A Thousand Glass Flowers (The Chronicles of Eirie 3) (25 page)

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 on
ly 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 som
ething..
.

The air around her smelled clean an
d 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 th
e glade.
An odd feeling drifted about, along with gold motes of pollen an
d the occasional falling leaf.
It played a shivery tune up Lalita’s spine, bony fingers dancing across the keyboard of a spinet, 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 bange
d 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 aw
ay from the edge of the glade.
But the feeling of unease persisted and she heard heavier feet next, head turning quickly – convinced the dj
inn 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, l
a
ying 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 h
ad 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 fearso
me frustration and impatience.
And all the while there was the sensation of perfection, his finger
s 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 pois
on and with vicious invective.
What ran through him now was unfa
miliar.
It disturbed him because he knew such feeling left him vulnerable to, even defence
less 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 broth
er 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 lea
ves as he heard a horse snort.
In a field overlooking the rivulet a black gelding stood with fetlock resting, idly swishing a tail, ears twitc
hing 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, eas
y.’
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 pa
lm 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, hear
ing a hoof scraping on cobbles.
‘Let it not be a donkey,’ he muttered as he pulled the horse’s mane and the an
imal followed in his footsteps.
‘I need speed, the faster you and your friend in there ha
ve 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 slippi
ng down the silky copper hide.
‘Perfect, you will fit h
er as if you are made for her.
What a pretty girl
you are.
And are you fas
t? That is what I need to know.’
The mare danced on eager feet, shaking her head at him and l
ifting 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 hi
s 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 ex
amination 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 w
aterways.
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 c
oloured his every waking mood.
He thought
about his present and Lalita.
But when his future reared its head he c
ould see nothing…
a vacuum of emptiness beyond the job at hand – the need to defy Isolde; hated ma
triarch, 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 o
n 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 flyi
ng faeries.
With a jingle of the bit in her mouth she shook her head and tried to prance ahead of the gelding, bu
t Finnian pulled on her reins.
‘Stead
y, 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 arou
nd 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, j
erking 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, lea
ving 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, obliviou
s to the fierceness in the air.
The interloper who had held her shape-changed to a darker 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 a
way from rape by the Ganconer.
From an embrace that wo
uld 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 affectio
n 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 tigh
tly and snarled into his face. ‘Leave it, Færan. You weren’t here, she was.
I was doing w
hat 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 Gancon
er shouted, skipping sideways.
‘You can’t kill me so why waste your en
ergies.
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.