Sea Lord (36 page)

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Unless Conn could hold his wardens together and hold back the sea.

“
I cannot do this without you,
” he had told Lucy.

He eyed the retreating water bleakly. He had no choice.

But he would have liked to see her one last time.

To tell her he loved her. To say good-bye.

The wiper blades scraped ineffectually at the windshield as Dylan drove their father’s truck through the

dark and snow to the headland above the point. Lucy squeezed shoulder to shoulder between Dylan and

Margred on the bench seat. A cold wind whistled through the faulty seals. The ancient heater blasted at

their knees.

“You do realize,” Dylan said as the truck caromed over another icy bump, “that if we had any sense at

all, we’d be driving the other way?”

Margred showed her teeth in what might have passed for a smile. “Bitch, bitch, bitch. At least you still

have your pelt.”

Dylan threw back his head and laughed.

After a shocked moment, Lucy joined in.

They were going unprepared into battle together. Her long lost brother. Her newly acquired sister. Her

unborn niece or nephew. She thought fleetingly of Caleb, risking his own safety to bring in the sick, the

elderly, and the reluctant from all over the island, and Regina at the community center, cooking enough

food for the entire town. Or an army.

Whatever Lucy lost, whatever she had given up, she could take comfort in this moment. She could cling

to this hope. Different as they were, they were family. And maybe, one day, she could have more.

If they defeated Gau.

If they survived this.

If Conn could forgive her.

Dylan drove the truck under the black shelter of the trees. Yanked on the brake. The wind howled.

White caps and skippers’ daughters ran in rows over the black water below. High tide, Lucy thought, her

stomach clenching. That would worsen the effects of the surge.

Dylan cocked a brow at Lucy, letting the engine run. Steam curled off the hood into the night. “Cal said

the epicenter was south of the Bay of Fundy. So the water will be coming from this direction. You want

to try here?”

She consulted her bones, her heart, her gut. “Yes.”

Dylan cut the engine. They climbed from the truck. The snow had stopped, but an icy wind whipped tiny

crystals into the air, swirling like a matador’s cape, silver on black.

Margred’s face appeared as pale and perfect as the snow. “Now what?”

Lucy took a deep breath and held out her hands. “Now we stop this.”

Conn stood on the castle wall in the path of the approaching flood, watching the wave roar out of the

west, dark as an eclipse, loud as an attacking army, carrying destruction on its crest like foam. Spears of

debris and pennants of spume flew before it.

His wardens stood with him, naked and unarmed, pelts at hand. Griff, sturdy as a tower, and Morgan,

mysterious as the deeps, and Enya, blazing like the sea at sunset. Their faces were white with fear and

stark with awe and alight with a terrible pride. For the sea was coming to the children of the sea, horrible

and beautiful as death, and its voice was the voice of the deep.

And Conn knew that Gau had made a mistake.

For the sea was theirs.

They were united, for that one moment, in appreciation for the Creator’s awful power and the water that

gave them being. Conn poured himself out along the channels Lucy had etched in his soul, drawing the

wardens’ power to him, funneling their magic through him, until his gift thundered in him like the roaring of

the surge and he held the flood poised on the cusp of Sanctuary.

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He held it.

They held it.

Barely.

Conn trembled. He only needed one push, one soul, one gift more to tip the balance. To turn the tide.

He needed Lucy.

And at that moment, when the fate of Sanctuary hung sparkling like drops at the curl of a wave, he heard

her voice, his heart’s own voice, calling out to him in his own words.

“
Conn. Help me. I cannot do this without you.
”

Conn staggered, and the wall of water slipped.

“Hold!” Morgan shouted, and the water halted, roaring like the waterfall at the edge of the ancients’

world.

Sweat broke out on Conn’s face.

Griff’s worried face swam before him. “Lord, what is it?”

Lucy.
He saw her, blazing in his inner vision as she had blazed in the waters of the tide pool. She stood

surrounded by snow and night, holding the hands of . . . Margred, Conn recognized. And Dylan. They

balanced on a headland as he balanced on his tower, and above them threatened a flood.

They were holding the waters back.

She was holding the waters back.

Barely.

He felt the struggle Lucy exerted, heard the desperation in her voice. “
We need you. I need you.
”

His soul answered hers, spinning a golden thread of love and need, a wavering bridge across the sea.

He shook with effort and the enormity of his choice. He could not do both. He could not save both her

and Sanctuary.

Either he drew on her power to hold the wave back here, or he sent his spirit self to help her turn the

flood there.

Love or duty?

Life or Lucy?

The past or the future?

Her magic sprang from love, he remembered thinking. Could his do less?

He licked his lips, bitter with brine and defeat. “You must Change,” he ordered his wardens. “Save

yourselves.”

“But my lord,” Griff objected.

“He goes to her,” Morgan snarled. “Fool!”

Enya’s mouth dropped open in shock.

“Change, damn you!” Conn cried before his heart was plucked from his chest.

For a moment, he hovered, his spirit winging like a bird above the tower. As he wheeled, he saw his

body drop abandoned on the wall, and Morgan grab the chain about his neck.

And then his spirit was drawn away, sucked across the sea.

The wave reared taller than the towers and fell like a hammer on Caer Subai.

20

LUCY HELD TIGHT TO MARGRED’S AND DYLAN’S hands as if they were drowning.

Or she was.

The flood roared down on them like a train in a tunnel. The earth shook. The wind rushed in her ears.

She felt Dylan’s spirit draining and Margred’s spirit ebb, and the wall she had built to protect them, the

dike to dam the demon flood, began to crumble and crack under the strain. Her knees trembled. Her

soul cried out.

Never to return to Sanctuary.

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Never to see Conn again.

“
We need you. I need you.
” An echo of his words.

I love you.
A cry wrenched from her soul.

And as if her love were a bridge, a channel, he was suddenly there, with her, in her, his strength propping

up her faltering strength, his power thundering through her veins.

She felt the demons’ surprise, heard their howls of pain and protest as she turned the ocean back on

them, as the sea wall she had constructed burst to become one with this new surge of power, boulders

tossed in the flood, missiles hurtled against an enemy.

Conn’s spirit flowed into her spirit. Her magic rose like the sea, shining, vengeful, smooth and towering as

the wave.

“
Gau!
” she shouted. “
I bury you!
”

The wave crashed down, turning the flood back out to sea, where it was swallowed by the deeps.

But even as her magic crested and crashed down, even as she clung to her family’s hands, she saw

another wall, another wave, across the sea.

Like a bird high in the sky, she saw the castle wall on Sanctuary, topped with tiny figures, human and

seal, and a wave rearing over them like the hammer of Hell.

She saw Conn, unconscious, helpless, lying on the wall; and she watched in horror as the hammer fell.

The next morning Lucy crept toward the stairs, aching and stiff in every muscle and sinew, sore and sick

at heart. In the hallway outside her old room, she paused, caught by the sound of her father’s voice,

reading aloud to the figure on the bed.

“ ‘Goodnight to the cow jumping over the moon ...’ ”

Lucy’s breath hitched.

Bart looked up and saw her. His spare, worn face flushed. “That new doctor told me it might help to

read to her. He saw us—saw her—saw Cora at the community center last night.” He cleared his throat.

“I’m calling her Cora. Too confusing to have two Lucys in the house.”

Tears sprang to Lucy’s eyes. She blinked, leaning against the door jamb. “That’s . . . great, Dad. Pretty

name,” she offered, because what else was there to say?

“I found this with your teaching stuff.” Bart held up the orange-and-green-striped cover of
Goodnight

Moon
. “You don’t mind, do you?”

“No,” she said truthfully. “I don’t mind at all.”

Bart frowned at the figure lying on the bed, so still, so pale, her chest rising and falling softly with her

breath. “She doesn’t look anything like you,” he said. “I don’t know why anybody . . . I don’t know why

I thought she looked like you.”

Lucy’s laugh sounded more like a sob. Walking into the room, she bent and kissed the top of his head. “I

don’t know either, Dad.”

Her father reached up and patted her hand awkwardly where it rested on his shoulder. “Caleb and the

rest of them’s downstairs,” he said. “You should go down. Get some breakfast.”

“Yes.” She swallowed hard. “I will.”

They were gathered in the living room: Caleb in his uniform, and Margred tired and beautiful, Regina with

eight-year-old Nick on the couch, and Dylan with his back to the room, staring out the window at the

snow.

Caleb and Regina were speaking in hushed voices, like schoolchildren in the library or visitors to a house

where somebody has died.

Lucy’s heart squeezed with terrible grief. Somebody
had
died. Conn. She had not been able to feel him,

touch him, sense his presence, since they had turned the flood the night before. The golden cord that

stretched between them had snapped completely, leaving her cut off. Adrift.

“. . . dissipated in the Atlantic,” Caleb said. He looked up and saw her. His face sharpened with concern.

“Lucy.”

Dylan turned.

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Her gaze sought his, an impossible hope raging like a fire in her chest. “Any word?” she begged.