Page 45 of Broken Veil
“Me?” Carys shook her head. “What are you talking about? I don’t know how to stop a sea monster.”
“Well.” Wade slapped his hand on the table. “It’s about an hour drive if we follow the river. You’ll have time to figure it out.”
“Figure it out?”Carys was nearly shouting. “I’m supposed to justfigure it out? What the hell?”
They’d piled into the van so they could follow the old truck Frida was driving, heading upriver toward the Naburn Locks where the tidal River Ouse stopped and the river evened out.
“Calm down, Nêrys.” Cadell tried to soothe her. “There is one sea serpent and seven of us.” He grumbled. “Which is far more than we need, in my opinion, but no one listens to me.”
“I listen to you,” Laura said.
Cadell raised an eyebrow.
“I mean…” Laura continued, “I also ignore you a lot of the time, but I do listen to you.”
The dragon smirked.
Despite Cadell’s confidence, Carys had the urge to sit under her dragon’s long arm and hide.
“You have to do this,” Godrik said. “The god said that it was your task, and we will help you, but it must be your victory.”
“Why?” Laura asked. “Carys didn’t ask for any of this.”
“Because she’s the one who let the Morrígan into the Brightlands,” Naida said. “And she is the one the gods have named as the hero.”
Naida wasn’t wrong, and that was the most terrifying part.
Carys knew that none of this was going to stop until she figured out a way to get the Morrígan back across the gate and locked out of the Brightlands.
But first she had to figure out how to stop a giant serpent from destroying the city of York. Becausethatwas completely in her skill set.
Laura was looking at her phone. “From what I can tell from reading online, once you get past the Naburn Locks, the river is no longer tidal. So the water levels are more even and recreational boats are more common.”
“That means more houses.” Duncan chimed in. “If the water is calmer upstream of the locks, there’ll be more farms and businesses too.”
“And far more opportunities for Sam the Serpent to cause chaos,” Godrik added.
“Locks,” Naida said. “How can they put a lock on a river?”
“Not a lock like on a door,” Lachlan said. “Locks are a Brightkin technology to move boats upstream. We don’t use them in the Shadowlands because they disturb the river spirits. But here, they build a series of walled channels where the river flows.”
“When the tide is high,” Duncan continued, “a boat can enter on one end of the lock, then a door is shut and another door opens on the opposite side to flood the chamber and even out the water level. That way a boat can move upriver even if the elevation changes.”
“So clever.” Naida smiled. “But yes, the river spirits would hate anything that disturbs the natural body of the river.”
Carys had already seen the map. There was a weir on the Ouse, a low dam to control the flow of the water and operate the locks, but that weir would be nothing against a massive sea serpent.
If Sam the Serpent followed the river far enough upstream, it would put him right smack in the middle of York, one of the most historic cities in the UK, where over 140,000 people lived and worked, completely oblivious to the fact that apparently a cranky and confused sea monster was heading their way.
“I wonder why he is doing this,” Cadell said. “Sea serpents are usually quite peaceful. Shy even. They would not eat dogs, cats, or humans when there is plentiful fish to eat.”
“Maybe that’s the problem,” Duncan said. “Slipped through that gate to the Brightlands, tried to hunt, and got confused because the ocean on this side is different.”
“Is it though?” Laura asked.
“Significantly,” Godrik said.
“Humans have engineered the river systems in the Brightlands,” Lachlan said. “A creature from the Shadowlands would likely be very lost.”
