Death's Mistress

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 people 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.