Page 26 of Death's Mistress (Sister of Darkness: The Nicci Chronicles 1)

“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.

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