by Prue Batten
What a pretty speech and so clever, thought Adelina. Why would he do it? How can I trust he has really done this thing? She looked at him. By Aine, he was such a strong and fair-faced individual. If he has done it, then he truly must love her, just like Kholi and I love each other. Adelina raised her eyebrows and gave Liam a cool look. ‘How valiant you are, Liam. I commend you. This must surely compare with Oisin and Niamh for devotion. You know the story? In all honesty I can find no reason to spurn your entreaty. So, yes, I give you Ana’s hand in marriage and charge you with her safety and surety.’
As she finished speaking, Ana hurled herself into the embroiderer’s arms, the robe crackling and swishing around her. It was a little too much for Adelina and she pushed her away. ‘Ana, mind my silk. If I’m to make this for you I want it to be perfect. Remove the robe carefully and leave me, I must prepare for a full day in here tomorrow.
‘As long as you promise to hurry downstairs when you’ve finished because I am going to get Buckerfield to have a celebration. Oh, Adelina I’m so happy.’ Ana flung the words over her shoulder as she clattered down the stairs after the two men, leaving Adelina defeated, feeling Liam had won. And her intuition burned like acid into her belly.
***
The crowd spilled out from the light-filled door of the Inn of the First Happiness. It was a markedly euphoric crowd, reveling in the news imparted by Buckerfield that there was to be a winter wedding. And to those nice young things Buckerfield had staying at the inn. Of course warming alcohol had a lot to do with the blithe crowd but even so, Ana and Liam felt themselves the centre of excitement and joy. The feeling was a familiar if not particularly recent one for Ana. For Liam it was another new experience to absorb. A Faeran wedding inspired nothing but grandiose largesse. There was no joy for the groom and his bride. Who cared? They would have multiple partners from now till forever. A constant search for another experience - stronger, longer, better, and so it went on. He raised a glass of the wine Buckerfield had poured as another friend of the innkeeper’s clapped him on the back.
‘Good choice, boy, she’s a beauty. She were in my shop t’other day and my word but she were nice. Friendly like and respectful. I warmed to her, I did. I hope you’ll be very happy. Now you come down and see me, ‘cos I’d like to give you both a gift.’
The noise from the inn drew others to its doors and drinks were passed out as people stood round flaming braziers, sharing happy stories.
‘What’s going on?’ A figure swathed in furs had pulled up on the edge of the crowd, with a small retinue.
‘A betrothal. Buckerfield’s friends. A young girl from the road and her handsome consort. The girl’s a relative of Adelina the Traveller. You know Adelina? Yes, thought you would. Everyone knows Adelina.’
‘Indeed. As you say, everyone knows Adelina.’ The fur swathed person reached white hands to the brazier.
‘Here, have a drink. It’s mulled wine, beautifully spiced and I swear it will warm your cockles.’ A woman handed over the drink and the stranger took it and tipped it up, agreeing it was indeed warming. ‘Better? I thought so. Bitter night but starry and pretty. Just the night for a betrothal. So you know Adelina? Did you know she’s making the wedding robe? Supposed to be a work of art. Buckerfield reckons it’ll look Other by the time its finished. She’s clever, that Adelina.’
The fur swathed stranger finished the mug of mulled wine and placed it on a tray carried by a passing waiter. ‘She is clever, I’ll grant you that. Very clever.’ The words emerged quietly from the depths of the furs because by now the gregarious conversant had moved on and the stranger stood alone. As she turned away to walk back down the street, flaring light caught her face. A pale countenance, dark as slate eyes and blood red lips appeared briefly. Severine’s expression was as cold as the air she breathed and as she followed the path to her own inn, all she could think of was the fabric and the robe that would suit an Other, perhaps even a Faeran. It was an integral part of her plan now, the robe. And by Belial and Behir, she would have it no matter what it cost.
Ana spent the night on a wave of happiness, riding the crest for a long while as each person had come to wish her well. Now however, the wave had broken and she sat becalmed at her window, watching the last glow of the braziers as a small flurry of snow settled in the courtyard.
‘You’re quiet, muirnin.’ Liam ran his fingers through the mahogany hair that had bound him to her, was it such a short time ago? A month perhaps? He tried to forget the bonds, to erase the seriousness of what he had done. Asking her to marry him? And as part of a game? Aine. She inclined the head towards the sensual pressure of his fingers and turned to him, her eyes wide.
‘Do you love me, Liam?’
He turned away to the bed, pulling off his coat. ‘Why would you ask? Marriage normally implies something of love does it not?’
‘I want to know that I can trust you, the depth of your feeling.’
He stood behind her, pulling her back against his hard body, feeling the need to make love, the lust fizzing over. ‘Methinks you worry too much.’ He lifted the dark brown hair and kissed her neck. She turned to receive his lips, silent, wanting more.
Chapter Twenty Six
Severine di Accia laid her head on her pillow in the inn further down the mountain and stared up at the whitewashed ceiling. The drapes were drawn back and a fiercesome night sky - black, indigo and grey - swirled across the face of a moon almost as pallid as Severine’s cheeks. All her life she had craved to know of things Faeran. Wasn’t she after all a changeling? In her youth, she had listened and absorbed the tales she heard on the road. For one such as she, attractive, different from her parents certainly, charming when she wanted to be, it was easy to presume she had such links. In very rare, more realistic moments, if she wasn’t Faeran then it was possible to assume such likeness. And that is where the arrival of the Count di Accia had been fortuitous, taking her away from the death of her parents. The man had money. Money brought knowledge and knowledge, as Severine knew, was power.
It required no real effort on her part to seduce him. She had previously had one cheap if informative night with an oily Raji reeking of garlic. The experience was just that - an experience, but one which she tailored to her needs and which served to put the old Count right in her pocket. When she left in his cavalcade the next day, she experienced no guilt. Her emotions were a perfect vacuum, space enough to be filled with more important matters.
Count Di Accia chose to marry the ‘changeling’ on the way from Veniche to the Pymm Archipelago. Privately thrilled at having her on his arm, the fact she was alarmingly younger was nothing. The sylph-like beauty gave herself all the airs and graces of a noble Other and he felt it reflected well on him. He gave her gelt by the bag load and she brought clothes and jewellry and furnished their palazzo on the Venichese waterways in a manner befitting a man of his rank. What he couldn’t understand was why she spent money filling a library with weighty tomes on Other life. Why she learned to play harp and gittern. Why she employed a strange wisp of a man dressed in cobwebs of brown and grey to teach her obscure languages. And why she spent long days and nights, sequestered in the library studying.
She smiled to herself as she lay on the bed. She had learned much. It wasn’t hard to convince simple folk she might be Other in her skills. Not when she had such knowledge of occult law, such powerful comprehension at her fingertips. It was a quaint poem, one of four cantrips translated by her odd little henchman that she chanted in her moments alone. Her mantra, her prayer for the future, her insurance just in case. As she lay in bed staring up at the sky she whispered and the words sat in the air above her in ribbons of vapour as the evening air grew colder.
‘From caverns deep, abysses cold
There lies a ring, so very old.
Through its eye the bearer sees
souls of Others which are keys
Keys to locks within a door
from which the bearer can expect more.
More life eternal, evermore.
‘The souls must part befront, behind.
Till four of the same from two will wind
their power around, around and more.
More life, eternal evermore.’
It had taken her time to secure the ring. Her wispy man, an Other, found it for her after months of searching. The ultimate weapon - an artifact from the days of chaos when Other had fought Other. This battered piece of jewelry made by the worst of the goblin wights had the power to kill the Faeran, sucking their souls into its sphere. And by some ancient glamour, anyone who possessed the ring and the souls could have the power of everlasting life.
Ironically, not long after the find Severine’s husband, frail and unprotected by rings and souls, cast his mortal coil. Of course, lesser people could assume she had helped him reach the other side. No one would ever know. What everyone did appreciate was that she was now one of the wealthiest women in Veniche, in Eirie perhaps, as even Heads of State recognised her fiduciary power and treated her with cautious respect.
She stretched in the bed, reaching for a looking glass. Adelina? By Behir, the bitch was nothing compared to the face staring back from the mirror. That common Traveller, her childhood combatant, looked like a whore and behaved liked a harridan. A laugh escaped, soaring to the rafters of her chamber and hanging there to echo in the stillness of a winter’s night. She turned her head this way and that in the mirror and in the soft light of a lamp she was able to admire her complexion with its unblemished skin; the deep slate eyes so clear of guilt, smooth ebony hair falling down her back, not a wisp of grey. Despite the harsh words of that odious silk seller at the market, she knew her cool looks would last longer than the overblown face of her childhood acquaintance. But there was a rub to it all. Time waited for no man. And she knew that she would age, become heavy of body, wrinkled of visage and decrepit of mind if she was not truly immortal. Unless...
She was within days and minutes of holding her grail in her hands. And the robe? It would serve to fulfill a two-fold duty. One being a way to emasculate Adelina. And the other? The perfect place to sew the souls. She grinned.
She had one of course... one of the ‘keys’. In truth, its deep blackness and its texture of freezing nothingness disturbed her. But never mind. It had been an easy capture that day by the lake. The silk seller, she of the sarcasm and wit had received such a surprise when Severine, coming upon in her in a solitary walk after the Fire Festival market, had acted instinctively. Whipping off the ring, holding it to her eye, she pulled the woman’s soul into her grasp, leaving her a frozen husk amongst the feathers and bird-dung of the shore. The woman hadn’t even time to cry out, only her eyes opened wide with horror as her soul tore free of its earthly anchor. Severine smirked. The speed and ease with which she had carried out the action without any forethought or rationalising thrilled her.
And now one more and then they would be parted ‘befront, behind... till four of the same of two’ existed and she would force Adelina to sew them into the stumpwork of that robe and every single time she donned the garment more and more glamour would seep into her bones until she was immortal. She stared at the mirror, into her cold eyes with their absence of guilt. There was nothing, absolutely nothing, she wouldn’t do to secure this end.
***
I am sure you can see as you read, that what people are and how they act truly does affect their fate, does it not? Although Jasper would disagree. He would say one’s fate is cast from the outset.
Remember too, my friend, back in the early days of this history I talked about kindred spirits? Ah! Kindred spirits are the glue that keep Travellers together. But Travellers are also able to feel the reverse, someone who is meant never to be kindred of any sort. The day I met Severine as a young child, the hair stood up on the back of my neck. I knew even then we would be destined to be at best, competitors.
At worst, sworn enemies.
Ah well... shall we continue?
Chapter Twenty Seven
‘You still don’t wish to contact your family, muirnin? Even now? With the prospect of your marriage and journeying to another life entirely?’ Adelina shook her head as she asked, unhappy with the ease with which Ana had cast her family aside. Whilst she waited for Ana’s answer, she had tried three times to thread a needle and three times her hand shook just as the thread nipped the eye. She had no doubt the tension was fired by anger at Liam’s arrogant confrontation with her. And she knew she had been stymied by the marriage proposal. If she spoke to Kholi he would never believe her, his experience of Liam so contrary to her own. And Ana? Like any young woman in the throes of love, lust and marriage, she doubted the girl would listen. She put the needle and thread aside and picked up a length of fine wire as Ana answered.
‘No. Liam is all I need.’
Adelina studied her and couldn’t help noticing her assurance. It’s as if by joining with Liam she has reinforced herself, re-invented herself. She glanced down to see she had been forming a wire shape for a leaf and thought how much Ana was like that fragile foliage. Without Liam’s backbone, like silk thread without reinforcing wire, she was sure the woman would fold in a minute. How deep does this newfound confidence run? What is she without Liam? Something better, something worse, weaker, stronger? She sighed with frustration. Faeran and mortal, mortal and Faeran, it ran around her head like a mouse in a wheel... a mouse in a wheel whose little axle was almost worn through. She tried to concentrate on Ana’s voice.
'You know, Adelina, I am truly at peace. I trust Liam with my life.’
Adelina shifted in her chair, the mouse wheel racketing around and close to shattering apart. 'How much do you know about him, Ana? Do you really talk?'
Ana looked up, surprised. 'What an odd question. Do you think we just stare passionately at each other and make love?' She cut away at pieces of lining; with each word the scissors snip, snip, snipped.
'Have you ever seen him use a mesmer or any of his special powers?' Adelina took a tiny pair of embroidery scissors, the ones with the blades shaped like a crane's bill and cut a remnant of thread.
'Yes. When he rescued me from the dunters. If he used them at other times, I was mesmered myself and wouldn't have been aware. I am not sure if he even has those powers now he has lost his immortality. I haven’t asked him. Does it matter?'
'No, I suppose not.' Taking a huge breath and feeling her heart thudding, Adelina faced Ana just as the mouse-wheel broke. 'Do you know if he has ever used his powers for ill?'
'Adelina, please.' Ana threw down her scissors and fabric. 'Has he not proved himself to you? Sometimes you make me so angry. You’re so opinionated, as if you have the right to say and think whatever you want. Have you forgotten this is the man I choose. And no, I am not suffering the pining sickness, he hasn’t mesmered me. This is a choice I make freely. You hear? I make it myself.’ She picked up the scissors again. ‘I don’t want to fight with you, not now, not ever. So I insist you give up this witch hunt and accept he is what he is: kind, caring, Faeran and my soon to be husband.’ She banged the handle of the sharp tool on the table with a thump, glaring at Adelina.
Momentarily shamed, surprised at the vehemence of Ana’s outburst, Adelina sat back. ‘I apologise, muirnin. It was wrong of me. As you say, it’s none of my business. But Ana, even though you are only my highway family, I am as fond of you as if you were my own and I only want the best for you.’
‘Liam is the best, Adelina. I wish you could understand. Don’t you want me to have the kind of love you have with Kholi? You wouldn’t be so selfish would you, not to want that for me?’
Adelina could hardly gainsay the plea. ‘No, of course I want the same for you. Forget I spoke at all. Can you forgive me and try this on?’
Ana left Adelina not long after and hastened down to the door of the inn to take a step outside. The glitter of snow and ice was so sharp her eyes closed to slits and she was momentarily blinded, walking carefully across the cobbles that se
parated her from the Celestine Stairway.
The road was empty of movement, sinister snow clouds sliding back and forth over the sun, the wind taking cruel bites at exposed skin. Most journeymen had eschewed the frosted stairway for the warmth of taverns and inns. An ugly gust sent a flurry of snow flying up the walls and buttresses, baffling away at Ana’s unprotected ears. As she shrank back to the shelter of the porch and gazed at the grey and white striated distance, she heard footsteps shushing toward her - the four beat of an animal pushing through the snowdrifts. Her hair prickled on her neck, each individual follicle rising and separating, goosebumps racing up her arms as she tried to discern the whereabouts of the sound. To the left there was nothing, then to the right. Only hard shadows against the corners of buildings, impenetrable blocks of dark where neither shade nor movement could be detected. The padding came remorselessly on and she turned her head again, her feet rooted through the snow to the very surface of the mountain.
A black shape detached itself from the corner and two amber eyes moved closer. A giant dog, as dark as doom, approached quietly, his eyes burning into Ana’s and piercing her heart. She gasped with horror as the gaze slid into her soul. A tiny corner of that life-source within her crinkled a little more, as it had done when her father died. The Black Dog, the Barguest, harbinger of the victim’s end, had marked her and she spun away, her hand scrabbling at the latch of the door, shoving it open and then slamming it behind. She leaned against the portal, a shaking hand to her mouth, wincing as a shadow passed outside, rippling across the bubbled glass of the window. Violet the tavern cat arched a hackled back, spat and then ran hissing into the bar as if the Barguest would enter their tidy, happy world.
Ana closed her eyes and stood swaying as her world strained to re-orient itself. She pressed her palms against each other until everything felt right again. She was overwrought with excitement, that’s all. Of course there were shadows for Aine’s sake and anyway, even if it was the Barguest, was not her own betrothed an Other? Against whom none could prevail?