56. The Brigantian
56
THE brIGANTIAN
“When the language of its cradle goes, itself craves a tomb.”
— THOMAS DAVIS, “OUR NATIONAL LANGUAGE”
T he Brigantian Academy was hidden in the depths of Northumberland, in an area that should have been less than an hour from Newcastle upon Tyne, but somehow took three to reach by yet another hired car.
Our interlude with Rachel Cardy had been weighing on me for the rest of the journey, on the flight from Dublin, through the car hire line, and then in the backseat of another Fiat while Robbie and Jonathan discussed my interview in the front.
“Callum’s the softest of the bunch,” Robbie reminded me for the fourth time. “And he missed Penny when she left. I think he’ll be on your side. But Miriam is a harder nut to crack, and Nsalu even harder.”
“Both Nsalu and Miriam prioritize facts, though. And they’re angry about the murders of their kin.” Jonathan said. “It’s Pavel and Senni you’ll have to watch. They’ve been aligned with the pro-secrecy faction for years, and Senni is actively looking for Elpis. He and my father are close friends.”
“And your father?” I finally got up the nerve to ask the one question I hadn’t wanted the answer to ever since Fallon had first winged his way to Inis Oírr. “Will he be there?”
I was summoned to stand before the Council of the Magi. And Caleb Lynch was one of its members.
Jonathan, however, shook his head. “I don’t think so. He’s been in hiding since Manzanita, and my contact at the Brig says he’s been missing since then. I found traces, but I don’t think they have more information than I do. So there should be just the six of them.”
“Instead of seven?”
“Eight,” Robbie corrected me as he steered the car down a narrow dirt road that couldn’t possibly lead to a school, of all places. “No one has replaced Penny—but perhaps you will, love.”
Jonathan turned and offered a subdued smile over the back of his seat. “It’s a magic number.”
I rolled my eyes. “Is that a sorcerer thing?”
“No, physics.”
I couldn’t help but smile back. If this was the version of Jonathan Lynch I got all the time, maybe being mates wouldn’tbe so bad. I rather liked the dorky physics professor. Him, I understood.
The car passed into a grove of alder and hazel trees, and magic grew thick in the air.
“We’re nearly there, aren’t we?”
Shadows covered my companions’ faces. They didn’t answer me. They didn’t need to.
The grove split, and the sky darkened as we approached a massive rock face soaring several hundred feet to the top of a rounded hill that sloped to each side and disappeared into the forest. In a way, it looked like an oversized version of the passage tomb we’d just toured with Rachel. If passage tombs were made for giants.
At the bottom of the face was a door carved into the stone with no other markers of civilization. I had the feeling that if we weren’t allowed to see it, we wouldn’t. A school of sorcery and magic would have no problem hiding itself in the hill.
Robbie parked, and we all got out. Robbie approached the door, palm out and eyes blazing, and recited a spell in yet another language I couldn’t guess at. The door swung open, and he stood aside for Jonathan and me to enter.
Space yawned before us.
A deep, cavernous hall had been hollowed directly into the hill, far enough that I couldn’t make out the shadowed end. The roof, tall enough to house a gothic cathedral, appeared to be held up by monolithic stone towers that recalled the henges dotting all the British Isles. These, however, were at least ten times the height of Stonehenge. Vaulted ceilings also recalled the Middle Ages, and the woven banners hanging from them, which may have extended two or three stories down from massive beams, were embroidered with insignia that looked vaguely Celtic along with words in Latin.
IGNIS
UNDA
VENTUS
SAXUM
Flame. Wave. Wind. Rock.
Sorcery specialties? There were subtypes of seers, so I could only suppose sorcerers had them too. Maybe they were the foundations for houses within the school. It was England, after all, even if nothing else about this place seemed remotely comfortable for children.
Hogwarts, this was not.
“You fools.”
A thick French accent echoed off the stone walls and floor like a pinball shot through the dark, followed by the clipped footsteps of the female owner.
We turned to where a tall, dark-haired woman with blood-red lips was exiting a corridor at the end of the hall. Dressed in a sleek suit the color of shadows and her hair pulled into a severe bun, she looked like she was better prepared to do battle on Wall Street than in a classroom.
I straightened, suddenly conscious of the way several pieces of my hair refused to stay pulled back in their braid and the faded state of the knee-length black dress I’d last worn on the morning of my dissertation defense. I’d tried to neaten my appearance when I changed in Newcastle upon Tyne, but I shouldn’t have bothered.
“Celine.” Jonathan didn’t sound altogether happy to see her. His hand twitched while the other lightly swung a briefcase to and fro.
“Ioannes.” Celine carved an assessing stare over me, then turned to Robbie and Jonathan. “You’re a soft-hearted fool, Rob Connolly. Why in the gods’ names would you take the open roads with something like this?”
Her accent sharpened the words somehow. Especially the last one.
I bristled. Some thing , indeed.
“Cassie doesn’t fly,” Robbie lied completely.
“Nonsense. We could have fetched her from Galway in a private plane. And if she doesn’t fly, just how did she cross the big blue ocean from America? Does she have a secret shape we don’t know about? A whale’s, perhaps?”
Again, that sharp gaze flickered over me, as if to assess the potential for largesse.
This time, I glared right back. “Maybe I didn’t want to. Maybe I had better things to do than ride off with a strange man who says I’m at the beck and call of a Council I’d never heard of before this year. Or maybe I wasn’t in a hurry to take a bunch of veiled insults from you.”
At that, the woman—Celine—blinked. Then, to my surprise, she tipped her head back and barked short, clipped laughter that bounced off the vaulted ceilings. “Well, at least she has a bit of spirit. She’ll need it if she will be mated to you.” When Jonathan’s mouth fell open, she waved it away. “Yes, yes, we all know. Fallon reported it immediately. You’re not the only one who can discover here, Jon.”
Robbie shook his head as if to say, “I told you.”
Then that appraising gaze was back on me. “By now every fae in the British Isles will know of her presence. An oracle with a watery aura.”
I recoiled. “How did you know that?”
Her eyes flashed at me in a familiar way, and finally, she spoke to me directly. “You’ll find that some of us have taken the time to refine our skills through intense study and discipline rather than wasting ten years at plain universities.” I opened my mouth again to argue, but she was already turning away. “I’ll let the members know you’ve arrived. You’ll wait here.”
It wasn’t, I noticed, a request.
As soon as the double doors swung shut behind her, I turned to Jonathan. “All right. You’re going to tell me everything about that woman, and you’re going to do it now. Who is she to you, and why was she looking at me like I’m gum on the bottom of her designer shoe?”
When Jonathan didn’t say anything, I held up a hand. We had limited time, and I wasn’t afraid to dig.
He sighed and grabbed it. Fine . But we’re going to take a walk . “Rob, I’m going to give Cassandra a tour of the gallery.”
Robbie snorted but waved us off. “Go on, then. I’ll just count my fingers over here.”
And? I prodded as Jonathan led me deeper into the hall toward an area where the walls were decorated with murals above entrances to various wings. As we approached, candles flickered to life in sconces beside each door along with the signs labeled what looked like languages.
Celine is the Speaker for the Assembly of the Fae , Jonathan thought as we walked. The larger body of elected fae that represents our interest everywhere. The Council operates separately, but Celine offers a ninth vote if a tie needs to be broken. She’s also the chief administrator for the Brigantian. A powerful witch, and on top of that has a sixth sense for reading people’s faces that once made me think she might be partly seer.
I said nothing, even after he stopped in front of the wing labeled Celtic.
I’m not trying to hide anything, he continued. We were classmates once and involved briefly many years ago. It ended, but occasionally our paths cross when I have to come here. She has made some indication that she would like to revisit that part of our history. I have not returned that inclination.
I knew it. Why didn’t you tell me before we got here?
He blinked. Confusion filtered through our confusion, along with a solid dose of fear.
Just say it , I ordered.
He drew a hand through his hair. I wasn’t sure what we were. Are. And if I’m being honest, I was afraid to bring it up. His thoughts were short, but anxious energy flowed through him. There was something about this place that made him nervous.
Visions of us—of me—flickered through his mind. The kisses we’d shared, yes, but other things too. The first moments we’d met. The terrifying pull he’d felt for me just from scenting me on my roommate, of all people. The fear that plagued him every time we spoke, even still the desire to be near me. To protect me. Consume me.
The savage in him was always lurking, just beneath his sophisticated surface.
It was too strong, and now I felt a bit scared. I turned to examine the entrance to the Celtic wing.
The double-doored entry (there didn’t seem to be any other type in this place) was darkened through glass panes, but to the side was a plaque that looked like a cross between a TV screen and a flagstone. I dropped Jonathan’s hand and went to investigate. The screen—if that’s what you could call it—flickered to life with a list of thirty or so surnames.
A glance toward the other visible wings leading off the gallery revealed similar setups, though I couldn’t read the titles over the doors.
“They’re language pods,” Jonathan said. “They rotate according to the scholars in residence. The students just finished years in Old Irish, Basque, Hadza, Koine Greek, Ainu, and Sanskrit, depending on their section. The Brigantian follows an immersion protocol—once the students enter their wings, they are sequestered and may only speak their assigned language for a year or longer, depending on how quickly they pass their fluency exams. The next term, they move to a new section and continue with their subjects.”
I tried to peek through the doors, but the corridor was too dark to see much. “Where are they now?”
“On holiday. They’ll be back in the fall.”
I pressed a hand on the Celtic entrance, and to my surprise, it opened. A few more sconces lit up as Jonathan and I stepped inside a long corridor that looked similar to every other school I’d attended, plain and utilitarian, with classrooms springing off the sides like buds on a spring branch. Each classroom had course titles and times posted next to its door in Old Irish and was outfitted with sleek technology, stainless steel desks, and clear white interiors, all resembling something closer to laboratories than what one might have imagined at a school of magic.
Though a few of the schedules bore names of classes that Harry Potter might take, such as “Beginning Transfiguration” or “Early Fae History,” science obviously dominated the curriculum. I browsed the titles: Fourier Systems. Advanced Thermodynamics. Beyond Newtonian Physics. Optics and Wave Theory. Advanced Geology.
I gawked. Some of the Brigantian students were taking the equivalent of graduate courses at MIT. In an ancient language.
“Are all the wings like this?” I wondered.
“Yes, mostly. Why?”
I looked down the hall toward the still-darkened hall, where a stairwell dipped into oblivion. “Where do the staircases lead?”
“To the dormitories. The students may not leave their wings except during free time and physical training.”
It seemed a rather morose place to live. More like a prison in some ways than a school.
“You went through this program?”
Jonathan nodded, stone-faced.
“How old were you when you started?”
He sighed. “Eleven. And before you ask, I spoke five languages before entering—Ladin, English, Italian, Irish, and German. I speak forty-three fluently now, including five isolates and seven ancient languages.”
My eyes popped open. “How?—”
He smiled, revealing a row of sharp teeth. “I’m over a hundred years old, Cass. There is no limit on the amount of time a sorcerer may spend here, and there are lots of places to pass a year or two.”
We left the wing and reentered the hall, where Robbie was busy going through some papers he had brought for a new curriculum proposal. I walked around the rest of the gallery, looking at the language groups that categorized each wing.
“Nothing modern?” I asked.
Jonathan shook his head. “You can go anywhere to learn a modern language. The Brigantian teaches the old ones or isolates. The ones closest to the magic.”
Rachel’s request echoed in my mind. If she was right, it made me wonder what that first language looked like—the one the original fae found to speak to nature. To speak to the magic directly.
“To communicate with the energy,” I murmured, recalling Jonathan’s and my conversations back in Manzanita. It had only been six months since our hike up the mountain, but it seemed like a very long time ago.
“Indeed. We can’t manipulate the world around us otherwise, unlike you mind-twisters.” His tone was joking, but I caught the note of jealousy in there.
“Well, I wouldn’t call it manipulation, really. More like the next stop to crazy.” I continued my examination of the wing entrances and their respective signs. “What’s Hadza?
Jonathan scowled. “An isolate from Tanzania.”
“Not a fan?”
“Those damn clicks. I just couldn’t get them right. Everyone is required to work with an isolate instructor for a year, and since the only time you get to see your mates is at meals and free time, of which there isn’t much. So if you don’t like your isolate instructor…”
“Ah. So, what was her name?”
He frowned. “I never mentioned Professor Petro was a woman. How did you know that? Did something happen?”
It took me a moment to realize he was talking about my powers. I hated to disappoint him, but I shook my head. “No, I just know you. I figured anyone who could get under your skin like that had to be female.”
“I resent that. Is that what you think of me? That I’m some sort of chauvinist?”
I chuckled. “No. I just know how upset you get when I challenge you. I can’t imagine how you would have dealt with a female instructor whose job it is to correct you for an entire year. I just know how much you love to be wrong, how it gets under your skin.”
All of a sudden I found us standing in the middle of the doorway to the loathed hall, our noses so close they were nearly touching. I was close enough that I could smell all of the things that made him unique—the wild scent of freshly fallen rain lingering in a forest melded with the more subtle scents of the ink, paper, and just a hint of blood to remind me of just how feral he really was under the glasses and corduroy jackets.
I inhaled and closed my eyes.
“I do know how to get under your skin, don’t I?” Jonathan murmured, though it was more a growl than a whisper.
“You’re not touching me,” I replied, my own voice a deep hum. “You have no idea what’s going through my mind right now. I could be remembering every scene from Annie Hall . I could be imagining Woody Allen’s bad hair.”
I opened my eyes to find such a peculiar expression on Jonathan’s face—frustration mixed with a strange combination of desire, longing, and respect. His fingers lifted and hovered over my cheek. Just as they grazed beneath my eyes, his thoughts filtered through.
Just ask what you really want to know, Cass.
I blinked at him, but his eyes held mine fast.
I swallowed as his hand fell away. “I wanted to know…what was your easiest year?”
It was a copout. But I wasn’t ready. Not yet.
He sighed. “Latin, of course.”
“Why ‘of course’?” I had taken enough Latin to know that even though it was rife with cognates to the rest of the major languages in Western Europe, it was certainly not an easy language to learn. Not to mention that as a dead language, its proper pronunciation was all but lost, which seemed to be an important element of spellwork.
He lifted one shoulder in a particularly Gallic gesture. “Well, it’s effectively my first language. I grew up speaking Ladin.”
“How can you grow up speaking Latin? It’s been a dead language for nearly five hundred years. Did you leave something out about your birth date?”
“No, La-Din,” he corrected me, overpronouncing the “d.” “It’s a form of vulgar Latin, spoken where I was born. Not quite the same as classical, but close enough that I had an edge.”
Something was bothering me. “How can they teach an immersion-based curriculum using a dead language? Did your instructors just make up the pronunciation as they went?”
“Some of the instructors here are very old, though they might not look it. It shouldn’t surprise you to learn that a few of them lived as monks and priests. There are some in this building who have lived for more than fifteen hundred years.”
Well, that was one good thing about being dragged here. No matter what happened with the Council, the possibilities open to me as a fae scholar of Celtic antiquity were legitimately exciting.
A hand found mine again, and Jonathan pulled me back to face him. You’re distracting yourself with this talk.
I didn’t deny it. I didn’t need to.
Just ask , he thought. Whatever you really want to know, just bloody ask me .
Why were you afraid to tell the Council that we’re mates? The thoughts burst from my mind like a wave, and Jonathan flinched as if he had been doused with cold water. What is it you’re afraid of? Death?
We both knew the eventual consequences. Caitlin had as much told us we were doomed if we gave into this supernatural connection.
Not mine .
And yet, fear turned to terror too chaotic for conscious thoughts. His mouth opened like he was going to say something out loud. But before he could, the doors to the administrative entrance opened with a bang that echoed through the gallery.
“The seeress may come with me,” Celine called. “The Council will see her now.”