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.