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As she layered turkey with ham, considered her choice of cheeses, Sasha came in with a new task chart.
“I figured lunch as a free-for-all today,” Sasha began, “as everyone’s settling in. I’ve got you down for it tomorrow, unless we head out somewhere.”
“Works. You want one of these?”
Sasha glanced at the enormous sandwich in the making. “I think much less. Bran spent some time talking to his family in Sligo, and he’s going to work in the tower. Annika wanted to help him, and Sawyer went out to start scouting the best place to set up target practice.”
Sasha set the canvas chart, suitably artistic as well as practical, on a ledge.
“So you’ve got some time?” Riley asked her.
“I can, if you need something.”
“Doyle and I worked our way through that journal. I’ve got notes. Bran’s ancestor—kind of a pompous boor—did it with Arianrhod.”
“Did what with— Oh. Oooh,” Sasha repeated, lengthening the word.
“Exactly. You get the implication.”
“That it’s possible Bran’s descended from her? That would make sense, wouldn’t it?”
“Logic.” Vindicated, Riley poked a finger in the air. “What I didn’t add, logically speaking, to Doyle, as he was getting pissy, is we’ve got two Irishmen who live in the same place—a few hundred years apart, but the same place.”
“Doyle could be from the same line.” Nodding, Sasha put the kettle on for tea. “It follows, doesn’t it?”
“Down the line for me. Let me give you some highlights from the journal.”
While she did, Sasha sliced an apple, some cheese, added some crackers, and settled down with tea.
“It may have been right off this coast,” Sasha stated. “It may be again.”
“I’ve got some details on what it looks like—sketchy, ha-ha. And what the palace looks like, what the goddesses—Arianrhod in particular—look like. If you were to draw them from my notes . . . ”
“Maybe I’d see more. I can try. And the queen was a baby, so the birth was literal.”
“He presented his gift—the songbirds—to the goddesses, and was himself presented to the infant queen.” Riley flipped through her notes. “‘A fair bairn with golden hair and eyes of blue, deep lakes, already wise. And on her shoulder, bared for all to see, the royal mark. The star of destiny.’”
“Another star. Did he write about her parents?”
“He was more about the food and wine, a lot more about the goddess, the clothes, the queen. He was a little bit of a jerk, at least in his own telling. And by his account the palace comes off as fairy-tale sparkle. Big and silver and full of art and elaborate rooms. But he also talks about the thick forests, and a stone circle on another hill where he walked to pay respects to the ancients. A waterfall and a troubling path, the Tree of All Life.”
“And Nerezza?”
“Gossip. Pretty juicy.” Riley took a swig of beer, wiggled closer in her chair. “First, no invite for her. She lives on the far side of the island, semi-banished to that area when she tried stirring up trouble for the former queen. Not much hard data there, but she’s feared and disliked. Everybody gives her a wide berth. On the night of his arrival, our narrator hears what he thinks is a storm. He ignores it at first, but it sounds like a big one. He gets out of bed—lots of description of his chamber—and looks out. He sees this scorched gulf cutting across the beach. Deep and black, he says, and the three goddesses on one side of it. He claims he felt the power shake the world, and the white sand flows over the split. As things settle, he looks up, as the goddesses are, and sees three new stars under the moon. More brilliant and beautiful than any star in any heaven and so on. Before dawn, Arianrhod appears in his chamber, they get it on. He’s there three days and nights, and she comes to him every night.”
“To conceive a child, part god, part sorcerer,” Sasha concluded as Riley took a huge bite of sandwich.
Riley nodded, circled a finger in the air. “I figure maybe he comes off smug and pompous in his journal, but he had to have some qualities she valued and wanted. When he left, she gave him a ring with a brilliant white stone. The Stone of Glass, she called it, and told him she would send into his world a greater gift, one that would one day return to her.”
“The child. Its descendants.”
“Same page, Sash.”
“It’s sort of lovely. I’ll get my sketchbook. It’s stopped raining, so I’d like a walk, I’d like to get a sense of where we are, where Bran’s home is, then I’ll see if I can use your notes to sketch anything.”
“I need to unpack and organize a little more.”
“I’ve got dinner tonight, with Bran assisting. I thought I’d try my hand at Guinness stew. I’ll make sure it’s done before moonrise so you can eat before the fast.”
