Home From the Sea: An Elemental Masters Novel

by Mercedes Lackey

  “And so you shall.” He came and took the babies from her, with a kiss for her and one on the top of each of the babies’ heads, and put them in twin cradles—Idwal and Daffyd had finished making the second one just in time. Mari smiled and was asleep instantly.

  “When—?” Nan asked, looking up at the Selch.

  “It began hours ago. Aled was born when the storm began, Aneirin moments later. It was a very easy birth, but I have been working magics toward that for a month now, and so has she.” He grinned. “And you never even thought to ask. Water is the birth element, you know.”

  “Ah, no, I didn’t know,” Nan admitted sheepishly. “Now I feel like a right fool.”

  “Don’t,” Daffyd said, coming out of the bedroom with his arms full of linen. “I was half out of my mind, and I did know about the magics. It was bad enough when Afanyn had Mari and her brother. It was worse this time. I just about fretted myself to ribbons.”

  He went out into the storm and for a moment Nan thought he must still be half out of his mind—but then she realized he was going to hang the linens out in the rain, and let the cold water do most of the work of washing them. She thought about going out to help him, but he was back in soon enough, though soaked to the skin. “Is there anything we can do?” she asked Idwal.

  “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 break
ing 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.

  Constable Ewynnog had been watching the cottage for three days now. The girl never came out, and there was no sign, none at all, of the husband. The first day, he had been merely suspicious; the second, his suspicions had hardened, and on the third, he determined that it was time to investigate in person.

  Because Daffyd Prothero had a very handsome little cottage, that was, as he understood these things, worth a goodly sum. And the simplest solution to the problem posed by the fact that the cousin would inherit it instead of the daughter would be to marry the cousin to the daughter, then be rid of the cousin. The cottage would go naturally to the daughter, as her husband’s nearest heir, without any more interference from other relatives. And a man who had rid himself of a wife would find no great moral difficulty in ridding himself of a cousin and son-in-law as well, particularly not one that was so cordially disliked by the daughter.

  Oh there was no proof that Daffyd Prothero had rid himself of his wife, but Ewynnog was mortally certain he had. “A policeman’s instincts,” he told himself.

  Well, Prothero might be clever enough to fool the ignorant villagers, but he was dealing with a trained constable now, and he would find he wasn’t able to pull the wool over Ewynnog’s eyes. Justice would be done. And he had brought the irons with him this time, to see that it was done.

  So he marched down to the cottage in a bloodthirsty frame of mind, dropped the irons down beside the doorstep, and pounded on the door furiously. When Prothero opened the door, he shoved his way inside without asking to be let in.

  Once inside, a quick glance around only made him more certain that his suspicions were correct. This was no common cottage; this was something on the order of the one the squire had for his friends and special visitors. It was far more than a touch above a common cottage, it was something a prosperous merchant would live in, like the postmaster, and without a doubt it was (in the eyes of a bloodthirsty anarchist of a fisherman at least) worth killing for.

  “Where’s Idwal Drever?” he demanded, harshly.

  “Out fishing,” said Prothero, rousing into a sullen anger. “And by what right have you—”

  “You’re lying,” Ewynnog said, just as the girl stumbled out of what he presumed was the bedroom, in clothing that had obviously been slept in, face puffy and eyes red with weeping. “Where’s the babies?”

  “What—” the girl began, her eyes going wide with shock, as her father shushed her.

  “What babies?” Prothero demanded heatedly.

  That was enough for Ewynnog, who leapt on the man like a tiger, wrenching his arm around behind his back, and shoving him against a wall. “You lying murderer! I’ve seen those two babies with my own eyes, and you have two empty cradles right there by the hearth! Where’s the father? Where are the babies?” He wrenched Prothero’s arm higher in the proper manner, getting a gasp of pain out of him. “Where did you get rid of them? In the sea? Confess!”

  The girl shrieked something unintelligible in her coarse peasant Welsh. He ignored her, as he ignored her when she flung herself at him, tearing at his arm with her fingers, crying hysterically, “Let him go! Let him go! He’s done nothing!”

  He had come prepared this time, in a stout leather coat and leather gloves, so she couldn’t tear at him with her nails as these fishwives were wont to do. He had Prothero under control, so he gave the girl a smack across the face that rocked her back, then a shove with his boot that sent her reeling down onto the floor. Since it was obvious he wasn’t going to get an answer out of Prothero, he frog-marched the man out the door, the wench screaming and crying after him. He’d left those manacles just outside, and before Prothero could even guess what he was going to do, he’d clapped the man in the irons and grabbed the chain that held the irons to the wrists. His heart sang with the glory of the justice he was doing, and the thoughts of the praise he would get from his superiors. He had a triple murderer!

  And best of all, he had timed his arrival so that the villagers would be off doing their work and wouldn’t see him bringing Prothero in. He wouldn’t put it past them to try to interfere, or even to attempt to free Prothero, and he was only one man; he couldn’t hold them all off. He’d keep Prothero safely locked up until reinforcements from Criccieth could come.

  “You’re coming with me, Daffyd Prothero,” he proclaimed loudly, although there was no one to hear but the weeping girl who had followed them out.

  “No!” the girl shrieked, and ran at him again, but now he was ready for her, and he gave her another smack across the face that knocked her back. She fell, and sprawled in the dirt on her face. “I am arresting you on suspicion of the murder of Idwal Drever and his children, and I am taking y
ou in.”

  And with Prothero in tow, the girl crying into the dirt, he started the march back to Clogwyn, a walk made all the shorter by the heady wine of success.

  Nan and Sarah were doing their best not to dance with impatience, but it was taking the stationmaster a hideously long time to unload the two bicycles they had brought back with them.

  They had not brought them for the sport.

  A few days ago, Nan had gotten a horrible feeling that something was wrong. Two days ago, Neville had come chasing after her with her locket in his beak—the one that had sprigs of oak, ash, and thorn in it. Understanding him immediately, she had managed, somehow, to find a fairy circle on the grounds of the school and had dropped all three into the middle of it.

  She had been about to declaim one of Puck’s speeches, when Puck appeared without it, and had given her the gist of what had happened to Mari since Gethin had taken the babies, so far as Gethin’s plans were concerned. Gethin intended Aled and Aneirin never to know their mother, and to set Idwal under a geas that would never allow him any freedom. Puck was angry, but not terribly worried.

  “Best to get the advice of the Water Masters, still,” he counseled. “The wench is heartsick, but the tale is far from being over. Just tell them what has happened, and get their wisdom. I know what I would advise if this were Earth-creatures, and that might be the same—there are rules for these things, and the folk must abide by them.”

  “But—” Nan began, about to point out that if Constable Ewynnog noticed that Idwal was gone, there were going to be some difficult questions.

  “I came because you called me in distress, but I’m sorting something myself,” Puck said. “Now I must be gone.” And he vanished straight out of the ring, before she could get another word out.

  Far from reassuring her, that only made her more anxious, and she and Neville went straight to Sarah.

  Sarah’s startled and dismayed expression only reinforced her own alarm. “Of all the times for Lord A to be in London!” Sarah said, looking as if she wanted to curse. “Some pother or other in the House of Lords—oh damn politics! What do we do first? Why did it have to be now?”