Chapter 23

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

" Y ou know, when you asked me the other day, it didn't even occur to me that Seren's journals would be among her books." Aisling was digging through a corner of the castle library where wooden crates were stacked. "I'm sorry I didn't think of it sooner."

"It's fine." Carys glanced at Duncan. "I'm just glad they weren't lost."

"Well, they were a little." Aisling brushed back a lock of hair that had come out of her braid. "Robb doesn't employ scribes like the éiren court does, so the task of going through Seren's books was given to me, and I've just been so…" Aisling sighed.

"You're a busy woman," Duncan said gruffly. "They should get you some help."

"Ha!" Aisling's mouth turned up at the corner. "That would be a dream. If I were in charge of this grand library, I would employ an army of scribes and scholars, but alas…"

Carys smiled. "Not your call?"

Aisling shrugged. "All I have is one apprentice from the village and a few servants to clean up. "

"That must be frustrating." Carys looked around the castle library, which was dusty and disorganized. If they were depending on Aisling to organize it, it would be an overwhelming task.

"But I do love being in the library," Aisling continued. "It's not really my job. And technically I'm only an apprentice mage myself, because to finish my studies I have to finish my grimoire and my amulet, and I can't really do that while Regan is jumping from one court to another, can I?" She popped her head up from the crates. "I apologize, these are my own frustrations and they're not your concern."

Carys saw in Aisling the echoes of academia at home. "No, I get it. When I was a graduate student, I felt like my desk was the dumping ground for every task no one in the department wanted."

"So it's the same in the Brightlands." Aisling returned to the crates. "Duncan, could you…"

"Of course." He stepped forward and gripped the heavy crate Aisling was pointing toward. He lifted the wooden box over his head like it was made of feathers, and Carys blinked when she realized she was staring at his back where it narrowed to his hips. It was too bad his kilt covered his backside. She'd love to see him in a pair of well-worn jeans that defined?—

Fuck.

Carys looked at the ground, kicking a dust bunny that rolled across the intricately tiled floor. She cleared her throat. "This library is huge though. Clearly built by someone who loved books."

"Yes." Aisling answered her while lifting one book after another and stacking them to the side. "The former king—Robb's uncle—was married to an éiren queen who invested heavily in bringing scholars to Sgàin. She had a musical school here, mages in residence. She had been trained as a scribe in Anglia, so she improved the library quite a lot. It was her passion."

"Robb didn't approve of all that," Duncan said. "Told Lachlan scribes, mages, and musicians attracted the fae."

"Is he wrong? "

"No." Duncan crossed his arms over his chest. "But if you're only concerned with hunting, farming, and war, what are you living for?"

Aisling pointed to another crate. "Duncan, can you?—"

"Happy to, lass." He lifted the wooden box over his head, and Carys quickly looked away.

She was being an idiot. The last thing she needed was to be looking at Duncan that way. It was as if her night with Lachlan had switched on her libido, which was… idiotic to say the least.

She was a stranger in a foreign fae realm, trying to figure out who poisoned her magical twin, and she didn't need to be looking at Duncan's broad shoulders or the hard curve of his thighs under his kilt when he lifted that crate like it weighed?—

Dammit!

"Found them." Aisling raised her head in triumph. "A whole crate of her journals right here." She pointed at it while Duncan stepped back into the confusion of wooden boxes. "I think I missed them because they were covered with some maps she was working on with Cadell." She cocked her head. "Land surveys from Northern Anglia, it looks like."

Carys cleared her throat. "Seren liked maps?" She remembered Dafydd mentioning Cymric maps.

"She adored them," Duncan said. "Collected every one she could find from the Brightlands when she'd visit with Lachlan. Even the old ones."

Aisling said, "On days she didn't have court duties with Lachlan, she and Cadell would just take to the air and…" Aisling's hand fluttered into the air. "She was an excellent artist too. Probably helped when drawing maps."

And Carys couldn't draw a stick figure. It was as if all her mother's talent in drawing had fallen into Seren's head and not her own.

"Let me know if you need help reading them." Aisling started restacking crates. "My Cymric is rough, but I could probably give you the basic idea." She caught herself. "Well, after Regan has gone. While she's here, we need to be working on my grimoire. "

"Is that like your doctoral thesis?" Carys walked over and tried to help with the crates, but Duncan pushed her back.

"I don't know what that is, but when you're studying magic, you must study from the magical writings of others to learn, but you're only considered a true mage when you have written your own book of spells and demonstrated its usefulness to your teacher. For me, that's Regan."

"Yep, sounds quite a bit like a thesis," Carys muttered. "What about the amulet thing?"

"Older mages still use wands to channel their magic and center themselves," Aisling said. "But I think they're kind of old-fashioned. Most mages my age use an amulet or a talisman of some kind to practice." Her eyes lit up. "I heard about a mage from the court in Gaulle who was using a ring , and that seems very progressive."

"Mmm." Duncan nodded and stacked the last crate on the top of the pile. "I think a ring would be useful. Discreet like an amulet but directed." He shot his hand out. "Like a wand."

Carys barely stifled a giggle. "Yer a wizard, Duncan."

He narrowed his eyes and flipped her off, but Carys could only laugh.

"I had the exact same thought about using a ring." Aisling's face showed all the excitement of a true nerd, and Carys had never felt more at home. "But I don't know if Regan would even consider it. Amulets are preferred in éire."

Carys could have stayed in the library for hours with Aisling, talking about magic and exploring the books, but she had a very large box of journals to read, and Aisling needed to get back to work.

Carys bent down and brushed a rolled map to one side, grabbing a book bound in red leather. "So these are my sister's books."

Duncan stared at the pile. "You're probably going to need your dragon."

"We'll take these to my house." Duncan had loaded the crate filled with Seren's journals into a wagon and covered it with furs and various household goods he'd collected from the merchants in the courtyard. "I think they'll be safer if we don't keep them at the castle."

"Good idea. Cadell and I can walk to your house when we want to read them."

"Can you read any Welsh at all?" He took the lead of the horse pulling the cart and urged the animal forward.

"I'm hoping some of it will come back. My parents usually only spoke Welsh when they were talking about my Christmas presents." She grimaced. "My mother spoke it more than my father, but he managed. It was her first language but not his."

"Neither of my parents spoke a lick of Gaelic," he said. "It's not common in Scotland, especially where I'm from. Even the old people speak English."

"I hear it here too." They walked over the moat and into the village. "The English, I mean."

"It's used for business mostly. You'll hear it around the castle because of all the traders and merchants." He nodded at a tall man with long braided hair sweeping in front of the pub. "That's Fionn," he whispered. "In Scone, his twin is named Javid and he's a petrochemical engineer in London."

"His parents must be thrilled."

Duncan clicked his tongue as he led the horse. "They brag about him at the corner shop every time I come in."

"And here he has a pub." Carys smiled. "So… Javid was born in Scotland, so his twin was too."

Duncan nodded. "That's how it works."

Carys looked at the dark-skinned man, at his angled face and thin build. "But his parents, maybe not?"

Duncan smiled. "Pakistan, I think."

"So their twins were born into the Shadowlands there?"

"I'd assume so. "

"So…" Carys was thinking about a woman in a distant land, continents away from the child born in Scotland. "Who raised Fionn here?"

Duncan shrugged. "Whoever the fae gave him to. Families often look a little different here. People are accustomed to it, so it's not given any mind."

Just then a short round man with a long grey beard and a shock of white hair wandered out and pointed at something on the roof of the pub. Fionn walked over, listening and nodding.

"See?" Duncan shrugged. "There you go. Your dad is going to find something to criticize about your work in any realm."

Carys smiled politely at the people they passed, and Duncan quietly narrated a few more people he knew.

"That man's a baker here," he said quietly. "In the Brightlands, his twin sells real estate to corporations who build shopping centers on the edge of town." Duncan nodded at a woman they passed. "Hallo, Anna."

"Hallo, Duncan!"

He waited until she passed. "That's the mayor. I'm not joking, that's the mayor of my town, and here she and her husband own a tailor shop. She prides herself on the curtains in the North Hall. Tells everyone she made them."

"They're impressive curtains, Duncan."

He smiled. "That they are."

Carys tried not to stare as they continued walking through town.

"Where's Cadell?" Duncan asked.

"I can feel him around, but he's not focused on me right now." Carys shook her head. "It's hard to explain. If I called him, I know he'd be here in two seconds, but he's not hovering."

"It was always that way with Seren too. I used to tease Cadell that he was her butler." Duncan smirked. "He liked that."

"He did not."

"After I explained what a butler was, no, he didn't." He glanced at her as he continued walking beside the horse-cart. "You're really taking all of this quite well, Carys Morgan. "

"No, I'm not. I ran out of the banquet last night, and Bonnie said everyone was talking about it." And then I had sex with your brother.

She mentally winced. It was none of Duncan's business. None at all.

Fuck.

"They might have been surprised you ran out, but they were more surprised you came at all, being a foreigner."

"Foreigner from the Brightlands or from America?"

"Both. Most of them have heard of America, but they've never met anyone from there. Even people from the continent are rare. Unless you command a flying creature like a dragon, it's a rare human in this realm who crosses the ocean."

"Right." She shook her head. "Sea monsters."

"Sea monsters."

They turned left at the end of the road, then right at the ribboned oak tree that led into the forest. Carys followed Duncan this time, knowing it was easy to get lost.

She thought back to the first time she'd run from the castle and the wrong turn she'd taken in the forest that led her to the loch and the unicorns. She must have walked far longer than she knew to get that far away from the village and human habitation.

"Why did you run?"

She blinked. "What?"

Duncan frowned. "Why did you leave the banquet so early? Avoiding another dance?"

Hardly. Her dance with Duncan had been the highlight of the party. She hadn't known he could be charming because he rarely was, but his playful demeanor on the dance floor and his light step had made her feel at ease.

She usually felt at ease with Duncan.

"Not the dancing." She looked at her feet. "You're a good dancer."

He grunted. "I'll let my mother know the mandatory classes paid off."

Carys couldn't help but smile. "Did she really? "

"Oh yes. Three days a week for several years before I went to school."

"Like, boarding school?"

Duncan nodded. "A grand old place where princes were educated, and my father was disappointed in me. I hated school."

"Did you?"

He glanced over his shoulder. "The only thing that saved me was rugby and rock climbing. And sneaking away when I could to watch the smiths near the stables."

"Is that when you got interested in blacksmithing?"

He handed the horse's lead to Carys and walked to the back to heave the cart over a rock in the middle of the path. "I'd always been interested in it, but yes. Here, of course, what I can do is very limited because of fae rules."

They had walked through the edge of the forest and to the other side where Duncan's cottage was hidden in a stand of ash trees. The moment she crossed the garden gate, her shoulders relaxed.

"So do you have a smithy here?"

The corner of his mouth turned up. "Of a sort."

"How do you work without iron?"

"More magic." He looked over his shoulder. "You can visit if you want. Meet Angus. He'll love you."

"Angus?"

"He's a…" Duncan frowned. "Better to meet him than to explain. Auld Mags is at the house, but unless you're there at night, you won't see her."

Carys stopped in the middle of the path. "I forgot you had a brownie. Brownies are powerful, you know. Way more powerful than people expect."

"Auld Mags wouldn't argue with you." He left the cart on the side of the cottage after unharnessing the horse, then lifted the crate full of Seren's journals into his arms. "Call your dragon and come inside. We have some reading to do."

Cadell set down another leather-bound volume and folded his massive hands in his lap. "This is also routine information that says nothing about why she was killed."

"The problem is that what we might think of as routine information could be the thing that got her killed," Carys said. "I can't explain it; I just have to read them." She sat back at Duncan's wooden table and huffed out a breath. "Which I can't do because they're in Welsh. Cymric. It's the same language, and I speak none of it anymore."

"I can organize them for you," Cadell said. "Put them in the order they were written. They start when she was very young, but she became more regular, writing in them when she returned to Caernarfon for training."

"That would be great. Thanks. But I will still need you to read them."

Cadell leaned forward and held up a small book bound in purple leather. "Do you truly believe that these journals are vital to discovering Seren's murderer?"

"I don't know for sure." She sighed. "But I think they're the best place to start."

Cadell looked grumpy.

"What do you want to do? Pick people at random, hang them by their toes, and torture them until they confess?"

"Seems like a better place to start than Seren's diary," Duncan muttered.

Cadell said, "I agree with the cross human."

"We're not torturing people!" Carys looked through another journal. "Yet." Her eyes were crossing as she tried to remember words she hadn't read in twenty years. "Okay, I'm useless with these."

Cadell looked over at Duncan, who was poking at the wood in the hearth. "We should ask your úruisg to translate them."

Duncan frowned. "What would Angus have to do with any of that? "

"úruisg wield powerful magic. Old magic. Even older than dragons." Cadell pursed his lips. "Humans have such small minds."

"Dragon, I've never in my life heard of any úruisg having a gift for languages. The unicorns maybe, but?—"

"Wait, what's a…" Carys frowned. "Oo-rishk? I've never heard that name before."

"úruisg is the Alban name," Cadell said. "You might know it by another."

"Eh." Duncan shrugged. "They're not as common in tales as kelpies or unicorns. Not even by half. Most books would probably group them in with brownies or dobbies because they're household spirits. But they're not the same."

Carys's curiosity was piqued. "How are they different?"

"In the Shadowlands, a brownie tends to attach to a place." He nodded toward the chimney. "Auld Mags was here before I was. The cottage is more hers than mine in a way."

"And úruisgs?"

"Again, I don't know what it says in books, but in the Shadowlands, they attach to families. The older the family, the more likely they have an úruisg."

"But it's a kind of fae?"

"No," Cadell said.

"Yes," Duncan said. "As I actually know an úruisg, please ignore the dragon."

"The úruisg are very old magical creatures," Cadell said. "Who can be very wild and very solitary, but if treated with respect, they are extremely loyal to their families."

"They're also proud," Duncan muttered. "Opinionated as fuck. Good workers though."

"Angus is extremely loyal to Duncan, though I've never understood why. The Albans think they are native to this land, but they are not." Cadell looked at Duncan. "And they are not fae. Head and torso of a human, legs of a goat. Who does that remind you of?"

Duncan shrugged. "Angus. "

"Pan." Carys sat up straight. "That sounds like Pan to me."

"The old gods would lay with anything that breathed," Cadell said. "Pan was the son of Mercury."

"And Mercury was Hermes," Carys continued.

"And who was Hermes before?" Cadell asked. "Old. Think very old gods."

Carys took a deep breath and thought about the pantheons of the ancient world. "Hermes likely came from the Egyptian god Thoth. Thoth probably had another name before that, but I don't know what it is."

Duncan shook his head. "I don't know anything about Thoth. And I've never heard Angus mention Hermes or anything like that."

"The old gods are tied together." Cadell persisted. "They take new forms as humans change. But they pass along powerful magic to their offspring."

"And Hermes was the god of language ." Carys looked at Duncan. "The god of interpreters. If Angus's magic does go back to Hermes, he could translate Seren's journals."

"I agree, Nêrys."

Carys added, "And he could possibly guide us to the underworld too, but hopefully we won't need that."

"Mercury, Hermes, and Thoth may be interpreters," Duncan said, "but Angus is a crotchety old úruisg who lives in the stream by my forge and only works with me to piss off Robb. So if you think he can help you interpret Seren's journals, be my guest, but I think you're reaching."

"Lives in a stream," Carys muttered. "And bodies of water are passages to the underworld. Just saying."

Cadell stared at Carys. "You will interest him. You're of neither realm and both. A human born in the Brightlands who can speak with magic. If you bring him a gift, Angus may translate the journals into Anglian for you." He turned to Duncan. "What language does he speak with you? Gaelic or English?"

Duncan frowned. "English. But I know he speaks Gaelic too. "

"And he speaks Cymric to me." Cadell rose to his feet. "I heard an úruisg complain once that all human language tasted like vinegar save for the language of flowers."

"The language of flowers?" Carys looked at Duncan. "Is that real here?" Delight fluttered in her chest. She loved studying the language of plants and the botanical connections between mythology and science. "Do magical creatures really use flowers to communicate here?"

"Yes," Cadell said. "Not dragons or wolves though. Flowers are meaningless to us."

And yet something about Cadell's face made Carys doubt he was telling her the whole truth.

"Angus does like flowers," Duncan said. "When I first moved into the cottage, Auld Mags told me to bring him daffodils on the New Year or he'd be offended."

"Daffodils symbolize new beginnings," Carys said. "That would be a good flower to take anytime you're going to introduce yourself."

"Auld Mags is a clever bwbach," Cadell said.

"Bwbach?" Duncan asked.

"It's the Welsh word for a brownie," Carys said.

Cadell looked at her. "Your mother was born in Cymru. Did she leave bowls of milk out at night?"

"Kind of?"

Not bowls, but there were mugs of milk left on the wood stove, and Carys had always thought it was her mother's superstition, but she didn't question it. Knowing that all of this was real added so many more layers to little things she'd always taken for granted.

"Mugs," Carys said. "Not bowls, but yes."

"She honored the bwbach." Cadell nodded. "Angus will know it. Human, do you have Queen Anne's Lace, tansy, and bluebells in the garden?"

"Probably," Duncan said. "Mags grows a bit of everything out there."

"She's smarter than you deserve. Magical creatures recognize flowers before words." Cadell reached out his hand. "Come. We'll bring some flowers and milk to Angus and see if he'll grant us a favor. Human, bring the journals."

"Not your servant, dragon." Duncan rose from the bench by the hearth. "But I'll bring them for Carys."