by Prue Batten
Chapter Twenty
Margriet had lit the lamp by the Ana’s bed to diminish the creeping darkness and as the fever had dissipated and the night air chilled, the fire had been re-kindled. At Margriet’s behest, Liam went to eat and Jasper sat by Ana’s side. He tipped his head back and watched the mirror as she walked alongside Liam around the pool with the width of the path between them. Each time she came to a small arched bridge, she would turn toward it as if to cross. But then a look of fear would enter her face and she would fling away, Liam hurrying to catch up. Each time she came to the bridge, the Ana on the bed would twitch and her eyelids would flicker rapidly as if she were about to wake. Such significance in such small actions, thought Jasper. As she lay with her lips slightly apart he drizzled drops of the distilled flower essences. Certainly she seemed less corpse-like. As she began another circumference of the pool he snorted like a horse exasperated with its rider and leaning forward, gently took her cold fingers in his own, rubbing them softly. The girl in the mirror turned away from the pool with a start.
‘Ana, have no fear. I am Jasper and I can help you to leave your anxieties behind. Trust me, my dear. Next time you come to the bridge, you will be calm and positive about what lies beyond. By crossing you will be able to leave the horrors of your past behind. It is, my dear, what bridges are for. Trust me.’
Ana had reached the bridge and stopped, biting at her lip, her hands clinging together, bones straining white through the fine skin. She stared across the bridge and then back over Liam’s shoulder, almost as if she would prefer to stay in the past with its harrowing memories. But almost as though Jasper drew her on, she took a step, placing a foot on the bridge and then she began to walk forward. Softly, softly, step by step as if she trod on a single rope cable that swayed and dipped over an endless abyss.
The mirror continued to reveal its secrets as on the other side of the bridge she turned, her face clear and radiant, the anxieties smoothed away. She looked at her companion from underneath shy lashes, the glimmer of a smile playing around her mouth as he took a step forward and it was that very action that caused Jasper to sweep his hand in front of his body to fade the mirror to its normal form. Without turning, he spoke. ‘Come in, Liam. And shut the door.’
Liam did as he was bid and with a cool expression, moved to sit in the other chair by Ana’s bed. ‘What were you doing, Jasper? What was Ana doing in the mirror? What was I doing?’ The young man looked at his elder with only the merest hint of respect.
So this is what he is like when he is disturbed, thought Jasper, watching the heated smouldering of the forest fire. ‘It was a dream mirror. Ana was having the same repetitive and defeating dream which distressed her and had the capacity to keep her locked in her despair. I merely helped her move through the dream.’
‘But you stopped it when I started to go with her.’
‘It was a dream, Liam. The only important thing was that she crossed the bridge.’
Liam sat tapping a leg, jig-jig, until Jasper put his hand down hard on the appendage. ‘So she will be well?’ Liam asked and pushed up from under the grasp to stride around the room.
Jasper gave a sigh. ‘I believe she now sleeps quite normally and that she will wake and be quite well.’ Such a look of relief sped across Liam’s face that the old man’s heart skipped a beat. Ah, he thought, now we get to the nub of it. I am right. A fool can see he has given his heart to a mortal. He grimaced. ‘In the name of Aine will you sit down and stop that confounded pacing. Pass me a goblet of wine as you do and you’d best pour yourself one. It may calm you.’
Liam picked up the glass carafe of wine and poured enough to fill two goblets. Had his mind been on the task in hand, he would have noted the soft chartreuse colour of the liquid and the fragrance of peach that drifted as he poured but he ignored such things and spilled some on the rug as he carried the goblets to Jasper and sat as he was bid. ‘You make me feel as my father did,’ he grumbled after taking a long draught of the wine.
Jasper gave a wry bark.
‘You may well laugh. But if you know so much, you’ll know my father treated me brutally.’ He toyed with the fine stem of the goblet, turning the glass this way and that with such tight fingers, Jasper worried the fine crystal would snap.
‘Is that why you went away so much?’ The old man’s tone was indeterminate, soft, as if it sought not to ripple the water.
‘What was the incentive to stay? I was supposed to fill the loss of his first son but so help me, most times he blamed me for the loss of the babe, abused me... I have marks on my back and arms that will be with me for eternity and you can guess the strength of such punishment to gouge an Other skin in such a way. So Jasper, tell me, what in Aine’s name was the point in staying?’
‘I think you’ll find that you reminded him over much of your mother, you have her eyes and a similar hauteur. And he hated her for losing your brother. He was... a difficult man.’
‘Difficult,’ Liam scoffed. ‘So much that I sought refuge away. I hated him.’
Jasper shifted in his seat, the leather creaking as Ana slept on. The fire crackled. ‘But why away from Faeran? There are plenty of your peers with whom you could have progressed around Eirie far from your father. Why spend so much time away from your own sort?’ He flinched at the intensity of Liam’s words, of the glance he threw in Ana’s direction, of the way he drained the wine and set the goblet on the table by the bed. What a mess this will be, mark my words, he thought.
‘My peers?’ Liam responded, quite direct. ‘They were no better than my father. Mocking, deceitful, bored and cruel. Faeran is about surfeit. About taking more and more so you can feel more and more. Outside of Faeran one gains an interesting perspective, especially with mortals. One starts seeing things through their eyes, to feel things differently. And such a relief to be away from the demands of a bastard of a father! My heart leapt with delight when he met his bane and my life improved from that minute.’ He sat forward, his hands between his knees. ‘In the beginning there was a mild interest in mortals but that became a fascination.’ A wisp of excitement passed across his face. ‘And then I met Ana. Aine, she was like a book begging to be read. I just wanted to turn the pages to get to the next chapter. She is tragedy and comedy rolled into one. I became quite absorbed with the whole mortal thing because of its very unpredictability.’
And that became infatuation and then obsession, thought Jasper, looking at the cavernous shadows under Liam’s eyes. ‘How long since you slept?’
‘A day, maybe two.’ Liam shrugged the broad shoulders.
‘Then sleep now. There is room beside Ana. I am going to stay here until she wakes so set you beside her on the bed and sleep.’ He wafted a hand in front of his chest as Liam closed his eyes to yawn again before stripping off his boots. Jasper nodded his head, waving the goblet at the young man, encouraging him to lie down. And then he was asleep before his head touched the feathered pillow beside Ana.
‘Now, we shall see what we shall see.’ Jasper stood up, a steely look of intent in his eyes. He walked to the flask of wine, poured more and then signaled for the dream mirror to resume focus. What Liam had not been told was that this eldritch mirror was one of Jasper’s ways of reading futures so lives would be revealed before him, unfolding in a series of scenic images. Chief amongst the information he secured was that of banes.
As the hours of night drifted by and Ana moved closer to the world of the wakeful and as Liam slept heavily beside her, Jasper’s heart sank as more and more information was laid in its plain glory. He sighed, realising there was nothing, absolutely nothing he could do to prevent the outcome. Fate had laid out the cards and the game was in play.
***
If I had known that someone else shared my own misgivings, I would have felt some vindication for what others may have seen as misguided thinking. But it was not to be so let’s not waste time. To the new book and the next piece of embroidery! Follow the bees away from the oak tree where y
ou will see they make a handy trail to a pear tree. Lovely leaves, lots of wiring and stitching, the kind I enjoy - stemstitch and satinstitch. Can you spy a tiny nest with a precious oval Venichese glass bead masquerading as an egg? Flying away from our tree is a robin with a proud red chest and underneath his inky wings is a book of the same ink colour. I bound it in silk – silk I found at the stalls of the Fire Festival market.
Once again you will get two for the price of one as there is a squirrel sitting in all his caramel coloured finery. See how his tail is an absolute brush of Raji knots? Part them carefully and you will find another miniature journal.
Chapter Twenty One
Star on the Stair froze and glittered in the bitter cold. As the sun set, swathes of heavy grey cloud swirled angrily across the face of the peaks above. Adelina sat at the window of their room watching one fire after another spring up along the town ramparts whilst Kholi shaved his chin with the blade of a dagger. He had generously lathered his face in soap and Adelina looked back. ‘At least I know what you will look like in your old age, Whitebeard.’
Kholi stood up, wiping off the lather, and walked to where she sat to bend and kiss her with sweet tasting lips. He stood looking over her shoulder as the moon rose over Trevallyn. The Lady Moon as he liked to call it, ascended shyly, dragging a pale wispy cloud behind. He whispered to Adelina.
‘When moonlight,
near moonlight,
tips the rock and waving wood
When moonlight
near moonlight
silvers o’er the sleeping flood
When yew-tops
with dew-drops
sparkle o’er deserted graves;
tis then we fly
through welkin high
then we sail o’er the yellow waves.’
‘How lovely,’ Adelina whispered, eyes bright.
‘I like poetry, ‘he said. ‘Many poets share campfires and we all entertain each other. I try to remember them all but that is one of my favourites, it came from someone who had travelled through Faeran and lived to tell the tale. He said it aptly described a time when one might see the Others.’
‘There is a word designed to spoil anyone’s joy.’ Adelina shivered.
‘My dove, fire and flame await us. You must not dwell on such a thing. Tonight is for celebration. Ana is alive and I believe she is well. No,’ he held up an admonishing finger as Adelina took a breath to speak. ‘Not another word. Come on, she-devil, or I shall throw you over my shoulder and carry you outside as if I would ravish you.’
‘You wish,’ she smiled, depression and anxiety barely shifting as she allowed herself to be hurried outside.
Clusters of people rolled down the alleys and steps, their bodies rounded and fattened by layers of heavy insulation, faces shining in the light of the torchères they carried. Children ran chittering, their high-pitched excitement overlaying the rumble of their more adult companions. Some people carried lamps and these swung in their hands, the light travelling from side to side over the quilting of their warm outerwear. The town-square was awash with the crowd. For a stretch of a minute, Adelina could have believed she was in the halls of the malign as noise and shrieking and flame-stung faces surged around her. She tucked her arm tightly through Kholi’s and clung to his side, the anxiety of the previous days heightened again by the dark shadows of the unlit square.
There were perhaps two minutes of silence grating on everyone’s expectation. Adelina felt the crowd building to a mute frenzy, the atmosphere stretching her own taut nerves tighter. Since they left the inn she had felt her scalp prickling and goosebumps underneath the padding of her coat. Her instinct was to turn and survey the crowd and ebony shadows because there was something, someone, out there. She knew it, her Traveller’s intuition was rarely wrong. This thing, whatever it was, stretched a mark as dark as death to her very toes. She wondered if the Barguest, the dog that spoke of doom had marked her. As the paranoia surged over her shoulders and around her neck someone called ‘Look!’
Hundreds of heads craned back to gaze into the heavens as a flaming arrow flew downwards from the belfry of the town-hall. The trail glittered like the after-burn of a comet, streaking to embed itself in a deeper than black shadow in the centre of the square. In seconds the flames had exploded into a pyre of vermilion and gold as drums began to thunder through the night and a squad of red and yellow-garbed youths strode into the arena with vast flags which they tossed through the flames, one to the other.
The evening licked and burned as jugglers and tumblers threw, swallowed and flung fire, momentarily ridding Adelina of her worries. As the final fireball was dowsed and the world descended again into the blackness of night, she smiled at Kholi. ‘It was splendid,’ she sighed as the crowd maintained a silent awe. The town clock began to chime. A succession of beautifully tuned bells played a melody reminiscent of sleighs and with that, in the flickering light of hundreds of lamps, snow began to fall and the people cheered and clapped. It was the finale they had wanted... a shower of white flakes drifting and fluttering to glance off hoods and hats, lashes and lips.
Kholi turned to Adelina. Her copper hair was laced in snowy finery and she brushed at the crystalline flakes unsuccessfully. He reached up and encouraged her to jump into his arms off the banquettes, swirling her round to face the exit. In his excitement, he neglected to see a woman close by and knocked her sideways as he placed his lover on the ground. The female staggered and turned to berate him but caught up short when her eyes locked with Adelina’s.
‘Ah, Adelina.’ The female’s voice was shallow and sharp. ‘I heard you were in the town.’
‘Severine.’ Adelina dug her hands into Kholi’s arm as if it were the woman’s throat she was squeezing. This then had been the 'someone' in the crowd, this spawn of the devil who stood right here in front of her. Her neck ached with tension.
‘Indeed. It is I. It has been a long time.’ A black quilted coat with a hood edged in spotted lynx fur draped the woman’s body and snowflakes trembled amongst the nap of the fur and glistened like diamonds in the light of torch and lamp. The sharp-featured face betrayed nothing to soften and charm. Which was not to say the woman wasn’t striking. Of that there was no doubt as male eyes passed over her and lingered longingly.
Adelina became aware of her own escort as he stood beside her, his interested gaze resting on this darkling woman. ‘A long time indeed, Severine.’ A feeling of dislike and unbridled concern slid like oil through her stomach. ‘May I present my friend, Kholi Khatoun. We are journeying together. Kholi, this is Severine, another Traveller. She and I grew up on the road. You may possibly remember her.’
Kholi smiled and held out a hand. ‘Madame…’
Severine’s eyes glanced at him, a cool look which dragged across the indigo tattoos as if she were scouring them. She acknowledged him with a flick of her eyelids but turned ostentatiously from his friendly gesture. ‘I do not recall Mister Khatoun. But then I did leave our little band of gypsies quite a long time ago, Adelina. And I am Severine di Accia now.’ She gave a sharp laugh. The embroiderer was reminded of two crystal goblets rubbing together... a honed laugh, full of knife-like edges like the woman. ‘Actually, it’s Contessa di Accia. I married.’
‘I thought as much. Was that the decrepit old man we met on the road all those years ago, the one who seemed charmed by you? The old Count from Veniche? I thought I had heard it was. My my, he must be ancient now.’
Severine tipped her head to the side and gave Adelina an appraising look. ‘Sadly, my beloved husband is dead. I now run his estates. I can see though, that you are still a Traveller. Still hawking your wares. Behir but I am glad I no longer have such a life. Too arduous by half.’ Severine ran a dismissive eye over Adelina’s apparel and smoothed the snow away from the expensive fur edged plaquet of her own coat.
‘Oh, I don’t know, Severine. I think there is not much difference between you and I,’ Adelina spoke the words as if they were tainted by
lemon juice. ‘You must travel for your husband’s affairs and presumably you buy and sell. It is different but the same.’
‘Hmm, well I can see you have not changed. Always ready with the last word.’ Severine drew herself up to eye-level with Adelina and gave a twist of her lips, what passed for a smile. ‘Perhaps I shall see you on the morrow at the fair. Good evening to you.’ She swirled her flared coat around and swept off, ignoring Kholi completely.
‘By Aine, not if I see you first,’ Adelina muttered a Traveller’s curse after the swift vanishing back of the woman.
‘You don’t like Severine then?’ Kholi took the hand he held and tucked it into the warm crook of his arm.
‘No,’ Adelina continued walking, looking straight ahead. ‘Kholi, tonight was magical. Tonight went some way to easing my angst. Please let us not spoil the rest of the evening by talking about that virago. Do you agree?’
Dawn began to seep between the folds of the drapes covering the windows in Ana’s room. The fire had long since burned down to glowing coals and the room had begun to chill. On the bed two figures slept, one sideways with an arm draped over the waist of the smaller figure. In a red chair Jasper sprawled, legs akimbo, head flopped back and a stentorian snore filling the chamber. Loud enough it seemed, to wake himself but not the two in the bed. He jerked up with a start, giving his head a shake and wiping his mouth with a hand. He stood and stretched like an old dog rising from his basket by the fire - head up, chin stretched, arms and legs taut. Then he gently began an examination of his patient. He felt her forehead and encircled her wrist with his own fingers, checking her pulse. Leaning down, he gently prised open her eyelids and seemed pleased with the result. Although he frowned after glimpsing Liam, he nevertheless stepped around the bed and pulled the curtains open a fraction. Then with one last glance he walked to the door and exited, leaving a sleepy ambience that turned progressively more golden as the sunlight slanted in.