Death's Mistress

CHAPTER 19

After he accepted his disheveled appearance, Nathan insisted on searching the wreckage to locate his sword, as well as any other items they might find useful for their survival. After all the misfortunes they had suffered, he had little hope of retrieving his precious weapon, but by a stroke of good luck he did find his ornate blade. The sword was wedged between a splintered wine cask and a crate that had held brightly dyed fabrics for market, which were now waterlogged and ruined.

The wizard pulled the blade free and raised it into the sunlight with a sigh of satisfaction. “That’s much better!” He winked at Bannon. “Now you and I, my boy, can defend our sorceress against any attackers.”

“The gulls and crabs are surely trembling in fear.” Nicci rolled her eyes and got down to serious business. “Before we set off, we should salvage any supplies we can find. There’s no telling how far we are from civilization, or how long it will take us to get back to the D’Haran Empire.” Even after their ordeals, she continued to think of what she needed to do for Richard and his vision for the future.

Along with several other mangled corpses of Wavewalker sailors, they found an intact keg of drinking water, from which they drank their fill, then a crate of salted meat. Nathan was discouraged to have lost all the new shirts, vests, and cloaks he had purchased in Tanimura, but he did discover a sailor’s trunk that contained a fresh shirt that fit Bannon, a tortoiseshell comb, and a packet of waterlogged letters, the ink now running and smeared. The few decipherable words indicated they were notes from a lost sweetheart who would now never get a response from her beloved.

“Take only what we can use.” Nicci pulled out a long fighting knife the nameless sailor had kept in the bottom of his trunk. She fastened the sheath to her waist. The bout with the insidious poison had left her weak and incapacitated, but it had taught her a lesson. Even if she couldn’t use her magic, Nicci would not let herself be unarmed. Never again.

Using scraps of sailcloth, they fashioned makeshift packs to carry the salvaged supplies. Just after the sun reached its zenith, the three set off down the expansive beach.

Around them, the headlands rose up in sheer sandy ledges dotted with tufts of pampas grass and fleshy saltweed. They worked their way up to the point, from which they paused to look out into the sparkling sea. Nicci saw no other sails, no approaching ships, not even the line of angry water that marked the reefs that had destroyed the Wavewalker.

“We must have been blown far south,” Nicci said, scanning back the way they had come. From Captain Eli’s maps, she thought they might be somewhere down on the Phantom Coast.

In such an empty land devoid of any human markings, an artificial structure stood out like a shout. Bannon spotted it first with his sharp eyesight, pointing ahead across the windswept uplands to a promontory half a mile away on which stood a monolith of rocks, obviously built by people and just as obviously placed there so it could be seen from afar.

Squinting, Nathan said, “Without any frame of reference, it’s difficult to tell how large the structure is.”

Nicci set off. “We have to go see. It might give us our bearings, or point the way to some nearby town or military outpost.”

Above the beach, the bleak, grassy emptiness played tricks on them, and the promontory with its stone tower was much closer than it had seemed. As they approached, Bannon sounded disappointed. “It’s just a pile of rocks.”

“A marker. A cairn—it’s to signal a waypoint,” Nathan said.

The marker was a tower of neatly piled rocks, with the largest boulders around the base stacked and wedged to form a solid foundation on which a thin, tall pyramid had been erected. The apex of the cairn was only a head taller than Nathan. Thick scrub grasses grew around its base, and orange and green lichen mottled the rough black surfaces of the mounded rocks. The rocks did not look like any others in the vicinity.

“Someone went to great difficulty to build this,” Nicci said. “It has obviously been here a long time.”

The wizard shaded his eyes and stared out into the sparkling ocean. “It might be for passing sailors. A point to mark on their maps. Or a signal tower … not that we could signal them anyway.” He sighed. “There isn’t enough brush to build a decent bonfire.”

Nicci turned to him with a thin smile. “A ball of wizard’s fire hurled into the air might draw some attention.”

Bannon circled the cairn, looking for any clues. He squatted down, brushing aside the lichen and moss. “Oh! Words are carved on these bottom stones,” he said, revealing chiseled letters. “It’s a message.”

Nicci and Nathan came around to see the first stone, and Nicci froze. The incised letters read, To Kol Adair.

“Well.” Nathan rocked back, sounding pleased. “I suppose that is the waypoint we were looking for.”

Nicci’s chill deepened as she saw the rough, weathered words carved into the next stone. From there, the Wizard will behold what he needs to make himself whole again.

The words on the third stone made her throat go dry. And the Sorceress must save the world.

Nathan looked at her in astonishment. He lifted his hand, flexing his fingers. “Made whole again? Do you think it means I will be able to touch my Han again? Use magic? Red knew! She knew.”

Nicci frowned, feeling a knot in her stomach. “Much as I hate to admit it, this lends credence to what the witch woman wrote.”

Bannon was confused. “What? What is it? A prophecy?” He looked from one to the other.

“Prophecy no longer exists,” Nicci said, but her insistence did not sound convincing. Maybe if this prediction was old enough, burned into the fabric of the world before all the rules themselves changed …

“I thought we were shipwrecked and lost,” Nathan said with a tone of wonder in his voice. “Ironically, this debacle may have put us exactly where we were supposed to go.”

“I prefer to choose my own direction,” Nicci said, but she could not argue with the evidence of her own eyes. She did not need a prophecy to help save the world or to aid Richard Rahl in any way possible. And if she had to journey toward a mysterious place called Kol Adair, then she would do it, as would Nathan.

The wizard pursed his lips as he regarded the stones. “Only a fool tries to resist a clear prophecy. In doing so, the person usually brings about the same fate, but in a far worse fashion.”

Nicci set off, leaving the cairn behind. “We go to Kol Adair, wherever it is,” she said.

After the tall stone cairn dwindled in the distance, Nicci heard a loud crack and rumbling clatter in the windblown silence behind them. They all spun in time to watch the spire of piled stones shifting and collapsing. The tallest rocks crumbled from the pinnacle, the center buckled, and the whole structure collapsed into a mound of rocks. The cairn had served its purpose.

* * *

Leaving the high point, they descended the headlands, and came upon the bones of a monster. A long skeleton sprawled among the rocks and weeds just above the high-tide line. Its head was the size of a wagon, a triangular skull with daggerlike fangs and cavernous eye sockets. Its vertebrae draped along the rocks and down into the sand like a rope of bones as long as ten horses in a row. Innumerable curved ribs formed a long and broken tunnel that tapered to a point at the creature’s tail.

“It’s not a dragon,” Nathan observed.

“Dragons are mostly extinct,” Nicci said.

Bannon crossed his arms over his chest. “Sea serpent, but just a small one. We often saw them swimming past the Chiriya shore during mating season, when the kelp blooms.”

Looking at the long skeleton, Nicci surmised that the creature had died out at sea, and the tides had cast its body up on shore, where gulls and other scavengers picked it clean. Only a few iron-hard scraps of meat remained on the curved bones. “If that is a small sea serpent, I’m glad the Wavewalker did not encounter one.”

They walked along the beach until the tide came in with late afternoon. The sun lowered in a ruddy ball toward the expanse of water. The three trudged on, finding no path, no villages, no docks, nor even old campfire circles that would indicate a human presence. This land seemed wild, unsettled, unexplored.

Bannon bounded off ahead, heading toward another large cliff that blocked their way, pushing out into the sea. “Hurry, the tide is coming in, and it’ll block our way. I’d rather walk along the beach than climb those cliffs.”

They were sloshing in ankle-deep water by the time they rounded the point, climbing over seaweed-covered rocks. “This way,” Bannon said. “Be careful of your footing.”

But when they came around the corner into a cove, the young man froze in place. He reached out to catch his balance on a tall rock.

Nicci saw what had caught his attention. Another wrecked ship had been smashed like a toy high up on the rocks. Little was left beyond a few ribs, some hull planks, and the long keel. Time and weather had reduced it to skeletal remains.

Nathan paused to catch his breath. “Now, that is interesting. What sort of ship is it?”

The wreck’s curved prow was adorned by a ferocious carved serpent head—a sea serpent like the bones they had seen, Nicci realized. The hull planks were rough-hewn and lapped one over the top of the other, rather than being sealed edge-to-edge as those of the more sophisticated Wavewalker had been. Several of the ship’s intact ribs curved up, draped with moss and seaweed. The rest of the hull had fallen apart.

Nicci turned to Bannon, who looked as if he had seen an evil spirit. “Is the design familiar to you?”

Too quickly, he shook his head. Nathan pressed, “Why are you shuddering, my boy?”

“I’m just cold and tired.” He cleared his throat and trudged up on the rocks. “It’ll be dark soon. We should keep going and find a place to make camp.”

Nicci looked around, made her decision. “This is a good enough spot. The cove is sheltered, and that wreck is above the high-tide line. It’ll provide shelter.”

“And ready firewood,” Nathan said.

Bannon sounded uncertain. “But maybe if we kept going, we could find a village.”

“Nonsense. This is much better than sleeping out in the windy headlands.” Nathan picked his way closer to the ominous serpent ship. “It’ll all look better with a nice roaring fire.” He began to gather shattered fragments of the planks for kindling.

Nicci found a sheltered area in the curve of the ruined hull. “The sand is soft here. We can build a fire ring out of rocks.”

Bannon sounded defeated. “I’ll go find us dinner. There’ll be crabs, shellfish, maybe some mussels in the tide pools.”

He trotted off into the deepening twilight, while Nathan gathered scraps of wood and prepared a fire, but he had to rely on Nicci’s magic to ignite it. Soon, they had a large crackling blaze.

After smoothing the sand for a decent cushion, the wizard situated himself on the ground. Nicci dragged up a wave-polished log to use as a makeshift seat. Nathan propped his elbows on his knees and gazed into the cheerful bonfire, looking miserable. “I do not believe I’ve ever felt so weary and lost, even if I know we’re on our way to Kol Adair.”

“We’ve endured a lot of hardship, Wizard. This is just more of it.” She poked a stick into the flames.

“I’m lost because my magic failed us when I needed it most. I’ve had the gift all my life. I wasted so many centuries locked in that dreadful palace, receiving prophecies and forced to write them down so that everyone could misinterpret them.” He snorted. “The Sisters had the best of intentions, but their results left much to be desired.”

He shifted his position, but could not seem to find a comfortable spot to sit. “They considered me dangerous! Prophecy was integral to me, woven through my flesh and bone and blood, and when Richard sent the omen machine back to the underworld, he unraveled that part of me.”

“Richard did what was necessary,” Nicci said.

“No doubt about that, Sorceress, and I’m not complaining.” He fumbled around in his makeshift pack to withdraw the tortoiseshell comb he had claimed from the unnamed sailor’s trunk. He began to wrestle with the tangles, grimacing as his unkempt hair fought against his efforts. “The world is a better place without that damnable prophecy.”

He held up his hand, concentrated, even squeezed his eyes shut, but nothing happened. “But now I’m losing the rest of my magic. I haven’t been able to use my gift properly since before the storm, before the selka. I have tried, but … nothing. How can that be, Sorceress?”

“Are you asking if magic itself is going away, as did prophecy? I don’t see the correlation. My gift functions properly.” Then, as an afterthought, she added, “So long as I haven’t been poisoned.”

“But I was a prophet and a wizard.” He looked at her with a flare in his azure eyes. “If the gift of prophecy unraveled within me, what if it was connected to the rest of my gift? You can’t pluck one loose strand from a complex tapestry without unraveling other parts. Could it have disrupted my entire Han? Maybe by yanking out prophecy, Richard loosened other strands of interconnected magic.” He pushed his hands out toward the blaze, visibly straining. “What if I can’t create a light web ever again? Or manipulate water? Or make fire? Will I have to resort to doing card tricks, like a traveling charlatan? How can I be made whole again?”

“I don’t have answers for you, Wizard,” Nicci said.

He looked stung. “Maybe you won’t be able to call me that anymore.”

Interrupting them, Bannon returned with an armload of misshapen oysters and mussels, which he dumped in the sand at the edge of the fire. “There were crabs too, about the size of my hands,” the young man said. “I couldn’t carry them all, and the crabs tried to run away. I can go catch some later.”

Nathan used a stick to push the shells into the coals, and the moisture hissed and spat as it steamed away. The mussels yawned open, gasping as they died. Bannon used a stick to fish them back out of the flames, rolling them onto the sand. “They cook quickly.”

Nicci and Nathan each picked up one of the hot shellfish, juggling them in their fingertips until they could pry the shells wide enough to get at the meat inside. After they devoured the entire haul, Bannon took a flaming brand from the fire and ventured into the darkness again. Before long, he returned with crabs, which they also roasted.

Squatting down on the smooth log near Nicci, Bannon laid his sword on his lap and ran his finger gently along the blade’s edge. He kept glancing around, deeply uneasy.

At last having the chance to think and plan, Nicci gazed at the skeletal remnants of the wrecked serpent ship, then looked up into the sky to view the altered constellations. “Tomorrow, we decide where to go.”

Paying little attention to their discussion, Bannon tossed the empty shells against the wooden ribs of the derelict ship.

Nathan opened the leather satchel at his side, glad he still had his life book. It had mostly dried, and the blank pages suffered little enough damage. Using a lead stylus he had procured in Tanimura, he began to sketch the coastline on one of the blank pages.

“I have no cartographic instruments, but I do have a good eye.” He added the rocky points, the crescent-shaped beach, the site of the tall stone cairn, and now the sheltered cove that held the wreck of the serpent ship. “It’s difficult to make an accurate map if you don’t know where you’re starting, but I’ll do my best. After all, I am the roving ambassador, and Richard will want a map when we come home again.” He worked his hands, concentrated, looked down at the pages, then sighed in disappointment. “A map-making spell could do a much better job, but this will serve.”

Nicci said, “At least that book provides blank paper. It is not entirely useless.”

Nathan sat up straight as a thought occurred to him. He looked at Nicci and extended a finger. “The witch woman wasn’t useless. She knew we had to be here. You had to be here.”

“Yes, to save the world, to save Richard’s empire. I’m sure it will all become clear enough … once we find someone to ask.”

Bannon looked up at them. “So if we find a place called Kol Adair, you’ll get your magic back? And the sorceress will save the world.”

“Yes!” Nathan said, then frowned. “Possibly. Or maybe it’s just a foolish, vague prediction that has no merit at all.”

Nicci added, “No one can be certain of anything a witch woman says. And prophecy no longer exists.”

“Do we have another choice? We’re here anyway. You and I came to explore the Old World. That quest seemed pointless before, but it is more important now.”

“Then we will go to Kol Adair,” Nicci said as she went to stand at the edge of their firelight, “as soon as we have any idea where to find it.”