Shadow Hand (Tales of Goldstone Wood Book #6) (12 page)

“You never mentioned a woman,” said Nidawi, who was not the sort to remember any woman besides herself. Tears brimmed yet again. “Faithless, heartless, cruel man—” she began.

“No, no!” Foxbrush put out both hands. “Please don’t cry! It’s . . . it’s nothing against you, I assure you. You are by far the loveliest woman I’ve ever clapped eyes upon—”

“Oh, well, that’s settled, then,” said Nidawi, and her tears vanished at once behind a satisfied smile. “If I’m lovelier than this Daylily creature, then who cares if you break off with her to marry me as you should?”

Foxbrush rubbed his nose and took another tentative step back. Though not the most insightful man in the worlds, even he could conclude that now was not the time to mention his intention of ending his betrothal to Daylily. The lioness flicked an ear his way, and he froze once more. “It’s a, um, a matter of honor. I must honor my promise to her. And I must find her as well. So you see, I don’t have time to marry anyone else.”

“Find her?” said Nidawi, her pout returning. “Find her, why?”

Foxbrush breathed a heavy sigh and dropped his gaze. He saw the scroll lying near, a little mangled by Nidawi’s pearly teeth. “She ran away into the Wilderlands. I’m not sure what became of her, but I must—”

“If she ran away,” the Everblooming said, settling down to the ground as elegantly as though she sank into the cushions of a fine couch, “she can’t like you very much, so I don’t see why you make these protests. Come. Sit by me.” She patted the ferns beside her, smiling invitingly and making Foxbrush’s stomach drop. “I like you well, and besides, I need you to kill someone for me. She can’t say that much, now, can she?”

For a brief, thrilling moment, Foxbrush almost took one step, then
another, then sank into those alluring immortal arms. All thoughts of his life and his mission and his world could so swiftly be forgotten.

But a timely sneeze returned enough of his sense that her words sank even to the dullest places of his mind. “I’m not killing anyone,” he said, rubbing his nose.

“Not yet.” Nidawi ran long fingers through her own hair and shrugged prettily. “But you will. Which means you have, which means . . . Oh!
So much!
Now come here, mortal king, and let me kiss you.”

Foxbrush fled.

He did not run, for he knew that it would do no good, but he turned on heel and walked very fast, stopping only long enough to grab up the scroll as he went. His face flushed deeply with something between panic and dread, and his heart thudded madly in his breast. He could easily imagine the tear of the lioness’s claws in his back, the fire, the rip, the end. . . .

His hands in fists, he strode as fast as he could, and the trees parted to make way, though he did not notice this. He knew the name of the Everblooming. What child in Southlands did not? She featured in many rhymes and nursery tales, even in the
Ballad
of Shadow Hand
, if he remembered correctly.

But that was just it. This nursery story wanted to—he nearly choked at the thought—wanted to
kiss
him! This children’s book character, this figment of some strange man’s even stranger imagination! Real and voluptuous and terrifying and . . .

It was too horrid. He must escape.

“Where are you going?”

“GAHHHH!”

Her voice in his ear propelled Foxbrush into a faster pace, though he maintained enough control over himself to keep from breaking into a full-out run. “I . . . I . . .” He panted, for she had drawn up beside him, striding on her long legs, the leaves of her gown fluttering. Foxbrush could feel the silent thud of the lioness’s feet behind. “I am simply, um, going . . .”

“I haven’t told you whom to kill yet,” she said, using a patient voice that was more terrible even than her wrath. “You mortals really are odd beasts, aren’t you?”

“I’m sorry,” he said, trying but failing to outpace her, for she matched her stride exactly to his. And his own wasn’t great in any case, what with his shoes falling apart and leaving bits of themselves in his wake. “I really can’t kill anyone. And I really can’t marry you either!”

“Oh, that’s what you say
now
,” Nidawi replied with a merry laugh. “But you’ll change your mind. Mortals always do. I’ll make you a Faerie king, and though I won’t give you three lives, I’ll give you one nice
long
one. You mortals like that, don’t you?”

He caught another sneeze. His head was beginning to throb. Why, oh why had he not thought to grab an extra handkerchief before setting off on this fool’s errand? “I think you’re very kind, my lady,” he said, “but I prefer the life I’ve always had, humble though it may be.”

“A
mortal
life?” she asked, a sneer in her voice.

He nodded and she fell silent beside him. The trees cast their green shadows around them, and Foxbrush noticed for the first time that he heard no other sounds besides his own footsteps and the beat of the lioness’s paws. Nidawi moved without even a murmur of her fern-leaf gown, and there were no birds in the trees.

A grove of five thin silver-branch trees grew up nearby. Nidawi saw them and twisted her pretty mouth thoughtfully. “I’ll take you back to
There
if you like, my king,” she said, and her voice was quieter than it had been hitherto. “I’ll take you back to the mortal realm.”

“I . . . I can’t go before I find Daylily.”

“Lumé’s crown,” she snapped, and her long-fingered hand clamped down upon his arm. “If I never hear another word about this chit of a mortal girl of yours, it’ll be too soon!”

She whirled him about to face her. She was suddenly neither a young woman nor even a child, but a much older woman, stern, beautiful, not alluring so much as commanding. There were streaks of silver amid the black and green of her hair, and her large eyes glowed with purple fire.

“I can’t make you love me, but I can certainly make you obey me!” she snarled, and her voice was deep and dreadful, and it struck him in the gut. “You’re going to the mortal realm, and you’ll think about what I’ve told
you. And when I come to you again, I hope you’ll have a different song to sing into my ear!”

Foxbrush opened his mouth to speak but did not have a chance. For Nidawi the Everblooming pushed him violently. For a moment, he glimpsed silver branches overhead as he flew and he fell . . .

. . . and he lay stunned.

Several moments passed before he realized that he did not lie upon crushed ferns. Nor did the canopy of the Wood’s branches and leaves close above his head but rather, blue sky, open and clear.

No sign anywhere of Nidawi or the lioness.

Foxbrush sat up, frowning, and looked about. He still clutched the scroll in one hand, and it comforted him, though he could not say why. Not many yards away stood the Wilderlands, casting long shadows that could not quite reach him. But he himself lay beyond its borders on rocks like the floor of a long-dry river. The gorge wall rose steeply behind him.

Frowning, Foxbrush got to his feet and brushed himself off. How he had come to be here, he could not guess. Had everything in recent memory been no more than a dream?

“Hullo?” No one answered, neither the specters of his imagination nor even Lionheart, whom he thought might still be near. His head hurt where he’d struck it, and he rubbed it uneasily, groaning.

“I know,” he muttered. “I know what happened. You hit your head when you slid down the trail. When Leo chased you. You must have knocked yourself out, and it’s all been a crazed dream . . . the sylphs, the woman, the lion . . . all a dream.”

But what a dream! Especially for a man who usually dreamed in numbers.

He shook himself out, noticing with dismay the tears in his shirt, the state of his shoes—both buckles missing—and the rents in his trousers.

He should have known better. He should have known better than to think he could find Daylily. Hero-ing was not for the likes of him.

Moving stiffly, too dizzy to make the climb, he started up the path, clutching the wall as he went. His sneezes were fading, so that was a mercy at least. He could draw a complete breath and his eyes were clearer. The sun was high and very hot overhead. He did not seem to have been unconscious
very long, which was just as well. Strange that no one had come searching for him yet. They were probably all in a clamor at the Eldest’s House, and when he returned and told his tale, they would nod solemnly, then laugh to themselves as soon as his back was turned.

Maybe he could sneak in unnoticed?

He flushed angrily. Oh, how the rumors would fly, and the jokes as well once it became public knowledge that Daylily had fled her own wedding. Was it evil for him to hope that she may have been abducted, not run off on her own?

Shaking his head at his own folly, he scrambled up the last of the path and slipped at the end, nearly vomiting his heart out in a moment of terror on the edge of the gorge. Then he gained the upper country and stood in the Eldest’s grounds.

Only, they weren’t the Eldest’s grounds. They couldn’t be.

For where the stump of the old fig should be stood a great, spreading, fruit-laden tree. And beyond, all was wild, dark, teeming jungle.

“Dragon’s teeth,” Foxbrush whispered, his hands turning cold. “Where am I?”

T
HE BEATING
OF
A
HEART
.
The thrilling sickness of a
gut. The rush, rush, rush of adrenaline coursing through veins.

How strange are these things called emotions, and how exhilarating.
How could one ever become accustomed to such sensations?

The
utter, ecstatic delight of terror!

She must be mad. Why else did she run from the shelter of the jungle? Why else did she plunge through the screaming throng of women, pushing them aside like so many frail dolls?

She must be mad. Why else was her voice upraised in something like a scream or battle cry?

Daylily’s feet beat the ground with painful insistency. She did not know what she would do when she reached the well. Could a hero be taught to
slay a dragon before the dragon descended? Could a maid outsmart an ogre whom she had never met? As the challenge came, so must it be overcome.

She covered the distance to the well in mere moments. Only when she reached the lip of that churning water did she pause, and the wind caught at her hair and her gown so that to those watching she looked like some fiery angel poised on the brink of the Dark Water.

The well was green and black, a witch’s caldron of bubbling evil.

The child
can’t live,
some piece of her mind argued.
Not
in that. He’s drowned already. You cannot help.

Dive! Dive!

Or die!

Daylily bared her teeth and plunged feetfirst into the water.

The surging froth and closing darkness was full of malevolence. Daylily felt it immediately, as thoroughly as she felt the cold. Water filled her nose, for she had not thought to take a proper breath, and she struggled upward for air. Her skirts closed around her legs, binding them. But she broke the surface and gasped a half breath.

Something caught her ankle. Something pulled her down.

It was like being caught by waterweeds, slimy and clinging but stronger by far. She was pulled into a blackened world, and even when she opened her eyes, her vision was filled only with stinging murk. She struggled and kicked at whatever held her, but to no avail. Her sumptuous underdress weighed her down, and she sank farther than she would have thought possible into the coldness of the well. She thought her lungs would collapse with the need to breathe.

First, there were bindings upon her wrists. Second, she found that air was given her, though she did not know why or how. She breathed it in desperately, then opened her eyes.

Two white lanterns pierced the darkness of the well. Daylily looked into the face of Mama Greenteeth, who grinned, her fangs gleaming in the light of her own expressionless eyes. Then the apparition swam away, and Daylily followed the trail of light left by her eyes to see where she went. Across from her, not many feet away, was the stone wall of the well, perhaps man-made, perhaps lined with homey care by Mama Greenteeth herself.

The child was bound to the wall. Daylily saw he wore over his mouth a flower gleaming pale green in the light of the monster’s eyes. A similar flower covered her own mouth, and she wondered if this provided the source of air. The little one was unconscious, she saw and was grateful for his sake.

Mama Greenteeth made certain of his bindings, then poked him cruelly. With that, she pulled out from some crevice a handful of wafers and began to eat them. But the light in her eye as she studied the child said that she preferred warm meat to wafers.

Horrified, Daylily strained against her bindings. She could not see her hands, tied above her head. Her hair floated across her face, blinding her still more. But as it waved to and fro, she caught a glimpse of something at the very bottom of the well.

A leafy plant grew in the center, its big leaves stirring of their own volition. And from this grew, like a stalk or stem, the sinuous body of Mama Greenteeth herself.

Daylily’s eyes stung with the murky water, and she could see nothing else clearly. But this she saw with the clarity of noonday, and she fixed her gaze upon it even as she worked her hands against her bindings.

Dive and die! Dive and die!

Daylily gnashed her teeth, tearing the flower the monster had secured over her nose and mouth to keep her alive and her blood fresh. Mama Greenteeth was still gnawing at her wafers, but one long finger and longer thumb pinched the child’s arm, testing.

The time must be now.
Now!

Daylily pulled. With strength she had never before possessed, she tore her hands through the bindings, shredding her skin and filling the well with the taste and scent of her blood.

Mama Greenteeth’s slitted nostrils flared. She dropped the child’s arm and turned. She saw her prisoner, struggling against the encumbrance of her wedding rags, swimming for the rooted plant at the well bottom.

Daylily grabbed a stout leaf, and though it waggled against her hold, she pulled herself down and wrapped her hands around the very base of the plant, right down to the roots. She did not look up, even when the roar of Mama Greenteeth reverberated through the water and struck her with
a hammer force. She braced herself against the muddy floor and, using her own weight as a lever, pulled.

Mama Greenteeth reached her just as she pulled, and a clammy, claw-tipped hand struck Daylily across the face, tearing streaks down her cheek. But Daylily did not lose her hold, and she pulled a second time. Mama Greenteeth screamed and shuddered as the plant came partially loose. She lashed out again, tearing the flower from Daylily’s face.

Immediately all was dark and drowning and the life-ending pressure of deep water. Even the lantern eyes of Mama Greenteeth vanished, and Daylily felt she was alone in the well, and her last moments were upon her.

A wolf in her mind. Bound
to four stakes. Paralyzed by a stone of bronze. Only
the red rolling of bloodshot eyes.

And then—a snarl
!

Daylily snarled. One last time, she hauled on the plant, putting all the strength of her remaining life into her effort.

Roots sprang up from the mud.

The wail of Mama Greenteeth exploded from the well in a geyser rush. The sobbing women around the well clutched their children and pulled them back, and the men running from the village stopped in their tracks, eyes wide at the sight. Sun Eagle stood hidden in the jungle shadows, watching all, and his face was like a rock, but his mouth moved as he whispered: “You’ll live. You’ll forge the bond.”

The great fountain of Mama Greenteeth’s shriek fell back in a splash all around the well. And when it flowed away and the people gathered dared look once more, they saw a strange figure lying partially draped over the well stones, clinging to land.

It was Daylily, her red hair flattened across her blood-streaked face like a veil, her undergown clinging to her limbs. She held the child in her arms.

She must be dead. But this was not the Netherworld, where the dead wander, this place of swirling darkness and pain. Or perhaps it was. After all, the last time she stepped through Death’s gateway and descended the long road into his world, she had been one of the living. Perhaps the pain and darkness were saved only for the truly dead.

Then her body convulsed.

Daylily coughed up a flood of dark water. Her ears swam with wet and distant sounds, but they were living sounds. And the thud of her heart, painful against her breastbone, told her she was not yet passed to the Realm Unseen.

The women of the village held back from the well even after the burst of water left the two sodden figures lying like drowned corpses upon the edge. Then the skinny young girl gave a cry and sprang forward, reaching for the child and for the strange ghostly maid who was his rescuer.

But Sun Eagle was there first. He took Daylily in his arms and held her upright in time for more water to cascade from her lips in a sickening gush as her stomach heaved and lungs burned. She pushed her heavy hair back from her face and, though she did not yet remember what she sought, instinctively looked for the child. She found him mewling in his sister’s clinging arms. He was alive.

“I saved him.”

The worlds crashed and danced in Daylily’s mind as she clutched Sun Eagle and lay upon the bank. Her body, relearning to breathe, shuddered and shivered even in the heat. But her thudding heart soared to the heavens. “I saved him!”

“You did, Crescent Woman,” Sun Eagle replied, and she blinked without recognition up into his triumphant face. “You have proven yourself. You are a warrior.”

The men from the village, tools brandished like weapons, swarmed down the incline, joining the women and children. They hesitated at what they saw. Should they attack these strangers, this otherworldly girl with her bright hair, this savage youth with blood on his hands and face? But the skinny girl, her sibling held close as though she would never let go, caught Daylily’s hand in her own and kissed it again and again. Then she began to speak, garbled and quick. Daylily wondered if it was the sobs that made her words incomprehensible, or if she spoke another language entirely, an older, wilder language.

Sun Eagle, still crouched with his hands supporting Daylily’s shoulders, said, “She wants to know how she may repay you.”

“Repay me?” Daylily ineffectually wiped water from her eyes. “No,” she said, her voice a whimper. “No, no payment.”

A woman and a man reached them now, the parents of the two children. They put their arms around the girl, helping her to her feet. The mother grabbed the little one and held him, weeping, to her shoulder. But the skinny girl would not release her hold on Daylily’s hands. She continued speaking earnestly, tears flowing down her cheeks.

“No, please!” Daylily said, frightened somehow by the intensity in those words she could not understand. She turned to Sun Eagle. “Please, tell her I want no payment!”

But Sun Eagle shook his head solemnly. “You cannot deprive her of that right,” he said.

Then he addressed the parents, speaking with swift assurance in their language, or a language very like it that they understood but Daylily did not. But Daylily watched the expression on the mother’s face change, so full of relief one moment, so full of devastation the next. She reached out and put her arm around the skinny girl, drawing her to her side.

On the girl’s face, all expression vanished.

The father stood by, unmoving save to adjust his grip upon the weapon in his hand, a wooden club set with a sharp stone at one end, a crude hammer. Sun Eagle, his voice low, even gentle, said his piece, then stood looking from father to mother.

The man stepped forward, his hammer upraised, and would have brained Daylily on the spot.

It was over before Daylily could react. By then, the man lay in screaming agony, his arm twisted too far behind him, so far it must be broken, and Sun Eagle’s foot upon his neck, pressing his head into the ground. The mother screamed and dragged her children back, and the villagers all exploded in shouts and screams as well. Only then did Daylily find her voice.

“What are you doing? Let him go!” she cried. Though weak from her ordeal, she flung herself at Sun Eagle as though to drag him off. But she found the gathered crowd of villagers closing in, and she saw from their faces that she and Sun Eagle both would be torn apart in a moment.

Sun Eagle dropped his hold on the man, stepped away, and then took hold of the bronze stone about his neck and lifted it high. It flashed in reflective fire from the sun, so blinding that even Daylily shielded her eyes.

“In the name of my master!” Sun Eagle spoke in a language unknown but understood by all. “In the name of the Sacred Mound! By the bonds uniting the Far and Near, and the blood that must spill to make all things whole, I say to you: Stand down!”

The villagers drew back. Though they kept tight hold on their tools, their fists clenched in wrath, their eyes were full of terror, and they crowded against one another in their efforts to back away.

Sun Eagle took hold of Daylily, who was near collapsing once more. He supported her, keeping her upright until she found a tentative balance. The crowd parted with frightened murmurs as they made their way through, every man and woman bowing their heads as though to some dread sovereign. Only the children dared look, and they from safe hiding behind their parents.

Sun Eagle half carried Daylily, but he made her take each step, however slow, all the way back up the incline. Only once they had reached the sheltering jungle and were hidden from the villagers’ eyes did he allow her to sink against him with a moan.

Gently, he helped her to kneel, then waited until her body stopped heaving up more water and sickness. He stroked the back of her head like he might stroke a dog, even after she had finished and merely sat unmoving in the dirt. Her once white underdress was brown, and leaves and bits of bracken clung to it.

“I’m sorry,” she gasped at last.