still for some time. Now the queen abruptly
made a chopping motion with that hand. Immediately the crossbows of the guardsmen came up. Ladies
screamed, and Ffolk dove for cover all around the commons. The princess seized a long carving knife and
sprang over the table, Hanrald and Brandon diving forward to stand at her sides.
The princess heard dual intonations and sensed that both Keane and her mother were casting spells.
Alicia paused in a fighting crouch, ready to defend the pair with her blade should the hateful ambassador or
his party attack.
All of this happened in a scant few seconds, but the next split moment became a frozen image in Alicia
Kendrick's mind. She saw a wall of fire spring from the ground, sputtering upward among the visitorsтАФher
mother's druid magic, she knew. Crossbow quarrels whistled through the air, a deadly crossfire of
steel-headed death. And then Keane's spell thundered, followed by a deluge of rocks from the sky,
pounding like meteors into the pulpy earth.
But amid the chaos of the lethal attacks, the princess saw one other thing in that split second before the
murderous barrage impacted its target. The visitors, the ambassador and his entire party, had disappeared!
"Stop! They're gone," announced the queen, raising a hand to the reloading crossbowmen. The flames
sank back into the earth, and the meteor barrage ceased.
"To where?" asked Prince Brandon, bashing his fist into the palm of his other hand. "We'll be after them
with the first tide!"
"To the Coral Kingdom," Alicia remembered. "At least, that's where he said...." Her voice choked in
helpless fury as she remembered the words that the horrifible visitor had uttered.
"A legendary place, the Coral KingdomтАФat least, so I had always thought," announced Tavish, the most
well traveled of them all.
"Where is it?" demanded Alicia.
"Hundreds of miles to the south of here, somewhere across the Trackless Sea," explained Keane when
no one else answered.