A Thousand Glass Flowers (The Chronicles of Eirie 3) (32 page)

‘We ar
e connected you and I, Lalita. I have family…
my brother is stepfather to
your niece.
How you
would hate it, wouldn’t you?’
He shifte
d as if he stood on hot coals.
‘You risked ever
ything just then and for what? For a child you don’t know? Is that what family does?
Erases
all sense, all intelligence?’
He muttered a curse in Færan, smouldering as he stood there a momen
t longer and then walked away.
He wanted to sit by her, to take her hand in his but he knew she hated him, thought he was invidious and capricious and he
could not bear the rejection.
Not on top of Jasper’s
revelations.
He was shaken to the very roots of his being.
Family and not of Isolde’s ilk.

In his room, he flung himself in a chair, the idea of fami
ly so difficult to comprehend.
His plans began to dissolve, his resolution as nebulous as the fog.
But
I cannot give up.
Must not give up.
A sense of being trapped by a destiny he had dreamed of began to irritate him like an itch and then a full-blown pain.
But it is family.
Outside an owl called as the moist air drifted in through the open window on a light breeze, the smell of honeysuckle
and nicotiana accompanying it.

He gazed through the window, trying to seek answe
rs through the beneficent fog.
But the shroud waxed and waned, fading to white, then thickening again –
nothing, something, nothing . . . nothing, nothing, nothing.
He searched every fold of the miasma as if solutions to everything should reveal themselves – answers to the question of a relationship with his brother, answers to the question of his abortive relationship with Lalita, answers on how
best to destroy the Cantrips.
But uppermost in his mind was the need to destroy Isol
de despite the ramifications.
No solutions appeared and he pulled off his clothes
and slithered into Jasper’s lave
nder scented bed.

He dreamed but the fragments drifted, smudged by a shifting veil and he could never make o
ut what lay on the other side.
It wasn’t a nightmare, nothing as evil as those the night-ghasts dropped over innocents – no, this was a dream of wafting shapes, of shining waters, of pearly river-m
ists.
He turned over in the bed and heaved a sigh, wishing in a moment of wakefulness that he could
be lulled by a Black Madonna b
ut a voice drew him along a starlit pathway until he could see her, her silver hair floating in a welkin wind.

‘Finnian, come to me, I would talk.’

He lifted his head, dark gaze
meeting inscrutable scrutiny.
Her dress ebbed and flowed and he drown
ed in the glistening of stars.
Struggling to the surface, he spoke.
‘Moonlady, I found them.
That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?
But tell me, why did I bother?
The old man is powerless so the charms are as vulne
rable to malign hands as ever. And Isolde still follows.
You used me.’

‘No, the
choices you made were your own. It was all I hoped for.
And there is yet another to come with as far-reaching consequence as th
ose you have already endured.’
She moved and the organza folds of her gown whispered
like the sighing of a breeze. ‘You must choose with wisdom.
But then again, you
may choose to follow a lesser path.’

‘Why do you alw
ays speak in circular riddles?
Can you not
be unequivocal just for once?
I haven’t
the time to play your games.’
He rolled over in the bed and turned his back
on her, as he had once before.
But she tapped him lightly on the arm and he recalled the lovely Primaflora.

‘Impatience achieves nothing.’
She spoke sweetly and any admonishme
nt was lost in the soft tones.
‘The fast road is often the doomed road.’

‘The road I
am following is doomed anyway. Leave me,’ he muttered. ‘
I’m tired.’

‘But I do not s
top you from resting, Finnian. You stop yourself.
Perhaps your agitation shall only be eased by the dec
isions you make in the future.
Fat
e has laid out a path for you.
Heark to what I say.’

‘
Bain as,
Moonlady,’ he sighed.

‘Goodnight,
muirnin.
’

A touch feathered down his cheek
and he wondered at the parado
xical warmth in those fingers.
But then perhaps it was only a gentle night-
breeze through the open window…

‘Old man,’ Finnian called to Jasper who walked along a path in the walled garden in the soft light of early morning.

‘Less of the old, Finnian,’ Jasper responded as crisply as if the air had turned to autumn.

Finnian allowed the barb to slide away and pulled up alongside, adjusting his stride to the slig
htly shorter one of his elder.
‘Is there a lake here?’

Jasper stopped and his gaze
on the younger man intensified. ‘As it happens yes.
Why?’

‘I just wondered.
No particular reason, although I thought I heard swans and knew we were too far from the river.’

The mists had cleared a little through the gardens, but further away, any distant view was completely shrouded and Jasper dragged his staff through the fine gravel of the path that wound under archways loaded with l
avender and carmine sweetpeas. He drew two runes.
‘The Færan runes for coincidence and conundrums, for what is life but a series of interesting or not so interesting coincidences and problems to be solved?’

Finnian met the gaze of his wise and acerbic companion and raised his eyebrows.

‘Ah, yes, the lake.’ Jasper gathered hims
elf together.
‘It’s at the far northeast end of the Ymp Tr
ee Orchard, about a mile away. We call it the Lake of Mists.
It is,’ he paused briefly, ‘an Other place.’

‘Mists you say?’

‘Indeed. My boy, I’m hungry.
Let us break our fast and you can tell me what you plan to do.
’

Piles of toast waited to be
buttered and spread with conserves
and Finnian found he was hungry, more than
he had been for a long while.
‘I take it you haven’t found a method of disposal yet.’
You must not, Jasper.
He chewed on a piece of toast and spiced orange preserve.

From Jasper there was fulsome silence and Finnian looked
up until the old man answered.
‘No,’ he said as he lifted a crust of toast to his mouth.

‘And shall you?’

‘Certainly a way shall be found, yes.’

‘When?’

‘When it reveals itself.
Aine Finnian, you are as imp
atient as was your twin, Liam.
Everythi
ng had to happen yesterday and if not there was hell to pay.’

The mention of his brother sucked the air from Finnian’s lungs and
his food stuck in his throat.
‘
And what about Phelim?
Is he so hasty?’

‘Far from it,’ Jasper’s irony
cascaded over Finnian’s head.
‘He spends time thinking things through and weighing up the pros and cons.’

Not so different then.
A little bit of each.
Suddenly the need to see his
older brother was paramount.
But the door opened as he went to speak again and Jasper stood, pushing his chair back.

‘My dear. How good to see you.
You look
so well, doesn’t she, Finnian?
An
d in Adelina’s hand-knits too.
Are you ready for some sustenance?’

Lalita entered, ignoring Finnian and edging past him to the chai
r on the other side of Jasper.
She wore Raji jodhpurs and a Traveller’s knit, woven by knowledgabl
e hands in some twisted cable.
She had pulled her hair into a high b
unch that swung as she walked.
Finnian dragged his eyes away and concentrated on the cider in his tankard.

‘I
am
hungry, yes.
Jasper, what did you do to
me that I have no pain at all?
I tell you, I wonder if everything that occurred was just a
bad dream, a nightmare even.’
Her comments, directed across the table at Finnian,
were nothing if not deliberate.
‘I must thank you,’ she nodded her head at Jasper.

‘I’m delighted.
I’ve found great success in the healing of all broken things, Other and mortal.’

Finnian could feel Jasper’s eyes on him, as if his desperate emotional state was being included
amongst those ‘broken’ things.
He squirmed in his chair.

‘Here,
muirnin
,’ the healer continued, ‘have some of Margriet’s toast, she makes her own bread and the toast has a
way of it that it keeps warm. Honey, marmalade, berry preserve?
Oh and th
ere’s butter from my own cow.’
He fussed ar
ound her like a parlourmaid.
‘Now
tell me, what are your plans?’
The two chatted, Lalita ignoring Finnian as if he didn’t exist.

Finnian played with his food and as the meal progressed, tightne
ss etched across his forehead.
The muscles hardened, his head aching with tension and the meal he had enjoyed turned to ashes in his mouth, the cider
tasting as stale as old water.
Finally Lalita’s deliberate manner drove him to throw back his chair and leave the room.

The gelding picked its way between the espaliered peache
s and apricots of the orchard.
Protected by the mists, Finnian sat in the saddle oblivious to the fruit and its fragrance, to the blossom and of the thick clover that brushed and bruis
ed against the horse’s hooves.
When he glanced up he noticed the ever-present vapour ebbing
and flowing ahead and behind.
He expected to look down a row of trees and see a dark
nightime
scene with an even darker figure in the middle of it but there was only the impenetrable fog, layers of it winding in and out through the orchard like flowing rivers of pewter-coloured ribbons and threads.

Anger at Lalita rushed through his mind,
pushing rationality before it.
If Jasper had been close by, he knew the old man would have said there was an underlying arrogance as well because it was a Færan trait to believe that one was always right
, that one had the upper hand.
But to Finnian, it had nothing to do with his own arrogance and everything to do with Lalita’s spontaneous actions
and her inane misapprehensions.
Damn her to hell,
she hardly deserved a minute of his attention.

But Isolde. 
He knew he could never avoid the reckoning which sometimes sped toward him like a herd of wild horses and at other times, when the misty enchantments cosseted him, as if he had all the time i
n the world to prepare for it.
But time or not, the idea of wilful destruction
now
sat like a lump of phlegm in his throat, choking him.

The horse’s pace quickened as it bega
n to sense familiar territory.
Its head came up, ears pricked and it began t
o trot, then canter.
Finnian gave it a loose rein until eventually it fetched up at the meadow fence from whence it
had been taken not long since.
An ear-splitting neigh shattered the bucolic peace, the horse’s body shaking as it shrieked forth and there was a drumming of hooves and an answering neigh as Lalita’s firebrand Raji mare pelted out of the
vapours and across the field.
For the horse’s sake, Finnian was glad it had fled safely to its home after decanting Lalita at the bottom of that fateful slo
pe.
The two animals nosed each other, stamping and giving high-pitched squeals of affection.

Such irony.
Lalita’s mare a
nd his gelding – such friends.
He opened the gate and led the horse in, unsaddling it, slipping the bridle off and laying the tack o
n the fence.
The two trotted away and as he shut the gate and glanced back, he caught a brief sight of them standing companionably
nibbling each other’s wither.
Their affection mocked him as he recalled Lalita’s neck and he glanced down at his scarred hands which Jasper had healed with c
harms and a foul brown potion.
Everything seemed
so pointless, every bit of it.
If the old man had a clue to the destruction of the charms, it may have been worth it
in the long run… after Isolde.
But now?