Serpent's Child (The Mindbender's Rise Book 3)

by D J Salisbury

  He took a deep breath and shouted, “Hunter of the Depths, become the Weapon of the Water.”

  Waves broke on the shore and continued up the beach. They rushed up to the pyre and formed a moat around the burning wood, lifting the seahorn from the sand.

  The phantom shark surged into the air and dove into the fire.

  Seawater gushed out of the moat and overwhelmed the pyre. Flames hissed, sputtered, and collapsed into soggy ashes. Water rushed back out to sea, dragging the shark’s tooth with it, but leaving the seahorn on the wet sand.

  Viper staggered forward to inspect the instrument. It looked even more like a coiled snake. A glistening snake as green and shifting as the ocean depths, and as clear as newly-blown glass. Wave-like scales covered its surface. Shark teeth lined the creature’s mouth.

  He needed to shove his imagination inside a basket. The seahorn didn’t have a mouth. The instrument’s end was called a bell.

  Garnet eyes opened. One winked at him.

  Viper backed away. His imagination needed to be stuffed inside a wool mattress. He was too tired to think straight.

  ***

  She dashed around the corner of the wagon, Tsai close on her heels.

  A thread-snipping huge wave roared up the beach. A big old fishy ghost hopped out of the water and swamped the fire.

  The kid sagged like all the juice’d run out of him. He wandered around the steamy pile of ash, looked at something in the sand, jumped backward like he’d been bit, and hobbled off to the southern pile of wood.

  Tsai shivered. “Whatever he’s doing, it’s giving me the creeps. Magic always makes me feel awful.”

  Her hair was kinda standing up around her head. From the wind? No, that was blowing the other direction. No wonder Tsai hated magic if it messed with her hair.

  Lorel thumped her friend’s back. “We’re lucky we ain’t no part of what he’s doing.”

  Tsai nodded. Keeping her gaze on the kid, she backed around the side of the wagon. As soon as she was out of sight she yelled, “Bog drown it!”

  Now what was wrong? Lorel strolled after her. “Blood in the Weave.”

  Four starfish clambered up the wheel, moving lots faster than the first one had. “Where’d they come from?”

  Tsai studied the ground, and peered under the wagon. “Where’d the dead one go?”

  “A gull must’ve eaten it.” Who cared what happened to the dead one? The live ones were their real problem. “Grab a Hreshith bone. I’ll chop these up, and you can bat them away from the wagon.”

  Tsai looked doubtful, but trotted to the nearest skeleton and brought back a wrist-thick, waist-high bone. “Good thing Viper’s busy. If he saw me with this, he’d scold me for disrespect and lecture us about which bone this was.”

  Lorel laughed. That sounded just like the kid, for sure.

  Fraying cold mist drizzled out of the sky. Just what they needed. Maybe fresh water would slow down these sea monsters.

  She paused for a minute. Didn’t look like the rain helped none. Tsai’s straight hair just stood out straighter, and her own hair curled up into miswoven ringlets. How she hated ringlets.

  No point in fussing. She had to get rid of them sea stars.

  Still careful to not carve up the wood, she sliced each starfish into five pieces. All the dead things dropped to the ground. Weird how little fish blood there was.

  Wait, was their guts poking out? Didn’t look like guts. She nudged one skinny blue arm with her boot toe. “This is fraying weird.”

  “What is?” Tsai strolled closer, her batting bone slung over her shoulder.

  “Look at this one.” Lorel nudged the chunk of dead starfish again. “It looks like it’s growing little baby arms.”

  “That’s not weird, it’s creepy.” Tsai swung the bone off her shoulder and held it like a shovel. “I like your idea of batting them out of camp even better now.” She whacked one starfish arm so hard it ought to fly for a hundred miles.

  Pop! Five full-sized arms sprouted like magic.

  Worse, the miswoven starfish didn’t go nowhere. It wiggled its arm tips, stood up on all five like a spider, and dashed to the next chunk of sea star.

  Pop! Pop! Pop! Every lump of starfish it touched shot out brand-new, full-sized arms.

  “Blood in the Weave.” But something looked off. She inched closer to the new-made starfish. “You can tell the extra arms ’cuz they got twice as many spines as the old ones.”

  “You’re worse than Viper. I just want them out of camp.” Tsai whacked a regrown sea star.

  Boom! Boom! Boom! Seven starfish, all twice as big as the first one, sprang up where just one had been.

  Lorel sighed. “Get rid of that, would you? It’s making this mess messier.”

  Tsai shuddered, and tossed the bone as far as she could. “Now what do we do?”

  Pop! Pop! Pop! Boom! Boom! Boom!

  “Wait for the kid?”

  Starfish swarmed up the wheels, up the side of the wagon, all over the roof. A couple dozen scuttled toward them.

  Tsai backed away. “Don’t think we have that much time.”

  “We gotta do something.” How come she had to think up all the new defenses? “Ain’t you got no ideas?”

  “My brother used to kill leaches with vinegar.”

  “Yuck. Well, we got lots of that crap. I’ll go grab a keg.”

  The sea stars scampered closer. They both backed away.

  “You’d better hurry.” Tsai pointed at the now blue-and-yellow side of the wagon.

  She was still in luck. No starfish managed to reach the driver’s platform yet, though several were trying.

  Lorel dashed to the wagon, made a flying leap over a bunch of miswoven stars, and landed hard on the platform. Wood creaked and crackled.

  Falling on all them spines was gonna ruin her day.

  She grabbed the underside of the roof, where the starfish hadn’t got to yet, and tried to lessen the force of her landing. The platform stayed put, sing to the Weaver.

  She kicked the stretching starfish away and ducked inside the wagon. “Hey, toad?”

  No answer. Good. The slithering toad must’ve decided to help the kid after all.

  She hustled to the cabinet where the kid stored his vinegar. The top keg was almost empty. She rolled it aside, grabbed the full one, and slid it under the door to the driver’s bench.

  Just opening the fraying door scraped a couple of starfish off the bench. Blood in the Weave. Could the miswoven things get inside? No way to lock the door from the outside. She’d have to deal with it later.

  She kicked seven thousand starfish off the platform, balanced the keg on her shoulder, and got ready to jump down.

  ***

  One more weapon to go. He stumbled to the last pile of wood.

  The scimitar lay in the sand. Alone.

  He’d forgotten to find a bone to summon a ghost for fire. How could he be so stupid?

  How could he summon fire’s heart? He had to awaken the scimitar somehow.

  He’d used a hoof, a tooth, a claw. What was left? A serdil pelt? But a serdil didn’t represent fire.

  The lava lizard skull? He pulled it out of his jacket pocket and rested it on his palm. It was only two inches long. The teeth were rounded and dull, only a quarter of an inch tall, with no fangs at all.

  It was so little and harmless looking. And he hated to give up its warmth.

  But the living lizard had been dangerous enough. It certainly had Lorel hopping. And it breathed fire.

  It didn’t exhale flames, it roared like a bread oven burning down the whole bakery. But could such a little creature serve as the heart of a magical weapon?

  No choice. It was all he had.

  Viper laid the skull inside the curve of the scimitar.

  He turned toward the Hreshith skeleton to get one last bone.

  And froze.

  RedAdder’s ghost floated between him and the Hreshith graveyard.

  His heart stop
ped beating. His writhing guts thumped it into a laboring, syncopated rhythm.

  She wore the form he’d seen before, a woman from the waist up, a snake from the hips down. But now he could see her clearly. Long, tangled brown hair massed over her shoulders. A ragged, Nashidran-style crimson tunic covered her torso. Her coiled tail was also a dark crimson.

  She looked young for a wizard, perhaps in her thirties. And she looked furious. “You refused to serve my master, yet you summoned me again?”

  He willed a fire shield, yanked it out of his mind, and cast it around the ghost.

  She raised one hand and cast an enormous dome shield over herself. No, not a dome, just a high wall. A long high wall between him and the Hreshith graveyard.

  His fire shield bounced off her wall and sputtered out of existence. He eased a single step back. “I didn’t summon you.” He’d summoned three other ghosts, though, and needed to summon the fourth. Right now. “Couldn’t you just go away? I’ve got work to do.”

  RedAdder snorted. “I shall transport you to my master. I am stronger now. You shall not thwart me.”

  The blasted ghost still spoke like a language instructor. Or like someone who’d learned Nashidran out of a book. Could he use that against her?

  Who was he kidding? How could a second-level sorcerer go against a wizard, even a dead one?

  “The enchantment must commence immediately.” The Kyridon slithered between Viper and RedAdder. “This one shall distract the wizard’s spirit.” It reared as high as it could.

  RedAdder’s jaw dropped. “A Dreshin Viper? Here? Why?”

  “This one shall defend its hatchling.” The serpent glanced at him. “The enchantment must commence immediately.”

  Right. He’d heard it the first time. All he could do now was hope the Kyridon could confuse the ghost until he was finished.

  Where was Lorel? She’d kept RedAdder at bay for lunars. Why hadn’t she come to his aid now?

  No time to worry about it. He turned back to the pile of driftwood.

  RedAdder sprang at him.

  The Kyridon tossed its coils around the ghost and twisted around it.

  They both fell to the ground.

  RedAdder swore like a soldier dying of a gut wound, sucked power into herself and threw a series of spells at his friend.

  ***

  Somebody cussed in Nashidran. How’d a Nastie get here? And where was the thread-snipper?

  No people except the kid in sight, but what on the Loom?

  Two huge snakes rolled around in the sand, all twisty and coiled around each other, like they was brawling.

  Bitter blood in the Warp and the Weave. They were fighting.

  One of the snakes had arms. And a woman’s body. And long tangled hair like she’d been locked up in prison for so long she’d forgotten how to take care of herself. Her fists pounded on Kyri-thing like the toad was the only barrier between her and freedom.

  But from the way the snake woman looked over her shoulder, Lorel was pretty sure what she wanted was to bite the kid. At least the slithering toad was lots bigger than the miswoven twisty woman.

  Too creepy. The toad looked like it was holding its own well enough. Good thing. She didn’t want to go nowhere near that battle.

  The kid stood really still, staring south and holding some red stuff in one hand. Blood? Where’d he get blood? He didn’t have the nerve to cut himself. And why would he even need it?

  Tsai yelped. “Lorel, I think I need help.”

  Now what?

  Tsai swatted a starfish off her trousers – with her knife, Weaver bless her thread. They didn’t need no more magic monsters.

  Neither the kid nor Kyri-thing needed her. She was free to go rescue Tsai from the tiniest opponents she’d ever battled. It was kinda embarrassing.

  After rebalancing the heavy keg, she jumped down from the platform. A whole bunch of sea stars squished under her boots. Guts flew everywhere.

  Pop! Pop! Pop! New starfish formed everyplace them guts and blood hit. This was getting ridiculous.

  No place else to walk, though. She stomped over crunchy little bodies until she reached Tsai’s side.

  Tsai shuddered and flicked couple more sea stars off her legs. “Do something, would you?”

  Lorel reached up and felt around for the keg’s spigot. “Let’s see if this works.” She opened the tap.

  Blood-red vinegar splashed down her front, over Tsai’s legs, across the attacking starfish.

  All the sea stars touched by the stinky stuff wiggled like they’d never hurt so much in their whole lives. They drooped like overcooked noodles, then stiffened, suddenly harder than fired clay. All their spines bristled outward like they was trying to protect their dead bodies.

  “It works!” Tsai clapped her hands and cheered. “Turn off the tap before we run out.”

  “Good idea.” It was a lot harder getting it closed at this angle. More vinegar drenched her trousers. “What a waste.”

  “Maybe not. Now they won’t want to crawl on us.”

  “I like that.” She set the not-so-heavy keg on the sand. “How’re we gonna kill all them beasties? There ain’t enough vinegar in the world to pour it on them.”

  Tsai chewed on her lower lip. “I think we’ll have to spray it on them.”

  “Spray it? With what?”

  “Our mouths.”

  The turtle turd must’ve fallen clear off the Shuttle to come up with that notion. “You want me to swallow straight vinegar?”

  “Don’t drink it, you cross-legged tree frog.” Tsai rolled her eyes. “Hold it in your cheeks and spit it out in a fine spray. Like you did when Viper accidentally handed you a mug of vinegar he thought was wine. You made a huge mess that day.”

  She didn’t remember making a mess. She’d spat the miswoven crap into the fire. It did make the flames hiss and stink, though. Maybe Tsai’s plan would work.

  “Let’s try it. We gotta hoist the keg up higher first. I could hold it up for you, but I can’t drink from the spout while it’s on my shoulder.”

  Tsai pointed at the nearest skeleton. “Put it on that Hreshith bone.”

  “You sure that’s a good idea?” Please, no more fraying magic stuff.

  “You have a better one?”

  “Nope.” Lorel lugged the keg to the oversized bone, the kind the kid thought was the sea empress’s shoulder blade, and placed the keg in a hollow spot. “Don’t think it’ll roll off. You go first.”

  Tsai rolled her eyes again, but crouched under the spout and turned the spigot. Almost right away, she turned it off again.

  She stood up. Her face turned green. She sprinted to the wagon and puked vinegar all over a bunch of starfish.

  Even from this distance, Lorel could tell they were dead. Weaver’s chamberpot. Now she had to do it, too.

  She knelt in front of the cask and turned the spigot.

  Winy fire invaded her mouth. Acid burned up her nose. Her throat closed down so tight she couldn’t breathe.

  She had to get this crap outta her! She raced to the wagon and spewed vinegar all over the place.

  A bunch of starfish wiggled and died. But not nearly enough to make a difference. She had to do it again. She wasn’t sure she could.

  Tsai patted her on the back. “It’s the only weapon we have.”

  Right. She forced herself to stand up straight.

  Tsai didn’t look too green anymore. Maybe they’d get used to it.

  She doubted it. She blood-woven well doubted it. But she’d never avoided a weapon in her life. She wouldn’t give up on this one until the war was won. If she survived that long.

  Together, they marched back to the keg, got a mouthful of vinegar, and dashed back to spit it on the blood-woven starfish.

  After the third trip, her nose got kinda numb. She spat the fraying poison out in a finer, stronger spray.

  Lots more starfish died. But seven-thousand thousands covered the wagon’s sides and roof.

  When Tsai sto
pped to catch her breath, Lorel thumped her on the back. “I’m gonna climb high before I spit on the thread-snippers. You work on protecting the wheels.”

  Tsai coughed and nodded. “I’ll try to clear the undercarriage, once I can get close enough.”

  “Sounds good.” She’d forgotten about the miswoven underside. All they needed was the blood-weavers to eat through the floorboards.

  No need to worry about it, if Tsai said she’d cover it. Lorel slurped up a mouthful of poison, leapt to the driver’s bench, and sprayed acid all over seven hundred sea stars.

  ***

  RedAdder’s spells vanished as if they’d never existed. Her eyes widened, and she tried to push away.

  The Kyridon heaved more coils around her, imprisoning her snaky lower body.

  The wizard’s ghost recovered in seconds. She raised her fists and battered at the Kyridon, but she couldn’t dislodge the serpent.

  He had to hurry. The Dreshin Viper couldn’t hold off a wizard forever.

  Viper raised his hands to the south. “Fire’s heart! Fire’s heart, come to us. Aid us. Fire’s heart, in the name of the burning sun, in the name of the ravaging forest fire, in the name of the crackling hearth, I summon you. Fire’s heart, become a weapon to save our world.”

  Nothing happened. He sensed no magical response at all.

  Did he need to ignite the mage fire first? That felt right. But RedAdder still cut him off from his power source.

  No. He had one source of power left. He drew his belt knife and sliced his palm.

  Blood pooled in his hand. Lavender mist rose above it. He reached out to the blood magic.

  Only a little blood. Only a little power. It wasn’t enough to ignite mage fire.

  He pushed up his coat sleeve and slashed his wrist.

  Blood splattered onto the sand. Purple and lavender fog surrounded his fist.

  He grasped the power and shoved it at the driftwood. “Ignite the fuel!”

  A single chunk of wood smoked, hissed. Snuffed out.

  Not enough power. He pinched the cut on his wrist to slow the bleeding. Even now he felt lightheaded, but he needed more time to think.