Children of the Sea 03 - Sea Lord

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 Page 112

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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.”
    Which accounted for that submerged stain.
    At least he hoped Tan was the cause.
    She came ashore in early twilight under a sky that smelled of snow. She raised her whiskered face to the breeze that blew from inland, scented with wood smoke and spruce. Recognition pierced her exhaustion.
    She knew this outcrop of rock and sand. This was the point on World’s End, a mile and a half from home.
    The gray sea reached long fingers over the frozen beach. The air was cold and still.
    She struggled on the broken shore, levering her weight on the rocks. For one awkward moment, as she flailed in the surf, panic swelled and threatened to swallow her. Would she . . . How would she become human again?
    Her flippers scrabbled. Her belly scraped the shale. She tightened her stomach to shove herself forward and sprawled naked, half in and half out of the water, her wet hair in her face and the sea foaming around her ankles.
    Lucy gasped. Shivered with shock and cold. Her fingers curled into the gritty sand.
    Fingers. She had fingers. And ankles. Toes.
    She staggered to her feet to see. Ten toes.