by Prue Batten
‘Enough of your love-talk. Give me the charms.’
He threw two of the balls to his grandmother and she tossed them in the crooked fists of her hands and then laid them in their positions.
‘Come on Finnian, hasten’, she grunted as he positioned a strip of paper on the board under his toe. Lalita sucked in her breath and he prayed she would not give the game to the old woman. He weighted another strip with Ibn’s stone in his vazir’s square and Isolde sighed as she gazed at the paper.
‘So. There they are. They were like these?’ She gestured to the paperweights at her own feet.
‘The others broke,’ was all he said because he knew he would spit venom and anger but the old woman clapped her hands like a child.
‘Temper, my boy. Oh I am looking forward to this. Remember our games when you were young?’
How could I not? Every time I lost a piece to your aliyat skill, you would beat me for my inadequacy and I grew to fear the board and its pieces like another child would fear the strap. Only later when he had matured and had begun to develop a certain tactical mentality, did she sit up straight with sick delight, saying that she could finally play with someone who might test her mettle. He won occasionally but not enough to claim to be an aliyat. And as she surveyed the board with a proprietary sweep, he knew she could win… the paperweights, his life and Lalita’s and the future of an entire world.
That she could have taken the paperweights in an instant Finnian knew, but he knew also that she enjoyed malevolent games above all else – such was the nature of Færan. It was why he had been stolen as a babe, purely as a game of malintent. In fact perhaps she hadn’t been ill at all most recently. Perhaps it was all just cat and mouse and he had been set up utterly to find the charms. It would be like the old bitch to play that sort of game, to twist the mind and wrench it…
‘Are you ready?’
He nodded, wiping his hands down his breeches.
‘Sarbaz forward two.’ The black piece slid forward.
Finnian moved his end sarbaz forward two in response, the white piece gleaming in the evil nightlight Isolde manifested.
The game began.
Finnian took a hundred deep breaths as he thought through each move, mentally delivering an outcome in his head before he shifted an actual piece. Isolde claimed one of his alfils and a number of his sarbaz, but she still had two paperweights and he had Lalita. But the dynamics of the board began to change – he attacked well and at the same time set up defensive lines of his own.
His grandmother snorted as she surveyed the next move. ‘I am surprised, Finnian. You play as if you have something worth holding on to.’ Her gaze swept around the board as she talked. ‘There’s something I want to know, boy. Why use yew to poison me? An odd choice to be sure.’
He could hardly bear to answer but to keep her talking gave him time. ‘You always seemed wary of it. You had no yew amongst your poisons and there was my father’s staff.’
Her eyebrows rose as a look of incredulity swept across her face. ‘How absolutely amusing! I hated yew but I was never afraid of it. Yew was what the bed my daughters died in was made of. The stinking shrub was used by your father because he had a love of it, had a ridiculous bed carved into legends and myths for his concupiscent delight. Yew turned out to be my daughters’ bane, not mine. You idiot, I can’t believe you did not know. I had the staff destroyed because it was how I wanted to destroy your father – to have him burned and to scatter his ashes off a cliff.’ Her voice sank to a mean hiss. ‘I hated him.’
She shifted her gaze to Finnian and he pulled his shoulders back, arming himself against her. ‘You know boy, there were times when I would look at you and catch a look of your mother and I would think that I could almost love you as my own. But then the light would change and all I could see would be your son-of-a-bitch father. What do you think I see in you now?’ In one swift counter move, leaving him gasping with her audacity, she thrust a vazir diagonally and one of his paper strips flew out from under his toe to lie at her feet.
Lalita’s head jerked around to catch his eye as the old woman unrolled the crinkled strip. He shook his head faintly at her… a warning.
‘What is this?’ snarled Isolde. ‘There is nothing on this paper.’
He dissembled. ‘You must hold it to a flame. The words appear.’
She laughed. ‘Really. You say?’
‘I do say. Believe me or not’.
‘Aren’t you clever that you found this out. For sure I did not know. Never mind, let’s play on. I am ever honourable in my games and would never take things wantonly.’
Finnian gritted his teeth. Think Lalita, think. Three charms were now in his grandmother’s possession. Two were real, one was fake. He had some moves that could give the old woman pause for thought but she had him at check. All she did now was toy with him like a cat with a mouse.
‘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 heard 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 at his waist to steady herself. ‘Don’t move, Isolde,’ he said 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.’
He shrugged his shoulders. ‘You think? The whore held the papers and the messages transferred to her palm. You have nothing but blank paper. But of course if you don’t believe me…’ he added as an afterthought, ‘old woman.’
Isolde licked her lips but with barely a pause she threw 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 courage to do something like that. Perhaps I misread you.’
‘Perhaps you do. I am your grandson after all.’ He went to lift Lalita’s hand but something flicked past his ear and Isolde gasped and staggered, fist held to her chest. In the nightlight, a slice 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 force 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 moonglass 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 purgatory of beatings and worse. A life filled with pain and misery. For what, dearest Grandmo
ther, 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 the half-life of which you speak. His life shall be filled with silence. And the silence itself shall be overflowing with pain, a silent scream 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 clasped 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 heart. Look down, Isolde. Look at the stain 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 burrowed 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 lavender tint edged the horizon. In that instant, he knew he had won. That moonglass from the hand of a mortal was indeed Isolde’s bane. In one of the trees, a lone blackbird trilled, a solo that thrilled the world – a trumpet 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 would 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, the sound bubbling into the air. ‘He shall be born in your image. And if…’ She stopped in mid-breath, like the running down of a Venichese wind-up toy. He would swear she had more to say, some dark message, but although her eyes remained open, they 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 pursue 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 taught 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.’ She shuddered as she remembered the Strigoi. ‘It’s over, Finnian. And without massive loss.’
He slipped his hands either side of 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 released 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 thought 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 her 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 angry hand pulled Finnian round. ‘What do you do? She’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, Phelim, we have the answer now. They can be interred 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 glittered like frost on the night. A boat as black as death glided across the swathe of the lake, a man in the stern.
The craft drifted to the shallows as the newly made family struggled with the 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.’
‘Could 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. Finnian, give me a paperweight.’ Finnian went to pass one over but the glass fell through Liam’s vapid grasp and 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 began 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 that 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.
The craft began to glide back over its watery path, not a ripple or a wave disturbing its strange progress. A thread stretched thinner and thinner as the distance lengthened, a pain cutting through her middle as if she would be sliced into two halves. She heard Finnian gasp and sag beside her. But Liam shouldered them both and like Ebba only days before in her daydreams, he whispered ‘It will pass, it will pass.’
The thread snapped and the boat swept on and they lost sight of the shore and their earthly brother as a familiar mist thickened and curled around the stern, hiding everything from view.
C
hapter Twenty Four
The island existed in a watery palette of colours, washed as if there was a veil of organza between the scene and the eye of the beholder. Often there were mists and at night it became hoary as a frost, in shimmering greys and silvers. But a profound harmony existed, with no care or trouble or very little that would disturb souls that had come. In the beginning, Finnian and Lalita lived in a cocooned somnolence, as if some greater thing protected them from a sense of loss, allowing them time to adjust to the momentuous thing they had done. That they might be saving the Eirish was one thing and sat lightly, but that they had given up everything that mattered, including an infant’s heritage, weighed like a thousand stones and Finnian had been glad of that temporary insulation.
‘Why did you not tell me when you knew?’ he asked.
‘I thought you would use it to keep me safe.’ Lalita sat enfolded in his grasp. ‘But then the family arrived and the charms transferred themselves and there wasn’t time. Are you angry?’
‘No,’ he replied as his hands smoothed over and over her stomach. ‘How can a father be angry? I am sad that it will be born here, that we are here, but we have no choice now and we shall love it more because of the strange circumstance. But I tell you, my dearest Lalita, if being born here protects the infant from Isolde’s malediction, I am glad. More than I can say.’
It seemed she had been happy with that as she said nothing and he refrained from mentioning it again, choosing to watch her child and his grow inside her. He thought often of Isolde’s attempt to speak in that last moment but finally let it go as Time moved on, trying hard to believe that the curse was limited to those words Isolde had spoken aloud.
He spent many moments talking to his brother, Liam listening with an intensity that resonated with Finnian. He was reminded of the one-sided imaginings of his youth.
‘Bitter,’ he finished one day after detailing the last of his life with Isolde.
