The Stumpwork Robe (The Chronicles of Eirie 1) (11 page)

Chapter Seventeen

‘Where in the name of Aine have you been?’ Adelina flung around at
Liam, shrieking as he rode into the copse. ‘SHE’S GONE!’

‘What?’ Liam’s smile froze.

‘It’s true.’ Kholi spoke with a knife-edge to his voice. ‘I thought we could trust you, Liam, to be there for us. You were our friend. We welcomed you as such. And in this wretched place you leave us, and what happens? I asked you to have a care for Ana, didn’t I? And now she’s gone. Been spirited away; the van is a mess.’

Adelina moved like a wildcat, advancing on Liam with teeth bared and eyes narrowed. If she had a tail it would have twitched from side to side. ‘You feckless, arrogant bastard, I don’t agree with Kholi, I swear she would still be with us if you hadn’t happened into our lives.’

‘Adelina, stop!’ Kholi shouted. ‘This achieves nothing.’ He turned towards Liam. ‘But in truth I don’t know where to begin to search.’

‘Show me.’ Liam pushed past Adelina to the van and Kholi preceded him inside. Drawers teetered open and baskets of embroideries, fabrics and threads tumbled out. Ana’s bedding was pulled back, the sheets ruckled. Her basket lay on the bed, its contents a rainbow of scattered colour. ‘No Other has been here.’ Liam turned to go.

‘Is that all you have got to say? No
Other
has been here? By the spirits!’ Adelina raised her hand to crack him across the cheek. Kholi grabbed her arm, full of intimidation and a quelling anger.

She subsided as Liam leaped down the steps to stalk around the copse, sniffing like a hound, casting wide. ‘And none here either.’ He walked outside the ring of trees, turning this way and that. ‘But here...’ he paused and looked into the watery distance and then quickly returned to the van. ‘There have been Others here. And she’s gone after them. I think she has followed, not been taken.’

Adelina threw down the nosebag she held for Ajax, the grain pooling in a honey coloured heap on the ground, full of fright at Ana’s predicament.

Liam avoided her and spoke directly to Kholi.
‘Get the wheel fixed and leave immediately for Star. I will find Ana and bring her to you.’ He grasped Kholi’s forearm and gave it a shake. ‘I will find her, I swear.’

‘Yes,
friend.
’ Adelina spat the words like so many shards of ice, cracking in the morning air around them. ‘But alive or dead. I tell you, if one hair of her head is damaged, I will seek you and curse you until you are dead yourself.’

Liam glanced at her briefly, a look that said ‘don’t cross me,’ and turned
away to fling himself on Florien. Leaving the copse at a gallop, he flung divots of soil in his wake.

Momentarily there was silence and then Adelina picked up a fallen
branch and flung it, followed by a string of invective after the departing horse and rider. Kholi shook his head and as he bent to pick up the spare wheel to slip it on the axle, he spied something lying half buried in the disturbed soil and pine needles by the side of the van. He curled his fingers around it and brushed at it, holding it to the ever-brightening sky to get a better look. ‘Adelina, look. It’s Ana’s music box. How did it get by the wheel?’

Adelina had been striding around the copse, hands on hips and breathing hard. She attempted to calm herself as she took the box from the merchant’s hands. ‘I imagine it fell out of her sewing basket when the wheel collapsed. We had our work on the step as we journeyed.’ She rolled the petite object
in her hand.

Kholi watched her struggling with the fear of Others and what they may do. He reached over and pulled her to his chest. ‘Come dove
heart, he will find her. I have faith.’

‘Oh yes,’ she uttered in a macabre tone. ‘He will find her. But alive or dead, Kholi, that is what I am afraid of. This is the work of Others and you know as well as I what can happen. This is the home of many shape shifters, and of the Teine Sidhe. But worse Kholi, it is the home of the Limnae, the spirits of the
Marsh. They are terrifying. They are
dead
spirits.’

‘Adelina, stop.’ Kholi shook her. ‘You only have two choices in this. To trust Liam or not. For myself, I shall trust him. If you have faith in me, do as I do.’

The dawn strobes flashed through the stone pines as she nodded. Perverse and cruel, the sun had rolled into a clear blue sky and the day would be beautiful.
Kholi picked up tools and continued to work at the wheel, desperate to
be away to Star on the Stair where they could wait in safety.

Liam followed the trail at a gallop, the smell of mortal quite overt
. To Liam it was like pollen to a bee. Ana’s track meandered; looping, curling, retreating, advancing till
Liam felt he was creating a vast Faeran calligraphy... a rune of flowing,
curving curlicews telling a story of disaster. All the while his mind gnawed at the emotion he was feeling - mortal emotion. An overpowering fear that someone he wanted, that he obsessed about, that he could almost love, would be lost. Why did it matter, because he had only ever really wanted a game, an experience? It was as if some giant prophetic hand had moved all the pieces on the board so that he must really struggle to win. Perhaps it was something he had done so that some Other cursed him. His father’s soul? No. Perhaps a mortal then - maybe Adelina. Aine knows she hated him enough and wanted him as far from Ana as possible. He could die in the attempt at goodliness and the copper-haired she-devil would remain unmoved.

His horse flew, as if by galloping, Liam raced away from the dark shadow of his former life. Perhaps by finding Ana and sweeping her into the saddle with him, he would be resurrected, reformed and revived. Maybe it
was
a game. With the winner taking all. He careened to a halt by a stone-pine that bent over a knoll overlooking a lake. A silver ruffle of buttongrass and sedge edged the shore. As the sun rose, seeping over the horizon and stretching gold and silver light across the landscape, the lake became a bowl of molten metal, as if an alchemist strove to create something magical in a steaming cauldron. In the dawn air, the gauzy mist lacing in amongst the shrubby shoreline created mystery and mesmer.

The lake edged around a small promontory and as the cocks crowed far away at the foot of the Goti range, a lone black swan flew in a circle over the lake, gliding smoothly onto the surface, legs skimming, ruffling the water and then allowing stillness to resume as it shuffled and folded rich black wings across its back. Paddling idly, it approached the shoreline and as it took a step from the shallows it shape-changed, becoming upright. The feathered covering dropped over the being’s arm to drape, shining like satin. The white swan face smoothed and elongated to become a woman’s visage... a woman palely beautiful with lips the colour of blood and cheeks the colour of blossom. Her form was clothed in a black gown falling in pliant folds to white, narrow feet and she walked to the shrubs and laid her cloak of plumage carefully. Everything about the woman was starkly graceful and she returned to the lake to enter its shallows as any normal woman would. She bent and washed her face and sank below the surface to float like a star, arms outstretched, eyes shut.

Liam dismounted and
ran to the shrubs, to the heap of glistening feathers. As he touched the cloak and gathered it to his arms, a hiss flew from the water and the woman turned to the shore, raising herself, a column of black fury. ‘Faeran! Leave it!’

‘It is mine, Maeve Swan Maid. And you are now mine. Again as I recall, and this time you will do my bidding to get your cloak back.’

The swan-maid ran out of the water, her robe clinging to her perfect form. Her chill face was filled with mocking anger as she stood in front of Liam.

‘Thy memory is good. Apparently though, thou has no humour or thou would have taken that moment, so long since, as youthful foolery? I asked for my cloak then and thou did give it to me. Thy misfortune. Hast thou brooded of thy weak-minded idiocy since? It is surely history.’

‘You owed me favour. I lifted your cloak, you owed me. It is the lore of the swan-maids is it not?’ Liam fixed a gaze filled with loathing on Maeve.

‘Thou tell of the truth. And I would ask thee, if I do thy bidding now wouldst thou then give my cloak willingly? For thou seems inordinately angry at my own self.’ What passed for a smile and a faint attempt at charm flashed across the chill face. A mere lifting of the corners of the mouth, no answering lilt in the eyes.

‘I asked for your favour, Maeve. I was young and wanted to have you. I should have taken favour first and then given the cloak back. One lives and learns. Besides I am glad you were not my first. There was another and she was, shall we say, warmer and more willing than you would ever have been.’

The maid hissed and spat at him.

‘Maeve, Maeve, can you not bear a little truth?’ Liam mocked but then plucked a feather from the cloak and as he did, Maeve Swan Maid gasped and grabbed at her shoulder. He plucked again. She grabbed for her arm, moaning and crying. Again despite her pain, perhaps because of it, he plucked at the cloak. She writhed, casting hissing cries at the Other who towered over her, holding up three black feathers.

‘Three reasons for you to do my bidding. I don’t trust you so the insurance will work admirably. You know as long as I have these you are in my thrall. So you can no longer promise the world and an oyster to have your cloak back. I would not have you fly off this time before my wish is carried out.’

‘Faeran is cruel.’ Maeve grabbed at her throbbing arm and shoulder as though she had been pierced with red-hot splinters. ‘So much pain! What is it thou wishes?’ Her voice moaned like a nasty little breeze.

Liam held up one of the feathers.
‘Tell me the truth, Maeve. Have you seen a mortal woman in these lakes last night or this morning... remember, I can crush this feather.’

‘Thou heart is hard.’ She wrapped her arms around her shivering body. ‘I did see a mortal. But for the hair, I would have thought it was a boy.’

‘Where?’ Liam curled his fist over the black quill.

‘What carest thou for a boy?’

Liam began to squeeze the feather.

‘No, cruel man, no,’ Maeve held out her hand as she took a step forward. ‘To the southeast at the Bog. And the Limnae were there. The mortal had lost its reason. Eyes as vacant as a swan’s nest out of season.’ A satisfied glimmer flashed across her face as
Liam gasped at this last. ‘Dost thou have affection for this boy, Liam?’

Liam’s voice
slashed the air. ‘Enough. How far?’

‘Why, tis a she,’ the swan-maid expressed surprise. ‘And thou feels love for her? Poor man, poor mortal woman.’ Again she mocked. Unwisely. ‘AAH!’

Liam had closed his fist on the feather.
‘How... far?’ He spat the words at her.

‘Less than half a mile as the swan flies.’ The swan-maid’s face paled, small beads of sweat glistening above her lip.

Liam held out the cloak. It shimmered in the daylight and the tips of
the feathers ruffled in the soft dawn zephyr. Maeve Swan Maid grabbed it in taut fingers. Tearing it over one shoulder, she hissed at the pain of the plucked plumage, turning a bitter face toward Liam as she sneered. ‘And so thy first ever was a mortal.’

‘As it happens. So?’ He fingered the feather.

‘Liam of the Faeran should remember what eventuated before he seeks most recent lost mortal woman.’

‘Why?’

‘Thy lovemaking destroyed thy mortal plaything. She was insensible in her home. Neither eating, nor talking, nor sleeping. One night she left, wandering the countryside seeking her Other love.’

‘Maeve,’ Liam warned and took a step forward but the swan-maid swung her head towards him, hissing.

‘Listen and learn. She was overtaken by a
rade
, radiant progress thy people make into mortal territory. Thinking every male was Liam, she became utterly mind-shot. She died where she lay days later, of hunger, thirst and with heart broken. That is what happened to thy first mortal love, Liam of the Faeran. What shall happen to this one?’

Liam was momentarily speechless, cut in half by warring emotions -
distrait at the death of the innocent girl and fury at feeling such distress. Then fear. That Ana, the sought-after prize and possession may so end her days. He stared at the divine face of the swan-maid for a moment only, holding the feather up. ‘Show me, Maeve. I will follow you and remember I have the feathers. I can crush them, cut them or burn them. Each pain you will feel as if it were you that was incinerated or stabbed and it will diminish you and make you so weak and ill that you can neither feed nor fly. You will die. Now get you gone.’

The swan-maid cast such a look of humiliation, anger and pain on Liam, a small wave of guilt rippled. But reason stepped in.
I am Faeran. We feel no guilt at all.
He watched the beauty paddle into the shallows, pull the cloak up over the other shoulder, shape-change and launch to the skies with a gutteral cry. He
leaped for his horse, thrusting the feathers in the pocket of his
riding coat. Two wishes left, maybe two weapons. Either way, he knew he would find Ana.