A Thousand Glass Flowers (The Chronicles of Eirie 3)

by Prue Batten

  He ran a hand through his hair. ‘I have the means to find the other two.’

  ‘How?’ She moved from him to the log, suddenly tense, and sat smoothing her hair in its tight bun, a mirrored action to his very own.

  ‘Curiosa. I wanted the paperweight that you presumed to acquire last evening. I was there before you, and Curiosa told me the woman had come for it. She left, he said, as if she had cursed him. I mesmered him and secured her address.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Here. In Trevallyn.’

  ‘Do you know where?’ Her interest concentrated itself fully on his words.

  He bent to pick up a stick and snap it into measured pieces, the crisp cracks breaking the ambience that surrounded them.

  ‘Not precisely, no.’

  ‘But Trevallyn is the home of Færan like the Raj is home to djinns – you should know every inch.’

  ‘I don’t. I have never lived in Færan, Lalita. Like you, I spent my life in the mortal world of the Raj, in a castello that sat on the edge of a godforsaken cliff by the side of a grey-as-grief sea. I grew up with all manner of Other and mortal types, all of them malign, and with a bitch of a grandmother…’

  ‘Finnian…’ she broke in. Pain wracked his voice, and she watched his eyes become shadowed. Saw the man she had met outside Curiosa’s who had said, ‘Excuse me, Lady, can I help? Are you faint?’

  ‘No. You shall listen. I do have family as it happens. Foul and malignant family whom I wouldn’t lift a finger to help. Unlike you. I am searching because if I don’t, my grandmother shall find the charms and wreak devastation. She has an obsession. An indecent obsession,’ he added scathingly. ‘So it seems to me that I need you and your charms, and you need me to be able to find the charms you require. Therefore it seems obvious we must search together.’

  ‘And then what?’ Fright tickled at the edges of her neck, fear of what might be.

  ‘What indeed? I think Lalita, that you shall just have to trust me and we may yet see what Fate has in store.’

  ‘Fate!’ Fear and distrust exploded together. ‘What is it with Others? The djinn and the afrit, they talked of Fate as if it were as powerful as the Lady Aine. It’s ridiculous. Surely one commands one’s own life. Do you mean to say that I would always have murdered Kurdeesh? That it was foreseen? That even as a babe, I had this base streak inside me that would eventuate, no matter how loving my upbringing or gentle my life?’ She stood, her hands gesticulating wildly. ‘And you, Finnian. Is it Fate that makes you search for the charms? Do you think it was always meant to be? That no one can have an altruistic motive that springs from the moment? Rajeeb said it was Fate bringing me to this exact minute in Time but if I hadn’t heard about Isabella, I doubt I’d have wanted to search for the charms. Did Fate intend for me to find out about her at just that right moment?’ She stalked around the glade, her throat hurting as she shouted.

  ‘I told you, Lalita,’ the tones of his voice touched her in intimate places. ‘I never believed in Fate, in pre-destiny, but now, after… now I do. In any event, you have to admit it matters little. One can moan and decry one’s predicament but our predicaments are the same. Better we live in the moment than dwell on what was. At this very moment we are in Trevallyn on the edge of the Ymp Tree Orchard. We must get to the other side away from here and on the way we shall find Killymoon. You must persuade yourself to trust me because you are safer with me than not.’

  She was so close to leaving, dancing on her toes like a nervy horse. So close, but the name flickered before her – Isabella. She drew in her breath, walked up to Finnian and stared him straight in the eye, pushing his chest with her finger. ‘I was honest with you. I bared my soul to you. If I am to trust you and work with you, then tell me why I need to leave here so quickly? What is it that has you so nervous you look to the river constantly? Who are we running from?’

  ‘Lalita, damn you.’ He ran his fingers through his hair in that oft repeated gesture, scrabbling at the wind tossed knots. ‘We run from the crone I call my grandmother.’

  ‘Your grandmother?’ She laughed. ‘An old woman?’

  ‘YES, MY GRANDMOTHER.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Aine, woman, it doesn’t matter why. Just know if she finds you with the charms, your life would be over like that.’ He clicked his fingers. ‘Believe me.’

  She moved away from him, shaking her head but then turned back quickly, her finger marking time again. Something made her believe him, some grudging truth that pressed on her. ‘It is agreed then. I’ll trust you and I say to you Finnian, don’t let me down. When shall we leave?’

  ‘Immediately. Get away from the Gate, beyond the orchard.’

  ‘But it goes forever.’ She subsided onto the log, the humming, foaming waves of blossom stretching away into the far hills for miles and miles. The weight of the day settled on her, the guilt, the horror, the insanity of it all, so that she couldn’t shrug it away. ‘I can go nowhere immediately. I need time, Aine help me. I just killed a man.’

  ‘We have no time!’

  ‘Please.’ She pulled again at the sari around her ankles. ‘Besides, look at this!’

  ‘Can you ride?’

  She nodded, surprised at his question.

  ‘I shall try and find horses. I suspect there is a farmlet on the edge of the orchard near the river. I saw hedging as we floated by. I shall have to leave you for a short while.’

  She sucked in a breath but he continued more equably. ‘No, don’t worry. See that tree?’ He pointed to a tall trunk with a crown of twiglets and leaves that spread in an elegant manner, and where creamy white flowers hung in dense corymbs. Bright orange berries clustered together, waxwings and thrush fighting over the delectables. ‘It’s a rowan, a guardian tree for mortals. I can’t go to that side of the glade myself, but you must pick yourself a staff for protection. And I know you have silver around your neck. With the silver and the rowan, you should be safe. There are clothes,’ he wafted his hand and a pile of garments manifested on the ground. ‘When I leave, change. Put them on back to front if you feel safer. It’s another guardian means. And do not speak to anyone, ignore them if they appear, and hold your staff in front of you.’ He began to turn away, ‘Please heed me in this.’

  Her last sight of him was a tall shape striding away and she wrapped her arms around herself and cursed the feeling she had, as if some indefinable bond was stretching fit to break as he left.

  She pulled a dark knitted garment over her head, the close fit clutching at a body used to the flirtatiousness of floating fabric when the Symmer wind blew. She had encased her legs in dark breeches and her feet were nestled in stockings and boots, her toes unaccustomed to the hardness of such stiff and enclosing leather. Sunbeams streamed into the glade, the sun moving rapidly across the sky, so she left the shadowy jacket on the log as she moved to the rowan tree. There were a number of broken branches and she found one that was straight and strong and she rested on it as if she were an old woman beset with the tribulations of age.

  Her mind filled with Finnian, what he had said, what he proposed. About his grandmother. A frail woman. How can she be dangerous? He says I have to trust him, that he tells the truth, that he has only my best interests at heart. But how do I know he doesn’t want what I carry for himself and himself alone? I don’t know him. How can I believe in his goodness? But a traitorous part of her thought, I want to.

  She remembered his solicitousness after Kurdeesh. Without him she would have collapsed. She thought about the kiss. As his lips pressed her own. I felt something...

  The air around her smelled clean and coolness caressed her cheek. She looked longingly at the crystalline water floating by, her mouth dry, but Finnian’s warnings were freshly engraved upon her and she turned from the river to walk around the glade. An odd feeling drifted about, along with gold motes of pollen and the occasional falling leaf. It played a shivery tune up Lalita’s spine, bony fingers dancing across the keyboard of a spi
net, and within seconds of hair raising itself on her arms, she heard whispers.

  ‘Go away, depart, begone.

  Or you’ll be lost and forlorn.’

  Her hands shook as she lifted the staff and banged it tentatively on the grass. But the whispers hissed closer and with urgency.

  Go away, depart, begone.

  ‘Or you’ll be lost and forlorn.’

  Her hand engulfed the locket and squeezed tight. This time she banged the staff twice with gusto, to be rewarded by a whine as feet padded away from the edge of the glade. But the feeling of unease persisted and she heard heavier feet next, head turning quickly – convinced the djinn of death was in Trevallyn. The sound of dragging breath raised hair on her neck and she wondered if her heart would freeze so the spectre could suck life from her, to pick up her corpse and take it to some cavern littered with bones and deathly detritus.

  Stop this, stop it. She hummed a jaunty melody, her mouth tacky, the tune breathless with bravado as she leaned against a tree for just a second, laying the staff down beside her. Finnian, how far away are you?

  She turned abruptly on her heel, forgetting the staff that lay at her feet, and walked straight into the arms of…

  ‘Finnian, oh thank Aine. But,’ she looked over his shoulder, ‘where are the horses?’

  ***

  Finnian had pressed on quickly upriver. Away from the clearing and Lalita. He was unnerved by her effect on him, as if she were Other and could manipulate by a simple shift of her shoulders. Never in any of his dalliances had he felt such strength of feeling. What is it about her? He swung from overpowering infatuation to fearsome frustration and impatience. And all the while there was the sensation of perfection, his fingers almost able to reach it… to stretch out and grasp something that had been denied him all his life. He tried to find one moment, one single second where someone in his long-ago life at Castello had shown affection or even kind interest in him. But there was nothing, an empty void that had been filled with poison and with vicious invective. What ran through him now was unfamiliar. It disturbed him because he knew such feeling left him vulnerable to, even defenceless against such numbing pain. And he realized he had nothing with which to measure the feeling.

  But what about Liam? The experiences his brother had, that he himself had intuited – that yardstick.

  He would never forget the overwhelming emotion that resonated across the world of Eirie from Liam to himself – that must have been when his brother realized he had found love. Was it like death and yet everlasting life for his brother? He had once heard someone softly pluck an arpeggio on a harp, a rising solfa of such gentleness and yet such power. That was it. That was the yardstick. But the story Lalita had told him of his brother’s life and death, of the utter fascination of finding the love of his life and then the deep grief of losing her, that was what frightened him and he, Finnian, a grown man. He had spent a large portion of his life defenceless and had no intention of visiting that state again.

  ‘Enough. Focus on Isolde, she’s the one you must be wary of, she will track you down, she will take what she wants,’ the voice in his head whispered on and on and he clenched his fists. She may well track me down, but she won’t get what she wants, not from me, not from Lalita.

  Coming to the sweeping fronds of a willow by the edge of the river in this mortal-styled corner of Trevallyn, he parted the veil of leaves as he heard a horse snort. In a field overlooking the rivulet a black gelding stood with fetlock resting, idly swishing a tail, ears twitching as gnats buzzed his head. Finnian eased through a hawthorn hedge and approached and the horse, aware that something preternatural was all about, laid its ears back, snorted and gave a tiny rear.

  ‘Easy my man, easy.’ Finnian caught a glance from the equine eye and between the two trust danced like a thread from a spider-web until the soft muzzle dropped into Finnian’s palm and licked the salty sweat. ‘Now I just need another like you.’ He glanced across the field to a yard with a byre and a handsome dwelling with a cottage garden, hearing a hoof scraping on cobbles. ‘Let it not be a donkey,’ he muttered as he pulled the horse’s mane and the animal followed in his footsteps. ‘I need speed, the faster you and your friend in there have ever delivered, my fellow.’ As they approached, a squeal floated out and on entering he saw an elegant bay mare tossing her head up and down. He stroked her neck, his palm slipping down the silky copper hide. ‘Perfect, you will fit her as if you are made for her. What a pretty girl you are. And are you fast? That is what I need to know.’ The mare danced on eager feet, shaking her head at him and lifting into a showy half-rear. ‘Ah yes, my girl. You’ll do well.’

  The yard outside was as empty of living mortal folk as a graveyard and Finnian thanked Aine for market-day or whatever had taken the landsman and his family away. In minutes he had the two mounts saddled and bridled from the selection of tack hanging on the walls and as he mounted the black and led the other, Ibn’s voice spoke from the back of his mind. ‘What would this simple tellak expect of you now?’

  Ibn… He laughed softly and made a move of his hand, an enchantment, and clicked his tongue to move the horses on.

  The willows closed about Finnian’s cavalcade as if he had never been, but behind him he left such a bag of gelt on the table at the cottage – more than the farmer would see in his lifetime and a panacea to satisfy even moral Ibn.

  The forest chattered around him and as the horse’s swaying stride relaxed his tense back and hands, he spent a moment in examination of his surroundings. Used to the baked red and ochre of the Raj, Veniche had been a vast learning curve for him – ivory marble, the glister of gold leaf, soft watermelon and peach colours all reflected in the ripple of the waterways. But Trevallyn beggared description – verdancy, bird trill, mellow light patterns, waffling breezes. A welkin wind, a kizmet? Behind leaf and tree, yellow eyes spied on him but he ignored them and they left him alone because he was Færan and as able to cause misery to them as they were able to cause mischief to him. In amongst the arboretum he had time to ponder on his past, how it coloured his every waking mood. He thought about his present and Lalita. But when his future reared its head he could see nothing… a vacuum of emptiness beyond the job at hand – the need to defy Isolde; hated matriarch, despised grandmother. A moment only did he think on her and then back to Lalita.

  The journey back to the glade and the woman who waited took little time on the back of the black horse. The mare followed willingly, as if she had been tired of her isolation within the barn. He watched her ears twitch back and forth as she snorted at feathery dandelion seeds drifting on the woody zephyrs like tiny flying faeries. With a jingle of the bit in her mouth she shook her head and tried to prance ahead of the gelding, but Finnian pulled on her reins. ‘Steady, hold your spirit for later. We may be in need.’ He pushed the animals through the lilacs, focusing on the mare, making sure none of the branches caught in her looped stirrups. When he looked up to call Lalita, his blood froze.

  Lalita stood in the circle of a man’s arms, looking into his eyes. The embrace tightened around her and she reached to the chin so far above, running her hands around his neck and into his hair. She tipped her head, wantonly inviting his lips, and his head came down. As his mouth moved closer, Finnian leaped from his horse and grabbed the man who was the very image of himself, almost as if he gazed in a mirror.

  ‘Get off, Ganconer!’ Finnian hooked the shape-changer by the collar, jerking him violently backward. ‘Have you forgotten me? I am Finnian with whom you have shared drinks and women. You think to parade as me? By the Fates I’ll kill you first.’ His fist moved and clouted the fellow’s jaw with a punch that cracked around the glade. The man’s head whipped aside and he reeled back, leaving Lalita to stand solitary. Finnian growled and leaped on him, the two crashing to the ground and rolling over and over like wolves.

  Lalita stared into some mesmered distance, oblivious to the fierceness in the air. The interloper who had held her shape-changed to a dark
er shadow of a man – almost charismatic but not quite, almost tall but not quite, almost Finnian – but not quite. Through Finnian’s head raced the thought that she had been a hair’s breadth away from rape by the Ganconer. From an embrace that would have begun her death walk. If the man had kissed her lips, if she had tasted his poison, then she would have been condemned to pine forever for his love. She would cease to eat or to sleep, pacingly endlessly across the miles of Eirie searching for that most perfect and elusive affection until she was skin and bone. Knowledge of her nearing death would then waken, the cruelest joke of all played by the evil being. And so the piteous scrap that she had become would spin her shroud and be fit only for a pauper’s grave by the roadside. Finnian wanted to kill the Ganconer but the fellow flipped to the side and then as quickly flipped again so that Finnian lay beneath him. He held Finnian’s arms tightly and snarled into his face. ‘Leave it, Færan. You weren’t here, she was. I was doing what comes naturally to Others. Even to you, as I recall.’

  Finnian roared and threw the Ganconer off him and the two men stood at arms’ length breathing heavily until Finnian swung again.

  ‘Leave it I said!’ the Ganconer shouted, skipping sideways. ‘You can’t kill me so why waste your energies. You’ve more to worry about than me, Isolde’s boy.’

  Isolde’s boy, Isolde’s boy. Finnian’s temper seethed as the jibe bit, a flush tinting his cheeks, his eyes closing to slits.

  ‘She comes, you know.’ The Ganconer smoothed his mussed hair and jerked 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-wight 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 him 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, think 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.