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!”
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.”