Shadow Hand (Tales of Goldstone Wood Book #6)(106)

He put out his hand and took hold of the Bronze. But it burned him, and he dropped it quickly, drawing a sharp breath of pain. Daylily let go of him then and placed both her hands over the stone, hiding it against her bosom.

“Twelfth Night is coming,” she said. “Eleven nights have I been bound by the Bronze.”

Her voice was strange and thin. Foxbrush frowned without understanding and wondered if she would let him hold her again. Somehow, he didn’t think it would be a good idea to try. “It’s been months, Daylily,” he said. “Months since I saw you.”

She shook her head. “It has been eleven nights. And Twelfth Night is coming. The final tithe is demanded.”

Foxbrush licked his cracking lips. “You are not one of them,” he said, though he knew he deceived no one, not even himself.

“I am not one,” Daylily whispered. Her shoulder was stained with fresh, oozing blood from the wound Foxbrush had watched Lark dress. Her body trembled with the pain of it, but she could scarcely feel a thing through the Bronze she wore. “I am not one. I am many. And I am gone.”

“No!” said Foxbrush, and his voice was more fierce than she had ever heard it. He reached out to her, grasping her arms. “No, you are not one of them! You are yourself and . . . and you don’t have to go back!”

She looked up at him, and for the first time, Foxbrush saw Daylily. Not the Lady of Middlecrescent, cold and calculating, nor even the lovely girl who had flirted with Leo all those long summers ago. She was Daylily herself, and she was frail and frightened. But there was a wolf in her eyes.

“I love you,” he said. He didn’t know why he said it then. He knew only that he could not have helped himself, not though his life depended on it.

She blinked and for a terrible instant he believed she would vanish in that flash of her eyelashes. But when she looked at him again, she was still, however briefly, herself. “I know,” she said, reaching up to touch his face. “But I am gone.”

He felt the tips of her fingers brush like cold fire against his skin. And then, Daylily’s mouth moved, but a voice that was not hers spoke.

Twelfth Night is near. Come away. . . .

Though she stood before him, Foxbrush felt her dissolving in his grasp. “No!” he shouted. “You don’t have to go back! Stay with me, Daylily! Stay!”

Then she was gone. Foxbrush stood in the orchard, his hands grasping empty air.

In the branches above his head, a bird trilled a silver melody, a stream of music flowing into the night. And Foxbrush believed he heard words in the song.

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.

“Well, isn’t this a pretty dish of fish?”

Foxbrush started and looked down at his feet. To his surprise, he found a pair of golden eyes shining up at him, made luminous by the glow of firefly light.

“I followed my quarry this far,” said the cat, speaking in the voice of a man, “only to find the trail cold here. Tell me, mortal, have you seen a girl with reddish hair pass this way? I think I should like to scratch her eyes out. If it’s all the same to you, of course.”





10


OR PERHAPS I WON’T SCRATCH HER. Perhaps I will merely give her a disapproving stare. I haven’t quite decided.”

“Who are you?” Foxbrush stumbled back from the cat, which he could barely see in the night, other than those luminous eyes. In the past many months he had seen more than his fair share of Faerie beasts and had become uncomfortably comfortable with their strangeness. But, while this cat was far from the largest or most threatening encountered, he somehow frightened Foxbrush more than even the giant Kasa.

For Foxbrush felt, though he could not say why, that he knew this cat somehow.

“I’m far too busy to deal with stupid questions,” the cat replied, turning his head this way and that, delicately sniffing the air. “I pursued the mortals deep into the Wood only to lose their trail entirely. But I picked up hers again eventually, and she led me here, of all places. The South Land. Yet again. I can never seem to be rid of this place.”

The cat’s voice was surprisingly bitter. He stood and padded around beneath the fig trees, sniffing some more. He came to the place where Nidawi had sat with the dead body of Lioness, and his lips curled back in a hiss. Then he fixed his gaze upon Foxbrush.

“What do you know of Nidawi and her murdered companion? I can smell that you were here at the same time as Nidawi and the red warrior. Are you harboring a murderer, mortal?”

“Daylily is no murderer,” Foxbrush said with more courage than he felt.

“Daylily, eh?” said the cat. “So you know the warrior girl.”

The cat stood up then and disappeared into the form of a tall man with a golden, shining face that was visible despite the darkness. It was an angry face, its anger carefully masked in disdain. He looked Foxbrush up and down and, like a cat posturing for battle, began to circle him. “And who are you to be mixed up in the affairs of Faerie queens and murderers? You don’t seem either important or threatening. Why should they both come here to you and not trouble to kill you? They both are so dragon-kissed keen on killing things, each other included. Why not you?”