Death's Mistress

CHAPTER 15

The invading creatures were sleek and smooth, with muscles rippling beneath their gray-green skin. Nicci remembered Nathan’s story that the selka had been human once, tortured and reshaped into a race of aquatic warriors. These things, though, looked as if they had forgotten their humanity long ago.

They opened their slit mouths wide, gasping in the rain-lashed air, to reveal rows of triangular fangs. A filmy membrane covered their large eyes, and pupil slits widened to encompass the few hardy sailors on duty. A serrated fin ran from the hairless head down the spine, and frills of swimming fins adorned their forearms and legs.

The Wavewalker was vulnerable, caught in the fierce storm. The sailors could barely survive the weather’s fury, and now deadly sea people swarmed aboard. Shouting for help, crewmen scrambled across the deck to find harpoons and boat hooks for weapons.

Three selka skittered forward like the flash of fish in a brook. The veteran sailor Karl grabbed a harpoon and swung the wooden shaft with a grunt to defend himself, but he had inadvertently seized the harpoon whose point was eaten away by jellyfish acid, rendering the weapon little more than a club. Karl fought nevertheless. He smashed the face of one selka, flattening its smooth head. Its gill slits flapped, oozing blood.

The other two creatures were upon Karl. The big seaman punched and struggled, but one selka held him down while the second ripped open his chest, splitting the sternum and peeling his ribs apart. Together, the selka dug into the gaping wound and yanked out his slippery organs as Karl shrieked into the raging winds.

Nicci stood her ground by the door to the stern deck, still trying to drive back her disorientation as she searched for magic inside her, any kind of spell that would let her fight. The poison had debilitated her, and she had just exerted herself to defeat Sol and his vile companions. She was in no shape to attack.

Nevertheless, she clutched at shreds of power inside her, trying to summon a fireball, but the winds tore around her. A cold, wet backwash dashed into her face, disrupting her concentration. Flinging salt water out of her eyes, she used her anger to bring focus, and fire blossomed in her right hand. Finally. She felt a rush of relief.

A male selka prowled toward her, its slitted eyes focused on her. The creature lunged just as Nicci hurled the fireball, which splattered against its slimy chest. The flames burned and bubbled its skin, and the selka hooted a strange resonant cry that echoed through flapping gill slits in its neck. Mortally wounded, the selka staggered away and collapsed on the deck.

Bannon managed to swing himself down from the ratlines, holding his sword. He looked terrified, but ready to fight. When he tried to make his way over to the wizard and the sorceress, Nathan spotted him. His voice was hard, grim. “Remember what I taught you, my boy!”

Dozens more selka swarmed over the side of the ship and fell upon the sailors. Two burly men stood side by side, jabbing and slashing with the serrated iron spear points of harpoons. They sliced open slime-covered hides, wounding three attackers—but fifteen more fell upon them. The men kept stabbing with their harpoons until clawed hands tore the weapons out of their grasp; then the selka turned the weapons upon the sailors in a feeding and killing frenzy.

Bannon tottered forward on the rocking deck, trying to keep his balance while he swung his lackluster sword against the monsters. Sturdy’s edge was sharp, and he took off the arm of one attacker, then swung backward to chop the neck of another, nearly cutting off its head.

A selka rushed toward Bannon from behind, webbed hands outstretched, but Nicci summoned another fireball and hurled it at the creature’s head. The flames struck home, and its flesh steamed and exploded. Shrieking, the thing dove overboard, ignoring its victim.

Bannon whirled, blinking in astonishment, and shouted an unintelligible thanks to Nicci.

As the sailors kept yelling for reinforcements, some of the off-duty crew threw open a deck hatch and emerged from below. Seeing the swarming creatures, the crew shouted to rouse the sailors in the lower decks. Rallied at last, the men grabbed whatever weapons they could find and boiled up out of the hatch to defend the ship.

But when the disoriented seamen climbed into the open storm, hissing selka converged on the hatch. The next sailor up was a tall, thin man who had been adept at patching sails. As soon as he popped his head up into the air, a selka slipped claws beneath his chin, hooked into his jawbone, and lifted him like a fish on a line. The man dangled by his head, and his arms and legs jittered spasmodically as the monsters gutted him, letting his blood spill down onto the other sailors trying to climb up. The selka discarded the body and then poured down the ladder, invading the lower decks where the crew members were trapped—and slaughtered.

Four attackers stalked forward as rain slashed down and salt water scoured the deck. Nicci stood firm, defiant, despite the roiling dizziness inside her. She felt the rage within, and reminded herself that she had been a Sister of the Dark, that she had stolen magic from many wizards. Even weakened by the poison, she was more powerful than any foe these creatures had ever seen.

The wind howled, and she pulled energy from it, reshaped it, brought the storm closer. As the selka attacked her and Nathan, she pushed back, throwing a battering ram of air. The blow knocked six creatures up over the ship’s rail, high into the air, and flung them far out to sea.

Striding forward, Nathan raised both hands, trying to summon a blast of his own magic. She could tell by his stance and his intent expression that he must be calling on a powerful spell. As ten more aquatic attackers climbed aboard the Wavewalker, Nathan gestured to fling a magical bombardment at them—and his face filled with a perplexed expression when nothing happened. He waved his hands again to no effect, and the selka surged toward him, undeterred.

“Nathan!” Nicci shouted.

The old wizard kept trying to summon magic, but failed. He seemed too confused to be afraid.

Just in time, Bannon leaped next to him, swinging his sword to hack into the nearest selka. As that one collapsed, he stabbed a second one, offering a dark grin to the wizard. “I’ll save you if you need it.”

Nathan looked at his empty hand in confusion. “I’m not supposed to need it.”

Nicci wondered if the wizard had also been poisoned. She trembled dizzily. Her last spell had left her spent, but Nicci could not afford to be spent—there were still too many attackers.

A blond sailor picked up an empty barrel and threw it at a selka. The creature grappled with him just as a large wave smashed into the deck, sweeping both overboard. The sailor went under, and Nicci never saw him resurface in the churning cauldron of waves.

Captain Eli burst out of his stateroom, screaming commands to his men. “Selka!” he cried, as if he had encountered them before. “Damn you, leave my ship alone!” He had brought his cutlass and a long rod that he used for clouting unruly sailors. With a weapon in each hand, he marched forward to meet the attackers.

Identifying the captain, the selka closed in on him, but he stood his ground on the wet deck. As the creatures came forward, the captain struck sideways with his long rod and slashed wildly with his sword in the other hand.

The cutlass lopped off a webbed hand at the wrist, and he hacked and clubbed, driving the selka back, but more closed in around him. His rod flattened slimy faces, broke sharp teeth, but selka hands snatched at him. Finally, one seized the club and tore it from his grasp.

Outnumbered, the captain kept fighting with his cutlass, slicing and chopping the attackers, but one of the selka took up the club he had lost and used the hard rod to strike Captain Eli’s wrist, shattering his forearm. He gasped in pain, no longer able to hold his sword, and the curved blade clattered to the deck.

Unable to fight, the captain retreated into the chart room, nursing his broken arm. He barricaded the door, but the selka made short work of it, splintering the wood before flooding into the chamber. Captain Eli’s screams were quickly followed by the sounds of shattered glass from the stern windows. Hurled out into the night, the man’s body floundered into the roiling wake of the ship. The sea creatures dove after him to have their feast before he could drown.

As the storm surged and Nathan struggled unsuccessfully to call on his gift, Nicci used every trick she knew, summoning a tangled combination of Additive and Subtractive Magic to draw bolts of black lightning. The first blast lashed one selka through the heart, leaving a smoking crater.

Beside her, Nathan looked bleak. “The magic … I can’t find my magic! It’s gone.” He raised his hand again to work a spell, curling his fingers. His azure eyes filled with fury, but with no result. “It’s gone!”

Nicci had no time to understand what was wrong with him. Desperate, she managed to call up a deadly gout of wizard’s fire. When the crackling ball boiled in her hand, she released it. The wizard’s fire swelled like a comet in the air and engulfed four selka that had cornered a lone sailor. The sailor’s screams changed, then ended abruptly along with their hissing, writhing shrieks as the deadly incineration erased them all.

But the uncontrolled wizard’s fire kept sizzling across the deck, charring a stack of barrels, and setting the deck and hull boards on fire. The magical incendiary kept burning, but the pounding rain and waves eventually doused the relentless fire.

Nicci sagged, not sure how much more energy she possessed, though she needed to keep fighting, because the selka kept coming.

Three weak and wretched men staggered out of the doorway from the cabins in the stern deck. The shirtless wishpearl divers walked with agonized scissorlike steps, blinded and disoriented. Sol, Elgin, and Rom could barely move, and they certainly couldn’t fight.

But the men were not entirely useless. At least they provided a moment’s diversion for the attacking selka.

When two sea creatures closed around the divers, Sol’s eyes were filled with pain and blood. He reached out, as if he didn’t realize that the selka was not one of his shipmates. The aquatic creature wrapped a webbed hand around his throat, slamming him against the wall as it grabbed his lower abdomen with its other hand. A hooked claw dug deep into Sol’s pubic bone and slowly curled upward to slice through the man’s groin all the way up to the base of his throat, like the knife of a fisherman gutting his catch. Sol’s entrails spilled out like wet, tangled ropes. As he collapsed, the selka passed him into the arms of another creature, who pulled him open wider, then dug pointed teeth into Sol’s chest cavity and began to eat his heart.

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!”