Shadow Hand (Tales of Goldstone Wood Book #6) (26 page)

“Light of Lumé, don’t be a gloomy sort!” he told himself, beginning to smile again. “There will always be some excuse out of it, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t press forward. And press forward you shall, just as soon as—”

A lion’s roar, deep and bellowing, rumbled through the Wood.

Immediately Eanrin dropped into cat form, his eyes wide and his pink nose twitching. He smelled the lion and knew it was near. What he could not smell was whether it was friend or foe.

It was definitely on the hunt.

His first instinct was to turn around and leave well enough alone. He was a cat, after all, and survival was chief among his concerns. Indeed, he had even turned and made the first few paces back toward the safety of the Haven when another sound, nearer than the lion’s roar, caught his attention.

It was birdsong.

His tufted ear twitched and, though he showed his teeth irritably, he looked back over his shoulder. He did not see the bird, nor did he expect to. But he knew the voice.

“Lumil Eliasul,” he whispered. And then he saw what he sought. A new
Path opened up from the one on which he stood. It led into the deeps of the Wood. It led toward the sound of the hunting lion.

“Bother it all,” the cat muttered. But he had made vows of service, and he meant them, no matter how inconvenient. Tail bristling and body low to the ground, he skulked swiftly through the underbrush, pursuing this new Path. It opened up before him as he went, like the birdsong itself, flowing swiftly and unpredictably but with a true course. It led him far and fast across the Wood, away from the Haven, which he did not like. But he dared not disobey, even as the scent of lion and the sound of its roaring grew.

Before he found the lion, however, he found its prey.

A young man in savage clothing—a mortal by the smell of him, though so long in the Between that much of his mortality was already lost—lay on the ground where he’d collapsed, blood spilling from a gash in his leg and pooling around him. Eanrin pulled up short, his nose wrinkling at the stench of fear and flight. This was the lion’s prey, no doubt about it; the wound smelled of predatory claws.

The lion would soon be upon them. Even now Eanrin felt the thuds of its feet, the pulse of its shortened breath. He must act quickly if he would act at all.

He stood up into man’s form and approached the fallen youth. “Are you awake?” he demanded, beginning to lift the stranger without waiting for an answer. The young man, startled by his voice, drew back with a cry and would have fought, however feebly. Eanrin quickly said, “I am a Knight of Farthestshore, and I can help you. Trust me. I’ll get you free of your enemy, and my comrade-in-arms will tend your wounds.”

Sun Eagle, for it was he, stared wordlessly at the golden stranger before him. Then he nodded and allowed Eanrin to help him to his feet. As they scrambled to get upright, Sun Eagle snatched the Bronze from around his neck and tucked it deep into a pouch at his side, a swift gesture that went unnoticed by the cat-man, for Eanrin was distracted by yet another roar from the oncoming lion and another, higher voice shouting, “Find him!
Kill
him!”

“Referring to you, I presume?” said Eanrin, stepping onto his Path and
hastening as best he could while supporting the youth. “You’ve certainly made some hard and fast enemies. Takes talent, that does!”

“Please,” said Sun Eagle, his voice thin with pain, “get me away.”

“That’s the idea,” said Eanrin.

They hurried on in silence. The lion was near enough that had they not been walking the Path of the Lumil Eliasul, it surely would have seen them. But while they were on the Path, it could not find them even if it were to pass within inches of their location. It knew they were near, however. Eanrin could hear its low, frustrated growl. It was following the trail of blood, for Sun Eagle’s wound bled freely. His skin was ashy gray, and his eyes rolled in his head.

“It’s a wonder you made it this far,” Eanrin said, more to himself than to the stranger. “You’re from the South Land, by the smell of you, and that’s far from this watch! You must have fallen on a Faerie Path by accident, and lucky for you.”

Sun Eagle did not answer. His arm was round Eanrin’s neck, and his other hand clutched at the wound in his thigh, desperately trying, but failing, to staunch the bleeding.

Before they reached the door of the Haven, Eanrin began bellowing Imraldera’s name. He had little hope she would hear, wrapped up as he knew she would be in her work. But lo and behold, no sooner did the Haven come in sight than Imraldera flung wide the door and stood upon the threshold looking out.

“Eanrin?” she called. “What’s wrong?”

“Oh, nothing much,” he replied. “Just lions and gore and fainted youths. The usual, you know.”

“Dragons eat you, cat,” she snapped, hastening to them. She reached out to the stranger, whose head was bowed to his chest in groaning agony. “Easy now,” she said. “You’re among friends. You’re safe.”

She touched his shoulder. His head came up, and he stared at her with eyes that flashed dark fire.

“Starflower,” he gasped.

W
HAT IS
THAT
?

On a dark plain under the starless sky, figures began to move.

At first they were nothing more than wafting shadows. But they assembled themselves with dignity, climbing stairs that did not exist to a balcony made of nothing. They carried instruments in their hands: dulcians, pipes and tabors, psaltries, viols, and a great set of richly decorated drums. As they took up these instruments, their shapes became at once both more indistinct and more real; they existed purely for the song they produced.

Soft, sweet, mournfully beautiful melody flowed down from the sky.

What
is that?
asked the mouth of Daylily that was no longer Daylily’s.

The she-wolf, flattened to the ground, blood dried in her coat, did not raise her head. But her icy eyes glanced up at the figure beside her. “Music,” she said.

We don’t like it.

The she-wolf snorted. “Since when did you start having likes or dislikes? Before or after you stole bodies?”

The figure of Daylily made no answer but watched as more shadow figures moved. These assembled below the musicians, and they formed strange figures and patterns as they flowed in and out from one another, always in time to the song.

“Dancing,” said the wolf. And she sighed. “I used to love dancing.”

Two figures stepped out from among the rest until they may have been the only two. And these, as they danced, became more vivid. A prince in white with a fibula of a seated panther on his shoulder; a lady in a flowing headdress, furs draped across her smooth shoulders. They danced and they smiled into each other’s eyes.

The wolf shook her head. “They never looked at each other like that. Only here in her mind. It was never so beautiful.”

The figure that was Daylily sneered but watched curiously even so.

The music changed. The tune became lighter, merrier, but despite this alteration, the mood of the scene suddenly darkened. The smiles fell from the faces of both dancers.

“Don’t leave me, Lionheart,” said the lady. “Don’t leave me standing here.”

But the prince stepped back, his face a stern mask. He let go her hand, and as he backed away, he disappeared into the surrounding shadows. And the lady stood alone, the merry music falling like sharp glass shards around her.

The she-wolf growled. “I will kill him one day,” she said.

Wait,
said the figure of Daylily, frowning.
Does he
return?

For a moment it looked as though he did. A man of much his build and coloring, also dressed in white, stepped out of the shadows, his arms extended to the lady. She turned to him, her smile momentarily flashing again.

But the man changed. His shoulders bowed, and his stance became awkward. His eyes, large and dark, squinted, either with nerves or nearsightedness. Rather than a fibula on his shoulder, he wore a crown upon his head.

“Let me dance with you, Daylily,” he said earnestly. “Let me take Lionheart’s place.”

And the lady, her face colder than ice, took his hand and allowed him to dance her away, spinning into shadows. The music fell into dissonance and then a silence darker than the blackness of the sky.

“All is lost,” said the she-wolf.

All is
mine,
said the mouth of Daylily.

“My da will kill me.”

“I doubt that very much,” said Foxbrush with a weak laugh that earned him a scowl from Lark. The little girl knelt on the floor beside Foxbrush’s own pile of animals skins (which he still resisted calling a bed). Daylily lay upon them, lost in some fevered dream that left her moaning.

Foxbrush had managed with some difficulty to carry Daylily most of the way up to the Eldest’s House before he realized that the people of the village would not take kindly to the presence of the “red lady” of whom they’d been hearing. Did they believe in fair trials in this age? He could not count on it.

So he’d left Daylily in the shadows near the jungle and, praying she would still be there when he returned, went to find the only person he felt he could trust.

Lark asked no questions, but after one look at Foxbrush’s face, left her sisters and brother in their small chamber and followed him out into the darkening night. The Eldest, her husband, and most of the villagers were gathered in the big stone central chamber of the Eldest’s House. But there were back ways into the humbler portions of that House. Lark showed Foxbrush and helped him smuggle Daylily in and hide her in his chambers.

“Out,” Lark had said then.

Foxbrush had started to protest. Then he saw Lark begin to peel back the last shreds of Daylily’s ruined underdress and made a swift exit. He stood outside the door (or crouched, rather, for the ceiling was very low) and waited, counting the seconds that felt like years.

But at last Lark called him back in, and he found Daylily clad in the Eldest’s old clothes, lying facedown with her shoulder exposed but dressed and well tended by Lark’s expert hands.

“It wasn’t deep,” Lark said to Foxbrush’s great relief. “Just a scratch. But I think she might be in shock. And she won’t let go of that.” She pointed to Daylily’s fist, which clutched the bronze stone.

Lark looked up at Foxbrush with sharp, questioning eyes. “She’s the lady they’re talking about, isn’t she. The one who killed Mama Greenteeth.”

Foxbrush shook his head. “Daylily couldn’t kill anyone.” As soon as the words left his mouth, he knew them for the lie they were. Still, he refused to admit it. For a moment he closed his eyes and tried, however desperately, to reclaim a fair image of her, an image he could bear: such as the time she visited his mother’s estate at Hill House for the summer, the first time he had seen her since they were children. She’d been a lovely girl of sixteen then, her hair piled high in shining curls tucked under a wide-brimmed hat to shade her fair complexion. Her hands had been gloved when she shook his in greeting, soft gloves of deerskin with jeweled bracelets at the wrists.

She’d scarcely looked at him then. She’d fixed her attention solely upon Leo. But it didn’t matter. Not then. Not ever.

Foxbrush drew a long breath. When he opened his eyes again, he found Lark studying him, her little mouth pressed into a line as stern as any scolding mother’s. “She’s from your time, isn’t she,” she said. “Is she your woman?”

“Not really,” Foxbrush admitted.

“But you’d like her to be?”

He shrugged, embarrassed at this bluntness from the child. “She’ll never be anybody’s.”

Lark nodded at this and looked down at the young woman under her care. In that moment, despite the childish roundness of her face and the older bitterness of Daylily’s, they looked very alike. Perhaps Lark felt some kindred link across the centuries. Perhaps she was simply too much a child to care about rumors. However it was, she bent suddenly, compulsively, and kissed Daylily’s cheek.

Then she faced Foxbrush. “I won’t tell my da. But if something bad comes of this, be it on your head.”

Foxbrush nodded solemnly and stepped back to let Lark exit. “She’ll not wake for an hour or so,” the girl said over her shoulder. “When she does, she’ll be in pain, so find me.” With that, she was gone.

Foxbrush sat beside Daylily, pulled his knees up to his chest, and waited. As he waited, he frowned and pulled the scroll Leo had given him out of his shirtfront. By this time, it should have been mashed and unreadable. But as though by magic, it remained whole and legible. Foxbrush unrolled it and read:

Oh, Shadow Hand of Here and There,

Heal now the ills

Of your weak and weary Fair,

Lost among the hills.

You would give your own two hands

To save your ancient, sorrowing lands.

“Ancient, sorrowing lands,” Foxbrush murmured, not realizing that he had begun to read the poem out loud or for how long. He stopped when he heard the sound of his own voice, embarrassed but thoughtful.

He put a hand to his shirt where the tears of the Everblooming had dampened it. And he shuddered suddenly at the closeness of everything, the nearness of the strange and fantastical pressing in upon his life.

When he looked up, he found Daylily watching him.

“Dragon’s teeth!” he exclaimed, dropping the scroll in his surprise. “You’re awake! She said . . . she told me you would sleep for an hour or more.”

“I never sleep long, no matter the drugs.”

Her voice was dark and low, quite unlike the bright, crisp voice Foxbrush had only ever heard her use before. He wondered if this was her real voice and the other was fake, another mask.

Daylily tried to turn and groaned, her brow wrinkling at the pain in
her shoulder. But she ground her teeth and drew a long breath, then made her face go smooth.

“Shall I get help?” Foxbrush asked, half rising.

“No,” she said quickly. “No one. I—” She compressed her pale lips. Then she whispered, “I must go.”

“You can’t. You were . . . well, you were mauled by a lion.”

Her eyes flicked up to meet his again, and her eyebrows lowered, then rose. “What are you
doing
here, Foxbrush? What are you doing in this place?” Her hands gripped the animal skins beneath her, and she glanced about at the small, dark room lit by a tiny fire in the corner, smoky and dank and smelling of mold and animal droppings. It was the most unlikely setting in which to find the fastidious crown prince. And he the most unlikely figure of all! He wore skins like a native, and his skinny arms were bare and darker than she remembered. His hair, which she’d only ever seen flattened down with oil, stood up in wild, wooly tufts and sported more than a few leaves and sticks.

Most altered was his face. A growth of scraggly beard outlined his jaw and chin, making him look older than he was. Lines deepened around his eyes and mouth in the firelight, lines of worry and of fear, but also lines of—what was it? She could not say and did not like to guess.

“You are,” said Daylily, pushing her hair back from her face, “possibly the last person I expected to meet in this place.”

“I followed you.”

It was like an admission of guilt. He bowed his head and could not look her in the eye. A long silence stretched between, each considering the words that hung still in the air.

Then Daylily said, “That was foolish. I did not wish to be followed.”

She sat up then, wincing at the pain, and tried to move her left arm. Her shoulder protested, but she could feel for herself that the wound was not deep. She slipped the shoulder of the old, brown-woven shirt into place, and it scratched the wound and stuck to the dressing. “Now,” she said, “I will be going.” She looked down at the Bronze, still fast in her fist. “I . . . I must . . .”

We must find him
.

“What was that?” Foxbrush asked, looking around, startled. He could have sworn he’d heard a whisper of many voices shivering about the room, darting round the walls and vanishing into the fire.

“I heard nothing,” said Daylily. She started to rise, but Foxbrush reached out and caught her wrist. She frowned but did not struggle. There was no need. One glance and he would wither and back down.

But this time he didn’t. He met her gaze, and though sweat beaded his forehead, he did not break it. “Daylily,” he said, “I came to . . . to tell you something. I had to follow because you must hear this. I . . . I won’t marry you.”

She blinked slowly and said nothing.

“Yes,” Foxbrush continued, still holding her arm. She felt his thumb moving nervously up and down over her skin. “Yes, I thought perhaps . . . They found my letter to you, you see, and I thought—”

“Oh,” said Daylily, shaking her head and nearly laughing. “Is that all? Did you think it was
you
who drove me to the Wilderlands?”

Foxbrush opened his mouth but settled for a swift nod.

Daylily laughed again, and it was very like the cold, bright laughs he’d known back when she was the darling of the Eldest’s court. Foxbrush, flushing so hot he thought his face would melt, hurried on.

“I won’t marry you, Daylily. I’ve made up my mind, and nothing can change it.”

“Is that so?”

“Not even your father. I don’t want you for my wife. So, you see, you’re free now. You can come home and . . . and . . .” He almost could not speak the words but forced them out. “And Lionheart has returned. If you want to, you can marry him instead, and I’ll see that it’s all right. I’ll still be Eldest, I suppose, and I’ll have some power.” The look on her face frightened him, so he rushed on at full speed. “And I’ve found a way to save Southlands! They grow elder figs here, and they showed me how to pollinate them, and there’s no other market in the Continent that can offer them. Our trade will reestablish, and everything will return to the way it was. We’ve . . . we’ve only got to find our way back to our own time.”

Daylily, smiling softly, listened to this speech, saying nothing but shaking
her head so that her hair fell over her pale face. Only when his words finally trailed into nothing did she pat his hand and firmly remove it from her arm. Then she drew herself up.