Chapter Seven

Selkie War

Marina Song Spinner

Salish Ocean, Salishen Isles, Noilaan

Xishlon night

Marina struggles against her invisible bindings, the ship’s black lacquered deck hard under her knees, her shock like a harpoon to the gut. Alarmed, she takes in the furious Selkie soldiers surrounding her with their lethal cone-snail spears—venom-coated weapons that could fell her in a heartbeat—the Selkie soldiers’ blue-shell-hewn battle armor muted to navy hues by the East’s Shadowed moonlight, their silver sealskins secured around their shoulders.

Marina’s gaze snaps toward the naval ship’s Vu Trin crew, the soldiers all being restrained by Selkies, spears to their throats, magic-dampening bull kelp fronds binding the wrists of Vu Trin naval commander Zephyr Quillen. The young, dark-hued commander’s steel gray eyes warily take in the situation as Vogel’s Shadow sea distantly roars against the huge, lightning-spitting dome-shield made of storm magic that Gareth and his whale kindreds conjured.

Marina’s gaze darts toward the scores of Selkie soldiers streaming onto the coastline, more soldiers invading every ship in sight, a line of them ringing the periphery of each naval vessel’s deck.

Her mind whirls.

My people’s Ocean army must have been amassing underwater here long before Noilaan’s dome-shield fell. How did they get through that shield?

Marina looks over the ship rail’s edge toward the water, the origin point of her invisible bindings, and meets the ferocious gaze of a Naiad witch.

The blue-scaled witch is treading water close to the ship’s side. Her glowing cerulean blue eyes are fixed on Marina, one web-fingered hand raised and holding a charged rune stone. The stone’s looping rune glows a vivid scarlet interspersed with bright pinpricks of emerald Varg light.

Marina’s gaze sharpens with recognition—it’s one of the Amaz rune stones given to Marina and the other land-trapped Selkies by Queen Alkaia and her Council of Sorceresses. The rune stone holds enough magic to break the spells that snared groups of Selkie women on shore during the full moon.

A split-second realization hits home—the Naiad witch must have found a way to reconfigure the powerful Amaz magic so that the Ocean army could break down shield spells as well as snare spells, allowing them to traverse Noilaan’s border shield, come to land, and wage war.

As if sensing Marina’s comprehension, the Naiad witch smiles, black teeth gleaming, her scaled skin and long, lashing fishtail glittering a vivid blue even in the Shadowed moon’s grayed light, her tentacle hair writhing.

Marina turns, and surprise floods her when she finds her combative soldier brother, Storm Tide, shouldering his way through the ranks toward her, his gills flared in anger. Outrage slashes through Marina, and she growls, wrestling against her bindings as she boldly meets her brother’s cleaving stare. Storm Tide’s hand flashes out mariner sign-language commands to the surrounding soldiers with staccato emphasis, even as his livid ocean-hued eyes remain locked on hers.

“Let me go!”

Marina snarls at him. “You’re fighting the wrong war!”

She’s certain her brother won’t understand her air-speech words but knows he’ll grasp her tone.

Storm Tide’s expression practically spits spears as he turns toward the Naiad witch and signs, “Release Song Spinner!”

Glaring murderously at Marina, the witch raises her webbed palm, and Marina’s bindings abruptly dissolve. She springs to her feet, ready to face her brother down.

“Where are the rest of our people?”

Marina signs at her brother, desperate for news of their family and loved ones, fearing the worst.

“Here!”

Storm Tide signs back, gesturing toward the northern waters inside the shielding. He bares his teeth at Commander Zephyr Quillen. “Well protected from these Ocean killers!”

“Ocean dweller,”

Commander Quillen both says and manages to sign to Storm Tide, the Vu Trin commander’s expression fierce as she ignores the lethal spear at her throat. “We are not your enemies!”

“She speaks the truth!”

Marina says and signs to her brother, hands flying.

Marina’s gaze darts back toward the Selkie land invasion, a chill racing through her as line upon line of Ocean-shifter soldiers march out of the water and onto the coast, spears in hand. And not just Selkie’kin. Marina spots the black-shell armor of a contingent of shark-shifters, their necklaces of teeth allowing them to return to their shark forms. There’s also a distant unit of gray shell-armored whale-shifters who hold their whale forms in a resonant song.

All the armies of the Ocean, suddenly aligned and able to come on land.

Vu Trin forces are moving toward the beach, including a line of archers spreading across the entire boardwalk, arrows nocked. But Marina knows the Vu Trin are no match for her people—not with their weapons stripped of Noi runes from Vogel’s Shadow attack and every Ocean spear holding enough cone-snail venom to fell scores of Eastern Realm soldiers. Marina’s gaze swings to Erthia’s real enemy, the distant Shadow sea, then back to her brother, urgency churning in her core.

“My brother,”

she signs. “Please hear me out! You are attacking the wrong people!”

Storm Tide bares his teeth at her. “You are ensorcelled by the land parasites!”

he emphatically signs back, his hands moving like they’re weapons, his gills flaring. Storm Tide pauses, his gaze raking over the purple branching pattern newly emblazoned on Marina’s deep-blue form, a look of open disgust twisting his features. “You need to be forcibly cleansed of this land corruption!”

he signs. “We will deal with the Ocean killers.”

“We do not seek to harm your ocean,”

Zephyr Quillen both states and signs, lightning crackling in her eyes.

“Silence, lying one!”

Storm Tide signs back with the full wrath of a storming Sea. “We know the full extent of your corruption. You land filth killed off an entire distant continent! Sent Shadow over it and into its surrounding Ocean! Killed every last reef! Sucked the breath clear out of those Waters! I’ve seen the seas around this dead continent with my own eyes. And I’ve seen how your Shadow power rains down poison from the skies into the Oceans of the Western Realm. And now, you land filth are poised to rain down this corruption over the East to kill off the remaining Ocean!”

Storm Tide swings his tempest-spitting gaze back at Marina. “They must ALL DIE to save our Waters!”

Marina stares her brother down as purple light explodes through her lines, the full might of the mangrove forest and her octopus kindreds rising within her. The power of her mating bond to her beloved rising.

“These land dwellers are our allies,”

she growls and signs, pointing a finger toward the armies facing off along the coast. “That is what will kill our entire Ocean. Us fighting each other. Instead of banding together to fight that!”

She swings her finger toward the distant Shadow sea. “My brother, please hear me out—our division is what the Shadow wants.”

Her brother’s face ignites with a look of unmitigated anger.

“We all know of your unnatural love for a Mage,”

he signs, letting out a low snarl. “A Mage!”

He sniffs at Marina, nostrils flaring with obvious revulsion. “I can smell him on you. I can scent that you actually mated with this land filth. Where is he? I will run a spear through him with my own hands!”

A SNAP of electricity discharges, startling them all, the dome-shield Gareth and the Storm Whales cast over Southern Noilaan flashing bright white. Explosive sprays burst from the nearby water as the entire pod of lightning-coated whales breaches the waves.

The lead whale swims straight toward them, Gareth on its back, lightning pulsing over his mangrove-leaf-armored form.

Storm Tide and the Selkie and Vu Trin soldiers all gape at Gareth and the Storm Whales. A resolute expression hardens Gareth’s features before he leaps off the back of one of the Ocean Goddess’s own prophesied whales and swims to the ship. He’s momentarily cut from Marina’s sight, and her heart thuds as she hears him climbing the ship’s rope ladder before reappearing to land deftly on his feet before them. He takes hold of the mangrove root clenched in his teeth, his intense eyes meeting Marina’s, his gaze blazing with bright lightning.

“My tide,”

Marina manages, an ache of love for him welling in her chest, strong as the Ocean.

Storm Tide and Marina’s other Selkie’kin survey Gareth’s green-glimmering, gilled, and point-eared form with expressions of vast confusion. She catches their nostrils flaring as they breathe in his Selkie scent, watches their astonishment intensify as their gazes rake over Gareth’s Selkie-silver- and mangrove-purple-streaked hair. Even her famously unyielding brother seems utterly thrown.

Gareth holds out his hand to Marina, and she takes it, her heart soaring as she thrills to the electricity sizzling over his skin.

“This,”

Marina says and signs to her brother, to them all, “is Gareth Keeler, my chosen mate.”

She gestures to the lightning-flashing whales now encircling the ship. “He has been called to be a Storm Whale Warrior for Erthia’s Waters. And both of us are being called to bind both land and sea peoples to the mangrove trees—to link the power of both our dominions.”

“It cannot be,”

Storm Tide signs with a look of confusion as he gapes at the huge whale pod, then at Gareth, before his gaze swings back to Marina. “He is not full Selkie, and we are Ocean’kin. We do not bond with trees . . .”

“All the myths are converging,”

Gareth signs and says to Storm Tide. “So that all the Peoples of Erthia can come together and fight that.”

Gareth points his root at the distant Shadow sea pressing up against the southern side of his lightning dome, an echoing lightning crackling over his own skin, defiance in his gaze.

“Forge a new myth,”

Marina implores the Selkies and Vu Trin both. “Erthia needs all of us to set down our differences and come to the Forest. As one.”

Marina lets go of Gareth’s hand, and they both raise their palms, displaying the image of the Great Ironwood Tree, III.

But even with mythical whales surrounding them, no one budges.

Storm Tide’s gaze turns explosive as it bores into Marina’s. “Have you lost your mind? You are asking us to trust landlings? You are an apprenticed Selkie bard. You know our songs. When in the entirety of history has it been a good idea to ‘set down our differences’ with them?”

Marina meets her brother’s gaze without flinching. “When in the entirety of history have we seen a threat that could undo the entire Natural World?”

She points, once more, at the black mass of Shadow. “Something that will kill everything.”

“We stand together as one, or we fall together with all of Erthia,”

Gareth signs and states. “And every last person and thing we love, above sea and below, will be destroyed.”

“Please, my brother,”

Marina says and signs, her tones fracturing. “Stop fighting. And come with us to our Forest. To build a bridge between Land and Water to save Erthia.”

Silence. Weapons still raised.

The whales grow agitated, circling the ship before forming a rigid line, all of them turned toward the north.

Gareth inclines his head toward the pod, lightning pulsing over his skin with the same staccato urgency as the light power forking over the whales’ huge bodies.

“What are they sensing?”

Zephyr presses Gareth.

Gareth’s gaze swings to his Vu Trin commander, his expression stark. Before he can get a word out, a huge dark wave ripples up from the Shadow sea and flows over the lightning dome like a malignant tide.

Feeling like a trapped animal, Marina glances around as the world darkens to blackish-gray, the gray moon muting to a Void. Only the lightning coursing over the Storm Whales’ bodies and striking over Gareth’s skin and through his eyes illuminates the ship’s deck and surrounding Ocean with pulsing white light.

Gareth meets Marina’s eyes, and Marina swears she can feel a jolt of the whales’ power in his gaze. “Vogel has trapped us here,”

Gareth states and signs. “Which means he’s trapped the bulk of those on Erthia who possess strong water magic—the Ocean Peoples of Erthia and the Sylphan Vu Trin—”

“There are others,”

Commander Quillen cuts in.

Gareth turns his gray-green eyes on her. “Yes. The Asrai Vu Trin. Who are sure to deploy south once they hear of this attack on Noilaan’s southern Waters. But this Shadow sea we’ve walled off from the Vo isn’t the main line of attack on Erthia’s Waters. That’s what my whale kindreds are sensing.”

“Lies!”

Storm Tide militantly signs out.

“What line of attack do they sense?”

Zephyr challenges Gareth, ignoring Storm Tide’s outburst and the spear still pointed at her throat.

A dire look overtakes Gareth’s expression, and Marina’s gills tighten. “The northern Vo River Cypress trees are sending my whales a vision,”

he says and signs. “There’s a monstrous Shadow force coming for the Waters of the East. But it’s massing in the far north.”

Gareth swallows, a terrifying look of foreboding crossing his features as he glances toward the mangroves then sets his gaze back on Zephyr, Storm Tide, and then Marina, a chill coursing over her skin.

“Vogel is attacking the Vo River at its northern origin,”

Gareth says and signs, his lightning-flashing eyes like two warning beacons in the darkness, “to entrench and flow Shadow pollution through the East via the river’s waters, to bring down Noilaan’s entire Natural World with Shadow power.”

Gareth’s gaze swings back to Storm Tide, a martial steadiness in it. “And that Shadow power will be flowing right toward us.”