Island of Glass (The Guardians Trilogy #3)(15)

Riley flipped back in the book, pushed it to him.

“Read that. Out loud,” she said, impatient, when he started to skim the words. “It helps me to hear it.”

“Bloody hell. Fine then. ‘Though the sea rolled beneath me, and the moon danced behind clouds to blur the light, I did not fear. I drew my power around me like my cloak, and sailed on my own enchantment as the mists swirled and thickened. For a moment, even the moon was lost, and the sea shuddered as if in fear. Some might have cried out, or turned the boat around, but I sailed on, blood cool as I—’ For Christ’s sake.”

“Yeah, yeah, but keep going.”

“‘As I stayed my course, though the water demon roared.’” Doyle paused, gave her a cool look. “Water demon.”

Riley shrugged. “Could be a Wahwee, though that’s Aborigine, maybe a Munuane—maybe a whale, a waterspout. Or just hyperbole. Keep going.”

“Water demon,” he muttered, but continued. “‘Through the mists, lights, torches burning bright, and the moon slipped her clouds to shine a beacon to light the way. For me the glass parted, and the sea calmed, and the Island of Glass shimmered like a jewel before me.

“‘Sand, white as the moon, with those tall torches blazing. Forests, thick and green, alight with drops of dancing colors. On a hill the palace shined in silver. The music of pipes and flutes and harps enchanted the air. I saw jugglers and dancers, and could smell meat on the fire, mead in the cup as young boys raced into the shallows to pull my boat to shore.’”

When Doyle paused again, Riley just circled her finger in the air.

He cursed under his breath, but continued.

“‘And while the night had been chill and damp when I left the shore of my world, here it was warm and dry. I stepped from the boat onto the white sand of the Island of Glass where Arianrhod waited with her sisters to greet me. As my foot touched the ground, I knew I had been granted what few had before, and few would after me. For here is the beating heart of the power of all worlds.’”

Doyle looked up. “You buy that one?”

“Not enough information, but it’s interesting, isn’t it? Magick is—we can’t deny that one. What if there is a core to it, a heart, a world where it generates? It sure makes sense that Nerezza wants the stars—created there, by the three goddesses. It makes sense if she got them in her evil little hands she’d have all the power, and the ability to destroy, well, everything. So it’s interesting.”

She sat back. “Keep going.”

“If I’d known I’d be reading you a story, I’d’ve gotten a beer.”

“I’ll get you a beer if it saves me from translating.”

“Deal.”

She went up the stairs. “Something else to think about,” she called down.

“I have plenty to think about. What’s your something else?”

“I’d need to run tests to get a better estimate of the age of this journal, but I’m going with ninth century.”

“Okay.”

With a roll of her eyes, she looked down over the rail. “Have some intellectual curiosity, Doyle, and ask why.”

“You’re going to tell me anyway.”

“I am.” She started down with his beer. “They had a mathematical layout for manuscripts in the ninth century, and the scribes ruled the parchment in hardpoint by scoring it with a stylus on the back. Sometimes they cut too hard. You can see the scoring on the parchment in the book. Bo here’s inflated, pretty pleased with his station in life. He’d have some lackey do the scoring. And if it was more like twelfth century—which, by the ink, I don’t think so anyway—they started using a kind of pencil to rule the page.”

“So it’s old, which we knew. What’s a couple hundred years matter?”

“Easy for you to say, old man. It matters, in this case?” She handed him the beer, sat. “Because while I’ve found snippets of the legend of the island that appear to date further back, this is the oldest serious account, and a first-person account. An account of traveling there for the celebration of the rising. When the stars were created, Doyle. It tells us when the stars were born. It’s what we call, in my circles, a discovery.”

“Dating the stars isn’t finding the third one.”

“Sometimes knowledge is its own reward.” She said it dryly, believed it absolutely. “But if I can date this, and somehow authenticate it, we’d know when the queen was born, the stars created. We know this enchanter dude sailed from the coast of Clare—alone. Odds are slim he had to sail far, as he left at night, arrived the same night. Putting magicks aside a minute, we assume the island was here, off the coast of Clare, which I like because so are we.”

Frowning over that, Doyle picked up the beer. “That would make us pretty damn lucky.”

“Considering the last couple months, luck be damned. We’re where we’re meant to be. I don’t know if we’re going to sail out one night and hit that portal, but using this account, putting it together with other sightings, doing the math, calculating currents, maybe we’d have ourselves a location, or an area anyway. There’s always a pattern, Doyle.”

He took a slug of beer. “Now you’re interesting me.”