Shadow Hand (Tales of Goldstone Wood Book #6)(119)

But she could smell it. The stench of greedy, desperate searching for something that could never exist. The slayer of worlds, the stinking Parasite.

“You are the Protector!” the Hound declared, and she knew he had called her by her true name, the name she had never known existed. “Now strike!”

She was not the Betrayer.

She was not the Manipulator.

She was not the Destroyer.

“You are the Protector!” bayed the Hound. “Mighty Protector! Courageous Protector! Beloved Daylily, strike!”

The she-wolf sprang at the shadow. Foxbrush looked up in time to see the red fury falling, the flash of white teeth, the burn of intense blue eyes, and he thought he saw his own death. But her jaws clamped down upon the shadow itself, upon the being of Cren Cru that hid inside this Mound and stole the minds of those it wished to possess. But it was nothing. It was no more than a bloodied, suicidal dream.

She took that dream between her teeth, and she tore it into pieces.

———

Reeeeaaaaarraaa!

The high, piercing screech shot across the empty wasteland, tore through the sky, cutting it so that raging red light shone through. To Foxbrush, it seemed as though the rest of the floor beneath him shattered and pillars crumbled and the ceiling overhead broke to reveal fire. A wind rose up, howling in agony, and it whirled through the children gathered above, tossing them like so many leaves in a storm. The walls gave way, collapsing in silence, for they were unreal, and nothing could be heard anyway over the continuous ravaging shriek of Cren Cru.

Foxbrush stared at the destruction, at the children falling down and down, for there was nowhere for them to land now. And he realized that he too was falling, and all the world was made up of that single, ongoing scream.





14


THE STONE KNIFE LAY just beyond reach.

Eanrin saw Sun Eagle’s hand reaching for it across the blackened grass, and he brought both fists down hard between the warrior’s shoulder blades, knocking him flat, then reached out and snatched for the knife himself. It was like a dead thing, and Eanrin shuddered and hurled it far into the darkness beyond the bronze light, where the frantic voices of the Faerie beasts rose like a wall all around.

Sun Eagle spat dirt from his mouth and sprang to his feet, standing opposite Eanrin. The two circled each other before the mouth of the Mound, alone within the surrounding Bronze other than the remaining children, who stood silent and unmoving before the doorway to their doom.

Eanrin glanced at them, cursed, then turned a flashing smile at Sun Eagle. “Did we interrupt some charming little ritual? How inconvenient for you. But you know, child sacrifice isn’t the thing these days, not since Meadhbh played out her hand all those ages ago.” He spoke lightly, but fury laced each word.

Sun Eagle’s face remained as stone. When he spoke, he said only, “You’ve lost her.”

“Yes, she ran where I’d prefer not to follow,” Eanrin agreed, placing his feet carefully as he eyed his enemy. He saw that Sun Eagle was slowly approaching one of the bronze stones, but he could not guess why. He prepared to spring before Sun Eagle could reach it. “Our little mortal king has gone in after her, and he’s the hero of this tale, or so the future me implies, so we’ll just—”

“She never loved you.”

The smile fell from Eanrin’s face.

“She would never love one such as you. Her heart is always with her people. Her heart is always with me.” Sun Eagle’s face was hidden from the bronze light, darkened by shadows cast from the Mound itself. But his eyes glowed with a spirit that had nothing to do with Cren Cru, a spirit that remained vital and resisting, deep in the center of his being. “Even as I wandered the Wood alone—even as I prepare to enter the darkness of my master—even in that darkness, her heart will always be mine.”

“Dragons eat you,” Eanrin whispered.

It was then that the Mound collapsed.

It fell away like a melting candle but left nothing behind as it went, disappearing into a swallowing emptiness, silently at first. Then the scream caught up—reaching out from the depths of Cren Cru’s pain into this world—and shot through those gathered, through the bloodied brawl beyond the bronze light, knocking warriors and beasts off their feet, leaving them curled up in sympathetic agony, clutching their ears.

Eanrin, his mouth twisted with pain, forced his eyes open. He saw the warriors, eleven of them now, none wounded from their fight so much as brought low by this shrieking that filled the worlds within their minds. They crawled in shuddering anguish toward their stones.

Something landed beside Eanrin. He turned, and to his great surprise, he saw Foxbrush lying as though he’d landed from a ten-foot drop, the breath knocked out of him but alive. Foxbrush also put up his hands to cover his ears, his mouth opening in a scream that could not be heard above the shrieking of Cren Cru.

Then, quite suddenly, the shrieking stopped, replaced by the roar of a great wind. It was enough to set the smaller of the Faerie beasts flying, caught up and hurled like dandelion fluff into the night sky away from the breaking center. The wind rose up from the black hole where the Mound had stood, swirling in a twisted rush.

Eanrin reached out and grabbed Foxbrush’s arm, and the two of them, straining against the wind, supported each other to their feet. They heard then a new set of screams.