A Thousand Glass Flowers (The Chronicles of Eirie 3) (28 page)

‘Coincidence I am sure.’
Once again he didn’t look at her as he spoke, a deliberate remove so as not to engage.

‘Why do you have it?’

‘Th
e stone was a gift from a…
friend and the paper has been with me for my l
ifetime.
It matters not.’

‘But it does.
Why do you ca
rry an image that could be me?
Surely you find it odd that it depicts someone as li
ke to me as my own reflection.
Can you imagine what I feel like when I see it?’

He gave a heavy sigh, sounding as exhausted as
a man who has lost everything.
‘I’ve w
ondered on it since I met you. Fate? Destiny? I don’t know, Lalita.
It’s an enig
ma that I am unable to answer. I found it
in a book in Isolde’s library
when I was young
and for a reason that I can’t identify it gave me comfort when I had none,’ his eyes locked onto hers wit
h a fierceness that shook her. ‘As it does now.
As to the rock, it is a talisman.’

Her heart felt such sadness and empathy that she leaned ove
r and kissed him on the cheek.
His stubble dragged at her lips and he turned his head and she
allowed him to kiss her back.
It was as if Finnian’s touch could banish the world’s woes from her life for just a moment, just
as his parchment did for him.
He held her in a st
rong clasp
and she felt secure and cherished for the first time since Imran and Sora
ya had left on that last trip.
She lifted her hands to his jaw, awed at the strength of the line, and ran her fingers through his hair as it lay at his nape, loving the feel of it on her fingertips, hearing him sigh as she drew those same fingers down the side of his neck, inside his collar to the top of his chest.

Later, with no attempt at coyness, she lay pliant as he
began to ease off her clothes.
She chided herself faintly for profligate
and immoral behaviour
but the better part of her enjoyed every gratuitous second as touch skimmed her body and she wondered if she were being wrapped in the delic
ate strands of a gossamer web.
He took her gently and she flew once again along the byways of the stratosphere, neither he nor she speaking, until the end when he said one word, ‘Lalita.’

‘It
is
beautiful.’
They lay together in front of a spluttering fire, as she turned the stolen paper
weight in the desultory light. She had told him of the
strip lying folded and secure in the silver locket about her neck and now the
millefiori
worked magic as she turned the ball fir
st one way and then the other.
It glistened, occasionally sparkled and all the while, the
‘
thousand flowers’ gleamed blue, yellow and wh
ite behind the glass confines.
‘It’s a different pattern entirely to the one that smashed and yet it has a harmony.’

Her fingers rolled the obj
ect around as Finnian replied.
‘And if not for an accident, you wouldn’t have discovered what it was.’

‘Perhaps the shattering of the glass itself was a accident, but events prior were not accidental at all.’

‘You truly planned to end your life?’

She nodded, feeling the w
eight of his chin on her head. ‘I had nothing to live for.
Or so I thought.’

‘But if you had, you woul
d not have begun this journey. You see?
Fate.’

She pocketed the paperweight and rested her own chin on h
is arms as they encircled her.
‘Then
it was intended I should live.
Sometimes though, I wonder what Fate has in store next as it would seem tragedy dogs our fo
otsteps like a faithful hound. The Barguest, maybe. I’ve heard of the Black Dog of Doom.’
She shifted
as if something dug into her.
‘Sometimes I feel overwhelmed by everything.’

He rolled her toward him and placed
a palm on the side of her face.
‘In the back of my heart I cherished an absurd dream that I should find goodness, that I should be privileged to hold it in my h
ands at least once in my life.
These last days, firstly with Gio, then Ibn the tellak and most perfectly you
, I have been given that gift.
I would be lying if I didn’t admit that all the heartache has been worth it for these last hours, Lalita.’

She stared at him long before r
isking words that may hurt him.
‘I understand what you say.  But no life should
be the price of another’s joy.
It’s wrong.’

Bu
t he was equable in his reply.
‘Fate, Lalita
. 
We should revel in it while we can for maybe ou
r joy will be cut short also.’
And even though she quailed at his prophetic words, she was glad that all pretence at separateness vanished as they made love again.

She fell asleep cocooned in his arms, dreaming of nothing, not even conscious of the heavens passing through their
celestial cycle far above her.
She burrowed further under the warmth
of the clothes laid over her.
But frigid cold slid in and touched
her, fingering her shoulders.
She opened her eyes and such a feeling of being solitary overwhelmed her that she sat up, heart pounding.

‘Finnian?’

But it was pointless. She knew he had left.
The blackest disappointment filled her and her fingers reached unconsciously to her neck to touch the locket for reassurance.

Gone.

She jumped up, dragging her clothes over her naked form and felt in the pocket of her breeches.
Taken.

The fire was nearly out but in the last of the light she saw the glimmer of silver and grabbed the
opened locket off the ground.
Its emptiness spoke of lying and deceit and she picked up the chain and threaded the locket on with shaking fingers, feeling humiliated and abused.

She hated him.
Hated what he had said to her, hated that she had believed him, hated what she had done with him and she wanted to tear shreds from the man, wanted to confront hi
m with her dagger in her hand.
She could hear the mare sidling back and forth and snorting in the dark at the edge of the copse and went immediately to her, spoke to her, smoothed her hand along the neck and saddled her quickly.

‘You leave then, scribe?’

She spun around to see a small, delicate woman becomingly turned out in a hunting suit of dark colours and a cap with long
feathers arching back.
She carried a longbow to suit her size and a quiver of arrows joggled at her shoulders as she walked to Lalita’s side.

‘You seek to follow the Færan?’

‘And if I do, of what interest is it to you or anyone else?’

‘We are all inte
rested, Lalita of the Raj.
It affects us all the way this plays out, for already we
are in the never-ending night.
We would like to think we can
trust him but one never knows.
I was merely going to say that if you do follow him, it might be a good thing
.
Insurance that he intends nothing bad with wh
at he has taken and what he might
find at Killymoon.’

‘Who are you?
Another of those
malicious Others so like him?’
Lalita swung herself far above the sprite and into the saddle.

‘Not at all.
I am Siofra, Botanica is my name and I am kin to another of my kind who
has already helped the Færan.
We
do no harm if we can help it.
And besides, it may be that you judge him too harshly.’

‘I
haven’t time to talk, Siofra.
Do you know which way he went?’

‘Follow the path that way,’ Botanica gestured with her bow, ‘the will o’ the wisps will guide you and go
with grace, my pretty mortal.
May Aine smile upon you because you will need her care where you are heading.’

Lalita let the woman’s words drift past her as she tapped her heels into the mare’s sides and launched into a gallop.

***

Finnian’s horse had flown like a bird, leaving sleeping a
nd satiated Lalita far behind.
The ground sped under its hooves, thuds cushioned by aeons of falling leaves and thick mosses growing in th
e moist shadows of the forest.
Pinpoint eyes surveyed Finnian as he dashed by, the
black gelding fleet and fired.
Night birds cried with shrill fear, wings battering the chill air as they lifted to the dark skies; disturbed, on edge, their nightly pattern
of foodgathering interrupted.
The small creatures that fed the avian bellies had ducked and dived for burrows and nests as the vibration of hooves
rippled over the forest floor.
All around was uneasiness at this night of the long dark.

He had suffered when he woke, cradling Lalita in his arms.
I could love this woman.
His lifelong dream had become as real as the face that lay in repose.
But I must not.
He kne
w he must get the charms and go
for Lalita’s life was at stake, and so he had cast a mesmer on her, a sleep enchantment from which she
wouldn’t wake for some while.
As his hand moved, he could hear the crone’s voice as if she crowed in front of him, her face lined with venom, ‘
I shall win.’

Thus he secreted Lalita in misty glamour within the deep green of the coppice, hoping the need to secure the charms would drive Isolde o
n, well past the hidden bower.
As Lalita slept the sleep of oblivion, he had pulled the paperweight free of the pocket in her breeches where they lay by the fire, removed as he remembered, in a moment of unguarded passion.

Then he reached for the
silver chain around her neck.
Biting down on the scald that flamed across his hands, he lifted her soft hair and slid the clasp around to the front, eyes watering, teeth pressing further into his b
ottom lip until he drew blood.
The clasp clicked back, the chain sliding as he pulled and flicked it to the ground, opening his palms carefully, ugly welts and blisters revealed,
burns from which fluid oozed.
The silver chain and its locket lay ominously innocent at his toes, a twinge of heat permeating through the leather of his boots so he reached for a stick and levered it under the necklet to shak
e it till the locket fell off.

Stealing himself for more pain, he quickly grabbed it, flicking the spring so the little
washi
strip fluttered out.
He thrust the paper in his pocket, sucking in a breath as the fabric of his breeches caught on the weeping wounds, and hurrying to the side of the rill he let the water run over the
cuts and burns.
But it would take more than a stream in the world of mortals to heal the silver injuries and presently he knew he should move on regardless.

He tied the mare securely before he left, springing aboard his own mount with a quick breath as the damag
ed hands grabbed at the reins.
He left at a trot, not looking back, and as soon as the copse was behind him, he set the gelding to a blistering gallop southeasterly, to put dista
nce between he and his scribe.
He rode swiftly, increasing the space between Lalita and himself until the track narrowed to nothing more than a winding defile and he was forced to slow to a walk
, chafing at the snail’s pace.
He wanted to get as far from her as he could so she would have no chance of finding him and so that his grandmother would leave her al
one, focusing on her grandson.
And no matter what, care and concern aside, he now had two paperweights and he was damned if he would allow anything to
stop him securing the others.
Not his grandmother, not Lalita, no one.

He looked skyward.
She’s an adept,
my grandmother, infinitely so.
She’s put such a barrier between light and the world that non
e will see anything but night.
And the moon – it battles Isolde’s glamour for look how it pushes
.
In the heavens, the moon shone like sunlight, shoving against the blackness, constantly breaking through the shrouds o
f night that coloured the sky.
Even when its face was concealed, moonbeams radiated, lighting the shadowy woods through which Finnian’s horse tracked.