The Stumpwork Robe (The Chronicles of Eirie 1)

by Prue Batten

  Nightmare after nightmare had swept over Ana, dragging at the cobwebs of her sanity. The night-ghasts, demons of the most frightening of dreams, pulled at her so that sweat poured from her body and her heart raced as she sought to outpace the fears that lurked behind her, waiting to pounce. She heard dunters milling, saw water wights shape-change to an image of her father. The Limnae’s wrinkled fingers pulled at her very soul and the thought she could flee across the bridge was tempting beyond belief. But what lay on that other side? There could be the Nicker, the Each Uisge, boggarts, all capable of maiming and killing. And there in the distance behind her as she turned away from the bridge with pounding heart was Bellingham. Gory and foul and leering at her. She turned to run away but caught sight of a titian-haired man, one who was so familiar. In her dreams her heart beat as fast as if the night-ghasts continued their pursuit, but it was a thrilling beat, a feeling that she was more secure by being in the gleam of Liam’s sights. Excitement flushed over her entire body and she longed to reach and put just a finger on him, just once. But something pulled gently at her soul, leading her away from him to the bridge as a soft, hypnotic voice encouraged her to step up and over. An overwhelming sense of freedom filled her to the brim as she stepped off the bridge and turned to stare at Liam on the other side. His black eyes burned after her, her skin feeling the static of a powerful yearning and she glanced from under her lashes. She saw him place a foot on the bridge and then she fell into a deep, dreamless sleep

  She became conscious of light much later as day pushed at her eyelids and so she opened them slowly, unafraid of her unknown surroundings and content as she stretched under the covers of the bed of clouds in which she lay. Something weighed down upon the blankets and impeded her and she turned in the semi-light to source the reason.

  Liam! Her fingers crept to her mouth in uncertain delight.

  He lay heavily asleep, unaware of Ana beside him as she tried to piece together the jigsaw in her mind. She lay and blinked at the golden light making patterns on the walls, feeling again the power of yearning that had manifested in her sleep. Her skin craved to be rubbed and her hair desired to be twisted in the hands of the man beside whom she lay. She could clearly remember the lost music box and Liam’s voice and the heady feeling of wanting to find him in the dark as she leaped from the van. As for the rest, all the horror and pain, was there any? She wondered if everything had been bleached from her mind, leaving her with a pristine sheet of paper on which she could write a new life.

  Perhaps I am mesmered. Perhaps Liam spirited me to Faeran. She lay still, feeling the rhythm of breathing beside her and the sensation filled her with a sense of wellbeing. Briefly she danced attendance on the thought that she was in bed with this man. She sucked in a breath. Was she a victim of Liam’s lack of probity, his corruptibility?

  She had never deeply examined how she felt about his reputation. Oh, to be sure she knew all about the Faeran. Hadn’t Adelina been drumming it into her for days. But Liam... he was different to the rest. He had saved her life... three times. Would he have been so stalwart if he merely desired her? She heard the faint coo of doves outside but wrenched her attention to the face of the man next to her. He had only ever treated her with scrupulous kindness, with gentlemanly care. To the point where if someone asked her did she trust him more than her family, what could she say? It was obvious to the most dull-witted fool. He hadn’t tried to sell her, barter her happiness for the price of a piece of dirt. Liam could be trusted.

  Implicitly.

  She heard him take a deep breath as he rolled closer to her. I want to touch him. The intensity of his presence swept all else from her mind and she eased herself onto an elbow and examined every inch of the face before her, the way stubble littered his chin and underlined his high cheekbones and the way his cheeks had a faint tawny glow as the coverings warmed him. His hair had come untied and strands of it stretched across the linen of the pillows. His mouth was slightly open and Ana could see teeth gleaming between the lips. Without a thought she traced fingers as light as thistledown along the chin and up to the cheek. Instinctively she leaned forward and pressed her own lips to his, at first softly but then, as her body filled with a rushing and aching pain, with naked desire.

  His hands snaked from under the covers into her hair and he returned the pressure of her lips, rolling her under him as he eased the linen of her gown from her shoulders. She gazed up at the strong jaw, at the hard, black eyes and felt as if she was falling into a dark oubliette and she knew that if he would just make love to her she would be happy to rot alone in that dark hole for ever, because the sensations would nourish her more than food or air.

  Jasper was in his workroom, attempting to scry using his crystal spheres. Most of the night he had watched the mirror and had discovered Liam’s bane. He was depressed, angry at being unable to turn the tide of events. He rolled and palmed the balls in a lyric, flowing movement, mesmerising in its rhythm as the glittering glass eddied from one hand to another. He had tried to intuit Ana’s future in his mirror and whilst there were faded images, nothing had been clear enough to be sure. Surely the balls would help. But as images pervaded the crystal clarity of the instruments and as Jasper tried to grasp the message, the concentrated peace of the room shattered as first one and then the other of the two spheres cracked and fragmented and the pieces fell out of his hands on to the floor - by their own disintegration revealing a rebounding integration happening under his very roof.

  He growled and swept furious hands along the table, sending notes, apparatus and charts flying. He had never felt so impotent in his life.

  Chapter Twenty Two

  Adelina opened the drapes in the morning and gasped at the view laid out before her. Such an eldritch sight, to be sure. Everywhere was sparkling white. As light danced off snow-clad roofs, tiny crystals sparked and spangled. It reminded Adelina of organza; the kind that glitters in a certain light with all the colours of the rainbow as one throws it about on a cutting table. She wondered at the purity of the view. Looking at the Stairway, not a single footprint could be seen, the highway stretching a virginal swathe up the mountain. Below her, she watched children chasing each other with snowballs; ducking, weaving and exploding with laughter. Sharp icicles hung off the eaves above, perfectly shaped, smooth and deadly sharp, not a drop of moisture splashing from their razor sharp ends in the freezing air. ‘Kholi, come look.’ Adelina huffed on the condensation on the window to clear it away.

  Down on the Celestine stairway, children gazed up as a fist rubbed at a fogged window in the Inn of the First Happiness. They watched as two faces appeared side by side. One copper haired woman and then one of those Raji men with the blue tattoos on the cheekbones. Childish hands waved and then there was a yell. ‘Get ‘em!’ A fusillade of armaments shot skywards to pound in cascades of fine powder snow against the windowpane, causing the two lovers to laugh at the youngsters below. ‘Bullseye!’ The children were jubilant.

  ‘I used to be just like that once.’ Adelina rubbed the window with a wistful finger, remembering a childhood of running through campsites, around vans, down forest tracks.

  ‘And of course, now you are too grown up. Is that it?’

  ‘I suppose. Life just seems more serious.’ She turned away from the window. ‘Especially now.’

  ‘Dove, the sun shines. Be content. I expect Ana to be back in a day or two and I really think you should stop this perpetual agonizing. She is protected and cared for and we are here with a fair to attend and we are warm and safe in our little inn. We are fortunate and I think we should just get on with our day. After all, Ana would want us to, wouldn’t you agree? Besides, I’d venture to say if she is able and well now, she is relaxing and sparing us little thought. Yes?’

  ‘I confess you’re probably right. But you know Kholi, up until now my life has been totally carefree. Selfishly so. And now all of a sudden, I have the responsibility of this young thing.’

  ‘Come now, she’s certa
inly no young thing. Not that much younger than yourself. And besides my love, why should you assume the role of parent? She chose to leave her familiar environment so surely she must accept responsibility. No... I know what you will say. She is naïve, unaware.’ Kholi dressed as he spoke. ‘But I think she has learned a lot in the last few days and in the end Adelina, we have looked after her the best that friends can. We need not chastise ourselves at all. I think she must assume her own mantle of responsibility. And,’ he pulled on a high buttoned, over-tunic which he belted with an embroidered scarlet sash. ‘If her life’s decisions include Liam, it is not up to us to prevent her. She must make her own choices.’

  ‘Kholi, I dispute Ana’s choice of Liam.’ Adelina’s voice hardened. ‘Mortals are not meant to ally themselves with Others, it always ends badly. I feel it deep in here,’ she tapped her forehead with her fingers. ‘And in here.’ she tapped her chest. ‘I can tell you any number of stories from Travellers’ tales and they are all true. Remember when Oisin met with Niamh? A love story but he, the mortal, died.’

  ‘Yes, I know. But my love, we all die sooner or later and isn’t it better to have had the experience of such a love before you die than to go to your deathbed wondering? Listen, I’ll tell you this. I would die tomorrow a happy man after the days I’ve just had with you. I swear on my sister Lalita’s life!’

  Adelina met Kholi’s intense gaze and touched his cheek, defeated temporarily by his argument. He didn’t understand. She had this feeling, an intuition that all was not well and she was convinced it was because Liam would not leave them alone, would not leave Ana alone. The weight of that feeling weighed her down more and more each day and she just wished Kholi would believe her. She sighed, realizing he was as stubborn as his wretched camel and would not be moved. Wisely perhaps, she changed the subject. ‘You know, I have a wish to buy such a length of fabric today. I am inspired to make a robe, Kholi, the kind no one has seen nor will ever see again. Shall we go shopping.’

  At the house amongst the Ymp Trees, Ana lay sleeping the sleep of the exhausted, full of surfeit and the seeds of a Faeran lover. Her skin glowed like Adelina’s satin in the light from the window and her hair lay tousled across the pillow. Liam, dressed but with his shirt loose over his breeches and his hair untied, sat in the window embrasure on a bench full of cushions. He stretched a leg from one side of the window to the opposite, the other leg bent and hands resting upon it, cupping his chin, eyes unfocused as he stared into the walled garden.

  He and Ana had made love. She had given herself to him and he had looked down at her, running his hands over the satin swathe of her hair. ‘Ana, I have saved you from death three times, I am now at liberty to call in the forfeit. I have the right to ask you to follow me to Faeran. You are unable to say no.’ For a while they said nothing; a silence filled with breath and sighing. Then he added, ‘But I would not force you. I want you to make the decision willingly, so I revoke my right. You will not pine or suffer. You are free to make your own way.’

  ‘Liam,’ Ana’s voice was croaky with repletion. ‘Even if you had not taken away your right, even if I was bound to follow you, I would do it willingly. I want nothing more than you. Forever if you want me.’ Liam smoothed his hand over her back and she sighed and closed her eyes. As she drifted into sleep, she whispered so he had to bend to hear her. ‘And forever is such a long time in Faeran, isn’t it?

  Thoughts chased each other through his mind. Why did I encourage her? What provoked me? The heat of the moment? The desire to play a game with her or am I being played like a pawn? I don’t understand. Look at her. She thinks she gives herself to me for eternity. Do I want her for that long? Because forever is almost forever for me. He shook his head. There were times like now where he found this absorption with mortal love so difficult to comprehend. So often he had asked himself why this had happened to him. On those disappearances from his companions, fulminating in some corner of Faeran, he had tried to wriggle out of the obsession, out of the fascination, out of the inevitable commitment that mortals demanded in their relationships with each other. He had thought she would be so easy to open, read and discard. But like the worst addiction, he craved more. He turned his head to the door as he heard it open.

  Jasper stood utterly immobile, face filled with cold rage. ‘You,’ he said in a loud whisper. ‘Out here. Now.

  He preceded Liam at a prodigious pace to the gravel outside, swishing his whip against doors and walls. ‘Mount up.’

  The command was as filled with ire as any Liam’s father might have given so he took Florien’s reins from Folko. He barely had time to leap for the saddle before a whack on Florien’s rump and a shouted ‘hyar!’ sent the horse into a bolt. His shirt billowed about him and his hair tore back as the horses raced after each other.

  Jasper led out amongst the Ymp Trees and away from the overblown beauty of the orchard. Hooves pounded the dry grass of the Barrow Hills and the horses wove and bent between the wild trees, the last red leaves whipping and falling in the mad slipstream as they sped past. Onwards and upwards until the snorting animals began to slow against the incline, snorts marking the beat of the hooves. As they crested the highest hill, Jasper pulled back on his reins, his black horse sliding to a bucking halt. Florien spun around as Liam tried to calm him, the very air filled with the crackle of anger and impatience.

  Instinct whispered to Liam and he leaned over his horse’s withers, smoothing and patting, thinking on what he should say for he knew why Jasper was angry. ‘I’m sorry. I abused your hospitality and your care of the girl. I should not have.’ He sees a perceived impertinence and with a mortal...

  Jasper said nothing as they dismounted and let their horses stand with drooping heads and resting fetlocks.

  ‘It was a bit of fun, Jasper.’ Liam attempted to fob off the event that had begun to resound with repercussions.

  ‘Fun, my boy? Well then, I cannot prevent you from having fun.’ There was a sting in the scorpion’s tail as Jasper hit the ground around him with his whip. He sat against one of the ruby-leafed trees, his coat pooling on the stubble.

  ‘If you had tried, I may have told you to go to Hades.’ Liam lowered himself by the old man.

  ‘Ho indeed,’ Jasper mocked the bravado. ‘To no avail of course, I'm a Faeran Elder after all.’ He laughed the dry bark again. ‘You do like your own way, don’t you?’ Then he changed the subject with alarming speed. ‘Why did you murder the mortal, Liam?

  Liam’s head spun for a moment. He even knows about Bellingham. He looked down at his boots and brushed at the dust, wondering how to respond. Part of him regretted the moment of anger that caused a man’s death, part of him was glad. Revenge is sweet. ‘I did not kill him. The Cabyll Ushtey did.’

  ‘With your not insubstantial assistance.’

  Liam shrugged. It was a just retribution. And besides, it did nothing to lessen the moment he had just experienced with Ana.

  ‘Does she know?’ Jasper turned and looked Liam in the eye. ‘She will hate what you have done. Most mortals have a far different code, one that they call justice. If it is at all violent it becomes so after the decisions of independent justiciars. She will never understand how you could appoint yourself summarily judge and jury. And with the Cabyll Ushtey of all beings. Aine, man, you had best never tell her as for sure it will go heavily against you.’

  ‘Then we shall keep the secret, shan’t we?’ Liam fixed Jasper with a cool look. I can beat you at your own game, old man. Try again.

  They sat absorbed in their own thoughts. The birds in the trees whistled and trilled and were utterly contrary to the issue of life and the taking which had just been touched upon. Liam leaned his head back against the bark of the tree. He felt its roughness against the back of his skull and longed for Ana’s ivory smoothness.

  ‘So my boy, do you fall in love with this pretty young thing?’

  Jasper’s question jerked him away from the dream of sexual favours. ‘Of course not. It is
a dalliance, a game pure and simple. Something to deter the mundane and titillate the senses.’ His voice held a tinge of mockery.

  ‘Aine man, don’t chafe so,’ Jasper sighed. ‘You follow others of your ilk who have trodden the same path. It’s one of those thousand to one things that becomes the stuff of story and legend - the Faeran and the mortal.’

  ‘I have not. You are wrong.’ Liam’s response pushed at the outer edge of respect. ‘You imagine too much in those balls and mirrors of yours, old man.’

  Jasper smiled patiently. ‘In my balls and mirrors, boy, I see more than you can ever imagine. Others come to me to be healed, to secure charms and potions, spells and incantations. But the chiefest thing they come for, those who are brave and stupid all in one, is knowledge of their bane. Sometimes when I know, they will stop me telling them, realising it is better to know nothing and continue regardless than to know everything and live life constantly glancing over the shoulder for the presence of the final Doom. Some don’t want to know because it adds a spicy danger to their lives, wondering if this encounter or that will be the source of their demise.’ His face set into grim lines. ‘Sometimes I don’t care what their bane is. I dislike them so much I pile the truth upon them and send them on their precarious and gloomy way. But there are other times,’ he ran the whip back and forth through his fingers, ‘where I know the person and I hate the knowledge I have.’