Shadow Hand (Tales of Goldstone Wood Book #6) (20 page)

“And meanwhile, what if they strike again? What if they kill more totem beasts and demand yet another tithe?”

The Eldest simply shook her head, for she had no answers to give.

Foxbrush sat with his meal cooling in his hands. Hungry though he was, he had no will to eat, not with the strange, sad scene playing out before him. Everything they said was incomprehensible to him.

Quietly he set aside his bowl and got to his feet. Still no one looked his way.

“Your pardon,” he said with as much dignity as he could muster while clad only in his trousers, his feet bare, his torso still smeared with Lark’s healing medicines. The Eldest and Redman looked up at him as though surprised by his continued existence. “Your pardon,” he repeated, “but I must be on my way now. If you would have someone point out the road to this Greenwell, I would be obliged. . . .”

Redman frowned at him, his ugly face far uglier in the firelight. “You’re going to set out now, in the dark, on a road you’ve never traveled?” He made a scoffing noise and did not bother to go on, so ludicrous did this idea strike him.

“Please,” said the Eldest, more kindly, “stay a little. You’ll not find your red lady, even if she is the one you seek. My men, expert trackers all, searched the whole of that area for any sign of her or her companion. They found nothing save this on the lip of the well.” She put a hand into a pouch at her side and withdrew a slip of dirtied silk, once white. This she handed to Foxbrush, who took it with a shudder. A scrap of Daylily’s wedding gown.

“I must find her,” he said, clenching the sorry remnant into his fist.

“As must we,” said Eldest Sight-of-Day. “We must find them all and the children they stole. Stay with us, stranger. You may be able to help. Not tonight. Not in the dark. The dark is full of too many hungers.”

Foxbrush felt his legs giving way at those words and hastily sat before he disgraced himself further. He curled his knees to his chest and studied the fire even as Redman and the Eldest conferred together in low tones. Their words trailed with the smoke up through the hole in the roof, for Foxbrush could no longer listen or even try to comprehend.

He saw Daylily in the flames. Daylily, his resentful bride.

Daylily, the monster slayer.

For the first time since all these dreadful events began, his heart beat with terror for someone other than himself.

Lark, sitting beside her mother, watched Foxbrush. Then she crossed to him, picked up his bowl, and placed it in his hands. She took a seat beside him. “Eat,” she said and grinned, which was an odd but welcome sight in that room of solemn fears.

Foxbrush, who never ate without silver, grimaced down at his bowl. Worms—that’s what the cold onions resembled, coiled round the chunks of fish and spices. Grimacing but feeling the pressure of Lark’s gaze, he selected a sliver of onion and popped it into his mouth.

The explosion of heat on his tongue was enough to make him choke. Sweat broke out on his nose, and his eyes watered.

Lark giggled. “Hot,” she warned rather late. Then she scrambled to her feet, all elbows and knees, and scampered to a dark corner of the room. She returned with a bowl of goat’s milk, which Foxbrush drank gratefully despite the taste of grass and mud and lingering goat. It cooled the burn, and he could then taste the variety of flavors so rich upon his tongue. Cinnamon and sugar, peppers and ginger, along with spices he did not recognize combined in ways he had never before imagined. Yes, there was also a taste of dirt—one to which he must become adjusted in this era of dirt—but if anything, it enhanced the whole. He had never, in all the royal banquets and feasts at which he had dined, tasted anything like this.

“Good?” Lark asked.

He managed a smile, braced himself, and took another bite. “Good,” he said, gulping down more milk.

Far beyond the village borders, a wind stirred the tops of the jungle trees. In that wind a voice called eagerly,
Foxbrush! Foxbrush! Where are you? I’m coming
for you, Foxbrush!

B
Y
THE
TIME
THEY
REACHED
THE
W
OOD
, Daylily was breathing properly. But with breathing came words, and she moaned and whimpered and made a fool of herself. Sun Eagle told her to be silent, and his command was sharp enough to shut her mouth at least until they’d descended the gorge and regained the shadows of the Between.

There Sun Eagle allowed Daylily to collapse beneath a tree, shuddering and drawing her knees up to her chest, clutching at the sides of her head. He stood back at first and watched her, fighting the various urges that pushed him this way and that. Then he shook these off and was himself for a moment at least. He knelt and put an arm around Daylily’s shoulder.

“You have nothing to fear,” he said quietly as she buried her face in his neck. “You have taken the Bronze. Nothing can hurt you.”

But she shook her head and moaned again.

“Was it that thing inside you?” Sun Eagle asked.

She nodded. In a voice like a child’s she said, “She will always hunt me. She will always plague me. I will never be free. And then she will devour me.”

Sun Eagle sat holding her, silent and uncertain what to say. Something fluttered into the branches of the tree above them, and he looked up to see a songbird there, brown with a speckled breast and bright eye. The bird sang, and the song fell over the two below. Sun Eagle shivered at that sound, and his stomach turned.

Form the bond. Do what you
must.

He stood, leaving Daylily where she was, and his voice was no longer comforting. “Stay here,” he said. “I must go to the Land and establish the tithe for the beast’s death. Don’t go anywhere.” He bent and pulled the bronze stone from beneath her tangle of hair, arranging it so that any who might happen by this way would see it at once. Daylily made no move but to press against the tree, shuddering. He scowled at her. “I’ll return shortly,” he said.

Then he was gone and she was alone in the Wood. Or not quite alone.

“You know what I told you,” sang the bird in the tree above.

Daylily, startled, looked up and glared at the bird. “You again? Why don’t you leave me in peace?”

“If I leave you,” replied the bird, hopping from branch to branch, “you’ll have no peace. Do you remember what I told you?”

“No,” she said, which was a lie. But the bird knew it was a lie, so it didn’t much matter.

He ruffled his wings, then cocked his head to one side. “You’ll have to let it go,” he sang. “If you don’t, it will eat you, just as you fear.”

“If I do, it will eat me; if I don’t, it will eat me. The end is the same either way,” said Daylily. Her voice was dull now with a quiet acceptance. “But I have done my duty. I have taken it away into the Wood, and I have found one who can bind it better than I could. It will eat me, but it will eat no one else!”

“There’s where you’re wrong,” said the bird. “The longer you cling to it, Daylily, the stronger it will—”

She snarled, interrupting the song of the brown bird, drowning out
the words so that she could not hear them. Then she groaned, bowed her head, and sank into a deep, troubled sleep.

———

In the broad, barren landscape that was both dream and memory, the being which assumed Daylily’s form walked, searching and sniffing and watching warily. The being knew it would find the she-wolf if it looked hard enough. There wasn’t much else to find in this place. Not anymore. Not in this new, strange, wonderful, awful mind.

What a find it was! What a catch! A mind like this, properly tempered, could do so many things, and the face of Daylily smiled a smile that was not Daylily’s.

“So you’re wearing
her
now, are you?”

The figure of Daylily turned in a flurry of torn wedding clothes, and the smile that was not hers grew at the sight of the red she-wolf. The rusted manacles tore more deeply than ever into the wolf’s flesh so that the ruddy red of her coat disappeared under the scarlet red of blood. But the wolf’s eyes flashed ice-blue. “I don’t think that aspect becomes you at all. You look a fright!”

The face that was Daylily’s frowned.
Oh, you think so? How sad. Perhaps we should . . .
oh, wait! We almost forgot!
The smile that wasn’t hers returned, quick as a knife.
Nothing you say can
matter anymore. You’re practically dead.

“Not dead yet!” said the wolf.

Better than dead,
said the figure of Daylily. She knelt and touched the chains. The wolf tried to lunge at her, and she flinched, then relaxed. The manacles were far too strong.

But she saw that the bronze stone she had tied about the wolf’s neck had slipped off. She picked it up.

How did this happen
?

The wolf panted in agony, but there was a grin in her voice. “Don’t you wish you knew?”

The figure of Daylily sat and looked upon the wolf. Then, with a strength beyond any she knew outside of dreams, she took hold of the chain securing the wolf’s right forepaw and twisted it, twisted the wolf’s leg, farther and farther, up unto the breaking point and then—
Snap!

The wolf screamed in Daylily’s voice. The whole of that barren world, the gray plain and the dark sky, rocked in agony. And when she stopped and the wolf lay gasping in agony, the figure that was Daylily tied the bronze stone on its cord about the wolf’s neck to dangle beneath the huge iron collar.

You’re much stronger than we thought.

The wolf could not answer through the pain.

We know how to break
you. We know all your secrets. You see, we are
Daylily now. And she is us. And we are strong
together.

The wolf’s voice was a puppy’s whimper. But already her leg was beginning to heal, though it was warped and painful still, for the bone was unset. Her lips curled back from her teeth, revealing pale white gums. “You’ll never be strong enough,” she gasped.

Won’
t we?

The figure that was Daylily sat upright.

Behold
our strength.

She put out an arm. It reached for miles, for leagues, for years. It reached beyond worlds and beyond minds. And it found a place where a young man hid in the topmost reaches of a tower, the door bolted and blocked, his captive bound to an iron link in the wall. He sat with his back to the door, listening to the whispers of those outside planning how to get in, fighting exhaustion and terror in his struggle to keep awake and alive.

The thing that was Daylily grabbed him by the collar and lifted him out of himself, hurtling him back across distances so vast they could not be fathomed, for such is the distance between each mind. And he, as dreamers do, thought nothing of this strange flight. If he felt anything at all, it was relief to be, however briefly, freed from the
knock,
knock, knock
ing on the far side of the tower door.

He stood upon the barren plain, his eyes closed, feeling nothing save the ground beneath his feet.

Then the she-wolf said, “Lionheart?”

He turned. What he saw startled him so much that he staggered back three paces and flung out his hands to catch his balance. Then he whispered, “Daylily?”

For it was she whom he saw bound by the manacles to the dirt-driven stakes, facedown with a chain about her neck. Her red hair fell freely over her shoulders and face, her only covering in that desolate place. For here she could have no protection.

“Daylily!” he cried and leapt forward, unaware of anything else that might watch them. He did not know if he dreamed or if, by some strange magic (many strange magics had been happening to him lately) he had been transported here. He fell to his knees beside her, searching for some lock or catch he might undo. “What happened to you? How did you come to be so bound?”

“Go away, Lionheart,” said she, her voice husky and low. “Don’t touch those chains.”

But he tried anyway, for such was his nature, always contrary, always disobeying. He could find no means to free her, however, and at last he had to sit back, his fingers bruised and bleeding, staring at her aghast.

She struggled up to her knees. The length of the chain allowed her that much freedom at least. Her hair, longer here than it had ever been in life, fell across her front and covered her knees like robes.

“Did you return to Southlands?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said.

“After I was gone?”

“After you were gone.”

“But that didn’t matter, did it? You did not come for me.”

Lionheart tried to swallow. The air was very dry, cold, and still in this place. “I came to make peace with my father.”

“That is good,” said Daylily, bowing her head so as not to look at him. “He is dying.”

“He is dead,” said Lionheart. “But I saw him. Before the end.”

She nodded. Then she said, “What did you do? When you left me, what did you do?”

“I died.”

Her icy eyes flashed up at him from under her shielding hair. “A ghost, then? Is that why you’re here?”

But he shook his head. “Not a ghost. I’m not dead anymore.”

He wasn’t. In the darkness of this place under that midnight sky, Lionheart’s face glowed. A glow of change, of growth, of life beyond anything Daylily had ever known or experienced. The closest thing to it she remembered seeing was in the face of a newly opened lotus flower just as the first breath of morning touched its petals. It had seemed to respond with a song of color and vibrancy that Daylily herself could not hear but could just barely see.

It was a sight she hated, for she could not share it. And she hated it now in Lionheart’s eyes.

She tried to raise her hands as some sort of shield, but the chains on her arms restrained her. She could only turn her head and stare out across the blight of her mind toward a horizon of darkness.

“Did you find Rose Red?” she asked at last. “Did you save her?”

Lionheart studied that profile, the crisp lines of her jaw and brow, harder and more stern, yet simultaneously more vulnerable in this barren land. Beautiful Daylily, not so beautiful now. He found it difficult to speak.

“No,” he managed. “That is, I did find her, but it was not I who saved her. She is safe now though. She is . . .” He stopped, uncertain how to continue, and Daylily heard many things in that silence, things he might not have intended to reveal. “She is safe,” he said. “And she is whole.”

“By whole, I assume you mean no longer hideous,” Daylily said, still gazing out to the emptiness. “Did you come upon some beauty spell and, just like magic, solve all your problems?”

“Rose Red was always beautiful,” said Lionheart. “I was simply too blind to see it.”

How she wished to laugh! How she wished to throw his words back in his face, to ridicule, to . . . to bite.

To tear.

To rip.

The red wolf turned suddenly and lunged at Lionheart. But he did not move, for he had seen already what she was, and he knew that she could not reach him. As he looked at her, tears welled in his eyes, spilled over, and fell to the dust, where they disappeared, unable to touch the dryness.

“I wish—” He stopped, waiting for his breath to allow more words. “I wish I could save you, Daylily,” he said.

The she-wolf growled and lunged again, and fresh blood flowed from the bite of the chains. “I don’t
want
you to save me!” she roared. “I want to
kill
you!”

“I see now,” Lionheart said, quiet before that ravening fury. “You bound yourself. Your true self. Deep inside.”

“But I’ll get free!” the wolf raged. “I’ll get free, and I’ll see you dead! I’ll see them all dead!”

“You’re killing yourself. From the inside out.”

“At least I’ll be free from all of you.” Again and again the wolf struggled and tore at the earth and howled and shook her shaggy head. But the stakes held, and the chains, though they groaned, were strong. At last the wolf collapsed again. The bronze stone about her neck weighed her down.

Lionheart stood looking upon her, and more tears coursed down his cheeks. “I wish I could save you,” he said. “But I understand that I can’t. This is why I wasn’t sent after you. This is why I must remain.”

“You’ll
never
come after me! Coward!” The wolf panted, scarcely able to get the words out, so thick were her mouth and throat with foam.

Lionheart turned even as she hurled curses and abuse at his back. He walked away into the empty plain, each pace taking him farther from her sight. He disappeared at last into the gray and the dark.

The wolf collapsed and did not breathe, strangled under the weight of the Bronze on her cord.

The being that wore Daylily’s shape stepped outside, back into the Between, where Daylily sat pressed up against a tree, her head bowed to her chest. Her eyes flickered softly open, and consciousness flowed back in, however unwillingly.

There. We are safe now. The wolf is dead
.