Death's Mistress

CHAPTER 18

Having wrought sufficient havoc, the storm dissipated and fled. The scattered clouds moved on like camp followers after a victorious army. Waves rolled and washed up on the rock-studded sand.

Nicci awoke to the shrieks of gulls fighting over some prized piece of carrion. Her entire body felt battered. Her muscles and bones ached from within, and her stomach still roiled, mostly from seawater she had swallowed in her struggle to swim ashore in the wind-blasted night. She brushed gritty sand from her face and bent over to retch repeatedly, but produced no more than a thimbleful of sour-tasting bile. She rolled onto her back and looked up into the searing sky, trying to get her bearings in her spinning mind and memories.

She heard the waves rumbling and booming as they crashed against the shore, slamming into the headlands, but here on the long crescent of a sandy beach, she seemed safe. She propped herself up on an elbow to reassess her situation, one step at a time. First, her own body. She felt no broken bones, only some bruises and abrasions from being thrown overboard and hurled by waves onto the shore.

Nicci inhaled again, exhaled, forced a calm on the queasiness inside her. Her heart was beating, her blood pumping. Air filled her lungs. She was restored now and could once again touch the tapestry of magic that was a familiar part of her entire life. She had been so weak after the wishpearl divers poisoned her, and Nicci did not like to feel weak.

The flood of memories crashed in like a riptide—the storm, the selka attack, the shipwreck.…

She climbed to her feet and stood swaying, but steadied herself. She was alive, and she was alone.

The gulls shrieked and cawed, challenging one another. A flurry of black-and-white wings settled around several corpses washed up on the shore, broken sailors from the Wavewalker. Birds fought over the bodies, pecking at the flesh, squabbling over choice morsels, although there was feast enough to gorge a hundred gulls. One seized a loose eyeball and plucked it out, held it by the optic nerve, and flew away while four other birds stormed after it with accusing screams.

At first Nicci thought one of the bodies might be Bannon’s, but she saw that the dead man had long blond hair. Just one of the sailors she did not know. Since these dead men were beyond her help or her interest, she turned to scan down the strand for any survivors.

The beach was strewn with wreckage deposited by the storm: splintered hull planks, smashed kegs, a spar that had been strangled by ropes and tattered sailcloth. Larger barrels lay tossed along the sand, some halfway buried by the outgoing tide, like dice tossed by giants in a capricious game of chance.

She waited motionless, like a statue, just trying to regain her mental balance. So much for their quest to find Kol Adair. She was cast on this desolate shore, with no idea where she was. She had never believed the witch woman had any secret knowledge. Nicci stood there bedraggled and bruised, lost, and she did not feel ready to save the world in any fashion, not for Richard Rahl, not for herself.

Even with the crashing waves, the whistling wind, and the shrieking gulls, Nicci felt overcome by oppressive silence. She was alone.

Then a voice called to her. “Sorceress! Nicci!”

She spun to see Bannon Farmer coming toward her. He looked waterlogged, his ginger hair clumpy and tangled, his face bruised. His left cheek had been smashed and discolored, and a long cut ran across his forehead, but his grin overshadowed those details. He bounded around a large curved section of broken hull that had piled up against a rock outcropping.

“Sweet Sea Mother! I didn’t think I’d find anyone else alive.” His homespun shirt was drying in the hot sun, leaving a sparkle of crusted salt on the fabric. “I woke up with sand in my mouth and no one around. I’d been caught in some tide pools about fifty feet from shore. I called out, but no one answered.” The young man lifted his arm to display his lackluster sword. “I somehow kept my grip on Sturdy, though.”

Nicci ran her eyes over his body, checking to make sure he hadn’t been wounded more severely than he realized. On the battlefield, she had often witnessed how shock and fear could deceive a man about how hurt he really was. Bannon seemed intact and resilient.

She asked, “Have you found Nathan?”

A look of alarm crossed his face. “No, you’re the first person I’ve seen.” He squared his shoulders. “But I just started looking. I’m sure Nathan’s alive, though. He is a great wizard, after all.”

Nicci frowned, knowing that Nathan had been unable to use magic during the selka attack. With concern for the old wizard, she made her way down the beach, shaking off any lingering aches and dizziness. “Where did you search? Have you gone this way?”

“I came from back there.” Bannon pointed. “That’s where I washed up. But most of the Wavewalker wreckage is scattered down here. Maybe the currents brought Nathan in this direction.”

The sunlight was so bright on the sand that it hurt Nicci’s eyes. She squinted, shaded her brow so she could look down the coastline, which curved out into an elbow of headlands that drew fierce waves like a magnet. Whitecaps battered the rocks, and the explosive boom could be heard even a mile away. If Nathan’s body had been thrown into that cauldron, he would have been smashed into a pulp.

With surprising energy Bannon ranged ahead, calling the wizard’s name. Nicci half expected that they would find his smashed corpse sprawled on the sand under another busy cluster of seagulls.

Halfway to the loudest crashing waves, they saw yards of sailcloth draped like a burial shroud on the beach, amid the remnants of splintered crates. Bannon spotted a tumbled pile of barrels, rope, and more wadded canvas. Nicci caught up with the young man just as he lifted a ragged swatch of sailcloth and cried out, “Here he is!”

Bannon grasped the shoulders of Nathan’s ruffled shirt. The old man lay facedown, draped over a broken barrel. His long white hair hung in tangles around his face. When she saw him there unmoving, Nicci’s immediate impression was that he was dead, drowned and cast aside.

Bannon rolled him off the barrel and laid the man flat on his back on the sand. Nathan’s skin was a pale gray; his eyelids didn’t even flicker. Bannon bent over him, listened for a breath, touched the older man’s cheeks, peeled open his eyes. With an urgent, determined look, he rolled the wizard over, wrapped his forearms around Nathan’s waist from behind, and put his fists right up against the abdomen. He pulled hard with a short, sharp jerk, forcing Nathan to convulse. Bannon clenched his arms again with enough power that Nicci thought he might snap the wizard’s spine. Instead, a fountain of seawater spewed from Nathan’s mouth. He convulsed again and then coughed.

His hands feebly swatted at Bannon, but the young man showed surprising strength. He laid him on his back in the sand again and began pumping his long legs, pushing Nathan’s knees up against his chest as hard as he could. Nathan coughed and expelled more water from the side of his mouth before finally gaining enough strength to push Bannon away.

“Enough, my boy! I’ve survived as much as I’m going to.” He looked miserable and shook his head, then ran his fingers through his hair.

Nicci looked curiously at the young man. “He was drowned. Where did you learn that?”

“On Chiriya we knew how to rescue drowned fishermen. Often it doesn’t work, but if there is still a spark of life and we can get the water out of his lungs, the Sea Mother sometimes lets a man breathe again.”

“I’m not just a man,” Nathan said in a rattling voice. “I’m a wizard.” He bent over and vomited copious amounts of seawater.

“Clearly the Sea Mother showed you mercy,” Nicci said.

As he sat up, still wobbly, Nathan put a hand to his right temple, where a long deep gash in his forehead still bled. “I’m pleased to find myself alive again. A good way to start the day.” He touched the gash again and winced. He closed his eyes, obviously concentrating, and his expression fell. When he looked up at Nicci, his face was forlorn. “Alas, the gift still eludes me. Might I humbly request that you heal me, Sorceress? Remove at least one inconvenience.” He gave her a sudden worried look. “Or is your power gone as well? You were having difficulty during the battle—”

“I am fine,” she said. “Those were aftereffects of the wishpearl divers’ poison. Fortunately, I am recovering better than those men are.”

Bannon turned to her with a strange expression. “The divers poisoned you?” He wiped sand out of his reddened eye.

Nicci gauged his expression carefully. “Yes, in the pot of chowder you delivered.” She could tell by the look on his face that he hadn’t known, which gave her a sense of relief. “That was why I felt so weak I could barely fight the selka. I was racked by poison.”

His expression turned to dismay. “In the food I brought? I poisoned you? I didn’t know! I didn’t mean to! Sweet Sea Mother, I am so sorry, I—”

In a similar circumstance, Nicci knew that Jagang would have murdered the young man, slowly and painfully, for such an error. There were times when Death’s Mistress would have killed him as well, but she was different now. Richard had changed her. Seeing Bannon’s abject misery, his open honesty, she was reminded again of why she had not suspected the meal he’d brought.

Nodding slowly to herself, she said, “That is why they used you, Bannon Farmer. I would never think you capable of treachery or of trying to harm me in any way.”

“I’m not! I would never poison you.”

“You see, your very innocence was a weapon that others turned against me. They duped you.” She hardened her voice. “Don’t let it happen again.” As he stammered and offered far too many apologies, Nicci flexed her fingers, felt the magic, felt strong again. “It no longer matters. I have recovered.” She laid her hand on Nathan’s temple and easily summoned what she needed to knit the torn flesh of his wound.

He let out a sigh of relief. “Thank you. It was not dire, but it was an annoyance.”

She turned to Bannon, looked at his battered form. “And now you.”

The young man took a step away, uneasy about her magic, or maybe not convinced that she had actually forgiven him. “There’s no need, Sorceress. They are but minor injuries. I will recover by myself in time.” He touched the slash on his thigh.

But Nicci, needing to reassure herself that she had full control over her powers again, reached out to grasp his arm. “I insist.” She let the power flow, and his bruises vanished, his cuts healed. The flicker of fear vanished from his face. “That’s wonderful! I feel like I could fight the selka all over again.” He gripped his sword.

“Let’s hope we don’t have to do that, my boy,” said Nathan.

Nicci brushed sand off her black dress and tied her hair back out of her eyes. “I want you both intact. We have work to do.” She looked up and down the coast. “We need to learn where we are.”