A Thousand Glass Flowers (The Chronicles of Eirie 3) (26 page)

‘She comes, you know.’
The Ganconer smoothed his mussed hair and jerk
ed his jacket straight.
‘She’s on the
borders of the Raj, they say.
She’s spoken to some friends of yours it seems.’

Finnian’s heart plummeted, as he thought
of Ibn, of pretty Primaflora.
‘Who?’

‘Oh a merrow from the Narrows here,’ the Ganconer sneered.
‘A water-w
ight from the Oster Sea there.
Maybe even a whirlwind
djinn in Fahsi for all I know. Then she killed them.
She mesmered the water-wight’s tail off, hanging it on a line with
shark fins to dry in the wind.
She harpooned the merrow and filleted hi
m like a common piece of fish.
And she slit
the whirlwind djinn’s throat.
She’s
an evil one, your grandmother. Powerful. Maybe even beyond powerful.
What, th
ink you, shall she do to you?’
He sketched an ironic bow to Finnian and a filthy wink that implied too much and left the glade whistling a haunting tune that shivered through the air.

She’s been to Fahsi, she’s behind me.
He grasped both Lalita’s arms and mesmered and her face sprang to life with all the i
mpatience and pertness of yore. ‘Are you harmed?’
His voi
ce was husky and he continued.
‘It was the Gancon
er who romanced you, not me.
Aine, tell me you are untouched.’

‘Of course
I’m untouched, ‘she answered.
‘I knew it wasn’t you.’

Despite the threat that hovered in the Ganconer’s revelations, he couldn’t help a small smile at Lalita’s aspersions, impressed that she chose not to giv
e in to tears and the vapours.
‘How did you know?’

‘He didn’t have the horses.’

‘Oh, of course. The horses.’
As he crossed to the shadows he said over his shoulder, ‘So you didn’t notice the bastard had no shadow or that the birds had ceased singing?’

‘No?’
Uncertainty sat at the edge of her voice.

‘An
d what about the rowan branch?
Why is it over there instead of in your hands?’

‘I forgot it.’

‘Surely yo
u see what I mean now, Lalita. There is so much out there.’
He clicked his tongue as he reached for two sets of reins and the horses followed behind him, their eyes rolling, ears back, tai
ls swishing from side to side. ‘They’re not happy.
All that’s eldritch upsets their sensibilities
and this glade is full of it.
They’d bolt if I let th
em; a little like you I think.
Anyway, if you fee
l steady enough we must mount.
Their desire to depart such a fearsome place as this will lend speed to our journey.’
And we must have speed.
For all that I distrust that son of evil, I think he spoke the truth.
He chose not to tell
Lalita of the Ganconer’s news.
She had enough to assimilate for now.

She mounted quickly and proficiently, gathering up the reins of the little mare th
at danced on sparkling hooves. Finnian look
ed back at her as she touched the mare’s flanks with her
heels and trotted to his side.
Without a word, he urged his horse to a gallop and she followed, flying in his slipstream.

The world whizzed past the horse’s hooves, the blossom a white blur to the side.
Finnian crouched low over the horse’s wither, oilskin coat billowing out behind and he glanced back to see how
competent a rider Lalita was.
Her mare was a true Raji, with movement that was spiri
ted and light, a flying dance.
The horse could have lasted for hours at such a pace;
it was how she had been bred.
But even so, as they climbed
the undulations of the Barrow H
ills, L
alita’s voice reached Finnian.
She shouted and pulled on her reins, halting the
mare as Finnian trotted back.
The two horses stood snorting with their sides heaving, their shoulde
rs and haunches wet with sweat. ‘The horses are not fit.
If we continue at this pace, th
ey’ll blow out and be useless.
We must measure them more carefully.’

Finnian’s eyebrows rose.
‘And you know this
because…
’

‘Kholi had horses he r
aced in desert endurance runs.
When he needed me, I helped.’

Not just a scribe, not just a pretty
face.
She had the knack of producing new details about herself that excited and impressed him, he who was so used to the profane a
nd obvious enthrall of Others.
He looked back down the hill and over the
orchard into the far distance.
The sun was at its zenith but with none of the cremat
ing strength of Raji daylight.
This one nurtured
and fostered and he liked it.
From the back of his horse he scrutinized every inch of the far horizon and finally he spotted something and his breath hissed through his teeth.

To the northeast, a cloud spr
ead like a stain over the sky.
The buds of grey cumulo-nimbus clouds had begun to climb into the heavens and unease pervaded the atmosphere, as if massive thunderstorms were being birthed in the distance.

A pair of swallows dipped and darted up the hill between the tussocks, flipping their wings this wa
y and that, stalling, bending.
The pair reached Finnian, rising across his shoulders and over the horse’s ebony rump, circling and twittering, before swooping to ground level again and darting away down the other side of the broad hill into the orcha
rd that still edged their way.
Finnian swore loudly, hitting his thigh so that his mount threw up its head and stepped sideways.

‘She beg
ins to track you, doesn’t she? The birds told you.’
Lalita
stared at the blackening sky.
‘She’s angry.’

‘Evidently.’
He dismounted and loosened the gelding’
s girth, his mind working fast.
‘But I shall remain ahead of her.’

‘How far is she behind?’

He squ
inted, a hand to his forehead. ‘A day, perhaps less. She’ll need horses.
But you are right, our mounts must rest and you seem to understand exactly
how to eke the best from them.
You’re a surprise, Lalita.’

‘They’
re quality mounts and willing. It pays to respect them.’
She jumped off lightly, loosening the girth and rubbing the mare between the ears.

He said nothing, just folded onto the ground holding the reins and watching the gelding nibble at sweet blades of grass.

‘Finnian, why didn’t
your grandmother use the Gate?
She would be so much closer to us.’

‘
I don’t know.’ He would not tell her what his grandmother had done, who she had slaughtered as she sought information. But you can be sure, she does it with a purpose in mind. She is a masterful tactician.’

Lalita seemed to digest this information as she stared at the dark cloud stack
in the far distance.
‘Can other mortals pass through the Gates the way I did?’

‘With someone like me, yes.
It would be
well nigh impossible without.’
He elucidated no further and they sat together in what should have been the restful and lush beauty of th
e strange orchard beside them.
Insects flitted, small birds called and the overpowering fragrance of fermenting fruit, like an aged wine, hung in the air.

‘Aine but I’m thirsty.
It’
s an age since I drank water.’
Lalita reached for a peach, but he grabbed it a
nd threw it away.

‘Don’t.
It may trap you here and we shall never ge
t further than this very spot.
We’ll stop at the next stream once we have passed from Fæ
ran and I’ll get water for you.
I don’t want you to dip a fingertip in any water without me by your side.’
A vision arose of a ravished, starving wraith wandering the highways and byways of Eiri
e.
He had never given a thought to the games Others play with mortals becaus
e in truth he had never cared. But the balance was shifting.
He cared most completely now and
had much to lose.
He needed those paperweights if he was to best Isolde and do what he must, therefore he needed Lalita, whole and in one piece, not some fragmented lovelorn scrap.

‘This is such a strange place.
We come through a Gate into Færan, you find a mortal farmlet on its outskirts and then you say we must
leave Færan to find Killymoon.
I am lost I
tell you.
It wanders and wends lik
e some obscure mountain track.
Do the Gates never shut?’

‘
They’re not like normal gates.
It’s not a question of
shut or open. They’re odd.
As you saw when we passed from the Raj to Trevallyn, t
he gates straddle both worlds.
The Ymp Tree Orchard too –
a leg in each camp as it were. Not that it matters.
Others are
everywhere
in the mortal world.
Don’t djinns, afrits and a hundred others plague the Raj?’

‘It’s all so odd,’ she looked around, almost as if she, like he, searched for signs of Isolde. ‘Why did you use yew to try and kill her… what was it that made you think it might work. Surely if she’s as omnipotent as you imply, she could arm herself against anything.’

He often wondered at this himself. Why yew above all other things? Why not the death mesmer?
Because she was always quicker than me. I would have died, not her.
‘She always seemed touchy about yew. In her vast array of poisons there was not one jar of leaves or bag of bark or anything at all from the shrub. An ostler found my father’s yew staff in the stables when I was quite young. I remember she visibly shrank from it, wouldn’t touch it, her face paled and her eyes became as black as pitch when she looked at it. She had the ostler build a fire and burn it and then she instructed that the ashes be thrown over a cliff into the sea. It was such irrational behaviour from a woman who made calculated irrationality a conceivable artform.’

Lalita looked at him as if she were calculating
his
answer but she didn’t respond
as a haunting cry cut through the hum
ming and tweeting of the hill.
Every hair on Finnian’s
body stood on end
as Lalita gasped, jumping up and grabbing onto the mare which had begin to pull back in fear.

‘What
is
that?’

‘It’s the Caointeach.
She w
ails for someone about to die.
She washes her bloody laundry by a stream and cries and thrashes about a
s a warning of death and doom.
There will be a
death before the hour is out.
We must leave,’ he held out his hand and she took it, ‘come on.  Mount up.’

‘Whose death, Finnian? Tell me. How close is it?’
She hitched up the girth and put her foot in the stirrup, springing aboard the circling mare.

‘Not us, it’s not near,’ was all he said.
No not us, and quite far away, but perhaps my grandmother has found someone mortal who defies her, who blocks her way and she has taken a life.

He recalled the nightmare image of devastation that had plagued hi
m in Fahsi, when Lalita and Eirie died.
As he looked now, he imagined everything that surrounded him – the swallows, the horses, the landsman and his family – all prostrate and twisted in
grim and painful death-throes.
As if she read his mind, Lalita said, ‘If Isolde catches us, will the Caointeach cry for us?’

Not
for me, no. Only for mortals.
But in all likelihood the Caointeach will be dead also.  My grandmother has never cared for harbingers of doom.
But he said nothing to her.
The wailing echoes had stirred the horses and Finnian’s gelding pranced to the other side of the hill’s cro
wn, saving the need to answer.
Lalita’s own horse bucked and spun but eventually she managed to join him as they looked down to spy a honey coloured manor amongst the ordered ro
ws of the orchard.
It basked in the sun’s golden wash and they saw a man with white hair, his clothing as black as a moonless night sky, his hand shielding his eyes as he looked up at them.