The serpent god wheezed out as it loomed over the Chaser. Nicci summoned a lightning bolt that scorched a smoking line down its sinuous body. With a roar, the serpent god lunged down and bit the side of the ship, splintering wood. The crew threw their harpoons, but their spears did little damage to the scaled hide.
Nicci recalled when she had fought the dragon Brom, using the Subtractive side of magic. Now she extended her gift and easily found the serpent god’s heart near the top of its long neck. The heart was as large as a barrel, beating hard. She unleashed her gift, caused the muscle to swell and darken?.?.?.?then burst. The serpent writhed backward, arching its jaws toward the sky in agony.
But even after Nicci had exploded its heart, the monster struck again, sweeping its great neck sideways to snatch a panicked crewman in its jaws. With one chomp, it bit the man in two and tossed the pieces into the water.
Nicci couldn’t believe the creature still lived. “I stopped its heart!” She reached out with her magic again, then realized to her surprise that this creature had more than one heart.
Once she concentrated, she discovered six hearts down the length of its body, each one independent, each beating to keep the underwater monster alive. “Then my work has just begun.” She lashed out with her destructive magic, finding another heart and stopping it. She burned a third heart to a lump of internal charcoal.
Each time Nicci hurt it, the creature recoiled and smashed into the ship, causing even more damage. The Chaser would not last long.
Groaning and still dazed, Nathan managed to summon a ball of wizard’s fire and hurl it at the serpent god’s head. The searing magic flames burned between the creature’s jaws and roasted its tongue.
Nicci didn’t stop her attack. With methodical intensity, she destroyed all of the monster’s remaining hearts, one by one. At last, the giant serpent collapsed onto the water, causing waves that rocked the kraken-hunter ship. The dead serpent god floated in the sea, longer than two or three ships.
Jared and his crew stared in dismay. The captain dropped to his knees and touched the bloodstain on the deck where his crewman had been killed. Bannon and Lila stood shaken, holding their swords ready as if some other monster might emerge from the deep.
Unsteady on his feet, Nathan placed a hand on Nicci’s shoulder. She knew it was meant to be reassuring, but he seemed to be steadying himself. “Sorry I couldn’t be more assistance.”
“The serpent god is dead, Nathan. We killed it.”
High up on the mast, the bedraggled lookout squawked, “Ships! Norukai ships on the horizon!”
Far out on the water, Nicci saw more than a hundred ominous vessels sailing toward them. From afar, the raiders had seen Nicci kill their serpent god, and even at a distance she could hear their howls of outrage. All the oars were extended, churning the water, so the serpent ships approached at great speed.
Nicci crossed her arms over her chest. “We have found them at last.” She felt a deep chill upon seeing the size of the fleet. “Turn your ship about, Captain. Quickly! Back to Serrimundi with all possible speed.”
Still unsteady, Jared shouted for the crew to reset the sails as he spun the wheel to turn the rudder. Though exhausted from battling the sea serpent, Nicci called up her gift, and Nathan assisted her as best he could. Together, they created a wind as strong as a storm to help the ship flee. The Chaser raced away with the Norukai fleet in pursuit.
CHAPTER 70
When his ships came upon the floating carcass of the serpent god, King Grieve stared down into the water, sickened and enraged. This fresh agony felt as strong as the pain he had experienced upon seeing his beloved Chalk murdered.
From the prow of his flagship, Grieve had watched the ugly kraken-hunter vessel with its gray sails and metal-plated hull, and he would never forget that ship. He had seen the sorceress strike down their serpent god. He would hunt it to the end of the world, if necessary.
But he could not simply sail past the body of their fallen serpent god. “Drop anchor! All ships. We halt here.”
Drums pounded, and shouted orders ricocheted across the water. The Norukai ships sailed close enough together that the staccato commands passed from ship to ship. With oars extended, Grieve’s ship maneuvered close to the drifting dead monster, where they dropped anchor stones and tied up the sails to keep the vessels in position.
Grieve had sacrificed to the serpent god many times. Now, he squeezed his massive hands against the rail until the wood creaked with the strain. The spikes in his shoulders protruded. He opened his jaws wide and roared with all the air in his lungs, all the power in his voice, a loud inhuman cry, much like the sound made by the serpent god.
The rest of the Norukai did the same, and the din was like a thunderclap that went on and on as one crew after another took up the howl. Grieve wanted blood, needed blood. He would find the sorceress and tear out her throat with his own teeth. First, though, he and his raiders would repay the serpent god for the grace and strength it had given them.
The monster’s body floated motionless just off the bow. Grieve looked down at its magnificent head, the frilled fin, the triangular jaw that was now a burned horror from wizard’s fire. One milky eye stared upward, half closed.
“The serpent god is dead,” moaned one of the raiders beside Grieve.
The king bashed him on the side of the head, and the man reeled away, clutching the blood that streamed down his face. Grieve snarled, “The serpent god is always here. The serpent god is us.”
He drew the long gutting knife from its sheath, swung himself overboard, and dropped down into the water. He plunged into the waves near the dead sea serpent.
As the raiders peered down from above with dismay and curiosity, the king swam to the scaled form and wrapped his muscular arm around it, holding on like a lover’s embrace. The pale underbelly turned upward as the body drifted on the sloshing waves.
Grieve hauled himself along its length, using the scales and fins for handholds. In all of history, no one else had been so close, so intimate with the serpent god except for the blessed victims whose flesh it incorporated. But he was Grieve, King Grieve of the Norukai! He was part of the serpent god, just as the serpent god was part of all of them.
He pressed down on the scales, then rested his scarred cheek against the wet form. He closed his eyes and tried to draw the power into himself, absorbing what he could from the magnificent creature. “I am the serpent god. We all are the serpent god,” he whispered to the dead form.
The countless serpent ships had fallen eerily silent as the raiders watched him.
Grieve plunged his long knife into the belly of the sea serpent. Aboard the ships, the Norukai gasped and groaned, but he glared up at them. “This is what we must do!” He sawed farther, cutting a long incision. Entrails spilled out in wet ropes that drifted in the water. With so much blood, he knew that sharks would come soon to feed, but Grieve and the Norukai would take what they required first.
He kept cutting until he found the first of the reptilian hearts. It was large, round, and purplish red. He hacked a chunk of the tough heart meat, which he stuffed into his mouth. He opened his scarred jaws wide to take in as much as he could. Chewing, he tasted the tar of burned blood. The flavor was exquisite, but the power was even more remarkable.
He knew that Chalk was a part of the serpent god, too. The serpent god had fed on the shaman, and now that strength was flowing into the Norukai king.
“I am the heart of the serpent god,” he yelled. “All my people must join me.” He cut off another piece of the meat and raised it out of the water. “All Norukai must be the heart of the serpent god.”
Three raiders leaped overboard without further encouragement. Once they understood what Grieve meant, others also jumped into the water and swam to the serpent god. With their own knives, they sliced the belly down its length to find the other hearts.
Atta was the first. The hefty woman swam up to Grieve and hacked off a piece of the hear
t for herself. After she chewed and swallowed, she turned her blood-smeared face to him and offered him another piece, which he accepted.
More Norukai swarmed around the floating body, butchering the creature. They removed the multiple hearts, some of which were charred and blackened, others still fresh and filled with blood. Every morsel contained the essence of the great deity. When the hearts were consumed, the raiders stripped the meat from the serpent’s bones. This was a feast unlike any they had ever experienced. The Norukai had pillaged towns, stolen their food, raped their women, but nothing could compare to this thrill.
The water became a froth of red. The circling sharks were wary, unwilling to approach the fierce Norukai.
As the feast continued, Grieve’s shock was replaced with an intense confidence. The great serpent god might have been slain, but it was not a cause for sadness. This was a transformation, and he felt it swell within him. Around him, hundreds of raiders stripped the carcass and squabbled over the last morsels. Every Norukai wanted to partake, though he knew that was not possible with the tens of thousands of bloodthirsty warriors aboard their fleet.
“You have eaten the heart of the serpent god,” Atta said as she floated next to him, caressing the scar on his cheek with one bloody finger. “You are King Grieve. You are all of us.”
“Yes, I am all of the Norukai. I have fed on the heart of our god, and now I myself am its living manifestation.”
