More creatures grabbed a gibbering Elgin, who slapped uselessly with his bare hands as the monsters ripped him open as well and tossed him aside for the other creatures to devour.
The third diver, Rom, turned and tried to flee, but the selka grabbed him from behind and sliced open his back, prying loose his entire spine with a few ribs still attached. After uprooting the vertebrae from his body, the creatures dropped the jellylike bag of skin and meat to the deck.
Giving up on trying to fight with magic, Nathan tore his ornate sword from its scabbard and held it up, defying the sea people. Standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Bannon, the two men attacked the monstrous creatures. With a fixed and brutal expression, Bannon swung Sturdy like a woodcutter hacking his way through a thicket.
For his own part, the wizard embraced his new role of swordsman. He threw off his rain slicker for freedom of movement and swung his blade in a graceful arc, catching one of the monsters under the chin and cutting its throat all the way back to the neck bone. He spun with a downsweep that cleaved through the shoulder and the chest of another.
While Nicci recovered from unleashing her wizard’s fire, two selka closed in on her. She summoned enough energy to shove them aside with a barricade of air, but she couldn’t call sufficient force to knock them overboard. Within moments, the selka came back, angrier now, and she faced them, ready to do whatever she had to do.
A panicked sailor scrambled up the ratlines, trying to climb to escape. He reached the yardarm on the mainmast, then pulled himself to the dubious safety of the lookout platform. When the attacking selka saw him unprotected up there, they swarmed up the ropes, closing in, and the man had nowhere to run.
With a loud and startling crack, a natural bolt of lightning struck the topyard, shivering the entire mast into splinters, and throwing the sailor from the platform. His smoking body was already limp as it crashed into the water out of sight.
The blast also scattered the climbing selka. Falling, one grabbed on to the furled mainsail, pulling on the unrolled canvas and slicing the fabric with its claws. With a groan, the smoking, splintered mast toppled forward, crashing into the rigging and snapping the Wavewalker’s foremast as well.
When Nathan gaped in dismay at the disaster, one of the creatures sprang on him from behind, grabbing his back and tearing his fine new shirt. Bannon ran his sword sideways through the selka’s ribs, skewering it. He used all of his strength to tear the dying creature from the wizard, stomped on its slimy chest, and yanked his sword back out.
“Thank you, my boy,” Nathan said in disbelief.
“You taught me well,” Bannon said.
Nicci dredged deep for another scrap of energy to create a second ball of wizard’s fire, but she knew it wouldn’t be enough.
Bannon’s expression fell as he looked toward the bow. “Sweet Sea Mother, they keep coming!”
CHAPTER 16
Storm waves slid across the deck, but even that wasn’t enough to wash away the blood of the slaughtered sailors. The attacking selka devoured their victims, fighting over hearts and livers, gnawing through arms and legs.
Nicci summoned another branch of blue-black lightning that lashed the selka like a cat-o’-nine tails. The stench of roasting meat and coppery blood was mixed with a powerful odor of burnt, salty slime.
After releasing her lightning, though, Nicci reeled, barely able to keep her balance as she continued to fight off nausea and the hammering pain in her head. When she staggered back to recover her strength, Nathan defended her against more oncoming creatures. Although the wizard’s magic had been rendered impotent, his sword remained deadly.
Wild and reckless, Bannon stabbed and slashed, but forgot to protect his flank. A selka dove in and raked a long cut down Bannon’s left thigh, although before the creature could do more damage, Nathan leaped in and decapitated the thing. The selka’s face stared up as it rolled, the thick-lipped mouth reflexively opening and closing to show its pointed teeth. Nathan kicked the severed head over the side of the boat as if it were a ball in a game of Ja’La.
When Nicci sensed a change come over the attackers, she looked toward the bow as one creature more magnificent than the others climbed over the rail. The selka was obviously female, and a flush of leopardlike spots swirled along her slick greenish body. The other selka turned to regard their queen with reverence.
Even with the howling wind, crashing waves, and creaking timbers, a hush settled over the Wavewalker. The selka queen stood at the bow, her back turned to the carved wooden figurehead of the beautiful Sea Mother. The queen spoke in an eerie, warbling voice, as if she had not spoken words in the air—or words in the normal language of humankind—in her entire life. “Thieves must die. Your blood cannot pay for the damage you’ve caused.”
Nathan shouted, “We have stolen nothing.”
Bannon’s eyes went wide, as if he suddenly understood the answer. And then Nicci knew as well. “The wishpearls,” she said.
The selka queen said, “Wishpearls are the seeds of our dreams. Teardrops of our essence, our greatest treasure. The selka are no longer part of your race, no longer part of your world. We have come to take our dreams back. Our pearls.”
The dead bodies of sailors on deck far outnumbered sailors who remained alive. The ship itself was nearly destroyed, its mainmast toppled, the foremast smashed, and fires smoldered in the wreckage of sails and snapped yardarms. Vicious selka swarmed below, ransacking the lower decks and the cargo hold. More screams accompanied a clash of swords and clubs, until the last sailors defending the lower decks were also killed.
Through the large open hatch, Nicci could hear the desperate lowing of the milk cow rise to a crescendo then fall silent. Before long, three selka returned to the deck, carrying large hunks of raw, bloody meat to offer their queen.
As the female creature glared at Nicci, Bannon, and Nathan crowded together in mutual defense, two burly selka climbed back to the open deck. They hefted a wooden chest that they had found behind locked doors in the cargo hold, and now they dropped it with a crash in front of the regal creature. The queen’s eye slits widened as her followers tore off the lid with such force that they ripped the hinges entirely off and splintered the wooden sides.
The chest was full of wishpearls harvested only days before.
Staring down at the treasure, the inhuman queen scooped the pearls in her webbed hands and held them up as if they were the raindrops of miracles. She raised her alien face to let out a hissing cry. “The seeds of our dreams!”
The queen cast the pearls back into the water, returning them to the sea. She picked up more wishpearls and gently, lovingly, scattered them into the raging ocean, as if she were planting a crop. She continued until she had emptied the entire chest.
As if hearing an unspoken command, the selka redoubled their attack and threw themselves upon the last desperate sailors aboard the Wavewalker.
Bannon and Nathan crouched on either side of Nicci, holding their swords and ready to fight to the death. As the attackers came toward them, Nicci opened herself to her magic, called upon everything she had learned, and stolen, from other wizards. Even though she had little left within her, she nevertheless managed to summon more wizard’s fire, a desperate act. A small blazing sphere appeared in her hands, which she augmented with normal fire, then an even brighter halo of illusion. To the selka, it appeared as if she held a sun in her hands.
The crackling globe of wizard’s fire hung ready, but Nicci kept it as her last defense. Once she used it, she doubted she would have any flicker of magic left with which to attack. But Nicci didn’t need magic. She had taken a knife from one of the fallen sailors, and she would keep fighting.
The selka queen strode forward to face them. The rest of her warriors snarled and gurgled. Nicci lifted her wizard’s fire into the standoff. “With this, I can kill most of you, including the queen. Would you like to taste my fire?”
The female creature was terrifying and magnificent. As the sea peo
ple pressed closer, several seemed curious about Bannon, their gill slits flickering. The queen fixed her slitted eyes on the young man. “We know you,” she finally said. “We saved you. Once. Why did you come back?”
“We didn’t mean any harm.” He blinked at her, covered with blood. Claw marks and gashes marked his skin and face, and his sword dripped with blood and slime from the selka he had killed. He said in a whisper of dismay, “I thought the selka were magical. I called on you to save me when I was younger. But now I see you’re just monsters.”
A flush suffused the leopard spots on the female creature, and the frills of her bodily fins extended. “We are the monsters?”
From below, a loud cracking sound rumbled through the deck, a sickening, destructive blow to the hull. The selka were breaking the ship. Storm lightning shattered the sky again.
The queen turned to Nicci, who refused to flinch. Her crackling ball of fire reflected off of the slick greenish skin of the creatures. Even with all the selka they had killed, more than sixty remained to face them.
All the other sailors aboard had been murdered, and even if she used her ball of wizard’s fire, Nicci knew she would kill some, but not enough, of the creatures. Then she remembered.
Nicci fished in the fabric of her dress, found the hidden pocket, and withdrew the wishpearl Bannon had given her just after their departure from Tanimura. It felt cold in her fingertips. One last wishpearl, probably the last aboard the ship. The seeds of our dreams.
She held it up in the fingers of her free hand, and the selka queen hissed. The other creatures reacted, simmering, ready to lunge forward even with the threatening ball of magical fire Nicci held.
While the selka watched her intently, Nicci threw the wishpearl as far out to sea as she could, and the storm-churned waves quickly swallowed it. “Let the fish have my wishes,” she said. “I make my own life.”
The selka queen watched her with respect and finally announced, “Maybe you are not thieves.” She turned to the remaining creatures in her army. “We are finished.”
The blood-spattered selka grabbed some of the remaining human corpses and dragged them overboard into the raging sea. Others took the bodies of the slain selka with them.
At the splintered side wall of the ship, the selka queen faced Nicci for a long moment, staring at the threat of the wizard’s fire, before she turned and dove overboard in a perfectly graceful arc. The rest of her people joined her, abandoning the Wavewalker.
They left Nicci, Bannon, and Nathan alone as the storm finished the destruction that the selka had begun.
CHAPTER 17
The Wavewalker had been mortally wounded. Two of her masts were broken, and the torn sails whipped about like spectral streamers. The battle with the selka had smashed the vessel’s bow, torn the ropes and the rigging. The deck boards were splintered, and an even greater slaughter had taken place in the lower decks. The smell of blood and offal wafted up from the open hatches.
Nicci and her companions stood together, the only survivors on the ship, tense and waiting for some renewed attack from the undersea creatures. Unable to maintain the flow of magic, she finally let the manifested sphere of wizard’s fire dissipate in her hand. She hoped they were safe from further attack, even though the selka queen had made no promises. As the fireball faded, she heaved a deep breath and clung to the tattered remnant of a ratline to keep her balance.
As the Wavewalker rode up on the high crest of a wave and crashed down again, they were all thrown to their knees.
“Sorry I couldn’t help you during the battle, Sorceress.” Nathan sounded both baffled and afraid. He looked at his hands. “I could not find the magic inside me. I tried to summon spells I’ve used all my life, even simple ones. I couldn’t do them.”
“It was the heat of the battle. You couldn’t concentrate,” Bannon said. “But your sword proved deadly enough. You saved me.”
“Oh, more than once, I expect.” Nathan forced an unlikely smile. “But you saved me as well. We made a decent accounting of ourselves.” His shoulders rose and fell, and he turned to Nicci again. “Try as I might, I couldn’t touch my Han.” He reached up, ran his fingers gingerly along his neck. “Is there an iron collar I can’t see? An invisible Rada’Han placed on me to prevent me from using my powers?”
Nicci knew full well how the Sisters in the Palace of the Prophets had controlled their gifted male students through the use of an iron collar, which blocked them from using the force of life. Nathan had worn such a collar for much of his life as a captive prophet, and Richard had been forced to wear one when he was taken for training by the Sisters.
“I’m not aware of any outside force neutralizing your gift, Wizard,” Nicci said as they stood back up. “But you were losing your magic earlier, even before the selka arrived. You couldn’t even summon a flame as a trick to show Bannon.”
Nathan hung his head. “Dear spirits, I knew I’d lost my gift of prophecy, but now I have lost my magic as well? I don’t even feel whole anymore.”
Rain continued to pelt them, and the wind was so heavy the droplets felt like thick pellets of ice. Another broken yardarm splintered, cracked, and crashed to the deck after a loud gust of wind wrenched it loose. The waves smashed the prow, sending a violent shudder through the entire ship, and Nicci barely kept her feet by clinging tighter to the ropes.
“If we make it through this night, I will be happy to consider further explanations,” she said.
Bannon struggled to make his way closer to them. Water ran down his face, and Nicci couldn’t tell whether he was crying. “What do we do now?”
Nicci found a grim strength in her answer. “We survive. That is up to us.”
The deck had begun to tilt alarmingly, and the Wavewalker rode much lower in the water. “We should search belowdecks,” Bannon said. “There might be other survivors.”
“Yes, my boy, we’d better check.” Nathan gave Nicci a knowing glance. They both understood there would be no survivors.
Nicci remembered hearing the sea creatures smashing about, battering the hull boards. “We also need to see what damage the selka did. I think they intended to wreck the ship even after they killed us all.”
They climbed down through the open hatches. The confined spaces reeked of blood and entrails, a gagging stench like a butcher shop filled with chamber pots. They found the cow’s head and scraps of its hide that the selka had peeled away and left like discarded drapes against the bulkheads.
The selka had left the ravaged bodies of dead sailors down in the crew decks, hammocks torn loose from the bulkheads and support beams. One young sailor hung by the back of his skull from a hammock hook.
A thundering sound of rushing water down in the cargo hold was even more ominous. When they lifted the hatches and stared down into the lower hold, Nicci managed to create a small hand light to illuminate the inky shadows. Part of the hull had been smashed and splintered from the outside, the cracked boards pressed inward. Swimming beneath the vessel, the selka must have attacked the wooden planks until they opened a jagged hole. Water roared in now, unstoppable, filling the hold.
“The Wavewalker is going to sink,” Nathan said. “It’s only a matter of hours.”
“We can seal the hatches,” Nicci said. “Confine the flooding to the bottom hold. That might buy us half a day.”
“Can’t we patch the hull?” Bannon asked. “I could hold my breath, swim down there, and do some work.”
Seawater gushed in, already half filling the lower hold. Nicci understood that the force of the flow would shatter any repairs as quickly as they were put in place.
“If I had my magic,” Nathan said, “I could restore the planks, grow more wood in place.”
“Let me try,” Nicci said. It was Additive Magic, using the wood itself, building upon what already existed. She reached into herself, but her every fiber trembled, wrung dry. She had already used so much magic in the battle, and the insidious poison still hadn’t worn off.
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br /> Nevertheless, the ship was sinking, and she had no time to lose. Nicci squeezed her eyes shut, focused her thoughts, summoned all the magic she could find. With her gift, she sensed the shattered hull planks, found the ragged edges, and used magic to draw more wood, making it grow. She pulled the smashed hole together like a scab over a wound, but the ocean continued to push its way in, and her newly formed wood broke apart, leaving her to start all over again.
Nathan grasped her shoulder as if to force strength into her, but she could draw nothing from him. Instead, she thought of her anger, thought of the murderous selka, thought of Sol, Elgin, and Rom and what they had done to her—what they had done to the entire crew of the Wavewalker. The repercussions went far beyond their attempted rape, because if those fools hadn’t poisoned her, Nicci would have been at her peak strength as a sorceress, and the selka would never have defeated them.
In the flash of her disgust and fury she found another tiny spark, pulled more magic, and made the planks grow again, closing up, until she forcibly sealed the hole that the selka had smashed through the hull. When the water finally stopped pouring in, she shuddered. “It’s fixed, but still fragile.”
Bannon sighed with delight. “Now that we’re not sinking anymore, we have time to find scraps of wood! I’ll dive down and shore up the patch. We can make it solid.”
For the next hour the young man threw himself into the task, holding his breath like a wishpearl diver and plunging down into the flooded hold. Remnants of cargo and crew floated all around: crates, heavy casks, bolts of sailcloth, and several bodies. But Bannon eventually succeeded in reinforcing the patch of magically repaired wood.
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