A Thousand Glass Flowers (The Chronicles of Eirie 3) (27 page)

‘Is that the house, Finnian? Is that Killymoon?’
Her voice was breathless as she held onto her reins tightly.

‘
No,’ he replied with certainty.
‘Killymoon is a stately home
with the grandeur of nobility.
But see now, if we go down this hill and feed through the third row from the bottom in the orchard, then we shall
again be in mortal Trevallyn.
Come on, we must make haste.’

‘How do you know
about the orchard,’ she said.
‘I thought you had never been here before.’

‘Isolde rambled a lot and the rest I remember from her library.’
Thank Aine there is a memory because at the time I cared little.

The horses pranced one foot in front of the other as they negotiated the steep descent, their riders rolling in the saddle, leaning back
from the sharp downhill angle.
The hill was bare of anything but red-leafed trees that fluttered their ruby detritus to lie
under the feet of the animals.
Finnian twitched a rein and turned into the rows of fruit trees, bending the animal back and forth until the third last row was reached
. W
hereupon they
urged their mounts to a ground-
swallowing trot as they climbed up and down over the Barrow Hills, always heading southeasterly.

Chapter Eighteen

Lalita longed to see someone, anyone, just for a sight of life as they began to approach the outskirts o
f the woods of North Tamerton.
But the way was deserted, a neverland of limitless verdancy to be sure, b
ut as soulless as a graveyard.
Her rear throbbed, the insides of her legs burned, and her hands
clawed from holding the reins.
Her spirit had thinned along with her confidence after her engagement with the Ganconer and the mistak
e of dropping the rowan staff.

B
ut she would not tell Finnian.
Her stomach had fluttered as the cries of the Caointeach faded into the hills and she thought for a minute that her companion would have been able to bend her across his arm
s and she’d break like a twig.
She tried to inject fortitude into her thinking, grabbing at the memory of Kholi to inspire her.
But I’m frightened.
Frightened of this dark shadow that chases us, spreading across the sky like spilled bottles of ink.

As they passed off the foothills, more and more beec
h and oak crowded around them.
The foliage cast lacy patterns on the forest floor and the horses’ hooves proceeded with muffled thuds along pathways edg
ed with thick mosses and fern.
The silence of the forest, with only the occasional chime of a bellbird, settled over them and Lalita resonated with aches and pains as she gazed around.

‘Finnian, look,
there’s a stream and a copse. Say we can stop, please.
The horses need water and nourishmen
t and I’m tired beyond belief.’
She pulled the mare up and rubbed at the equine neck, the horse grabbing at the
slack rein and stretching.
It shook its whole body and ratt
led every bone in Lalita’s own.
‘You may find it tiresome but I’m not Other and as subject to
discomfort as the next mortal.
Even if Hamou Ukaiou were behind me, I can go no further.’  And with such a pronouncement, ignoring likely protest, she flicked her leg over the horse’s wither and slid down, groaning as if she were eighty in order to make her point.

But Finnian was vague
ly equable, foraging for food – be
rries and some windfall apples. H
e shelled some almonds and fetched
water for them both to drink, passing
her a tin cup from the small array of goods
he discovered in his saddlebag.
‘Y
ou should put on your jacket, i
t’s becoming chill.’

Her heart sank. ‘It’s at the glade.
I’m sorry but we left so precipitously.’

‘No, Lalita!’

She knew he was seeing the crone, just as she was, bending over the jacket, almost sniffing it.
It will be like a drag hunt, that’s what he’s thinking.

‘Rain,’ he cast a hand to the canopy above and a misty drizzle began to eke from the sky  – mizzle that blotted scent
s away like stains off fabric.
‘We must have rain.’

‘I’m sorry.  If I’d known, do you think
I’d have left it deliberately?
Anyone would think the old woman was the most malign in Eirie the w
ay you react.’ Lalita snapped.
‘I wish you’d tell me
what makes you so frightened.
You’re Other, a Fær
an, apparently inviolable.
You magick rain and
you mesmer clothes out of air.
Surely you can protect us against her.’

His face soured as she ranted but she
continued on her abrasive way.
‘Besides, I told you the
truth and you owe me the same.
Surely it’s better for me to know what I face than to go into battle ignorant and unaware.’

He sat still, always so still.
This unreadable quality was what
Lalita hated the most.
Finally he spoke with
out making eye contact at all. ‘Malign? Oh she is, Lalita.
The m
ost malignant in all of Eirie.
And she is even
more
dangerou
s because I tried to kill her.
Her anger at being defied almost unto death will k
now no bounds.
She’ll think
I seek the charms for myself.
She has spies the length and breadth of the land – goblins, trows, djinns, afrits, foliots, all manner of wights who are in her thrall.’

Lalita sucked in a breath.
Afrits!
Have I been gulled by
those
I thought were my friends?
Perhaps they
are his grandmother’s lackeys.
‘But you don’t seek the charms
for yourself do you, Finnian?’
The fragile trust stretched thinner between them as her confidence received another shake to its foundations.

Finnian took a breath.
‘This is a wretched, blood-spattered story of merrows and innocent men and babies, of whirlwind djinns
and my own cowardice, Lalita.
Brace yourself because if you didn’t like me before, there is no doubt you’ll hate me by the end of what I have to say.’

Lalita heard everything, every misbegotten detail; of the game with the captain, of drunken ego, of Finnian’s cowardly e
scape with the Black Madonnas.
With each word he spoke, she alternated
between sympathy and disgust.
He told of his dream of the Moonlady and how she had offered him choices and a chance to redeem himself and Lalita said nothing of her own feelings one way or the other, instead qui
zzing him about other matters.
‘So this is just a magnaminous gesture to the wor
ld at large? You seeking the paperweights?’
She bit like a dog but she needed to push him, she needed her answers.

‘I seek them to prevent
her
from possession of them.’

‘That’s a bland
answer, Finnian, very oblique. It could mean anything.
If it is altruism then why did
n’t you tell me back in Fahsi? Why be so secretive?
We are after one and the same thing after all.’

‘You had alread
y decided I was untrustworthy.
Imagine if I had told you everything.’

‘Well I could never condone your game with the Captain but you were not to know the merrow would kill the sailor or the dji
nn to cause the babe’s death.’
She rubbed at her arms, the chill of
insecurity biting at her skin.
‘No wonder we have to carry charms and amulets against Others
.
What you’ve sai
d sickens me…
innocent lives.’

Finnian shrugged off his coat and placed it around her shoulders and despite her best efforts to the contrary, she relished the feel of his fingers as he lifted her fall
ing hair away from the collar.
‘Tell me about your
grandmother,’ she asked.
‘I can see pain in the back of your eyes, it obviously haunts you.’

He moved to sit in front of her, his
face engraved with bitterness.
‘She’s been my guardian like your uncle and aunt since I was a babe.’

‘But why such appalling care of you?’

‘I w
as asked this not long since.’ He shifted.
‘I chose not to enlighten the
last person, but with you…’ he gave a hollow laugh.  ‘I have to, don’t I?
I promised you the truth.’

She waited, afraid to cast one ripple upon the moment.

‘Isolde had
two daughters,’ he continued.
‘And her husband, my grandfather, arranged for
the eldest to marry my father.
The woman died in childbirth – her bane perhaps, or perhaps it w
as his seed that was her bane.
One or the other.’

‘How do you know this?’

‘Whispers.
The kitchen staff gossiped and who pays attention to a
scrawny child in the shadows?
But to continue: my grandfather had met his own bane at this time and Isolde was absent on one of
her questionable expeditions.
To be sure there would have been a trail of despair and damage behi
nd her, it is how she is known –
killing, maiming, a
ll in an uncontrolled instant. She has a reputation for darkness amongst the Færan.
Whilst she was gone, my f
ather seduced his sister-in-law
my mother,
and by the time Isolde returned
her remaining daug
hter was my father’s wife.
My mother successfully birthed a son, but being Isolde’s daughter, tired quickly of lying-in, taking her infant on a rade.’

Lalita nodded.
She knew of rades, those enchanted journeys through mortal country that did more damage than delight as the Færan sought distraction.

‘My m
other left her babe somewhere. Forgot him.
And my father’s wrath
reached the heavens and back.
He never found the child and he got another babe immedi
ately on my mother as revenge.
Isolde found out and after the death of the first daughter, she had only vengef
ul thoughts against my father.
The staff said she lived in my mother’s pocket right to the last, when she and only she delivered
my mother of me, whom she hid.
What she didn’t tell my father was that as my mother bled to death on her birthing bed, Isolde delivered my twin – my brother Liam, pre
senting him as the only child.
I did say I though
t my father’s seed was a bane, didn’t I? And apparently n
ot just for his first wife, but his second.’

‘Finnian, this…
’

‘L
et me finish. It’s not long.
I wouldn’t want to visit it again.’

She understood her purged himself with the telling and her heart opened to him as he continued.

‘Isolde stole me away. Punishment to my father.’
He lapsed into silence.

‘But why not care for you, her daughter’s son?’

‘Oh I have a rationale alth
ough I have never told a soul.
I believe I m
ay have looked like my father. A
s I grew older, in Isolde’s eyes she could no
t or would not separate
one from the other.
And there is a bestial side to her, as I said. She liked having a whipping boy. I served her well.
’

Will o’ the wisps lit the copse with a candle-like glow, a welkin wind sifting the leaves, clic
king the beech-discs together.
Lalita sat by the rill, leaning back against an oak tree and at one point Finnian jumped up and grabbed a twist of thick grasses to rub at the sweat marks on his g
elding, all the while talking.
She made no comment as the tale spread across the glade, a patchwork of cruelty and belittlement that even as he spoke had her crying inside for the little boy wh
o sobbed for his unknown twin.
All around the mizzle dripped like the child’s tears.

The story came to a halt a
nd he laughed, an acidic sound.
‘You see, there is no altruistic motive in
her
posses
sion of the cantrips, Lalita. I
t is pu
rely an obsession to dominate.
Once it was a small boy, now it’s our entire wo
rld, as insane as that might sound.
By threat and by deed,
it has always been her manner.
Firstly one dead and then another until such fear of
her is rampant
that her bidding will be done.
It pleases her to have such dominance.’

He sat down and she surprised herself as her hand burrowed into his, spreading her fingers to interlace wit
h his own and then to squeeze.
Her other slipped into the warm pocket of his jacket and she felt the crisp crackle of paper and withdrew a slip of parchment a
nd a quartz stone. ‘What’s this?’
She took her hand from within his own to unfold the parchment
and felt him tense beside her.
Her fingers smoothed out the creases and she
shielded it from the drizzle. ‘Aine, it’s…
’

‘A good enough piece of artwor
k and a pleasant enough verse. And that’s just a stone.’
He reached across and took the parchment back, folding it and placing it inside his shirt, the stone in the pocket of his breeches.

‘Finnian, I’m not blind.
That figure is as like to me as if it’
s a personal portrait.
It’s uncanny.’