Page 24 of Fiendish Delights
Instead of snapping at me, which I’d half-expected, Hugo took my suggestion seriously. ‘There’s no doubt that my face is well-known and that’s a concern. But I’m the most experienced treasure hunter, and I’m best placed to defend against an attack if other fiends appear. Even without the promise I made to Mr McAlpine, my presence is a risk worth taking. My magic is strongest.’
He wasn’t boasting, simply stating facts, but I still wasn’t sure if his words sprang from natural arrogance or if his self-assessment was correct. He hadn’t brought Zashtum down; then again, neither had I.
A tiny smile played around his lips. ‘If anybody asks, we’ll tell them that we’re on a training exercise. Specifically, I’ll be training you to be a better treasure hunter.’
‘You’ll be training me?’ I said flatly.
‘Yep.’ He gazed at me with an oddly satisfied expression.
Great: so now I was Hugo Pemberville’s protégé. Unfortunately, I couldn’t think of a good enough reason to argue. ‘I won’t pretend to be a Prime,’ I said.
‘Okay. You can still act as my temporary apprentice, though.’ As he grinned, the dimple in his cheek reappeared. ‘It’ll be fun.’
Would it? It seemed to me that it would be an excuse for Hugo to order me around. But we were in this together and, without a better plan to offer, the best option appeared to be to lean into the role.
I pulled back my shoulders, snapped out a sharp salute and shouted. ‘Sir, yes, sir!’ Hugo’s eyes gleamed.
‘Why don’t you tell us what you saw on the scroll, Daisy?’ Becky asked. ‘Where do we start looking?’
I stood, walked to the whiteboard and picked up a marker to scrawl what I remembered so that everyone could see it. ‘There was a drawing,’ I said, trying to re-create it as best as I could.
‘A map?’ Rizwan asked.
I added a bit more detail.
‘No.’ Becky shook her head. ‘It’s a man waving.’
‘How is it a man?’ A muscular elf, heavily adorned with tattoos and whose name I’d learned was Slim, pointed at my art work. ‘Unless you know of any men with three arms?’
Becky stuck her tongue out at him. He stuck out his tongue at her and there was a ripple of laughter around the table.
Miriam, a female elf in her sixties with a golden ear cuff that signified she was Hugo’s equal tilted her head. ‘Is it a horse?’
I took three steps backwards and looked at my drawing. Hmmm. I’d not translated the image very effectively.
‘It’s a tree,’ Hugo said.
‘It is.’ Thank goodness someone had recognised it for what it was supposed to be. ‘This will probably be more useful.’ I returned to the whiteboard and wrote down three words, taking care to spell them correctly. ‘I saw a few different words. None of them are English, but that shouldn’t be an insurmountable problem.’ I stepped to the side so they could see what I’d written.
‘Coelcerth,’ Miriam said aloud. ‘That’s Welsh for bonfire.’
‘Or pyre,’ Rizwan said in a darker tone.
‘Brigynis twig or small branch, andcychwynis to start or commence.’ Miriam frowned. ‘But those words together don’t make much sense.’
‘I could only see a small section of the scroll – there’s a lot I couldn’t make out,’ I explained.
‘So we can’t really tell what it means.’ She sighed. ‘This might be a dead end, Hugo.’
‘There’s more.’ I scribbled down three more words. ‘There,’ I said, allowing a moment to be pleased with myself before I butchered the pronunciation. ‘Cwydd Y Gal.’
Miriam and Rizwan looked mildly shocked but everyone else was confused. ‘It’s obviously Welsh too,’ Slim said. ‘But what does it say?’
‘Hester?’ I asked.
She stretched languidly and sat up. ‘It roughly translates as “Ode to the Penis”.’
From the back of the room, Otis called out, ‘It’s a medieval poem by Dafydd ap Gwilym. It contains some lovely rhyming couplets and majestic alliteration.’
