Shadow Hand (Tales of Goldstone Wood Book #6)(120)

Turning, they saw the warriors beside their bronze stones. The stones, larger than life, fixed into the turf, were melting. Runnels of liquid bronze ran down into a pool on the ground, steaming there before sinking into the dirt and vanishing.

And as the stones melted, the warriors themselves faded to wisps of nothing.

The giantess Kasa howled. Her stone broke at the sound and vanished in an instant. She herself, caught in the twisting wind, dissipated and was gone, never to be seen again. Her brethren, watching her fate, screamed with redoubled terror.

Foxbrush stared at them. Then he pushed himself from Eanrin’s grasp and turned to the one bronze stone that stood without its warrior.

“Daylily!” he gasped. Though the wind threatened to fling him off his feet as it had the Faerie beasts, he put his head down and started toward the stone.

“What are you doing?” Eanrin cried, his voice barely audible.

“I’ve got to reach her! I’ve got to find her!” Foxbrush replied, but since his face was turned away from the poet-cat, his voice could not be heard. But Eanrin read his purpose in the set of his head and shoulders, and the words of the ballad sprang to his mind.

No lance, no spear will save the night,

Nor bloodshed on the ground.

This alone will be your fight:

To hold your lady, hold her tight

When once again she’s found.

Eanrin leapt forward and caught Foxbrush’s arm. He put his mouth to the mortal’s ear and shouted to be heard.

“Grab the stone! Hold on to it and don’t let go!”

Foxbrush nodded and Eanrin released him. Another wail broke suddenly into nothing, and Eanrin turned to see that a second bronze stone had disappeared, taking its warrior with it. Then he saw Sun Eagle standing in stoic silence, staring at his own stone as it melted away. There was little of it left now.

“Lord, grant me strength,” Eanrin muttered between bared teeth. Then, the wind propelling him from behind, he ran to Sun Eagle and threw himself at the stone. He took it in both hands.

It burned.

“Dragon’s teeth!” Eanrin shouted and yanked his hands away.

Sun Eagle looked down. The wind should have knocked him over, but he braced himself against it, his shoulders back, his chest bare and covered in old bloodstains and scars. He was fading around the edges, losing his form and substance as the Bronze melted away. His long black braid whipped behind him, melting into the night, and his eyes were mere dark slits as he gazed at Eanrin.

Eanrin reached out to grab the stone again, cursing at the pain but determined. “Hold on!” he shouted, looking up at Sun Eagle. “Help me!”

Sun Eagle bent down, his face level with Eanrin’s. And the cord around his neck dangled, the bead with the white starflower flashing bright for an instant.

“Tell her she is always with me,” Sun Eagle said.

Then he brought his fist down, striking Eanrin in the jaw and knocking him over. Eanrin let go of the stone, and when he did so, it burst.

With a cry, Sun Eagle vanished, carried away like smoke in the wind.



Foxbrush was thrown from his feet several times as he struggled toward the stone, his mind a cacophony of sounds and sights he could not understand. But the Bronze gleamed in its melting. And there came to his mind suddenly the woodcut image in Eanrin’s Illustrated Rhymes, the one he had seen long ago as a child.

King Shadow Hand, bearded and fierce, holding the Fiery Fair as she melted.

He could not see Daylily, had caught no sight of her after the wolf tore into the shadow of Cren Cru. The ceiling and floor had broken, and she had vanished, lost in the storm of pain and the whirling fall of the stolen children.

And now here he was, somehow back in this world. The phantom children were nowhere to be seen, not Lark, not any of them. All he saw was the stone.

He reached it at last and stood over it, watching helpless as it collapsed on itself. What had Eanrin said? Hold it?

“This alone will be your fight,” he whispered.

He put out both hands, one bleeding from bite wounds, the index finger partially torn away. They shuddered with redoubled agony as they neared the stone, which radiated a dreadful heat.

Then, with a cry, Foxbrush grabbed it.

Pain coursed through every nerve of his body, up his arms, his shoulders, into his brain, down into his very core. He screamed and wanted to let go, but some drive beyond self-preservation made him tighten his hold instead, even as the Bronze dripped over his fingers, melting his skin and bones along with itself.

Suddenly Daylily stood beyond him. Daylily, wolf or maid, he could not say. It did not matter; it was she in truth.

She stared at the Bronze, at his hands. Then she looked at Foxbrush, her eyes, always unnaturally large, enormous in her face.

“Foxbrush!” she cried. “Let it go!”

He screamed still, unable to stop for the pain. But he shook his head.

“Please!” she cried. “You have to let it go!”

She grabbed his shoulders, forcing him to look into her face.

The wind and the pain and the howls of the dying warriors.

The burning, burning, searing heat.

All of this vanished in the depths of her gaze.

“It’ll destroy you, Foxbrush,” said Daylily. “Don’t love me. Let me go.”

Foxbrush shut his mouth against his own cries, closing his eyes. Tears of utmost pain streamed down his face, and he thought his head would explode.