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.”
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?”