Shadow Hand (Tales of Goldstone Wood Book #6)(121)

Then he looked up again. He poured all his soul into Daylily’s eyes, all his heart into his words.

“I’d give my life for you.”

Another shriek, and another warrior vanished into the rushing wind. Daylily stood, her bloodstained dress caught up in a cloud, her red hair streaming, her being much faded. She stared down at the young man clutching the Bronze and his own destruction.

And she saw there the painful truth of his words, and it smote her to the core. He would die for her. This man she’d despised. He would die for her, and he would deem it a worthy death.

“Foxbrush.” She whispered his name.

He tried to respond, but the pain was too much and he screamed again, his body convulsing. But his hands never let go.

Daylily reached out. She put her hands around his.

She could not feel the burn that he felt, but she could feel the strength of his grasp.

“Hold on, then,” she said. “Hold on to me.”

The stone continued to melt. Bronze sizzled and bubbled and pooled away at their feet. One by one, the Twelve Bronze disappeared, and the warriors followed their master into oblivion.

But when the last stone joined its brethren and became nothing but a sodden mass and then not even that, soaking into the ground . . . when the wind streaked up into the night sky and vanished, leaving behind a breathless hush and many Faerie beasts lying low, their hands over their heads . . .

When Lumé crested the horizon and gazed into the place of darkness where for so long he had not dared to shine, his great golden eye fell upon two figures kneeling together in the dust. The one strong, clad in rags, held the other, who fell against her in shuddering weakness, his head upon her shoulder, his face buried in her neck as he wept. Her hair cascaded over him in a comforting shield against everything he must soon face.

And she held his ruined, melted hands in hers.





15


LARK HAD NEVER WALKED on clouds before.

She decided these probably weren’t real clouds. Real clouds held the rain, and that meant they had to be wet, or at least a little soggy. These, however, were more like what storytellers and poets want clouds to be: indescribably soft and springy yet solid enough that a little girl might walk upon them.

Or perhaps she was simply not solid enough herself anymore to fall through.

Either way, she didn’t mind. After all the horror of recent memory—horror that her conscious mind had been too numbed to recognize, but that her raging subconscious had experienced in all the vibrancy of dreams-come-true—a stroll in the heavens was quite pleasant.

How she had come here, she couldn’t decide. She had vague recollections of the shadow’s scream, followed by a long, long fall. Then she’d opened her eyes and found herself lying upon this cloud that was softer than lamb’s wool. All was gray-blue around her with the promise of dawn nearing. She got to her feet, unsteady at first, then started walking, stepping from cloud to cloud.

There were other children. None of them were near enough to call out to, but she could see hundreds of them all round her. Dark children of the South Land, clad in garments very like her own. Her brothers and her sisters through the binding of the nation.

They had all passed through the black door of the Mound.

Lark shivered at this almost memory. It couldn’t be a real memory since she had been unconscious, lost at the time in the light of the Bronze. But somewhere deep inside, she came so close to remembering, it was frightening. She would spend the rest of her life trying to forget what she had never truly known.

Lumé began to rise. The clouds, dark purple beneath her feet, came alive with red, with saffron, with gold, rippling like swiftly moving water as the light spread farther and farther. Lark heard gasps of delight from the great crowd of children surrounding her, but then those gasps were swallowed up in the sound that followed.

The sound of Lumé’s Song.

He appeared on the edge of the horizon, lordly and powerful, a vision-filling giant even at this vast distance. He was young and he was old, and his hair streamed like flames, and his body flamed as well, a vibrant flame full of life. From his mouth poured the Melody, and it was the Melody itself that exploded with light, and shot the colors across the clouds, across the waking world.

As Lumé rose, he danced, and Lark found she longed to dance as well. She raised her hands above her head, and her feet moved in a rhythm hitherto unknown. All the children danced, each a different dance, unique in its pattern, hundreds of inimitable patterns that moved together with the Song of Lord Lumé and scattered tufts of light-infused clouds beneath their feet.

They raised their sweet, childish voices and sang. Theirs was not the language of the Sun, but language did not matter here, high above the worlds.

“I bless your name, oh you who sit

Enthroned beyond the Highlands!

I bless your name and sing in answer

To the Song you give!

“My words in boundless gladness overflow,

In song, more than words.

Joy and fear and hope and trembling,

Bursting all restraint!

“Who can help but sing?”

So the sun rose and danced across the sky. And his Song became milder, more distant as he climbed those high blue vaults, and the clouds gave up their brilliant colors to become a softer, gentler white. Lark, exhausted and happy, sat down suddenly, closing her eyes, feeling the warmth of Lumé’s blaze upon her skin. The darkness of Cren Cru’s Mound was all but forgotten now.