A Thousand Glass Flowers (The Chronicles of Eirie 3) (39 page)

‘Come on, boy!  Out-play
me
for once. Is it going to be this easy?’
With one of her mercurial mood-shifts she shouted at him, stamping on the board with her foot so the paperweights jumped and Lalita sucked in her breath.

Lalita, what are the words?
Think!
A small night breeze whispered out of the night, ruffling the trees around them and lifting Finnian’s hair off his forehead
.
It laced itself down his body, a reptilean writhing that
at once had his senses alert.
Reaching the board, the little zephyr strengthened and blew Ibn’s stone sideways, lifting the strip and blowing it back against his boots.

‘Grab it, grab it.
Let’s get on.’

He bent to pick up the strip but as he went to lay the stone atop it on the board, he he
ard Lalita’s barely-there tone.
‘Earth Dust.’

‘What are you whispering?’
Isolde began to move across the board.

He pulled Lalita back and she fell against him, grabbing a
t his waist to steady herself.
‘Don’t move, Isolde,’ he sai
d as he held Lalita’s hand up. ‘See these tattoos? They are the Cantrips.
If I call one out, it will be your death.’

Isolde’s brow creased. ‘Liar.’ But she stood still.
‘You lie.’

H
e shrugged his shoulders. ‘You think?
The whore held the papers and the mes
sages transferred to her palm.
You
have nothing but blank paper.
But of cour
se if you don’t believe me…
’ he added as an afterthought, ‘old woman.’

Isolde licked her lips but with barely a pause she thre
w down her ultimate challenge.
‘Kill me then and if you use the charm to do it, you
kill all for a hundred miles.
I wouldn’t have thought you had the cour
age to do something like that.
Perhaps I misread you.’

‘Perhaps you d
o.
I am
your
grandson after all.’
He went to lift Lalita’s hand but something flicked past his ear and Isolde gasped and stag
gered, fist held to her chest.
In the nightlight, a slic
e of something sharp glittered.
He looked quickly at his lover and she gave a tiny nod of her head.

She had taken the last sliver of moonglass from his belt as she tripped against him and thrown it with unerring precision and fo
rce so that it pierced Isolde.
The crone grasped it, trying to extract it but it stayed obscenely stuck as she tottered to a tree and slid down the trunk.

Lalita!

‘Isolde,
dearest
grandmother.’
Finnian’s voice stripped bark off the
trees on the side of the lake. ‘Have we won, do you think? Could this be your bane?
Maybe the whore here and her weapon were always to be your
bane but you just didn’t know. Oh but no!
Maybe it’s the moon that’s your bane for that’s moong
lass that cuts into your life.
Would Fate do that to
you,
do you think
?’
Moonglass appears in the darkest of times when innocence and goodness are under threat.
The image of Killymoon sprang into his mind and as quickly disappeared.

‘I gave you life, you ingrate.’
Breath came in short bursts, creating a syncopated rhythm with Lalita’s own beside him.

Outwit, Finnian, outwit.
His mind had great clarity.
She’s not yet dead and could take the advantage.

‘Life?
You gave me a half-life, a pu
rgatory of beatings and worse.
A lif
e filled with pain and misery.
For what, dearest Gran
dmother, should I be grateful?
The world can only be better for your absence and my life begins to improve by the minute.’

‘Then I curse your son,’ she panted, ‘with th
e half-life of which you speak.
His life
shall be filled with silence.
And the silence itself shall be overflowing with pain, a silent scre
am that cuts a soul in half.
And the pain shall be flooded with guilt and his guilt shall be borne by him because his father feels none.
He shall suffer.’

The words hissed out as if she were a basilisk rising above Finnian and Lalita in a filthy column. Lalita shrank by his side, as though the rank curse had meaning for her and his arm c
lasped her tight at his waist. He scoffed.
‘Do you
think I care for your curses?
I have no
son nor any likelihood of one.
Your words are empty and as dark as your hea
rt. Look down, Isolde.
Look at the stai
n spreading across your chest.
Your
life’s blood empties from you.
Does it scare you?’

‘Stop, Finnian. Enough.
Please,’ Lalita begged, pulling at him.

Isolde stared at him, eyes still filled with fire, a look that burrowe
d in like a corkscrew turning.
As she hovered on the edge of death, the sky began to pale and in the east, an apricot and la
vender tint edged the horizon.
In tha
t instant, he knew he had won.
That moonglass from the hand of a mo
rtal was indeed Isolde’s bane.
In one of the trees, a lone blackbird trilled, a solo that thrilled the world – a tru
mpet call celebrating light.
Finnian scooped up the paperweights, dropping them with exaggerated brinksmanship into his coat pocket.

Isolde’s eyes never left Finnian’s and as her garment became shiny with blood, and as her hands clutched at the wound, she smiled at him, an expression of such hatred that he knew he w
ould remember it for eternity.
More words hissed forth and even then he was awed at her ability to fight even unto death.

‘No son you think? Think again. Ask your little whore.’
She laughed, th
e sound bubbling into the air.
‘H
e shall be born in your image. And if…’
She stopped in mid-breath, like the running d
own of a Venichese wind-up toy.
He would swear she had more to say, some dark message, but although her eyes remained open, th
ey were empty.
The fire had been dowsed and the hands frozen into pugilistic fists.

***

Finnian turned to Lalita and
there was no smile, no relief. ‘I should berate you…
’

‘You could thank me, whore that I am,’ she said and was relieved he did not purs
ue the crone’s revelations of a child.
‘We had nothing to lose and everything to gain
. And I hated her so much for what she did to you and because she sucked all the goodness from the air. It was tangible.
Kholi tau
ght me how to wield a dagger and I can see Fate again… even in that. But I swear I did not know it was moonglass that was her bane.’ S
he shuddered as she remembered the Strigoi.  ‘It’s over, Finnian.  And without massive loss.’

He slipped his hands either side o
f her jaw and held her softly.
‘Not quite.
’ He kissed her. ‘
Have you forgotten?’

Lalita’s heart flipped over.
As she watched the shatranj game play out, she had barely breathed, her mind going over and over what sign Rajeeb might have given her of the charm she had release
d from the broken paperweight.
When the memory returned, her skin flushed and sweat trickled under her arms as she imagined all the living things in their vicinity that would wilt, curl and die as Finnian called the charm to best his grandmother.
She would have let him do it if it had been necessary, but she would have lived with the horror and shame to eternity and back and when she fell against him and touched the moonglass, she had no thoug
ht other than overreaching hatred
for a woman who had wrought such pain and
would continue to wreak more.
Her temper knew no finite end as she held the sharp point, flicking it swiftly end over
end toward the woman’s heart. Sending thoughts after it.
Die.
Die, woman, and take my hate with you.
She could barely
believe it was Isolde’s bane.
As the weapon flew she had been sure there would be glamour to push back death; that Finnian would have to use the Cantrip to finish the woman.

But it was unnecessary.
The moonglass from her mortal hand was all that was required.  She could feel tears of relief at the edges of h
er eyes but she would not cry. Not yet.
‘I have not forgotten,’ she said.

He bent and kissed the corner of her mouth and then took her
remarkable, her tattooed hand.
‘I don’t know how this is
to pass, Lalita?
I think we must keep walking.’

She said nothing, turning to stare at Isolde’s body, and then following him to the edge of the lake and into calf-deep water, holding his hand as if it were a lifeline.

‘Brother.’
A voice shouted and there was splashing behind them and an an
gry hand pulled Finnian round. ‘What do you do?
Sh
e’s dead, what are you doing?’
Phelim looked from one to the other, his expression not just perplexed but bordering on furious.

‘Don’t, please.’ Finnian pleaded.
He tugged away but Phelim jerked at his arm again.

Lalita spoke as she
saw the pain in Finnian’s eyes.
‘Let us go, P
helim, we have the answer now.
They can be inte
rred on the island,’ she said. ‘They can never be retrieved.
Is it not one of the laws of death, that one can never return?’

Phelim’s face froze. ‘You can’t do this. It’s too great a thing.
Lalita, what about your child?’

‘What?’
Finnian’s attention sharpened.

Honesty, now and forever.
‘Finnian, I…
’

But Phelim butted in. ‘Look!’
They followed his finger as it pointed across the water.

The mists had parted revealing the silver filigree trees and a waiting crowd of people cloaked in colours that glit
tered like frost on the night.
A boat as black as death glided across the swathe of t
he lake, a man
in the stern.

The craft drifted to the shallows as the newly made family struggled with t
he weight of what was to come.
A shadowman stepped
out and splashed toward them.
He touched Lalita as he passed and a shiver progressed over her shoulder – as cold as ice, as warm as the sun.

‘Finnian,’ Liam said, for it was the third
brother who stood before them. ‘There’s little time.
It gets lighter and we must leave.’

Phelim grabbed the shade of his brother by the arm, but it was like grasping at air and Liam spoke gently.

‘There
will be time one day, Phelim.
For now, go
back to Adelina and Isabella.
And believe in the
courage of Finnian and Lalita.
This is a choice of heartbreak but a necessary one.’

‘Cou
ld you not take the Cantrips?’
The begging tone in Phelim
’s voice warmed Lalita through. ‘Let them stay?
She is with child.’

‘With child?’ Finnian stared at her.

‘Did you not know, brother?’ Liam asked Finnian.
‘She carries your child, and I say to all of you, for that very reason I would
take the Cantrips if I could. But watch.
Fi
nnian, give me a paperweight.’
Finnian went to pass one over but the glass fell through Liam’s vapid grasp a
nd rolled to the water’s edge. ‘You see? I rue the day.
But even more
is the fact of Lalita’s hand.
She
is
the other charms.’
His face portrayed deep sympathy
, kindness in a fraught moment.
‘I
am sorry, we must go.’
The boat bega
n to withdraw and he jumped in.
‘Quickly, the boat won’t wait.
It is your last chance.’

Finnian grabbed Phelim and clasped his arm and saying not
one word, swept Lalita aboard.
She steadied herself, blocking the desperate fear t
hat threatened to swallow her.
Finnian’s arms wrapped around her and she wished she could bury her face in his chest and close off the view of her vanishing
life, her disappearing world.
But instead she watched Phelim as he splashed to the shores of the living world.