Page 98 of Beneath the Haunting Sea

She jerked her body against the rope, but it wouldn’t give way and the knife slid from her palm. She found the knot, fumbling with it uselessly. She could distinguish the dark shape of the ship in the water now, but it didn’t matter.

And then Wen was beside her, tugging at the rope. She saw the flash of his white face, felt the pressure of his hand on her shoulder.

The rope broke free.

Talia fought upward, bursting above the surface of the water, choking and gasping for air. She spotted Wen, but he was too far away from her. She tried to cry out but another wave hit, and her mouth filled up with seawater.

She clawed through the waves, breaking the surface again, gulping another desperate breath of air. Somehow she managed to grab hold of a splintered pieceof wood that had broken off the ship, and she clung to it as the sea tossed her about and hail burned her skin. She couldn’t see Wen anymore—there was nothing but the rain and the sea, swirling and dark. The knapsack was still hanging from her shoulder, the Star-light and Tree-sliver safe inside. But she didn’t know how to use their power to save them.

She screamed into the storm, a single Word,over and over and over—her failsafe, one last plan she hadn’t told Wen.

But no one answered.

Nothing came.

A wave slammed over her head, and she lost her grip on the piece of wood. The sea pulled her under, her fingers grasping at nothing.

Her lungs screamed for air, but she had no strength left. Water crept into her nose and her mouth and dragged her down, down, down, away from the stormand the ship and Wen.

In another moment she would be lost. She would sleep as the sea creatures slept, and perhaps she would come to the Hall of the Dead after all, caught in the Billow Maidens’ terrible nets.

Her consciousness blurred. She had one fleeting thought of deep sorrow: Wen shouldn’t have followed her out here. He belonged with the artisans and craftsmen on Od, filling the world withhis beautiful music. Now he was lost forever.

Despair and darkness closed around her, and she could feel herself slipping away.

In another moment, she would be gone.

Chapter Forty-Three

AVOICE ECHOED INSIDE OF HER, ALL STONEand storm and boundless power. She thought the strength of it would kill her—if she’d had breath, she would have screamed.

The sea heard too. It shivered around her and let her go.

Suddenly she was hurtling up, up, up beyond the grasping fingers of the waves, back into the storm and the rain and the life-giving air. She gulped for breath,coughing up the water in her lungs. She scrubbed the salt from her stinging eyes.

Something moved beneath her, vast and dark. Something alive. It lifted her partially from the water and gleamed in the white flashes of lightning: a huge rippling shape, more than twice as long as her shattered ship. Waves washed over it—overher—but the thing didn’t heed them.

“Endain’s daughter.” That voice again—asstrong as the earth, searing through her whole body.

She did scream then, and leapt back into the ocean. She glimpsed the fan of a wide, flat tail, the curve of a broad back. Waves clawed at her hair and pulled at her heels, trying to drag her down into the darkness. She struggled to stay above the surface of the water.

“The sea means you harm.”

Lightning ripped across the sky and for an instantshe saw all of it—a massive creature, with long, powerful flippers and a huge mouth and the gleam of a great black eye. It propelled itself easily through the angry sea, like it didn’t even notice the storm.

“The sea will destroy you.”

Terror writhed cold in her mind, of the creature or the waves—she didn’t know.

Another spear of lightning slashed the sky, illuminating all at once the wreckageof her ship and the ragged figure clinging to the fractured mast. Gods above, he was still alive. Joy warred with her fear.

“Wen!”

She tried to swim toward him but the sea wouldn’t let her. Waves slammed over her head and choked her breath away. He was alive, and she couldn’t reach him. She clawed her way back to the surface.

His voice cut through the wind, Words of power spilling out of himlike music and twisting into the storm. But then he was screaming, screaming and screaming, as if he endured unimaginable pain. In a flash of lightning she saw his body twisting, writhing.Changing.

“Wen!”

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