Shadow Hand (Tales of Goldstone Wood Book #6) (24 page)

Foxbrush nodded sympathetically, but his heart was still soaring at what he had learned that morning.

“I have to go,” he said.

“Fine, fine,” said Redman, intent upon his task. “No need for you to stand around here, I’m sure. There’s always more work to be done, just ask my Meadowlark, and—”

“No, no,” Foxbrush interrupted, hurrying on with more confidence than he felt, “I mean, I have to go. To leave your village. I must find Daylily and return to my own time. If I can. I can’t waste another moment.”

“Waste?” Redman paused and frowned up at Foxbrush. His face was very ugly when he frowned, though scarcely more ugly than when he smiled. “You call your time enjoying the Eldest’s hospitality a waste?”

Foxbrush opened his mouth to answer but stopped. After all, he would never have learned the secret of the black fig wasps had he not come here. How many other unknown blessings might he have received these last few days?

“No,” said Redman, wiping sweat from his red-burnt brow. Though he wore a makeshift hat of sorts, his skin, unsuited to the sweltering climes of the South Land, was forever peeling and freckled. “No, it’s my opinion you should rethink that last thought of yours, crown prince.” Foxbrush cringed at the title, which sounded so hollow and pointless in this place. “Your Path led you here, and your Path is not, so far as I can see, leading you away just yet.”

“What do you know of my path?” Foxbrush asked, his tone more surly than did him credit. But Redman did not seem to mind.

“I’ve traveled the Wilderlands down below,” he said, returning to his task of repair and handling his tools with expert grace as he spoke. “I’ve seen sights I could not begin to tell you and wouldn’t try if asked. I’ve
walked my share of Faerie Paths; I’ve followed in the footsteps of a star. I recognize a Path of the Lumil Eliasul when I see one.”

Without so much as glancing back over his shoulder, he pointed at Foxbrush’s feet. These were clad in tough leather cloths tied across the insteps and ankles with string made of animal gut. Foxbrush stood in a patch of mud and weeds, and as far as he could see, there was no path save the one a few paces behind him leading up to the Eldest’s House.

But he remembered suddenly Nidawi and her lioness. Especially Nidawi’s screeching yet oddly alluring laugh.
“You
walk the Path of the Lumil Eliasul, and you don’
t even know it!”

He had very nearly convinced himself that this encounter had been a dream. But it wasn’t. No more than the Twisted Man or the sylphs or the leather-tied shoes on his feet.

Still he said quietly, “I don’t see any path.”

“You walk it even so. Don’t try to escape it, and don’t try to hurry it.” Redman looked thoughtfully up at Foxbrush. “I know you want to find your lady. But you cannot simply wander off into the jungle and expect to happen upon her. I know the play and pattern of stories. I’ve lived enough of them by now to know! You were brought to me, a balance to my own tale, I should imagine. You need to stay here until it becomes clear that you must move on.”

“But how will I know?” Foxbrush asked, his voice a whisper of pent-up frustration.

“You’ll know.” Redman heaved a great sigh and stood, turning the full intensity of his one-eyed gaze upon Foxbrush. He reached out and clasped the young man’s shoulder, opening his mouth as though to say more.

But a nearby cry of “Redman! Redman!” sent them wheeling around. A man ran up through the village between the mud-and-wattle houses, and villagers with anxious faces gathered in his wake. He fell to his knees before Redman, not kneeling but simply giving out at the end of what must have been a long run. Redman silently waited for the man to regain breath enough to speak. Foxbrush, sensing the anxiety in the gathered crowd and feeling more than one unfriendly gaze turn his way, stepped back a little, though he watched all with interest.

The man gasped out a string of words Foxbrush did not understand. Redman drew a sharp breath and barked an answer. The man shook his head and spoke again, then bowed down, exhausted, and did not move until someone brought him a skin of water, which he first poured over his flushed face before drinking.

Redman stood silently, looking neither at the villagers nor at Foxbrush but at the wounded kid in the goat pen. Then he drew a long breath and took the hat from his head as he rubbed a hand down his face.

“Your red lady has been seen again,” he said in Northerner.

Foxbrush leapt forward. “Where?” he demanded, looking from Redman to the messenger and back again. “Where is she?”

Redman shook his head. “She’s gone. She and others wearing the Bronze were seen in the Crescent Land not three days ago. This man ran all the way to tell us. They killed Tocho, the Big Cat of Skymount Watch. One of the most powerful totems in all the Land.”

None of this made sense to Foxbrush. But he grasped the one detail he did understand and held on like a lifeline. “She was seen there? At Skymount Watch? Where is that? Can he take me?”

“No, I told you,” said Redman, his voice angry now. “She is no longer there. They came and they went. Warriors wearing bronze stones about their necks. Killers of Faerie beasts.”

“But there might be something!” Foxbrush insisted, his eagerness blinding him to the look on Redman’s face. “There might be some sign, some token! She might be held against her will by these warriors you speak of! She is no warrior herself, and she couldn’t kill anything, I know. I must—”

“You must be quiet,” said Redman. And Foxbrush, though he wanted to protest, shut his mouth. “You do not know of what you speak. These warriors wearing the Bronze are moving throughout the Land. The messenger tells me there have been other sightings. And if your Daylily is wearing their stone, she is one of them.”

The villagers gathered did not understand a word passing between their Eldest’s husband and this stranger. They watched with fearful eyes, for the world had become a darker place since even the night before.

“Do you want to know what they demand in tithe for services rendered? For the killing of Tocho?”

Foxbrush didn’t want to know. But he couldn’t speak or even shake his head, so Redman continued: “Firstborns. Children. For every beast they kill, for every life they save. They demand the firstborn children of the Land. And they take them, Foxbrush. They come in the night, these warriors wearing the bronze stones. They came to the five villages nearest Skymount Watch, and they took all the firstborn children, leaving no trace behind.

“Your red lady, Prince Foxbrush, is stealing the blood of the South Land.”

Foxbrush stared at Redman. The words, foreign and dark, filled his head so that he could not comprehend. All was blackness and pain, and he felt his temples throbbing.

The only words clear in his head were two lines from the ballad he had read to the gathered children just the night before:

But dark the tithe they pay, my son,

To safely dwell beneath that sun!

Foxbrush did not leave the Eldest’s village that day. The villagers gathered in the Eldest’s House with Sight-of-Day and her husband to discuss what might be done in light of these dire happenings. Foxbrush, to no one’s surprise, was not invited but sent out among the children.

“What happened?” Lark demanded when Foxbrush appeared and descended the hill. Wolfsbane, balanced on her hip, added his own experimental, “Wha?”

But Foxbrush shook his head, which was full and aching. He continued on past Lark and her little sisters, who fell into step behind him like goslings behind a mother goose. They trailed him all the way down the hill and on through the village, ignoring the looks of those they passed, who did not like or trust the stranger (though they made respectful signs to the Eldest’s children).

“What is it?” Lark persisted as they went. “Is it the Bronze? Have they had more news?”

“Yes. No. I don’t know,” Foxbrush said, which wasn’t entirely untruthful. Lark, however, was unconvinced.

Still carrying her brother, she caught Foxbrush by the sleeve and yanked him to a halt with surprising force for her size. “Don’t talk to me like a child,” she said, which never ceased to sound strange coming from her childish mouth. “What news did the runner bring from the Crescent Land? I know it’s about the Bronze Warriors, and you needn’t try to hide it!”

Foxbrush looked at her hand on his sleeve, then at her. She scowled fiercely, and her three sisters, gathered behind, mirrored her face. Wolfsbane chewed on his fingers, but his eyes were no less solemn than those of his sisters, and they were very dark beneath his mop of red hair.

“We are the Eldest’s children,” Lark said. “We are strong and we are brave. We fear only ignorance. So tell us, wasp man.”

Foxbrush squeezed his eyes against the throbbing in his temples. Then he shook off Lark’s hand. “The Bronze Warriors are demanding firstborn children in exchange for the monsters they kill. Will you leave me in peace now?”

A variety of expressions flashed through Lark’s eyes. Then she bowed her head and took a step back, holding Wolfsbane close and allowing her sisters to close in around her. Foxbrush bit his tongue until it hurt, wishing he’d had the sense to do so before it spoke of what it shouldn’t.

With a bitter curse, he turned and walked away from the children, making for the fig orchards where he had spent that morning. Evening was descending, bringing with it the sultry heaviness of an oncoming storm. All was dark, and the black figs hanging in the branches of the elder fig trees looked ominous, like so many little black heads hung up as a warning by some cruel warlord.

Foxbrush shuddered as he passed on through the orchard. Now and then, when he looked up, he thought he saw the flit of wings and the glow of bulbous eyes. Perhaps they were merely evening birds and lemurs. Perhaps they were fey folk, drawn out in the gloaming murk, ready to mock him.

“He can save Southlands?”
they might ask each other.
“What a laugh!”

“What a laugh,” Foxbrush whispered. How hollow and foolish all his grand plans sounded. How hollow and foolish he was! He tried to put his hands in his pockets, found he had no pockets, and stood a moment, awkwardly wondering what to do with his arms.

Suddenly his nose began to tickle. He rubbed it but could not drive back the force of an oncoming sneeze. It burst out of him with an explosive roar, and he wished very much for a clean handkerchief . . . any handkerchief at all, for that matter. Rubbing his nose with the back of his hand, he cast about for a fig leaf as a substitute.

“You were thinking of me.”

Foxbrush startled and fell back against a tree trunk, one hand still pressed to his nose, staring about. He knew that voice, or thought he did. “Where are you?” he gasped.

“Right here, darling. Didn’t you see me?”

And Nidawi the Everblooming stepped out from behind the very tree against which he’d taken shelter, sweeping around to stand before him. She was mere inches from his face, one hand pressed into the tree on either side of his head, leaning in and smiling the most secret and brilliant and dazzling of smiles.

“You were thinking of me!” she said again. “I heard you. You thought of me and something I said to you, and I heard it, so I came at once. I
knew
you wouldn’t be able to get me out of your mind! Are you ready to marry me now?”

S
UN
E
AGLE
AND
D
AYLILY
passed through the Wood in silence and once more came to the gate. They entered the Near World and stood in the gorge, looking up to the tableland above. Daylily, dulled by now to the comings and goings, still looked unconsciously for the bridge she knew should be there. For this was the gorge near the Eldest’s House, or rather, near where it would one day be.

“Come,” said Sun Eagle, and they began the long climb. Worn and trembling, more disturbed than rested by her sleep in the Between, Daylily lagged behind Sun Eagle. He reached the top and waited there for her to catch up. A certain gnarled fig tree seemed to watch him, and he eyed it back and made certain it could see the Bronze upon his chest. It did nothing, and though Sun Eagle suspected a Faerie dwelled therein, he chose to ignore it for the moment.

In time, they would deal with them all.

Daylily reached the top of the gorge trail and sat, breathing hard and looking into the jungle. It was unusually quiet. In the deeper reaches, birds
and monkeys called, but here not even the buzzing of an insect disturbed the air.

“They know who we are,” Sun Eagle said, answering Daylily’s unspoken question. “They know the master has come to this realm, and they are afraid. As they should be.”

When Daylily was rested enough, he made her get to her feet. This time, when they progressed into the jungle, they took the man-made trail. “Our brethren are spreading throughout the Land,” Sun Eagle told her. “Every tribe and every village will see us and thank us and fear us for what we do. It is good work.”

“Good work,” Daylily echoed. “But what about . . .”

There flashed through her mind an image. She saw herself holding a child, carrying him toward a yawning black door. Who was that child? Where was he now?

Ask if you dare
,
snarled the wolf.

So the wolf was alive. Just as she’d feared.

Yes, I’m alive. You’ll
never be rid of me. Ask this Advocate of yours
what happened to that child. Ask what happens to all
the children!

“I’ll do nothing by your order,” Daylily whispered fiercely. “I am not your slave.”

You are a
slave, but not to me,
the wolf growled, then subsided for the time being. Silence fell upon Daylily’s mind, interrupted only by the shushing of the wind overhead.

For a moment, oddly enough, Daylily thought she heard a voice in that wind.
Foxbrush! Foxbrush!
it called as it wafted overhead.
Where are you, Foxbrush?

Daylily frowned, an unpleasant taste rising in her throat. Why should she think of that name now? Of all people, Foxbrush was the very last she wanted to remember. Her spurned groom, her unwanted lover. She shuddered and quickened her pace behind Sun Eagle. He glanced back and read things in her face she did not intend to reveal. He could not read all, for he knew so little of her. But he read enough.

“You must let go of your past,” he said, “if you hope to survive in this new life.”

Her eyes flashed, and she was again, however briefly, the cold Lady Daylily of Middlecrescent, who could freeze a man’s blood with a glance. “Who are you,” she said, “to tell me what I must or must not let go? What right have you to judge?”

His face remained impassive before her tight-lipped wrath. “I am your Advocate,” he said. “I have every right. And if you wish to be an Advocate yourself one day and take on an Initiate, you will do as I say.”

Daylily drew herself up, her tiredness forgotten in her ire. “Do as you say? Do as you do?”

“Both.”

“Let go of my past? Is that what you have done?”

“This is what all of us must do in order to devote ourselves fully to the master.”

Her gaze ran up and down his savage form—his skins, his bloodstains, his weapons, his scars. Then she said, “If that is so, why do you still wear those two beads about your neck?”

Sun Eagle’s face did not move. Slowly one hand rose to the necklace on which hung the clay beads, the blue and the red, name marks given him long ago to carry into the Wood as he made his rite of passage. He touched them now as though he didn’t quite know what they were.

The Land is all
. All we need.

“All we need,” mouthed Sun Eagle, but he still caressed the blue stone. Then he smiled grimly. “We have work to do. No more talk.”

He passed on into the jungle, and Daylily had no choice but to follow. Thunder rolled overhead, threatening rain, but the air was already so thick with moisture, plastering Daylily’s body with sweat, that she felt rain could scarcely make a difference.

Suddenly Sun Eagle stopped. He lifted a hand and Daylily also froze, tilting her head to listen, lifting her nose to sniff. But she sensed nothing. Nothing but jungle and greenness all around.

“What is it?” she whispered.

“A Faerie beast,” said he. Then his lips drew back in an animal snarl. “One I know. One I know too well!”

The next moment, he was running, disappearing into the green, and Daylily was hard-pressed not to lose him.

Foxbrush sneezed again.

He couldn’t help himself. It’s not something a fellow likes to do when a stunningly beautiful woman is leaning toward him with an expression on her face like Nidawi’s wore. But sneezes are not prey to the wants or wishes of those inflicted with them. He sneezed so violently that he nearly knocked his forehead against Nidawi’s exquisite little chin. She leapt back lightly, frowning at first, then shaking the frown into a rain of laughter.

“True love is such a beautiful thing!” said Nidawi the Everblooming. “It has made me decide to find that odd little quirk of yours charming. I can find anything charming if I love it enough. Even mortals!”

“Pardon,” Foxbrush gasped and pulled a fig leaf down to wipe his nose, simultaneously trying to sidle away from the tree and put it between himself and the fey woman. For she was overpoweringly beautiful with a natural, breezy, frolicking sort of beauty, like a flower or a young tree or a fawn on delicate, gamboling limbs. Her hair was loose and tangled, with thick braids of moss and flowers, and her leafy gown fluttered in the wind of an oncoming storm. One could far more easily believe she had sprung up from the ground than ever been born of a mother.

But she was too frightening for words. Trying to escape her, Foxbrush rounded the tree and started to back away when he felt a gust of warm breath on his neck. His mouth opened, his lips drew back from his teeth with the desire to scream, but his throat closed up. He turned his head ever so slightly and found himself gazing into Lioness’s black-rimmed eyes.

She started to purr. Foxbrush thought it a growl and nearly died on the spot.

“Lioness has decided she likes you too,” Nidawi said. Taking Foxbrush’s hand, she turned him to face the beast. “She wasn’t certain at first, but after we talked about it, she agreed you would be a fine husband.”

Lioness’s mouth was open, her pink tongue showing hugely between
her teeth. If one strained the imagination, one could believe it was a smile. But one required no imagination whatsoever to think it was a hungry expression. Foxbrush felt his knees giving out.

Nidawi caught him before he collapsed, easing him gently to the ground. Twilight was deepening, bringing with it a heavy summer storm. The first few drops began to fall, and Nidawi, seated with her arms around Foxbrush’s rigid body, tilted back her head and caught rain in her mouth. “Delightful! We shall have a drink to toast our betrothal!”

“B-betrothal?” Foxbrush shook his head, trying to find strength to protest. Despite the warmth of the evening, he began to shiver.

“Why, of course! Now that you love me, I see no reason for us not to wed. Just as soon as you’ve killed my enemy.”

Foxbrush’s head continued shaking for some moments before he could find words, during which time Nidawi laughed and stuck out her tongue to catch more rain, then suddenly turned and planted a huge kiss on Foxbrush’s cheek. This worked like a lightning bolt, shooting him instantly to his feet and out of her arms.

“See here, my good woman, I . . . I . . . I thank you for your kindly, um, thoughts of me, but I—” His hair flattened down across his forehead, and he pushed it back nervously. “I haven’t changed my mind. I still can’t marry you. Or kill anyone,” he added quickly.

Nidawi blinked. Despite the darkness, everything around her shone brightly. Her lashes caught the rain into tiny diamonds rimming her violet eyes, glittering like prisms, casting and creating gleams of light. How magical and beautiful and thoroughly petulant she was in that moment.

She crossed her arms. “If you don’t want to marry me, why were you thinking of me?”

“I wasn’t thinking of you.”

“Yes, you were. I heard you. Ever since I sent you back, I’ve been listening for you very carefully. You thought of my laugh, and you remembered it as
alluring
.” She grinned slyly up at him. “I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist the memory of me. Not once you got home to your own world.”

“H-Home? My own world?” All temptation to yield (which may or may not have been slowly building in Foxbrush’s heart) vanished as he
gasped out those words. He opened his mouth and roared like a young lion himself,
“You sent me back into the wrong time!”

She drew up her legs and sat more primly, her face an entire world of affront. “No, I didn’t. I don’t deal in Time.”

“You pushed me! You pushed me out of the Wood, and I landed
here
!”

“No, actually you landed
There
,” said Nidawi. “
Here
is . . . elsewhere. If you ended up anywhere, it’s because of the Path you’re on. Nothing to do with me.”

Foxbrush opened his mouth, but nothing happened, so he shook himself and managed a weak, “I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

He felt the breath of Lioness again. The great animal pushed her massive head under his hand and rolled it around so that he now stood with his arm up and across her neck. She blinked sweetly at him, her mouth still open as she exhaled a puffing lion’s purr.

“Um,” said Foxbrush. Then he sneezed again.

Lioness nosed him affectionately in the chest.

“Really, Lioness,” said Nidawi crossly as she scrambled to her feet. “You are too forward sometimes.” And she hurried over to take Foxbrush’s other arm, clutching it tightly. She smiled at him again, and he was nearly blinded by the glitter both of her teeth and of the rain in her eyelashes and hair.

“Please,” said Foxbrush, stepping back and trying to free his arms. “Please, I think I’m allergic to your lion.”

“My what?”

“Your lion.”

“My . . . oh! You mean Lioness?” Nidawi laughed like chiming crystals and refused to release Foxbrush’s arm no matter how he tugged. “She’s not
mine
! I mean, I suppose she sort of is. Are you
mine
, Lioness?” she asked the white lion, who shook her head briskly and padded away to lie down in a dry patch under a tree. She continued blinking Foxbrush’s way, but the tip of her tail swished quietly through the grass and over the roots.

“There now, you’ve offended her,” Nidawi said, shaking a finger under Foxbrush’s nose. “She’s not
mine
like a slave. I never kept slaves, not even when I had a world of subjects!”

A change came across her unbelievably delicate features. They sagged suddenly with heaviness, bags appearing under the eyes, lines deepening into framing crevices around the mouth, which, in turn, thinned to a narrow line. The black hair tumbling over Foxbrush’s shoulder and arm faded to gray, then to white. Nidawi the Everblooming let go her hold on Foxbrush and stepped away, bent and tottering so that she had to put out a hand and support herself against the tree.

It was unnatural and so sudden that Foxbrush took a moment to catch his breath. Then he licked rain from his lips and said, “I say, I’m sorry.” He put a hand on Nidawi’s bowed shoulder. “Was it something I said? Is it . . .” He grimaced. “Is it about the betrothal?”

But she shook her head. When she spoke, her voice was as heavy as her face but paper-thin and frail. “No, it’s just painful to remember.” She drew a shuddering breath that Foxbrush feared might shatter her body. When she turned to him, the lights had gone from the rain in her lashes, and instead her eyes brimmed with shining tears. “A mother should never outlive her children.”

Then she was sobbing an old woman’s sobs, dry and broken. Foxbrush put his arms around her and held her close to his chest, and her tears mingled with the rain. But unlike the rain, which was warm on that summer’s evening, Nidawi’s tears were cold, and they chilled him. Still he held her and smoothed her thin hair, from which dead leaves fell and littered the ground at their feet.

The moment ended with Foxbrush’s sudden yelp of pain. For Nidawi’s hands, which had been wrapped around him, dug into his skin with a surprising sharpness. Foxbrush looked down to see the white head sinking into a black mop of tangles, and Nidawi was a child again. A child turning away from him with a vicious snarl, her fingers curled into claws.