Shadow Hand (Tales of Goldstone Wood Book #6)(118)

But then she saw Foxbrush sinking into the dry, dusty ground, brought low with shame. She saw him and drew a surprised breath, for she knew it was him, truly him. Not a mere memory, but Foxbrush himself, clad in those ugly, stinking garments, his face half hidden behind a ragged beard.

She opened her mouth to speak his name. But to her horror, she realized he was looking at her.

Just as she saw him in his true form here, so he saw her. Not the self she always presented, not the beautiful girl, the ruthless conspirator, the cold, unreachable beauty. He saw her.

He saw the wolf.

“Daylily!” Foxbrush cried, all thoughts of the near-Lionheart forgotten as he stared at the red she-wolf bound with bloodied chains to the great stakes. How he knew that foam-mouthed beast for the girl he loved, he could not say, for reasonable thought had long since fled. He knew in the depths of his frantically beating heart, and he surged toward that knowledge, pulling against the will that sought to swallow him.

“Foxbrush,” said the wolf.

And at the sound of his name falling from that mouth, Foxbrush felt his strength reviving. He fought the hold Cren Cru had upon him, heaving himself up and onto his feet. The floor remained unstable, but the tiles had shrunk now, and he stood up to a full man’s height. On unsteady but determined feet, he started toward her, toward the wolf. “Daylily,” he said again, his hands reaching out to her chains, eager to free her.

The figure of Lionheart lunged at him from behind, wrapping powerful arms about him and hurling him from his feet. Foxbrush fell upon the tiles, which shattered like shards of glass into blackness. He put up both hands to protect his face, but now the figure of Lionheart was gone and, in its place, a shadowy form swooped down upon him and struck him again, on the face, on the chest. He tried to hit it, but something bit his hand with razor teeth and worried it like a dog pulling flesh from a bone. Foxbrush screamed and pummeled at nothing, for there was nothing to strike: no body, no form, only teeth and biting pain.

Daylily watched, and the wolf surged against her chains, ravening. “Let me loose! Let me loose!” she roared. “Let me kill it!”

“No!” Daylily cried, lost in her mind, uncertain of her own body and form now. Was she herself? Was she the wolf?

Was she Cren Cru?

“Let it go.”

From somewhere up above, the song of the wood thrush fell down upon Daylily. The next moment, she felt the bird himself alight upon her shoulder, though she wasn’t even certain she had a body anymore. She turned to the bird, and he looked at her with his bright eye. How could he follow her, even here, even into the heart of the Mound and her own blighted mind?

“Let it go. The time is now.”

“If I let it go, it will kill us all,” Daylily whispered.

“No, Daylily,” sang the bird. And suddenly he wasn’t a bird anymore. She found herself standing beside the form of a man, but not exactly a man. More like what man was intended to be at the beginning of Time and the Near World, before the ravages of mortality took hold and corrupted what should have been most fair. This Man was the realized ideal, the realized potential, and more besides—so much more! This form he wore could only just contain the glory of his majesty and the Song that burst from the inner depths of his being.

She knew him at once. She had seen him before, in the House of the Eldest. She had seen him enter the gate and then, two hours later, walk away again, and she’d never spoken to him. But she had known, even in that distant glimpse she’d had, that this person, this Man, was someone she must either love or hate. There could be no other response to him.

He looked at her now with his ageless eyes: deep, bottomless wells of kindness and strength. The Prince of Farthestshore, Lord of all the Faerie, son of the King Across the Final Water.

“No, Daylily,” he said to her. “It will kill you only if you cling to it. But if it dies, others will die as well. For they need you, Daylily. They need you as you truly are. Not this thing you pretend to be, this mimic of the real woman.

“Let it go. Release the wolf into my care and keeping, and I will show you how the worst in you, all that you most fear, may be transformed. Let the worst be made the strongest, the truest, the best!”


He put his hands on her shoulders. And suddenly she was the wolf herself, crouched in her chains, slavering at the mouth.

“Please!” she said, and her voice was the wolf’s, and the wolf’s voice was hers. “Set me free!”

The Prince smiled. Then he reached out and broke the chains.

The red wolf jumped forward and shook, and the shackles fell away, ringing as they struck the hardened ground. Her great claws tore at the soil, and she felt strength returning to her, beyond any strength she had ever known.

Then she leapt into a run across that barren landscape, chasing the dark shade that attacked Foxbrush. Running beside her, shoulder to shoulder, was a great golden Hound, and she matched her stride to his, pace for pace, and her heart thrilled in rhythm to his; as unlike the driving rhythm of Cren Cru’s shared purpose as a brilliant spring dawn is unlike the vacuum of deep space.

That which she had feared most in herself—that which she had struggled most to hide—the strongest, deepest part of her soul—flew now with every stride. Her eyes fixed intently upon the shadowy nothing that struck and bit and clawed at Foxbrush as he struggled with it on the ground, helpless before its wrath. He could not see it; neither could Daylily.