Sea Lord (33 page)

fur.

She surfaced, and the world burst on her, explosions of light and air against a liquid horizon, harsh and

overwhelming.

Breathing, she dived again.

Her sorrow was a weight in her chest, her fear and purpose a pressure at the base of her skull.

But beneath the waves, everything was buoyant and clear. With a flick of her flippers, she wheeled and

soared, breaking the flat planes of her previous existence like a bird. She had slipped the shackles of

land, the burden of responsibility. In the ocean, she was graceful, weightless, and alone.

She was free.

Lucy was not in their room.

Conn stood in the doorway, aware of an unaccustomed hollow in his chest.

Selkie were solitary. He had always preferred his own thoughts, his own company, his own space.

Yet after centuries in the splendid isolation of his tower, he had somehow gotten used to seeing Lucy’s

face over dinner at the end of the day, had grown attached to her quiet conversation and her unexpected

passion and the glow of her eyes by fire and candle light.

The hearth was empty. Lucy was gone.

Conn frowned. When had he begun to count on her presence, to want her company?

When had he started listening like Madadh for the sound of her voice or her footsteps?

Madadh
, he thought. The vise around his chest eased. Lucy must have taken the dog for its evening walk

on the beach.

Reassured, he crossed to the window and swung open the glass. The light faded from sea and sky,

leaving behind a gray and purple luster like the inside of an oyster shell and Sanctuary like the rounded

pearl at the heart of the world.

He scanned the scalloped line of foam rushing and retreating along the shore.

He saw the dinghy, pulled up against the rocks, and an unacknowledged tension left his shoulders.

He saw the dog, a long, lean shadow.

And there, dark in the dying light, he saw the red of Lucy’s cloak, crumpled on the sand.

Conn’s heart pounded. His eyes strained to see as his mind struggled to process. Lucy sleeping, Lucy

hurt, Lucy . . .

Gone.

His heart howled in silent protest.

Snatching up his sealskin, he plunged down the steps of the tower, his own careless words drumming in

his ears.

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“
Will you go after her, lord?
”

“
Go where? We are on an island.
”

And Lucy could not swim.

Could not . . .

Should not . . .

Buggering hell. He slammed through the postern door.

She must not go alone into the sea. Not the first time. Without guidance, she could become dazzled,

disoriented, lost beneath the waves.

Lost.

As his father was lost.

Conn stumbled and burst onto the beach, more bull than human, blind with fear, uncoordinated with

worry. Madadh guarded a slim pile at the water’s edge. Lucy’s cloak. Lucy’s clothes.

Lucy was gone.

His heart turned to ice in his chest. She had left him.

He wanted to scream her name and plunge into the sea after her.

He fought the impulse. He had no way of knowing where in all the vast ocean she was. Or what she was.

If she was Changed or lost or drowned.

His hands fisted at his sides.

He stood listening, casting his heart and all his senses out to sea to find her. But all that came back to him

was the low roll of the breakers and the high seabirds’ cries.

Madadh rose, ears drooping, skinny tail pressed between his legs, as if his dim, doggy brain accepted

responsibility for Lucy’s leaving.

“Not you,” Conn said hoarsely. “Me.”

He reached for her cloak, as if the touch of the fabric which had touched her skin could provide a hint of

comfort, a clue to her presence or her fate. Something fell from the cloak’s folds, flashing as it tumbled to

the sand.

Conn picked it up, his hand trembling.

The aquamarine drop glinted in his palm, pale as a diamond in the twilight.

His heart clenched. His hand closed.

Dropping to his knees on the hard sand, he bowed his head.

Lucy.

Lucy.
A finger touch on her soul.

She was Lucy.

Her name was a chain around her neck, tightening her throat. She dived to escape, but the sound

followed her into the depths like the ringing of a buoy’s bell.

She scythed through the water, pursued by her name, by the memory of his voice.

She had left him, the one who called her. The one she loved. She wept tears into the sea from large,

moist, round eyes that saw in the dark.

But she did not turn back. The siren song of the sea rushed in her ears, drummed in her head, as she

plunged in the wake of the sun, driven by a need deeper than hunger, more compelling than exhaustion,

goaded on by visions of blood and tears that stained the water.

Wave upon wave.

Day after day.

She slept in snatches, bobbing in the waves, breathing brine. Woke and swam. Slept and swam again.

Until her strength was nearly depleted, until her mind was almost gone, until she existed only as a purpose

and a shadow gliding in the shadows of the water.

Following the sun.

Going home.

She carried the one she loved with her, a fish hook caught in her heart, and every mile she swam from

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him ripped her chest and made her bleed.

The wardens gathered around the ancient map imbued with magic on Conn’s desk. The tall windows

barred the tower room with rose light and with shadow.

As if, Conn thought, the castle already burned. He clasped his hands behind his back, refusing to

entertain the fantasy or the fear.

“There are no signs of life anywhere near the fissure,” Morgan said. He had just returned from the vent.

“No squid, no shrimp, not even worms.”

“Killed by the heat,” Griff suggested.

Morgan shook his white-blond head. “Life thrives in the heat around the vents.”

Ronat frowned. “So if there is no life . . .”

“Then the vent opened only recently. After Gau’s visit,” Conn said grimly.

The issue was not the cause, but their response.

On the map, the demons’ activity was revealed as a throbbing red threat off the west coast of Sanctuary.

Never admit emotion. Never reveal weakness.

“How large is the seep?” he asked calmly.

Morgan shrugged. “The magma has not built up. But the cracks are deep. I could see the sulfur plume

before I was down a hundred feet.”

Brychan whistled, obviously dismayed. “We cannot seal such a gap.”

“No.” Morgan turned his unblinking golden stare on Conn. “I should say . . . not without help.”

Not without Lucy to boost and bind their powers together.

They all looked at Conn, as if expecting him to produce the
targair inghean
from thin air and save them

all.

Conn quelled the impulse to shout at them. She was gone. She had left him. He could not save them.

“Even if we seal this fissure, there will be more,” Conn said.

“There are always vents,” Morgan said. “Thousands of them across the ocean floor.”

“But not this close to home,” Conn said. “This goes beyond a diplomatic skirmish at our borders. Hell

strikes at our heart. The demons cannot break the wards on Sanctuary itself. So they open a fissure mere

miles beyond our shore to use our own element against us. When the vent erupts—and it will erupt—the

surge will flood us. We must control the surge. And evacuate Sanctuary.”

“Evacuate?” Enya’s voice was shrill. “No. Without Sanctuary, we are no more than mortals. We must go

beneath the wave or age and die.”

There had been centuries when Conn might have welcomed death as a variation in his endless existence.

Might have given up his responsibilities to join the king in the land beneath the waves. But to grow old

cowed and conquered, knowing his death was defeat for his people . . . To die, knowing he would not

see Lucy again . . .

No, Conn did not want to die. Not now.

He drew a breath. Loosed it. “Which is why the wardens will stay,” he said. “To hold the island if we

can. And to fall with it if we must.”

Griff looked at him steadily. “And if we fail?”

Then his life and his love would both be forfeit.

“Then we will trust to be reborn on the tide,” Conn said. He regarded the few scattered blue sparks on

the map, a taste like ashes in his mouth. “The youngest will survive. Along with however many of our

people still exist in the sea or under the wave.”

“Survive, how?” Byrchan asked.

“There is a boat in the harbor,” Conn said. “Iestyn can sail.”

“Why a boat?” asked Enya. “Why can’t they simply Change?”

“With the right winds, a boat will get them clear. And there are things I would save from Sanctuary that

they could take with them.”

Morgan lifted an eyebrow. “We flow as the sea flows. We have no need of possessions. What the surge

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seizes, we can retrieve again from the deep. What would you take from Caer Subai?”

Conn looked around the tower room where he had lived and ruled since before the
sidhe
fled to the west

and Britain was overrun by the Romans and the Vikings and the monks. His room was furnished with

treasures, his desk from a Spanish galleon, the fish-shaped lamp from the temple of Enki.

What would he save from the salvage of centuries?

“My dog,” he said.

An embarrassed silence fell.

“How very . . . human of you,” Enya said.

“The Creator gave us human form, too,” Conn said. “Perhaps it is only our pride that makes us deny our

human affections.”

“Much good those affections have done us,” Morgan said.

Another silence.

Ronat cleared his throat. “There is no sign of the
targair inghean
?”

“No,” Conn said shortly.

Griff grunted. “Well, if you cannot find her, neither can the demons.”

“Unless she swims into a trap.” Morgan tapped the other side of the map, where a smattering of red dots

clustered, demons off the coast of Maine. World’s End.

The possibility that Lucy might have fled to greater danger twisted Conn’s gut. But Hell’s focus was on

Sanctuary. The activity on the map proved it.

“The demons were already active on World’s End,” he said evenly. He put his finger on a glowing spark

north of the island. “One of them, Tan, is imprisoned here, beneath the water.”