Home From The Sea: The Elemental Masters, Book Seven (40 page)

“I would be grateful if the two of you would keep watch, while
we finally get some sleep,” he said instantly. “It would be a great kindness.”

“We would be happy to!” Sarah said instantly. “Grey and Neville will know where we went and they’ll fly here at dawn on their own.”

“And that will be all that I need to hear,” Daffyd said, turning to the ladder and climbing into the loft, which was now his since Idwal and Mari had the bedroom. “I feel as if I had been beaten like a bad dog.”

Idwal and Rhodri went to the bedroom, presumably to fall into a similarly exhausted sleep, since the newly-made bed was the only other flat spot for them to fall upon that was long enough to take them. Nan and Sarah looked at each other.

“Well?” said Nan.

“Well, it is a good thing I left that new book here,” said Sarah. “And here I was annoyed at myself for doing so.” She went to the shelf where she had left it, and picked it up, opening it to the beginning. “‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,’” she began.

Mari worked on the nets, the babies beside her, as Idwal drilled her on the ways of telling some of the sea-Elementals apart. Her mind was not on the drill however; she kept looking out to sea until he finally stopped even trying to ask her questions.

“Mari,” he said, and snapped his fingers to get her attention. “You’ve no more mind for this than the babes do. What’s wrong?”

“When will Gethin come?” she asked, finally, the question she had been dreading hearing the answer to.

Idwal shook his head. “I don’t know. Obviously he’ll want to claim one of the babes—”

“And he can’t have them! And he can’t have
you!”
she exclaimed. “I’ve no quarrel with one—or both!—of the boys going to the clan, but not when they are babies! Not until they are old enough!” The
original Bargain now seemed a terrible one. Give up Idwal and one of her children? Never!

“I have no reason to want to leave you, my love,” he said soothingly. “And as long as I am here, Gethin has no call to take one of the boys.”

“But what if he
makes
you go?” she demanded.

“I—don’t know,” he admitted, unhappily. “He is the clan chief. He can command me…”

“Well, we will see about that,” said Sarah, as she and Nan came around the corner of the cottage, with their usual luncheon-basket and the birds kiting along behind them.

Mari looked from Sarah to Nan and back again with hope and uncertainty. “I know that you know a great deal, and you are my friends. But—the problem is that you are not magicians—”

“No, but we are very good at finding ways out of things,” Sarah told her, quite firmly, as she and Nan put down the basket and each picked up a gurgling baby. “We’ll find a way out of this. It’s logic. Magic has rules, and all we need to do is find the one that will make your marriage binding and permanent, too permanent for Gethin to interfere with.”

“For one thing—though I expect Idwal already knows this—I have been told that the Selch are different from the Scottish Selkie.
And
who
is a handsome boy then?
” Nan cooed at the baby who looked at her vaguely and bubbled. “
Aled is a handsome boy!
Yes, he is!
The Selkie are seal-spirits that can become human. The Selch are humans who returned to the sea. So that puts a rather different complexion on things.”

“How so?” Idwal asked, tilting his head in that way that meant it was curious.

“Because your longing isn’t for the sea and your skin, it’s for the land and two legs,” Nan said. “In a battle between the two, the land will win for you. That is why, I suspect, there are so many Selch husbands and wives choosing to stay with their human spouses, and so few of the Selkie.” She put the baby down again, and began
unpacking the luncheon, as Grey and Neville landed beside the babies, guarding them from insects. “And that means that any pull that Gethin can put on you, Idwal, will be correspondingly weaker than if you were Selkie.”

“So the main thing we have to fight,” Sarah said, sitting down with Aneirin in her lap and picking up the conversation, “is the bond of blood between Idwal and the clan. I
think
that is how Gethin will control—”

“And isn’t it the clever mortal, then,” said a sneering voice. “So sad that you are come to that understanding too late.”

There had been
no one
there, not to any of Mari’s senses, yet suddenly, there they were, surrounding all of them. Not just Gethin, but two wild-haired, wild-eyed women in primitive skin dresses and nearly a dozen grim-faced men, armed to the teeth.

“Now, since I have two wetnurses, I’ll be having the boys,” the Selch leader said, cruelly, as two of his men snatched up the babies and handed them to the women before anyone could move. Mari cried out and tried to fling herself at the group, but Nan caught her and held her back. “And I’ll be having my Druid as well. Idwal!” He threw a handful of stones at Idwal, who went glassy-eyed and vacant faced. “You will be coming with me now.”

Idwal stood up stiffly, and lurched to the side of his chief. Gethin laughed in Mari’s face. “You’ve had your teaching, wench, and you had the husband to your liking. I have the babes. The Bargain is fulfilled. I give you back your freedom and the Prothero luck.”

He made a gesture, the sea roared right up to their feet, waves somehow breaking over the Selch without touching the humans—and they were gone.

Mari had nearly gone mad with grief and rage, and it had been all that Nan could do to keep her from flinging herself into the sea and trying to follow. She had finally wept herself into stupefied exhaustion and her father had managed to coax her into bed, promising
faithfully that he and the girls would find a way to get Idwal and the babies back.

“Though I haven’t a glimmer of how we are to do that,” he said, mournfully, as the three of them huddled around the hearth, as much for the comfort of the flames as for the warmth.

Nan absolutely refused to give in to despair. When she thought of everything that
she
had somehow survived to get to this place, she knew that there must be an answer, if only they didn’t lose hope and kept looking for it.

“There must be a way,” Nan said, firmly. “We just have to find it.” She and Sarah looked at each other, and then at the birds, who had been sitting silent till now.

“Old Lion,” said Grey, firmly.

Nan and Neville nodded. It really did seem the only place to start. “We’ll go back to London and discuss this with Lord Alderscroft in person,” Nan said. “If you think you can handle Mari alone—”

“I think I can care for my own daughter,” Daffyd retorted angrily, then passed a hand over his face. “Apologies. My temper—no offense meant.”

“Has been strained to the breaking point,” Sarah replied gently. “No offense taken. In that case, we’ll leave in the morning, and be in London well before midnight. Lord Alderscroft will have other Water Masters he can call on, and he can surely advise us. Never forget, Mari
is
a powerful Water Master; she merely does not have the experience that would season her. I think that Gethin is afraid of her. I think he was even more afraid to leave Idwal with her for the two years or so it would have taken for the babies to grow to the proper age to take one, because I think that he knew if he did, she would be so powerful he could never counter her. Remind her of that.”

“Meanwhile, we’ll see what we can find out,” said Nan, standing up, and picking up Neville. “Let her know we haven’t deserted her, and whether we find an answer or not, we
will
be back to help.”

“I’ll do that,” Daffyd promised, though his face looked miserable. He could hardly bear to look at the empty cradles.

Nan hated to leave him alone with Mari like this. But what else could they do? It was clear there were no answers here, at least not yet. Mari had descended into a grief so deep that right now grief was all she could see. The Water Elementals would never speak with her or Sarah. And Puck had already said he would never act against his counterpart of the sea. She patted his shoulder comfortingly, and she and Sarah went out into the night.

Mari did not so much sleep as move from grief-ridden wakefulness into a kind of heartbroken paralysis. She couldn’t stop crying, though she kept her sobs stifled. She heard what the girls had to say to her da, and although she wanted to cry even more because they were leaving, she knew they were right. But oh, her world was shattered, and the wreckage tossing on the waves, and if she was truly a “powerful Water Master” she certainly felt anything but powerful at the moment. Why, she couldn’t even actually follow her love and her babies, because she didn’t know where Idwal hid her skin, and without it she could never go beneath the waves to where they were.

She had to hold to hope with both hands, for if she did not, she knew she would fling herself into the sea anyway, and follow until she drowned. And yet, she could not see any hope to hold onto, which made her want to fling herself into the sea even more.

Which would be a
sort
of revenge upon Gethin, for there would never be more Protheros and the Bargain would end with Daffyd, but it would be a cold sort of revenge, and not one she would enjoy.

So she cried until her eyes were swollen and sore, until she could not even think, but merely existed in a kind of mindless sorrow, and passed into a sort of nightmarish doze, only to wake and cry more, feeling despair crush her down into the bed until she couldn’t move. When morning came, she could not be coaxed to eat or drink a thing, and Daffyd fretted over her. But not only did she have no appetite, the mere thought of food left her wanting to
vomit, though she finally gave in to his pleading and drank. Then she went back to shadows and weeping, the grief growing only deeper with each day that passed—

For with each day that passed in which Nan and Sarah did not return, she became more and more certain that there
was
no answer, that they could not bear to face her to tell her so, and they were never coming back. Gethin had won all, and she had lost everything she cared about but her da.

Three days… then four… and then came the fifth, and the fifth brought the storm-crow himself.