The Stumpwork Robe (The Chronicles of Eirie 1) (13 page)

At this Adelina’s face lit up.

‘Yeesss! Thought that’d brighten you. But there’s more!’ The folds and wattles of his face creased in an excitement he wanted to share. ‘The Faeran will be selling their wares. And whilst I don’t take much with them Others, the Faeran do have some beautiful stuff and honestly I reckon it’d be once in a lifetime they’d bother to mingle with mortals in a market of their own making. I don’t think they do it for the money, that’s for sure. I reckon it’s for the game. And Adelina, a group of traders has just arrived from the Raj with some stuff that’d be right up your alley and Kholi, I bet you know half the folk anyway.’ He paused for breath. ‘Anyhoo, my lovelies, I must get back to the bar, very busy it is. But I think you need a bit of diversion so get you up and out and be a part of it, eh? I’ll see you later.’ He departed on soft light feet, closing the door gently behind him.

Chapter Nineteen

Liam slowed Florien to a walk as he negotiated the foot of the Barrow
Hills. He had travelled back over trails already covered by the foursome in earlier days until he had found a track that was barely a defile of broken grasses leading to a fold in the hills. Sequestered in a quiet vale was an orchard of peach and apricot trees, the last of their jewelled leaves dangling. They waved, miniature pennants undulating in a welkin wind whereupon some detached to flutter and land between the trees, forming a carpet that crackled under the horse’s hooves. The trees were twisted into espaliered lanes and the tortuous results became the infamous Ymp Trees... gateways to places outside nature and one of the gates to which Liam had retreated so often over the past few weeks.

Florien walked down the first lane and then up the second before turning carefully into a third so that Ana would be neither jostled nor jolted. The reins hung loose over his neck and all the while as they walked along, Liam had been stroking Ana’s forehead, smoothing her dried, muddy locks back, away from her catatonic face. Had a mortal been watching their progress into that third lane, he would have thought himself bosky as the horse, his rider and cargo vanished as if they had never been.

‘So you are come at last.’ An elderly man leaned on a stick, the Ymp Trees sporadically unloading their plunder around his shoulders. Some landed to mix with his white hair which was cut short, closer to his head than the fashion. Jasper had an elegant forehead lined with a wealth of grooves that indicated kindness and a goodly dose of humour.

‘You knew I was coming.’ Liam’s voice betrayed little emotion as he gazed at Jasper who was said to be wise, possessed of the ability to seer, to scry - one of the privileged few.

‘Indeed. Watching your progress these last few weeks has been somewhat of an entertainment, my boy. My, my. If your father were alive he would flay you for the turn you appear to be taking. Living with mortals, helping them? No, no, don’t look so. I am not your father. In fact most Others think me very strange indeed. I have always thought kindness in anyone, mortal or Other, will bring its own reward. But come now, I can see the girl needs attending.’ He set off between the Ymp Trees, using his stick more as a scythe than as a support, his swagger indicating an agility belying his years.

Here, through the gate to Faeran, the colours were richer, the fragrances more overpowering. Where peaches and apricots had dropped, so they rotted and fermented, wafting a heady odour. Liam had become more used to the subtle tastes of mortal life and found the scent of Faeran clogged his nose and fogged his senses. Birds chimed and chorused, butterflies flitted, touching Ana’s head with soft wings. And everywhere was the sense of richness and excess. Liam grimaced.

Jasper called over his shoulder. ‘Mortal life suits you then, more than your own home.’

Liam wondered if the old man had eyes in the back of his head
. ‘There are things I prefer,’ he said.

The hauteur in his answer caused Jasper’s eyebrows to shoot for the sky, as if he found something amusing and ironic in Liam’s reply. They had wound their way through a dense knot garden full of thick privet and box hedges groomed to intertwine in some ancient Faeran way. A charm to be sure, thought Liam, to keep the unkind and unkempt away. Cypresses stood at each corner of the garden, reaching to the sky like sentinels. In the middle of the knot, right where the trees met in a controlled explosion of tightly pruned branches, a white dovecote stood proudly. The paunch-bellied doves swaggered around, dipping and curtsying to each other, the feathered parody of a Faeran Court.

They had reached the forecourt of a stone house. Long and sitting on a gravelled terrace, the sandstone dwelling looked as if it had been dipped in honey, the colour dripping onto the gravel. Jasper tapped on a deeply carved door with his stick and Liam had a moment to observe the carved runes curling, presumably telling only Jasper the charm to use for the thresh-hold to be safely traversed. As the massive piece of cedar swung noiselessly back to reveal a light, interior,
Liam sat aboard Florien, nursing his bundle whilst Jasper chivvied
Folko, his ostler, to help. The stocky servant reached up and Ana was placed in the wide, tender arms and then Liam jumped down, loosened Florien’s girth and hurried inside after the others.

The interior smelled of beeswax and herbs. Tellurions and orreries glinted in the beams of sunlight falling through the large oblong windows; globes, spheres and discs rolling, swinging, rotating silently in movements of eldritch propulsion. Shelves exploded with all sizes of books and those not shelved were marshalled into ordered rows along the walls. Vast rugs covered polished floorboards and at the far wall, where a stone fireplace stretched from floor to ceiling, a woman was setting kindling and logs and brushing the hearth with blacking.

‘Margriet,’ Jasper called. ‘We have our company at last and I need your help.’ He walked rapidly ahead, his boots making no sound on the rugs and his long black damask coat sweeping behind him. Through the high centre-vent at the back, one could glimpse breeches that were dirty with a saddle mark. The man had obviously been riding early that morning. They proceeded past
vast story-telling tapestries that clung to the walls
and illuminated books which glistened shyly from lecterns until Jasper turned through a door into a sparse room where a large bed stood in the centre. A huge silver framed mirror was propped on the mantelpiece and had Liam looked he would have seen an image of himself following Ana as she walked around a small lake. It played the same scene over and over. As the woman was laid on a brown rug on the bed, the mirror returned to its normal, reflective form.

‘Will she be well?’ Liam asked as if it should matter.

‘Not sure just yet, my boy.’ Jasper placed a hand on Ana’s forehead. ‘Folko, carry the bath in and then Margriet, bathe the girl in warm water with lavender and camomile oils. Light the lavender candles as well. Try to be as calm and gentle as you can. Methinks that while she may not feel you touching her, any sudden move may cause her to break even more.’

‘What do you mean ‘break even more’?’ Liam moved to Ana’s side, grasping a hand as limp and lifeless as a corpse.

‘I doubt her physical injuries are much at all. But she is catatonic and I think all the events she has experienced these last few months have finally pushed her into a deep depression. And yes, I know all about her, Liam, so don’t prevail too much upon my good humour.’

‘Can you heal her?’

‘I will try, dear boy, but she is mortal.’ Jasper looked around the room, searching for something. He pushed at the door of the room beside Ana’s. Capacious, lined shelf upon shelf with manuscripts and folios, the workroom smelled of herb and vellum, parchment and oil. A massive table extended along the room covered in an array of alchemical glassware.
Mortars and pestles marched along the windowsill. A low fire glowed in a
hearth overhung by an iron trivet. Ranks of drawers filled one wall. Liam watched him go immediately to this fine piece of cedar furniture and fling open one drawer after another to place herbs and petals on the table. Then he turned and stared at them, fingers to his mouth. The night-sky blue eyes looked up at Liam, unfocussed.

‘What are you doing?’ Liam picked up a crucible and turned it this way and that before thrusting it back on the table.

The Elder grabbed the dried flowers and stored them again. He spoke to himself, ignoring the man closeted with him, each sentence underlined by a small slam of a drawer. ‘No, this is all useless. I need fresh flowers.’ He grabbed a small basket and placed a bottle of clear water and some glass bowls wrapped in cloth, gently inside. ‘Come to the garden.’

The sun saturated the walled garden at the back of the house and the whole was suffused with the overpowering scents of flowering shrubs and the drone of bees. Jasper immediately headed for the far wall, mantled in a swathe of clematis. Beside the climber, a wrought gate stood open, giving a glimpse of the Ymp Trees and their fragrantly rotting fruit outside. His liver-spotted hands reached up to the flower heads and he deftly plucked a small number with a pair of pincers, then turned to Liam who stood hands in pockets. ‘Fill the glass bowls with the water and dear boy, don’t allow your own skin to come in contact with the interior of the bowls or with the liquid. Ana’s sensibilities depend on your care and must not be tainted by your own juices. Clematis, you see, when steeped in water and allowed to heat in the sun and pour out its properties, is a marvellous medic for unconsciousness. But there are other things too.’ He picked up the clematis petals with the pincers and dropped them into one of the bowls
Liam had prepared. ‘I need some golden helianthum for extreme shock
and some gentiana. Altogether, the three flowers will insulate her from the terrible mental injury she has sustained and allow her psyche to re-build.’

‘How long? Is there not a charm, some form of incantation?’
Liam stared at the few paltry flowers, unimpressed.

‘No my boy, there is only this. And patience.’ And love, he muttered to himself but Liam didn’t hear as they went about their pruning.
Mimulus was picked and scleranthus and the feathered white blossoms
of the cherry plum. This last to prevent loss of mind. And then sweet chestnut to cure the mental anguish the young woman sustained. Throughout the garden, the water-filled glass bowls continued their distilling process under the warmth of the sun until presently Jasper gathered them all, passing the basket to Liam and returning to the sickroom.

Ana lay clean and smelling sweetly of the fragrant oils on her skin. Her hair, still damp from Margriet’s tender care, was spread on the pillow and mahogany strands of it glinted in the light coming through the wide window. Her skin shone more healthily, although two spots of bright carmine coloured her cheeks. Jasper placed fingers against her forehead. ‘Margriet, open the window and pull back the covers, she is a little warm. I shall return forthwith.’ At this last, he turned in a flurry of black, the damask silk hissing against the cedar door as he brushed past.

Forgotten by the Elder, Liam walked to Ana’s bedside and ran his fingers into her open hand. Margriet, watching covertly, had never seen such a tender moment. His fingers slid slowly and almost wantonly over Ana’s palm to curl her inanimate fingers in his own. There’s a thing, she thought and turned away.

Adelina and Kholi stepped along the cobbled streets of Star
. Excitement about the coming Fire Festival fizzed around them but
they felt insulated from it all, slung deep in worry.

‘What if he can’t find her?’ Adelina walked with a thick padded coat wrapped around and tied with a cord to exclude the cold. A chill breeze blew down the mountainside, bringing with it the smell and feel of the approaching snows of winter. But she knew her own cold was more than skin deep, it came from a heart and soul filled with anxiety. Kholi put his arm across her shoulders and pulled her close.

‘Liam is Other. He has many ways of searching.’

‘But I told you Kholi, she’s fragile and I am so worried. She has become family. I hadn’t realized how much I have missed family since my own parents died. I honestly always felt I was a self-contained person and content with it but I can see I am not. She filled a gap. A sister-friend, someone to care for, to mentor. All those things that families do, that they feel.’

They had reached the small lake at the far side of the town. It filled from the mountain streams that would soon be frozen. Now it eked an overflow into a narrow waterfall that could often be seen from parts of Trevallyn, a glistening gold and copper ribbon in the rays of any dawn sun.
Kholi led Adelina to a bench under a bare willow. The branches
undulated in the breeze and the two lovers tipped their faces to the sun as it moved westward. The day had begun to darken as the sun slid down towards the precipitate crags. The lake ruffled here and there as the breeze danced across. Small green ducks with curled tails and upswept tufts of feathers on their wing tips floated past, saw the strangers had nothing to offer, quacked in a dejected fashion and moved on. Their white ringed necks made them look bureaucratic, reminding one of the collars of the suited clerks in Veniche. A movement to Adelina’s left caught her eye and the waving willow branches parted as a pair of swans glided through. White and graceful, they rested their eyes for a moment on the mortals and then with a hiss of warning to stay away, swept regally on.

Kholi’s arm draped over Adelina’s shoulder. ‘You won’t lose her, Adelina, I swear. And in addition, you have me.’

Adelina looked up at him and kissed him as a black swan paddled through the twiggy willow veil. It approached the shore and stepped onto dry land... to transform, feathered cloak sliding down to rest on the slim white arm of Maeve Swan Maid. The lovers untangled with a gasp. This unexpected Other in her singularly chill fashion was breathtaking.

‘Kholi Khatoun and Adelina, Maeve Swan Maid comes from Liam. He has found chit. He said to tell thee he takes her to Jasper. She is wounded, but...’ she paused, her sibilant tones shivering to a halt.

‘But what?’ Adelina had quickly buried her awe of the swan-maid. She reached out to grab Maeve’s arm but with a hiss and a sweep of the elegant neck, the long midnight hair describing an arc, the swan-maid stepped back out of reach.